Page 95 of Atmosphere

It hurt Joan’s hands not to touch her in front of people the way Donna could touch Hank.

There was a fire in her—a burning through her belly and chest—when they fought.

And they did fight. There was the time Joan lost her temper just before Donna and Hank’s wedding, when Vanessa didn’t want to go in the same car. And when Joan started crying after Vanessa introduced Joan to a woman she had dated once, without giving Joan a heads-up first. And the deadly silent treatments Vanessa would levyagainst Joan when Joan canceled on her one too many times. The fights they’d gotten into when Joan defended Barbara’s questionable behavior.

They both had said awful things to each other. It was the first time in Joan’s life that she’d said something untrue just to upset someone else—just to try to make her own sting go away. She’d been horrified by what could come out of her mouth. “Of course you’re not as important to me as my niece!” “You don’t know how to stand by anyone! You always have one foot out the door!”

And the things Vanessa had said: things that, no matter how many times Vanessa apologized, Joan knew in her heart she would never really let go of. “You’re a doormat to your sister!” “You are childish, Joan. It’s not your fault, because you’re inexperienced, but sometimes you are as mature as a teenager about this.”

How was it, exactly, that two people could scar each other like that and keep going? In fact, go deeper? How was it that Joan could know that Vanessa did mean some of those things—that Joan could admit to herself in quiet moments that she meant some of what she’d said, too—but somehow the effect was to be tied together even more tightly?

Why was it that when you let someone that far in, you learned to be okay with all the ways they saw you, even if they weren’t flattering? Why, right now, talking to Vanessa, did Joan feel the most perfect sense of safety?

Joan’s scientist mind could come up with a series of explanations for this that had to do with the brain’s talent for denial and compartmentalization. But she suspected that the truth was that acceptance so powerful made everything else feel small.

Vanessa loved her. Would love her. Showed no signs of stopping. And did it at great risk to her own future.

“Yeah, of course,” Joan said. “Obviously, you should fly the T-38 with Hank. It’s not even a question.”

“Are you sure?”

“Really,” Joan said. “I get it. You have to do it. I will be mad at you if you don’t.”

Vanessa laughed, and just the sound of it made Joan happy. Joan wanted to love Vanessa in a way that never made her give up what she wanted. That never changed her.

—

But, maybe, that wasn’t exactlytrue.

After Vanessa went flying the next day, she showed up late at Joan’s apartment, when Joan was already in her pajamas, getting ready to go to sleep.

Vanessa took off her pants and her bra, brushed her teeth, and got into bed in her T-shirt alongside Joan, pressing her cold legs against the warmth of Joan’s body.

As they were falling asleep, Vanessa said, “I haven’t had a dream about my funeral in months.”

“Really?” Joan said. “I wonder why.”

And Vanessa, as she buried her head in Joan’s neck, said, “You.”

Joan and Vanessa were drivingback from dinner in Vanessa’s convertible with the top down, the hot August wind in Joan’s hair.

Joan noticed that Vanessa had taken to driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on her knee. Sometimes, Joan would watch Vanessa do a reverse three-point turn, her palm flat as it moved against the wheel. It never failed to light something up in Joan.

Vanessa pulled into her driveway and cut the engine.

“I want to take you somewhere special,” Vanessa said.

“I’ve always wanted to go away,” Joan said, and then more quietly as she moved closer: “Somewhere far from here where no one can see us, and I can kiss you in the sunshine.”

Vanessa closed the convertible top, and they walked inside. Once the door was shut behind them, Vanessa pushed Joan against the wall and kissed her. Joan never got tired of it, being pushed and pulled like that.

“Do you know what I want?” Vanessa said. “I want to be lying on a beach where we don’t know a single soul. And you are in a bikini. And I lay out this big blanket. And everything smells like suntan oil. And there are waiters bringing us French 75s. And the water is warm.”

“And we can go into the ocean together and I can put my arms around you as the waves come and put my legs around your waist and just rest there with you.”

“And I can kiss you and no one looks, no one cares.”

“I want that, too.”

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