Robert Tine - The Astronaut's Wife

“How do you feel?" Spencer asked his wife.

“Like there’s a part of you always inside me,” she answered. “It’s nice. I always know where are.”

“Inside you,” Spencer whispered.

“Yes, that’s right.”

The music the cellist was playing changed. She had finished the Bach suite and swung into something a little faster. A big smile on her face, she started to play “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.” Jillian turned around and embraced her husband.

“Happy anniversary, Jillian,” Spencer said. He kissed her warmly and held he close.

“Anniversary?” She put her hand to her mouth and looked worried for a moment. She had completely forgotten that today was their anniversary. She searched for a look of disappointment or hurt in his face. But it wasn’t there. He smiled down at her and she could tell that he was secretly glad that he had remembered and that she had forgotten their great date. It was one of those sexual role reversals he loved to pull. He never played the oafish insensitive husband if he could help it. But both he and Jillian had forgotten his brutish lovemaking that had put those twins in her in the first place. But that was in the past and neither of them wanted to dredge it up again.

So she had forgotten their anniversary? So what? For the first time in a long time life was good…

Never in her life would Jillian Armacost have guess that there were so many products on the market aimed at children not yet, born. She walked the aisles of a big store in the East Thirties that catered exclusively to newborns, toddlers, and children up to the age of twelve.

The selection was truly astonishing. There weren’t six or ten different, strollers and baby carriages on sale—there were sixty, ranging in price from rock-bottom models to ultra luxurious buggies that seemed to cost as much as a small car.

In addition to cribs and car seats, layettes and bassinets, there was aisle after aisle of toys, acres of brightly colored plastic creations catering to every childish whim and fancy.

Jillian stopped in front of an array of plush animals. There were so many of them she felt like she was facing an audience of bunnies and bears, and fluffy elephants’ and lions and tigers that looked as if they wouldn’t hurt a fly, even if they were hungry.

Jillian smiled and picked up two identical fuzzy teddy bears and looked at them. From now on she was going to have to think in terms of twos, two of everything, no playing favorites… she wondered if she would be tempted to dress them alike, as mothers so often did with sets of twins.

She was sure of one thing, though. No matter how identical her children might be physically, she knew—she could sense in only the way a mother could sense—that they would have distinct personalities. They would be individuals.

Then everything changed. There was a flash of light before her eyes and she dropped the twin teddies as that image came back to her. That New York City street that she had seen once before. There was something terrifying and distorted about it and she shook her head to clear it. But the image persisted.

Jillian wanted to cry. Things were going so well, she could not allow herself to slip. By sheer force of will she forced her way back to the ordinariness of the kids’ store, pushing that cursed street from her mind.

It vanished, and she blinked as if she had just been brought out of a trance by a stage hypnotist. She was sweating and she was scared and she knew she had to get out of there. But as she turned to leave she saw a man standing at the end of the aisle. lie was shabbily dressed and carried a tattered over-stuffed briefcase. He stared at her and she stared back. And she realized she knew him. It was Sherman Reese… well, not exactly Sherman Reese. It was a sort of like looking at a threadbare and bedraggled copy of Sherman Reese.

As he took a step town her, Jillian took a step away, ready to run and scream if she had to.

“Mrs. Armacost?” Reese said. He took another step toward her. “Mrs. Armacost, do you remember me?”

Jillian stopped and forced herself to be friendly. She was in a public place and this man could not hurt her. She rebuked herself for giving in so easily to a hysterical fear.

“Mr. Reese? Is that you?” she said.

Reese walked up to her. “Yes, that’s right,” he said, his eyes glittering. “Sherman Reese from NASA…” He looked her over quickly. She could feel his eyes on her body and it made her uncomfortable. “Are you…” He stared at her widening hips and protuberant abdomen. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you?”

Julian nodded. “Yes, just a few months. I didn’t realize that I showed that much… Sherman Reese had always been faultlessly dressed and perfectly groomed. She remembered that terrible day when he had come to collect her to take her to the center where she would await news of Spencer’s fate. Even on an awful and disturbing day like that, he had been cool and comfortable. She remembered thinking that his immaculate look had been something approaching an insult to her.

But all that had changed. His clothes were dirty, his shoes scuffed, his tie stained; his once perfectly manicured finger nails were filthy and bitten down to the quick. He wore a three-day growth of stubble on his face. One did not have to be a genius to realize that something catastrophic had happened to Sherman Reese.

“I need to speak to you,” said Reese. “It is terribly important, Mrs. Armacost.”

Jillian felt her fear and suspicion returning, rising up in her like mercury in a thermometer. “You should call my husband, Mr. Reese. You can reach him at— ”

.Reese cut her off. “I need to speak with you, Mrs. Armacost.” He spoke fast and frantically. He spoke in a low and nervous whisper. “I need to talk to you about those two minutes. The two minutes, Mrs. Armacost. You know which two minutes I mean, don’t you?”

“What is it,Mr. Reese?” Jillian spoke almost wearily. Things were going so, well, but she could tell that the appearance of this odd man spelled the end of that.

Reese seemed overly eager to talk, as if he had been silent for a long time. “Mrs. Armacost, have you noticed any change in your husband’s behavior since that shuttle mission?”

Well of course she had, but she had no intention of telling this man about them. Any changes that had occurred in her husband had been explained to her satisfaction. He had been through a horrible and terrifying ordeal. It had affected him. It would have had an effect on anyone. But the shock and the trauma were wearing off now. They were coming out of it together.

“No,” she lied. “I haven’t seen any change in Spencer. Why do you ask?”

Sherman Reese took a step closer. “It’s odd that you haven’t seen any changes on him, because I have been going through these files and I see some striking anomalies and peculiarities.” He threw open the bulging briefcase and pulled out a thumb-stained photocopy of an official NASA document.

He pointed at a line on the piece of paper with a grimy finger. “Like right here. You see? This is your husband’s signature from just before he went on the last shuttle flight. It was a release that all the crew members were required to sign—it’s a secret, you know, that they have to sign a release, but they do. Ever since Challenger—”

“Mr. Reese ”

Sherman Reese realized that he was losing her. “This was the signature that he signed before he left,” he said quickly, “and here is a form he signed on his return. I admit, they are similar but they are not the same… they are not the same signature.”

Jillian did not bother to examine either the before or after documents or the signatures on them. Instead, she frowned at Sherman Reese, looking at him crossly. “May I ask you a question, Mr. Reese?”