Atmosphere: A Love Story By Taylor Jenkins Reid - 7

In the months after learning she would be joining the astronaut corps, Joan did three things.

First, she gave notice at Rice.

On her last day, the Physics and Astronomy Department threw her a going-away party. By the punch bowl, Dr. Siskin asked—in a way that struck Joan as remarkably transparent—how she’d managed to pull this off. Joan said, “Luck, I guess,” and then regretted it.

Joan knew that Dr. Siskin, and most men like him, had never taken a good look at her. She was used to it. After all, she was not Barbara. She had never commanded the attention of the entire room with how great she looked in a dress or how well she delivered a comeback. Once, when Joan was a teenager, her mother told her that she and her sister each had their own strengths. She said that Barbara’s were loud and Joan’s were quiet, but both were powerful in their own way. When her mother said this, Joan hugged her.

Joan knew she was easy to overlook. She was average height and a bit stocky. She dressed simply. Her light brown hair was just past her shoulders, but she didn’t wear it feathered like some other women did. Instead, she pulled it back loosely. Sometimes, when Joan saw herself in photographs, she was struck by how beautiful her smile was, her dimples making her face seem friendly and bright. In high school, Adam Hawkins had said so. But she didn’t expect other people to notice.

She also didn’t expect other people to ask what she did in her spare time (she was a classically trained pianist, had run two marathons, was an avid reader and an amateur portraitist, among other things). When people came into her office and saw some of the sketches on her wall, she knew they’d assume she’d bought them somewhere. When someone admired them, she never bothered to tell them she’d drawn them. The praise was never the point. In any case, no one in a long time had asked her about herself enough to know any of this. And Joan found a familiar peace in going unnoticed.

So it came as a huge shock to the men in the department, many of whom fancied themselves secretly destined for victory, to see that the woman they’d overlooked was lapping them in a race they did not know had started.

Joan looked around the room, put her drink down, and left her own goodbye party early.

The second thing Joan did was tell her family she was going to be an astronaut candidate.

“It’s all because you suggested I apply,” Joan said to Barbara over the phone.

“I did?”

“Because of the commercial.”

“Oh, right,” Barbara said. “Well, you’re welcome.”

Her mother and father flew out from Pasadena. They all went out to a celebratory dinner, at which Barbara mentioned multiple times that she hoped this didn’t mean Joan was moving to Clear Lake. After all, Frances needed her close by. Joan explained three separate times that it did mean she was moving to Clear Lake. There were apartments right next to the Johnson Space Center. It was only thirty minutes south of her current place, and regardless, she would never in a million years miss a second she could spend with Frances.

And then Joan leaned over to Frances and kissed the part in her hair at the top of her head.

There were things Joan had done with Frances since Frances was a baby—turning her upside down, carrying her on her shoulders, throwing her on the bed—that Frances was too big for now. But Joan would always be able to kiss the top of her head. Even if she had to get on a stool, one day, to do it.

When Joan and Barbara were little, they’d played make-believe for hours. Joan was always a doctor or a nurse or a teacher. Barbara would pretend to be a singer, a ballet dancer, or a figure skater. But once Barbara could see adolescence approaching, there was no more pretending. She went out in search of things Joan knew nothing about.

Though four years younger, Barbara snuck out to her first party before Joan, had her first kiss before Joan, had her first drink before Joan. What could Joan offer someone so much more worldly than her? How could Barbara look up to someone so far behind?

A few years later, when Joan was pursuing her PhD at Caltech and Barbara was in her junior year of college at the University of Houston, Barbara called Joan late one night, sobbing.

She’d gotten pregnant.

“You’re the only one I could call,” Barbara said.

Joan could barely believe what she was hearing. Not that Barbara had found herself here—in fact, Barbara had already gotten pregnant and miscarried once as a teenager. The shock was that Barbara had called Joan.

“What do I do?” Barbara asked.

Joan stayed on the phone with her for three hours, talking it through. She gleaned a lot of surprising information from that conversation. Namely, that there was more than one possible father, that Barbara was unwilling to suffer the indignity of trying to figure out which it was, that she was intent on hiding this as long as possible from their parents, and that she’d stopped going to classes weeks ago.

Joan was trying to find the words for how to respond to the last bit of information when Barbara’s roommate came in and Barbara rushed off the phone.

Then Barbara called again two days later, this time with a clarity of purpose.

She had realized this was a great thing! This pregnancy was the answer to a question Barbara had been asking herself for years. What was she meant to do with her life? This! The reason she had yet to find a passion was because she’d been waiting for this child to give her life a shape.

Joan knew that Barbara did not understand the full weight of the task. But there was little to be done about it now.

“Do you think I’ll be a good mother?” Barbara asked Joan.

Joan had a hard time imagining Barbara as someone’s mother, but the simplest way of looking at it seemed true. “You’ve always been incredible at anything you’ve put effort into, Barb.”

“Thank you, Joan. That means a lot.”

After that, Barbara kept calling. Barbara needed money for an apartment. Barbara needed help finding out if she could get her tuition money refunded now that she was officially dropping out. Barbara needed Joan there when she finally told Mom and Dad. Barbara needed Barbara needed Barbara needed.

When their parents were upset that Barbara was single, pregnant, and dropping out of college, Barbara called on Joan to defend her.

When their mother offered to be with her when the baby was born, Barbara asked for Joan instead.

When Frances was born that May, this gorgeous gangly thing, it was Joan who held her first. It was Joan who handed her over to their mother to hold, Joan who filled out Frances’s birth certificate.

Frances Emerson Goodwin.

Joan spent months sleeping on the sofa in Barbara’s new one-bedroom apartment in Houston. She had to. Frances needed someone to arrange her checkups. Frances needed someone to rock her. Frances needed someone to feed her when Barbara was too tired to wake up. Frances needed Frances needed Frances needed.

It felt weird to Joan—holding a baby. She always felt as if she was going to break her, always worried she wasn’t supporting her head enough. Frances was colicky the first few months; there were times when she would not stop crying, no matter how much Joan held her. Joan sometimes could not hear her own thoughts above the screaming.

And Joan wondered how she’d gotten here. This was not the life she’d seen for herself, caring for a baby.

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.”

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