Page 122 of Atmosphere

“Which part?”

Joan wanted to tell her that she knew exactly what it meant to love someone. That she’d had kisses and dates and a whole life that Barbara knew nothing about. But that—also!—her opinion would still matter even if she hadn’t. Even if Joan had never fallen in love, she would still matter. She wasn’t a child just because her life looked different from Barbara’s. She wanted to tell her that there were many, many people in this world who had full, rich lives the likes of which Barbara could not fathom because of her tiny little brain.

But when she played it out in her mind, it was so clear how such a conversation would go that there was no need to see it through.

“Forget it, it’s not worth it,” Joan said.

Barbara had done so many things society said were “wrong.” And Joan had stood by her, cared for her, taken her side. How many nights had Joan wiped away Barbara’s tears while she was pregnant? How many times had she made Barbara feel better after someone made a disapproving remark about the absence of a father?

The rules of society came for everyone eventually: the too big, too small, too wild, too quiet, too strong, not strong enough. When Barbara had been kicked out of the main group, she’d never stopped to question the injustice of it all, she’d just been so desperate to get back in.

There would be people who loved Joan for exactly who she was. Donna, Griff. Maybe her parents, hopefully Frances. But Barbara would never be one of them.

The world was full of Barbaras. That was the whole problem.

Joan hung up without saying goodbye. She called Frances’s hallway phone three times but kept getting a busy signal.

Later, Barbara would make a remark about how she could never forgive Joan for hanging up on her.

But 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.

—

The next morning, Joan foundit difficult to drag herself out of bed. It was so comfortable, Vanessa’s body so warm as it clung to her.

“I have to go,” Joan said.

She had to go to the airfield and get into a T-38 to Cape Canaveral. She would not—could not—see Vanessa or anyone other than her crew for over a week.

It would be her and the guys in the crew quarters until the morning of liftoff.

As Joan lay in bed, her legs sinking into the welcoming mattress, her pillow so soft, she kept trying to understand how she’d gotten here.

Hadn’t she been an associate astrophysics professor, teaching freshmen about Copernicus, just yesterday? She would go home each night and heat up her dinner. Frances was six and slept over every weekend.

But as Joan had taken each small step forward, the world had kept spinning on its axis. Days had formed into weeks and months and years, which people marked with watches and calendars, all based on the only thing they had to tell what time it was: the stars.

As the Earth orbits the sun, it shifts toward the sun’s warm embrace. Then summer turns to fall, fall to winter. Soon it loops backaround, and winter thaws to spring, spring to summer. 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.

And that is why, small as they were, Joan’s choices had added up to something magnificent. In the changing of seasons these past four years, Joan had found it all.

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

“Goodbye, my love,” Joan said as she kissed Vanessa’s temple.

“Come home soon,” Vanessa said.

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

“T minus ten…nine…eight…seven…”

Joan was in her flight suit, her helmet on. She was strapped to her seat in the mid-deck, lying on her back. The four guys on the crew, including Harrison, were sitting in the flight deck. She did not have a view out any window during ascent. All she could see were the lockers in front of her.

“Six…five…main engine start…”

---