The Launch

        The Space Shuttle Atlantis looked gigantic from three miles away.  It stood atop
the launch pad, towering above the Cape Kennedy wetlands and the blue Atlantic.  A pit
formed in her stomach as she took in the scale of six million pounds of fuel and machinery
being readied for launch.  Her best friend Elsie sat beside her in the car, helping to
navigate with the aid of a map.  Elsie's nephew was on this mission, and he was probably
already onboard Atlantis, strapped in and ready to go.
        They reached the VIP observing area and parked in a lot jammed with cars, trucks,
and RV's.  A few hundred people had already set up chairs, tables, telescopes, cameras,
laptops.  Almost everyone -- dignitaries, photographers, the family and friends of the
astronauts, had binoculars slung around their necks.  The place was a buzz of activity as 
people rushed video camera setups to completion.
        Sue got out of the car and aimed her binoculars at the launch pad.  The scale of
the shuttle became apparent when she saw the two trucks moving away from the launch area.
The trucks looked like ants beside the shuttle.  Just in front of her, Elsie was spreading
out a blanket on the grass and serving up their picnic dinner.  They had bought a box of
chicken, a couple salads, and biscuits along the way.
        "I wish Earl were here," Sue said.  Not the Earl she had left at home in Cleveland,
but the man she had married over thirty years ago.  Just after their honeymoon, Apollo 11
had blasted off for the moon.  A few days later, they sat in bed after making love,
mesmerized as Armstrong took one small step and changed history.
        "You're kidding, right?" Elsie said.  "After what he pulled on you yesterday, then
this morning?"  The smell of fried chicken drew Sue to the blanket.  She sat down and began
to nibble on a piece of chicken while recalling the previous day -- a chilly October
morning when Earl had reluctantly agreed to carve a Halloween pumpkin.
        He had complained about the mess pumpkins make, with all the seeds, so they
had agreed to perform the ritual outside.  They stood on the porch, on either side of a
table where a huge, orange pumpkin wobbled in the wind.  He was tall and spindly beside
her, she at least a foot shorter and twice as wide.
        "Why the hell'd you buy such a big one?" he said.  He picked up the carving knife
and traced a path along its skin.
        "Draw the face first.  It's a lot easier," she said, propping herself against the
railing.  He picked up a crayon and sketched in two full, round cheeks, a double chin, and
now eyes, half closed.  Next, twisted lips, craned open as if the pumpkin struggled to
fill its girth with air.  She crossed her arms, pinched her brow as he stared at her, all
the while shading pouches beneath the eyes.  He dug the crayon into the orange flesh and
colored in two thickly knitted eyebrows.  The face on the pumpkin looked like it was about
to cry.
        "There," he said, and tossed the crayon to the table.  He lifted the knife, sucked
in a breath, and prepared to cut.
        "What are you doing?" she said.  Her voice quivered, strained higher like a young
girl's.
        "Just trimming away the fat, Dear."
        Now, Sue chewed on a piece of chicken and struggled to shut out Earl.  Tears welled
in her eyes, and she said a prayer, her first in years.
        "Please give me a sign, Lord.  Should I stay or should I leave?"  The last time
she had prayed, she had just found out her mother had liver cancer with only a month to
live.  And, further back, when she learned she couldn't have children and Earl had refused
to budge on adoption.
        That was the day their romance ended.  She sat beside Earl as he swore and
struggled through Cleveland rush hour traffic on the way home from the doctor's office.
They had enjoyed a bright future until then, with his career as an accountant and hers as
a schoolteacher, a new house with a room already picked out as a nursery.  Four months of 
trying, throughout the summer of their marriage, had sent them in search of answers.
        "I will not be father to a child that's not mine," Earl had shouted, then laid on
the horn when a taxi cut him off.  "We just aren't meant to have kids.  You have to face
reality."
        It was already six in the evening at Cape Kennedy, and the sun had softened in the
western sky.  To one side of their view of the launch pad, a huge digital clock ticked off
the seconds.
        "Are you nervous?" Sue said.
        "I'll admit to being a little worried.  But everything will be okay.  Let's cross
our fingers for no launch delays."
        "The weather sure won't be a problem."  The sky was cloudless and deep blue.  A
warm, gentle breeze blew across them.
        By now, Elsie's nephew was probably helping with the pre-flight checklist.  Sue
stared through binoculars at the shuttle and hoped for a safe flight.  Fifteen years ago,
she had watched in horror as the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in a roaring fireball. 
She had tuned into the launch on television in her classroom, to watch the first 
schoolteacher fly into space.  Her class of third-graders sat stunned when the shuttle
blew up.  She spent the next few days trying to make sense of what happened.
        "Space launches are tricky," Sue said.  "No matter how many things you think about
beforehand, anything can happen.  Some launches start off with delays and problems, but
then the rest of the mission goes without a hitch.  Other missions start out smoothly,
then all sorts of problems crop up.  Remember Apollo 13?"
        "Thanks for the warm fuzzies.  Geez, I brought along a prophet of doom."
        Sue caught herself and apologized for thinking out loud.  She had once been the
perpetual optimist, the girl who found something good in everyone she met.  And she had
never seen more good in anyone than Earl.  That's why she fell in love with him.  Her
optimism crumbled after Earl's prejudices ruined her dreams of children.
        Over the next thirty years, she had divorced her heart and her desire of him.
Their passion stilled, Earl grew bitter and had a long-term affair with one of the
secretaries at work.  Sue's own image of womanhood had shriveled and fallen dormant,
sinking into the quiet of a heart that mourns the passing of a dream.  The years had
become mere co-existence for them, lovemaking forgotten but for rare gestures they enacted
to convince themselves that they were still married.
        "It's beautiful, isn't it?" Elsie said.  Everyone watched as the sky darkened.
The top of the shuttle glowed orange in the sunset.  Lights twinkled on the launch pad,
up the massive steel truss supporting the huge delta winged vehicle, two rocket boosters,
and a towering fuel tank.  Searchlights were aimed upon the shuttle.
        Elsie turned to Sue's mopey face and rested a hand on her shoulder.
        "He's no good for you, you know that."
        "What can I do?  I can't live on my pension, even with my measly social
security."  She fought back tears, angry that Earl was spoiling her time here,
more than a thousand miles from home.
        "It's not worth putting up with his bullshit.  The security of money is no
reason to stay."
        Sue looked into Elsie's eyes, bright, alive amidst the deep creases in her face.
Elsie was still sharp as a whip despite her eighty years.
        "What if we could make things better?"
        "How are you going to do that?  You've been trying that since before we met.
Has he ever tried?  Riddle me that."
        "I could lose some weight.  Maybe he'd look at me like he used to."
        "There's too much between you now.  Being thirty or forty pounds lighter won't
get you over the wall."
        "Listen, I'm sick of talking about Earl.  I'd like to enjoy at least a day without
him."
        They sat in silence for a while, finishing off their dinner and relishing the
warm Florida air.  Earlier that day, they had left their homes, next door to each other,
on the headlands along Lake Erie.  A three hour flight had brought them from chilly autumn
air to palm trees, sunbathers, and temperature in the eighties.
        Sue recalled the beach they had passed on their way here -- all the beautiful young
men and women, and a surprising number of older people who were jogging and keeping
themselves in shape.  She felt fat, ugly as she remembered the many times Earl had
taken jabs at her folds.  Her weight was his chief weapon against her, and he rarely spared
her his wrath.
        "What's for dinner?" Earl had said.  Sue had just returned to the house after
accepting Elsie's invitation to fly to Florida.  She was smiling with excitement.  "By the
way, you can finish the pumpkin yourself," he said.
        "I need to get packing," Sue said, her gaze aimed at the floor.
        His face went blank.  He slipped his hands into his pockets, rocking from one foot
to the other.
        "Packing?  Why?  Where you going?"
        Sue explained about Elsie's nephew, the space mission, and Elsie's spare ticket.
        "Are you serious?  A real astronaut, on the space shuttle?"
        "I'll only be away for one night."
        She knew she had put him at ease, that she wasn't packing to leave him for good.
It was good to know he didn't want her gone.  As she removed her coat, his face flushed.
        "And you're going without me?  Without even asking?"
        As suddenly as relief had replaced anxiety, she flashed with anger, reaching a
critical point.  Something snapped.
        "You wouldn't be caught dead walking next to a fat lady like me, especially on the
beach.  Picture it, you looking so trim, me waddling to keep up.  I couldn't bear
embarrassing you like that, Dear."
        She stopped him in his tracks.  He stood frozen, mouth hanging open, speechless.
She had never admitted to being fat, and she had shocked both of them.  At first she felt
like crying.  Then a feeling of relief came over her.  She had finally disarmed him.
        A voice over a PA system indicated that the shuttle's engines had been armed.
The atmosphere was charged, the air filled with nervous electricity.
        Elsie stood up and tapped her foot on the ground.  Sue felt her anxiety as the
counter ticked down toward zero.  A thin cloud of vapor rose about the shuttle as more 
stars appeared in the sky.  Everyone was standing now, as the counter reached ten minutes.
        "I can't believe this is really about to happen," Elsie said.
        Sue remembered the day that Elsie had come pounding on the front door with the
good news, that her nephew Michael had been selected for his first space mission.  That 
was over a year ago, before the training for the mission had begun.  Elsie had recounted
his grueling hours, the frequent moves around the country with his wife and three
children.  It was a tough life being an astronaut.  Sue thought it might be more difficult
to be on the ground watching and praying for everything to go well.
        Sue took her hand and felt the tension in her grip.  She wondered how much Elsie
would have wanted her late husband to be here, by her side, holding her in his arms.  They
had been very close, a seemingly idyllic relationship, at least by Elsie's retellings over
the years.  Elsie's history had made Sue's own unhappiness glaringly evident, by the 
contrast between the two marriages.  She struggled to recall just one pleasant memory from
the past thirty years of Purgatory with Earl.  Next year, he would be retiring as well.
He'd be home all day with her.
        "Hell," Sue said, and Elsie gave her a puzzled look.
        The count reached the one minute mark.  Between isolated whistles and cheers, the
landscape fell into an eerie silence.  Both of them joined the crowd in a loud chant as
the count reached ten seconds.  Sue's heart was in her throat.  She swallowed hard, unable
to remove her gaze from the space shuttle, poised for launch.  At four seconds, flames 
flickered at the base of the shuttle, then a puff of white smoke jetted from the launch
pad.
        Zero.
        The night became day, as the main boosters ignited and obscured the launch in a
rushing, boiling cloud of smoke.  All of this in silence, as the sound raced toward them
across the miles.  The shuttle emerged from the cloud, clearing the launch pad, rising on
a blinding pillar of fire.  Then the roar engulfed them, loud, all encompassing, as 
Atlantis thundered into the sky.  The rocket boosters spit massive tongues of flame,
building a column of smoke toward the heavens.
        The crowd screamed.  They clapped and cheered to the snap of thousands of camera
shutters.  Sue was trembling, her eyes filled with tears in the awesome display of power.
Elsie was taking pictures as quickly as she could.  She stopped, grabbed the Polaroid
camera from the blanket and snapped a shot of Sue's face.
        "Gottcha," Elsie said.  Sue couldn't take her eyes off the launch.  Atlantis
continued upward, the atmosphere torn asunder and crackling.  A minute later, there was
only a scorched launch pad and a drifting cloud of smoke.  The cheering died down as the
calm of night returned.  Twenty minutes later, someone announced that Atlantis had reached 
orbit, and all systems were functioning perfectly.
        Sue and Elsie embraced, tears sliding down their cheeks.  Elsie's nephew had
realized a life-long dream.  Sue had watched a new beginning, a thunderous display of
light and gleaming metal take to the sky.  Atlantis and her crew had left an old world and
found a new.

                                          * * *

        It was already dark by the time Sue returned home from the gym.  She drove up the
driveway and saw light in the downstairs windows.  An orange flicker in the living room's
bay window filled her with warmth.  What a way to return home -- dinner and a crackling
fireplace.
        She parked and climbed the steps to the kitchen door.  Elsie was visible through
the checkered curtains.  She stood at the stove stirring a large pot.
        "Beef stew and cornbread," Elsie had suggested that morning, and by the smell in
the doorway she had made good on her promise.  Sue hesitated at the door.  She turned and
gazed out into the yard, lit dimly by the porch lights.  Deeply worn tire marks, from the
Ryder truck Earl had rented, were still visible on the lawn.  Over the past few weeks, 
the rain and wind had worn them down considerably.
        That was the last time they had seen each other.  Her lawyer would attend the
divorce hearing in her stead, and the division of property agreement was signed.  Elsie
had bought Earl's half of the house with her savings, and she was selling her own house to
recoup it all, plus more.
        Sue entered the house and greeted Elsie.  They sat down to dinner and each talked
about their day.  Elsie had spent the morning at the hospice center where she volunteered,
Sue at the house of a chronically ill boy she was giving private instruction. 
        After dinner, they cleaned up the table, and Sue went upstairs.  She had moved
into the spare bedroom, to escape the curtains steeped in Earl's English Leather scent,
the nail holes that once supported his hunting pictures and the large mounted sea bass.
The walls in here were bare, the furniture sparse.  Just what she wanted.  Simplicity.  
Purity.
        The Polaroid shot that Elsie had taken of Sue was lodged in a corner of the
bureau mirror.  She removed it and looked at it, smiling.  The photo was dark, except
for a round white face, ghostlike, in the center of the frame.  Her round cheeks were
puffed out, her chin doubled, wide eyes gleaming in the flash.  Her lips were cranked
open, her teeth bright in the glare.  Glancing in the mirror, she noted the thinning
of her face.
        She sat on the edge of the bed, recalling the shuttle launch, the thunderous
liftoff.  Her mind drifted back further, thirty years, to a flickering, fuzzy black and
white television screen.  Neil Armstrong was about to walk on the moon.  She and Earl
had just made love, and they were watching history in the making.  Then she remembered
her thoughts, as she and Earl held their breath together, a dream that they had just
conceived their first child, a boy or girl who would grow up and one day become an
astronaut.
        She cried, lonely for Earl.  The man she had married.