Page 49 of Atmosphere

“Falling in love, getting married.”

Vanessa cocked her head and finished her beer. “So there’s this nice, handsome guy, and your family liked him. And he asks if you could see yourself marrying him and you said no?”

“Yes?”

“If a different boy had asked, would your answer have been the same?”

“I think so.”

“I’m impressed, Joan Goodwin.”

“What? Why?”

“It puts you in a different context, that’s all,” she said. She wasn’t slurring her words, but there was a laziness to her mouth.

The table was a mess. The empty beer pitcher—the foam drying along the sides—hadn’t been cleared. What was left of their burgers sat off to the side. The air smelled acrid. The bar was quiet for a moment as the song changed over. When a new one started, Joan recognized it as “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.”

Vanessa started humming along.

Joan realized she was sweating. “Whatcontextdoes it add?” she asked.

“You could have married a nice handsome guy and had some kids. Happily ever after and all that. It would have been easier than all this,” she said, gesturing to the restaurant around her as if it were NASA itself. “But you didn’t go that route.”

“Neither did you.”

“Well, right, but…I never could have. Whereas it seems like you had the option.”

Joan gazed down at the remains of her meal. “You’re making a lot of assumptions.”

Vanessa looked at her, inviting her to explain.

“Marrying Adam Hawkins and being a wife? Waiting at home and making dinner every night? My mom is so good at that stuff, but I never looked at her and saw myself. I know that hurt her feelings. I know that me choosing a different life didn’t quite make sense to her at first. But I think choosing that other life, her life, would have beenvery hard.I think it would have been one of the hardest things I’d had to do. I chose the only life I knew how to choose.”

“I was trying to compliment you,” Vanessa said. “But you look insulted.”

Joan shook her head. “No, I just…Don’t make it out like life in the suburbs is easy. Life’s not easy for anybody, first of all. And second of all, I’ve never fit in there. That life, in particular, would not have been natural for me at all.”

Joan could feel Vanessa studying her face. But then Vanessa pulled back and put her arm on the back of her chair. She sat slumped ever so slightly, with her knees apart. When she sat like this in bars or buses, Joan cringed a bit.

“Sometimes I think you and I are having one conversation and then I realize we’ve been having an entirely different one the whole time, you know that?” Vanessa asked.

“No,” Joan said. “I think we’re on the same page.”

Vanessa considered this. “I admire you,” she said finally.

Joan scoffed. “That’s a little silly.”

“Why is that silly?”

“Because you’re just as accomplished as me. In some ways more so.”

Vanessa leaned forward. “I can fly a plane better than you. Fix a plane better than you.”

“See? There you go.”

“But I can’t play the piano the way you do.”

Joan waved her off.

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