Atmosphere

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

But I think it is also the relief I feel that those stars are immovable. Nothing you or I could do will ever alter them. They are so much bigger than us. And they will not change within our lifetime. We can succeed or fail, get it right or get it wrong, love and lose the ones we love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south. And in that way, I know everything will be some type of okay—as impossible as that can seem sometimes.

In Joan’s estimation, we are not ill-suited at all. We are exactly who should be out there. We are the only intelligent life-form that we know of in our galaxy who has become aware of the universe and worked to understand it.

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,”

What could Joan offer someone so much more worldly than her? How could Barbara look up to someone so far behind?

“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.”

.......

I hope I don’t do it with both elbows out, knocking everyone down. I hope I wait until I fully earn it instead of trying to steal the chance out from under someone. I want it bad, but still, I hope I do it right.”

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.’ ”

Astronomy was history. Because space was time. And that was the thing she loved most about the universe itself. When you look at the red star Antares in the southern sky, you are looking over thirty-three hundred trillion miles away. But you are also looking more than five hundred and fifty years into the past. Antares is so far away that its light takes five hundred and fifty years to reach your eye on Earth. Five hundred and fifty light-years away. 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.

Joan stared right at him, unsure how to respond. But then Lydia laughed.

Yuck shes a pick me

Didn’t Lydia understand that if one of them made it seem like it was okay, the rest of them would be sidelined as humorless? Didn’t Lydia get that this was how the men kept them separate and underestimated? With these small jokes that made them look petty if they got upset? Couldn’t Lydia see how it worked?

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

“If only I could find something I love half as much as you love talking about stars.”

Goodbye

Joan so loved the beauty in this world: showing people the stars, spotting the fuzzy glimmer of the Orion Nebula with just her eyes, the rare moments when auroras are visible even in the southern states because of intense geomagnetic storms, trying one more time to really nail Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor, rereading The Awakening, listening to Joni Mitchell and Kate Bush, drawing for so long, so late into the night that her palm cramped, running so far that she forgot to think, taking Frances for ice cream and watching how long she deliberated over which flavor to choose, the smell of Frances’s hair… That was the stuff that made life worth living. And she worried Barbara didn’t see that.

When we learn about the constellations, we also learn how earlier generations made sense of the world. The stars are connected to so many other elements of our life. It’s the gray areas that are most fascinating: ‘Is this astronomy or history?’ ‘Is this time or space?’ ”

“Well, we are the stars,” Joan said. “And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.”

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.

Bravery, Joan suspected, is almost always a lie. Courage is all we have.

“Don’t roll your eyes,” Barbara said. “I have given up my entire life to raise you. You can give me one damn kiss.”

“No one at NASA is thinking, ‘Let’s see how women do it.’ They’re thinking, ‘Maybe we should give them a chance to prove they are just like us.’ ”

“The only reason you think it’s funny is because we’ve been told our whole lives it’s okay to make fun of us,”

“The whole sky makes sense to me now,” Vanessa said. “Because of you.”

“Navigator,” Joan says finally. “We need to update you about the crew.”

“I’m just trying to tell you that I understand that you must have something going for you that I don’t have,” Lydia said. “Something I could learn from. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I do see it. I do see how great you two are. You have skills I am lacking. And I need to listen to you.”

I feel like I could know you forever and still be curious about what you’re going to say next.”

“I mean, don’t confuse my respect for you with patience.”

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

No matter how easy it was for Joan to lose herself in this new life, she was constantly aware of the cold, hard borders of it. The world would not care for her and Vanessa as they cared for each other.

“The Jewish philosopher Spinoza said that God did not necessarily make the universe, but that God is the universe. The unfolding of the universe is God in action. Which would mean science and math are a part of God.” “And we are a part of God because we are a part of the universe,” Vanessa said. “Or better yet, we are the universe.

as human beings, we are less of a who and more of a when.

I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God. My life is tied to yours, and to everyone’s on this planet. How does that not instantly make us more in debt to one another? And also offer us the comfort that we are not alone?”

But she did believe in a God that had led them here. That led their lives to intersect. That led Vanessa to need what Joan had to give. That led Joan to have what she needed.

You could not have a little of everything you wanted.

But to love Frances was to be always saying goodbye to the girl Frances used to be and falling in love again with the girl Frances was becoming.

That if you were happy, you wanted others to be happy alongside you. This was the only reason Joan could think of for why Barbara suddenly seemed so immensely proud of her.

“But I work harder than you.” “No, you don’t.” “Well, I’m smarter than you.” “No, you aren’t.”

Lol

It’s about the collective, not the individual.”

“I think I forget sometimes,” Barbara said. “That your life is different than mine. It must be very hard seeing so many happy couples while you are on your own. You deserve to have a great night.”

Bruh

This was Barbara’s low-Earth orbit, Joan realized.

“STS-LR9. Steve’s my commander. It’s him, Hank, Griff, Lydia, and me. Right after Christmas ’84, six weeks after you.”

Im cry

“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.”

Joan would never be able to forgive Barbara for not loving Joan as Joan had loved her. For not knowing how to love Frances as Joan loved her.

Something she loved, someone she loved, the parts of her she had hidden within herself.

She wanted to say, I don’t think humans are meant to be up here. And I’m worried I’ve spent my entire life hoping for something it turns out I can’t stand. And I don’t know who I might be anymore if I don’t want to do this ever again.

“Hard to believe any one person has any significance,” he said. “I knew that before, but I never knew it, until now. Human life is…meaningless.”

“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?”

Joan stared at her, shocked that she had the audacity to cry.

Same

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.

If Frances had spent the first ten years of her life unsure of where she belonged, Joan knew she would spend the next ten knowing she firmly belonged to her.

“You make my life worth something. And I can promise you with my entire body that you will never be alone. Every day, you can wake up and go to bed knowing there is someone whose heart is bursting, barely able to contain how much they love you. I know you’re my niece, Frances. But you have always, too, been mine.”

“You’re…” Lydia said. “You’re my best friend here, Joan.”