Spring and Summer 1984
For the next few months, Joan’s training for her mission became so intense that she was not always able to see Frances. Meanwhile, Vanessa’s parallel training had her in the dunk tank in Alabama so often that she and Joan would go weeks without seeing each other.
But Joan threw herself into it.
She was running simulations with the crew, going through various physical tests, and preparing Spacelab to run the solar experiments. Joan sometimes hit the bed at night like she’d been knocked out, sleeping heavy and hard, the morning feeling more like coming to than waking up.
Still.
As stretched thin as she was, she walked into Antonio’s office and asked for more.
“I’d like to be assigned time in Mission Control,” Joan said, once she sat
down.
Antonio appeared surprised.
“You’ve had someone on each crew do it for the past few missions,” Joan said. “And I see immense benefit in that. We all need to know how best to communicate with Mission Control, and having at least one of us actually having worked the job is the best training. I think I should be that person.”
All of that was true.
The thing she didn’t tell Antonio was that lately, she ached to be in that seat.
As they had run their simulations the past few months, Joan found herself drawn to the lone voice on the other side of the speaker. It reminded her of being in college, listening to the teacher but also unable to resist imagining herself teaching one day. What would it be like to be that steady voice for someone?
“I will consider it,” Antonio said. “I’m not sure it is necessary for you, specifically.”
“Respectfully, sir,” Joan said, leaning forward, “I am exactly who you need.”
“And why is that?” Antonio asked. He seemed neither impressed nor doubtful.
Joan inhaled. She’d prepared all of her arguments in the shower that morning.
“Because out of everyone on the crew, I am the most unflappable. Look at my heart rate and blood pressure stats during our sims—you can even go back and look at my stats from the initial assessments four years ago. I am also the person on the crew with the most consistent relationships throughout the astronaut corps. I am friendly and on good terms with everyone. From pilots like Hank and Duke to mission specialists like Lydia. And I can think on my feet. You’ve seen it yourself in our simulations. You saw it yourself in our assessments when we applied. And I will do what needs to be done for the team. I follow orders. I have always displayed that here.
“In that CAPCOM chair, you need someone who is trusted, can remain calm, think quickly, and do what they are told. That’s me.”
“People think you’re so easygoing,” Vanessa said when Joan told her that Antonio had agreed. “But you’re surprisingly intense about things. Nobody sees you coming.”
“I don’t give up,” Joan said. “When I want something.”
Vanessa nodded. “Persistence. Highly underrated in women. Overrated in
men, but underrated in women.”
Joan laughed.
One Friday afternoon, Joan picked Frances up from camp and took her to the mall. They stopped at the food court and split an order of french fries.
Which was when Frances asked if she could spend the whole weekend at
Joan’s place.
“The whole weekend?” Joan said.
Already the impossibilities of it were piling up. There was a barbecue at Antonio’s that she was expected at on Saturday night that kids weren’t invited to. She had told Harrison she’d get lunch with him on Sunday to discuss what was going wrong during the sims. Jack, the flight director she got along with best, had offered to have her in on Monday to observe. But the
biggest issue was that there was no way to have Frances at her house and still be close with Vanessa. The two things were incompatible.
“We can make a plan for that in the future, but probably not this weekend.
Aren’t you excited about your new room?”
Daniel had brought home paint chip samples from the hardware store, and Frances had chosen a lavender gray. Barbara had picked out a matching bedroom set from Macy’s. A full bed, a nice dresser. It was a beautiful room.
“Not really,” Frances said. “My bedroom is boring. I just read books alone in there. Mom and Daniel are never home, Joanie.”
“What?”
“They are never home. They go out to dinner every single night. Mom feeds me a grilled cheese and then tells me to get ready for bed and I do, and then they leave. I don’t see them again until the morning.”
“Oh,” Joan said. Frances was ten years old, having just finished the fifth grade. Joan tried to remember how old she’d been when her parents left her at home and in charge of Barbara. She had been older, certainly. But maybe it wasn’t the same.
After they finished eating, Joan took Frances to get a birthday present for her new friend, Rebecca.
After that, Joan was supposed to bring Frances home, but instead, she took Frances’s hand and said, “Should we see a movie while we are here?”
Frances jumped up and down. Joan called Barbara from a pay phone.
“I was wondering if I could keep her tonight,” she said. “Bring her back in the morning.”
“Oh, please do,” Barbara said. “She’s killing me.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? She’s terrible, Joan! She’s rude to Daniel. She’s crying all the time for no reason. I’ve been very clear—Daniel’s been very clear— that we expect respect in this house. ‘Yes, sir,’ ‘No, thank you,’ simple stuff.
And she won’t listen!
“Last night, he called home and offered to bring her dessert from the restaurant we were at and she said she’d ‘rather die’ than take anything from him. This, to the man who made sure she had the perfect bedroom. And has opened his home to her. Do you know he has been planning on buying her a
stereo? Not even for her birthday, just to be nice. But I’m not sure she deserves it now. I swear I raised her better than this. Do you remember when she was little? She was a dream.”
“Do you think maybe she’s just feeling left out? Of your new life?”
Barbara was silent for such a long pause that Joan thought the line had disconnected. “Hello?”
“She’s ten years old,” Barbara said. “She’s not part of my adult life.”
“Okay,” Joan said. “I’ll try to talk to her.”
“Thank you. I really need to make this work.”
Joan shook her head and got off the phone. “Okay, your mom said she will miss you, but she’s okay with it,” Joan said. “Ice cream, movie, dinner, you
sleep at my place—what do you think?”
“Can Vanessa join?” Frances asked.
Joan smiled. “I’ll call her right now.”
Joan did not know how to have Frances with her all weekend and still be with Vanessa. But this, tonight, would work beautifully.
“It was Frances’s idea,” Joan said as Vanessa considered it.
“Well, I do what Frances Emerson Goodwin asks,” Vanessa said. “I’ll meet you at the movie theater in twenty.”
The three of them saw The NeverEnding Story. When they came out of the theater, Frances and Vanessa were teary.
“You two are a bunch of softies,” Joan said, smiling.
“You’re like Atreyu,” Frances said to Vanessa.
“I am?”
“Yeah, you’re just like him.”
“How is Vanessa like Atreyu?” Joan asked.
“Because,” Frances said, looking at Vanessa, “you are the sort of person who would do anything to save the kingdom.” And then: “Don’t you think,
Joanie?”
Joan looked at Vanessa and smiled.
“Can I have change for the gumball machine?”
When Joan gave her a coin, Frances ran ahead.
“Good God,” Vanessa said. “Kids can just knock the wind right out of you, huh?”
Joan laughed. “They just tell the truth without any agenda, that’s all.”
“Well, I’m not sure it’s the truth but . . .”
“But what?”
Vanessa shook her head. “It would just be nice to be the person she thinks I am. That’s all.”
Afterward, the three of them went out for Italian food. And Frances again brought up how much she liked being with Joan and Vanessa, and how little she wanted to be at home.
Joan wasn’t sure what to say, but Vanessa spoke up first: “Listen to me, kiddo. For some people, childhood is the best part of their lives, and later, all they are trying to do is go back to it. But for people like us, it’s different. The good part hasn’t started yet. But it’s coming. It’s just ahead, when your life is in your own hands and, listen to me, you are going to soar.”
Frances leaned forward. “You really think so?”
“I know so,” Vanessa said. “I can see it in you.”
“Do you think I could be an astronaut?” Frances asked.
“If you want, baby girl,” Vanessa said. “You may just land on the moon.”
Joan spent all of her time when she wasn’t training for her mission taking shifts in Mission Control.
It was the highlight of her days and nights.
She loved the hum of the room, getting to know the scientists at each console. It was like being surrounded by mission specialists. All nerds, no cowboys.
But it also meant she’d been packing her schedule too tight. After work tonight, she had to drop Frances’s books off at Barbara’s, and she was already late to meet Donna and Griff.
They were supposed to meet at the bar, and while Joan did not particularly want to go, she felt needed. She had to be there to order a club soda and then let Donna swap it for her vodka and tonics. That way Donna could seem like she was drinking and no one would pick up on the fact that she was almost six months pregnant. Vanessa and Joan were the only ones at NASA who knew other than Hank.
Surprisingly, Donna wasn’t showing much. It was certainly concealable in a flight suit or a baggy shirt. Which was good. Because the moment the higher-ups at NASA learned she was pregnant, they were going to restrict what Donna could do, even if there was no medical reason for it.
Namely, they wouldn’t let her fly in the T-38s anymore, which meant she wouldn’t qualify for missions until after she had the baby. Donna getting pregnant was going to directly and indirectly ensure that she did not get assigned to a crew for years. Meanwhile, Hank was going up in less than six months.
Joan really wanted to get to the bar in time to order Donna’s drink. It felt like an honor to be trusted with such a secret, and she wanted to come through. But she was already running late when Barbara pulled her into the formal living room to have a “chat.”
“What is it, Barb?” Joan said. She did not sit down.
“Please sit,” Barbara said, sitting down on a white leather upholstered sofa
in front of a glass coffee table.
Joan sat.
“I owe you an apology for something.”
Joan tried not to cock her head and look at her sideways, but she had middling success.
“I don’t think I’ve given you enough credit for everything that you have done for Frances and me these past few years. Well, no,” Barbara said. “Not the past few years. Her entire life.”
It was like being handed a gift you had wanted desperately five years ago.
One that Joan had taught herself how not to yearn for anymore. And, therefore, did not know what to do with now.
“Oh,” Joan said.
“When she was born, I was so lost. I was so angry,” Barbara said. “I was angry at the world for finding myself in that position. And I . . . I knew, in those moments, that I could rely on you. I have relied on you for such a long time, and I think, well . . . Daniel has helped me see that I was embarrassed.
For needing you. So I acted like it was nothing. That was wrong of me. I’m
sorry.”
“Wow,” Joan said. “That’s—”
“And you have been an extra parent to Frances in many ways. Ways not every sister would have been. So thank you. Because of that, I want to include you in our news.”
Joan could sense something was coming, and she felt stupid for not seeing
the punch before it landed.
“Frances is going to boarding school.”
Joan felt the breath pulled out of her lungs. “What? Barb, no.”
“Yes, she is.”
“She’s not even in junior high.”
“Some of these schools start in sixth grade. She’ll begin the school year at Landingham Prep after Labor Day. It’s in Dallas. Lots of kids go there and
love it.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because the current situation is not working.”
“You have to give it time.”
Barbara shook her head with a patience that enraged Joan.
“I cannot believe you are doing this to her,” Joan said.
“Plenty of children go to boarding school, Joan. Don’t be dramatic.”
“She is ten years old. She’s young for her grade. She’s not ready.”
“She’s certainly old enough to cause trouble.”
“She’s hurting and confused about you getting married and her life changing. This is not the time, even if boarding school were right for her.”
“Joan, please—”
Joan’s heart rate was rising. “And the worst part is, you know better.”
“I know better? Excuse me. You have no idea how she speaks to him, Joan. It’s unacceptable. And that’s not even getting into how she speaks to me. Daniel is honestly worried about her. That she needs some discipline.
Maybe I did wrong by her, up until now. I felt so guilty about being a single mother that I babied her. She needs structure, and she’s not accepting the structure we are giving her. So this is how she’s going to get it. It’s good. It’s
good for her.”
“Does she want to go?”
“Of course she wants to go. What do you take me for?”
It sounded impossible to Joan. She marched right up to Frances’s bedroom.
Frances was sitting at her desk, finishing her homework.
“Your mother told me you’re going to Landingham. Is this what you want, babe?”
“Yeah,” Frances said. “Mom says there’s a lot of other kids there. I’d eat dinner with my friends every night.”
Joan looked at her and sighed. How could Joan make any better argument?
Frances had been eating dinner alone most nights.
“I’ll have a roommate, which I think will be fun. And we’ll go on field trips all the time. I read in the brochure that we get to go to Washington, D.C., in seventh grade.”
Joan nodded. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“I’ll miss you, but Mom says that I will be back a lot of the weekends, like every month. And I was thinking maybe a few of them could be at your
place?”
“Of course. Of course.”
“I’m excited.”
How had Barbara done this so masterfully? Joan had no way to stop it.
Joan put on a smile. “I know you’re old now, but can I still kiss you on the top of your head?” she asked. “This once?”
Frances laughed and then bent her head down.
Joan kissed the part in Frances’s hair.
“I love you, Frances,” Joan said.
“I love you, too.”
Joan shut the door. She tried to regain her composure before going downstairs.
“So that’s it?” Joan said as she put her hand on the door handle. “The decision has been made? There will be no further discussion?”
“I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. I really do. Like I said, I know I haven’t always made that clear. So thank you. But my child is unhappy. I want her to find a place in the world where she feels she belongs.”
Joan wanted to take her hands and thrust them into Barbara’s shoulders, to knock her down on the ground. She wanted to yell at her. Shake some sense into her. She wanted to go upstairs and tell Frances that she deserved a home where she felt she belonged.
Instead, she gritted her teeth and walked out the door.
The day Frances was leaving for boarding school, Joan woke up in Vanessa’s bed and started crying before she was even alert.
Ever since Frances had been born, Joan had not gone more than ten days without seeing her for at least a few minutes. Now Joan was approaching a future where she saw her only on holidays. Even if this was good for Frances, like Barbara claimed, it would break Joan’s heart to miss her this much.
Vanessa handed Joan a tissue. Joan dried her tears.
“She will be home some weekends,” Vanessa said.
“I know,” Joan said. “I’ll miss her, but I’ll be okay. I’m just . . .”
“They’re shitty parents,” Vanessa said finally.
Joan looked at her, shocked.
“You talk around it,” Vanessa said. “Even your mother seems to know it but is unable to say it. But just say it. It’s shitty, what Barb and Daniel are doing.”
“Barb thinks it’s what’s best for Frances,” Joan said.
Vanessa frowned. “Do you think it’s what’s best for Frances?”
“Of course not.”
“Do you think if Barbara thought about it for one second, she would still think it’s best for Frances?”
Joan shook her head. “For some kids it would be a good idea. But if Barb were honest with herself, she would see that her child is acting out because she’s lonely and needs to feel cared about and pulled in. Not sent further
away.”
“Exactly.”
“But I’m not Barbara,” Joan said. “At the end of the day, Frances is not my kid. She’s my niece.”
“Yes, but also, who cares what word you use? Some aunts are completely irrelevant, and some aunts have been there since the day their niece was born.
I had one grandmother I never saw and one who, when she died, I cried for three days. The word isn’t what matters. It’s the specific relationship. You love that kid more than anything on this planet. She knows that. And that’s what matters.”
Joan nodded. “I don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to her.”
“You’ll tell her what you have to. That you’ll be fine, even if you won’t.
And she’ll be fine, even if you’re not sure. And that you’re always there.”
Joan went over that morning and had breakfast with Barbara, Daniel, and Frances. They were leaving in an hour to start the drive.
As Barbara and Daniel packed the car, Joan sat with Frances in her room.
“I’m in Clarefield Hall,” Frances said. She picked up the brochure she had from her first visit to campus. “You can see it in the background here.”
Frances pointed to a large brick dormitory behind what looked like a campus square.
“It’s the building all the girls want to be in,” Frances said. “Because it is next to the cafeteria and it’s the newest one, so it has individual bathrooms and more phone booths. That means I can call you anytime I want, I bet.”
Joan nodded. “It looks gorgeous.”
“My roommate’s name is Tabitha. She’s eleven. I think most of the other kids are eleven. Tabby and I decided we are going to pick out posters to hang up together. She likes Cyndi Lauper, too. So I think that will be cool.”
Joan kept watching her face, looking for signs of sadness that weren’t there.
“And Mom and Daniel are coming for parents’ weekend in just a few weeks. Mom says they are going to send really huge care packages all the
time. Like every Friday.”
“Well, good,” Joan said. “I’m glad.”
“And I’ll be home for Thanksgiving.”
“Oh, I can’t wait.”
“I wish I could come see your liftoff,” Frances said.
“I know, but you’re gonna be having so much fun at school, you’re not even going to be thinking about it. I’ll be up there and back before you know it. In time for Thanksgiving, too. So I can come get you and take you to the movies that weekend. You can think about what you want to see.”
The minutes were speeding by and Joan ached to slow them down. It had been that way for much of Frances’s childhood. Stay. Stay. Stay right here.
Don’t go so fast.
Barbara appeared in the doorway.
“Listen, babe,” Joan said. It was getting harder and harder to keep her composure, and she didn’t want to cry in front of Frances. “I think I should get going—you all are about to get in the car.”
“Come on down in two minutes, okay, my love?” Barbara said.
Frances nodded.
When Barbara left, Joan hugged Frances as hard as she could, as if it would make up for all the time ahead of them.
“I love you, make good decisions, I’ll see you at Thanksgiving,” Joan said.
“Joanie,” Frances asked as Joan reached the door.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to have so much fun, right?”
Joan choked back the lump in her throat. This didn’t feel right to her. Any of this. But what could she do? She didn’t have the ability to stop it. She was leaving on a mission in just over two months. She closed her eyes and reset herself. “You’re going to have a great time. And I’m always a phone call away. Day or night. I will always pick up. Okay?”
Joan rushed in one more time and kissed Frances on the top of her head and said goodbye.
That Tuesday, Joan’s crew had a full-scale simulation to prepare for their mission.
She strapped into her seat in the mid-deck. She listened to the commander and pilot as they prepared for liftoff. She was there, ready for anything that
came at them.
But part of her brain was with Frances.
She was thinking about how it must have felt to arrive at the campus, whether Frances and Tabitha were getting along. Were the upperclassmen intimidating? Had she been okay saying goodbye to Barbara and Daniel?
Joan tried to imagine Frances free and happy and surrounded by friends, that the school was everything Frances had dreamed of.
After eight and a half minutes, they were “in orbit” during the simulation.
Joan unstrapped herself and began to pretend, as best she could, that she was
in microgravity. Pretending to solve problems while floating, even though the gravity of Earth kept them all weighed down.
So much pretending.