Fall 1980
It was after eleven on Saturday night. Joan should have been in bed, but she could not tear her fingers away from the piano.
After a long week of classes, her brain was fried. The lingo at NASA was going to kill her, especially the abbreviations. OMS, RCS, EVA, EMU, FIDO, GPCs. Joan was attentive and ready. But the terms were coming at her so fast that often it felt less like science and more like French.
She needed a break. So instead of going out to a bar, she’d gone on a long run, come home, taken a shower, and sat down at her keyboard. She did not know how long she’d been at it, but she’d played so much and just kept playing. Tchaikovsky, Chopin, Shostakovich, and now, Satie’s “Gnossienne No. 1.”
It was exactly what she needed: one of those moments when she forgot where she was or even who she was. It was what she had loved about the piano as a child, why she had kept with it even after deciding she would never try to become a professional. It let her mind leave her body, let her body speak for her.
Everything else in Joan’s life was thinking thinking thinking thinking. But when she picked up that pencil to draw or put her hands on the cool keys, the thinking stopped.
The knock at the door startled her. She yelped so high and so loud that she cringed to hear it.
Two possibilities flashed across her mind of who it might be, neither good: her neighbor, angry about the loud noise, or Griff.
“Jo?” she heard through the door, just before she could unlock it.
Vanessa.
“Hi,” Joan said as she opened the door.
“You screamed very loudly just now,” Vanessa said at the doorway. “It sounded so dainty and helpless. I worry you’ll set women back centuries if any man hears it.”
Joan frowned. “Thank you for your excellent notes on how I can be scared in a less vulnerable way.”
Vanessa smiled. “Can I come in?”
Joan opened the door farther, and Vanessa followed her into the room.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you, too.”
Joan raised an eyebrow.
“I just dropped off Donna—she’s drunk as a skunk. I was going to ask you
if you’d check on her in the morning.”
“Oh,” Joan said. “Of course I will.”
“I wasn’t even going to stop by. I assumed you’d be asleep, but then I could hear you playing when I passed your door.”
“Is it that loud?”
Vanessa shook her head. “You’d have to be walking by, hoping you were up, to notice.” And then she added, “You are very good, by the way.”
“Oh, thank you,” Joan said. “I just like to play to clear my mind. I’m not anything to write home about.”
“Are you doing that thing where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not that good’ and then I have to tell you that you’re great?”
“What? No. I don’t do that. I’m competent at a lot of things and am honest with myself about my talents. But I am an amateur classical pianist. I don’t practice enough to be superlative. I do it because I enjoy it.”
Vanessa hid that smile, the lopsided one.
“What’s so funny?” Joan asked.
“You have a very high standard,” Vanessa said. “That’s all.”
Joan pursed her lips, trying not to frown or smile.
“Anyway, listen—I had a secondary reason for coming over here,”
Vanessa said.
“I’m listening.”
“I need . . . I need help with something. And you’re . . . sort of the only person that can help me. I guess I’m asking a favor.”
“Are you . . . nervous?”
“I’m embarrassed,” Vanessa said.
“What on earth is it?”
Vanessa laughed. “It’s actually not on Earth.”
Joan shook her head and smiled.
“I’m not able to orient myself in the night sky as well as some of the others. Lydia can spot every constellation, and she’s incredibly smug about it.
But I’m having trouble recognizing them consistently. Especially in a dark
sky.”
“Okay, what can you spot?”
“Well, I can find Polaris. And I have a handle on Vega, Deneb, and Altair.
So I can always find north and south. But I’d love to feel more confident about the dimmer constellations.”
“Then you’ve come to the right place. Of course I’ll show you.”
“Thank you,” Vanessa said, her eyes warmer than Joan had ever seen them.
“You’re an astronaut who doesn’t recognize most of the stars,” Joan said, “That’s pretty funny.”
“I’m a pilot who applied to NASA because I want to fly out of the atmosphere,” she said. “And I’m willing to learn anything I have to in order to do it.”
“Okay,” Joan said. “I would love to teach you. Tomorrow night. We can head out of the city. I can even bring my telescope.”
“Yeah?” Vanessa said.
“Yeah, it will be fun.”
Joan arrived at Vanessa’s front door one minute before six o’clock. She waited two full minutes to ring the doorbell so that Vanessa could see she was perfectly capable of being late.
Vanessa’s bungalow was painted teal with a red door, a curved archway at her front porch. Joan could hear the doorbell ring inside the house.
Vanessa appeared with a cooler in her hand. She was wearing jeans and a dark gray T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, her hair still a tad wet. In a flash, Joan went from liking the dress and jean jacket she was wearing to feeling mortifyingly overdressed. And why had she never thought to roll her sleeves up like that?
“I made sandwiches and brought us sodas and beers,” Vanessa said,
gesturing to the cooler.
“That’s great. Thank you.”
“Well,” she said. “I like to pull my own weight. Thank you for helping me.”
Joan waved her off. “It’s a good excuse to do a little stargazing myself. I don’t make time for it as often as I’d like. So, really, you’re doing me a favor, too. Keeping me company.”
Joan started walking to her Volkswagen, but Vanessa stopped her. “We can take my car,” she said. “You can just tell me where we’re going.”
“You’re sure? It’s a bit of a drive.”
“It will be nice,” Vanessa said. “Wait here, I’ll pull out of the garage.”
Joan grabbed her binoculars, telescope, and blanket out of the back of her car and then stood on the lawn and looked up at the sky as the sun began to set. It would be a good night to take a little sky tour around Hercules.
Vanessa backed out of the driveway in a cream convertible with a red interior.
“Wow,” Joan said, putting her things in the back.
Vanessa laughed. “I like cars.”
Joan opened the car door and got in. “It’s nice.”
Vanessa pulled away from the curb. “Where are we going?”
“Brazos Bend.”
“I don’t know it.”
“It’s far outside of town. But the view is incredible. Turn left here—we’re going to head to 288.”
As Vanessa’s car picked up speed, Joan’s hair began to float behind her, the wind on her shoulders.
“I used to take Frances there when she wouldn’t fall asleep.”
“How old is she, again?”
“She’s six now,” Joan said. “It was a long time ago. My sister would lose her mind after so many nights not sleeping and so I’d take Frances and just drive. Usually out to Brazos. Most of the time, she’d be asleep by the time we got to the park, but sometimes, she’d still be wide awake, so I’d lay her on a
blanket and show her the stars.”
“Raising the next generation of astronauts,” Vanessa said.
“Frances has said she wants to be an astronaut,” Joan said. “I don’t know if she really will, but it’s a nice idea that . . . you know . . .” Joan seized up, very aware of the lump in her throat. It’d snuck up on her.
“Girls today might look at us or the women in Group 8,” Vanessa said.
“And know they can do it, too.”
Joan looked at Vanessa as Vanessa watched the road. The wind ran through Vanessa’s hair. Joan had been trying to control hers, holding it back.
But Vanessa just let it fly. Joan put her hands down, let hers go.
“I mean, pretty soon, they are going to put a woman in space,” Vanessa said.
“Have you heard anything about who they might choose?”
“No,” Vanessa said. “You know how they are about that stuff. It’s like we’re not even supposed to admit we’re curious.”
The first American woman in space would be one of the women from Group 8, the first round that Joan had applied to, when she hadn’t been called back. She was grateful for it, in hindsight. Being the very first would have been so much to hold on her shoulders.
As they got onto the highway, the wind was too loud for either of them to say anything and so Joan closed her eyes and felt the air run over her.
“This is far,” Vanessa said once they took the exit and the wind quieted down.
“I know,” Joan said. “But trust me. It’s worth it.”
Vanessa kept her eyes on the road. “Donna and Hank are fucking, right?”
Joan’s shoulders came up to her ears. “I think they are sleeping together, yes. But I don’t care for that word.”
Vanessa laughed. “You’re a little bit of a prude.”
“No, I’m not,” Joan said, in a tone that she knew undercut her point.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” Vanessa asked.
Joan tried to think of something, but her mind was blank. “I mean, when I was six years old, I stole a pack of cards from the five-and-dime.” She could already tell it was a dud. “Forget that one—I ended up returning them
anyway.”
Vanessa smiled. “Okay, you can try again.”
“I let kids in high school cheat off my tests for about two months before I lost my patience and told them all to study on their own.”
“And which is the bad part? Cheating or eventually telling them no?”
Joan laughed. “Cheating! Obviously.”
Vanessa shook her head. “Sorry, try again. I’m asking you to look deep down in the ugly parts of your soul, Jo. Come on, now. What’s the thing you’re the most ashamed of having done?”
“I assume you’re going to answer, too?”
“Of course. I’ll go first if you want. I’ve got loads to choose from.”
“No, no, I’ll think of something.”
Joan was not sure why she was so willing. “Oh,” she said finally.
“You got it?”
“I . . . yes. I have the thing I regret the most,” Joan said. “I’m not sure how
terrible you’ll find it. But I do.”
“I’m ready.”
“When my sister was seventeen, I was home from college, and I heard her sneak out her window to go see some boy. I woke up my parents and told them. They pulled her back in the house and she was grounded for months.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“She’d gotten pregnant the year before. She’d miscarried early, before she’d even figured out she was pregnant. She never told our parents. I was worried it would happen again, and I didn’t know what else to do.”
Vanessa thought this over. “There were better ways to go about it, maybe.
But I don’t know . . .”
“You didn’t let me finish.”
“Oh, well then, by all means . . .”
“When my sister came to my room the next morning complaining about being grounded, I pretended I knew nothing about it. I told her Dad must have heard her climbing out the window.”
Vanessa raised her eyebrow and bit her lip. “Why not tell the truth?”
“Barbara is . . . very delicate. If you so much as look at her the wrong way,
she might just say the worst things you can think of. And mean each and every one of them. We all just tiptoe around her. We always have. I am not . . . I am not honest with her. Maybe ever. I don’t even know what that would look like. And I hate it about myself.”
Vanessa put her hand on Joan’s shoulder.
“Forget I said that. You go,” Joan said.
Vanessa stopped at the red light. “Wait, I feel like there is a lot to discuss
there.”
“No, no, you go. Please.”
“Okay.” Vanessa shifted her head from side to side. “Oh, what to pick, what to pick. There are so many. Even as a teenager,” Vanessa said, “I stole money out of the vending machines by taking them apart. I hot-wired a car for a friend of mine. I drank too much. I slept around.”
That last one made Joan take her eyes off the red light to look at Vanessa.
She turned back only when she remembered herself.
“I did too many drugs.”
“Drugs? What drugs?”
“I smoked pot at first, did LSD.” Vanessa looked at her and considered whether to go on. “Tried heroin.”
The sound Joan made was somewhere between a gasp and a gulp.
The light turned green, and Vanessa pressed her foot on the gas. Suddenly Joan hated the way her own confession had sounded coming out of her mouth.
“Please don’t read too much into my story,” Joan said. They were
approaching the park.
“What do you mean?”
“About ratting out my sister. Just . . . please don’t think that I can’t be trusted, or I ruin people’s fun, or I’m a coward, or anything like that. I’m
not.”
“I know.”
“Okay, it’s just, with my sister, it was . . . I always feel like I’m trying to do the right thing and getting it wrong. I don’t know why I told you that story. You’re right, I am a prude. And always early. And all the things you think I am.”
“I don’t think of you any differently than I did when you got in the car,”
Vanessa said. “You are what you are, and I like what you are. Anyway, nobody is one thing all the time. Maybe you’ve been a Goody Two-shoes up until now. But anything can happen,” she said, laughing, as she pulled into the parking lot. “The night is young, and you’re out with a bad girl.”
It was dark now, with hundreds of stars visible. They put down a blanket, and Joan set up the telescope as Vanessa stood on the grass and stared up at the sky.
“We might be up there one day,” she said.
Joan looked through the eyepiece. “I know.” She could show Vanessa the constellations without it. But the truth was, Joan relished any moment to show people certain stars up close. How else could she tempt them to fall in love? Joan got Rasalgethi, the head of Hercules, into view. She looked at
Vanessa.
“Okay, come look.”
Vanessa moved over Joan’s shoulder, and Joan backed away to give Vanessa a chance to look. As Vanessa brushed up against her, Joan noticed that she smelled like baby powder. Joan now felt gauche, wearing perfume.
Vanessa peered into the eyepiece.
“That is Alpha Herculis, or Rasalgethi, which is Arabic for ‘Head of the Kneeler.’ It’s almost four hundred years into the past you’re looking. It appears to be one star to the naked eye, but it’s—”
“Is it a binary?”
“It’s actually a triple star system.”
“Okay.”
“Hercules has no first- or second-magnitude stars, so it’s a great place to start expanding your celestial landmarks. It’s not like Lyra or Cygnus, or even something like Boötes or Auriga, which we can see tonight on the horizon. Hercules doesn’t have a bright star that draws your eye to it. Though a lot of the stars are magnitude four, which is decent. The brightest star is actually called Beta Herculis, not Alpha. Don’t get me started on that.”
Vanessa laughed, and Joan gently pulled her away from the telescope.
“Can you see Rasalgethi now with your eyes? As I point to it?”
Vanessa’s sight line followed Joan’s finger. Joan watched Vanessa’s face
for any sign of recognition.
“I think so,” Vanessa says.
“Okay, now to the right and farther toward the zenith, you should see a star a little brighter than Rasalgethi—do you see it?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“That’s Beta Herc, also known as Kornephoros—the ‘club bearer.’ Now we’re looking at Hercules upside down. Rasalgethi represents the head and Kornephoros one of his shoulders. From there, you should be able to make out the four stars that are the torso. They are called the Keystone asterism.
One star at each point of his shoulders and hips. With two arms coming off it.
The one off of Kornephoros goes up, almost like he’s throwing a football.
The other arm goes out to the side, as if he’s pointing.”
“I can see that,” Vanessa said.
“All right, so follow it down, you’ve got his pelvis, in this asterism there, and then two legs.”
“He looks like he’s running,” Vanessa said, smiling.
“Exactly. He’s standing or dancing—or, as most commonly interpreted, kneeling—on Draco’s head. Draco being the representation of the dragon Ladon, who Hercules defeated outside the garden of Hesperides.”
Vanessa took her eyes off the sky. “Placed there by Zeus, I assume.
Almost all the constellations are placed by Zeus.”
Joan smiled. “Well, most of the northern constellations. At least in Western cultures. They say that when Hercules—or Heracles, I should say, since that was the Greek name—was poisoned by Hydra’s venom, the human part of him died but the immortal part of him joined his father and the other gods on Mount Olympus. And Zeus had the image of both him and Draco placed in the night sky, to honor him.”
Vanessa looked at Joan. “The mythology always struck me as a little trivial.”
“Oh, no. I disagree. That’s part of what I love about astronomy. When we learn about the constellations, we also learn how earlier generations made sense of the world. The stars are connected to so many other elements of our life. It’s the gray areas that are most fascinating: ‘Is this astronomy or
history?’ ‘Is this time or space?’ ”
Vanessa looked back up at the sky. “I can still see it—Hercules. Now that you’ve pointed it out, I can see it so clearly. And then just beyond it is Ursa Major and then Ursa Minor, with Polaris.”
Joan nodded. “That’s what made me fall in love with astronomy as a kid,” she said. “That the night sky is a map, and once you know how to read it, it will always be there. You’ll never be lost.”
Vanessa smiled at her. And it made something in Joan want to keep talking. “I’ve always felt like, when I look at the stars, I am reminded that I
am never alone,” she said.
“Really?” Vanessa said. “How?”
“Well, we are the stars,” Joan said. “And the stars are us. Every atom in our bodies was once out there. Was once a part of them. To look at the night sky is to look at parts of who you once were, who you may one day be.” As she said it, Joan could tell how lonely it must sound. To find companionship with the stars. But what she meant was bigger than that.
Being human was such a lonely endeavor. We alone have consciousness; we are the only intelligent life force that we know of in the galaxy. We have no one but one another. Joan was always moved by the fact that everything— all matter on Earth and beyond, up past the atmosphere, going as far as the edges of the universe, as it expands farther and farther away from us—is made from the same elements. We are made of the same things as the stars and the planets. Remembering that connection brought Joan comfort. It also brought her some sense of responsibility. And what was kinship but that?
Comfort and responsibility. “It sounds stupid, I know,” she said.
“No,” Vanessa said. “It doesn’t. It’s fascinating. I love hearing why you became an astronomer. I don’t know if I have that clarity.”
“About why you wanted to be a pilot?”
“I mean, what am I doing at NASA? I know they want me because I’m an aeronautical engineer. But that’s my day job. The real me is a pilot. That’s who I am. And they won’t let me fly the shuttle.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, actually. I got into a fight about it with Antonio when everyone went up in the T-38s for the first time.”
“Oh.”
“They won’t let me get fully checked out in the T-38 because I’m a commercial pilot, not military. So I’ll always be a backseater. And if I can’t fly the T-38, they won’t let me fly the shuttle. I signed up as a mission specialist. I get that. But I did think that it would be open for discussion, at least. That once they saw what I could do, it would be something to work toward. Which was naïve, in hindsight. They said that they absolutely cannot
bend or change the rules.”
“That’s not true,” Joan said.
“What’s not true?”
“They have excused the college-degree requirement for certain members of the military. So why can’t they excuse the military requirement for certain civilians?”
Vanessa looked at her. “I mean, you already know the answer.”
Joan frowned. “Why didn’t you join the military?”
“Women couldn’t join the military as pilots, and now NASA will only take military pilots. Ergo, women can’t be NASA pilots. It’s a nice little work- around they’ve got themselves there. It’s not like I could go to the Naval
Academy, like my father did.”
“Your father was in the military?”
“He flew in the Korean War.” Vanessa looked up at the sky. “I think most of my life I’ve been both drawn to and terrified of the idea of being just like him.”
Before Joan could respond, Vanessa said, “Will you show me another one?”
“Of course.” Joan gazed through the scope and set it on the next star, far out along the horizon line. “Do you see Scorpius just with your eye? It looks like, well, a scorpion or maybe a fishhook. Try to find the bright star that has a bit of a reddish hue.”
“I see it—looks a bit like Mars, right?”
“It does. It’s a red giant star, Antares. Ant-Ares. Rival of Ares, the Greek name for Mars. Here, I have it in the viewfinder.”
Vanessa leaned in. “Okay, I see it.”
“Now come look at the sky. It’s low in the distance.”
Vanessa pulled back, Joan now right behind her shoulder. Joan pointed toward Antares and then out. “Antares is in the body of the scorpion, with two stars flanking it. Behind it is the tail. It creates an S shape. But on the other side of Antares are three stars in a line. Those represent the head and
the claws. Do you see those?”
“I’m not sure.”
Joan stood closer behind her, trying to align their eyes as much as she could. She pointed again.
“I see them,” Vanessa said. And then she was quiet as she looked further.
“I see the whole thing, the whole scorpion now.” And then: “My father died flying an F9F Panther over Sui-ho Dam. I didn’t mention that part.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I was six.”
“I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.”
Vanessa turned back to the stars. “What is the cluster of stars between Hercules and Scorpius? It is not Sagittarius, right?”
“It does look a little like Sagittarius, but Sagittarius is smaller and closer to the horizon. That’s Ophiuchus,” Joan said. “It almost looks like a rounded triangle—as a kid, I thought it looked like a stingray. But it’s said to be a god holding or fighting off snakes. It might even represent the Mesopotamian serpent-god Nirah. Try to find the two winding arms coming off each side.”
“Okay.”
“Did your mother remarry?” Joan asked.
Vanessa nodded, softly, as she looked. “About a year later.”
“And you didn’t like him?”
“I see them. Those are the Serpens, right?”
“Very good.”
“I liked him fine. He’s a nice enough guy. Taught me to drive a car.”
“But he wasn’t your dad.”
“Hard to compete with a war hero.”
“Sure.”
Vanessa looked at Joan. “Sometimes I don’t know if I knew my dad or I just created a man out of thin air, as a god to pray to.”
“Well.” Joan sat down on the blanket. She opened the cooler and grabbed a beer. “Maybe it’s both and maybe that’s okay.”
Vanessa joined her, and Joan handed the beer over, grabbing another one.
“I made chicken salad,” Vanessa said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“More than okay,” Joan said, pulling out the sandwiches. “It’s so thoughtful.”
Joan took a bite and realized, at that moment, how hungry she was. “This is very good.”
Vanessa shrugged. “I dry-poached the chicken, and I put a lot of tarragon in the chicken salad. I think that’s the big thing. That, and people never use
enough salt.”
“It’s so good.”
Vanessa laughed and took a sip of her beer. “I’m glad you like it. I really
appreciate you doing this. Helping me.”
“It’s nothing,” Joan said.
“You only think that because of how you are,” Vanessa said.
Joan took another sip of her beer, and the thought went through her mind that everything about this moment was perfect. The breeze that cut the humidity, the salty chicken salad, the cold beer, the stars.
“Tell me more about your dad,” Joan said. “If you want to.”
Vanessa looked away. She picked at the bread on her sandwich, which she had yet to touch. “You know how I was talking about bravery versus
courage?”
Joan nodded.
“I always thought he was really courageous. That he must have been. And kind, and quiet. Just based on the stories my mom and uncles told me. He died doing something very few people could do. And he gave up his life to do it, to serve his country. I hope he felt conflicted about it. I hope he knew that he was needed back home. But I think he did it. . . . I think he flew that jet with a sense of duty. So, in that way, I think or I hope that he was okay that that’s how he went.”
Joan reached out and touched her shoulder. Vanessa looked at her, surprised. And Joan pulled her hand away, unsure of what line she’d crossed.
“How old was he?” Joan asked. “When he died.”
“Thirty-eight.”
“So young.”
“It seemed so old to me when I was little.”
“So he’s why you became a pilot,” Joan said.
Vanessa sighed. “I think he’s why I did a lot of things, honestly. Lashed out at my mom, cut school. I gravitated toward people I knew were bad news.
I remember knowing exactly how stupid it was, what I was doing, and doing
it anyway.”
“You were lost.”
“I don’t think I was lost. I think I was trying to lose myself.”
Joan nodded.
“I’m assuming that’s where the heroin comes in?”
Vanessa laughed. “It’s not funny, but it is funny hearing it come out of
your mouth.”
Joan threw her napkin at her.
“I think I just wanted to feel something other than sad,” Vanessa said.
Joan did not look away. “Did it work?”
Vanessa inhaled. “Yes, that’s the problem. If you find a way to make yourself absolutely terrified, there’s no room for any other feeling.”
Joan nodded. “Makes sense.”
Vanessa laughed. “You’re the first person to tell me I’m making sense.”
Joan laughed, too. “Well, maybe people aren’t listening. But it makes perfect sense to me. You make yourself afraid so you don’t feel sad. But the more you put yourself in terrifying situations, the braver you become. So you have to put yourself in more and more danger until . . .” Joan regarded Vanessa expectantly. “Until what? Tell me. How did you stop?”
Vanessa considered this. “I don’t know. My uncle Bill—my dad’s best friend from the navy—never gave up on me. I think that was part of it. I remember turning eight years old and asking for a model plane for my birthday. My mom didn’t get it for me. But that night, Bill came over with one. He used to take me out in his prop plane. My mom and I would be in some huge fight, and she’d call Bill and he’d come over and ask if I wanted to go flying. I think I was seventeen when he pushed me to fly by myself.
And when I did, I just . . .” She laughed. “At first I thought I had just found something dangerous that was more fun than stealing or having sex . . .”
Joan blushed and looked at her hands.
“But that wasn’t it,” Vanessa said. “I think flying that plane, glancing at the ground below me, watching the horizon ahead . . . it was the first time I remember feeling . . . peace.”
Vanessa relaxed back on the blanket, her hair spread all around her, and looked up at the stars. Joan, after a moment, joined her.
“That’s Cygnus, right?” Vanessa said.
Joan moved closer, following her finger as she pointed to the sky. “Yeah, very good.”
“I only know it because of Deneb,” Vanessa said.
“Still, it’s harder to spot when there are so many stars in the sky, like tonight. Easier in the city,” Joan said. “There are a lot of stories about it, but my favorite is that Orpheus was transformed into a swan after he was murdered and placed next to his lyre, which is Lyra, right next to Cygnus.”
“I’m going to guess he was placed there by Zeus,” Vanessa said.
Joan laughed. “You know, I’m not sure. It could have been Apollo. But, yeah, I mean, for much of recorded history, humans have looked at the stars and believed there are gods up there.”
Joan did not believe there were gods up there, but she did believe that God was there. Was everywhere. The wonder of the night sky was as good a place to connect with it as the smell of a grapefruit or the warmth of a pocket of sun.
“Of course we look for the gods there,” Vanessa said. “And if we make it up there, we’re going to have to fight against that sneaking suspicion that we might just be gods ourselves.”
If Joan could have been pressed harder into the Earth, if gravity was variable, this would have flattened her.
Did Vanessa know that, on some level, Joan could not resist the idea that to go up there would be to touch God? That Joan could not help but wonder if, among the stars, there would be answers to questions no human had yet found?
It seemed so clear to Joan, as crazy as it might be, that the meaning of life
had to be up there, somewhere.
Joan had rescheduled Frances’s sleepovers the past few weeks because, for a short period of time during the training, all of the ASCANs had to hop into a fleet of T-38s and travel all over the United States, visiting NASA centers and contractors.
They visited the Kennedy Space Center to see the launchpads and Boeing to tour the facility and boost morale. They went to the Goddard Space Flight Center and Edwards Air Force Base. Soon they would tour Marshall, to check out the development of the shuttle rockets and payloads.
Joan began to see firsthand what being in the astronaut corps, even as candidates, meant in the eyes of the public. They gave talks at schools all over Houston and were met by reporters as they stepped off the bus. Every person they came in contact with seemed to stand a little straighter in their presence and regarded them with a respect that Joan had never received before. Most people’s smiles were a little more intense, when Joan shook their hand, than she had expected. It wasn’t personal. It was the aura of being an astronaut. It was the promise she held. That one day, anyone who shook her hand might be able to say with pride, “I met her.”
After a while, Joan started standing a little straighter, too.
This Friday night, Joan handed Frances a magnet from Washington, D.C., where she had gone with the ASCANs and some astronauts to meet lawmakers at a state dinner. Joan had not said much at the event. She let some less reserved members of the group take center stage. But she was surprised to see just how easy it was for Lydia to step into the spotlight. Joan watched as she explained the mechanics of the space shuttle to a senator with such focus and verve that Joan realized Lydia could be a very good instructor one day, long after her astronaut career was over.
“I also got you a replica of the Apollo LEM, but it shattered in my bag on the way back,” Joan told Frances.
“You skipped two Fridays in a row,” Barbara said. “We miss you.”
“I missed you, too. But I will be here for the next few weeks, all right? So no one needs to worry about me being away for a little while.”
Frances ate her Chinese food. “And I can come over every week again?”
“If she can find time in her very busy schedule,” Barbara said.
Joan tried to catch her eye, but Barbara wasn’t looking at her.
“Okay,” Frances said.
Frances never pushed Joan, never tried to make her feel guilty. Joan was not sure if that was because Frances was nothing like Barbara, or if she just hadn’t figured out the power she held yet. But there was something about Frances that made Joan believe she was better—held more goodness—than anyone she had ever met. That kind of faith was a lot to put on a six-year-old girl. Joan tried to keep it in check. To be ready to accept all the ways that Frances would grow and change and blossom into her full imperfection.
Joan would love her no matter what. Even if she grew up to be exactly like Barbara. Joan would love her then, too. Without hesitation. Whether she had to work at it or not, she would do it forever.
“We learned about gravity in school,” Frances said. “My teacher said that astronauts float, and I told her she was wrong. I said, ‘My aunt is an
astronaut, and she doesn’t float.’ ”
“Frances, that’s not—” Barbara started.
Joan looked at Frances. “You’re right, I don’t. But if I go up into space, I
will.”
“You’ll float?”
“Have they taught you yet in school how gravity works?”
“It pushes us down?”
“It pulls us. Everything that has mass has some amount of gravitational pull. So think about this— Actually, wait, come with me.”
Joan got up from the table and walked into her bedroom, looking for something heavy. She wanted a bowling ball but settled for a few rolls of quarters. She tore the comforter off her bed.
“What are you doing?” Barbara said. Frances was smiling.
“Okay, look.” Joan threw the rolls of quarters onto the mattress. “The quarters are heavy, right? They have mass.”
Frances nodded, but then Barbara did, too, and it stopped Joan for a second.
“Okay, look at the mattress over here,” Joan said, pointing to an empty space. “It’s flat. It’s a flat plane, right?”
“Right,” Barbara said.
“But look over here, by the quarters,” Joan said. She pointed to the indentation the quarters made in the mattress, the way the rolls sank into the mattress around them in a circle. “If the mattress is the fabric of space, do you see how the mass of the quarters bends the space around it? It’s creating gravity. Hold on.”
She searched in her freezer and found a bag of peas. She opened it up and took one out and returned to Barbara and Frances.
“So if I put a pea where it’s flat, what happens?”
“Nothing,” Frances said.
“Right, it stays put. Nothing near it has enough mass to pull it anywhere.
But now,” Joan said, placing a pea just outside the quarters. “What happens when I put one within the gravitational force of the quarters?”
The pea rolled toward the quarters.
“It rolls.”
“It’s being pulled,” Joan said. “Right.”
“So the quarters are the Earth, and we are the pea,” Barbara said.
Joan nodded. “Yep, the pea is all of us and all the trees and all the dust and all the dirt and every animal and all the—”
“We get it.”
“Okay, sure,” Joan said. “So right now, we’re the pea right here. If I get chosen to go up into space one day, I’ll be the pea here.”
She put it back on the flat plane of the mattress. “Nothing will be pulling me down, at least not at the rate that Earth can. So if I’m not being pulled toward the Earth, what’s going to happen?”
“You’re gonna float,” Frances said.
“I’m gonna float.”
They called it the Vomit Comet—a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker. It was designed as a refueler, but at NASA, it had a much different job. It was a cargo plane—with no seats, only padding—used to simulate weightlessness.
With the ASCANs as passengers, the pilot would fly a series of parabolas that would lift the ASCANs into the air with extra gravitational forces, then
lower them back down, allowing them to enter free fall. In between these moments of intense lift and fall, there were pockets of time—less than a minute—in which the ASCANs would float in midair.
The parabolas, when executed properly, simulated microgravity.
They also made a lot of people sick. Especially Joan.
On the KC-135 with Lydia, Hank, Teddy, and Jimmy, Joan seemed to be the only one calculating how quickly she could grab the barf bag from her pocket.
It was her first time on the plane, and they were approaching the third moment of weightlessness. The first two times, she had barely kept her food down. Putting on her blue flight suit that morning, she had felt like an astronaut. But now, as she lay flat on the floor of the aircraft as it ascended again, she felt like a child.
“Maybe we should land so Joan can get off.” Lydia was seated in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest. “She seems a little pale.”
Joan wanted so badly to understand Lydia. She always corrected everyone, always had some way to cut Joan or Donna or Vanessa down. But even if it was a competitive strategy, there was no need for it. Lydia was already a clear favorite of Antonio’s—Donna and Joan had seen Antonio out with Lydia and Griff for dinner more than once. And she was picking up every class lesson quickly, not just those in her field of study. If anyone was pulling ahead of the class, it was Lydia.
“I am fine, Lydia, thank you,” Joan said.
Jimmy huffed. “She’ll have to be a big girl.”
“I said, I’ve got it,” Joan said.
Jimmy put his hands up as if she were about to shoot.
She tried not to roll her eyes, or he’d make a comment about that, too. But he didn’t have to say anything else. The subtext was clear: This is why women don’t belong on the shuttle. Last week, he’d asked Lydia if she was going to be bitchy if she got her period in space. Lydia had laughed, and Joan had had to clench her jaw to keep it shut.
“I almost puked my first time,” Hank said to Joan. “No shame in it.”
Joan closed her eyes. Bless Hank for trying. But she did not need to be consoled, either. She just needed everyone to shut up.
As the plane began to rise once more, Joan felt the air gain heft underneath her, and her stomach somersaulted.
Her body rose into the air. As she lifted farther, Joan closed her eyes like she had all of the other times. She’d thought that weightlessness would feel like floating in a pool. But to her, it felt more like being thrashed around in the ocean. She braced against it, but that didn’t work. She tried to think of it differently, to remember the times she’d swum past the breakers and felt the ocean lift her briefly as the waves surged and then gently brought her back down. She thought of being in the ocean with Barbara as a kid, the way Barbara had clung to her, and Joan would tell her she was okay.
Her stomach began to roil.
Joan gave up on that idea and opened her eyes. She looked at her legs and pulled them into her chest. Her stomach calmed.
“You’re gettin’ it,” Hank said.
Seconds later, the plane began to level out, but she kept her eyes open. As the weight of the air landed on her back, she looked at Jimmy. He was holding on to the padding on the side of the plane, and as he began to drop, his eyes went wide and blinked over and over again, his chest rising and falling rapidly as his breath became shallow.
Joan realized he was terrified.
And it did not excuse his attitude. But she understood, finally.
Jimmy had been told from a young age that fear and failing and trying and wanting and openness and kindness and sincerity made him weak. And because he had believed it, he’d learned to suppress all of those things. And when he saw those traits in others, he hated them because he hated himself.
Jimmy was hiding. That’s what Jimmy was doing. Lydia was, too— because she was trying to prove she could be like Jimmy. And Joan was falling for it.
She was trying to prove that she could be just like a man to all of them. To Jimmy. To Lydia. Because the world had decided that to be soft was to be weak, even though in Joan’s experience being soft and flexible was always more durable than being hard and brittle. Admitting you were afraid always took more guts than pretending you weren’t. Being willing to make a mistake got you further than never trying. The world had decided that to be fallible was weak. But we are all fallible. The strong ones are the ones who accept it.
Joan had let men like Jimmy set the terms.
But the terms were false, even to him. He was just as scared as anybody else.
Bravery, Joan suspected, is almost always a lie. Courage is all we have.
She didn’t want to lower herself to the game men played.
As the plane turned toward the sky, her stomach dropped hard and fast before her torso caught up.
Joan grabbed the barf bag from her pocket. And puked.
“Who wants another beer?” Hank called out from his kitchen at just after eleven o’clock on New Year’s Eve. His high-end stereo was blaring the Eagles. It was supposed to be a small party, but as word spread, more and more of the astronauts arrived. Hank’s place was now packed. Harrison and Marty had already made two additional runs for more beers and ice.
Someone made a joke about needing to turn water into wine. But to Joan, it felt more like high school juniors getting incredibly excited when the seniors showed up.
Griff called out, “Another round for everybody!” and everyone cheered.
Joan downed the rest of her bottle. She was two beers deep in a buzz that felt less like the consequence of the alcohol and more like the genuine promise of 1981.
The first shuttle mission was scheduled for just over three months away.
Originally predicted to launch as early as 1977, the inaugural orbital flight had been delayed multiple times. The development of the shuttle had not been without its challenges. There were issues with the main engines during testing. The shuttle’s complicated carbon and silica thermal tiles were so temperamental that entire portions of them had repeatedly fallen off. But the engineers kept at it.
Two days ago, the space shuttle Columbia had left the Vehicle Assembly Building to be ushered over to the launchpad at Kennedy Space Center.
STS-1 was on the horizon.
Hank was pulling bottles out of the coolers and ice buckets and passing them around as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
One of the many things Joan had learned during their flights was that Hank was the recipient of a very large trust fund. It was a fact that Hank wore with complexity.
He had mentioned it on one of their flights, after they’d landed in Nevada somewhere and were getting a bite to eat at a roadside stand. Joan had asked him why he’d joined the military in the first place.
“I think I wanted to do something no man in my family had done before,” he’d said, biting into his sandwich.
“No one in your family served in either of the World Wars? Or even
Vietnam?”
Hank shook his head. “They found a way out.”
Joan raised her eyebrows. “And here you are,” she said. “About to fly to
space with your own two hands.”
“God willing, I suppose so.”
It was easier and easier for Joan to understand why Donna would love him.
But the further she got into her training, the harder it got for Joan to understand why Donna would tie herself down to someone at all.
“My father is a mathematician,” Joan told Hank. “Very left-brained and analytical. So I’m not sure I fell as far from the tree as you did.”
“But I bet your mother was a homemaker,” Hank said.
“She was, she is,” Joan said.
“So you’ve carved a new path for yourself, too.”
“Yeah, maybe that is true.” Joan finished her sandwich. “Hey, I wanted to
say thank you.”
“What for?”
“It’s not easy to get a pilot to give consistent time to us backseaters,” Joan
said.
Hank nodded.
“I know you’re helping out Donna, too,” she added, and then, so he didn’t have to respond, she kept going: “Vanessa’s got Steve, but Lydia, Harrison, and Griff aren’t having an easy time getting their hours in. So I just wanted to say thank you. You’ve been a great teacher.”
Hank smiled. “Well, I’m glad for it. I enjoy these rides with you, Goodwin.
You’re one of the good nerds.”
Joan laughed.
“No, I mean it,” Hank said. “A lot of these eggheads have come in here and acted like they’re smarter than everyone else. And talking to that Marty fellow requires propping your eyes open with toothpicks. But you—you’re easy to talk to. And you’re trying. I’m on the other side of it, tryin’ like hell, too. My mother always said, ‘I like a try-hard.’ I agree with her. I like somebody scrappy. Man or woman, I don’t care.” Joan detected that Hank was affording himself a sense of magnanimity with this statement, but she let it go. “You’re scrappy, Goodwin. I’ll always stick my neck out for that.”
Joan smiled. “Well, thank you. I hope you know that I feel the same about you. If you need anything, I hope you’ll ask.”
Hank nodded and put his hand in his jacket pocket.
“I do have something for you, partner,” Hank said.
Joan laughed. “Oh?”
At that moment, Hank pulled out his aviator sunglasses and put them on.
He then pulled out another pair for her.
“Pilot to pilot,” he said. “You need to look the part.”
Joan took them and laughed. “Oh, this is great,” she said. She slipped them on and then tightened her face, clenched her jaw, and removed all hint of a
smile from her face.
“Atta girl!” Hank said.
Joan put her helmet on and, later, took over the controls as they flew home.
She got them back to the base, and then Hank took over and landed them.
After she had gotten in her car to drive home that day, she’d picked up the glasses again and put them on. When she had looked in the mirror, it had no longer seemed like a joke.
“Coors Light for Goodwin,” Griff said now, as he handed Joan a beer.
Everyone beat their hands on the tables to thank Hank for circulating another round. Joan started moving through the crowd toward an open window for some air.
She watched as Donna hung back, across the room from Hank. Vanessa was laughing with Steve about something, and Joan wondered what it could be that made Vanessa laugh that hard. She wondered if maybe Vanessa had a thing for Steve.
“Do you think Hank’s in the lead to get the first assignment out of our group?” Lydia asked. Joan had not realized Lydia was behind her.
Vanessa caught Joan’s eye and smiled. Joan instinctually looked away. Did Vanessa know how beautiful she was? Her beauty seemed so obvious to Joan, but no one ever reacted to Vanessa the way they reacted to most beautiful women.
“Are you listening to me, Goodwin?” Lydia asked. “Hank seems like the favorite out of the Group 9 pilots, don’t you think?”
Joan turned to her. Lydia was dressed for a party—she was wearing a blue
dress and the sides of her hair were pulled back with two tortoiseshell combs —but her eyes were narrow, her lips pursed tight. Joan realized that being at a party and partying were two different things. “I don’t know,” Joan said.
“It’s hard to gauge.”
Once NASA had one successful shuttle mission, they were going to start scheduling many more. Everyone wanted to be chosen for a crew as soon as possible.
Already there seemed to be an unspoken hierarchy emerging, with favorites and leaders, long shots and outsiders.
Hank, Teddy, Duke, and Jimmy were training to fly chase—to be the pilots who guided the shuttle to the landing site once it reentered the atmosphere.
Vanessa and Griff were spending a lot of time in the dunk tank, experimenting with what was possible on spacewalks.
Lydia and Harrison had been added to the team working on the thermal protection system—the shuttle’s complex protective skin of tiles and blankets —which meant they had the most hands-on time with the spacecraft itself.
And Donna, Marty, and Joan had been assigned to Spacelab, an orbital science laboratory designed by NASA’s European counterparts.
Donna was studying the effects of weightlessness on the human body, for which Joan was immensely grateful. She was still puking in microgravity.
Joan, herself, was preparing for ultraviolet and X-ray astronomical observations from space. She’d helped design experiments for a set of planned solar instruments, and soon would begin making calls to geologists and physicists she’d known in her time in academia to get their ideas about potential shuttle experiments in those fields, too.
Despite how necessary each of these jobs was, Antonio was partial to certain people in Group 9, and he showed it. He favored Lydia, Griff, Harrison, and Hank. He gave them more scheduled time on the most relevant and urgent skills that one would need to fly.
So, yes, Hank probably was the favorite of the pilots. But this was not something Joan was particularly interested in talking about at 11:30 on the last day of the year, when everyone was trying to—for one small moment of their lives—let go.
“I think Hank will get assigned first,” Lydia said.
“Can we talk about this another time?”
Lydia sighed. “Sorry for trying to remain focused on the objective.”
“I’m just saying that you could back off a little,” Joan said.
“Do you honestly not realize that everyone here is clocking everyone else?
That Antonio is going to hear about everything that happens here tonight?
Someone gets drunk and passes out in the bathroom and trust me, all of JSC is going to hear about it and there’ll be a little mark next to their name.”
Joan knew this was true for all of them, herself included. Who she was, what she did in her spare time, how she chose to conduct herself . . . it all mattered. It would be weighed in terms of passing training and would be a factor in what roles she was assigned. It would no doubt be considered when —or if—they put her on a mission.
“Look, Joan, you want to get up there as much as I do. So do Donna and Vanessa. And you know damn well they aren’t going to put two of us on a mission together at first. They are going to assign one woman at a time, because we’re novelties to them still. We’re not the same as a male astronaut until one of us or two of us or even three of us have gone up there and proven that we are. So if I want to get assigned, it means I have to wait out all of the women in Group 8, most likely. And then I have to make sure Antonio chooses me over you or Donna or Vanessa. So go ahead and blow off steam and take your eye off the ball—I don’t care. Because the first crew assignment for our class, you can bet your ass I’m going to be on it. If it means I need to curry favor with Hank so he wants me to be on his crew, I will. Especially because I know he’s more likely to push for Donna, since they’re sleeping together.”
There was nothing Lydia was saying that Joan didn’t already know.
“Lydia, you have to do what you have to do,” Joan said. “Just leave me alone tonight, please.”
“I really don’t get you, Joan,” Lydia said.
“What’s not to get?”
“I see you working harder than almost anybody else out there except me,”
Lydia said. “You’re up in the T-38s all the time, you’re puking in microgravity and going right back up the moment they give you a chance, you’re studying like hell for these classes, asking more questions than anybody. When the astronauts are running the simulations, you’re always there in Mission Control, always watching, keeping notes, just like I am. You
look like you’re just as desperate to get into that seat as I am. The only other thing you have to focus on is politics, and you’re not doing it.”
Lydia was right about the simulations. They weren’t letting any of the ASCANs on them yet, but whenever Joan heard that any of the astronaut crews were doing one, she made sure to be there. She watched as the simulation supervisors threw every possible problem at them. It was one of her favorite parts of the job, being on that floor, watching it all unfold.
One of the jets starts leaking and you don’t understand how to close the manifold while properly accounting for the other lost jets? The crew dies.
One, two, three buses go down and you can’t figure out if you’ve lost critical redundancies in time to act? The crew dies.
A radiator inside the payload bay doors has a blockage at the same time the flash evaporator is low on water, which means the heat of the spacecraft is not dispersing, and you can’t fix it? The orbiter burns up and the crew dies.
Any one of the ASCANs who was chosen would be putting their lives in the hands of their fellow crew members and everyone down in Mission Control. Hank, she knew, would do anything to save her life. Donna, she was confident, would, too. Griff would. Vanessa surely would.
Would Lydia?
It suddenly seemed too full of risk to ignore Lydia. Or Jimmy. Or Marty, or any of the ASCANs she didn’t get along with. Success would be found together or not at all.
“Hear me out, Lydia,” Joan said. She grabbed an unopened beer from the cooler next to them and handed it to Lydia. “You’re not just an astronaut—do
you get that?”
“Well, not yet,” Lydia said.
“No, I mean . . . this isn’t all that you are.”
Lydia looked at Joan as if she were the stupidest person she’d ever met.
“Come on,” Joan said. “You have hobbies.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You have friends.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“You have your family.”
“My parents like my brother’s wife more than me. They all go on skiing trips together and don’t invite me. My dad still hangs out with my ex- husband.”
“I bet it’s because you’re too . . .” Joan hiccuped and covered her mouth.
“Busy.”
Lydia frowned and gave up. “Sure.”
Joan took the beer back out of Lydia’s hand and opened it.
“What are you doing, Goodwin?”
“The clock is going to strike midnight soon. I’m not going to kiss anybody —are you?”
Lydia glared at her. “Do you see any man knocking down my door?”
“Right, okay. So have a beer with me. We can ring in the new year together. You need to take a load off for a moment.”
Lydia inhaled sharply and then took the beer. “Just until midnight.”
“Great: for fourteen minutes, try to calm down, and then you can go right back to shoving coal up your butt and pulling out diamonds.”
Joan was drunk. Even she knew it now. But it was fun! She should do this more often. Why had she spent so much time with her nose in a book up until now? She liked going to parties!
Lydia stared at her. “That wasn’t funny.”