The Astronaut's Wife (20 page)

It could have been a scene you might see anywhere in America. Two little boys—tow-headed identical twins who had passed their fifth birthdays and were well on their way to their sixth— walking down the driveway of their neat little suburban house.

Right behind them were their parents. The father was square-jawed, clear-eyed and his hair was brush-cut—just the look you expected of a man dressed in the flying suit of a pilot in the United States Air Force. His wings were embroidered on his chest, his captain’s bars on his shoulders. His wife had dark hair and was petite and pretty—the former Jillian Armacost. She carried two paper bags, two identical lunches, and she tucked them into the pack each boy wore on his back.

“Ready.”
Their mother tapped the backpacks. “I gave you each an apple. And I want you to eat them.
No trading, okay? Promise?”
Simultaneously the two little boys answered:
“Promise.”
A beep sounded and the little family looked up to see a bright yellow school bus pulled up to
the curb. Stenciled on the side of the vehicle were the words: Nellis AFB Elementary School. “There it is,” Dad said.
“Give me a kiss,” said Mom, kneeling down.’ Both boys kissed her on the cheek and Jillian
held them tight. As the bus horn sounded again, the two kids broke from the embrace and raced
across the lawn for the bus.
The two proud parents watched them go. “What do you think they’ll be when they grow up?”,
Jillian asked.
Her husband laughed. “Grow up? Give them some time, honey. It’s only their first day of
school.”
Jillian put her hands on his shoulders and turned him away from the school bus and the twins,
then pulled him into a tender embrace.
She laid her head on his shoulder and watched as her boys stopped in front of the school bus
door. They looked back over their shoulders at their mother.
“I think they are going to be pilots,” she said softly. “Just like their father
_{. . . “}
“Stepfather,” he said with an air of self-deprecation.
But Jillian did not appear to have heard him.
The twins were looking back at their mother. The sunny little-boy smiles gone now, as if their
faces had been wiped blank and replaced with cold, dark, adult stares. Their eyes locked onto
Jillian’s for a moment, and mother and sons stared hard at each other for a moment as if joined in
some wordless form of communication.
“I’m only their stepfather,” the husband reiterated.
Jillian traced the embroidered wings sewn onto the chest of his flight overalls. “No,” she said
firmly. “You are their father now.”
The bus horn beeped one more time and the link between Jillian and her twin sons snapped.
There were smiles all round again, as if storm clouds had passed. The twins waved and
clambered onto the school bus.
The twins knew most of the kids on the bus; they all lived near one another on the air force
base. The other kids generally tried to make the ride to school a barely contained riot, but the
twins seemed airily above it all. They walked to the very rear of the school bus and settled
themselves in their seats. Each pulled a Walkman from his pack, plugged a pair of headphones
into it and started the tape. As the sound reached their ears, the twins suddenly looked very
peaceful, eerily so.
The shouts and yells of their schoolmates faded away as the twins listened to that terrible sound,
growing louder as the seconds passed. It was as if it were sweet music in their ears . . .