Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Human intelligence and curiosity, our persistence and resilience, our capacity for long-term planning, and our ability to collaborate have led the human race here.

We are so determined to learn what lies beyond our grasp that we have figured out how to ride a rocket out of the atmosphere. A thrilling ability that seems ripe to attract cowboys, but is best done by people like her. Nerds.

Joan watched as more people filed in. Soon a set of classifications emerged in her mind: scientist and military. Later, Steve Hagen would make it even simpler: “The astronaut corps has two types: dorks and soldiers.” Still, that evening, Joan could not classify the woman in the olive-green shirt.

“By now I hope you have surmised that you are looking at a spacecraft unlike anything we’ve seen before. The shuttle is not one piece of machinery. It is three. On launch, it is a rocket. In orbit, it is a spaceship. On landing, it is an airplane. This is what will allow us to usher in the future of space exploration.”

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.

I told my mom that I wasn’t going to help him, and my mom said that if I was going to be proud of myself for being generous, that I had to do it even when it meant I might lose something. She said, ‘You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.’ ”

So when you look out at the sky, the farther you can see, the further back you are looking in time. The space between you and the star is time.

To look up at the nighttime sky is to become a part of a long line of people throughout human history who looked above at that same set of stars. It is to witness time unfolding. That was the stuff that made her knees buckle.

“My dad taught me when I was little. Bravery is being unafraid of something other people are afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but strong enough to do it anyway.”

My God, she thought, what else can I do?

How can her heart sink in microgravity? But it does.

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.

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.

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.

And that there had always been a place for her in this world. She had just been walking past it over and over again, never noticing that there was an unmarked door, waiting for her to discover it.

“I want to take you everywhere. And do everything with you. And ask you every single question that’s been on my mind for months. And I want to know when you knew what was happening between us and I want to tell you when I knew. And I want to hold your hand in a quiet corner and I want to lie in bed and hear your heartbeat through your chest. I want to bring you coffee in bed. And I want to hear you tell me anything you’ve always wanted to tell someone. Because you know that you’ve met someone who desperately wants to listen.”

All she could think about was how grateful she was that the Earth was ninety-three million miles away from the sun today, far enough to be warm but not too hot, just the right distance for life on this planet.

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

And what every marriage in the whole godforsaken country had. The right to exist and to love and be proud and happy. The right to live.

It felt so good to Joan, to hurt to leave her.

When Joan looked back at the Earth, she was overwhelmed with her own life’s meaning—and the fact that the only meaning it could have was the meaning she gave it.

said. “I was circling two hundred miles above the Earth, and all I wanted was to get home and see you. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I don’t care how big or small this world is, that you are the center of mine? Do you understand that, to someone, you are everything that matters on this entire planet?”

How entirely undemanding of yourself it was to believe that everything happened to you. And everything was about you. And that your feelings were the only ones that mattered. Worse yet, to afford yourself the role of the victim always—regardless of how grotesquely it required you to twist reality—so that you never had to look in the mirror and admit you were the perpetrator.