The Time It Takes to Fall

by Margaret Lazarus Dean

  “He’s lying,” I said of the thin man. My father raised his eyebrows and swayed his head from side to side, a gesture that meant, Maybe, we’ll see.

  “The chairman is really grilling him,” my father assented. “I don’t think he likes this guy one bit.”

  “That’s because he’s obviously lying,” I said. “Who is he?”

  But before my father could answer, the man’s name and title popped up in white text at the bottom of the screen. WILLIAM FITZGERALD, NASA ACCOUNTING OFFICE. I opened my mouth to wonder aloud why an accountant had been called to testify, but before I could, I realized that this man must be Josh Fitzgerald’s father—he had Josh’s height, his eyes. The father Josh assumed couldn’t be fired.

  Mr. Fitzgerald was nodding vigorously at something a commissioner was saying to him, a knowing look on his face. He leaned in toward the microphone.

  “I did write a memo to that effect at that time,” he said. “I indicated those concerns to the best of my ability.”

  “I know that guy,” I said. “I mean, that guy’s son. I know his son.”

  “He goes to your school?” my father asked. “Is he in the Gifted and Talented?”

  “I don’t think so. He’s a senior.”

  My father said nothing more, and I knew he couldn’t understand the import of what I had told him. What it meant for me to see, on television, the man who had raised Josh, who lived with him, to see that man interact with the commissioners who by now were celebrities to me—my father could never understand that.

  “Why do you say he’s lying?” my father asked after we watched Mr. Fitzgerald drone on for a few more minutes.

  “He seems arrogant. He seems like he thinks nothing can happen to him.”

  The commissioners reached the end of their questions and thanked Mr. Fitzgerald.

  My father shook his head gently. “No one will be immune,” he said.

  “What about someone like the Director of Launch Safety?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Biersdorfer?” my father said. It sent a little shiver through me. I was tempted to tell my father I’d spoken to Eric only a few hours before, but he would ask too many questions. “Well, that depends on what the cause is found to have been, whether it’s something the director should have known about. For instance, if it was the ice—the commission might feel that he should have seen that as a risk and scrubbed the launch.”

  “What could they find that wouldn’t be his fault?” I asked. “What is outside his responsibility? He’s Director of Launch Safety.”

  “I see what you mean,” my father said. He fell silent, and I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, but a few minutes later he said, “Astronaut error, maybe. That wouldn’t be his fault. Or if there was some problem he was never informed of. That’s possible.”

  “Mr. Biersdorfer should take the blame,” I said, suddenly angry that our lives could be changed so much while Mr. Biersdorfer continued on in his job.

  “Not necessarily,” my father said in the same neutral voice. “Not if the cause was something he didn’t know about.”

  “If he didn’t know about it, then he should have,” I said. “That’s his job.” The anger I felt was so sudden it threatened to choke me. “Better that he take the blame than someone like you.”

  “It’s not a question of who to blame,” my father said patiently. “It’s a question of finding the truth.”

  I wanted my father to be right, and as recently as yesterday I’d thought the same way: something had caused the explosion; we could find the cause, then fix it. But now I saw the way this would really work. Blame would be placed as low on the chain of command as it would stick. And that might be on my father.

  23.

  MY FATHER AND I WATCHED ON TV THE NEXT EVENING AS MR. Biersdorfer, fat, pink, and arrogant, performed for the commission. He answered the questions, said all the right kinds of things. I didn’t want him to be fired if it would mean Eric would move away, but I still found it satisfying to watch him pinned to that seat, trapped by the edges of the camera’s frame.

  We listened while Mr. Biersdorfer denied knowing anything about possible problems associated with cold weather. He lowered his eyebrows as he spoke, shook his head. I was impressed by his acting. I leaned forward to study his face more closely, looking for some sign of my mother—some smudge of her, a mark, a clue as to where he had hidden her. Maybe my mother was waiting somewhere for him right now.

  “There’s also the possibility,” Mr. Biersdorfer said, looking up woefully, “that the assembly procedures at Kennedy were not properly followed. That is, the question now becomes, to what extent did the engineers draw up faulty procedures, and to what extent did workers at the Cape not properly follow those procedures?”

  “Oh my God!” I yelled. My father looked at me warily.

  “He’s blaming you,” I told him, pointing at the TV. I studied my father’s face, trying to find his reaction, but he was blank. He stared at the TV for another moment, then nodded at me reassuringly.

  “It wasn’t my team,” my father said. “It was the contractor. They know that.”

  “Biersdorfer just said, ‘improper assembly at the Cape.’ Were you listening to that? That’s you.” My father shook his head.

  “I don’t think that’s going to be the official position,” he said. “They investigated it, but there’s just no evidence.” He wandered into the kitchen again. I’d never seen him like this, turning his back on new information, not wanting to know. Except, of course, where my mother was concerned.

  “Mom was right about you,” I said. “They’re blaming you and you’re just going to let them.” He appeared in the doorway again, a dishcloth over his shoulder.

  “Dolores, you do know that I assembled that joint, right? I packed that O-ring and the putty and did the leak check. You know that, don’t you?”

  “But you did it the way they told you to,” I protested. “You did it right.”

  “Well, of course,” he said. “But it’s hard for people to understand what that means. I’m the one who had my hands on it.” He held his hands up with their backs to me, his fingers wilting, like a doctor on his way into surgery.

  “I know I’m not to blame,” he said finally. “It was a faulty design. We knew that almost from the beginning. But it’s hard not to think maybe there was something I could have done different. I could have spoken up more.”

  “You’re going to let him put this on you?” I demanded. I sounded like my mother then, and I knew he heard it too. He shook his head and tried to explain, tried to calm me, but I wasn’t listening. I went to the table near the front door where my father kept his wallet and picked it up.

  “What are you doing, D?” he asked listlessly. “Do you need some money?”

  I opened his wallet, old brown leather shiny with use. I went past his bills and credit card receipts and pulled out the business card I knew would still be there: Rick Landry, National Desk, Cincinnati Observer.

  “What have you got there?” my father asked. He couldn’t see the card from across the room; maybe he had forgotten that he even had it.

  I stepped closer and showed him the card. He still looked confused, until I went to the phone and dialed long distance.

  My father did nothing to stop me. He sat down heavily on the couch to listen, the yellow dishcloth still on his shoulder.

  Rick Landry picked up on the first ring and said his name. He didn’t seem surprised to hear from me. I reminded him where we had met, and he remembered. He didn’t ask why I was calling or where I had found his number, just asked calmly what he could do for me. Maybe thirteen-year-old girls called him all the time, spilling out their fathers’ secrets.

  I told him, calmly and thoroughly, everything I knew about the field joint. I described the napkin with the diagram, all the parts labeled. I told him what my father had told me long ago, that the engineers wanted to call off the launches until the rocket joint was fixed, but that the man
agers weren’t showing a lot of urgency about it. This phrase seemed to snag Rick Landry’s attention.

  “‘Not a lot of urgency’?” he repeated. “Were those your father’s exact words, Dolores?”

  “Yes,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure. But I was relieved to have caught his interest. Up to that point, he hadn’t offered any reaction to anything I’d said.

  “Is there anything else he told you?” Landry asked.

  “No,” I said. “Just that there was this problem with the rockets all along. Especially on cold days. And they knew about it.”

  “Did your father tell you anything about who was in charge of the decision to launch in spite of that? Whose decision it was to keep the problem quiet?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer this question, because the question didn’t make any sense. No one had made a decision to hide the problem; they had just failed to pass the knowledge up the chain of command. Even I knew that.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Are you sure, Dolores?” he implored. “Think. Did your dad ever mention who was responsible? Maybe you don’t remember the name, but the position? The title?”

  I looked at the TV, where Biersdorfer’s mouth still opened and closed. The look on his face was the same self-satisfied expression he had worn at the launch the year before, lecturing my father and Eric and me on things we already knew about. It was the same smug look he wore while eating my mother’s cooking, sitting at the head of our dining room table. He must have worn that look as he stroked my mother’s arm in the evening over drinks, assuring her that everything would return to normal soon, meaning that he would survive this disaster and my father might not.

  “Director of Launch Safety,” I said.

  I could swear I heard the sound of Rick Landry’s mouth dropping open. At the same moment, my father’s eyes flicked to me, alarmed. The shock of finally having gotten my father’s attention made my stomach lurch.

  “Are you sure about that, Dolores?” Rick Landry asked.

  My father’s expression was not angry. His face looked like a delicate gray bag full of something heavy. His eyes settled on me blankly—he looked at me as if to say, You are doing what you are doing. You are who you are. It was a look of recognition.

  “Actually, no, I’m not sure about that,” I said into the phone. “I might be mixed up.”

  “Okay,” he said calmly. “I have one more question for you. I’m wondering if you could fax me that napkin.”

  “Fax?” I repeated. I had only a vague idea of what that meant—something used in offices.

  “Is there a fax machine you can use? Or maybe you could photocopy it and send it to me?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll try.” I felt unreasonably disappointed that Landry didn’t show more appreciation for what I had done. Rather than thanking me, he was demanding that I find access to obscure office machines.

  I took down the fax number and address he gave me and hung up the phone. I had no intention of sending him anything.

  “I hope you understand what you’ve just done,” my father said, back in the kitchen, as soon as I hung up. He started fixing Delia’s lunch for school the next day.

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” I said curtly. I was just a kid, after all; no one would take seriously what I reported.

  “You know what’s going to happen,” my father said calmly. He cut my sister’s sandwich into the shape of a letter D. My mother had done this for both of us when we were little, which now seemed like a hundred years ago. I had asked her to stop when I was in fourth grade, because I was afraid the other kids would think it was babyish. I started to cry.

  “You wouldn’t have done this if you didn’t know what would happen,” my father reasoned. He didn’t react to my crying at all. He opened Delia’s thermos, sniffed inside, and went to the sink to wash it out.

  “You’re a smart girl,” he added. “You must know. You must have your reasons.”

  I felt disoriented, like I’d been dropped into this scene from somewhere else and didn’t know what I had done just moments before.

  “But I don’t know,” I insisted. “Really.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “What will happen?” I asked. “Daddy? What will happen?” I followed him around the kitchen, frantic, waiting for him to answer. “Daddy? What’s going to happen?”

  He finally turned around, the dishcloth suspended in his hand.

  “Dolores, the newspapers have been trying to get this kind of leak since the moment of the explosion. So far, no one has given them anything. Until…” He gestured at the phone rather than finishing his sentence.

  “What you told him will be in his newspaper tomorrow morning. Joint rotation. O-rings. Cover-up.” He ticked off the steps on his fingers. “The big papers will pick it up. It will look like there was a conspiracy to cover up the real cause. Bob Biersdorfer, since you named him, will definitely be fired.”

  “Good,” I choked. “At least you won’t be fired for his mistake.” This had been my motivation, I reminded myself. To protect my father.

  “Oh, honey,” my father said. He turned off the water and dried his hands. He snapped Delia’s lunchbox closed with a solid metal click. “Don’t you know? I’m going to be fired no matter what.”

  It took only two days for the story to make its way into the national news. My father threw the newspaper into my lap the morning the story appeared, then sat at the table finishing his breakfast with the sports section.

  “What is this?” I asked, though I could see the headline: NASA Had Warning of a Disaster Risk Posed by Booster.

  “I thought you might be interested in that,” he said. The story was not under Rick Landry’s byline, and of course my name was never mentioned. Reputable sources were quoted, from inside and outside NASA, and just as my father had predicted, the story took the form of an exposé, accusing NASA of a cover-up of the problem with the Solid Rocket Boosters.

  “Did you read this?” I asked.

  “Skimmed it,” he said.

  “What did you think?”

  He took several more bites of his cereal and drained his coffee cup before he answered.

  “There’s not much to think,” he said finally. “It’s just what I expected.”

  He was right: just as he had predicted, the article exaggerated the possibility of wrongdoing and took a slight tone of outrage. I told myself that the article wasn’t exactly inaccurate: the joints in the rockets did have a history of failing, especially in cold weather. Managers did know about it and allowed the shuttle to continue to fly. A new design to fix the joint rotation problem had been agreed upon, even as Challenger launched.

  But the story didn’t feel true either. Its tone implied outrage that anything on the space shuttle had been found to be unsafe. There was no reflection of the fact that the shuttle was an experimental vehicle, that every part of it was being used for the first time. Reading the article, I was surprised to find myself feeling defensive for the engineers. They found problems all the time, and they had to make decisions about whether those problems were serious enough to stop flying. They chose as well as they could, and up until now their decisions had resulted in safe flights. What the article missed was that the same story could have been told about the shuttle’s Main Engines, or the heat tiles, or the space suits, or the outdated computers, or a thousand other things. The space shuttle was neither safe nor reliable, nor was it supposed to be. The surprise was that it worked at all.

  “Do you think anything will happen from this?” I asked when I had finished the article. My father answered me in the same neutral voice he had been using since the day Biersdorfer testified and I called Rick Landry.

  “We’ll see,” he said. By which he meant: Yes, everything will change because of what you have done.

  And it would. The facts about the faulty joint design would have come out even if Landry had never written his article. But this news might not have been characte
rized as a conspiracy, and everything that followed might have been different had the evidence emerged piecemeal, on its own.

  The next day, the presidential commission held an emergency closed-door session to discuss the issues revealed by the newspaper article. Only then did they learn of the late-night teleconference the night before the launch, when engineers, experts on Solid Rocket Booster joints, had advised against launching in cold weather. They had pointed out that the O-rings in the joints had shown signs of erosion in cool weather in the past. But managers had pressured them to change their minds—one manager was quoted as having said, “My God, when do you want us to launch, April?”

  By the end of the day, the commission issued a statement: because there was a possibility that the decision-making process itself had been to blame, their investigation would no longer work in tandem with NASA’s, but would replace it entirely. No one who had been involved with the decision to launch would be invited to take part in the investigation.

  My father exhaled loudly at the news. “It’s been taken from us completely,” he said. “Now heads are really going to roll.”

  As horrified as I was by what I had done, by the way it might have hurt my father, I couldn’t help feeling a warm flush of pride then, that something I had done was now changing the course of history.

  24.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, THERE WAS NO SCHEDULED launch date in the future, and we had to face the possibility that the shuttles would never launch again. It seemed now that all the delays to the Challenger launch and the one before were just practice for this ultimate delay, which could no longer be accurately called a delay because it had no foreseeable end.

  Through February and early March, I collected evidence in my notebooks and felt the cigarettes I smoked accumulating in my chest as a sticky yellow film of sophistication. The investigation was still dominating the news, and since the story about the joint rotation had appeared, the commission found more and more evidence that NASA had known about the problem, that O-rings had partially burnt on previous flights, and that engineers had tried to raise alarms about the danger of continuing to fly with this design. A new theory had emerged, which appealed to me immensely because it blamed the President: if Reagan had planned to talk to the astronauts live during his State of the Union address that night, the White House might have put pressure on NASA to launch that day, despite the freezing weather. If this were found to be true, NASA would take less of the blame, my father wouldn’t lose his job, the shuttle program would continue, and I could still become an astronaut. But no evidence had emerged for this theory, while more and more evidence against the O-rings piled up.