Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

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

She wanted what they had. She wanted what Donna and Hank had. 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.

“I would give you anything,” Vanessa said, “if it wasn’t going to cost us everything.” “I would never ask it,” Joan said, shaking her head. Her tears began to fall, and she dried them. “Which is how I know that you’d be worth giving it to,” Vanessa said.

I will take your hand. If you are not, I will go find you. I will spend the rest of my life, if I get that lucky, seeking you out. Not because I promised you or because you’re there. But because I will want to. I will want to be beside you. Every day. Forever.” “You will?” Vanessa tucked a strand of Joan’s hair behind her ear. “Every morning, I wake up and I think, ‘God, yes, her.’ ”

“In that CAPCOM chair, you need someone who is trusted, can remain calm, think quickly, and do what they are told. That’s me.”

“Listen to me, kiddo. For some people, childhood is the best part of their lives, and later, all they are trying to do is go back to it. But for people like us, it’s different. The good part hasn’t started yet. But it’s coming. It’s just ahead, when your life is in your own hands and, listen to me, you are going to soar.”

But I’m not scared of being a mother.” “Why not?” Joan asked her. “Because it feels good to love someone,” Donna said. “It feels better than anything on this Earth. And I bet better than anything up there.” —

The rules of society came for everyone eventually: the too big, too small, too wild, too quiet, too strong, not strong enough.

Through it all, babies are born from stardust and grow taller. They begin to walk and talk and learn the days of the week, the months, the seasons. Then they look up at the sky, to see where they came from. And the adults spend most of their days looking down. They fall in love and make mistakes and learn new things and feel tired. They lose people they love, and fail themselves, and change or never change. They get new jobs and fall out of love and convince themselves that if they just get this one thing, they will finally be happy. Day in and day out, the Earth keeps spinning and revolving and sailing through the Milky Way. That is why time never stands still.

“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?” “Okay,” Frances said again. This time Joan could hear the lump in her throat.

Joan marveled at how easy Barbara’s inner life must be. 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.

“That’s not a relationship!” Joan said, doing her best to keep her voice down. “That’s what we can have!” Vanessa said. “And I’ll take anything I can have with you! Don’t you see that?” “Well, I can’t ask that of you.” “I’m asking it of you!

“Do you know why I kept saying the best song was ‘Space Oddity’?” Vanessa asks. “Because of your favorite part.” “When he says, ‘Tell my wife I love her very much…’ ” Vanessa says. “And then he says, ‘She knows,’ ” Joan says. “Yeah,” Vanessa says. “That’s it. That’s the best part of that song. But do you think she knows? Do you really think she knows?” “She knows,” Joan says. “She absolutely knows.” “Okay,” Vanessa says. “I can live with that.”

In this one moment of brilliant clarity—a clarity Joan knows she will lose her grasp on within seconds, and have to fight like hell for years to come back to—Joan understands that God gave her something spectacular. A love, and a life, beyond the confines of her imagination.