Joan swallowed and nodded. She wanted so badly to tell her parents that Vanessa was more than a friend. She wanted to open her mouth and say that lying in bed next to Vanessa at night was the only way Joan knew she’d had a good day. That the touch of her hand in Joan’s made Joan’s heartbeat slow down. That Joan did not know why everyone was so goddamn happy all the time until she met her.

But the Moral Majority was campaigning again for Reagan. Anita Bryant had come through Houston just a handful of years ago to convince voters that people like Joan should not be allowed to be near children. A couple of years ago, Billie Jean King had come out and lost $2 million in endorsements overnight. At that very moment, people all over the country were convinced that AIDS was a punishment for moral failing.

Sure, her parents weren’t from Texas. They were from Pasadena, California, and had gone door-to-door for Kennedy and then Johnson. But Joan knew that they had never known a person like her, at least that they had been aware of. So how could they truly understand this part of Joan at all? Her parents misunderstood her, the same way she’d misunderstood herself for so long.

Joan wanted to tell both of them that they thought she didn’t want to get married, but the truth was that she wanted exactly what Barbara had. She wanted what they had. She wanted what Donna and Hank had. And what every marriage in the whole godforsaken country had.

The right to exist and to love and be proud and happy.

The right to live.

“Yeah, Vanessa is really sweet,” she said.

When Frances and Vanessa came back to the table, Frances seemed to have forgotten all about hating Daniel.

“Couldn’t find the cake,” Vanessa said, smiling. “But we did find a tray of brownies and we snuck one.”

“It was so good!” Frances said.

Joan laughed.

Barbara and Daniel danced all night. Soon Barb’s high heels were off, and her makeup started to smear, and Daniel drunkenly, joyously, put Barb’s garter in his mouth. Which was when Joan and Vanessa volunteered to take Frances to her room at the hotel.

Frances walked on her own across the hotel lobby, and into the elevator. But once they were on the right floor, Vanessa picked Frances up and carried her. Frances was too big for Joan to carry. But she smiled to herself as she watched Frances close her eyes and let Vanessa take her the rest of the way.

Vanessa put Frances down on one of the beds. Joan took Frances’s shoes off and they both put the blankets on top of her.