Page 62 of Atmosphere

“I know that, too,” Joan said.

“She’s saying we’re outnumbered,” Donna said. Joan looked at her. “NASA is run primarily by men. If we want to go up there, we have to convince amanto choose us. We have to be somebodythe menhere want to work with. We have to be smart.”

Studying Donna, Joan realized that she was actually fully aware of how people saw her. That Donna knewthey all knewshe was dating Hank. And that her coyness about it, her complete denial of it in front of any of them, was her only shot at self-preservation. It was Donna, then, who was keeping it a secret. Not Hank.

And if Donna was smart enough to know that seeing Hank would hurt her career and did it anyway, well, Donna must really love him.

“I will never be Jimmy,” Joan said. “Or Marty. Or Teddy. I don’t want to tell jokes at other people’s expense, and pretend I’m never afraid, and refuse to ask for help. I don’t want to hold in how I feel, or hide it if I’ve been hurt, or try to prove to anyone that I don’t cry. Because I do cry sometimes.”

“Oh, me too, hon,” Donna said. “But you know we can’t show that.”

“We can never, ever show that,” Lydia said.

“I…” Joan shook her head. “I don’t want to prove I can be like them. I don’t want to be like them. I’m not going to do it.”

“But what you do affects all of us,” Lydia said. “Because they are looking at every woman here. There aren’t enough of us in this program yet for us to only represent ourselves. You cry in front of them and they are going to say, ‘Women can’t handle being in the hot seat.’ And thenIget screwed over. You’re not just here for you, Joan—we all succeed or fail together.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Joan said.

“It is true,” Donna said. “I don’t know exactly what to do about it. But it is true.”

“So, we let them say crude things about us and we don’t push back?”

“I mean, I tell them to fuck off,” Donna said. “You should try it.”

“But Lydia laughs like it’s funny.”

“Sometimes itisfunny,” Lydia said.

“The only reason you think it’s funny is because we’ve been told our whole lives it’s okay to make fun of us,” Joan said. “But I’m not doing it. You want to talk about how it reflects on all of us the way one of us behaves? You laughing at those jokes makes them think it’s okay to keep doing it.”

Lydia sighed. “I don’t want to keep talking about this,” she said.

“Well, me neither.”

Joan thought of Vanessa then, still talking to Steve. She wondered if Vanessa would agree with her. And whether she would see that Joan wasn’t being a peacemaker now.

“All right, let’s dust it off,” Donna said. “We all agree on the root problem here. We just don’t know how to solve it.”

“There is no one way to solve it,” Joan said.

Lydia nodded. “No, you’re right about that.”

“But me fighting with you certainly isn’t it,” Joan admitted.

“Yeah,” Lydia said.

“I’m so annoyed,” Joan said.

“At me?” Lydia asked, with such a childlike vulnerability that it softened Joan’s heart.

“No, at them. It’s their fault we are fighting at all. I am actually mad at them, but instead I’m blaming you.”

“Well, as you know,” Lydia said, smiling, “women can be very irrational.”

Joan laughed, despite herself.

“Lydia Danes, as I live and breathe,” Donna said. “Did you just make a good joke?”

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