Page 8 of Atmosphere

She sat for interviews in which the intense tone made even a question like “Would you like me to turn down the thermostat?” seem complicated to answer. She spoke calmly and clearly as she answered each one.

Joan’s favorite part of the week was when she was put in a suit and instructed to climb into a three-foot-wide white fabric ball. Her only source of air was an oxygen tank. She was ordered to stay in there for fifteen minutes. The moment Joan got in and could feel the quiet solitude of the ball, she understood.

It wasn’t a test of dexterity or mechanical aptitude. They wanted to see if she’d freak out, unable to stand the sensory deprivation and claustrophobia. She smiled to herself. Piece of cake.

She fell asleep.

—

One evening two months later,the phone in her apartment rang. Joan was eating Chinese food and sketching a portrait of Frances to give Barbara as a birthday present. She put the pencil down and walked to the phone.

It was Antonio. “Are you still interested in joining the astronaut corps at NASA?” he said.

Joan looked up at the ceiling and steadied her voice. It was the closest thing she’d ever felt to the way women look in the movies when they are proposed to. “Yes,” she said. “Absolutely yes.”

“Good, we are lucky to have you on board, Joan. There are sixteen of you who will be joining us here in Group 9. Eight candidate pilots and eight candidate mission specialists, such as yourself. I am not sure if you got to know Vanessa Ford during your time here at JSC,but she was in the same interview group with you. She also made the cut and has accepted. You two are the only finalists to make it through from that session.”

“No men from our group, huh?” Joan asked, and then could not quite believe she’d let that slip.

But Antonio laughed. “No,” he said. “I am afraid they were not up to snuff.”

Summer 1980

In the months after learningshe would be joining the astronaut corps, Joan did three things.

First, she gave notice at Rice.

On her last day, the Physics and Astronomy Department threw her a going-away party. By the punch bowl, Dr. Siskin asked—in a way that struck Joan as remarkably transparent—how she’d managed to pull this off. Joan said, “Luck, I guess,” and then regretted it.

Joan knew that Dr. Siskin, and most men like him, had never taken a good look at her. She was used to it. After all, she was not Barbara. She had never commanded the attention of the entire room with how great she looked in a dress or how well she delivered a comeback. Once, when Joan was a teenager, her mother told her that she and her sister each had their own strengths. She said that Barbara’s were loud and Joan’s were quiet, but both were powerful in their own way. When her mother said this, Joan hugged her.

Joan knew she was easy to overlook. She was average height and a bit stocky. She dressed simply. Her light brown hair was just past her shoulders, but she didn’t wear it feathered like some other women did. Instead, she pulled it back loosely. Sometimes, when Joan saw herselfin photographs, she was struck by how beautiful her smile was, her dimples making her face seem friendly and bright. In high school, Adam Hawkins had said so. But she didn’t expect other people to notice.

She also didn’t expect other people to ask what she did in her spare time (she was a classically trained pianist, had run two marathons, was an avid reader and an amateur portraitist, among other things). When people came into her office and saw some of the sketches on her wall, she knew they’d assume she’d bought them somewhere. When someone admired them, she never bothered to tell them she’d drawn them. The praise was never the point. In any case, no one in a long time had asked her about herself enough to know any of this. And Joan found a familiar peace in going unnoticed.

So it came as a huge shock to the men in the department, many of whom fancied themselves secretly destined for victory, to see that the woman they’d overlooked was lapping them in a race they did not know had started.

Joan looked around the room, put her drink down, and left her own goodbye party early.

—

The second thing Joan didwas tell her family she was going to be an astronaut candidate.

“It’s all because you suggested I apply,” Joan said to Barbara over the phone.

“I did?”

“Because of the commercial.”

“Oh, right,” Barbara said. “Well, you’re welcome.”

Her mother and father flew out from Pasadena. They all went out to a celebratory dinner, at which Barbara mentioned multiple times that she hoped this didn’t mean Joan was moving to Clear Lake. After all, Frances needed her close by. Joan explained three separate times that itdidmean she was moving to Clear Lake. There were apartments right next to the Johnson Space Center. It was only thirtyminutes south of her current place, and regardless, she would never in a million years miss a second she could spend with Frances.

And then Joan leaned over to Frances and kissed the part in her hair at the top of her head.

There were things Joan had done with Frances since Frances was a baby—turning her upside down, carrying her on her shoulders, throwing her on the bed—that Frances was too big for now. But Joan would always be able to kiss the top of her head. Even if she had to get on a stool, one day, to do it.

When Joan and Barbara were little, they’d played make-believe for hours. Joan was always a doctor or a nurse or a teacher. Barbara would pretend to be a singer, a ballet dancer, or a figure skater. But once Barbara could see adolescence approaching, there was no more pretending. She went out in search of things Joan knew nothing about.

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