Mom smiled, laughed briefly and nervously. She touched Jeanne's cheek tentatively with a trembling hand, hugged her daughter quickly and drew back. "I didn't know," she said. "None of us knew. We were afraid to listen. I mean, it's so far."
"Knew he'd make it," said Pop, tamping his pipe full with another load of tobacco from the humidor. "Tom's got good stuff in him. Smokes a pipe, you know."
"Not up there," said Jeanne practically. "It would waste oxygen."
"It says here in this magazine the moon is 240,000 miles away," Aunt Anna told them.
"Did the announcer say how Tom felt?" Mom wanted to know.
"Just imagine how it will be," Aunt Anna said, "when we get Tom back here and he speaks to the Women's League. We'll have to make arrangements—"
"Can't," Pop reminded her. "Government hasn't said anything about when Tom's coming back. Liable to keep him there a long time. Do the boy good. See what he's really made of, I always say. Andrea, your roast is burning."
Mom scurried off toward the kitchen. A moment after she disappeared, the phone rang and Aunt Anna took the receiver off its cradle. "Hello? Yes, this is the Peterson home. Yes, she is. In a moment. Jeanne, it's for you."
"Hmmmm," Jeanne chortled. "Some fellow trying to make time because Tom's too far away to protest." She hated herself for saying it, and administered the mental kick in the pants which never helped. She was missing Tom more acutely every minute. The distance was unthinkable, the moon almost too remote to consider, lost up there in infinite void, surrounded by parcels—parsecs?—of nothing.
Picking up the receiver, Jeanne turned her back to Aunt Anna, who appeared quite eager to listen to at least half of the conversation. "Hello? Yes, this is Jeanne Peterson. The Times-Democrat? I could see you today, I suppose. Why, here at home. I'm on vacation. But what—about Tom? Oh, I see. Oh, they told you down at White Sands. Well, all right. 'Bye."