August 1981
The all-astronauts meeting that Monday looked like any other. The astronauts and directors were seated at the conference table and around the room. The ASCANs were lined up against the wall, Joan, Griff, Lydia, and Vanessa crammed into a corner.
Donna and Hank slipped in quietly at the last minute and took up the
remaining spots by the door.
Then Antonio walked in.
Joan knew something out of the ordinary was about to happen. And while other people might have called this a sixth sense, Joan recognized it for what it was: perception. Antonio was carrying himself differently, walking slower, and holding back a smile.
“Today is a day that I know the astronauts in this room remember fondly from their own time as ASCANs,” he said.
Joan looked at Griff, and he raised his eyebrows.
“In the fall of 1979, we received three thousand one hundred and twenty- two applications for the astronaut program. In the early winter of 1980, we interviewed one hundred and twenty-one finalists and selected the top eighteen to become astronaut candidates.”
Lydia caught Joan’s eye.
“Today, one year and one month after we began this training and evaluation, I can confidently say that the eighteen members of NASA Astronaut Group 9 have proven themselves to be some of the finest candidates NASA has ever had the pleasure to train. And it is my honor to declare that you are no longer ASCANs. Gentlemen—and ladies—we are immensely proud to call you, as of this moment, astronauts.
Congratulations.”
Everyone started cheering. Joan caught Vanessa’s eye and, this time, could not bring herself to look away. Vanessa smiled.
Later that day, after elementary school was out, Joan picked up the phone at
her desk at NASA and called Barbara.
“Can you put Frances on, too?” Joan asked.
Barbara called Frances to the phone, and when Joan could hear both of them, she told them the news.
“Did you get the silver pin?” Frances asked.
Joan was holding it in the palm of her hand. It was small and sharp. Ready to fly. “I am looking at it right now.”
Frances hollered, “Joanie! I am so proud of you!”
It unnerved Joan, just how quickly that made her choke up. She cleared her throat. “Thank you, babe,” she said.
“Well, how do you like that?” Barbara said. “My big sister is an astronaut.”
Everyone went to the Outpost that night to celebrate. Hank and Jimmy were buying rounds of beers, people were trickling in. It was early still, but getting rowdy quickly. When Duke offered to get a round for the whole bar, everyone in the place cheered, and then Hank turned to Donna and kissed her.
Lydia looked at Joan with her eyes wide. Joan laughed.
“So this is out in the open now?” Jimmy said.
Hank shrugged.
But Donna was beaming. When Donna caught her eye, Joan smiled at her, despite being filled with absolute terror. That one day she might smile like that, so unguarded.
“I suppose it is,” Hank said. And then, just above a shout: “We’re getting married. We thought y’all might as well know.”
The group cheered so loud Joan’s eardrums vibrated.
“Well, knock me over with a feather,” Jimmy said. “Hank giving up on happiness and tying his boat to a dock.” Jimmy laughed. “Good luck having a
good time ever again!”
“Real nice, Jimmy,” Donna said.
“I’m just kidding!” Jimmy said. “Hank, get your girl to take a joke.”
“She takes a joke just fine, Jimmy.”
Vanessa arrived just then and came up next to Joan. “Why is everyone cheering?” she said. “The silver pins?”
Joan shook her head. “Hank and Donna are engaged.”
“Wow,” Vanessa said.
“It’s wonderful,” Joan said, but she couldn’t make her voice sound enthusiastic. Donna was hanging on to Hank’s arm, curling right into the space of his shoulder. Joan was mortified for her. “I guess.”
“You aren’t happy for her?” Vanessa said.
“I . . . they just think they’re very cute, don’t they? Two astronauts in love.”
Vanessa laughed. “Yeah, how awful. Two astronauts in love.”
Hours later, the bar had mostly cleared out. Griff, Lydia, Joan, and Vanessa were the only ones left.
“We did it,” Lydia said. “We actually did it.”
“We did,” Vanessa said.
“I didn’t think either of you would make it,” Lydia said, pointing at
Vanessa and Joan.
“All right, Lydia,” Vanessa said.
“No.” Lydia shook her head with a fluidity that made Joan realize she was absolutely hammered. “I’m saying . . . I’m saying . . . listen to me.”
“Why don’t I make sure you get home?” Griff said.
“Yes, fine, but wait,” Lydia said. “I had good reason to be worried. I mean, Vanessa is a glorified mechanic, okay? Don’t get upset.”
“No,” Vanessa said. “Why ever would I be upset by that?”
“Right, you get it. I’m not being offensive,” Lydia said. “And Joan, at first you were so meek. You were like a tiny little baby mouse and I thought, ‘She’s never even going to make it out of parachute training.’ But look at you!”
“Let’s move on to your larger point,” Joan said.
Lydia sighed. “I didn’t think I had much to learn. I mean, I’ve always been the smartest girl in the room,” she said. “My whole life. Do you know what that’s like? When it’s all you have? Neither of you probably do.”
Vanessa rolled her eyes. “Lydia, I swear to God. You may be smarter than me, but you’re not smarter than Joan, so drop it. Just drop it. I’ve tried to be cool, but you’re really pressing on my nerves,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Joan said. “She’s fine.”
“She’s not, actually,” Vanessa said. And then she looked at Lydia. “You’re not.”
“You don’t like me. I get it,” Lydia said. “I’m used to it. Not many people like me. And I understand why, because I don’t care about you as much as I care about myself and it’s obvious. I don’t even know how to hide it.”
Vanessa shook her head. Griff buried his face in his hands and sighed. Joan kept listening.
“I’m just trying to tell you that I understand that you must have something going for you that I don’t have,” Lydia said. “Something I could learn from. I don’t know how to do that yet, but I do see it. I do see how great you two are.
You have skills I am lacking. And I need to listen to you.”
Joan smiled at her. You had to keep the bar low with Lydia, but if you did, she would eventually surprise you.
“Go home and get some sleep,” Vanessa said.
Lydia nodded, and Griff led her out of the bar. As he left, he glanced back over his shoulder to give Joan an indecipherable look. It made her exceedingly aware that she and Vanessa were alone now. The beers she’d had were swirling around her head, which made it easier to look Vanessa in the eye.
“Lydia’s drunk,” Joan said. “But do you see what I’m saying, that she means well?”
“I see that she’s lonely,” Vanessa said, leaning back.
“I mean, everybody’s lonely.”
Vanessa shook her head. “No, not everybody. Are you lonely? You have
Barbara and Frances.”
“Sure, no, I know. I’m not lonely.”
“That was unconvincing.”
“Well, are you lonely?”
“I don’t know how to answer that question,” Vanessa said.
“Why not?”
“You know why not.”
Joan didn’t want to respond, but she couldn’t stop herself. “I can’t imagine you ever being lonely,” she said. “I can’t imagine that everyone’s not begging to stand next to you all the time.”
Vanessa looked at her but said nothing. Joan was losing control of what came out of her mouth.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Joan said.
“You do not want me to say what I’m thinking.”
Joan knew that this was true. But she also couldn’t resist the temptation. “I don’t know about that. I feel like I could know you forever and still be curious about what you’re going to say next.”
Vanessa leaned forward and lowered her voice: “I thought the same about you, the first time I saw you,” she said.
Joan’s chest began to feel heavy and leaden, like there was an anchor sinking into the tenderest parts of her heart.
“We should go,” Vanessa said. “I’ll drive you home.”
They drove in silence. Joan was unsure what to say that felt true.
When they pulled up to Joan’s building, Vanessa said, “Can we talk inside?” and Joan nodded.
A silence overtook them again as they made their way to Joan’s door and went in.
When Joan shut the door of her apartment, she felt like she could breathe again.
“I need you to understand something,” Vanessa said.
They both stood by the threshold.
“Okay.”
Vanessa looked at her and frowned. “I don’t know how to . . .” Vanessa exhaled. “I have a recurring dream,” she said finally.
“About what?” Joan hoped it was her.
“It’s my funeral. And I’m in the casket, but I’m alive—I’m actually
completely fine. But no one can see that, or hear me. So they are all just crying. My mother is there. The other people change, but my mother is always there. And she’s always sobbing into a tissue. And she always talks about something that I never got to do. Sometimes it’s that I never had a
family. Or I never got married.”
“Do you want those things?”
Vanessa shook her head. “It’s more about what my mom wants for me. But it’s always about how short my life was. And when I’m in the casket, I realize how little I did on Earth. That I didn’t get a chance to do something
with the time I had.”
“Do you think it’s about your father?”
Vanessa shook her head again. “No, what I’m saying is that . . . Joan, you live in a world where time is on your side. But I don’t live in that world,
Joan. You live there alone.”
“What do you mean?”
She inhaled deeply and blew out her next words like cigarette smoke. “I mean, don’t confuse my respect for you with patience.”
Joan felt the heat of Vanessa’s gaze. She understood that the real Vanessa had never looked right at her until now.
The real Joan could not look back. “I don’t think I understand what you are saying.”
“You spend a lot of time pretending you don’t understand what I’m saying.”
Joan looked away. She didn’t know how to be the person she knew she was.
“I don’t have a recurring dream, exactly,” Joan said. “But there is a type of dream that I keep having, ever since I was a teenager.”
“Okay . . .”
“I’m happy and doing something really simple,” Joan said. “I make dinner.
Or I read a book. Or I hang up a picture. It’s always different houses.
Sometimes it’s my parents’ old house. One time it was this mansion I saw in a movie. I’m always different ages, doing different things. There’s never anything risky about it, or dramatic. Nothing big happens. I’m just at home.
Living my life.”
“But?”
Joan looked Vanessa in the eye, then. Forced herself to not look away.
“I’m always alone, Vanessa.”
Vanessa looked down. Their hands were just an inch apart and Joan wanted to move her pinkie, to reach out and touch her. But she couldn’t bring herself to.
“I do understand what you’re telling me,” Joan said. “You won’t wait forever.”
Vanessa shook her head. “No, Jo. You don’t get it at all.”
The amber of Vanessa’s eyes was almost gold when the light hit it. The look of them, especially in this moment, was so complex that they reminded Joan of what her mother always said about her favorite landscape painting, which hung above the dining room table at their house. It “rewarded your attention.” Joan could stare into Vanessa’s eyes for hours and still never tire of all that they held.
“I’m scared I will wait forever,” Vanessa said, her voice a whisper. “And it
will kill me.”
Joan’s heart began to pound.
“I’m begging you to tell me not to,” Vanessa said. “Please. Tell me I’m wasting my time. Tell me I’m crazy. Put me out of my misery, Joan. Can you do that?”
Joan looked at her. “I can’t tell you that.”
Vanessa stared at her.
“And I don’t want to tell you that.”
Vanessa held her gaze a moment longer and then pushed Joan up against the door and kissed her. Joan put her hands on Vanessa’s face and kissed her back. And, in that second, almost everything Joan had known about herself became untrue.
And everything she never thought she’d want or have was in her arms.
Vanessa tasted like salt. And she smelled the way she always smelled, but richer, the scent thicker. Joan pulled her closer, as hard as she could. For a moment, she worried that she was hurting her, pulling her that tight. But Vanessa sighed. And Joan’s arms went loose as she let go of her weight against the door and sank into her legs in a way she never had before.
Vanessa pulled away then, but Joan pulled her back. And it was partially because Joan was afraid to look at her, to face what she was finally letting herself do. But it was more that she had to have Vanessa’s body against hers, had to feel the weight of her. She wanted to be trapped between Vanessa and the door. To be asked to surrender to her.
Joan let her go, finally. And Vanessa pulled back slightly but did not go far. She looked at Joan, and Joan felt herself blush. Vanessa took her thumb and grazed it across Joan’s jaw. Joan’s muscles melted, and she felt like she could dissolve.
Joan knew then that Donna was not an idiot. And the Beatles were not nonsense. And that there had always been a place for her in this world. She had just been walking past it over and over again, never noticing that there was an unmarked door, waiting for her to discover it.
Oh, but what now?
Joan did not know what she was doing!
She did not know when it was okay to smile at Vanessa at work and when she should hide her feelings. She did not know if she was standing too close to her when everyone was out together at a bar.
And so, instead, Joan spent over a week with her pulse racing, desperate to find herself alone with Vanessa as if by accident. Which was not an easy feat.
“We should go away,” Vanessa said in a low whisper, one afternoon when the two of them finally ran into each other alone on campus. Vanessa moved so effortlessly, appeared to know where to look with such ease.
“Okay,” Joan said, aware that her tone sounded eager but unable to hide it.
“Where?”
They drove down to Rockport separately, so that they would not drum up suspicion. That had been Vanessa’s suggestion. And Joan was starting to get a sense of how this would work.
Joan got to the hotel early, and so she sat in the grand lobby having an iced tea, watching the brass revolving doors. Families and couples walked in, a few businessmen. When a girl Frances’s age walked in the door, Joan felt the pang of missing her. She’d called Barbara to make plans so she could be sure to see her the following weekend, but it still felt uneasy, choosing to go away.
Joan finished her iced tea quickly and a waiter brought her another. After she finished that one in two big sips, she declined a third. Her bones were already jumping within her skin.
Joan saw Vanessa’s car pull up at the front entry. She stood up, as if to greet her, then felt silly and sat back down.
Vanessa got out of her car, put the top up, and then handed the valet her keys.
As Vanessa walked through the revolving door, she did not see Joan. And so Joan waited, watching Vanessa walk toward the reception desk to check in. Vanessa smiled at the woman behind the counter. And then, as the woman looked up Vanessa’s name in the records, Vanessa scanned the lobby and her eyes landed on Joan. Vanessa’s entire face lit up. She took the hotel key from
the receptionist and walked toward Joan.
“Hi,” she said when she got near.
“Hi.”
Joan tried to hide her smile, but it just kept opening up across her face.
“Should we drop off our bags in the room?” she asked.
“Sure.”
Joan grabbed hers and walked alongside Vanessa toward the elevators.
Joan simply could not stop smiling. She kept thinking about when Frances was four or so and got really into what she called “playing tricks.” She would throw a blanket over herself or hide under the bed with both legs dangling out and Joan would say, “Jeez, I wonder where Frances went.” And Frances would giggle, as if she was doing the funniest, most daring thing anyone had ever done. If the giant blob the size and shape of Frances under the blanket or the dangling legs didn’t give it away, Frances’s gleeful laugh certainly would have. But Frances could not contain her joy.
That’s how Joan felt now.
How did people do this? How did they go through every single day with this kind of excitement inside them? How how how how how. Poor Donna.
Having to hide this for so long. It was the single greatest feeling Joan had ever felt.
The elevator doors opened and Joan was relieved to see that the car was empty. When the doors closed, Joan hoped desperately that Vanessa would rush toward her. Instead, Vanessa reached her hand out and grabbed Joan’s softly, as if they had held hands thousands of times before. It was so casual in its affection that for a sweet, soft moment, Joan felt light-headed.
But then the elevator stopped on the mezzanine level and Vanessa let go of her hand just as easily as she’d grabbed it. A woman in a Chanel suit got into the elevator.
“Oh, my,” the woman said as the doors closed. “I meant to go to the lobby.”
Vanessa smiled kindly at her, but they were stuck now. Certainly this woman could sense the tension. Couldn’t she feel the way the space shifted as she intruded into this world of theirs?
The elevator’s bell dinged and Vanessa calmly led the way down the hall,
stopping in front of room 408. Vanessa opened the door with her key, and they walked across the threshold.
Joan loved the sound of the thick door clasping shut, all of its locks falling heavily into place. Had anything sounded better?
“Come here,” Vanessa said.
Joan rushed to her. Vanessa put her arms around Joan and the two of them fell onto the bed.
Vanessa put her hands on the top button of Joan’s shirt.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
Take off all my clothes, Joan thought. What had felt so necessary her entire life—to cover up—felt so restrictive now. She wanted everything gone. Her clothes, Vanessa’s.
Joan lay back on the bed as Vanessa took off her own shirt and then lay on top of her, Vanessa’s necklace hitting Joan’s chest. Joan kicked off her shoes, unbuttoned her pants.
To touch Vanessa’s bare skin with her own seemed vital, crucial. She’d never wanted anything more.
Vanessa took off Joan’s bra and the cold edge of the air hit Joan’s chest and the warmth of Vanessa’s hand sent Joan into a shudder. Joan closed her eyes. She could not allow herself to question any of this, could not let the part of her brain in charge of judgment light up. There could be no embarrassment or shyness or hesitation. Not if she was going to get what she wanted. Not now.
She had to exist only in the base of her brain, the heavy putty of her heart.
And so she put everything away except Yes, and I want, and More, please.
She instead focused on the buzz in her chest, the warmth and lightness of her lower belly.
If Joan had listened to what was happening outside that room, she would have heard people walking by in the hallway and the sounds of the waves outside the window. But all she could hear was the beat of her own pulse and the sound coming out of the base of Vanessa’s throat. Then, soon, all she could hear was her own voice saying, over and over again, “Oh.”
What ran through Joan made her call out, in a tone she did not recognize.
And a thick peace overtook her.
Self-consciousness dared to creep up, but Joan would not let it. Not now.
Not yet. Don’t take this from me.
Did she fumble? Was she unsure of how to move and what to do? Yes, yes, of course. She did not care. For the first time in Joan’s life, she knew how it felt to give in to someone and let go.
“I want to go out to dinner with you,” Vanessa said, kissing Joan’s neck as
they lay together under the sheets.
“Can we do that?”
“Can we eat dinner?”
“In public? I’m just not sure how all of this works. With, you know . . .”
“Being with a woman in this world?”
“Being with anyone in this world. But yes.”
“Do you want to get dinner with me?” Vanessa asked.
“I want to do everything with you. I want to be so close to you that I’m worried I’m being creepy about it.”
Vanessa threw her head back and laughed.
“So then let’s decide where to have a romantic dinner.”
“What if someone sees us?”
“They will see two women having dinner and think nothing of it. We’re in a busy hotel, in a city where no one knows us. As long as I don’t lean over and kiss you, no one’s going to notice.”
“Okay,” Joan said, nodding.
“Back home, we have to be careful. But there will also be times when there’s nothing to worry about. No one will look twice at us here if we don’t give them a reason to. I’m not going to pretend this is always easy, but this weekend, right now, it can be.”
“Okay,” Joan said, smiling. “I like easy.”
Vanessa laughed as she got up and started unpacking.
“Which side do you want?” she asked.
Joan pointed to the right. “Uh, this one.”
Vanessa nodded. “Good, that way I’ll be by the door.”
They each unpacked their things, one by one. Joan placed her T-shirts and jeans in one drawer. She hung her dress in the closet. And then she reached into the bottom of her suitcase. She’d bought a lavender bra-and-underwear set yesterday at the lingerie store. That’s what the saleswoman at the store had said to do, to match her bra with her underwear if someone was going to see it. As Joan reached in to get them, she dropped them on the floor. She bent down to grab them and dropped them again.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” she said.
Vanessa looked at her. “Are you nervous?”
Joan calmed. “Yes!” she said. And it felt good to admit it. To just get to be nervous without the extra effort of hiding it. “Aren’t you nervous? What are
we doing?”
Vanessa smiled. “I’m not nervous, no.”
Joan’s cheeks started to burn.
“I’m excited,” Vanessa said, closing the gap between them. “I want to take you everywhere. And do everything with you. And ask you every single question that’s been on my mind for months. And I want to know when you knew what was happening between us and I want to tell you when I knew.
And I want to hold your hand in a quiet corner and I want to lie in bed and hear your heartbeat through your chest. I want to bring you coffee in bed.
And I want to hear you tell me anything you’ve always wanted to tell someone. Because you know that you’ve met someone who desperately wants to listen.”
Joan’s heart was in her throat, and she could not swallow it down. “No one has ever . . . said anything that wonderful to me before,” she said, trying to keep her voice level and failing.
Vanessa took the bra and underwear out of her hand. She placed them gently in the top drawer of Joan’s side of the dresser. And then she stood in front of Joan and kissed her.
“Good. So finish unpacking and take me on a date tonight,” Vanessa said.
Vanessa wanted to swim laps.
“It will be nice to spend time in a pool when I’m not wearing a three-
hundred-pound suit, practicing fixing a latch with a ratchet wrench.”
“That’s a great idea,” Joan said. “Why don’t you bring a bag and shower in the locker room, and we can meet in the lobby at eight?”
“Like a real date?”
“Like a real date.”
“See you then,” Vanessa said. She grabbed her things and kissed Joan goodbye. The kiss was so small. So quick. It was a peck, really, a formality.
But when Vanessa shut the door behind herself, it took Joan a moment to recover.
And then she went to the phone and called down to the concierge to make a dinner reservation.
When she was done, she put on her navy blue dress that tied at the waist. It had a lower neckline than her other dresses, and she liked how she looked in it.
She went over to the mirror and opened her sparse makeup bag. That night, for the first time, Joan picked up the mascara wand and took it to her eyelashes not just to fit in, but with the hope that someone might notice.
When she was done, she breathed in and looked at herself. Did she look like Ingrid Bergman? The cheekbones and the lips . . . maybe. Maybe she did.
When Joan got down to the lobby, Vanessa was leaning against a column, wearing faded Levi’s and a black belt, with a crisp white button-front shirt, the sleeves rolled up on her forearms. Her hair was still drying around her face.
She was the most beautiful person Joan had ever seen in her life.
Joan wanted to kiss her as she made her way to her. But she didn’t. She just smiled. And this time, she was able to let the secret that existed between them live lower in her body, deeper under her skin.
Vanessa smirked, and Joan bit her lip to hold back too big a smile.
Joan had never felt this way about a man, so she’d never stood with one in public and held his hand. And maybe, if that had been available to her with Vanessa, she would have enjoyed it.
But for now, Joan could think of nothing sweeter than what she had.
“I’m going to drive,” Joan said.
Vanessa raised her eyebrows. “Lead the way.”
When they got to Joan’s car, Vanessa took Joan’s right hand in hers before Joan could even put the key in the ignition. She brought Joan’s hand up to her lips and she kissed the underside of Joan’s wrist.
No one had ever touched Joan so delicately there, and Joan knew that, while she could not predict what would happen to them, for the rest of her life she would think of that area of her body as belonging only to Vanessa.
Halfway through dinner, Joan was talking about how badly she wanted to help NASA develop a solar probe when she noticed that Vanessa was staring
at her.
“Did I do something wrong?” Joan asked.
“No, of course not.”
“Then what is it?”
“I love hearing you talk,” Vanessa said, smiling at her.
Could you burn up from a gaze this bright upon you? “Oh.”
“You’re the first woman I’ve ever met who I feel like understands things
about me before I even say them.”
“Really?” Joan said. “How do you mean?”
Vanessa considered the question. Then she looked Joan in the eye. “How did you feel when you saw the moon landing on TV?”
Joan laughed. “Really?”
“Really. How did you feel? Because I felt something so intense, and I’ve never been able to explain it.”
“I . . .” Joan tried to find the words to convey something that lived so deep in her chest. “I felt . . . left out,” she said finally. “In this way that burned me up. Like I had been fine until humans touched the moon. But once somebody
had, I had to, too.”
“And now?” Vanessa asked.
“Now I will settle for the stars.”
Vanessa laughed. “I knew you knew. I knew you knew it even better than me. For so long, almost no one understood how I’ve felt. Why I wanted to do this. I mean, they were impressed, don’t get me wrong. But trying to explain that fire I feel to leave the planet, the one you’re talking about? It is like
trying to describe the color blue to someone who has never seen it. And then you come along and it’s like you are describing the color blue to me and I feel such . . . relief. I’d have followed you anywhere just for that.”
What was happening?
Joan’s chest grew hot, and she did not know what to say back. And so she did not say, “I love hearing everything you have to say” or “I think I’ve been pulled toward you since the moment I saw you.” She said, “I want to show
you the way my mother serves bread.”
“Oh,” Vanessa said. “Okay.”
Joan took a slice of bread from the basket and covered every millimeter of it in a very thin layer of butter. She sprinkled it with salt first and then pepper. Evenly, lightly. And then she handed it to Vanessa.
Vanessa took it and bit into it. And her eyes went just the littlest bit wild.
“See?” Joan said.
“How is it so much better with just a little bit of salt and pepper on it?”
“I don’t know but I . . . I want to show you every good thing I’ve ever found,” Joan said.
The way Vanessa’s eyes crinkled at the sides . . . Joan knew that she would not need to find a way to tell Vanessa how she felt. Vanessa would understand it. Which meant Joan would not need to learn how to be anything other than who she already was.
Later, after Joan paid the bill and the waiter had left the table, Vanessa looked Joan square in the eye. “I love your dress,” she said. And then, in a low whisper: “And I want to take it off you.”
A heaviness took hold in Joan’s hips.
Joan rushed them toward the car. They did not make it back to the hotel.
They pulled over on the side of a dark road and, urgently, recklessly, Joan let Vanessa cure what ached her.
At three in the morning, they were still awake. Joan’s head was on Vanessa’s chest as they lay in bed. It was hot, the blankets were off, the sheets barely pulled up to their waists. Joan was shocked at herself, how quickly she had learned to shed decades of inhibitions.
“. . . and then when I saw those drawings you did,” Vanessa said, laughing.
“The sketches were not of you!” Joan said. “They were of the stripper.
What was her name? Raven!”
“Oh, I know. I could see that. They were of Raven . . .”
“Thank you.”
“. . . the one stripper in that joint who looked like me.”
Joan was embarrassed in a way that reminded her of being tickled as a child. “Unbelievable,” she said. “How would you even know what Raven looked like? You left early.”
“I left early because I could not stand to watch you stare at those women.”
Joan looked at her. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do.”
“You were . . . jealous.”
“I was jealous.”
Joan could feel her muscles starting to shake within her skin. She took Vanessa’s hand. “I don’t think anyone’s ever been jealous over me before.”
“They have,” Vanessa said. “You just can’t see half the things going on around you.”
She pulled Joan’s arm closer. “Wait, are you okay?” she asked as she put her hand on Joan’s forearm. Joan was not sure what she meant, but when she looked closer, she could see there were hives all over her arms. Joan then looked down at her chest. It was also bright red.
Vanessa leaned over her and checked her back.
“You’re breaking out,” she said. She sat up and then sat Joan up. “Do you think it’s something in the sheets? Do you want me to call the front desk and
get new ones?”
“It’s fine, I feel fine.”
“You’re covered in hives.”
“I know, I can see that. But they don’t hurt. I don’t even feel them.”
“Should we at least get you in the shower? Maybe cold water would help?”
Joan lay back down and gestured for Vanessa to as well. “I’m fine,
Vanessa. Truly.”
“Okay . . .” she said. “Does this happen a lot?”
Joan exhaled. “No, actually. It’s only happened one other time that I can
think of.”
“When?”
Joan laughed. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“Oh, now you have to tell me.”
Joan put the crook of her arm over her eyes. “It was my seventh birthday.
My parents took me to Disneyland. And usually, even if it was my birthday, Barbara was the one who dictated what we would do. My parents were always saying, ‘Well, your sister might get upset if . . .’ But that day . . . well, I guess my dad knew someone who was in charge of scheduling the characters’ appearances, and he set it up so that I got to meet Minnie, Mickey, Donald, and Daisy all by myself. Just me. Even Barbara didn’t go.”
“And you broke into hives when you saw them?”
“I broke into hives walking over there. On the way across the park, I was walking just with my dad, and he explained where we were going and that it was a special thing, just for me and . . . I broke out into hives. And then I met them all, and I cried and could barely get up the courage to talk to them. I was just so happy. I remember it very clearly. That I could not believe I was talking to Minnie Mouse all by myself. That she was right there, and focused entirely on me. The hives went away later, after it was over. My parents called the doctor that night, and they said it was probably just excitement.”
“Excitement,” Vanessa said, with a small smile.
“Oh, it’s mortifying,” Joan said, just as the hives started to itch. She clasped her hands to stop herself from scratching her arms.
Vanessa got up and turned on the shower. She came back to the bed and put her hand out.
“Up you go,” Vanessa said. “The cold water will help.”
“But I’m so tired, I just want to fall asleep.”
“Can you fall asleep with those hives?”
“No.”
Vanessa tugged on Joan’s arm, pulling her body up out of the bed.
Joan breathed in deep. “Okay.”
Joan got into the shower and the cold water calmed her skin, cleaned the sweat off her. She turned off the shower and pulled the curtain open to see that Vanessa was standing there, leaning against the sink, smiling and
shaking her head.
“What’s so funny?” Joan asked.
“This is dangerous,” Vanessa said as she handed Joan a towel. “Those hives of yours might just be the most romantic moment of my life.”