The Great Unknowable End

by Kathryn Ormsbee

  She is ready to leave it, to walk away and start a new conversation. It’s in that moment that I find my courage and spit out, “It’s an escape pod.”

  Gayle presses her lips tight. She is waiting for me to go on.

  “Have you seen the movie Marooned?” I ask.

  Gayle frowns in thought. She nods slowly, then faster. “Gregory Peck is in that one, isn’t he? Came out ten or so years ago? Right around the moon landing.”

  “That’s it. I was Jill’s age then, and I snuck into the theatre to see that one with my friend Dennis. Well . . . I mean, we’re not friends anymore. Not that that matters.” I am still blushing, and I am certain Gayle notices, even in the candlelight. “Anyway, the movie scared me. I know it was meant to be suspense, but it was more than that. It was a horror story, watching those astronauts trapped in a little bit of tin, rotating Earth, unable to come back down. And the scene where the one astronaut cuts loose, and his oxygen goes out, it . . .” I am speaking very fast, and I know it is too much. I should stop. I have never told anyone this. Gayle is listening and nodding, though, and she looks understanding in the flickering light—something beyond human, a patron saint come down to listen to my innermost confessions. So I continue to confess. “I was crying at the end. I couldn’t stop. I think I scared Dennis. My mother had . . . had passed a few months earlier, and Dennis thought it had to do with that. Maybe it did, but I don’t think so. It was just—I kept imagining what it would be like, trapped in space with no way home. I had nightmares for a while, and then I mostly forgot it. But then Apollo 13 happened, and it got me to thinking of Marooned again and everything that can go wrong in space, and I thought, shouldn’t rockets have better lifeboats? That’s when I decided I would come up with the perfect escape pod. A way to get home, with thrusters and the proper shielding and an extra store of oxygen. Though I know now it’s stupid. I know NASA has good reasons behind their designs, with plenty of precautions in place. And there are regulations concerning size and weight and money spent, I know that. So it’s stupid. Just this dumb thing I came up with.”

  “You thought of that when you were nine?”

  I am so startled by the question, I laugh again and say, “No. I mean, I drew a lot of plans when I was that age. I didn’t work out the math until freshman year.”

  Gayle’s expression does not change. “You were fourteen. When you drew that.”

  “Yes.” I am wondering now what possessed me to put up the drawings. Had I left them alone on my desk, I wouldn’t be enduring this inquisition. It’s all the fault of those horrible winds.

  Gayle doesn’t notice my discomfort, though maybe that’s because I do too good a job at hiding it. Oblivious, she asks, “How old were you when you made the shuttle designs?”

  “That was this year,” I say. “Like I said, though, those things wouldn’t fly. They’re only bare-bones ideas, you know.”

  “Yes,” says Gayle. “I know.”

  As she holds the candle closer to the drawings, I get an urge to blow out the flame. I purse my lips.

  “This is upper-level math, Stella. Past high school calculus.”

  “Well, my teacher wasn’t the best,” I say, unsure of what I am trying to explain. “I did a lot of studying on my own.”

  Gayle is silent. That serious, uncovered feeling is back on me.

  “You know what’s funny?” I say. “I only saw that movie once, but I remember it really well. Even better than movies I saw last year. The only women in it are the astronauts’ wives. And even back then, I remember getting so angry about that. The wives were awful. I don’t mean they were bad people, or anything, it was that . . . There’s this scene when the engineers tell them there’s been a problem, and one of the wives tells the other one, ‘The best thing is to let the men do their jobs and keep our emotions to ourselves.’ Something like that.” I am laughing again. “Isn’t that ridiculous? I thought that even when I was nine.”

  Gayle is looking at my sketches when she says, “Ridiculous.”

  I want to ask every impertinent question I have been biting back. Why did she get the degree she did? How is she a nuclear physicist? What is that like, a woman among so many men? I feel certain if I asked them, she would understand. She would answer.

  I cannot ask, though. Gayle has grown quiet, and she seems almost . . . angry. I decide this should be over. My father is probably wondering what’s become of us. I should leave the room and get ready for bed, before we use up the last of our candles.

  “Anyway,” I say, “I’ll leave you to—”

  “Sorry. Sorry, hang on.” Gayle’s eyes are swimming. Too much candlelight, I suppose. “Stella, hang on. Your father tells me you’re not going to college. Is that right?”

  I say, “I can’t leave Jill. And we need the money.”

  “I see.”

  She looks so displeased that I have to say something more.

  “I know what you’re thinking. I’d like to go to college, and I mean to. Just later on, when Jill’s older. People go to college later in life. That’s what I’ll do.”

  I don’t know where this is coming from. It is the first time I’ve thought it, and certainly the first time I’ve said it. I don’t mean to go to college later. By the time Jill is my age, my life will have moved on, and college won’t be an option. What I want is for Jill to go to college, to get an opportunity I will not have. I know that. What I don’t know is why I was compelled to lie to Gayle in order to make her think better of me.

  Though my lie seems to have changed things. Gayle’s face clears, the anger no longer there. She smiles, which makes me realize she hasn’t been smiling all this time, and she says, “I understand.”

  “Hey! Hey, you two!”

  My father appears at the doorway, holding the crank lantern aloft. He reminds me of a mythical character—a guide with magic in his blood, straight from the pages of the Lord of the Rings. Jill is by his side, dressed in a flowing white nightgown, hair pulled out of its braided pigtails, long and crimped.

  “You have to see this.” Dad is so excited he’s short on breath. He waves us into the den, where he yanks up the blinds from the window there. Raindrops are crowded densely upon the glass. Beyond them are sky and the short, weedy expanse of our front yard.

  “What?” I ask, as Gayle and I approach the window. “What’s—”

  A flash of light knocks the words out of me. Another flash follows, and another.

  Veins.

  That is what I think as I watch them pulse against the sky, bright pink and branched out in jagged lines. They are the veins of something larger than us, and something powerful. Something unfeeling and impersonal. And yet . . . something wonderful. I cannot take my eyes off the sky. I have never seen lightning like this—pink and relentless. I have never heard thunder like this—booming outside, but within me too, down to my bones. I cannot stop looking and listening. None of us can. We stand still and watch in wonder, as the pink light illuminates our faces.

  13

  Galliard

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 6

  My gods died young.

  Janis and Jimi were each twenty-seven, and Buddy was only twenty-two. Can you imagine? All that talent and life, snuffed out by an overdose, asphyxiation, a plane crash. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. That talent and life have to go somewhere. I think they went to the stars.

  I don’t believe in ghosts. It’s not that I think those three are still around, or that they’re actually living in the sky. And I don’t mean any disrespect to their memories or their living relations. I guess it’s more what they represent. I pray to Buddy for confidence and understanding, which is something he had in spades. I pray to Janis for bravery and strength. And I pray to Jimi for discipline and cool. Sometimes they fail me, but most days they’ve got my back. And these days I’m starting to think they might be the very wind at my back.

  Even now, when it looks like I’m stuck in J. J.’s kitchen for life with no hope of playing my music full
-time, I’ve got hope. You have to keep playing, right? You’ve got to have talent, but you’ve also got to persevere. My gods sure did.

  There’s one piano on Red Sun property, and it’s located in Common House. I go there to play when I’m not on shift—late morning some days, early evening on others. Ruby gave me my first lesson when I was five. She taught me how to curve my hands over the keyboard as though I was holding on to fragile bubbles. She taught me sharps and flats and the circle of fifths, and I worked my way up from “Hot Cross Buns” to Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G Minor over the course of eleven years. Until I was nine, Ruby could place requests for new sheet music to be brought in from the Outside. Then Rod came on the Council, and things changed. Members were no longer allowed to request importations; the Council would decide on everything, from fabrics to soap to linens. The biggest change was that there would be no more additions to the Back Room collection.

  In the Back Room, there’s a record player, an LP collection, and a small library of books, all from the Outside. Members are allowed to visit with a pass from the Council. Leander, Opal’s husband, believed humans work best when their souls are well-nourished or something, and that both music and writing are the best food for the soul. But when Rod assumed authority, he claimed to have noticed a “disturbing trend” in the commune. More workers seemed restless while performing their tasks, he said, and more youths were leaving Red Sun. So he introduced the cutoff: no more music and no more books—nothing created after 1970. Technically, the whole Council implemented the rule, but everyone knew it was Rod’s idea.

  I try not to think about what I’ve missed in the past seven years. Instead I listen to what we do have, which includes the Beatles and the Byrds and the Rolling Stones; Simon and Garfunkel, the Beach Boys, James Brown; and, of course, my gods. My weekly listening sessions always include a line-up of “Manic Depression” followed by “Kozmic Blues” followed by “Words of Love.” To top it off, at the close of each session I listen to Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never.” Because Elvis is the King, and to end on anything else would be sacrilege.

  I listen to the music the same way I end my morning prayers—lying down, eyes closed. In the Back Room, wrapped up in the music, the beat thump-thumping through my skeleton, I feel all right. The week’s aggravations don’t reach me there. I melt into the music. Buddy, Janis, and Jimi usher my spirit to the sky, and for an hour I exist outside myself, carried along by chord progressions and the tap of cymbals. And then the hour ends, and Saff knocks on the door and tells me to hand in my pass.

  I started writing my own songs when I was thirteen. I don’t know if they’re any good; I only know they’re mine. I mostly sing about life on the commune. I sing love songs too, though they’re based on the love songs I’ve heard, not personal experience. In case you’re curious, I’m not popular with the ladies. In a commune of four hundred people, your options are already limited, and after what happened with this girl named Cynthia, I’ve gone into a kind of lockdown. You take what you can get, and if you don’t get anything? Well, you can write a song about that too.

  Here’s the thing: Music is a kind of magic. When I’m lying down in the Back Room, and even when I’m playing chords and singing lyrics, a calmness washes over me the same as it does during my morning prayers. When I’m wrapped up in the music, my tics can’t find me. They fade to nothing, and all that’s left is melody. No jaw jerks, no throat clears, no self-conscious thoughts. Just me and the notes and the magic in between.

  Lately, I’ve been in need of that magic, and so today, at the Yamaha, I’m mixing some Liszt with some Stevie Wonder with some original composition. I pound at the keys with more force than necessary.

  I haven’t spoken to Phoenix, and Phoenix hasn’t spoken to me. He’s stopped trying to make nice and realized that we’re only going to talk again when I deign to speak to him; backstabbers don’t get to set the terms of reconciliation.

  Trouble is, I don’t want to be reconciled. I’m still mad as hell at Phoenix, and matters definitely aren’t any better now that some of his paintings have started to show up on display at the Moonglow, replacing old photographs of the commune. Next to each painting is a paper listing the title and price; the Council is selling each work for a hundred dollars. I guess canvases sell better than songs.

  The trouble about the trouble is, I have to make nice with Phoenix, and soon. Stella Mercer is depending on it. If she shows up here on Wednesday with those big, sad eyes, asking about her brother, I will lose it. I will break down and tell her everything and invite her to run me through with J. J.’s sharpest chef’s knife, because I deserve it.

  So I have to talk to Phoenix. I have to play it nice, even though he has ruined my life, because I myself have quite possibly ruined Stella Mercer’s life.

  Hence the pounding on keys with undue force.

  I try to make the music louder than my thoughts. Maybe, I think, the chords can drown out the memories of all the nights Phoenix sat across from me at this piano and told me I had a unique musical talent.

  “Gonna break that thing, man.”

  I’ve been so lost in my bad feelings and a corresponding run of octaves that I haven’t noticed Archer standing a few feet off.

  “Goddamn it,” I say, skidding back on the piano bench. I begin to blink—quick, relentless flutters.

  Archer snickers. “Aw, poor brooding artist, alone with his craft.” He places his hand on his forehead in faux distress. “No one understands my tortured soul.”

  I mean, it’s absolutely true. No one does.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “Past time. The guys are gonna leave without us unless we get a move on.”

  Still blinking hard, I stack the sheet music and stow it in the bench. Archer is watching my every move.

  “You ready for this?” he asks. “Cause I don’t think you are.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” I look over at what Archer is wearing. It’s not the usual Red Sun tunic, but a purple T-shirt that reads KANSAS CITY ROYALS. He looks like an outsider.

  I point to my own stark white tunic and ask, “Am I going to stand out?”

  Archer shrugs. “We’d stand out anyway. Everyone knows we’re from the commune. Follow my lead and you’ll be fine.”

  Archer and I have gone out once since the drive-in, on Thursday night. We biked to what Archer called the “main drag”—a long street of shops and restaurants. We walked around and eventually bought some deli sandwiches, and I had my first try of something called pastrami. It was good, but not better than anything we cook at the Moonglow. I’d heard Archer talk enough about Slater to know what to expect. It’s not like I haven’t read about stores and roads, and I’ve seen cars before. But things are different in person. Larger and way more solid, moving in ways I didn’t exactly expect. It was an all right visit, I guess. I’ve got nothing to compare it to. According to Archer, though, I still haven’t had a real introduction to the Outside.

  That real introduction comes tonight.

  Archer and the other crossers have been invited to an outsider party. Archer says he’s been to plenty of these, and they turn out okay so long as you don’t drink everything you’re handed. I plan on following his advice. I want to be alert and aware tonight, because tonight I’m meeting actual people from the Outside. It’s the next step. A chance to see if what they’ve told us here in Red Sun is true. If the people out there are selfish backstabbers, out of tune with the Life Force. If Phoenix was right about something, anything.

  Not for the first time, I think about what Rod told me in his office—that Crossing is for the weak. That weak actions are wrong actions, and they deserve punishment from the Life Force. Yet here I am, Crossing not only because I think my Life Force approves, but because I think it’s telling me to. Janis, Jimi, and Buddy were risk takers, innovators, rebels. Maybe Rod would call their actions wrong too. All I know is that if my Crossing bothers Rod, tough. I’m not near close to forgiving him for passing
me over for resident artist, whatever his reasoning. Because songs aren’t just songs. And what I’ve been playing on this Yamaha? It’s who I am.

  • • •

  “Hey, hey! Put a drink in this man’s hand!”

  The party’s underground. Or, to be totally accurate, it’s in someone’s basement. Archer says this is the usual. The guy who’s hosting—someone by the name of Evan or Ethan, I can’t remember—has parents who regularly go out of town on the weekend, making his place the place to party. Only he insists everyone stay in the basement so that no irreparable damage is done to his mom’s china collection. Based on what I’ve seen tonight, that’s a valid concern.

  The place is packed. There have to be at least sixty people here, all around my age. Girls are sitting in guys’ laps, and plastic cups are in everyone’s hands, and the air is thick with cigarette smoke. Everywhere around me, people are talking and laughing. I’ve already seen six different couples making out. Bowls of chips and plates of brownies are passed around the room, from hand to hand. At one end of the basement, a half-dozen people are bent over rows of red, blue, yellow, and green circles, their arms and legs jumbled together.

  “It’s Twister,” shouts the same guy who’s insisting someone put a drink in my hand. “Never seen it before, flower child?”

  I don’t know if I’m supposed to be offended by this guy, so I just edge away and slip back into the crowd. Slipping out of notice entirely is a tougher task. Archer lied to me about clothes; none of the other crossers are in the Red Sun tunic, which leaves me looking like a colossal idiot. Dressed this way, my very person seems to be screaming, Ask me about life on the inside!

  “Are you all virgins?” asks a giggling girl in a paisley wrap, before being shushed and carted away by her girlfriends.

  “You heard of disco in there?” asks another girl, who’s hanging upside down over a couch arm, her pupils as large as moons.