Atmosphere(67)

“You make it sound so easy.”

“It is easy. And it’s important to me. Which is why you’re going to do it.”

Vanessa closed her eyes again and then opened them and put the car in gear.

“Wonderful choice,” Joan said. “By the way, you’re underestimating Frances. She has excellent taste.”


They drove to the elementary school, where they found Frances sitting on the ledge by the stairs.

“Hey,” Frances said, with a disbelieving look at the sight of her aunt in a convertible.

“This is my friend Vanessa,” Joan said, getting out of the car to fold her seat back.

“Hi,” Vanessa said. “I’m Joan’s friend Vanessa.” And then she cringed slightly. “I think we actually met briefly on the camping trip last year.”

Frances smiled sweetly. “Oh, yeah, nice to see you again.”

“Hop in the back,” Joan said.

Frances stepped into the back and shoved her books over. Joan got in, and Vanessa pulled away from the curb as Joan directed her where to go.

“Did you have a good day?” Joan asked.

“Kinda. But we played kickball in gym class, and I tried to get Nicky out and missed. It didn’t even get halfway to the plate. It was so embarrassing. After, Phil Magnusson said I throw like a girl. And when I told him that was unkind, he called me a ‘pansy.’ ”

They came to a red light and Vanessa turned her entire body around. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Pansies are very hardy flowers.”

“What does that mean?” Frances asked.

“It means only an idiot would try to use that as an insult. Pansies can literally survive a frost.”

“What’s a frost?”

Vanessa hit the gas when the light changed. She raised her voice to speak over the wind. “It’s when the ground freezes. The point is that when many other flowers would die from being too cold, pansies can survive. Pansies can handle it. Pansies are tough. They are beautiful and tough as nails.”

“Really?” Frances said.

Joan turned to see that Frances had lit up, entirely focused on Vanessa’s next word.

“Yeah, so you are a pansy, I bet,” Vanessa said. “And he’s an idiot.”

“Well,” Joan said, “we try not to call people ‘idiots.’ ”

Vanessa wasn’t listening. “Next time he says something like that, you know what you say? You tell him that you can learn how to throw a ball farther if you want to, but he’ll always be stupid.”

“Frances, do not ever say that!” Joan corrected.

Frances was already laughing. “He will always be stupid,” she said to herself, nearly wheezing. “It’s true.”

Joan looked at Vanessa like a teacher scolding the class clown. Vanessa bit her lip, then mouthed, “Too much?”

Joan nodded.

“Hey, I have an idea,” Vanessa said. “Does anyone want to go out for milkshakes?”

Joan turned to the backseat to see Frances’s reaction.

“YES!” Frances yelled. “OF COURSE!”


At the diner, Vanessa ordered a strawberry milkshake and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which she cut into four pieces.

“When I was really little, even younger than you,” Vanessa said, across the table from Frances, “my dad would take me to this diner, and do you know what he and I always got?”

“Milkshakes?”

Vanessa acted as if Frances were a mind reader.

“How did you know that?”

“It’s what I would do.”

“Well, yeah. That’s what we did. A strawberry milkshake,” Vanessa said. She handed Frances a piece of the sandwich. “And we also always got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to dip in it.”

Frances laughed. “A sandwich in a milkshake?”

“Don’t knock it until you try it.”

Frances took the piece of sandwich and dipped it in her chocolate shake. She made a face like she thought it was just okay.

“I should have been clearer,” Vanessa said. “A strawberry milkshake is what you need for a peanut butter and jelly.”

She took another piece and dipped it in her own milkshake and handed it to Frances.

When Frances tried it, her eyes went wide. Joan could barely make out the words coming out of her full mouth. They were something along the lines of “Wow, that’s really good.”

Vanessa dipped hers and did the same thing. “See?”

“All right,” Joan said. “Somebody let me try.”

She grabbed a piece and dipped it in Vanessa’s milkshake.

“See, Joanie?” Frances said.

Vanessa handed Frances the last piece of the sandwich and Frances took it. She dipped it and stuffed it in her mouth. “Next time, I’m going to order this. And I’m going to call it ‘the Vanessa.’ ”

Vanessa laughed and turned to Joan. “What a legacy to leave behind.”

Joan laughed, too, but these were the moments of legacy she found the most compelling: the chance to share something of the past with a person who could bring it further into the future. She knew most of the world was focused on bigger triumphs—scientific discoveries, great works of art—but a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a strawberry milkshake seemed to Joan, at that very moment, a grand thing to carry forward.