Page 89 of Atmosphere

“No!” Frances said, growing angry. “I don’t want them on top. I want them all throughout, like my mom makes.”

“Franny, I can’t put the chocolate chips in now,” Joan said. “They’ve already set.”

“Why did you do that?” Frances yelled. “Why would you ruin them?”

“I didn’t mean to,” Joan said. “You know that.”

“You just don’t want me to have them!”

“I do want you to have them, babe. But there’s nothing I can do.”

“Make them again, then!”

“Frances, please calm down.”

“I can’t calm down! I don’t want to calm down! I want you to put the chocolate chips in them!”

And then Frances swung her foot from the stool she was on at the kitchen counter, directly into Joan’s shin.

“Frances!”

Frances did it again.

Joan stared at her, completely shocked. Frances burst into tears.

At NASA, Joan’s job was preparing for every single possibility. It was a system built to eliminate unknown variables. In her work life, she had never felt morepreparedand ready to face disaster.

But all Frances had to do was kick her in the shin, and Joan had no idea what to do.

She bent down to Frances’s eye level as Frances continued to scream.

“I want my mom! She knows how to do it! You don’t know anything!” Frances began to flail her arms around and shoved her homework folder onto the floor.

Joan did not know what to do except lean over and put her arms around Frances, holding her tight against her body.

“Stop it!” Frances screamed at her. “Let me go.”

Joan didn’t. She held Frances as Frances thrashed against her. Joan was quiet and steady. Eventually, Frances relaxed into Joan and stopped yelling. She began to cry into Joan’s shoulder. When she finally stopped, Joan pulled back and looked at her tears.

Frances’s face was flushed, her eyelids swollen. But when Frances turned her gaze up from the floor, it was her eyes that gripped Joan.

Supposedly, children are resilient. But Joan suspected this was merely something we tell ourselves because we are terrified they are just as delicate as we are.

Joan put her thumb to Frances’s cheek and softly wiped her tears away.

Frances did not say much after that. She never ate the Rice Krispies treats. But the two of them watched TV together until it was time for Frances to go to bed.

Frances got into the shower and bathed on her own.

Joan lay down on Frances’s bed. As the shower ran, she looked up at the plastic stars on Frances’s ceiling. They were disorderly, those stars. They had no relation to the actual night sky.

There was nothing she knew to do except take every single star down off that ceiling.

When Frances came out of the bathroom in an oversized T-shirt, her hair wet, Joan was still on the stepladder.

“What are you doing?” she asked Joan.

Joan got down. “Turn off the light,” she said.

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