Atmosphere: A Love Story By Taylor Jenkins Reid - 15

It was after eleven on Saturday night. Joan should have been in bed, but she could not tear her fingers away from the piano.

After a long week of classes, her brain was fried. The lingo at NASA was going to kill her, especially the abbreviations. OMS, RCS, EVA, EMU, FIDO, GPCs. Joan was attentive and ready. But the terms were coming at her so fast that often it felt less like science and more like French.

She needed a break. So instead of going out to a bar, she’d gone on a long run, come home, taken a shower, and sat down at her keyboard. She did not know how long she’d been at it, but she’d played so much and just kept playing. Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Shostakovich, and now, Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1.”

It was exactly what she needed: one of those moments when she forgot where she was or even who she was. It was what she had loved about the piano as a child, why she had kept with it even after deciding she would never try to become a professional. It let her mind leave her body, let her body speak for her.

Everything else in Joan’s life was thinking thinking thinking thinking. But when she picked up that pencil to draw or put her hands on the cool keys, the thinking stopped.

The knock at the door startled her. She yelped so high and so loud that she cringed to hear it.

Two possibilities flashed across her mind of who it might be, neither good: her neighbor, angry about the loud noise, or Griff.

“Jo?” she heard through the door, just before she could unlock it.

Vanessa.

“Hi,” Joan said as she opened the door.

“You screamed very loudly just now,” Vanessa said at the doorway. “It sounded so dainty and helpless. I worry you’ll set women back centuries if any man hears it.”

Joan frowned. “Thank you for your excellent notes on how I can be scared in a less vulnerable way.”

Vanessa smiled. “Can I come in?”

Joan opened the door farther, and Vanessa followed her into the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Nice to see you, too.”

Joan raised an eyebrow.

“I just dropped off Donna—she’s drunk as a skunk. I was going to ask you if you’d check on her in the morning.”

“Oh,” Joan said. “Of course I will.”

“I wasn’t even going to stop by. I assumed you’d be asleep, but then I could hear you playing when I passed your door.”

“Is it that loud?”

Vanessa shook her head. “You’d have to be walking by, hoping you were up, to notice.” And then she added, “You are very good, by the way.”

“Oh, thank you,” Joan said. “I just like to play to clear my mind. I’m not anything to write home about.”

“Are you doing that thing where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not that good’ and then I have to tell you that you’re great?”

“What? No. I don’t do that. I’m competent at a lot of things and am honest with myself about my talents. But I am an amateur classical pianist. I don’t practice enough to be superlative. I do it because I enjoy it.”

Vanessa hid that smile, the lopsided one.

“What’s so funny?” Joan asked.

“You have a very high standard,” Vanessa said. “That’s all.”

Joan pursed her lips, trying not to frown or smile.

“Anyway, listen—I had a secondary reason for coming over here,” Vanessa said.

“I’m listening.”

“I need . . . I need help with something. And you’re . . . sort of the only person that can help me. I guess I’m asking a favor.”

“Are you . . . nervous?”

“I’m embarrassed,” Vanessa said.

“What on earth is it?”

Vanessa laughed. “It’s actually not on Earth.”

Joan shook her head and smiled.

“I’m not able to orient myself in the night sky as well as some of the others. Lydia can spot every constellation, and she’s incredibly smug about it. But I’m having trouble recognizing them consistently. Especially in a dark sky.”

“Okay, what can you spot?”

“Well, I can find Polaris. And I have a handle on Vega, Deneb, and Altair. So I can always find north and south. But I’d love to feel more confident about the dimmer constellations.”

“Then you’ve come to the right place. Of course I’ll show you.”

“Thank you,” Vanessa said, her eyes warmer than Joan had ever seen them.

“You’re an astronaut who doesn’t recognize most of the stars,” Joan said, “That’s pretty funny.”

“I’m a pilot who applied to NASA because I want to fly out of the atmosphere,” she said. “And I’m willing to learn anything I have to in order to do it.”

“Okay,” Joan said. “I would love to teach you. Tomorrow night. We can head out of the city. I can even bring my telescope.”

“Yeah?” Vanessa said.

“Yeah, it will be fun.”

Joan arrived at Vanessa’s front door one minute before six o’clock. She waited two full minutes to ring the doorbell so that Vanessa could see she was perfectly capable of being late.

Vanessa’s bungalow was painted teal with a red door, a curved archway at her front porch. Joan could hear the doorbell ring inside the house.

Vanessa appeared with a cooler in her hand. She was wearing jeans and a dark gray T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, her hair still a tad wet. In a flash, Joan went from liking the dress and jean jacket she was wearing to feeling mortifyingly overdressed. And why had she never thought to roll her sleeves up like that?

“I made sandwiches and brought us sodas and beers,” Vanessa said, gesturing to the cooler.

“That’s great. Thank you.”

“Well,” she said. “I like to pull my own weight. Thank you for helping me.”

Joan waved her off. “It’s a good excuse to do a little stargazing myself. I don’t make time for it as often as I’d like. So, really, you’re doing me a favor, too. Keeping me company.”

Joan started walking to her Volkswagen, but Vanessa stopped her. “We can take my car,” she said. “You can just tell me where we’re going.”

“You’re sure? It’s a bit of a drive.”

“It will be nice,” Vanessa said. “Wait here, I’ll pull out of the garage.”

Joan grabbed her binoculars, telescope, and blanket out of the back of her car and then stood on the lawn and looked up at the sky as the sun began to set. It would be a good night to take a little sky tour around Hercules.

Vanessa backed out of the driveway in a cream convertible with a red interior.

“Wow,” Joan said, putting her things in the back.

Vanessa laughed. “I like cars.”

Joan opened the car door and got in. “It’s nice.”

Vanessa pulled away from the curb. “Where are we going?”

“Brazos Bend.”

“I don’t know it.”

“It’s far outside of town. But the view is incredible. Turn left here—we’re going to head to 288.”

As Vanessa’s car picked up speed, Joan’s hair began to float behind her, the wind on her shoulders.

“I used to take Frances there when she wouldn’t fall asleep.”

“How old is she, again?”

“She’s six now,” Joan said. “It was a long time ago. My sister would lose her mind after so many nights not sleeping and so I’d take Frances and just drive. Usually out to Brazos. Most of the time, she’d be asleep by the time we got to the park, but sometimes, she’d still be wide awake, so I’d lay her on a blanket and show her the stars.”

“Raising the next generation of astronauts,” Vanessa said.

“Frances has said she wants to be an astronaut,” Joan said. “I don’t know if she really will, but it’s a nice idea that . . . you know . . .” Joan seized up, very aware of the lump in her throat. It’d snuck up on her.

“Girls today might look at us or the women in Group 8,” Vanessa said. “And know they can do it, too.”

Joan looked at Vanessa as Vanessa watched the road. The wind ran through Vanessa’s hair. Joan had been trying to control hers, holding it back. But Vanessa just let it fly. Joan put her hands down, let hers go.

“I mean, pretty soon, they are going to put a woman in space,” Vanessa said.

“Have you heard anything about who they might choose?”

“No,” Vanessa said. “You know how they are about that stuff. It’s like we’re not even supposed to admit we’re curious.”

The first American woman in space would be one of the women from Group 8, the first round that Joan had applied to, when she hadn’t been called back. She was grateful for it, in hindsight. Being the very first would have been so much to hold on her shoulders.

As they got onto the highway, the wind was too loud for either of them to say anything and so Joan closed her eyes and felt the air run over her.

“This is far,” Vanessa said once they took the exit and the wind quieted down.

“I know,” Joan said. “But trust me. It’s worth it.”

Vanessa kept her eyes on the road. “Donna and Hank are fucking, right?”

Joan’s shoulders came up to her ears. “I think they are sleeping together, yes. But I don’t care for that word.”

Vanessa laughed. “You’re a little bit of a prude.”

“No, I’m not,” Joan said, in a tone that she knew undercut her point.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Vanessa asked.

Joan tried to think of something, but her mind was blank. “I mean, when I was six years old, I stole a pack of cards from the five-and-dime.” She could already tell it was a dud. “Forget that one—I ended up returning them anyway.”

Vanessa smiled. “Okay, you can try again.”

“I let kids in high school cheat off my tests for about two months before I lost my patience and told them all to study on their own.”

“And which is the bad part? Cheating or eventually telling them no?”

Joan laughed. “Cheating! Obviously.”

Vanessa shook her head. “Sorry, try again. I’m asking you to look deep down in the ugly parts of your soul, Jo. Come on, now. What’s the thing you’re the most ashamed of having done?”

“I assume you’re going to answer, too?”

“Of course. I’ll go first if you want. I’ve got loads to choose from.”

“No, no, I’ll think of something.”

Joan was not sure why she was so willing. “Oh,” she said finally.

“You got it?”

“I . . . yes. I have the thing I regret the most,” Joan said. “I’m not sure how terrible you’ll find it. But I do.”

“I’m ready.”

“When my sister was seventeen, I was home from college, and I heard her sneak out her window to go see some boy. I woke up my parents and told them. They pulled her back in the house and she was grounded for months.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“She’d gotten pregnant the year before. She’d miscarried early, before she’d even figured out she was pregnant. She never told our parents. I was worried it would happen again, and I didn’t know what else to do.”

Vanessa thought this over. “There were better ways to go about it, maybe. But I don’t know . . .”

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“Oh, well then, by all means . . .”

“When my sister came to my room the next morning complaining about being grounded, I pretended I knew nothing about it. I told her Dad must have heard her climbing out the window.”

Vanessa raised her eyebrow and bit her lip. “Why not tell the truth?”

“Barbara is . . . very delicate. If you so much as look at her the wrong way, she might just say the worst things you can think of. And mean each and every one of them. We all just tiptoe around her. We always have. I am not . . . I am not honest with her. Maybe ever. I don’t even know what that would look like. And I hate it about myself.”

Vanessa put her hand on Joan’s shoulder.

“Forget I said that. You go,” Joan said.

Vanessa stopped at the red light. “Wait, I feel like there is a lot to discuss there.”

“No, no, you go. Please.”

“Okay.” Vanessa shifted her head from side to side. “Oh, what to pick, what to pick. There are so many. Even as a teenager,” Vanessa said, “I stole money out of the vending machines by taking them apart. I hot-wired a car for a friend of mine. I drank too much. I slept around.”

That last one made Joan take her eyes off the red light to look at Vanessa. She turned back only when she remembered herself.

“I did too many drugs.”

“Drugs? What drugs?”

“I smoked pot at first, did LSD.” Vanessa looked at her and considered whether to go on. “Tried heroin.”

The sound Joan made was somewhere between a gasp and a gulp.

The light turned green, and Vanessa pressed her foot on the gas. Suddenly Joan hated the way her own confession had sounded coming out of her mouth.

“Please don’t read too much into my story,” Joan said. They were approaching the park.

“What do you mean?”

“About ratting out my sister. Just . . . please don’t think that I can’t be trusted, or I ruin people’s fun, or I’m a coward, or anything like that. I’m not.”

“I know.”

“Okay, it’s just, with my sister, it was . . . I always feel like I’m trying to do the right thing and getting it wrong. I don’t know why I told you that story. You’re right, I am a prude. And always early. And all the things you think I am.”

“I don’t think of you any differently than I did when you got in the car,” Vanessa said. “You are what you are, and I like what you are. Anyway, nobody is one thing all the time. Maybe you’ve been a Goody Two-shoes up until now. But anything can happen,” she said, laughing, as she pulled into the parking lot. “The night is young, and you’re out with a bad girl.”

It was dark now, with hundreds of stars visible. They put down a blanket, and Joan set up the telescope as Vanessa stood on the grass and stared up at the sky.

“We might be up there one day,” she said.

Joan looked through the eyepiece. “I know.” She could show Vanessa the constellations without it. But the truth was, Joan relished any moment to show people certain stars up close. How else could she tempt them to fall in love? Joan got Rasalgethi, the head of Hercules, into view. She looked at Vanessa.

“Okay, come look.”

Vanessa moved over Joan’s shoulder, and Joan backed away to give Vanessa a chance to look. As Vanessa brushed up against her, Joan noticed that she smelled like baby powder. Joan now felt gauche, wearing perfume.

Vanessa peered into the eyepiece.

“That is Alpha Herculis, or Rasalgethi, which is Arabic for ‘Head of the Kneeler.’ It’s almost four hundred years into the past you’re looking. It appears to be one star to the naked eye, but it’s—”

“Is it a binary?”

“It’s actually a triple star system.”

“Okay.”

“Hercules has no first- or second-magnitude stars, so it’s a great place to start expanding your celestial landmarks. It’s not like Lyra or Cygnus, or even something like Boötes or Auriga, which we can see tonight on the horizon. Hercules doesn’t have a bright star that draws your eye to it. Though a lot of the stars are magnitude four, which is decent. The brightest star is actually called Beta Herculis, not Alpha. Don’t get me started on that.”

Vanessa laughed, and Joan gently pulled her away from the telescope. “Can you see Rasalgethi now with your eyes? As I point to it?”

Vanessa’s sight line followed Joan’s finger. Joan watched Vanessa’s face for any sign of recognition.

“I think so,” Vanessa says.

“Okay, now to the right and farther toward the zenith, you should see a star a little brighter than Rasalgethi—do you see it?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“That’s Beta Herc, also known as Kornephoros—the ‘club bearer.’ Now we’re looking at Hercules upside down. Rasalgethi represents the head and Kornephoros one of his shoulders. From there, you should be able to make out the four stars that are the torso. They are called the Keystone asterism. One star at each point of his shoulders and hips. With two arms coming off it. The one off of Kornephoros goes up, almost like he’s throwing a football. The other arm goes out to the side, as if he’s pointing.”

“I can see that,” Vanessa said.

“All right, so follow it down, you’ve got his pelvis, in this asterism there, and then two legs.”

“He looks like he’s running,” Vanessa said, smiling.

“Exactly. He’s standing or dancing—or, as most commonly interpreted, kneeling—on Draco’s head. Draco being the representation of the dragon Ladon, who Hercules defeated outside the garden of Hesperides.”

Vanessa took her eyes off the sky. “Placed there by Zeus, I assume. Almost all the constellations are placed by Zeus.”

Joan smiled. “Well, most of the northern constellations. At least in Western cultures. They say that when Hercules—or Heracles, I should say, since that was the Greek name—was poisoned by Hydra’s venom, the human part of him died but the immortal part of him joined his father and the other gods on Mount Olympus. And Zeus had the image of both him and Draco placed in the night sky, to honor him.”

Vanessa looked at Joan. “The mythology always struck me as a little trivial.”

“Oh, no. I disagree. That’s part of what I love about astronomy. When we learn about the constellations, we also learn how earlier generations made sense of the world. The stars are connected to so many other elements of our life. It’s the gray areas that are most fascinating: ‘Is this astronomy or history?’ ‘Is this time or space?’ ”

Vanessa looked back up at the sky. “I can still see it—Hercules. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I can see it so clearly. And then just beyond it is Ursa Major and then Ursa Minor, with Polaris.”

Joan nodded. “That’s what made me fall in love with astronomy as a kid,” she said. “That the night sky is a map, and once you know how to read it, it will always be there. You’ll never be lost.”

Vanessa smiled at her. And it made something in Joan want to keep talking. “I’ve always felt like, when I look at the stars, I am reminded that I am never alone,” she said.

“Really?” Vanessa said. “How?”

“Well, we are the stars,” Joan said. “And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.” As she said it, Joan could tell how lonely it must sound. To find companionship with the stars. But what she meant was bigger than that.

Being human was such a lonely endeavor. We alone have consciousness; we are the only intelligent life force that we know of in the galaxy. We have no one but one another. Joan was always moved by the fact that everything—all matter on Earth and beyond, up past the atmosphere, going as far as the edges of the universe, as it expands farther and farther away from us—is made from the same elements. We are made of the same things as the stars and the planets. Remembering that connection brought Joan comfort. It also brought her some sense of responsibility. And what was kinship but that? Comfort and responsibility. “It sounds stupid, I know,” she said.

“No,” Vanessa said. “It doesn’t. It’s fascinating. I love hearing why you became an astronomer. I don’t know if I have that clarity.”

“About why you wanted to be a pilot?”

“I mean, what am I doing at NASA? I know they want me because I’m an aeronautical engineer. But that’s my day job. The real me is a pilot. That’s who I am. And they won’t let me fly the shuttle.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. I got into a fight about it with Antonio when everyone went up in the T-38s for the first time.”

“Oh.”

“They won’t let me get fully checked out in the T-38 because I’m a commercial pilot, not military. So I’ll always be a backseater. And if I can’t fly the T-38, they won’t let me fly the shuttle. I signed up as a mission specialist. I get that. But I did think that it would be open for discussion, at least. That once they saw what I could do, it would be something to work toward. Which was naïve, in hindsight. They said that they absolutely cannot bend or change the rules.”

“That’s not true,” Joan said.

“What’s not true?”

“They have excused the college-degree requirement for certain members of the military. So why can’t they excuse the military requirement for certain civilians?”

Vanessa looked at her. “I mean, you already know the answer.”

Joan frowned. “Why didn’t you join the military?”

“Women couldn’t join the military as pilots, and now NASA will only take military pilots. Ergo, women can’t be NASA pilots. It’s a nice little work-around they’ve got themselves there. It’s not like I could go to the Naval Academy, like my father did.”

“Your father was in the military?”

“He flew in the Korean War.” Vanessa looked up at the sky. “I think most of my life I’ve been both drawn to and terrified of the idea of being just like him.”

Before Joan could respond, Vanessa said, “Will you show me another one?”

“Of course.” Joan gazed through the scope and set it on the next star, far out along the horizon line. “Do you see Scorpius just with your eye? It looks like, well, a scorpion or maybe a fishhook. Try to find the bright star that has a bit of a reddish hue.”

“I see it—looks a bit like Mars, right?”

“It does. It’s a red giant star, Antares. Ant-Ares. Rival of Ares, the Greek name for Mars. Here, I have it in the viewfinder.”

Vanessa leaned in. “Okay, I see it.”

“Now come look at the sky. It’s low in the distance.”

Vanessa pulled back, Joan now right behind her shoulder. Joan pointed toward Antares and then out. “Antares is in the body of the scorpion, with two stars flanking it. Behind it is the tail. It creates an S shape. But on the other side of Antares are three stars in a line. Those represent the head and the claws. Do you see those?”

“I’m not sure.”

Joan stood closer behind her, trying to align their eyes as much as she could. She pointed again.

“I see them,” Vanessa said. And then she was quiet as she looked further. “I see the whole thing, the whole scorpion now.” And then: “My father died flying an F9F Panther over Sui-ho Dam. I didn’t mention that part.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I was six.”

“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”

Vanessa turned back to the stars. “What is the cluster of stars between Hercules and Scorpius? It is not Sagittarius, right?”

“It does look a little like Sagittarius, but Sagittarius is smaller and closer to the horizon. That’s Ophiuchus,” Joan said. “It almost looks like a rounded triangle—as a kid, I thought it looked like a stingray. But it’s said to be a god holding or fighting off snakes. It might even represent the Mesopotamian serpent-god Nirah. Try to find the two winding arms coming off each side.”

“Okay.”

“Did your mother remarry?” Joan asked.

Vanessa nodded, softly, as she looked. “About a year later.”

“And you didn’t like him?”

“I see them. Those are the Serpens, right?”

“Very good.”

“I liked him fine. He’s a nice enough guy. Taught me to drive a car.”

“But he wasn’t your dad.”

“Hard to compete with a war hero.”

“Sure.”

Vanessa looked at Joan. “Sometimes I don’t know if I knew my dad or I just created a man out of thin air, as a god to pray to.”

“Well.” Joan sat down on the blanket. She opened the cooler and grabbed a beer. “Maybe it’s both and maybe that’s okay.”

Vanessa joined her, and Joan handed the beer over, grabbing another one.

“I made chicken salad,” Vanessa said. “I hope that’s okay.”

“More than okay,” Joan said, pulling out the sandwiches. “It’s so thoughtful.”

Joan took a bite and realized, at that moment, how hungry she was. “This is very good.”

Vanessa shrugged. “I dry-poached the chicken, and I put a lot of tarragon in the chicken salad. I think that’s the big thing. That, and people never use enough salt.”

“It’s so good.”

Vanessa laughed and took a sip of her beer. “I’m glad you like it. I really appreciate you doing this. Helping me.”

“It’s nothing,” Joan said.

“You only think that because of how you are,” Vanessa said.

Joan took another sip of her beer, and the thought went through her mind that everything about this moment was perfect. The breeze that cut the humidity, the salty chicken salad, the cold beer, the stars.

“Tell me more about your dad,” Joan said. “If you want to.”

Vanessa looked away. She picked at the bread on her sandwich, which she had yet to touch. “You know how I was talking about bravery versus courage?”

Joan nodded.

“I always thought he was really courageous. That he must have been. And kind, and quiet. Just based on the stories my mom and uncles told me. He died doing something very few people could do. And he gave up his life to do it, to serve his country. I hope he felt conflicted about it. I hope he knew that he was needed back home. But I think he did it. . . . I think he flew that jet with a sense of duty. So, in that way, I think or I hope that he was okay that that’s how he went.”

Joan reached out and touched her shoulder. Vanessa looked at her, surprised. And Joan pulled her hand away, unsure of what line she’d crossed.

“How old was he?” Joan asked. “When he died.”

“Thirty-eight.”

“So young.”

“It seemed so old to me when I was little.”

“So he’s why you became a pilot,” Joan said.

Vanessa sighed. “I think he’s why I did a lot of things, honestly. Lashed out at my mom, cut school. I gravitated toward people I knew were bad news. I remember knowing exactly how stupid it was, what I was doing, and doing it anyway.”

“You were lost.”

“I don’t think I was lost. I think I was trying to lose myself.”

Joan nodded.

“I’m assuming that’s where the heroin comes in?”

Vanessa laughed. “It’s not funny, but it is funny hearing it come out of your mouth.”

Joan threw her napkin at her.

“I think I just wanted to feel something other than sad,” Vanessa said.

Joan did not look away. “Did it work?”

Vanessa inhaled. “Yes, that’s the problem. If you find a way to make yourself absolutely terrified, there’s no room for any other feeling.”

Joan nodded. “Makes sense.”

Vanessa laughed. “You’re the first person to tell me I’m making sense.”

Joan laughed, too. “Well, maybe people aren’t listening. But it makes perfect sense to me. You make yourself afraid so you don’t feel sad. But the more you put yourself in terrifying situations, the braver you become. So you have to put yourself in more and more danger until . . .” Joan regarded Vanessa expectantly. “Until what? Tell me. How did you stop?”

Vanessa considered this. “I don’t know. My uncle Bill—my dad’s best friend from the navy—never gave up on me. I think that was part of it. I remember turning eight years old and asking for a model plane for my birthday. My mom didn’t get it for me. But that night, Bill came over with one. He used to take me out in his prop plane. My mom and I would be in some huge fight, and she’d call Bill and he’d come over and ask if I wanted to go flying. I think I was seventeen when he pushed me to fly by myself. And when I did, I just . . .” She laughed. “At first I thought I had just found something dangerous that was more fun than stealing or having sex . . .”

Joan blushed and looked at her hands.

“But that wasn’t it,” Vanessa said. “I think flying that plane, glancing at the ground below me, watching the horizon ahead . . . it was the first time I remember feeling . . . peace.”

Vanessa relaxed back on the blanket, her hair spread all around her, and looked up at the stars. Joan, after a moment, joined her.

“That’s Cygnus, right?” Vanessa said.

Joan moved closer, following her finger as she pointed to the sky. “Yeah, very good.”

“I only know it because of Deneb,” Vanessa said.

“Still, it’s harder to spot when there are so many stars in the sky, like tonight. Easier in the city,” Joan said. “There are a lot of stories about it, but my favorite is that Orpheus was transformed into a swan after he was murdered and placed next to his lyre, which is Lyra, right next to Cygnus.”

“I’m going to guess he was placed there by Zeus,” Vanessa said.

Joan laughed. “You know, I’m not sure. It could have been Apollo. But, yeah, I mean, for much of recorded history, humans have looked at the stars and believed there are gods up there.”

Joan did not believe there were gods up there, but she did believe that God was there. Was everywhere. The wonder of the night sky was as good a place to connect with it as the smell of a grapefruit or the warmth of a pocket of sun.

“Of course we look for the gods there,” Vanessa said. “And if we make it up there, we’re going to have to fight against that sneaking suspicion that we might just be gods ourselves.”

If Joan could have been pressed harder into the Earth, if gravity was variable, this would have flattened her.

Did Vanessa know that, on some level, Joan could not resist the idea that to go up there would be to touch God? That Joan could not help but wonder if, among the stars, there would be answers to questions no human had yet found?

It seemed so clear to Joan, as crazy as it might be, that the meaning of life had to be up there, somewhere.

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