The Lady Astronaut of Mars (3 page)

As soon as he was sitting up on the edge of the bed, I gave him the walker. He wrapped his shaking hands around the bars and tried to stand. He rose only a little before dropping back to the bed. I stayed where I was, though I ached to help. He sometimes took more than one try to stand at night, and didn't want help. Not until it became absolutely necessary. Even then, he wouldn't want it. I just hoped he'd let me help him when we got to that point.

On the second try, he got his feet under him and stood, shaking. With a nod, he pushed forward. "Let's go."

I followed him to the bathroom in case he lost his balance in there, which he did sometimes. The first time, I hadn't been home. We had hired Genevieve not long after that to sit with him when I needed to be out. 

He stopped in the kitchen and bent a little at the waist with a sort of grunt. 

"Are you all right?"

He shook his head and started again, moving faster. "I'm not--" He leaned forward, clenching his jaw. "I can't--"

The bathroom was so close. 

"Oh, God. Elma..." A dark, fetid smell filled the kitchen. Nathaniel groaned. "I couldn't--"

I put my hand on his back. "Hush. We're almost there. We'll get you cleaned up." 

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He pushed the walker forward, head hanging. A trail of damp footsteps followed him. The ammonia stink of urine joined the scent of his bowels. 

I helped him lower his pajamas. The weight of them had made them sag on his hips. Dark streaks ran down his legs and dripped onto the bathmat. I eased him onto the toilet.

My husband bent his head forward, and he wept.

I remember wetting a washcloth and running it over his legs. I know that I must have tossed his soiled pajamas into the cleaner, and that I wiped up the floor, but those details have mercifully vanished. But what I can't forget, and I wish to God that I could, is Nathaniel sitting there crying.

#

I asked Genevieve to bring adult diapers to us the next day. The strange thing was how familiar the package felt. I'd used them on launches when we had to sit in the capsule for hours and there was no option to get out of our space suit. It's one of the many glamorous details of being an astronaut that the publicity department does
not
share with the public.

There is a difference, however, from being required to wear one for work and what Nathaniel faced. He could not put them on by himself without losing his balance. Every time I had to change the diaper, he stared at the wall with his face slack and hopeless.

Nathaniel and I'd made the decision not to have children. They aren't conducive to a life in space, you know? I mean there's the radiation, and the weightlessness, but more it was that I was gone all the time. I couldn't give up the stars... but I found myself wishing that we hadn't made that decision. Part of it was wishing that I had some connection to the next generation. More of it was wanting someone to share the burden of decision with me.

What happens after Nathaniel dies? What do I have left here? More specifically, how much will I regret not going on the Mission?

And if I'm in space, how much will I regret abandoning my husband to die alone? 

You see why I was starting to wish that we had children?

In the afternoon, we were sitting in the living room, pretending to work. Nathaniel sat with his pencil poised over the paper and stared out the window as though he were working. I'm pretty sure he wasn't but I gave him what privacy I could and started on one of my eagles. 

The phone rang and gave us both something of a relief, I think, to have a distraction. The phone sat on a table by Nathaniel's chair so he could reach it easily if I weren't in the room. With my eyes averted, his voice sounded as strong as ever as he answered. 

"Hang on, Sheldon. Let me get Elma for-- Oh. Oh, I see."

I snipped another feather but it was more as a way to avoid making eye contact than because I really wanted to keep working. 

"Of course I've got a few minutes. I have nothing but time these days." He ran his hand through his hair and let it rest at the back of his neck. "I find it hard to believe that you don't have programmers on staff who can't handle this."

He was quiet then as Sheldon spoke, I could hear only the distorted tinny sound of his voice rising and falling. At a certain point, Nathaniel picked up his pencil again and started making notes. Whatever Sheldon was asking him to do,
that
was the moment when Nathaniel decided to say "yes."

I set my eagle aside and went into the kitchen. My first reaction – God. It shames me but my first reaction was anger. How dare he? How dare he take a job without consulting with me when I was turning down this thing I so desperately wanted because of him. I had the urge to snatch up the phone and tell Sheldon that I would go. 

I pushed that down carefully and looked at it. 

Nathaniel had been urging me to go. No deliberate action of his was keeping me from accepting. Only my own upbringing and loyalty and... and I loved him. If I did not want to be alone after he passed, how could I leave him to face the end alone?

The decision would be easier if I knew when he would die.

I still hate myself for thinking that.

I heard the conversation end and Nathaniel hung up the phone. I filled a glass with water to give myself an excuse for lingering in the kitchen. I carried it back into the living room and sat down on the couch.

Nathaniel had his lower lip between his teeth and was scowling at the page on top of his notepad. He jotted a number in the margin with a pencil before he looked up.

"That was Sheldon." He glanced back at the page. 

I settled in my chair and fidgeted with the wedding band on my finger. It had gotten loose in the last year. "I'm going to turn them down."

"What-- But, Elma." His gaze flattened and he gave me a small frown. "Are you... are you sure it's not depression? That's making you want to stay, I mean."

[snorts] "Now what do I have to be depressed about?"

"Please."  He ran his hands through his hair and knit them together at the back of his neck. "I want you to go so you won't be here when... It's just going to get worse from here."

The devil of it was that he wasn't wrong. That didn't mean he was right, either, but I couldn't flat out tell him he was wrong. I set down my scissors and pushed the magnifier out of the way. "It's not just depression."

"I don't understand. There's a chance to go back into space."  He dropped his hands and sat forward. "I mean... If I die before the mission leaves and you're grounded here. How would you feel?"

I looked away. My gaze was pointed to the window and the view of the house across the lane. But I did not see the windows or the red brick walls. All I saw was a black and grey cloth made of despair. "I had a life that I enjoyed before this opportunity came up. There's no reason I shouldn't keep on enjoying it. I enjoy teaching. There are a hundred reasons to enjoy life here."

He pointed his pencil at me the way he used to do when he spotted a flaw in reasoning at a meeting, but the pencil quivered in his grip now. "If that's true, then why haven't you told them no, yet?"

The answer to that was not easy. Because I
wanted
to be in the sky, weightless, and watching the impossibly bright stars. Because I didn't want to watch Nathaniel die. "What did Sheldon ask you to do?"

"NASA wants more information about LS-579."

"I imagine they do." I twisted that wedding band around as if it were a control that I could use. "I would... I would hate... As much as I miss being in space, I would hate myself if I left you here. To have and to hold, in sickness and in health. Till death do us part and all that. I just can't."

"Well... just don't tell him no. Not yet. Let me talk to Dr. Williams and see if she can give us a clearer date. Maybe there won't be a schedule conflict after al--"

"Stop it! Just
stop
. This is my decision. I'm the one who has to live with the consequences. Not you. So, stop trying to put your guilt off onto me because the devil of it is, one of us is going to feel guilty here, but I'm the one who will have to live with it."

I stormed out of the room before he could answer me or I could say anything worse. And yes-- I knew that he couldn't follow me and for once I was glad. 

#

Dorothy came not long after that. To say that I was flummoxed when I opened the door wouldn't do justice to my surprise. She had her medical bag with her and I think that's the only thing that gave me the power of speech. "Since when do you make house calls?"

She paused, mouth partially open, and frowned. "Weren't you told I was coming?"

"No." I remembered my manners and stepped back so she could enter.  "Sorry. You just surprised me is all."

"I'm sorry. Mr. Spender asked me to come out. He thought you'd be more comfortable if I stayed with Mr. York while you were gone." She shucked off her shoes in the dust room.

I looked back through the kitchen to the living room, where Nathaniel sat just out of sight. "That's right kind and all, but I don't have any appointments today."

"Do I have the date wrong?"

The rattle and thump of Nathaniel's walker started. I abandoned Dorothy and ran through the kitchen. He shouldn't be getting up without me. If he lost his balance again-- What? It might kill him if he fell? Or it might not kill him fast enough so that his last days were in even more pain.

He met me at the door and looked past me. "Nice to see you, Doc."

Dorothy had trailed after me into the kitchen. "Sir."

"You bring that eagle to show me?"

She nodded and I could see the little girl she had been in the shyness of it. She lifted her medical bag to the kitchen table and pulled out a battered shoe box of the sort that we don't see up here much. No sense sending up packaging when it just takes up room on the rocket. She lifted the lid off and pulled out tissue that had once been pink and had faded to almost white. Unwrapping it, she pulled out my eagle.

It's strange seeing something that you made that long ago.  This one was in flight, but had its head turned to the side as though it were looking back over its shoulder. It had an egg clutched in its talons.

Symbolism a little blunt, but clear. Seeing it I remembered when I had made it. I remembered the conversation that I had had with Dorothy when she was a little girl.

I picked it up, turning it over in my hands. The edges of the paper had become soft with handling over the years so it felt more like corduroy than cardstock. Some of the smaller feathers were torn loose showing that this had been much-loved. The fact that so few were missing said more, about the place it had held for Dorothy.

She had asked me, standing outside the fence in the shadow of the rocket gantry, if I were still going to Mars. I had said yes.

Then she had said, "You going to have kids on Mars?"

What she could not have known-- what she likely still did not know, was that I had just come from a conversation with Nathaniel when we decided that we would not have children. It had been a long discussion over the course of two years and it did not rest easy on me. I was still grieving for the choice, even though I knew it was the right one.

The radiation, the travel... the stars were always going to call me and I could ask
him
to be patient with that, but it was not fair to a child. We had talked and talked and I had built that eagle while I tried to grapple with the conflicts between my desires. I made the eagle looking back, holding an egg, at the choices behind it.

And when Dorothy had asked me if I would have kids on Mars,  I put the regulation smile on, the one you learn to give while wearing 160 pounds of space suit in Earth gravity while a photographer takes just one more photo. I've learned to smile through pain, thank you. "Yes, honey. Every child born on Mars will be there because of me."

"What about the ones born here?"

The child of tragedy, the double-orphan. I had knelt in front of her and pulled the eagle out of my bag. "Those most of all."

Standing in my kitchen, I lifted my head to look at Nathaniel. His eyes were bright. It took a try or two before I could find my voice again. "Did you know? Did you know which one she had?"

"I guessed." He pushed into the kitchen, the walker sliding and rattling until he stood next to me. "The thing is, Elma, I'm going to be gone in a year either way. We decided not to have children because of your career."

"We made that decision together."

"I know." He raised a hand off the walker and put it on my arm. "I'm not saying we didn't. What I'm asking is that you make this career decision for
me
. I want you to go."

I set the eagle back in its nest of tissue and wiped my eyes. "So you tricked her into coming out just to show me that?"

Nathaniel laughed sounding a little embarrased. "Nope. Talked to Sheldon. There's a training session this afternoon that I want you to go to."

"I don't want to leave you."

"You won't. Not completely." He gave a sideways grin and I could see the young man he'd been. "My program will be flying with you." 

"That's not the same."

"It's the best I can offer."

I looked away and caught Dorothy staring at us with a look of both wonder and horror on her face. She blushed when I met her gaze. "I'll stay with him."

"I know and it was kind of Sheldon to ask but--"

"No, I mean. If you go... I'll make sure he's not alone."

#

Dorothy lived in the middle of the great Mars plains in the home of Elma, who was an astronaut, and Nathaniel, who was an astronaut's husband. I live in the middle of space in a tiny capsule filled with punchcards and magnetic tape. I am not alone, though someone who doesn't know me might think I appear to be.

I have the stars.

I have my memories.

And I have Nathaniel's last program. After it runs, I will make an eagle and let my husband fly.

END