Page 104 of Atmosphere

Crying in the office felt so good. Holding it in felt so terrible.

As Joan inhaled and blew the air out of her lungs, she let the tears fall down her face.

She’d done it. She’d been assigned a mission. The first mission of her group. She was going to space.

When she was all cried out, she left the stall and washed her hands at the sink. She looked at herself in the mirror.

Her eyes were puffy, her cheeks splotchy. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail. Her mascara had run.

This probably wasn’t what an astronaut looked like to most people. But she was one, and she was going up into space. So the definition was going to have to change.

She waited until some of the redness went away, caught her breath, and then left the bathroom. As she was walking back to her desk, she saw Vanessa coming down the hallway.

Vanessa was trying, covertly, to read her face. She raised her eyebrows inquisitively.

As they passed, Joan said, “November ’84.”

Vanessa beamed.

And then the two of them walked on in different directions, not skipping a beat.

—

That night, Joan went toVanessa’s house and knocked on the door.

Vanessa opened it and they both walked inside. But just as Joan shut the door behind them, she took Vanessa by the wrist and pulled her close.

“You’re sure you’re okay with me going up there first?” Joan asked. “It would be okay if you were struggling with it.”

Vanessa shook her head. “Every day I don’t have an assignment,I’m on pins and needles waiting to hear,” she said. She pushed her body into Joan’s and took Joan’s face in her hands. “But that has nothing to do with you.”

She kissed her and then looked her in the eye.

“I fell for the coolest astronaut at NASA,” Vanessa said. “What did you think I thought would happen?”

—

The announcement about the flightcrews was made the following Monday at the all-astronauts meeting.

Donna put her hands on Joan’s shoulders and squeezed them. Vanessa clapped softly while smiling at her. Lydia’s jaw tensed. She would not look at Joan. She just kept nodding, intensely, rapidly, in a way that was almost pathological.

Later, in the hallway, Joan chased Lydia down.

“Are you okay?”

Lydia turned to her. “I’m fine, Joan.”

“I know you wanted it to be you.”

“I’m fine, Joan. Congratulations.”

But three days later, at nine o’clock at night, when Joan was alone in her bedroom, there was a knock on her door.

Vanessa had gone to Alabama, where she was working in the dunk tank. Joan had been sketching, trying to draw Vanessa’s face. In all of their time together, Joan had not once captured it right. Every so often, Vanessa would ask Joan if she could see whatever Joan had come up with. Joan had yet to show her a single attempt.

This evening was no different. It wasn’t right. It was the hair—it was always the hair. How could you capture something like that with a pencil? The way it was always in motion? You couldn’t.

Before Joan could put the pad down, the person knocked again. She tucked her things in her nightstand and walked to the front door and answered it.

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