SUMMER 1980

SUMMER 1980
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‎IN THE MONTHS AFTER LEARNING SHE WOULD BE JOINING THE ASTRO-naut corps, Joan did three things.
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‎First, she gave notice at Rice.
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‎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.
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‎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 Bar-bara’s were loud and Joan’s were quiet, but both were powerful in their own way. When her mother said this, Joan hugged her.
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‎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 herself
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‎in 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.
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‎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 mara-thons, 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.
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‎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.
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‎Joan looked around the room, put her drink down, and left her own goodbye party early.
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‎THE SECOND THING JOAN DID was tell her family she was going to be an astronaut candidate.
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‎”It’s all because you suggested I apply,” Joan said to Barbara over the phone.
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‎”I did?”
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‎”Because of the commercial.”
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‎”Oh, right,” Barbara said. “Well, you’re welcome.”
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‎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 it did mean she was moving to Clear Lake. There were apart-ments right next to the Johnson Space Center. It was only thirty min-
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‎utes south of her current place, and regardless, she would never in a million years miss a second she could spend with Frances.
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‎And then Joan leaned over to Frances and kissed the part in her hair at the top of her head.
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‎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.
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‎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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‎Though four years younger, Barbara snuck out to her first party before Joan, had her first kiss before Joan, had her first drink before Joan. What could Joan offer someone so much more worldly than her? How could Barbara look up to someone so far behind?
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‎A few years later, when Joan was pursuing her PhD at Caltech and Barbara was in her junior year of college at the University of Houston, Barbara called Joan late one night, sobbing.
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‎She’d gotten pregnant.
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‎”You’re the only one I could call,” Barbara said.
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‎Joan could barely believe what she was hearing. Not that Barbara had found herself here in fact, Barbara had already gotten pregnant and miscarried once as a teenager. The shock was that Barbara had called Joan.
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‎”What do I do?” Barbara asked.
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‎Joan stayed on the phone with her for three hours, talking it through. She gleaned a lot of surprising information from that con-versation. Namely, that there was more than one possible father, that Barbara was unwilling to suffer the indignity of trying to figure out
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‎which it was, that she was intent on hiding this as long as possible from their parents, and that she’d stopped going to classes weeks ago.
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‎Joan was trying to find the words for how to respond to the last bit of information when Barbara’s roommate came in and Barbara rushed off the phone.
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‎Then Barbara called again two days later, this time with a clarity of purpose.
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‎She had realized this was a great thing! This pregnancy was the answer to a question Barbara had been asking herself for years. What was she meant to do with her life? This! The reason she had yet to find a passion was because she’d been waiting for this child to give her life a shape.
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‎Joan knew that Barbara did not understand the full weight of the task. But there was little to be done about it now.
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‎”Do you think I’ll be a good mother?” Barbara asked Joan.
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‎Joan had a hard time imagining Barbara as someone’s mother, but the simplest way of looking at it seemed true. “You’ve always been incredible at anything you’ve put effort into, Barb.”
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‎”Thank you, Joan. That means a lot.”
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‎After that, Barbara kept calling. Barbara needed money for an apartment. Barbara needed help finding out if she could get her tu-ition money oney refunded now that she was officially dropping out. Bar-bara needed Joan there when she finally told Mom and Dad. Barbara needed Barbara needed Barbara needed.
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‎When their parents were upset that Barbara was single, pregnant, and dropping out of college, Barbara called on Joan to defend her.
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‎When their mother offered to be with her when the baby was born, Barbara asked for Joan instead.
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‎When Frances was born that May, this gorgeous gangly thing, it was Joan who held her first. It was Joan who handed her over to their mother to hold, Joan who filled out Frances’s birth certificate.
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‎Frances Emerson Goodwin.
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‎Joan spent months sleeping on the sofa in Barbara’s new one-bedroom apartment in Houston. She had to. Frances needed some-
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‎one to arrange her checkups. Frances needed someone to rock her. Frances needed someone to feed her when Barbara was too tired to wake up. Frances needed Frances needed Frances needed.
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‎It felt weird to Joan-holding a baby. She always felt as if she was going to break her, always worried she wasn’t supporting her head enough. Frances was colicky the first few months; there were times when she would not stop crying, no matter how much Joan held her. Joan sometimes could not hear her own thoughts above the screaming.
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‎And Joan wondered how she’d gotten here. This was not the life she’d seen for herself, caring for a baby.
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‎Joan’s bright, sharp brain-her most beautiful muscle-turned to mush from too little sleep. Sometimes, unsure what else to do, Joan would take Frances out of the apartment, stare up at the night sky, and talk to her about the phases of the moon. Frances often cooed then. It was probably just the cool night air, but Joan also sus-pected that Frances was starting to focus, perhaps even taking in Joan’s finger, bright against a dark sky. Maybe this was who she could be to Frances. Maybe this was their language.
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‎But that clarity was fleeting. The rest of the time, caring for Fran-ces felt like trudging through mud up to the knees.
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‎Still, as soon as Joan could, she did what Barbara asked and ap-plied to transfer to Rice to be close to Barbara and Frances.
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‎”I do not understand why it has to be you,” her mother said to Joan when Joan was accepted and began to plan her move. “Why it can’t be me? Why can’t I help with my own grandchild?”
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‎Joan did not know how to say to her mother what they all already knew: Barbara had chosen Joan, and Barbara always got what she wanted.
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‎Looking back on it, Joan could see that the universe had un-folded just as she had needed it to. It had given her something she had not even been smart enough to have wanted. Because those tiny moments with Frances in the courtyard showing her a waxing gib-bous moon, blowing bubbles and teaching her shapes, tickling her under her chin and making her laugh-came more and more often,
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‎each day. They grew longer, settled in deeper. Until one day, years ago, Joan took Frances to the playground and, as she watched Fran-ces befriend another kid on the slide, realized that she could not envision a good week where she did not at least once get to brush her thumb against Frances’s soft, dewy cheeks. To tickle Frances’s chin-and hear that laugh was to need it forever.
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‎The night of their dinner, Frances looked up at Joan and smiled. She was six years old. Her light brown, shoulder-length hair was no longer baby fine. Her bright blue eyes picked up on more of what was going on around her than ever before. She’d stopped wearing Mary Janes and dresses last year. Now she wore corduroy pants and T-shirts most of the time. She’d begun using words Joan was surprised she knew, like “horrid” and “pivotal.” She did not have a “great” day but a “splendid” one; when she tasted a new food, it did not taste “bad” but “peculiar.” She’d already skipped a grade in school.
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‎Frances had been born just yesterday; Joan was sure of it. And yet, Frances was going into second grade and Joan was going to be an astronaut.
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‎”Joanie?”
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‎”Yes, Franny?”
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‎”Wait! You’re the only one who calls me Franny!”
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‎”And you’re the only one who calls me Joanie!”
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‎Frances laughed. “When you get a new place to live, can I come visit?”
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‎”She’s not getting a new place,” Barbara said.
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‎THAT WAS THE THIRD THING Joan did. Days later, she stopped by Bar-bara’s with a pound cake from the bakery on the corner and explained to her sister one final time that she was, in fact, moving.
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‎”Well, fine,” Barbara said. “But you still need to take Frances on the weekends. I can’t afford a babysitter.”
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‎”I will see Frances on the weekends, just like I do now.”
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‎”You’re really excited about this astronaut thing, huh?” Barbara
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‎said. She pushed the pound cake away, and Joan recognized this as her punishment.
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‎”Yeah, I am. And I’m scared, but in a way I’ve never really been before. Which I think is good. It’s exciting.”
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‎”You’re really lucky,” Barbara said, her voice lightening. “That you are free to do something like this. No kid or husband or anything holding you back. I always think about where I would go if I could. And I think London or Paris but you’re going to the stars. You’re thinking so much bigger.”
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‎Joan felt a swelling in her throat.
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‎Later that week, Joan packed up her entire apartment. When the moving company arrived, they took all of her stuff and drove off. Less than an hour later, she opened the door to her new place. It smelled like fresh paint.
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‎That night, she went out for a walk in her new neighborhood and ran into Donna Fitzgerald and John Griffin, two of the other mission specialists who were a part of Group 9. She recognized them from the day NASA had gathered them for a photo of the incoming class.
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‎Donna had blue eyes and dark brown hair that was thick and
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‎bouncy, so much so that Joan thought she looked like she could be in
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‎an ad for shampoo. And John-with such an easy smile and eyes that
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‎crinkled had the most soothing voice Joan had ever heard. It was low
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‎and gravelly and made Joan like him the moment she heard him speak.
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‎”I guess we’re all predictable as shit, huh?” Donna said. “Join the astronaut corps and get a one-bedroom apartment by the campus the week before training starts.”
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‎Joan laughed. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe John got a two-bedroom.”
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‎”Sorry to disappoint,” he said. “It’s a one-bedroom, just like yours. Pretty sure Lydia Danes is in the building, too. I think I saw her.”
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‎”Ah, well,” Joan said. “So much for being original.”
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‎Joan would remember this moment for weeks to come. Because within days, Donna and Griff would come to feel like such close friends that she laughed to think she’d ever called Griff “John.”
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‎THE MORNING OF THE FIRST ALL-ASTRONAUTS MEETING, JOAN, DONNA, and Griff walked over to JSC together, already cracking up at their own inside jokes, overusing their new punch line: “But that’s not going to happen here.”
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‎Griff had said it the first time a few days prior, talking about how he’d been the big man on campus at his New England prep school: valedictorian, class president, and captain of the lacrosse team. When Donna arched her eyebrows, implying that maybe he expected to be just as big a deal at NASA, he quickly added, “But that’s not going to happen here.” And all three of them laughed.
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‎Donna then used the line not even a half hour later, when talking about her previously dramatic and volatile love life.
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‎Then Joan told them about how she’d been considered an as-tronomy nerd by almost everyone she’d ever known and added, in a sarcastic tone that surprised her in how well she nailed the joke, “But I bet that’s not going to happen here.”
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‎As they made their way onto campus that morning, they spotted Lydia Danes up ahead. She was slight-no taller than five-two, her body wiry-but to Joan there was something terrifyingly invincible about her. Perhaps it was the way she moved with such intense focus. As if enjoying the walk would threaten to waste her time.
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‎The night before, Donna had asked Lydia if she wanted to walk over with them in the morning. Lydia had never given her an answer.
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‎”There’s always one in a group who thinks their shit doesn’t stink,” Donna said.
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‎”Oh, but Donna
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‎.” Griff said.
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‎”Don’t!” Joan said.
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‎”That’s not going to happen here,” he said.
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‎Joan shook her head and smiled.
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‎”I’m telling you,” Donna said. “She’s rude.”
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‎Joan watched Lydia walk ahead of them. “You can’t take it per-sonally,” Griff said.
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‎”She thinks she’s better than everyone else,” Donna said. “As evi-denced by the way she keeps clarifying for people that I’m only an ER doctor, but she is a trauma surgeon.”
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‎As Donna spoke, Joan began taking in the architecture around the campus. All brutalist, boxlike buildings made of windows and concrete. Somehow dated, and yet timelessly plain.
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‎But as she glanced at the Mission Control building, something buzzed inside her. It had a personality to it, a spark of the ’60s Apollo program flair. And Joan nearly froze in her tracks.
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‎I’m at NASA.
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‎They got to the conference room one minute early, which Joan considered four minutes late.
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‎The three of them crammed in along the sides of the room, obey-ing the clear and unspoken hierarchy that the chairs were only for the astronauts, and the candidates would remain standing on the periphery. There was already a tension in the room that Joan could not name. Some of the astronauts were seated with their legs ex-tended, taking up as much floor space as possible, making no at-tempt to create room for the new candidates. Joan, Donna, and Griff stood wordlessly along the wall. Lydia barely looked at the rest of them. The last person to dash in, just before Antonio began to speak, was Vanessa Ford.
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‎Her curly hair was pulled back, her posture was tall and straight, her shoulders broad. She took off her sunglasses and tucked them into her shirt pocket, with her eyes narrow, her jaw tight. Then she clasped both hands behind her back and faced forward, her full at-tention on Antonio, at the front of the room.
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‎And the thought that went through Joan’s head was: That’s an astronaut.
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‎LATER THAT NIGHT, GRIFF AND Donna headed out with some of the other astronaut candidates which Joan now understood was what everyone meant when they said “ASCANs” for drinks. They invited Joan, but she declined. She’d promised Frances she’d call her to tell her all about her first day, so she headed straight back to her apartment.
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‎”Did you know that there are two pins I might get eventually?” Joan said to Frances over the phone.
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‎”Like my Mickey Mouse pin?” Frances said.
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‎”Yeah, close to that. But these pins are shaped like a star with three rays behind it, coming out of a halo. One is silver and one is gold.”
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‎”And they give you them for being an astronaut?”
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‎”Hopefully, but not yet,” Joan said. She was pulling at the twisted telephone cord in the kitchen, unraveling it as she spoke. Just two weeks ago, the phone had been brand-new. Now it was already tan-gled from use.
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‎”A year or so from now, if I pass this program, they will make me an astronaut. And they will give me that silver pin, which means I am ready to fly. And then one day when I get chosen for a mission, and go up there and come back, that’s when they’ll give me the gold one.
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‎To symbolize that I have flown in space.”
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‎”I can’t believe my aunt is going to space.”
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‎”Maybe one day,” Joan said. “Yeah.”
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‎Joan kept the phone between her shoulder and her ear as she pulled a frozen dinner out of the freezer and popped it into the oven.
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‎”I want to be an astronaut,” Frances said.
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‎What a time Joan lived in. To be able to tell her niece that she could be an astronaut.
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‎”If you work hard at it, then you will,” Joan said. “Now go brush your teeth. Every quadrant. You remember what the dentist said now that your molars have come in.”
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‎”I know,” Frances said. “I will.”
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‎Once Joan hung up, she looked in the oven at her still-half-frozen dinner and felt a familiar sadness creeping over her. She turned off
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‎the oven, put the food in the fridge, and headed out to Frenchie’s for dinner on her own.
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‎She walked straight up to the bar and ordered a Caesar salad and the chicken marsala, then grabbed a book from her bag and began reading. But before she even got to the second paragraph on the page, someone sat down next to her.
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‎Joan knew who it was before she saw her face. She also knew there was a scientific explanation for these moments in which she felt she could sense the future. Information was being received at such a rapid speed that it felt as if the reaction was coming in before the stimulus. But the sensation was eerie, nonetheless. She understood why people got confused sometimes, started calling things fate.
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‎”Hi,” Vanessa said.
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‎”Oh.” Joan put away her book. “Hi. I’m Joan. I’ve seen you around, but I don’t think we’ve officially met.”
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‎”Vanessa.”
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‎Joan looked at Vanessa and tried not to stare. Vanessa’s eyes were light golden brown, almost amber. Her hair was such a dark shade of brown it was verging on black. And there was so much of it, the curls taking up so much space.
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‎”It is nice to formally meet you,” Vanessa said.
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‎Vanessa seemed more stoic than Donna, less high-strung than Lydia. Joan started to wonder what she must seem like to Vanessa. Bookish.
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‎”No one has really introduced themselves to me,” Vanessa said. “But you all seem to know each other already.”
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‎”Oh,” Joan said. “It’s because we all met about a week and a half ago. We moved into the same apartment complex.”
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‎”The one right next to campus?” Vanessa said, nodding. “Makes sense.”
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‎”Where do you live?”
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‎”A bit further out.”
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‎”Didn’t want to bunk with the rest of us?”
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‎”No, it’s not that,” Vanessa said. She smiled out of the left side of
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her mouth and then laughed. “Or maybe it is. I like my privacy. Not sure I’m going to be good at this whole ‘living in a fishbowl thing.”
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‎Joan laughed as the bartender brought her salad and put it down in front of her. “Thank you,” she said to him.
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‎Vanessa leaned forward, gestured to the bartender. “Can I have a glass of cabernet and a steak, medium rare?”
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‎Joan’s salad seemed so boring now.
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‎”I really am sorry none of us have spoken to you,” Joan said. “It wasn’t on purpose, but I regret it.”
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‎Vanessa sat back on the barstool, waved her off. “It’s perfectly all right. I figured it was up to me to say hello. So, hello.”
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‎”Hello,” Joan said. She speared a piece of romaine on her fork. It was disarming a little confusing, maybe to think of Vanessa as in want of company. She was the sort of woman who seemed like she could have any friend she wanted. Didn’t the world revolve around women like her? She was tall and lean, with big eyes. Her hair was so shiny. That way she smiled out of the side of her mouth-certainly that pulled people in.
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‎”Settling in okay?” Joan asked.
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‎Vanessa shrugged as her glass of wine arrived. “I mean, it’s hot as hell out here. But otherwise, it’s going okay.”
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‎Joan nodded. “July is the worst of it. The humidity is brutal. You get used to it.”
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‎”Do you?”
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‎Joan laughed. “No, I don’t know why I said that. It’s miserable.”
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‎Vanessa chuckled and sipped her wine.
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‎This made no sense at all. Vanessa was the one who had come up to her and said hello. But now, somehow, it was Joan leaning toward her, as Vanessa sat there, cool in every sense of the world.
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‎Detached. Effortless. Aloof.
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‎Joan thought about Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke-and got the sense that it would not end well for her if she challenged Vanessa to eat fifty eggs. If she challenged Vanessa to anything at all.
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‎”How about you?” Vanessa asked. “How is it for Miss Popular over here?”
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‎Joan laughed so loud that it startled the man a few seats down. She covered her mouth. Vanessa reached over and gently took her by the wrist, pulling her hand away from her mouth. Joan looked at Van-essa’s fingers on her.
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‎”You did him a favor,” Vanessa said. “He was falling asleep in his beer. But, really, how are you settling in?”
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‎”Well, wildly incorrect assumptions about my social status aside Joan said. “It’s going all right.”
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‎”Glad to hear it.”
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‎Joan wasn’t sure why she was still talking-what she was think-ing, saying this out loud? “Though…”
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‎”Hm?”
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‎”Did you sense an undercurrent today?” Joan asked, turning toward Vanessa. “When talking to almost anyone in the astronaut corps?”
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‎”You mean the feeling that any of them would slit your throat for ten bucks?”
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‎Joan laughed, this time at a completely reasonable volume. “Exactly!”
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‎”Yeah, I suspect we have a horse race ahead of us,” Vanessa said.
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‎”Am I supposed to compete with you?” Joan asked. “And Donna and Griff and everyone? It seems like a lot of work, to do all that and still put all my time into training.”
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‎Vanessa raised her eyebrows. “Spoken like a real killer.”
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‎Their food arrived at the same time, and as Joan looked at her chicken, she wished she’d ordered Vanessa’s steak.
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‎”For what it’s worth, I don’t think you and I are going to have a problem,” Vanessa said. “I don’t think anyone’s going to put us up against each other like they would Donna and Lydia. I mean, I’m an you’re the astrophysicist, right?” Van-aeronautical engineer. But essa said.
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‎Joan corrected her: “Astronomer.”
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‎”What’s the difference?”
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‎Joan shook her head. “There barely is one.”
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‎”But there is a difference, clearly.”
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‎”An astrophysicist studies the physics of space, whereas my focus is on space itself, the sun in particular. Then again, you can’t study space without studying the physics of space. And time. Or math. Or anthropology and the history of humans’ understanding of the stars. Or mythology and theology, for that matter. It’s all connected.”
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‎Vanessa nodded. “And that’s why you like it.”
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‎”Hm?”
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‎”You’re smiling as you’re talking.”
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‎”I am?”
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‎Vanessa grinned out of the side of her mouth again, and Joan wondered if it was one of those quirks she was born with or if she’d practiced it, knowing how captivating it would be.
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‎”Yes,” Vanessa said. “You are. I love that. I love when people love what they do.”
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‎”I do love what I do. I have been… I don’t know obsessed with the stars since I was in elementary school. During the winter, when it got dark out early enough, I would lie in the backyard and look up at the night sky, just aching to touch the stars. I’d sit there with my hand stretched out as far as I could reach, trying to convince myself I could scoop them into my hand. I begged my parents to buy me a Unitron telescope for my twelfth birthday. I had never made a fuss about anything before, never asked for so much as a doll, I don’t think. But I had to have that telescope. I had to see the stars up close. And that was before we landed on the moon, mind you.”
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‎”You’re like the girls who liked the Beatles before they went on Ed Sullivan.”
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‎Joan laughed. “Yes, the moon landing was, for us space nerds, exactly like the Beatles on Ed Sullivan! I liked the moon first.”
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‎”Good for you.”
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‎”But I cannot claim to be cool enough to have liked the Beatles first. I barely like the Beatles at all.”
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‎”You don’t like the Beatles?”
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‎”I am indifferent to the Beatles.”
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‎Vanessa’s eyes went wide.
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