Atmosphere(9)

Joan’s bright, sharp brain—her most beautiful muscle—turned to mush from too little sleep. Sometimes, unsure what else to do, Joan would take Frances out of the apartment, stare up at the night sky, and talk to her about the phases of the moon. Frances often cooed then. It was probably just the cool night air, but Joan also suspected that Frances was starting to focus, perhaps even taking in Joan’s finger, bright against a dark sky. Maybe this was who she could be to Frances. Maybe this was their language.

But that clarity was fleeting. The rest of the time, caring for Frances felt like trudging through mud up to the knees.

Still, as soon as Joan could, she did what Barbara asked and applied to transfer to Rice to be close to Barbara and Frances.

“I do not understand why it has to be you,” her mother said to Joan when Joan was accepted and began to plan her move. “Why it can’t be me? Why can’t I help with my own grandchild?”

Joan did not know how to say to her mother what they all already knew: Barbara had chosen Joan, and Barbara always got what she wanted.

Looking back on it, Joan could see that the universe had unfolded just as she had needed it to. It had given her something she had not even been smart enough to have wanted. Because those tiny moments with Frances—in the courtyard showing her a waxing gibbous moon, blowing bubbles and teaching her shapes, tickling her under her chin and making her laugh—came more and more often, each day. They grew longer, settled in deeper. Until one day, years ago, Joan took Frances to the playground and, as she watched Frances befriend another kid on the slide, realized that she could not envision a good week where she did not at least once get to brush her thumb against Frances’s soft, dewy cheeks. To tickle Frances’s chin—and hear that laugh—was to need it forever.

The night of their dinner, Frances looked up at Joan and smiled. She was six years old. Her light brown, shoulder-length hair was no longer baby fine. Her bright blue eyes picked up on more of what was going on around her than ever before. She’d stopped wearing Mary Janes and dresses last year. Now she wore corduroy pants and T-shirts most of the time. She’d begun using words Joan was surprised she knew, like “horrid” and “pivotal.” She did not have a “great” day but a “splendid” one; when she tasted a new food, it did not taste “bad” but “peculiar.” She’d already skipped a grade in school.

Frances had been born just yesterday; Joan was sure of it. And yet, Frances was going into second grade and Joan was going to be an astronaut.

“Joanie?”

“Yes, Franny?”

“Wait! You’re the only one who calls me Franny!”

“And you’re the only one who calls me Joanie!”

Frances laughed. “When you get a new place to live, can I come visit?”

“She’s not getting a new place,” Barbara said.


That was the third thing Joan did. Days later, she stopped by Barbara’s with a pound cake from the bakery on the corner and explained to her sister one final time that she was, in fact, moving.

“Well, fine,” Barbara said. “But you still need to take Frances on the weekends. I can’t afford a babysitter.”

“I will see Frances on the weekends, just like I do now.”

“You’re really excited about this astronaut thing, huh?” Barbara said. She pushed the pound cake away, and Joan recognized this as her punishment.

“Yeah, I am. And I’m scared, but in a way I’ve never really been before. Which I think is good. It’s exciting.”

“You’re really lucky,” Barbara said, her voice lightening. “That you are free to do something like this. No kid or husband or anything holding you back. I always think about where I would go if I could. And I think London or Paris . . . but you’re going to the stars. You’re thinking so much bigger.”

Joan felt a swelling in her throat.

Later that week, Joan packed up her entire apartment. When the moving company arrived, they took all of her stuff and drove off. Less than an hour later, she opened the door to her new place. It smelled like fresh paint.

That night, she went out for a walk in her new neighborhood and ran into Donna Fitzgerald and John Griffin, two of the other mission specialists who were a part of Group 9. She recognized them from the day NASA had gathered them for a photo of the incoming class.

Donna had blue eyes and dark brown hair that was thick and bouncy, so much so that Joan thought she looked like she could be in an ad for shampoo. And John—with such an easy smile and eyes that crinkled—had the most soothing voice Joan had ever heard. It was low and gravelly and made Joan like him the moment she heard him speak.

“I guess we’re all predictable as shit, huh?” Donna said. “Join the astronaut corps and get a one-bedroom apartment by the campus the week before training starts.”

Joan laughed. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe John got a two-bedroom.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said. “It’s a one-bedroom, just like yours. Pretty sure Lydia Danes is in the building, too. I think I saw her.”

“Ah, well,” Joan said. “So much for being original.”

Joan would remember this moment for weeks to come. Because within days, Donna and Griff would come to feel like such close friends that she laughed to think she’d ever called Griff “John.”