Atmosphere(102)

Joan looks around the room. She’s unsure how to answer, unsure what a good answer would be.

Jack speaks up: “Tell her everyone. We are all here for her. Tell her Donna and her baby girl are in the theater. Tell her Helene is here. Tell her the entire astronaut corps is with her in spirit right now. Tell her everyone here is rooting for her.”

Joan nods and gets back on the loop. “Well, Ford, just about anybody you’ve ever met is here.”

“Does my mom know?” Vanessa asks. Joan can hear the jovial tone Vanessa is trying to hold on to slip away.

Joan looks to Jack, who nods. “Affirmative,” Joan says. “Your mother knows.”

“She’s probably scared.”

Yes, she’s probably terrified. She’s not sure how she’s going to live through the next hour.

“I don’t think she is scared at all,” Joan says. “I think she knows what her daughter is capable of. I think she knows exactly who her daughter is.”

“Yeah,” Vanessa says. “Maybe.”

The future bleeds in again, and Joan can’t deny what may be coming. She won’t be able to live with herself if she doesn’t tell Vanessa this one thing.

“You are courageous, Vanessa Ford,” Joan says. “Beyond all measure. You have proven yourself to be of stunning character. And I believe your father would be proud.”

Vanessa does not respond for a moment. But then: “Joan, can I ask you a question?”

“Roger that,” Joan says.

“No, Joan,” Vanessa says. “I need to ask you something. Is it okay to ask you something?”

Joan looks to Jack as if he can help her, but he can’t. Only she knows what Vanessa is intimating.

“Affirmative,” she says. “Yes. Anything.”

Vanessa blows air out of her lungs and then says, “Will you tell Frances that I really wanted to fix the payload bay doors? Will you tell her that I was deeply conflicted?”

Joan has to bite down on the inside of her cheek to stop the tears from forming in her eyes.

“Joan? Did you hear me?” Vanessa asks.

“I heard you,” Joan says. And then: “Vanessa, I heard you.” She tries to steady her voice. “I will tell her. Of course I will tell her.”

“I don’t want her or anyone—I don’t want anyone out there who can hear this right now—to wonder if it’s that I didn’t have anything to live for. I do. Okay? Do you think everyone knows that?”

Joan takes in a deep breath, and Jack catches her eye. She begins to cry. Then Jack nods to her with a downward motion that is so quick, she could swear it never happened. But as he holds her gaze, she understands.

He need not choose any words to convey it. The sentiment—perhaps beyond language—is strong enough.

He puts his hand on Joan’s shoulder. “Tell her what you need to tell her,” he whispers.


Vanessa is wondering if she’s lost the connection, but then Joan’s voice comes back.

“Do you remember when you told me you felt like you’d never met someone who had also seen the color blue before?”

Vanessa smiles. “Yes, I do.”

“Well, this is what I think the color blue looks like right now,” Joan says. “I think that you want to come home and sleep in your warm bed. I think you want to go out for milkshakes and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And watch Marlon Brando and Paul Newman movies. I think you want to know what David Bowie is going to record next. I think you want to listen to Joni Mitchell albums with the stereo on low, staring at the ceiling at midnight. And lie down on the grass with a picnic blanket and look up at the stars and wonder if all the answers are up there. I think you want to play Scrabble at a kitchen table with a ten-year-old girl. I think you want to go to weddings and slow dance. I think you want to live in a two-bedroom bungalow, and when the hinges on the cabinet are broken, you’ll fix them. I think you want to take the people you love flying over the Rockies at dawn. I think you want to be here to find out which, of all the things we believe to be impossible, we figure out next.

“And I think the only thing you want more than any of that,” Joan says, “is to know that you did everything possible to save the lives of your fellow crew members.”

Vanessa is trying not to cry, not to break down over the loop.

“And I think that you have to do this,” Joan says. “Because you come from a long line of heroes. And we are lucky that today, we have a hero on board STS-LR9. That’s what I think. Okay? That’s what I am . . .”

Joan can’t finish her sentence. She tries again: “That’s what I am . . .” She stops once more.

“It’s okay,” Vanessa says.

But now Vanessa is crying and unable to speak as well.

Vanessa can see that Navigator is over Mexico now. Any moment, the shuttle will hit the dense atmosphere and enter ionization blackout. There is not much more time to set everything right. To make sure everyone can live with whatever happens.

“Will you do me a favor?” Vanessa says. “Please tell my mother that I love her. Tell everyone down there that I loved them. That we loved them—I know Hank and Steve and Griff and Lydia would all feel the same way. Can you tell Donna and Helene and everyone that? Don’t let this hang too heavy, don’t carry it with you all too far down the road. We wouldn’t want that.”