Atmosphere: A Love Story By Taylor Jenkins Reid - 16

Joan had rescheduled Frances’s sleepovers the past few weeks because, for a short period of time during the training, all of the ASCANs had to hop into a fleet of T-38s and travel all over the United States, visiting NASA centers and contractors.

They visited the Kennedy Space Center to see the launchpads and Boeing to tour the facility and boost morale. They went to the Goddard Space Flight Center and Edwards Air Force Base. Soon they would tour Marshall, to check out the development of the shuttle rockets and payloads.

Joan began to see firsthand what being in the astronaut corps, even as candidates, meant in the eyes of the public. They gave talks at schools all over Houston and were met by reporters as they stepped off the bus. Every person they came in contact with seemed to stand a little straighter in their presence and regarded them with a respect that Joan had never received before. Most people’s smiles were a little more intense, when Joan shook their hand, than she had expected. It wasn’t personal. It was the aura of being an astronaut. It was the promise she held. That one day, anyone who shook her hand might be able to say with pride, “I met her.”

After a while, Joan started standing a little straighter, too.

This Friday night, Joan handed Frances a magnet from Washington, D.C., where she had gone with the ASCANs and some astronauts to meet lawmakers at a state dinner. Joan had not said much at the event. She let some less reserved members of the group take center stage. But she was surprised to see just how easy it was for Lydia to step into the spotlight. Joan watched as she explained the mechanics of the space shuttle to a senator with such focus and verve that Joan realized Lydia could be a very good instructor one day, long after her astronaut career was over.

“I also got you a replica of the Apollo LEM, but it shattered in my bag on the way back,” Joan told Frances.

“You skipped two Fridays in a row,” Barbara said. “We miss you.”

“I missed you, too. But I will be here for the next few weeks, all right? So no one needs to worry about me being away for a little while.”

Frances ate her Chinese food. “And I can come over every week again?”

“If she can find time in her very busy schedule,” Barbara said.

Joan tried to catch her eye, but Barbara wasn’t looking at her.

“Okay,” Frances said.

Frances never pushed Joan, never tried to make her feel guilty. Joan was not sure if that was because Frances was nothing like Barbara, or if she just hadn’t figured out the power she held yet. But there was something about Frances that made Joan believe she was better—held more goodness—than anyone she had ever met. That kind of faith was a lot to put on a six-year-old girl. Joan tried to keep it in check. To be ready to accept all the ways that Frances would grow and change and blossom into her full imperfection.

Joan would love her no matter what. Even if she grew up to be exactly like Barbara. Joan would love her then, too. Without hesitation. Whether she had to work at it or not, she would do it forever.

“We learned about gravity in school,” Frances said. “My teacher said that astronauts float, and I told her she was wrong. I said, ‘My aunt is an astronaut, and she doesn’t float.’ ”

“Frances, that’s not—” Barbara started.

Joan looked at Frances. “You’re right, I don’t. But if I go up into space, I will.”

“You’ll float?”

“Have they taught you yet in school how gravity works?”

“It pushes us down?”

“It pulls us. Everything that has mass has some amount of gravitational pull. So think about this— Actually, wait, come with me.”

Joan got up from the table and walked into her bedroom, looking for something heavy. She wanted a bowling ball but settled for a few rolls of quarters. She tore the comforter off her bed.

“What are you doing?” Barbara said. Frances was smiling.

“Okay, look.” Joan threw the rolls of quarters onto the mattress. “The quarters are heavy, right? They have mass.”

Frances nodded, but then Barbara did, too, and it stopped Joan for a second.

“Okay, look at the mattress over here,” Joan said, pointing to an empty space. “It’s flat. It’s a flat plane, right?”

“Right,” Barbara said.

“But look over here, by the quarters,” Joan said. She pointed to the indentation the quarters made in the mattress, the way the rolls sank into the mattress around them in a circle. “If the mattress is the fabric of space, do you see how the mass of the quarters bends the space around it? It’s creating gravity. Hold on.”

She searched in her freezer and found a bag of peas. She opened it up and took one out and returned to Barbara and Frances.

“So if I put a pea where it’s flat, what happens?”

“Nothing,” Frances said.

“Right, it stays put. Nothing near it has enough mass to pull it anywhere. But now,” Joan said, placing a pea just outside the quarters. “What happens when I put one within the gravitational force of the quarters?”

The pea rolled toward the quarters.

“It rolls.”

“It’s being pulled,” Joan said. “Right.”

“So the quarters are the Earth, and we are the pea,” Barbara said.

Joan nodded. “Yep, the pea is all of us and all the trees and all the dust and all the dirt and every animal and all the—”

“We get it.”

“Okay, sure,” Joan said. “So right now, we’re the pea right here. If I get chosen to go up into space one day, I’ll be the pea here.”

She put it back on the flat plane of the mattress. “Nothing will be pulling me down, at least not at the rate that Earth can. So if I’m not being pulled toward the Earth, what’s going to happen?”

“You’re gonna float,” Frances said.

“I’m gonna float.”

They called it the Vomit Comet—a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. It was designed as a refueler, but at NASA, it had a much different job. It was a cargo plane—with no seats, only padding—used to simulate weightlessness.

With the ASCANs as passengers, the pilot would fly a series of parabolas that would lift the ASCANs into the air with extra gravitational forces, then lower them back down, allowing them to enter free fall. In between these moments of intense lift and fall, there were pockets of time—less than a minute—in which the ASCANs would float in midair.

The parabolas, when executed properly, simulated microgravity.

They also made a lot of people sick. Especially Joan.

On the KC-135 with Lydia, Hank, Teddy, and Jimmy, Joan seemed to be the only one calculating how quickly she could grab the barf bag from her pocket.

It was her first time on the plane, and they were approaching the third moment of weightlessness. The first two times, she had barely kept her food down. Putting on her blue flight suit that morning, she had felt like an astronaut. But now, as she lay flat on the floor of the aircraft as it ascended again, she felt like a child.

“Maybe we should land so Joan can get off.” Lydia was seated in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest. “She seems a little pale.”

Joan wanted so badly to understand Lydia. She always corrected everyone, always had some way to cut Joan or Donna or Vanessa down. But even if it was a competitive strategy, there was no need for it. Lydia was already a clear favorite of Antonio’s—Donna and Joan had seen Antonio out with Lydia and Griff for dinner more than once. And she was picking up every class lesson quickly, not just those in her field of study. If anyone was pulling ahead of the class, it was Lydia.

“I am fine, Lydia, thank you,” Joan said.

Jimmy huffed. “She’ll have to be a big girl.”

“I said, I’ve got it,” Joan said.

Jimmy put his hands up as if she were about to shoot.

She tried not to roll her eyes, or he’d make a comment about that, too. But he didn’t have to say anything else. The subtext was clear: This is why women don’t belong on the shuttle. Last week, he’d asked Lydia if she was going to be bitchy if she got her period in space. Lydia had laughed, and Joan had had to clench her jaw to keep it shut.

“I almost puked my first time,” Hank said to Joan. “No shame in it.”

Joan closed her eyes. Bless Hank for trying. But she did not need to be consoled, either. She just needed everyone to shut up.

As the plane began to rise once more, Joan felt the air gain heft underneath her, and her stomach somersaulted.

Her body rose into the air. As she lifted farther, Joan closed her eyes like she had all of the other times. She’d thought that weightlessness would feel like floating in a pool. But to her, it felt more like being thrashed around in the ocean. She braced against it, but that didn’t work. She tried to think of it differently, to remember the times she’d swum past the breakers and felt the ocean lift her briefly as the waves surged and then gently brought her back down. She thought of being in the ocean with Barbara as a kid, the way Barbara had clung to her, and Joan would tell her she was okay.

Her stomach began to roil.

Joan gave up on that idea and opened her eyes. She looked at her legs and pulled them into her chest. Her stomach calmed.

“You’re gettin’ it,” Hank said.

Seconds later, the plane began to level out, but she kept her eyes open. As the weight of the air landed on her back, she looked at Jimmy. He was holding on to the padding on the side of the plane, and as he began to drop, his eyes went wide and blinked over and over again, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his breath became shallow.

Joan realized he was terrified.

And it did not excuse his attitude. But she understood, finally.

Jimmy had been told from a young age that fear and failing and trying and wanting and openness and kindness and sincerity made him weak. And because he had believed it, he’d learned to suppress all of those things. And when he saw those traits in others, he hated them because he hated himself.

Jimmy was hiding. That’s what Jimmy was doing. Lydia was, too—because she was trying to prove she could be like Jimmy. And Joan was falling for it.

She was trying to prove that she could be just like a man to all of them. To Jimmy. To Lydia. Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

Joan had let men like Jimmy set the terms.

But the terms were false, even to him. He was just as scared as anybody else.

Bravery, Joan suspected, is almost always a lie. Courage is all we have.

She didn’t want to lower herself to the game men played.

As the plane turned toward the sky, her stomach dropped hard and fast before her torso caught up.

Joan grabbed the barf bag from her pocket. And puked.

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