Rocket Man

I swear she could have been me. She had the same long blond hair, although mine was now maintained with help from a bottle. She had the same long legs and tall, thin figure. Her boobs were bigger than mine had even been and her ass had a little more curve to it. But she could have been me. Well ... I would never have chewed gum while waiting in someone's doorway, like she did. But other than that ...

As I looked at her, I noticed that she was holding a sheaf of documents.

"Elizabeth Dixon," she asked. Her asking to identify me only confirmed who she was. I was sure that she was the messenger sent over by the law firm.

"Yes," I said angrily. I took the packet she handed me and glared at her.

"And tell those jerks at the law firm that they did me a favor. They saved me from having to quit. I didn't want to work for them anyway," I said.

"Grandma, I think you need to go back upstairs and take your medication," she said. "The papers I gave you weren't to fire you. I've seen that kind of papers enough times to know ... Well ... just read them." Then she turned, on her expensive high-heeled shoes, and walked back to her waiting car.

I looked at the papers she had just handed me and almost passed out. They were divorce papers. Jack wanted a divorce. I had given that man the best years of my life, and he wanted to kick me out of his. I was angry beyond belief. I went to our computer and looked up the senator's office number. Those things are published so that the people who vote for them can reach their senators. None of the senator's ever answer their own phones, but it makes the public think they have access to their elected officials.

As expected, I got one of the senator's third or fourth level flunkies. I gave him a piece of my mind out of frustration. I told him to tell the senator that Elizabeth Dixon would spend the rest of her life making him pay for what he'd done. I'm sure that my words could have been taken as a threat, but I didn't care. I hung up the phone angrily and started crying.

A short time later, there was a knock at my door. I didn't answer it. I just wanted to stay curled up in the corner crying my eyes out. The next thing I knew the sound of my door opening made me look up. It must have been Jack, only he and I had keys.

I looked into the eyes of the two huge bruisers that worked for the senator.

"She's in here, sir," said one of them.

The hunched over form of the senator came into view after that.

"So Mrs. Daniels ... I believe you're angry with me?" he said. "Obviously, the news of your husband's miraculous return from space isn't enough for you. I still can't fathom why you're spending your time calling me."

"You told Jack about Brett," I bawled. "You ruined my marriage. I hope you're happy. You ruined my life."

I did no such thing," he snapped. He looked me over with an expression that told me he was evaluating me for something.

"You are about the age when women start having those hormonal changes," he said. "So I'm going to try to explain this to you one more time, and I'll go slowly. I've already explained to you that my motives are totally political. I would love to have your husband become involved in political service, especially in my party. Even if he wasn't interested in public office himself, he would be an extremely potent person to have campaigning for us. Your paramour, Brett, was totally unsuitable for anything. He lacked not only integrity, but any trace of a personality who could be sold to the public.

If I wanted your husband on my side, the last thing I'd want to do is be involved in the breakup of his long-time marriage. I wouldn't even want to be the person or responsible party for telling him you cheated on him because people do tend to shoot the messenger. You should probably try to find the answers to your questions by speaking to your husband."

He turned and left the room, flanked by his huge body guards. And I realized that he was probably telling the truth. I knew Jack and the way he reacted to things. The senator obviously did his homework. Jack would have reacted the same way the senator claimed. He would look at the motives of the person who'd given him the news.

According to the packet, Jack wasn't divorcing me for sleeping with Brett. He was using irreconcilable differences and going for a simple no-fault divorce. Perhaps Jack was the one who had found someone else. Maybe he had hooked up with some reporter, or some female engineer at NASA. Jack was kind of famous without tying to be; he could have become involved with anyone. She could be a model or an actress or literally anyone.

Well, it didn't matter. Whoever she was; she should be prepared for the fight of her life. There was no way I was giving Jack up without a fight. We'd been together since we were kids. We would be together until we stopped breathing.

I spent the rest of the day finding a lawyer I could trust. I needed someone who understood the rules and tricks of family law. Even though I was still a lawyer myself, I gave no thought to handling my own case. That old legal saying about lawyers representing themselves having fools for clients came back to me.

* * * * * *

Jack

For the two-week period after I got back, I did two things. I made sure to speak to my colleagues who were on the station every day. I did everything I could to reassure them that we hadn't forgotten them, and we're working very hard towards coming to get them. They laughed and asked if I was going to be on the mission to bring them back to earth. I told them if they wanted to wait six weeks for my leg to heal, I would gladly come for them. And they laughed even harder as they declined.

The reporters from several different news networks ate it up. There were tapes of our daily conversations all over the media.

The second thing I did was to do everything I could do to speed up the healing of my leg. I got daily healing treatments with vibration therapy and also thermal therapy that could be delivered through the cast. I ate foods that were rich in calcium and other minerals to aid in the bone remodeling process.

After the two weeks were up, I still had another month in the cast, but I was at mission control for the entire rescue mission. When the rescue effort was complete, I spoke to each of my colleagues and wished them the best. They all returned to their lives, and I returned to mine.

My biggest problem seemed to be keeping my personal life, personal. Somehow the press got wind of my looming divorce, and it became front-page news.

I tried as hard as I could to keep things private. It was hard enough getting over the only woman I had ever loved without having the facts on the front page of every newspaper. It was especially difficult when no one really knew what the facts were.

My lawyer was supposedly handling everything for me. I had made a very fair offer to split everything down the middle and even gave her the house to sweeten the deal. I left the negotiations up to my lawyer after that.

He kept coming back to me and telling me that Elizabeth wanted to speak to me. I refused. Legally, it wasn't necessary for me to speak to her, so I opted not to. It wasn't that I wanted to avoid arguments with her, or that I had any lingering anger towards her. It was pure cowardice. I guess most people consider me a brave man. I make my living pushing the envelope. I go into situations that would frighten most people, but I couldn't face Elizabeth. How could I look into her eyes without breaking down in tears?

What a lot of people fail to realize is that men are people too. We have feelings and emotions just like women do. We may not be as forthcoming with them, but we still feel. When you spend your entire life with one woman and that woman betrays you, it hurts. It makes you doubt yourself. It makes it hard for you to trust anyone again.

I would never have believed that Elizabeth would do what she did, but the way she handled our divorce was worse.

* * * * * *

Elizabeth

I couldn't believe that Jack wanted just to throw me away like garbage. Sure Jack was famous now and there were all kinds of women throwing themselves at him. He needed to know that anything those bitches could do for him, I would do for him better. My lawyer had several good ideas. The first thing we needed to do was get the evidence on him, so we could force a meeting.

We hired a PI to follow Jack. However, the PI had to follow Jack at a distance and be very careful about it. Jack is a national hero, and as such; he has protection provided by the government. He didn't have body guards or secret service agents assigned to him, but he was monitored closely.

All that did was to show me that Jack was slicker than I have him credit for. My PI trailed Jack as closely as he could for nearly three months and found nothing. I was burning through money in PI fees and legal fees like it was water.

I decided with my lawyer's help to fight fire with fire. I spent a month with a ghost writer, writing my autobiography. The ghost writer I used was a pro. My book came out and immediately went to the top of the bestseller list. The writer painted me as a long-suffering wife who was cast aside by her rock star astronaut husband, who threw her away for a younger, prettier, more famous woman.

The backlash against Jack was huge. I started doing the rounds of daily talk shows to promote the book. The audiences of those shows are largely female and very pro women's rights. Those women are always ready to castrate any man they run into anyway, but after reading my mostly fiction book, they wanted Jack's balls on a plate.

My lawyer was sure that the negative publicity would force Jack to sit down and have a meeting with me. She was also sure that whatever woman or women Jack was dating would have to back away from him or see her career destroyed by the negative publicity. My lawyer was right; she just never saw the way the meeting would take place.

I was doing yet another one of those national talk shows. I had the audience eating out of the palm of my hand. I was answering questions about how Jack had simply thrown me away for absolutely no good reasons. I explained how one morning I was a very much loved wife and the next I was on the trash heap. The hostess of the show literally shocked the shit out of me, when she announced her next guest.

The entire audience started booing and hissing when Jack walked out onto the stage. I hadn't seen Jack in months, but he was different. He wasn't the brash swaggering cowboy that I had known and loved for his entire life.

He was just as attractive, but he seemed more mature and extremely vulnerable. Half of the women in the audience were on his side before he ever sat down. The combination of attractiveness and vulnerability had them ready to forgive him before he said a word.

I sat there on the stage, not realizing that my mouth was gaped open.

"You don't have to be afraid," said the hostess. "He wouldn't dare beat you, here, in front of a national audience." She was smiling as she said it. And I noticed that my lawyer, who was usually backstage for these things was nowhere to be seen. I had a bad feeling about the whole thing then.

"Uhm, he's never laid a hand on me," I said. "Whoever said that he ... Uh beat me?"

"You did," said the host. "It was in chapter fourteen."

"That may have been an exaggeration," I said.

"You mean a lie," asked one woman in the first row.

"It wasn't really a lie," I said. "I think the writer just misunderstood some of the things I told her. Or maybe she padded a few things to make the book seem more ... "

"So what you're saying ..." Interrupted the hostess. " ... is that you didn't really write your own autobiography?"

"I uhm ... helped," I said.

"So what exactly did he do to you," asked a woman on the other side of the audience.

"After more than twenty years of marriage and almost forty years together, he just dumped me," I shouted. "He threw me away like yesterday's garbage without any kind of explanation."

"Ladies you are in for a treat," smiled the host. "For the past few weeks, this woman has been all over TV selling her book and telling us a terrible tale of neglect and abuse. Today on my show, you'll get to hear the other side. Today you'll find out why America's greatest astronaut is divorcing his childhood sweetheart."

The camera panned over to Jack. No one in the audience could look away from him. He leaned forward and sighed. Even that sigh of his swayed the women in his direction. He looked miserable.

"I know this is hard, Jack," cooed the host.

"I met Beth when we were five years old," he started. "At the time, the time I didn't even like girls. However, for some reason, I liked her. From that moment on, we were best friends. Sure, she hung out with the girls, and I hung out and played sports with the boys but other than that we were always together. If I was playing baseball or football, she was there watching. If she was cheerleading or dancing, I was in the audience. Once we got older, the two of us weren't under any sort of pressure.

We didn't have the need to experiment with sex or drugs or anything because we already knew that we were going to be together for life. By the time we were ten years old, we knew that I was going to be an astronaut, and we would get married when we were old enough.

I still remember the boys trying to make fun of me and the girls trying to make fun of Beth. The girls would say, "Hey Liz, here comes your boyfriend." And she'd say, "I see him." And then come over to talk to me. The girls were all shocked because at that age, no one had a girlfriend or boyfriend. It was the same with the guys. They couldn't understand why I spent half of my time with Beth. Even from that age I was the only one who called her Beth. No one else was allowed to.

Once again, we were under no pressure to get married, so we waited until we were twenty years old and in college. We got married on our summer break. It was also the first time that we ever had sex. We had always kissed and hugged, but again, we weren't under any type of pressure. Neither of us needed to impress anyone except each other. So we did things on a time schedule that seemed right for us.

I entered the Air Force academy and specialized in aerospace engineering. Beth and I grew closer as the years went by."

The women in the audience oohed and ahhed as pictures from our wedding album and our photo album played on the huge screen behind Jack. Even I liked looking at them and couldn't help smiling.

"For all of these years we've been together," he continued. "I finally made it to space and never looked back. I had fulfilled my dreams, and Beth started working on hers. She wanted to go to law school, and I encourage her to do it. When she graduated, I hoped that she'd start her own small practice in our home town, but she wanted to work for a big law firm. And she got her shot with one of the biggest firms in Washington DC."

The screen showed a photo of me in my cap and gown graduating from law school. The next picture was of Jack lifting me off my feet and kissing me in my cap and gown. The women in the audience started oohing again.

"Through all of our lives, we've been together," said Jack. "I have never once looked at another woman. So I'm sorry, but most of the things that Beth wrote about in her book are absolute lies."

The women in the audience got quiet, too quiet. You could hear a pin drop in that huge sound studio. My heart was beating so loudly I was sure they could all hear it.

"You've all heard about how my latest trip to space went badly, right," asked Jack.

"We know you're a hero," screamed a woman somewhere in the audience. That did it all of the women started screaming and crying and clapping. The applause lasted for nearly five minutes.

"Thanks ladies," said Jack. "But I was just doing my job. And the stunt that got me home wasn't something I'd have done under normal circumstances. I'm just not that brave."

That started all of the women to screaming again about how brave Jack was. I swear some of those women looked like they were about to take their panties off and throw them on the stage. And then suddenly they all got quiet. There was a close-up of Jack's ruggedly handsome face on that huge screen, and they all saw that he was crying. I think every one of those women had a broken heart then.

"I'm really not that brave," Jack said sadly. "I just didn't care. In actuality, what you all think of as a brave and adventurous act, was a man with a broken heart trying to commit suicide. I never thought that crazy assed idea would work. I just wanted to die. I was in so much pain that I just didn't want to live anymore." The entire building was deathly silent again. Jack had an amazing degree of control over women who just ten minutes earlier wanted to lynch him.

"You're smart; you're handsome; you have a great career," said the hostess. "What could be so bad that you wanted to kill yourself?"

"How many of you ladies have iPhones," asked Jack. Nearly every hand in the audience went up. I was surprised. I thought that the market was supposedly evenly split between Apple and android, but I guess that's just what they say on TV.

"How many of you ladies actually understand the whole iCloud thing," asked Jack again. Only one or two hands went up.

"Like I said earlier," continued Jack. "I'm an aerospace engineer, and I don't fully understand the whole iCloud thing either. Sometimes it works perfectly, other times it acts as if it has a mind of its own. And that was what happened that day in space. I had my iPad with me, so I could play some games and take some pictures from space for our family albums. I like to take pictures, so I can show them to Beth when I come home. However, that day in space, my iPad, over NASA's communication linkage and the capsule's Wi-Fi, connected with my iPhone back on earth. As a result instead of me taking pictures in the capsule, my phone took pictures back on earth in my living room."

Before I even knew what was going on a video began playing on the giant screen. It showed me coming into my living room and dragging Brett behind me. Every woman there in the studio went into shock as they watched my drunken tryst with Brett. A few of the older women gagged and vomited as they watched me sucking Brett's tiny dick.

"Shut it off," someone screamed. It took a few moments before I realized that I was the one screaming.

"So now you see," said Jack. "I never dumped her. It was just too painful for me to talk about all of this. And every time I see her, even in those pictures, it just brings home exactly what I lost. I didn't throw her away as she claimed. She threw me away. I don't have a clue why. I just needed to get away to try to start over. At the same time, I was injured and trying to heal. And I had a lot of emotional things to go through over the mission. Whether you guys realize it or not, I lost a man up there, and I keep thinking if I had done something different, just one thing ... EVERYONE ...might have made it back."

There was nothing but silence in the room. "Thank you for listening to me," said Jack. He stepped down off of his chair and left the stage. More than a thousand women watched him go. They all started clapping wildly. They continued to clap long after he was gone.

And then almost as one they turned back to me. The look they gave me scared me. Then they started pointing at me and booing. I didn't know what to do. Then something flew out of the audience and glanced off of my shoulder. It hurt. I looked at the floor of the stage set where it had fallen. Someone had thrown a copy of my book at me. Then another flew through the air nearly hitting me in the head. That was when I got up and started running.