The Astronaut's Wife Read Online Free

from space?” said Nan as she eased the cork from the bottle of pinoe noir. She sounded incredulous. De-spite her sister’s marriage to an astronaut she still could not get used to this NASA stuff. It was still science fiction to her. Of course, it wasn’t the technology ‘involved that astonished her, but the act itself. Nan was not famous for her success with men.
The cork emerged with a pop. “From outer space,” she repeated as she reached for a wine glass.
Jillian, still engaged with her vegetables, did not
turn around. But she nodded, as if to herself. “Well, technically not outer space,” she said. “He was still in the earth’s orbit. But, yes, he called me from the orbiter. Out there.” She gestured vaguely toward the window with the knife in her right hand.
Nan sighed and sipped her wine. “I can’t get Stanley to call from the Beef and Brew and you get a call from outer space. You gotta admit, that’s got to make a kid feel a little... inadequate.” She poured a glass of the scarlet wine and handed it to Jillian. “Not that it’s your fault or anything, Jilly 0...”
    Jillian smiled and took the glass. She thought that if she was in Nan’s shoes she would not exactly relish the idea of a call from Nan’s latest boyfriend, Stanley, whether from the Beef and Brew, outer space, or anywhere else. Stanley, sadly, was no woman’s idea of a knight in shining armor.
“Like I said,” Jillian replied gently, “technically it wasn’t outer space, Nan.”
    Nan shrugged and shook her head. “Earth’s orbit, outer space, Jupiter, whatever. Jill, if you want to get really technical about things, you scored.” She took a deep pull on her wine and shook her head again. “Oh man...”
    “What?” Jillian asked.
“I don’t get it,” Nan replied. “How is it—we grow up in the same house, we watched the same television shows, ate the same frozen dinners. .. Your background is no different than mine, you know. It’s no nature versus nurture thing here.
We weren’t separated at birth or anything like that—”
Jillian looked puzzled, not quite sure where her sister was going with this. “So what?”
Nan rolled her eyes and swigged a bit more wine. “So what? So you land Johnny Rocket Boy—who probably would have sent you flowers from outer space if he could have—and I keep on ending up with subtly different models of ‘throws up on himself Elmo.’” She took another gulp of the wine and then winked slyly at her sister. “And let me guess... I’ll bet he’s good at the little things, too, isn’t he?”
“What little things?” Jillian asked innocently. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling broadly, but she could not match her sister for brazenness. After a moment, she blushed and looked away, turning back to her vegetables.
“Those little things that mean so much,” said Nan, peering at her sister over the top of her wine glass. “You know what I’m talking about, July.”
“Maybe,” she replied and blushed a little bit more.
Nan laughed out loud at the truth she read in her sister’s eyes. “It’s true,” she said. “Men are like parking spaces. The good ones are taken and you can bet that the available ones are all handicapped. Maybe you don’t know that, but I sure as hell do.”
The two sisters shared a laugh over that, Jillian shaking her head ruefully as she expertly diced a
zucchini. “There’s a man out there for you, Nan. Give it time.”
“How much time is time,” Nan shot back. “Wait a minute, Jilly-o.. . I know... Maybe, just maybe, I’m gay. Maybe that’s it. I could be gay, you know.”
“Oh, Nan, you? You are not the type.”
“Maybe I could get to like it,” Nan countered. “You know, gay is pretty damn cool these days... or is that over already.” She considered that for a moment. “No, I think it’s still pretty cool.”
“Nan, stop it!”
But Nan wouldn’t stop it. She knew that anything that took her sister’s mind off of the space