The Great Unknowable End Read online

  When I first wrote to Craig, it was because I needed the Craig he was before. I needed his advice, his comfort, his expertise. Then I began to write for a different reason. I wrote because Craig had become someone new: my friend. I could tease him for growing his hair long, and he could make fun of my childhood love for Herman’s Hermits. We were almost normal siblings, as we’d been before. I didn’t want to lose that. That’s why I never asked him again why he left us. For two whole years, I didn’t write anything too dangerous or confrontational.

  Then I made my mistake.

  At the start of June, I wrote to tell him about my graduation. Then I told him I wanted to see him.

  I have not heard from him since.

  I’ve written two more letters, calling him a coward, telling him he as good as owes me a meeting.

  He’s written nothing.

  I never told my father or Jill about the letters. I guess I’ve been selfish in my own way. If I’m honest, I wanted Craig to myself. I wanted to be an exception to his abandonment. Now, it seems, he has finally abandoned me too.

  After Craig left us, my father expressly forbade me and Jill from going anywhere near the commune, including their public café. I’ve respected my father’s wishes. I have written my brother behind his back, but I’ve never gone to Red Sun. What I did not expect was for Red Sun to come to me. I didn’t expect to see those boys in their long white shirts, and I never, ever expected one of them to know my name.

  I know you.

  Stella Kay.

  Even now, after taking care of the mess in the girls’ bathroom, back in the heat and relative safety of the concessions hut, the words make me shiver.

  There is only one explanation for why that strange, waving boy—whom I most certainly do not know—recognized me: Craig. Craig showed him a picture or, more likely, a painting of me. Craig told him my name.

  Maybe he’s disowned me, I think, pulling a new tower of paper cups from their packaging and stacking them by the soda fountain, but he hasn’t forgotten me.

  Then a couple of junior high boys show up at the window, demanding two large root beers.

  • • •

  There is no wind on my bike ride home—not even the slightest stirring. It’s the heat that alerts me to this fact, rising from the pavement and pressing down on my shoulders, utterly uninhibited. It’s as though someone has flipped a giant switch, cutting off every breeze in town. After only a few minutes of biking, I’ve built up a sweat.

  When I get home, the lamp in the den is on—an anomaly, since my father is away at work and Jill should be in bed. I’m readying a lecture for my sister when I walk into the creamy yellow glow of the room and find my father sitting in his La-Z-Boy.

  “What’re you doing here?” I ask, happily surprised.

  “Switched a shift. I wanted a chance to talk to you alone.”

  Panic whirs inside me. For one irrational second, I am convinced he has found out about the letters.

  “O-okay.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing bad.” He reflects for a moment. “Nothing I consider bad, anyway.”

  “Okay.” I sit on the sofa, opposite him. I become aware of my scent, competing with that of the house. My frizzy brown hair smells of liquid butter and earth but not, luckily, marijuana.

  “Have a good time?” he asks.

  “Good for work, I guess.”

  “I bet you’ve memorized that movie.”

  I smile and tuck my hands between seat cushions. I appreciate the way the rough-woven fabric feels on my palms. In a low voice I say, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

  My father laughs. “I told you, it’s nothing bad.”

  I lean back and study the spin of the ceiling fan. For many years now, we’ve turned off the air-conditioning on summer nights and let our ceiling fans do the cooling. I often wake up hot and itchy, but the practice does make a difference in the electricity bill.

  My father is clearly nervous. He keeps running his right hand over his left. He no longer wears a wedding band; he removed it three years ago. I never asked why.

  “Stella.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You didn’t tell me about the fish.”

  I’m confused for one moment. Then I remember: Velma.

  “Oh.” I remove my hands from the cushions and fold them in my lap. “I meant to tell you. Only it happened early yesterday, and I didn’t want to bother you with it.”

  “I—” He breaks off, frowning hard. The movement shifts his mustache, sends it bristling more than usual. “Were you afraid to tell me?”

  “What? No, it’s just that Jill was near hysterics, and I knew you needed the sleep. I was fine.”

  “Because you can tell me those things, ask for help. I’m your father.”

  “I know that, Dad.”

  He looks as though he wants to say more. I am not sure I want to hear it. I don’t hold my father responsible for the extra housework and the looking after Jill. They are not things I have to do because of him; really, they’re because of my mother. I work two jobs and will not attend college because of something my mother did on July 20, 1969, when I was only nine years old. I could not have known then what her death meant to my future.

  My father settles into silence, but I don’t think he’s through talking. He would not have missed a shift to ask me about a fish named Velma. He must be working up to something more. So I wait.

  “Stella.” He throws my name out like an anchor.

  I let it catch, and I smile reassuringly. “Dad, just say it.”

  “I . . .” The word comes out as a wheeze, then dissolves. “Sorry, hon. I don’t exactly know how to word it, but I met someone at the plant. We’ve been seeing each other, and . . . well, I thought it was about time I brought her to the house to meet you girls. I wanted to ask you about it first, though. I want to know how you feel about it, and how you think Jill will take it.”

  “Dad,” I say. “Are you talking about a girlfriend?”

  “Well. Well, I don’t think that’s what it’s called for someone my age.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “Then . . . yes, I’m talking about a girlfriend.”

  “She works at the plant?”

  “Yes, she’s in administration. A nuclear physicist.”

  My mouth opens wide. “Nice, Dad.”

  My father is quiet. He scratches at his chin, though I doubt very much that he has an itch.

  At last he says, very soft, “You’re not angry about that?”

  I scratch my own chin, in need of something to do. “I . . . don’t feel anything about it. Is that weird?”

  “It’s been eight years.”

  “Yeah.”

  I am not sure what he means by that. It’s been eight years. I don’t know if it’s justification or observation, or perhaps both. Here is the fact, though, hanging heavy on the room: It has been eight years since my mother hung herself—almost two weeks since the anniversary.

  “I think I’m fine with it,” I say. “I think Jill will be even more fine than me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Her name is Gayle.”

  “I don’t dislike the name.”

  “And if Gayle were to come over this Saturday night—”

  “I can ask off.”

  “Well, that’s . . . that’s very good to hear. Thank you.”

  I’m not sure what he is thanking me for. I was only honest. I do not feel anything about it. Even as I brush my teeth and comb my hair and shut myself into my bedroom, there is no great revelation of emotion. No anger, nor sadness, nor even a bittersweet pang. My father is bringing his girlfriend to the house for dinner Saturday night. It is the first girlfriend, at least that I know of, since my mother’s passing. There it is. I attempt to turn the fact into something more—a tear, a shudder, a laugh. In the end, though, it remains stubbornly true to its original form: It is only a fact.

  My window, impossible to close be
fore, sits open, letting in the hot and muggy outside. I latch the panes with ease this time around and, as I do, note the newly placed drawings above my desk. They belong to That Stella’s life, I know, but I can at least look at them. Even now that the winds have died down, the papers feel as right tacked up there as they did before.

  I turn on the ceiling fan and shift my attention to a wooden crate that I’ve placed on my bed. Craig made this crate his junior year, in shop, to hold pieces of his art. It is one of the few things I kept when I moved into his room last year. Craig was clearly never coming back, and sharing a bedroom with Jill was more than inconvenient. Our house is small enough as is, and it did not make sense to leave the room unused. That’s why, one weekend, I went through Craig’s remaining things and boxed them up. I tried not to be hurt by what I found—little things he’d left behind, like a homemade macaroni frame I’d made for him in the third grade, containing a photo of us at the neighborhood Fourth of July barbecue. I told myself that Red Sun must have had rules about the possessions you brought inside. I told myself that Craig had left behind plenty of important things, like extra pairs of shoes and his favorite winter coat. He simply didn’t have room for a silly picture frame from his sister.

  Then I finished boxing up what remained and stored everything in the garage.

  I kept the crate, though, and the artwork inside.

  There are several charcoal sketches in here—cars and trees and various storefronts on Vine. The paintings are all portraits. Of me and Jill. Of two old girlfriends. Of faces I do not recognize and assume to be Slater residents Craig charmed into sitting for him. Craig was always a charmer. He knew how to butter his questions and demands in ways that made them impossible to resist. Many times, he convinced me to do one of his chores in such a way that I felt Craig was doing me the favor.

  “Stella,” he would say, “I’m going to let you take out my trash. It’s a top-secret mission, though. Don’t tell Jill or she’ll be jealous.”

  Though those lines stopped working on me as I got older, I witnessed Craig use them repeatedly, with much success, on teachers and friends and girls. I used to joke that his true vocational calling was not art but con art.

  The largest portrait in the crate is of our mother, Diane Mercer, at the age of twenty-one. I’ve seen the photograph Craig used as his model. It was taken at our parents’ wedding. The photographer snapped a shot of my mother laughing at an uproarious joke told by her maid of honor, Betty Hume. Her brown eyes are crackling with life, her face stretched in pure joy. It’s an already vibrant expression, but Craig’s painting transformed it into something more alive. He painted in bright blues and greens, and the face looks both nothing and everything like my mother. Anyone can see that the portrait was made of more than canvas and acrylics; it was brushed on thick with love.

  Craig loved our mother so much.

  More than Jill could have at such a young age. Even more than I did; I am the first to admit that.

  Craig did not see what my mother did as an unknowable past, as Jill does. Or as a desperate measure, as I do. He saw it as an act of fearlessness. He told me that late one night, a month before he left.

  “Maybe it ended badly,” he said, “but we shouldn’t remember it for how it ended. We should remember why Mom did it. What she was after.”

  I’ve revisited that conversation many times in the past two years. I have asked myself, why did Craig do it? What was he after? There are many possibilities: He was bored and after adventure. He was confused and after answers. He was angry and after solace. I have no way of knowing for certain, and for all his letters, Craig never gave me an answer. Lately, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that he won’t contact me ever again.

  Then that Red Sun boy said my name.

  I place the portraits and sketches back into the crate and set it on the floor. Stretching out on my bed, I study the ceiling fan, its brown blades a blur.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I tell the ceiling. “It doesn’t.”

  Stella.

  You’re Stella Kay.

  That boy knows Craig.

  Craig talked about me.

  I don’t know why it bothers me this much. It does not matter if he refuses to see me and refuses to answer my letters. There is nothing I can do about it.

  That is what I’ve told myself until today.

  Only now I wonder how bad it would really be if I paid a visit to the Moonglow Café.

  Sudden pain jolts through my eyes. I hiss and shut them, rubbing at my temples. The pain fades almost as quickly as it came on, and when I blink my eyes open again, all is well.

  Except, all isn’t well.

  In that moment, I notice what I didn’t notice before: There is a kind of light on the inside of my open closet door. And the light is writing, and the writing is numbers. They cut across the wood paneling in faint violet marks.

  Alarmed, I clamber out of bed, and as I do, I attempt to land on an explanation. Jill might have snuck into my bedroom and written on the door with marker as I slept. That isn’t possible, though. I always lock my door. Even if I hadn’t, I would have noticed the numbers before now—when I opened the closet door to get dressed this morning, for instance. More than that, recent memory tells me there’s been a change. There are glowing numbers on this door where there most certainly were not numbers a minute ago.

  I stand before the door, squinting, and raise a hand to rub at the writing. I drive the flat of my fist against the wood, pressing so hard that my skin turns red with irritation. The effort does no good, though. When I am through, the numbers remain, visible as ever. Nothing has changed.

  But something has changed. One of the numbers—the one farthest to the right—is different.

  Where once the markings read 17:01:34, they now read 17:01:33.

  I know what this is. What I do not know is how and why it is on my closet door, or what it means. I know what to expect next; even so, I cry out when the rightmost number changes again, before my eyes. The three vanishes from sight, and a two fades into its place.

  17:01:32.

  It is a countdown. If it can be trusted to follow the usual pattern of countdowns, it reads seventeen days, one hour, thirty-two minutes.

  I tell myself that I am dreaming. I must be. I pinch my left arm, and I pinch my right. I dig my nails into my scalp, and I spin in place—a single, tight rotation.

  I don’t wake, though. The countdown remains: 17:01:31.

  And I am left with one, dumbfounded question:

  Seventeen days, one hour, and thirty-one minutes till what?

  9

  Galliard

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 2

  Here at Red Sun, we don’t encourage the use of surnames. We call each other by our given names, most of which we gave ourselves. For example, can’t-stop-asking-questions Bright used to be called Patty Hewitt. Six months ago, she shrugged off that name, and forevermore she will be Bright. Like that.

  I was born in the commune—the first kid born here, actually—so I got my name from the Council. They named me Galliard, which is some kind of old French dance. This is because, when I came out of the womb, I was kicking my feet in what Ruby described as “an intentional, rhythmic pattern.”

  Ruby gave birth to me, but we don’t call her my mother, the way people would on the Outside. Ruby is as much my mother as Opal, and any of the older women at Red Sun. And J. J. is as much my father as Rod, or any of the older men. J. J. and Ruby came here in ’61, when Ruby was seven months pregnant with me. Before that, they’d lived in Cleveland, Ohio. Their names were Joe and Roseanne Lazzari. That’s all I know about the Before, and that’s only because, when we were fourteen, Archer sneaked a look at my record in Rod’s office.

  It was too weird, thinking of Ruby and J. J. as Roseanne and Joe. It was weird thinking of them being my age and living on the Outside in the distant and unknown state of Ohio. So I didn’t think about it for long. What was the point? It wouldn’t accomplish anything any more than i
t would for Archer to try to remember what life was like for him when he was little and lived in Los Angeles. Most of his memories are of Red Sun, from the time his parents moved him here at age six and onward. That’s the life that counts now.

  Ruby and J. J. didn’t raise me. The community raised me. We raise one another. That’s how it works. Kids are cared for in the nursery, Brush House, and at the age of ten they go to Sage House, where they’re given a roommate and a supervisor. That’s when they get a preassignment—a service to the commune while they continue their studies.

  When we turn sixteen, we meet with a school official from the Outside, and our natural parents sign some papers saying it’s all right for us to stop school and start work. Then we get our actual assignments. These are the roles we will play in Red Sun for the rest of our lives. Once we assume them, we become fully incorporated members of the commune, and we move to Heather House—the largest building on commune property, where the adults live, and where Archer and I moved in yesterday. It was a fifteen-minute process that entailed transporting our very few possessions to a furnished room.

  So you see, there’s plenty of order to life at Red Sun. It’s all about structure and a day-to-day schedule. That’s why, when I’m asked to report to Council House, I’m sure I’m busted. I’ve never been summoned before. It’s completely out of the ordinary. I’m convinced that somehow, some way, the Council found out about me and Archer irresponsibly lighting up on the Outside, and from here on out, my Crossing privileges will be revoked. Now, of all times, when I actually want those privileges—need them, even. Maybe going Outside started as the wind at my back—a directive from my gods and a kind of “fuck you” to the Council for passing me over. Now, though, I need more. I need to know what else is out there. What the people are like. If they’re as bad as Phoenix told me, or if that’s another thing he lied about. And then there’s the matter of Stella, but I’m doing a great job of not thinking about that, and I plan on keeping it up.