Atmosphere(39)

“Sometimes I think you and I are having one conversation and then I realize we’ve been having an entirely different one the whole time, you know that?” Vanessa asked.

“No,” Joan said. “I think we’re on the same page.”

Vanessa considered this. “I admire you,” she said finally.

Joan scoffed. “That’s a little silly.”

“Why is that silly?”

“Because you’re just as accomplished as me. In some ways more so.”

Vanessa leaned forward. “I can fly a plane better than you. Fix a plane better than you.”

“See? There you go.”

“But I can’t play the piano the way you do.”

Joan waved her off.

“You can try to deny it, but I’ve heard you play,” she said.

Joan caught her eye and then looked away.

“And I don’t know the history of the stars. Or how to take care of a kid—stock my kitchen with food they’d like and say all the right things, like you do with Frances. Lord knows, I can’t draw at all,” she said.

“Yeah, how terribly accomplished of me. I doodle.”

“Why are you calling them doodles? Why are you doing that? All I’m trying to tell you is that I’ve only ever really loved one thing. Being in the sky. But I look at you, and you are so curious about everything. Not just about the planets and galaxies and the stars. But Earth. About the people on it. That’s what I admire.”

“My curiosity?”

“Your commitment to the world around you. How much you care. You are so thoughtful. About everything.”

Joan suspected that liking the view of herself through Vanessa’s eyes was dangerous. She just wasn’t sure how.

“Why are you telling me this?” Joan said.

“Because I understand why it isn’t me who is in the lead for the first mission of our group,” she said. “But I don’t know why it isn’t you.”

“I think sometimes you . . .”

“Sometimes I what?” Vanessa said, leaning forward, daring her to finish.

“I’m not as great as you think I am,” Joan said.

Vanessa smiled. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Don’t kill my dream. Let me think you’re the best astronaut in the class. Can you give me that? Let me think that right now, the wrong woman won, okay? Let the world be as I see it for just tonight. Without too many gray areas and caveats. Where I know I’m mortal but I’m not sure that you’re not a god,” she said. And then her voice got barely above a whisper as she leaned in. “Can you do that for me?”

And what escaped Joan’s lips was “Yes.”


June 1981


The whole group of ASCANs traveled to the National Space Technology Laboratories in Mississippi. On the way back, they opted to spend the night in New Orleans.

Joan had wanted to get back to Houston to see if she could pick Frances up from school on Monday, but she had been outvoted. She called Barbara from a pay phone in the lobby of the hotel to let her know.

“I swear, Joan,” Barbara said. “It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

Joan sighed. “C’mon. Because I’m staying an extra night on a work trip? Don’t you think you’re overstating it?” She looked at the buttons on the phone, the deep grime of the numbers, the one and the zero worn down more than the others. “Just let Frances know I’ll pick her up Tuesday, okay?”

“I mean, fine. But she’s struggling, Joan. I know she doesn’t say it, but she misses you. She’s been very crabby lately, a little rude, honestly.”

“Okay,” Joan said. “Well, I will see her Tuesday. Please tell her when she gets home from school.”

When Joan walked away from the pay phone, Vanessa was standing in the lobby.

“You’re coming with us to Bourbon Street,” Vanessa said.

“Do I have to?”

“That’s the spirit,” Vanessa said. “Donna wants to go shopping before we go out. And specifically requested our attendance.”

Joan considered this.

“You think I want to go look at dresses?” Vanessa said. “But we can’t leave her with Lydia. You’re coming.”


Joan stood in the Esprit store—looking in the full-length mirror at herself in the blue floral dress Donna had insisted she try on—completely taken aback.

“Joan?” Donna called from the other side of the fitting room door.

“Yeah?”

“How does it look?”

“I don’t know.”

“Show me.”

Joan looked at herself one more time and then came out of the dressing room.

Donna gasped. “Jesus jumped-up Christ.”

When she was off the clock, Donna had taken to teasing her hair so it was big and voluminous. She was wearing a red denim skirt with a high slit and a white-and-yellow strapless top. She’d put it on in the dressing room, then handed the saleslady the tags and asked her to bag up her old clothes. “You have to buy that,” Donna said.

“I do?” Joan looked at the price tag. She could just hear her father’s outrage at the audacity.