Atmosphere: A Love Story By Taylor Jenkins Reid - 36

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.

“Antonio?” 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.”

“Before Lydia or Griff? C’mon.”

Vanessa shrugged. “It’s not impossible.”

“It’s not likely.”

Vanessa didn’t respond. Instead, she grabbed a bottle of wine off Joan’s counter and began to open it. “Let’s stay in tonight and drink this bottle and listen to records and make out,” she said.

Joan had become a flake since falling in love. “Yes,” she said, “Let’s.”

The next morning, Joan was outside Antonio’s door at seven forty-seven, despite knowing he usually didn’t get to the office until after eight.

She waited patiently by his door until she saw him coming down the hallway, holding a briefcase.

“Come on in,” he said, opening his office door.

He had a corner office in Building 1, the large windows giving him a view of the campus. And Joan saw a future, in a flash, of who she might be when she was no longer an astronaut. Might she be Antonio one day? She did not want to go back to academia. She wanted to be here at NASA for as long as they’d have her. But that would require her getting this part right first, the astronaut part.

She sat down as she waited for him to get settled.

Antonio put down his briefcase, hung his suit jacket over the back of his chair. When he sat, he situated the notebooks on his desk and then looked at her.

“Joan Goodwin, always a pleasure.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Tell me, how would you feel about going up into space?”

“What?”

Antonio started smiling and leaned back. “How would you feel,” he said again, this time slowly, “about going up into space?”

“I would feel . . . great about that,” Joan said. “I would love that, sir.”

“I thought you might.”

He took a long pause, and Joan felt herself leaning forward. A smile spread across his face and crinkled his eyes.

“We are assigning you to STS-LR7. Your commander will be John Donahue, who I know you’ve spent some time with during training.”

“Yes, sir, he was one of the survival-training instructors.”

“This will be his second mission, so you’ll be in good hands. And your pilot will be Greg Menkin. The mission specialists will be you, Mark Simons, and Harrison Moreau. You’ll be flying on Discovery, slated for launch November of ’84, which gives you more than a year to train.”

“I . . . I don’t know what to say.”

“Say that you accept.”

“I do, I absolutely do,” Joan said.

“Good. You’ll be assigned to Spacelab on the shuttle. You have become absolutely crucial to the inner workings of the pallet. We have a series of experiments that will be conducted by all of you, but we are planning on moving forward with the solar investigations, which we believe you are best suited to execute. But more than that, we feel you will be a great asset to the crew in terms of expertise and demeanor. We need a calm, steady hand on any crew, someone who understands that we all succeed or fail together. And we believe for STS-LR7, you are the best fit. That’s why we’ve selected you.”

“I am honored, truly.”

“The assignments on STS-LR7 will be announced shortly. As I know you are aware, the entire astronaut corps is eager to be assigned a mission. I ask that you keep your assignment between us and your crew until I have time to formally announce. And when it is announced, that you help me to keep morale high for those not assigned yet.”

“Of course, sir. I would consider that my highest priority until training.”

“I know, Goodwin. That contributed to my decision. You are exactly who NASA needs on the mission. And we are lucky to have you in our service.”

He stood up and put out his hand. Joan stood up and shook it. “Thank you, sir. I will make you proud.”

“Of that, I have no doubt.”

When Joan left his office, she had trouble composing her face. Finding it impossible to steady her hands, she walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind herself. She was overcome. And it came bursting out of her.

She sobbed.

Crying in the office felt so good. Holding it in felt so terrible.

As Joan inhaled and blew the air out of her lungs, she let the tears fall down her face.

She’d done it. She’d been assigned a mission. The first mission of her group. She was going to space.

When she was all cried out, she left the stall and washed her hands at the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror.

Her eyes were puffy, her cheeks splotchy. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail. Her mascara had run.

This probably wasn’t what an astronaut looked like to most people. But she was one, and she was going up into space. So the definition was going to have to change.

She waited until some of the redness went away, caught her breath, and then left the bathroom. As she was walking back to her desk, she saw Vanessa coming down the hallway.

Vanessa was trying, covertly, to read her face. She raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

As they passed, Joan said, “November ’84.”

Vanessa beamed.

And then the two of them walked on in different directions, not skipping a beat.

That night, Joan went to Vanessa’s house and knocked on the door.

Vanessa opened it and they both walked inside. But just as Joan shut the door behind them, she took Vanessa by the wrist and pulled her close.

“You’re sure you’re okay with me going up there first?” Joan asked. “It would be okay if you were struggling with it.”

Vanessa shook her head. “Every day I don’t have an assignment, I’m on pins and needles waiting to hear,” she said. She pushed her body into Joan’s and took Joan’s face in her hands. “But that has nothing to do with you.”

She kissed her and then looked her in the eye.

“I fell for the coolest astronaut at NASA,” Vanessa said. “What did you think I thought would happen?”

The announcement about the flight crews was made the following Monday at the all-astronauts meeting.

Donna put her hands on Joan’s shoulders and squeezed them. Vanessa clapped softly while smiling at her. Lydia’s jaw tensed. She would not look at Joan. She just kept nodding, intensely, rapidly, in a way that was almost pathological.

Later, in the hallway, Joan chased Lydia down.

“Are you okay?”

Lydia turned to her. “I’m fine, Joan.”

“I know you wanted it to be you.”

“I’m fine, Joan. Congratulations.”

But three days later, at nine o’clock at night, when Joan was alone in her bedroom, there was a knock on her door.

Vanessa had gone to Alabama, where she was working in the dunk tank. Joan had been sketching, trying to draw Vanessa’s face. In all of their time together, Joan had not once captured it right. Every so often, Vanessa would ask Joan if she could see whatever Joan had come up with. Joan had yet to show her a single attempt.

This evening was no different. It wasn’t right. It was the hair—it was always the hair. How could you capture something like that with a pencil? The way it was always in motion? You couldn’t.

Before Joan could put the pad down, the person knocked again. She tucked her things in her nightstand and walked to the front door and answered it.

“Can I come in?” Lydia said.

“Uh, sure,” Joan said, opening the door wider.

Lydia looked at Joan’s apartment. Joan could now see it through her eyes: a little messy, a little lived in, a little quaint.

Lydia stood by the couch. “Can I sit?”

“Of course—do you want water or something?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Lydia sat down. “You need a new couch,” Lydia said. “The springs are soft.”

“I like it just fine,” Joan said, as she sat in the chair opposite Lydia. “What’s on your mind?”

Lydia said nothing for a moment. There was an awkwardness to Lydia that some people found off-putting. But it did not unnerve Joan at all. Joan found it easier to be around Lydia one-on-one, when she did not have to contend with Donna’s or Vanessa’s discomfort around her.

Lydia put her elbows to her knees, looked down at the floor. When she looked back up at Joan, her eyes were soft, just a hint of glassiness to them. Joan could hardly return her gaze.

“Why wasn’t it me?” Lydia said.

Joan blew the air out of her lungs. “I don’t know.”

“It should have been me,” Lydia said, her voice breaking slightly.

“No, Lydia, that’s not true.”

“I understand you deserve it,” Lydia said. “I’m not saying you don’t.”

“Good,” Joan said.

“But I work harder than you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Well, I’m smarter than you.”

“No, you aren’t.”

Lydia considered this, looked down at the floor again.

“Why are you here, asking me this?” Joan said. “Instead of going to Harrison’s door and asking him why he got assigned before you?”

Lydia nodded and continued to stare at the floor. And then looked up at her. “I’m . . .” She hung her head again. And then quickly worked up her nerve again. “I’m not confronting you. I’m . . .” She looked Joan in the eye. “I’m asking your advice.”

Joan’s entire body softened. “Oh.”

“I want to go up there—” Lydia said.

“And you will,” Joan said.

“Stop—please let me finish.”

Joan backed off.

“I want to go up there first and, sure, that is part of why I’m upset. But, Joan, even more than that, I . . . I want to be good at this. Not just because I want the gold pin. I want to be good at it in the sense that I want to be helpful. I want to use what skills I have to be of service to this team. I want to be what NASA needs. I really want that.”

Joan nodded.

“They need you for Spacelab, and I get that. But also, if they wanted me, they would have just assigned Marty to Spacelab and given me Harrison’s spot. I have the most hours on the RMS of anyone from our group, so it doesn’t actually make sense to give it to Harrison first. There must be another reason. Something I didn’t get exactly right yet. Or there is something else I need to learn,” Lydia said. “So that I can be a great astronaut, someone Antonio knows he can trust.”

“I can’t speak for Antonio,” Joan said. “But I do think you’re already learning it.”

Lydia looked up at Joan, her eyes a little brighter. “Learning what?”

“That it’s not about you,” Joan said. “Choices like this are dictated by what is best for the mission, not the individual. And if you’re asking my advice, I think that’s where you sometimes go wrong. You’re not smarter or harder working than anyone here. Yes, you’re brilliant and driven, but you’re surrounded by people who are just as brilliant and just as driven. You’re not better than anyone on this crew. You cannot be. And you cannot want to be. If you are, you won’t be prepared to do the hard stuff, if you’re too worried about whether you’re winning some imaginary race. It’s about the collective, not the individual.”

Lydia closed her eyes and nodded. She did not speak for quite some time.

“You’re saying be less American, be more Soviet.”

Joan laughed. “I absolutely did not say that!”

“Yeah,” Lydia said, laughing. “You did. I’m going to tell everyone you said I needed to be more Soviet in my mentality, and you’re gonna get kicked off LR7 for being unfit to serve and I’m gonna get your spot. I finally figured it out.”

Joan was still laughing when Lydia stood up. “This is so much easier than I thought! I don’t have to learn anything!”

Joan stood up too and then, without thinking, walked over to Lydia and hugged her.

“What is happening?”

“I’m hugging you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Lydia didn’t pull away. She relaxed into it. “I hate this.”

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