Work Text:
San Francisco, CA- 2014
Joan stood in the doorway of the nursery, the smell of fresh paint strong in the air, watching as Vanessa assembled a white crib. A few feet away sat the matching dresser that she’d assembled earlier in the morning.
“I tried to hire a 25-year-old to do this,” came Frances’s voice from next to Joan. “The last thing she needs is to throw her back out while trying to move that dresser around. She won’t admit it, but she’s not as young as she used to be.”
Joan looked at Vanessa, who was pushing her hair back out of her face. She was nearly 68, but still looked like she was in her early 50s and acted even younger. She hadn’t changed much in the 35 years Joan had known her; her dark hair was now salt-and-pepper gray, she’d lost a touch of her height, and she’d stopped flying at night two years before, her vision not quite what it used to be. But she was still active, swimming laps almost every morning and strength training at the gym four times a week, walking the dogs with Joan daily on the trails around their home in Danville, and going on weekly hikes with Joan and the “Dykes Who Hike,” a group of lesbians who hiked around the Bay Area and beyond (they’d just gotten back from a week-long trip to Asheville, where they’d hiked for a week on the Appalachian Trail in between touring the Biltmore Estate, drinking wine on restaurant balconies, and shopping for art downtown). She still had the same cream-colored convertible with the red seats that she’d driven in the early 80s, still in pristine condition. On nice days, Vanessa and Joan would take Highway 1 and drive all the way down to Big Sur with the top down, Vanessa’s hand on Joan’s knee and the wind in their hair.
Joan supposed that she wasn’t too badly off herself. Her hair was also gray now- like Vanessa, she steadfastly refused to dye it, believing that it was a blessing to have reached an age where her hair had gone gray. An extra 20 pounds had settled around her hips at menopause and refused to budge, but luckily Vanessa didn’t seem to mind one bit, by the way she loved to grab Joan around the waist and knead her hands into her hips. Arthritis meant that she couldn’t play the piano for as long as she used to, and bad knees meant that she’d had to give up running in her mid-50s and now took to hiking with two poles. But she still rode her bike every morning and went to the gym with Vanessa, and would certainly be able to chase around Frances’s daughter in a year or two, once she had started running.
The daughter in question was still two months from making her appearance Earthside, and was currently the large bump jutting out from beneath Frances’s stretched out and faded Stanford Law t-shirt. Frances rubbed the bump absent-mindedly.
“You okay, Frannie?” Joan asked quietly.
Frances sighed. “Yeah. Just got off the phone with Mom.” She rolled her eyes. “She wants to know if I can schedule an induction for the week before the due date because she and Fred are leaving on a six-week long European cruise the day after I’m due. It’s not like she hasn’t known the baby’s coming for five months now.”
Barbara was still… Barbara. She was still living in Houston, and was currently on her third husband. Daniel had died of a sudden heart attack in 1998, she’d had a short-lived second marriage in the early 2000s to a man who was barely worth even mentioning, and Fred, a former oil executive who was disgustingly wealthy, was husband number three. She got to wear the designer clothes she loved so much, took multiple trips to Europe and the Caribbean a year, and hated visiting Frances in San Francisco because she found it “dirty” and demanded they meet in Napa Valley instead. Vanessa still couldn’t stand her, but was cordial enough, for Frances’s sake. Joan had long stopped putting up with Barbara’s nonsense, but Vanessa thought that she was still far too forgiving.
Barbara and Frances were currently on relatively good terms, but that could change in an instant. Barb would feel slighted by something Frances did or didn’t do, and she would go months without speaking to her. The longest cold spell had been after Frances’s wedding to her wife Jen in 2008, when she’d asked Joan to walk her down the aisle instead of Barbara.
Barbara had been incensed- “I am your MOTHER” she had screamed over the phone when Frances broke the news to her.
“Well, you may be my mother, but Joanie and Vanessa are my parents,” Frances retorted.
Barb hadn’t come to the wedding and didn’t speak to Frances or Joan for a year and a half afterwards.
Frances’s relationship with Joan and Vanessa was a sore spot for Barbara; it always had been, and it always would be. When they moved into Vanessa’s bungalow, making Joan and Vanessa’s relationship crystal clear, Barb had threatened to take back custody of Frances, not wanting her to live around “you know” (it was years before Barb could say “lesbian” openly), but never did. When Frances brought a girlfriend back to Houston for Spring Break her sophomore year at Duke, Barb had driven over to scream at Joan that she and Vanessa had convinced Frances to “turn into a lesbian.” Vanessa had retorted that it was only because Barb’s head was so far up her own ass that she couldn’t see that Frances was gay- “No one who is that obsessed with Cyndi Lauper at 10 is straight”- and Barbara didn’t speak to any of them for eight months.
Jen, Frances’s wife, was a psychologist who said that Barbara was a textbook case of narcissistic personality disorder. “It’s not anything you all did or didn’t do,” she told them. “The only thing that you can do is set boundaries with her and manage your expectations, because unless she miraculously decides to start intensive therapy (which they all knew she wouldn’t), she’s going to be unwilling to change.” Joan still loved Barbara, as exhausting as it was, and despite all the ways that Barbara had hurt her and was still hurting her, Frances still loved her too.
“Ignore her,” Joan said. “Honestly, it’s probably better if she waits to come visit. It gives you a chance to get used to being a parent without having to act like a parent to your mom, too.”
Frances nodded. “I don’t get it,” she said. “How she just never really wanted me.” She touched her bump gently again. “She didn’t even have to work for it, and she didn’t want it. I’ve wanted this, desperately. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.” Frances had fought for this pregnancy. A failed IUI, two failed rounds of IVF, a miscarriage. She was 40; if not now, then she would maybe never get this.
“She didn’t deserve you,” Joan said simply. “And you deserved better than her.”
Frances smiled. “Luckily, I did get better than her. I meant what I said to her, right before my wedding. She’s my mother, but you and Vanessa, you’re my real parents. You were there, for every major moment in my life. She wasn’t.”
Joan felt a lump rise in her throat. She and Vanessa had been there for Frances, always, at every major moment of her life.
It was Joan who told her about periods and sex (even though Frances, embarrassed, had claimed “I know all that already,”) and when she was 12 and came home from school to find blood in her underwear, it was Joan who she called first and it was Joan who talked her through putting in a tampon for the first time.
It was Vanessa who taught her how to drive, who taught her how to change a flat tire, and change the oil in her car.
When she was invited to the homecoming dance as a high school junior by a boy who had been clearly besotted with her for over a year, it was Vanessa who bought her a pack of condoms and made sure that she knew how to use them, even though a mortified Frances swore up and down that she wouldn’t need them.
It was Joan and Vanessa who drove her from Houston to Durham to move into her freshman dorm at Duke, and it was Vanessa who had to pull off to the side of the road to switch places with Joan because she was too teary-eyed to keep driving. It was Joan who she called three months later to tell that she had kissed a girl who was on her hall, and that she thought that she might be a lesbian (Joan and Vanessa had both had their suspicions for years, but it was up to Frannie to figure it out for herself). It was Joan and Vanessa who were the first ones she called when she got into law school at Stanford, and who moved her cross-country from North Carolina to Palo Alto. It was Joan and Vanessa who decided to move to the Bay Area in 1999 when Frances decided to stay in San Francisco to practice.
It was Vanessa who Frances bonded with over music and movies, who taught her to love David Bowie, who surreptitiously taught her how to roll and smoke a joint, and who she spent the whole of July 2000 with following the Indigo Girls as they performed a series of concerts throughout the West Coast.
It was Joan who was the first person she called when she made junior partner at her firm. It was Joan who she called when she met a pretty psychologist in a bar at age 32 after a string of failed relationships, and when she bought the ring she was going to propose with, and when she got a positive pregnancy test at nearly 40. It was Joan who was going to be in the delivery room with her and Jen when she had the baby.
Joan swallowed the lump in her throat. “Sometimes I don’t know what we did to deserve you, either.”
Frances rested her head against Joan’s shoulder. “We did something right, to get each other.”
Vanessa stood up, wiping her hands on her jeans. “I’m all done with the crib. Where do you want me to move it?”
“Nowhere,” Frances said. “You promised you wouldn’t move any furniture. Jen’s going to move it later.”
“It’s like you think I’m an old woman or something,” Vanessa said, her characteristic smirk on her face. “I’m not the one who’s a geriatric mother or whatever it is they call it these days.”
Frances rolled her eyes. “I’m someone of ‘advanced maternal age.’ They don’t use geriatric anymore, it’s insulting, apparently.”
“Well, no one has ever called me geriatric OR ‘someone of advanced age,’ so I’ve got you beat on that front,” Vanessa said. “What have my two favorite girls been talking about?”
“My mother,” Frances said. “She wants me to get induced a week early so that she can go on a European cruise.”
“Fuck that,” Vanessa said. “Fuck Barbara.”
“Fuck Barbara,” Frances replied in agreement. Joan cringed- both of them still found her to be a bit of a prude.
Frances walked into the nursery, admiring the freshly painted walls, which were a light green. Joan and Vanessa had spent the better part of the weekend painting it. Joan had done a careful sketch of the baby’s name on the wall. Emerson, Frances’s middle name. It would have been the name whether the baby was a boy or a girl. Joan remembered picking it out, all those years ago, because Barbara was too overwhelmed and out of it after the birth. She thought that Frances Emerson Goodwin sounded like a strong name for a strong woman, and Frances had indeed become one of the strongest women Joan knew. They were still being coy about the middle name. “It’s a surprise that you’ll find out when she’s born,” Frances had said simply. In two months, Joan would watch in awe as Frances pushed out her daughter, long-limbed and the mirror image of her when she was born. Joan would cry when Frances, holding the screaming baby against her bare chest, said, “Welcome to the world, Emerson Joan Goodwin-Jones.”
Vanessa moved behind Joan, clasping her arms around her middle and placing a kiss to the side of her neck. It never ceased to amaze Joan, this casual affection. She’d always heard that things cooled after decades together, but Vanessa felt like a soft, well-worn blanket that was still amazingly warm. Things were different now than they’d been in the 80s. They could walk down the streets of Danville holding hands, and no one batted an eye. Vanessa could pull out Joan’s chair for her at a restaurant, and Joan could kiss Vanessa when she greeted her at the trail after Joan had brought the dogs from home and Vanessa had come from the airfield where she kept her prop plane, which she still took out several times a week. It didn’t mean that there wasn’t still hate in the world, especially for people like them, and in some places they wouldn’t feel comfortable holding hands, kissing, or resting a hand against the small of the other’s back. But overall, things were good- very, very good.
Joan grabbed Vanessa’s left hand, working her hands over Vanessa’s fingers gently. Her heart lifted when she saw the simple gold band on her ring finger. They’d gotten married in July 2008, just a month before Frances and Jen, during that brief, beautiful window of almost 5 months when same-sex marriage had been legal before being invalidated again until 2013. They hadn’t wanted a big affair- as Vanessa had said, “As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been married since 1984”- so it was a small courthouse wedding, both of them wearing simple suits, with Frances and Donna, who had come in from Colorado, where she was now living, as their witnesses. Barb didn’t come, and their parents were all gone; Joan’s father had died in the late 90s, and both of their mothers in the mid-2000s. Joan’s parents had been endlessly accepting of them and their relationship; they didn’t entirely understand it at times, but they adored Vanessa. Vanessa’s mother knew about their relationship but never properly acknowledged it, referring to Joan as “Vanessa’s friend,” and leaving it at that; however, there was no malice from her, and she died with both Vanessa and Joan at her side in the hospice house.
“Can you believe it?” Vanessa whispered into Joan’s ear. “Frannie’s going to be a mother.”
“I can’t,” Joan said. “Wasn’t it just yesterday that she was badgering us to play that Cyndi Lauper record on repeat?”
“God, yes,” Vanessa said with a groan. “I’m glad she has a better taste in music these days.” Vanessa and Frances still went to concerts together whenever they could, traveling near and far to see Indigo Girls, Ani DiFranco, and Brandi Carlile. They had seen David Bowie on his final tour, first in London in November 2003 and then in San Jose two months later.
“We’re so lucky,” Joan said simply. She didn’t know how she had gotten so lucky, to have Vanessa, and Frances, and all the wonderful people who loved her and cherished her.
It hadn’t been easy, these past 30 years. The years following STS-LR9 were some of the most difficult. Neither of them ever went back to space, which was fine by Joan but utterly crushed Vanessa. Joan stayed on at NASA for a few years, working as CAPCOM, but left after the Challenger disaster in ’87. “I don’t want to have to listen to any more of my friends die,” she’d said simply. She went back to Rice, actually getting to teach classes she was passionate about. In her free time, she took her telescope out to Brazos Bend and stared at the stars.
Vanessa had floundered a bit, trying to find her purpose now that she was no longer an astronaut. She was an aerospace engineer, an accomplished on at that, but she couldn’t be tethered to the ground. She ended up opening a flight school, wanting to teach the next generation, particularly girls and women, how to fly. It was enormously successful.
In 1999, when they moved to the Bay Area, they chose to buy a home in Danville, a small town in Contra Costa County surrounded by nature and perfect for the hiking, stargazing, and flying that they loved to do. Joan took an adjunct position teaching astronomy classes at Berkeley, but also taught local schoolchildren about the stars. Vanessa gave flight lessons and took her plane out as often as she could. They frequently visited Frances in San Francisco. They were finally able to join groups of queer women, and felt far more comfortable and less alone than they ever had in Houston.
They were still close with Donna, and tried to see her at least twice a year. When she’d finally been able to go up, when Thea was two (an endlessly controversial affair, since she was a single mother), Thea had stayed with Joan and Vanessa. Donna remarried when Thea was 8. She and her husband had moved to Colorado once she left NASA. Thea, who was the spitting image of Hank, went to the Naval Academy and became a pilot like her father; Vanessa was both proud and supremely jealous. Donna emailed them pictures of Thea and her fiancé, a fellow Navy pilot; they would be marrying in the fall.
“I’m glad that I get to be here, and see this,” Vanessa said, kissing Joan’s neck again. “See Frannie become a mom.” She touched Joan’s hair. “See our hair turning gray. I’m the luckiest person in the world, that I get to grow old with you, Joan Goodwin.”
Joan leaned back against Vanessa and closed her eyes. They were very, very lucky indeed.