Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Not a single person left.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

Oh, they were much too close to the sun.

“Look,” Vanessa said, pointing up toward the western edge of the sky. “Hercules.” Joan did not speak. “The whole sky makes sense to me now,” Vanessa said. “Because of you.” And Joan thought, Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no.

“Houston, come in. This is Navigator, do you read?” Vanessa says. Pull it together, Goodwin. Joan has never called herself Goodwin in her own head before. And now she wonders who’s speaking to her.

“I…they just think they’re very cute, don’t they? Two astronauts in love.” Vanessa laughed. “Yeah, how awful. Two astronauts in love.”

“I don’t know but I…I want to show you every good thing I’ve ever found,” Joan said.

Joan felt, so acutely, that the incurable problem with life was that nothing was ever in balance. That she could not have toddler Frances and fifth-grade Frances at the same time. She could not meet adult Frances and have a moment to hold baby Frances all at once. You could not have a little of everything you wanted. Joan tried to remind herself that when Frances had been younger, she had held Frances’s little hand every single chance she got. When Frances had been a baby, she had smelled her hair sometimes for whole minutes at a time. She had been present for all of it. Didn’t that mean that she would not grieve its loss, since she had voraciously and self-indulgently taken all of it that was offered? No. It did not. She still ached for every version of Frances.

Joan did not say anything for a moment. And then: “It’s not fair,” she said, finally. “That part is not fair.” “No, honey,” Vanessa said. “It isn’t.” Later, before they fell asleep, Joan said, “Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.” “That’s because you’re too good for the world you love so much,” Vanessa said.

“If you want, baby girl,” Vanessa said. “You may just land on the moon.”

How could I say I loved you if I didn’t love this about you?

Jack speaks up: “Tell her everyone. We are all here for her. Tell her Donna and her baby girl are in the theater. Tell her Helene is here. Tell her the entire astronaut corps is with her in spirit right now. Tell her everyone here is rooting for her.” Joan nods and gets back on the loop. “Well, Ford, just about anybody you’ve ever met is here.”