Atmosphere(58)

“Excitement,” Vanessa said, with a small smile.

“Oh, it’s mortifying,” Joan said, just as the hives started to itch. She clasped her hands to stop herself from scratching her arms.

Vanessa got up and turned on the shower. She came back to the bed and put her hand out.

“Up you go,” Vanessa said. “The cold water will help.”

“But I’m so tired, I just want to fall asleep.”

“Can you fall asleep with those hives?”

“No.”

Vanessa tugged on Joan’s arm, pulling her body up out of the bed.

Joan breathed in deep. “Okay.”

Joan got into the shower and the cold water calmed her skin, cleaned the sweat off her. She turned off the shower and pulled the curtain open to see that Vanessa was standing there, leaning against the sink, smiling and shaking her head.

“What’s so funny?” Joan asked.

“This is dangerous,” Vanessa said as she handed Joan a towel. “Those hives of yours might just be the most romantic moment of my life.”


Fall 1981


Joan barely slept. Neither of them did. If the moon was out and the lights were low, they were together, wide awake in bed.

So many nights, Joan felt as if her heart might implode as she rubbed her leg against Vanessa’s, felt the softness and bone of her, the way her upper thighs were smooth, her knees knobby.

Joan had had no idea how quickly you could learn another’s body. How swiftly their legs become your legs, their arms your arms. She was no longer Joan, or no longer only Joan. She was also part of this larger body, this larger self. That could only exist when they were together.

And yet, when she was only Joan, that had changed, too.

Joan’s body felt alive—an electric current running from her chest down her legs.

She felt it when Vanessa was close to her. She felt it when she was waiting for her. When she was thinking about her. When she was entirely alone.

Joan did not need Vanessa in order to feel this current. Because it now lived in her. It was hers.

On the nights when Joan fell asleep with Vanessa in her bed, she was grateful for that charge. But on the nights when Joan fell asleep alone, feeling the soft sheets against the skin of her legs, grazing her own fingertips across her own belly, she was so grateful that she now possessed it. That it had possessed her.

From the outside, her life looked the same. She kept her dates with Frances. Neither she nor Vanessa were ever late to work, despite how tempted they were to stay in bed.

Joan said nothing to Barbara, nothing to her parents. When she hung out with Donna and Griff, she rarely mentioned Vanessa. When they were all at the Outpost together, Joan and Vanessa always sat at least one person away from each other. When they ran into each other at JSC, they acted like they always had: two friends, catching up.

To everyone else except the two of them, nothing had changed.

Except on those perfect nights when, after saying goodbye at the bar or Frenchie’s or driving home separately from a barbecue, there would be a soft, perilous knock on Joan’s door an hour later.

God, that sound. The knowledge that the part of Joan’s day that was in black and white had ended, and color was about to bleed in and flood her night.

Vanessa’s voice, so smooth, so low. “Hi.”

Joan’s after, smaller, excitable. “Hi.”


“Can I ask you something?” Joan said one night as she gave Vanessa a massage. Joan was in her underwear and bra, Vanessa wrapped up in Joan’s bedsheets.

It was so easy, to be this close to someone. Why had it ever seemed out of reach?

“You can ask me anything,” Vanessa said without looking back at her.

“Does your mother know?”

Joan could feel Vanessa’s shoulders tighten. She dug deeper into them.

“Does my mother know what?”

Joan knew there was no need to clarify.

“My mother is Catholic,” Vanessa said, finally. “So no, she does not.” Her flat tone made Joan think there was nothing more to say but then, after a moment, Vanessa spoke again: “I think she has her suspicions. But she will never ask me directly. In exchange, I never do anything to make it obvious.”

Joan could not conceive of telling her own parents; she certainly was not going to tell Barbara. Sometimes, Joan felt as if the words were in her throat, desperate to leap out of her mouth. But she held them back.

No matter how easy it was for Joan to lose herself in this new life, she was constantly aware of the cold, hard borders of it. The world would not care for her and Vanessa as they cared for each other.

It wouldn’t matter how pure the warmth in her chest felt. It wouldn’t matter that Joan had loved and accepted so many others. There were people—many people—who would never return that kindness.

It was too early, in all of this, to know what the future held. But what Joan understood already was that what they had together was a lit candle, and the wind could be fierce.

“Are you Catholic?” Joan asked.

Vanessa turned over onto her back and pulled the sheets up over them both. “I no longer believe in God,” she said. “If that’s what you mean.”

Joan grabbed Vanessa’s hand and started playing with her fingers, grazing her own through the gaps in Vanessa’s. She saw that Vanessa had a hangnail on her right middle finger, the skin reddening.