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Her job today is one of her favorite parts of being an astronaut. She is CAPCOM on the Orion Flight Team for STS-LR9, the third flight of the shuttle Navigator. The role of CAPCOM—the only person in Mission Control who speaks directly to the crew on the shuttle—is one of many that astronauts fill when they aren’t on a mission. This is something Joan often has to explain to people at the rare party she agrees to go to. That astronauts train to go up into space, yes. But they also help design the tools and experiments, test out food, prep the shuttle, educate students on what NASA can do,
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When Joan was twelve, she had read a newspaper article mentioning the FLATs—First Lady Astronaut Trainees, involved in what was known as the Women in Space Program. That group of thirteen women had been privately tested and trained by William Randolph Lovelace II, the same physician who had helped select the Mercury program astronauts. He’d done it on his own, outside of NASA, in hopes that the organization might recognize the potential of female candidates.
Her light brown hair was just past her shoulders, but she didn’t wear it feathered like some other women did.
When Joan and Barbara were little, they’d played make-believe for hours.
Now she wore corduroy pants and T-shirts most of the time.
Barbara looked at her, and Joan could feel the distance between them growing. She’d been just an arm’s length away a second ago, but she was gone now.
But a moment later, Vanessa strolled up to her and handed her another beer. “You look like you’re counting down the minutes until you can leave.” Joan laughed. “I think I’ve had my share of socializing for now,” she said as they stood on the edge of Steve and Helene’s pool.
No offense, but I could be at home right now with a good book.”
“When somebody’s too smooth, there’s nothing to grab on to. Now that you’ve got a little edge to you, I can hang on.”
How can her heart sink in microgravity? But it does.
Afterward, she takes Hank and pulls him toward the airlock, the same as she did with Steve. She tells him that his joke earlier about getting home in time to watch M*A*S*H was funny.
Then Vanessa takes Griff in her arms and carries him to the flight deck, putting him in the seat next to Lydia. And in a moment that she does not know is happening until it is over, she leans forward and kisses him on the temple.
She needed a break. So instead of going out to a bar, she’d gone on a long run, come home, taken a shower, and sat down at her keyboard. She did not know how long she’d been at it, but she’d played so much and just kept playing. Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Shostakovich, and now, Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1.” It was exactly what she needed: one of those moments when she forgot where she was or even who she was. It was what she had loved about the piano as a child, why she had kept with it even after deciding she would never try to become a professional. It let her mind leave her body, let her body speak
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Everything else in Joan’s life was thinking thinking thinking thinking. But when she picked up that pencil to draw or put her hands on the cool keys, the thinking stopped.
“You screamed very loudly just now,” Vanessa said at the doorway. “It sounded so dainty and helpless. I worry you’ll set women back centuries if any man hears it.”
“You have a very high standard,” Vanessa said. “That’s all.”
Joan frowned. “Why didn’t you join the military?” “Women couldn’t join the military as pilots, and now NASA will only take military pilots. Ergo, women can’t be NASA pilots. It’s a nice little work-around they’ve got themselves there. It’s not like I could go to the Naval Academy, like my father did.”
I feel like I could know you forever and still be curious about what you’re going to say next.”
Joan could stare into Vanessa’s eyes for hours and still never tire of all that they held.
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.”
“You’re the first woman I’ve ever met who I feel like understands things about me before I even say them.”
Joan knew that she would not need to find a way to tell Vanessa how she felt. Vanessa would understand it. Which meant Joan would not need to learn how to be anything other than who she already was.
I feel like I’m always trying to not cause problems, but you’re not like that.
Joan beamed and tried to hold back her smile. In all of her time spent watching others, she hadn’t picked up on this part of falling in love, that someone could look at you as if you were the very center of everything. And even though you knew better, you’d allow yourself a moment to believe you were worthy of being revolved around, too.
“Or better yet, we are the universe. I would go so far as to say that as human beings, we are less of a who and more of a when. We are a moment in time—when all of our cells have come together in this body. But our atoms were many things before, and they will be many things after. The air I’m breathing is the same air your ancestors breathed. Even what is in my body right now—the cells, the air, the bacteria—it’s not only mine. It is a point of connection with every other living thing, made up of the same kinds of particles, ruled by the same physical laws. “When you die, someone will bury you
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Whether they were seeing one of Vanessa’s favorite black-and-white movies at an old theater miles outside of town, or the two of them were reading their books together on the couch, or Joan had convinced Vanessa to watch the evening news with her, it was always with a peacefulness that Joan had never experienced.
She was wearing the same Wrangler jeans and baseball tee that Joan had sent her to school in.
At NASA, Joan’s job was preparing for every single possibility.
“This is how they used to launch astronauts into space,” Joan said as she pointed to the Mercury-Redstone on display. “This was the rocket that launched the very first American in space. And this one”—she pointed to the Saturn V—“launched the first astronaut to the moon.” “Neil Armstrong,” Frances said. “That’s right.”
Joan had long known that if you’re unhappy, it’s hard to watch other people be happy. So it stood to reason that the opposite was true, too. 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. If that was the case, then maybe Barbara had been right. She had needed to set up her future with Daniel in order to take care of the people around her. In order to be her best self for Frances.
“You know, Frances, it took us one hundred and twenty years to go from a man in a hot-air balloon to the invention of the airplane,” Joan said. “But then only fifty-eight years to go from the first airplane to the first man in space.”
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.
“Listen to me,” Joan 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?”
Joan looked at Frances. “Do you have any duffel bags we can use?”
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.
