Page 97 of Atmosphere

“Oh, yeah. I mean, right now you’re in a machine that eighty years ago they said couldn’t exist. In 1903,The New York Timesdeclared that we were still one to ten million years away from a flying machine.”

“They said ten million years?”

Vanessa nodded. “The article was called ‘Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly.’ Some of the most notable engineers in the world said it was impossible to create a flying machine heavier than air.”

“I don’t think I knew that.”

“But then sixty-nine days later, the Wright brothers did it.”

Joan laughed. And so Vanessa did, too.

“I know! It made them all look incredibly stupid. But the thing is, they had good reason to think it could never happen. So many people had failed. Samuel Langley had just crashed his Aerodrome into the Potomac. And engineers had been at it for a long time. They hadn’t been able to achieve anything approaching powered flight.”

“And then the Wright brothers just figured it out?”

“The Wright brothers figured out a lot of things that Langley and the others didn’t. Three-axis control, balance, you name it. But one massive thing that the others hadn’t understood that the Wright brothers did was that it wasn’t just about the plane, it was about the pilot.”

Joan smiled and then closed her eyes. “Of course.”

“It’s not just about making a machine that can fly. It’s also about understandingthe wayto fly it. The pilot matters. Knowing how to be a part of the machine is what makes the machine possible.”

“Ooooh,” Joan said. “Okay. Okay, I get it.”

Vanessa looked at her. “You do?”

“I do. You’re bigger than just human,” Joan said. “When you’re flying.”

Vanessa blushed and then looked forward again, nodding to herself. “The Wright brothers didn’t have funding or even college degrees. They had a bike shop and a younger sister named Katharine, who deserves way more credit than she gets because she took care of everything for them as they tinkered around. But they just wanted to see if they could learn how to fly. And that’s why they stuck with it, because they loved the pursuit. When I think about that…I guess that’s what I mean when I say ‘hopeful.’ Because when I think about that, I wonder—”

“What else everyone has said is impossible that you could try to do just for fun?”

“Yes!” Vanessa said. “Can you fucking imagine what’s possible if this is possible? Can you imagine what the shuttle can do?”

“I think you’re going to be the one to find out,” Joan said.

Vanessa bit her lip and did not look at Joan. “Do you really think that?” It was the smallest Joan had ever heard Vanessa’s voice.

Joan put her hand on Vanessa’s knee. “I really do.”

Vanessa nodded and then inhaled. “Hey,” she said, her voice back to normal. “Can I add a pretty big detour and fly you over the Grand Canyon?”

“A thousand times yes,” Joan said.

And with that, Vanessa nodded and turned the plane so smoothly that if Joan hadn’t seen her do it, she was not sure she would have known they were changing course.

Joan watched her some more, watched her change the controls, reset her sights. She watched Vanessa’s chest as it rose and fell. So calm, so controlled, so free.

As they flew over the Grand Canyon, Joan pressed her forehead to the window and looked as far down as she could at the vastness of the chasms below. She marveled at the millions of years of time Earth had existed without humans on it, at how unhurried the Earth had been to unfold.

Joan looked back at Vanessa. She watched the smile erupt on Vanessa’s face as she kept them steady just over the North Rim, the calm that took over as she pulled them up, back to altitude. Joan saw Vanessa’s ears move back, her eyes soften, her shoulders drop, all nearly imperceptibly. This was the woman she loved.

And Joan could find no fault with her, no complaint that didn’t, in that moment, feel so small. Joan had not ever believed that God sent down two halves of a soul in separate bodies, destined to meet. She did not believe in a God thatcould.

But she did believe in a God that had led them here. That led their lives to intersect. That led Vanessa to need what Joan had to give. That led Joan to have what she needed.

That led the North American tectonic plate to shift, causing the uplift of the Colorado Plateau, pushing former seabeds nine thousand feet above sea level. Joan believed in a God that, indifferent and unknowing, sent the Colorado River cutting through those rock formations.

She believed in a God that put a young girl without a father in proximity to a family friend with an airplane. She believed in a God that had pulled her to Joshua Tree to fall irretrievably in love with the stars. She believed in a God that had led them to this very moment: the two of them flying together, so safe, above the Grand Canyon.

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