The Great Unknowable End Read online

  Personally, I’ve had no reason to think well of the place until now, as it brings Gayle Nelson into my life. She is a woman with a doctoral degree and a good career, and I want to know the why. I want to know the how. It’s strange, but how I see her as my father’s girlfriend and potential member of this family means relatively little compared to how I see her as her. And I suppose that’s a good thing.

  I’ve folded the last of the napkins and am slipping it under my own knife and spoon when there is a knock at the door.

  “She’s here!” Jill yells, bounding down the hall. “Stella, get the door!”

  “Calm down, you goof,” I say, poking Jill’s nose. She is wearing her only sundress—lavender cotton with a fringed hem.

  I lean into the swinging door that leads from our dining room to the kitchen. My father is blaring the radio and following my instructions for preparing a garden salad. I know he would prefer to be the one to greet Gayle and usher her into our home.

  But I change my mind. I’m too eager, and too selfish. I want my first impression and initial survey to take place without my father in the room. So I do not shout over the radio to alert him. I swing back out of the kitchen and hurry down the hall, Jill on my heels. I open the door.

  Gayle Nelson is a full foot taller than I am, and she isn’t even wearing heels. She is broad-shouldered and dressed in a wrap dress patterned with squash-colored hexagons. Her skin is warm and beige. Her toenails—visible through threaded sandals—are painted a bright goldenrod to match her fingernails. Her lipstick is plum, and she is plump and smells of a spicy perfume I do not recognize. She is lovely, and for a moment I forget what I am supposed to say.

  She speaks first. She does not say “Hello” or “You must be Stella,” as I am expecting. She has been looking to the sky, and when her gaze settles on me, she says, “There’s a storm rolling in. The forecaster lied to us.”

  Her words are hoarse—I’m guessing she is a smoker—but her tone is friendly. Confidential, even. Perhaps it’s the way she says “the forecaster lied to us,” as though we are in this together. I decide that I like her.

  I do not reply to her comment on the weather. I say, “I’m Stella. Dad is in the kitchen.”

  “Is he?” Gayle’s laugh is hoarse, same as her words. “He told me he doesn’t cook. I thought he’d order out.”

  “We got Salvatore’s,” Jill says from behind me.

  “Oh!” Gayle peers past me to get a look at Jill. “Well, excellent. I love Italian.”

  As Gayle crosses the threshold, I glance outside at dark looming clouds rolling in from the east, over the neighbors’ rooftops.

  • • •

  I love the way Gayle talks. Everything she says is a little comical so that, if you wanted, you could laugh at any moment and not feel awkward. I cannot put my thumb on what it is that makes me feel that way—whether it is the smoky roughness of her voice or the way she says my name enough to make me feel known, though not talked down to. I think it must be something beyond that, some combination of her voice and cadence and physicality. I would like to see an equation for it, written out. I’d like to solve it and adapt the answer to fit my own life.

  I see why Dad likes her. She is pretty and confident and kind, too. She is, however, very different from my mother—or at least my memory of my mother. Diane Mercer was small and quiet. I don’t remember her ever beginning conversations, or extracting answers, or filling the room the way Gayle does. In my memory she is soft, blurry on the edges, an ethereal thing. Gayle seems denser, more defined than other people. She has a way of ensuring that everyone at the table feels part of the conversation. During the salad course, the topics range from how she met my father—in a hallway where Gayle, naturally, struck up a conversation—to Jill’s favorite subject at school—social studies—to my work at the drive-in. Then she brings up the fact that the first woman priest was ordained in the Episcopal church a few months back. (Gayle is Episcopal, but church is one thing she doesn’t ask about, thank goodness.)

  It is inevitable that, sooner than later, the conversation lands on the town hall countdown. My father is convinced that it is an elaborate marketing ploy, no doubt arranged by some big company in Kansas City. In the end he and Gayle agree that it’s nothing to worry about—no doubt for Jill’s benefit. I see uncertainty on my father’s face, though. Gayle is too new an acquaintance to read, though she seems to be a person who’s near impossible to worry. I stay quiet throughout the discussion, afraid that if I open my mouth I’ll let loose my secret about the closet door. I jump at the chance to clear away the salad dishes.

  We’ve just begun on our squares of lasagna and oven-warmed freezer rolls when Jill says, without warning, “Everyone in New York is scared.”

  My gaze slices to her. Dad, too, is staring at Jill, a half-eaten, now-forgotten roll in his hand.

  Only Gayle is unfazed. She shifts her shoulders toward Jill and asks, “Why is that?”

  “You know. Because of that man. He keeps killing people.”

  “Jill,” I say, finally capable of speech. “That’s not appropriate.”

  “It’s okay,” says Gayle. “It’s a scary business, and all over the news.”

  “Perhaps Jill shouldn’t be watching the news right now,” Dad says to me.

  Jill gawks. “Don’t you want your kids to be informed? It’s just the news. Why is everyone mad at me?”

  “No one’s mad at you,” Gayle says, reassuring. “It’s only . . . that’s rather heavy material for someone your age.”

  Jill forks at her lasagna. She doesn’t say anything. I don’t either. I feel as though I have been unfairly chastised. As Jill says, it’s just the news. I would like to tell my father that, were he around more, he could monitor what Jill watches on television.

  “They’re going to catch him.” Gayle’s every word is heavy with confidence, and she’s drawn Jill’s eyes to hers, as though by magnetic force. “I think he wants to be caught. I think he’s similar to boys who steal from a convenience store and then come back the next day to hang around. Because they want to be acknowledged. They’re arrogant.”

  It seems Gayle has transferred her confidence to Jill in that magnetic gaze, because Jill speaks again.

  “They were talking about the letters he wrote to the police. About more murders he’s going to do.”

  Dad shakes his head, still looking at me. “I had no idea you were seeing that, Jill.”

  “It’s not Stella’s fault!” Jill near shouts. “Anyway, I’m almost ten. I’m old enough.”

  “They’ll catch him,” says Gayle. “In fact, maybe that’s what our mysterious countdown’s about. Counting down to the capture of Son of Sam.”

  “It’d better be sooner than that.” Jill’s words trip out, uneven.

  “It’s more than a thousand miles from here to New York, Jillie,” I tell her. “He’s not going to get to you.”

  “I don’t think he is!” Jill snaps in her most babyish voice. “I’m not stupid. And I’m not scared.”

  My father is clearly ready for this conversation to be over. With authority he says, “Nothing to be afraid of. No big bad murderers come to Slater, Kansas.”

  That is when the lights flicker. A crash of thunder shakes the house, and I wonder why I did not notice that it is sheeting rain outside.

  Then the lights go out entirely.

  There is a scream in the darkness—Jill’s. My father swears, which is a strange sound almost more terrifying than the darkness itself. I get out of my chair, fumbling in the dark toward where Jill sits. When I find her shoulder, she screams again and swats me away.

  “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Jillie, it’s okay. It’s only a storm.”

  Though even I am not entirely convinced by my words. I know it must be an ordinary power outage, but my mind is filled with images that have played repeatedly on the news: police searching a roped-off crime scene, bloodstained headrests. My skin prickles all over, and my wrists feel weak, a
lmost elastic. I touch Jill’s shoulder again, and this time she turns in to me and wraps her arms around my middle. I don’t think she’s crying, though her breath is coming in and out in rapid bursts.

  There’s a scratching sound and, suddenly, light appears. Gayle is holding a lighter, and her face is thrown in sharp relief against the blackness.

  “Good Lord,” she says. “My heart’s hammering.”

  “Mind if I borrow that?” Dad asks, leaning across the table, palm open.

  “Certainly not.”

  Gayle clicks off the lighter, casting us back into darkness, and Jill’s grip tightens on my waist. The next light we see, Dad is carrying it away to the hallway.

  “There’s a crank lantern in the garage,” he calls to us. “Circuit breaker’s there too. I can check to be sure it’s the storm, not a blown fuse.”

  “Dad, no!” Jill shrieks. “Don’t go out there. Don’t go out there alone!”

  It’s difficult to make out my father’s expression, but I’m fairly sure he’s smiling. “I’ll be fine, hon. Don’t you worry—I can take on any madmen hiding out there.”

  “Hang on, Dad,” I say.

  “What, both of you?” He’s laughing now. “I swear to God, Son of Sam is not in our garage.”

  “It’s not that. I don’t want you leaving us in the dark.”

  I gently push out of Jill’s grip and fumble through the shadows to the sideboard. I open the leftmost drawer and feel blindly inside. My fingers light on cold, cylindrical wax—two taper candles we use for Christmas dinners.

  “Here.” I walk the candles toward Dad. “Light these. Then you can go be brave.”

  He does. Gayle, meantime, has taken my place at the sideboard and located the candlesticks. My eyes are adjusting to the dark. I can make out shades of purple and gray, the silhouettes of solid objects in the room—chairs, table, curtains. Gayle and I fit the candles into their cheap ceramic stands and bring them back to the table. Jill has gone very quiet and pulled her knees in to her chest. When I get close to her, I realize she’s chewing on a piece of lasagna.

  “I think that’s the best thing to do,” Gayle tells her.

  “What?”

  “Keep eating!” Gayle forks an extra-large piece of lasagna and raises it to her mouth in the winking candlelight. She makes a show of enjoying herself, saying, “Mm-mm-mmm!”

  Jill begins giggling, until another round of thunder rattles through the house and her giggles turn into a shrill squeak.

  “Here,” I say, an idea coming to me. “I’ll be right back.”

  I take one of the candles and carefully make my way into the kitchen. There, next to a cutting board covered in tomato juice and seeds, is the portable radio. I turn it to 580 AM, the local station. I reason that if the storm is very bad—so bad it’s affecting Kansas City, too—there will be an alert of some kind. There isn’t any special bulletin, though, only the smooth-jazz hour with Reggie Holt. I keep the music on. The plaintive ramblings of the saxophone are actually soothing, and I bring the radio to the dining room in hopes that it will calm Jill, too.

  “Dad’s taking too long,” she says. “We should check on him.”

  “He’s fine. Probably just rummaging around.”

  There is another boom of thunder. They keep getting louder. The rain is slamming hard against the windows and the roof, and I feel suddenly heavy, pressed down upon by an unseen force that’s boxing itself around our house.

  “No one forecast this?” I ask Gayle, hoping she won’t think I’m as nervous as Jill.

  “Not even a summer shower.” Gayle smiles, looking out the large dining-room window.

  I can tell she likes the storm. I think I do too. Even though it’s an inconvenience, and a little frightening, it is also unexpected. It is real and loud and powerful, and it has changed our plans. That’s what I like about it, I think.

  The front door opens, and moments later harsh, bright light fills the room. Dad has found the crank lantern. Even in his big hand it looks weighty.

  “Well!” he says. “We can finish our supper as the Addams Family.”

  Gayle begins humming the Addams Family theme song and snaps her fingers at the appropriate times. Dad and I join her. Jill looks on, brow furrowed, as though we are the children and she is the adult. She’s too young to remember that show.

  We finish supper while the storm grows worse. The rain pounds so hard against the roof I begin to sneak glances upward, certain I will see water stains forming, expecting at any moment to hear little drip-drips and ping-pings around the room. There are none. The rain rages on, and the thunder shakes us from our eating every half minute or so. We move on to dessert—homemade cannoli from Salvatore’s, delivered to our plates fresh from a brown paper bag. This is a real treat, after many years’ worth of TV dinners. I savor each bite, relishing the crack of the fried dough under my teeth and the burst of cold, sweet ricotta on my tongue.

  The crank lantern goes out, and Dad says he won’t bother to restart it until we’re ready to clear the table. We sit there in the candlelight, savoring our cannoli and only starting slightly every time the thunder makes an appearance. We’ve moved on from the unsavory topic of killers to talk of baseball. My father is a big Kansas City Royals fan, while Gayle roots for the Chicago White Sox. They’re sparring cheerily enough over statistics and predictions for the World Series, and I am content to sit here, watching them. I am happy, I realize. Surprisingly happy. I don’t even once wish the power would come back on or the storm would let up, and when we’ve cleared the table and moved the light into the kitchen, where we wash dishes and revive the chorus of The Addams Family, I am happier still.

  This is something different. This is something new in our house, after eight years. Gayle is here, and that does not make us any less the usual loners, but perhaps she would be all right being a loner together with us. Perhaps she could join our small band.

  The storm hasn’t let up when we are through with washing. There are still no notifications on the radio, no warnings of flash floods or storm damage. Even so, Dad says Gayle shouldn’t attempt to drive home in this kind of weather, and Jill and I agree. Gayle says she’d be happy to sleep on the couch; I insist she take my room. It is only somewhat uncomfortable, navigating this. I know my father would offer his room, but that is too strange a thing to do in front of me and Jill. I understand: The task of hospitality falls to me.

  I retrieve our only fresh sheet set—what used to be Craig’s sheets—from the linen closet. Gayle says that if she is taking over my bedroom, she should at least help me strip and make the bed. She teaches me a trick she calls “angel wings”—folding triangles of sheet at the end of the bed, then tucking them snug between the mattress and box spring. After I fluff the pillows and spread the quilt, I notice Gayle standing by, candle raised, staring at my desk—or, really, at the wall above my desk.

  I’d forgotten. The papers that the wind blew around days ago—they’re tacked there, in plain sight. Sudden paralysis keeps me in place, staring at Gayle as she stares at my work. It’s not as though I bring strangers into my room, and the drawings only face inward, toward my bed, away from the hallway. I didn’t think Dad would ever notice them, and Jill would know better than to ask. Now, watching Gayle, I feel uncovered. It is a serious sensation, and I don’t like it, so I say, as flippantly as I can, “Oh, those are stupid.”

  Gayle turns to me. “Are you interested in space?”

  I shrug. “Who isn’t?”

  “No,” says Gayle. “Sorry. I mean, are you interested in rockets?”

  She draws nearer my desk and taps the largest of my works—ten sheets of graph paper aligned five across, in two rows. There are sketches on the paper, and equations, too. They are plans I created more than six months ago and have been erasing and adding to ever since.

  I stay where I am, at the head of my bed. “I guess so. Like I said, it’s stupid. They’re only sketches. For fun.”

  Gayle taps another of th
e papers—a pencil-drawn sketch of a shuttle. “This is missing something, you know. The NASA logo.”

  She turns to me again, and she is smiling so big and wide that I laugh with nervous energy.

  “Hardly.” There is feeling back in my feet, and I walk to where she stands. “I know they’re working on their design, probably doing lots of tests as we speak. I just thought it’d be fun to guess at it, you know? Figure out what it’d take to reenter the atmosphere the same way you leave it. I like to imagine how it will look.”

  Gayle shakes her head slightly. “This is more than guesswork, Stella. These equations, you worked them out yourself?”

  “I know they’re off,” I say quickly. “I was approximating. From things I’ve read.”

  “Things you’ve read?”

  “Well. For a small public library, ours is pretty well stocked. And I bought some books when we went to Wichita in January.”

  Gayle says nothing to that, only shifts her gaze across the wall and, after moments more of studying, points to another collection of papers arranged in three rows, three across—a perfect boxed containment of plans.

  “What’s this?”

  I am blushing hard. It is strange, because I think I wanted Gayle to ask me that question. Only now I don’t want to answer.

  Sensing my discomfort, she says, “I’m sorry.” She removes her finger from the wall. “I’m prying. Heaven knows you didn’t expect some snooping lady in your bedroom.”