Atmosphere(80)

“I just . . . I don’t want you to think I don’t want all those things. I mean, I didn’t. Ever. Before. But I do now, with you.”

“You do?”

Vanessa looked at her and took her left hand. “I want to live in a little bungalow with you and if the cabinet door started to feel loose, I would tighten it the moment you said something. And I’d make you anything you wanted for breakfast every weekend morning. And I’d take your name, if I could. Or give you mine.”

Joan’s eyes began to water and her mouth began to quiver. What was the point of this? To be told exactly what you couldn’t have?

“I would give you anything,” Vanessa said, “if it wasn’t going to cost us everything.”

“I would never ask it,” Joan said, shaking her head. Her tears began to fall, and she dried them.

“Which is how I know that you’d be worth giving it to,” Vanessa said.

Joan closed her eyes.

“I love you,” Vanessa said. “And I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Joan said. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Vanessa said. “The whole situation is not okay. But . . . I guess I’m saying that I can accept the trade-off. And I want to make sure that you can.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can wake up every single day and choose you, over and over and over again. If you’re in bed next to me, I will take your hand. If you are not, I will go find you. I will spend the rest of my life, if I get that lucky, seeking you out. Not because I promised you or because you’re there. But because I will want to. I will want to be beside you. Every day. Forever.”

“You will?”

Vanessa tucked a strand of Joan’s hair behind her ear. “Every morning, I wake up and I think, ‘God, yes, her.’ ”

Joan smiled and dried her tears.

“If that can be enough for you,” Vanessa said, “it’s yours until the day I die.”


A week later, Joan got a stomach virus and had to call in sick. She forbade Vanessa from coming over because Vanessa was supposed to leave for Cape Canaveral the next day. And so, that night, there was no knock at the door. But her phone did ring.

“There is homemade chicken noodle soup at your doorstep. With crackers, ginger ale, and a cookie,” Vanessa said.

“What?” Joan asked. “Were you just here?”

“I’m at the pay phone.”

Joan stretched the phone cord as close to the window as she could to sneak a glimpse of Vanessa across the street. Vanessa looked toward the window and waved at her.

Joan waved back.

“I have something to tell you,” Vanessa said.

“What?” Joan said.

“Antonio called me in this morning.”

Joan’s eyes went wide. “No! What did he say?”

“STS-LR9. Steve’s my commander. It’s him, Hank, Griff, Lydia, and me. Right after Christmas ’84, six weeks after you.”

“You’re going up into space,” Joan said, smiling.

Vanessa laughed. “I’m going up into space.”



Spring and Summer 1984


For the next few months, Joan’s training for her mission became so intense that she was not always able to see Frances. Meanwhile, Vanessa’s parallel training had her in the dunk tank in Alabama so often that she and Joan would go weeks without seeing each other.

But Joan threw herself into it.

She was running simulations with the crew, going through various physical tests, and preparing Spacelab to run the solar experiments. Joan sometimes hit the bed at night like she’d been knocked out, sleeping heavy and hard, the morning feeling more like coming to than waking up.

Still.

As stretched thin as she was, she walked into Antonio’s office and asked for more.

“I’d like to be assigned time in Mission Control,” Joan said, once she sat down.

Antonio appeared surprised.

“You’ve had someone on each crew do it for the past few missions,” Joan said. “And I see immense benefit in that. We all need to know how best to communicate with Mission Control, and having at least one of us actually having worked the job is the best training. I think I should be that person.”

All of that was true.

The thing she didn’t tell Antonio was that lately, she ached to be in that seat.

As they had run their simulations the past few months, Joan found herself drawn to the lone voice on the other side of the speaker. It reminded her of being in college, listening to the teacher but also unable to resist imagining herself teaching one day. What would it be like to be that steady voice for someone?

“I will consider it,” Antonio said. “I’m not sure it is necessary for you, specifically.”

“Respectfully, sir,” Joan said, leaning forward, “I am exactly who you need.”

“And why is that?” Antonio asked. He seemed neither impressed nor doubtful.

Joan inhaled. She’d prepared all of her arguments in the shower that morning.

“Because out of everyone on the crew, I am the most unflappable. Look at my heart rate and blood pressure stats during our sims—you can even go back and look at my stats from the initial assessments four years ago. I am also the person on the crew with the most consistent relationships throughout the astronaut corps. I am friendly and on good terms with everyone. From pilots like Hank and Duke to mission specialists like Lydia. And I can think on my feet. You’ve seen it yourself in our simulations. You saw it yourself in our assessments when we applied. And I will do what needs to be done for the team. I follow orders. I have always displayed that here.