“No one can picture anything infinite.” Her father reached down and put his hand on her knee and gave it a squeeze. “All we know are things with edges and ends. I think that’s why people get bothered by looking at the ocean sometimes, because they can’t really see the end of it. It’s too huge. That’s why the moon shots made such a difference—you know, the pictures Armstrong and Aldrin took of earth from out in space. All of a sudden we got to see the edges of our world, and I think it made everything seem both smaller and bigger all at the same time.”
“Is that why you believe in God? Because it gives things edges?”
“No,” said her father. “I believe in God because it dissolves the edges.” He removed his hand from her leg and Jory shivered slightly, the evening’s cool air seeming almost autumnlike. “If there’s a god, then there doesn’t have to be an end to things,” he said, “to space, to time, to life. Things can be bigger than whatever it is we’re merely able to see or measure.”
“But they already are,” said Jory. “Molecules and atoms and black holes and quarks. Everything is plenty huge even without God.”
“Well,” her father said, “yes, so to speak.”
“You always told me that space went on forever,” said Jory. “And that there were more stars than anyone could ever count no matter how long they went on counting.”
“That’s true,” her father said. “Pretty much.”
“And everything that’s dark is actually full of light, and all things that seem to be holding still are really moving, right?” The night sky was coming on in earnest now, its purpling dye flattening and darkening the enormous bowl that was upended over the earth.
“I’ve always believed that science and religion don’t have to be mutually exclusive.”
“Grace says . . . Grace said . . . that science is just there to uncover the watermark of God. That all of nature is merely the outward sign of an omnipotent being.”
“Yes,” he said. “Grace would be certain to correct us if we’d gone astray in our theological reasoning.”
This statement seemed to put a temporary end to their conversation.
The sky was now an almost midnight blue, and so dark that she had to strain to see her father’s face or even read his expression. Was this what faith was? Just a believing and hoping and trusting in something, regardless of the evidence to the contrary? And if so, what kind of idiotic belief system was that? The sky suddenly seemed to bend or slip, revealing a radiant white slice of moon where before there had been only darkness. It reminded Jory of a lily’s trumpet just beginning to unfurl.
“Jory—do you think I’ve done wrong by you girls?”
Her father was looking at her in a new, oddly fearful way, and waiting hopefully for her response.
How was it possible to care deeply about people and not hurt them? To touch them and not leave terrible marks? Her father said that even meteors left fingerprints: imprints as distinct and specific as those produced by human hands, little rills or valleys that revealed the meteor’s size and weight and velocity. And that sometimes if a falling star was large enough, its impact could change a planet’s course forever—that simply by touching the planet’s surface it could eternally alter its course through space.
“I love you, Dad,” she said, and as she said it she realized that this was suddenly, utterly, and inviolably true. She hoped that this one small truth might be answer enough to make up for the scars that his loving, and hers, had already left behind.
Her father’s shy smile bloomed at her through the dusk. “Well,” he said, giving his lawn chair’s armrest a gentle tap, “we might as well give these fancy new shoes of ours a trial run.” He stood up and swung his arms above his head. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s start out slow and just see how it goes.”
The two of them now, father and daughter, began jogging around the perimeter of the backyard, next to each other in the nighttime air. Nothing seemed important enough to say. Jory listened to her father’s breathing and felt an awkward sense of intimacy with this human body running so close beside her, deliberately matching its strides to hers. She could hear, but no longer see, his footsteps, so she had to trust that he knew the way, and that any of the ground’s rough spots or upheavals had already been worn away by years and years of her father tracing his careful, deliberate orbit through the darkness.
Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to my phenomenal agent, PJ Mark, whose sharp-eyed vision for this book enhanced its scope and meaning in ways both great and small, and to Marya Spence for her excellent revision suggestions. Endless thanks are due my editor, the extraordinary Allison Lorentzen; her wisdom and encouragement made the editorial process surprisingly pain free. I am also grateful to Diego Nuñez and to my copyeditors and proofreaders at Viking for their tireless attention. And an enormous thank you goes to Paul Buckley for his amazing design work, which, along with Alessandro Gottardo’s evocative illustration, made the book’s cover a thing of genuine beauty.
I am forever grateful to the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University, to Elizabeth Tallent, my beloved John L’Heureux, and particularly Tobias Wolff, who helped me immeasurably with the first draft of this story. Thanks go, too, to the University of Virginia and its excellent instructors: John Casey, Ann Beattie, and the wondrous Deborah Eisenberg.
I also want to thank Bill Clegg and Michelle Velasco, two early readers of my manuscript, for their many insightful comments. I am ever beholden to Andrew Altschul, Scott Hutchins, and Josh Weil, whose continued friendship, generosity, and aid I treasure highly.
To my sisters, Constance Ford and Gail Roberts, who shared with me many of the experiences portrayed on these pages, I owe a deep debt of gratitude and love that cannot be adequately expressed here. This is equally true of my obligation to Tim Brelinski, whose assistance has been wise, unfailing, and inexhaustible. And to Max Boyd, my child and chief adviser, my son and fundamental support system, goes all my love and more besides.
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