Atmosphere(73)

“Thanks—it’s five carats.”

Joan did not know much about diamond rings, except for what she knew about diamonds themselves. Which was that scientists had long thought it was possible that there were diamond-like minerals on other planets. In fact, in 1967, a substance named lonsdaleite was discovered in the Canyon Diablo meteorite in Arizona—a fragment of an asteroid that had struck Earth—and it is theoretically harder and purer than any diamond ever known.

Which meant that the rock used in Western civilizations to express romantic love and steadfastness was not the strongest material in the universe, but merely the strongest thing humans had ever found on Earth. The hardest, strongest thing humans knew of at the time.

Language is what allows us to communicate. But it also limits what we can say, perhaps even how we feel. After all, how can we recognize a sentiment within ourselves that we have no word for? And perhaps, Joan thought, science is the same. Even the way we tell one another we want to live alongside them is limited by what we understand is possible in the world. What more could we say if we knew more about the universe?

“I’m happy for you,” Joan said. “I know this is what you wanted.”

“He’s a really good man,” Barbara said.

Joan nodded. “I believe that. And I’m thrilled to hear it.”

“What are you talking about?” Frances asked.

“I’m getting married, honey,” Barbara said to her. “Daniel and I are getting married.”

“Oh.”

Joan squeezed Frances’s hand, trying not to let it show on her face that she was stunned that Barbara had not told Frances all of this before, at home, just the two of them.

“He’ll be your stepdad. We are all going to be a family. And we’ll move in with him. Into his big house with the pool—remember when I brought you over there?”

“I’ll have a pool?” Frances asked.

“You’ll have everything you ever wanted,” Barbara said, rubbing Frances’s cheek with her thumb.

The balloons started to lift, one by one. “Look!” Barbara said. “There they go!”

There was a red-and-yellow one, one with blue and green stripes, and a few were rainbow-colored. They all started to lift.

Vanessa had said she would be in the American Express balloon, but Joan couldn’t quite make out which one that was. And so, as they all began to take off, Joan felt thrilled by each one lifting, all of them potentially holding Vanessa. If she was not exactly sure where Vanessa was, then Vanessa was everywhere.

“You know, Frances, it took us one hundred and twenty years to go from a man in a hot-air balloon to the invention of the airplane,” Joan said. “But then only fifty-eight years to go from the first airplane to the first man in space.”

Barbara looked at her.

“I’m reading a book about the Wright brothers,” Joan said. It was the closest she could come to saying to Barbara, I love a pilot.

“Well, then imagine what we will do in the next fifty-eight years,” Barbara said, smiling. She started French-braiding Frances’s hair as they watched the sky.

Joan looked up. Vanessa was in the air somewhere. And if Joan was looking up, trying to find Vanessa, it stood to reason that Vanessa was looking down, trying to find her.

“Wow,” Barbara said.

“I want to fly,” Frances said. “Someday.”

“Then someday you will,” Joan said.

“Who knows,” Barbara told her. “Maybe one day Daniel will buy you a plane.”

“I can’t wait until you get assigned to a mission, and I can tell everyone at school that my aunt is going to space,” Frances said.

As the hot-air balloons floated above their heads and the sun had set and the stars dared to come out, Joan grabbed Frances’s hand. It was not as tiny as it had once been, but it was still so small compared to hers. Frances was still so young. Joan could not wait to meet the adult she would be, but also wished she could pause here, in this moment, forever.

Joan kissed the top of Frances’s hand. “I’m glad you’re both here,” she said.

And then she bent her head back and looked up at the sky with the wonder of someone who’d never seen it before.


It was a balmy September night, at six o’clock in the evening on a Monday.

Vanessa and Joan were at Joan’s apartment, about to head out to Frenchie’s for dinner with Donna, Lydia, and Griff. But then Joan’s phone rang.

Joan picked it up in the kitchen.

And there he was. That voice that ruled over the astronauts as if they were mere gods and he was Zeus.

“Can you come see me tomorrow morning?” Antonio said. “First thing?”

“Of course,” Joan said. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Just please come see me when you get in.”

Joan hung up and then looked at Vanessa, who was leaning against the refrigerator, watching her.

癆ntonio?” Vanessa asked.

“He wants me to see him first thing in the morning. He won’t say why.”

Vanessa cocked her head. “How did he seem?”

“Very casual, like it was nothing at all. Like he always summons me to his office.”

“Maybe you’re getting a flight assignment.”