Page 41 of Atmosphere

“You’re gettin’ it,” Hank said.

Seconds later, the plane began to level out, but she kept her eyes open. As the weight of the air landed on her back, she looked at Jimmy. He was holding on to the padding on the side of the plane, and as he began to drop, his eyes went wide and blinked over and over again, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his breath became shallow.

Joan realized he was terrified.

And it did not excuse his attitude. But she understood, finally.

Jimmy had been told from a young age that fear and failing and trying and wanting and openness and kindness and sincerity made him weak. And because he had believed it, he’d learned to suppress all of those things. And when he saw those traits in others, he hated them because he hated himself.

Jimmy washiding.That’s what Jimmy was doing. Lydia was, too—because she was trying to prove she could be like Jimmy. And Joan was falling for it.

She was trying to prove that she could be just like a man to all of them. To Jimmy. To Lydia. 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. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.

Joan had let men like Jimmy set the terms.

But the terms were false, even to him. He was just as scared as anybody else.

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

She didn’t want to lower herself to the game men played.

As the plane turned toward the sky, her stomach dropped hard and fast before her torso caught up.

Joan grabbed the barf bag from her pocket. And puked.

“Who wants another beer?” Hankcalled out from his kitchen at just after eleven o’clock on New Year’s Eve. His high-end stereo was blaring the Eagles. It was supposed to be a small party, but as word spread, more and more of the astronauts arrived. Hank’s place was now packed. Harrison and Marty had already made two additional runs for more beers and ice.

Someone made a joke about needing to turn water into wine. But to Joan, it felt more like high school juniors getting incredibly excited when the seniors showed up.

Griff called out, “Another round for everybody!” and everyone cheered.

Joan downed the rest of her bottle. She was two beers deep in a buzz that felt less like the consequence of the alcohol and more like the genuine promise of 1981.

The first shuttle mission was scheduled for just over three months away.

Originally predicted to launch as early as 1977, the inaugural orbital flight had been delayed multiple times. The development of the shuttle had not been without its challenges. There were issues with the main engines during testing. The shuttle’s complicated carbon and silica thermal tiles were so temperamental that entire portions of them had repeatedly fallen off. But the engineers kept at it.

Two days ago, the space shuttleColumbiahad left the Vehicle Assembly Building to be ushered over to the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center.

STS-1 was on the horizon.

Hank was pulling bottles out of the coolers and ice buckets and passing them around as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

One of the many things Joan had learned during their flights was that Hank was the recipient of a very large trust fund. It was a fact that Hank wore with complexity.

He had mentioned it on one of their flights, after they’d landed in Nevada somewhere and were getting a bite to eat at a roadside stand. Joan had asked him why he’d joined the military in the first place.

“I think I wanted to do something no man in my family had done before,” he’d said, biting into his sandwich.

“No one in your family served in either of the World Wars? Or even Vietnam?”

Hank shook his head. “They found a way out.”

Joan raised her eyebrows. “And here you are,” she said. “About to fly to space with your own two hands.”

“God willing, I suppose so.”

It was easier and easier for Joan to understand why Donna would love him. But the further she got into her training, the harder it got for Joan to understand why Donna would tie herself down to someone at all.

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