The Great Unknowable End

by Kathryn Ormsbee

  I hand the walkie-talkie to Dad. He grips it, running his thumb over the label. “Where did you get the supplies?”

  “Here and there. I’ve been saving up my Dreamlight tips for this specifically. I had them special-order a few things at Belmont and Mike’s. Mostly it’s from the surplus store. They have high-range walkie-talkies, and that’s what I needed. I tried with toy sets at first, but they only reach thirteen hundred feet.”

  He raises his eyes to me, startled. “You’ve been biking to the surplus store alone?”

  “Not always alone.” My face turns hot at the thought of my trip with Galliard. “The paint is left over from when Connie redecorated the salon. I haven’t told her what I’m doing. There’s a chance she might hate it. Or not understand. But now that I’m working there full-time, I wanted to make things easier for everyone.”

  My father lifts the walkie-talkie, gives it a gentle shake. “Gayle told me she has a connection with a professor at KU—an old schoolmate. She says they have an excellent school of engineering. Wants to introduce you there, look into the possibility of applying for spring admission. Did she tell you any of that?”

  I shake my head, mute.

  “Is that what you want, Stell? Do you want to go to college?”

  I am crying. I wipe at the tears streaking my cheeks, unable to form a response.

  “You never told me that,” he says. “You never said anything about it. I thought you were happy.”

  That is when the words break free.

  “I thought I was too,” I say, blotting at the tears with my first. “And I don’t want to let you down. I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want to leave Jill, but . . . I don’t want to feel stifled here. I don’t want to feel I have to stay, and grow bitter, and . . . and go mad from it. I don’t want to be Mom. And I’m so scared I will.”

  It is a terrible thing to tell him, but it is what I need to say. I need him to hear it, and I need to hear it, out loud: I cannot become Diane Mercer. I cannot stay in this town and turn into someone’s wife with two children and scribble on graph paper in my spare time. I cannot tend to a house and cook meals and also do what I’m best at. I cannot be This Stella and make it through alive. I must be That Stella, or I will die. And I’m not sure I knew that until now, in this very moment, on this porch, with the scent of cigarette lingering around me.

  Dad is crying now too. “Did you feel I was forcing you to stay here? I never said you couldn’t go to college.”

  I take the walkie-talkie from him and place it back in the bin. I drag the backs of my hands across my face.

  “It’s not that you said I couldn’t. You just never said I could.”

  I stop my attempts to get rid of the tears. They come far faster than I can hope to make them disappear. I feel as though I am waking from a dream, only to realize I’ve shown my heart to Dad, shown my project. I don’t know whether I am terrified or elated. Whatever the emotion is, it’s strong. It wraps around my body and squeezes the breath out of me.

  “I think you should talk to Gayle.” My father stands. He slaps his hands together as though ridding them of dust—like my project has left residue there. “You should call Gayle, meet with this professor friend of hers.”

  I stare up at him. “I couldn’t go spring semester. I don’t know if I could go at all, Dad. Maybe I’m not good enough. And I’d have to quit my jobs here and take out loans, and I can’t—”

  “You should talk to her.” His hands fall to his sides, clenched tight. “You’re not the breadwinner of this family. You shouldn’t be. You’re an adult, as you say. You deserve to get away. And I’d rather send you off than have you run off like . . .”

  Craig.

  Craig, Craig, Craig.

  His name crackles in the air around us, though I spoke it many minutes ago.

  “Jill needs me,” I whisper. “She’s growing up. She needs me here.”

  “That’s not a reason to stay, Stella.”

  “Are you serious?” I turn on him. “It’s the best reason to stay. Family is what matters. We’re all each other’s got.”

  “We’ll still be family if you’re in Lawrence. You could visit on weekends, if you wanted.”

  I shake my head. “It’s not the same.”

  I can’t be my mother, but I can’t be my brother, either. I can’t be This Stella, but I can’t be That Stella.

  I don’t know what’s left to be.

  I shut my eyes, and Dad goes back in the house. I think he is gone, but a moment later he returns to the stoop and places something on my knee, papery and featherlight. I take hold of it, but I do not open my eyes until he has left again, this time for good.

  The paper in my hand is small and square, ripped from the kitchen grocery list. On it is a series of carefully printed numbers, and a single word: Gayle.

  Dad told me to call her, and now he has given me the means.

  • • •

  I am in a daze when I go into the house, hauling the wicker bin to my room. I sit at my desk, staring at my project. All that effort, to be indispensable at a job I don’t enjoy. It’s funny, only I don’t laugh. I look at Gayle’s telephone number, written on paper now damp from my holding it so hard. My breaths turn short, my head light. I am suffocating here, in this room.

  I make my escape. I walk, and I do not stop until I reach the kitchen phone. I set the paper before me, on the kitchen counter, and then, with a trembling index finger, I dial. The numbers spin out, one by one, each heavy stroke of the rotary drawing me closer to a connection.

  Then the number is complete, and the phone rings. It continues to ring—three, four, five times. My heart falls. Gayle isn’t there. She isn’t going to answer. I am about to hang up when I hear, “Hello, this is Gayle Nelson.”

  “G-Gayle?” I sputter.

  “I’m not available, but if you leave a message with a number where you can be reached, I’ll be in touch soon.”

  Then there is a long, loud beep in my ear, followed by silence.

  An answering machine. Gayle Nelson has an answering machine. Of course she does, I reflect. She’s an important scientist, and if anyone needs that fancy piece of equipment, it’s her. Only after that reflection do I realize that an answering machine means I am being recorded. I could hang up right now, and Gayle wouldn’t know it was me. There would only be a few seconds of dead air. I imagine she gets a lot of that, since I don’t know of anyone in Slater who has an answering machine, and those callers certainly wouldn’t be expecting one on the other line.

  This Stella would hang up.

  That Stella doesn’t. She speaks.

  “Miss Nelson? Gayle. It’s Stella Mercer. My dad told me you spoke with him about me, and I don’t really appreciate that, but . . . but . . .” The remaining words burst out: “I want to know if you can help me. With college. If you think I can go, what I can do. I want to talk about that. All right. I’m sorry, I don’t know if I—I’m—I’m sorry.”

  I slam the phone on the receiver, so hard the clang echoes through my skull.

  Then I run, down the hallway and out the front door. I cannot stay still. I take to the sidewalk and circle around my street, once, then twice. When I reach my house the second time, I return to the door, but I don’t go inside. I sit on the stoop with my head between my knees, gulping in long breaths. Slowly, very slowly, they even out.

  I feel rather than see the sun lowering. My skin cools and dampens, and the birdcalls change. I am coming to terms with a new reality. By leaving that message with Gayle, I have done something wholly irretrievable. That Stella is no longer an experiment.

  When I finally go inside, Jill is in the den, already watching the news, a TV dinner on her lap. I check my watch and find that it’s a quarter till six.

  “Oh my God. Jill. I’m sorry, I lost track of time.”

  She doesn’t answer me, too absorbed in Cassie Mackin’s report and her steaming mac and cheese. I leave it alone. I don’t fix a meal for myself; I ha
ve no appetite. I go to my bedroom, ready for sleep and for this long, ravaging day to be over.

  I don’t notice the damage at first. It isn’t until I’ve fallen back on the bed that I see the shreds of finely ripped paper scattered on my desk and the surrounding floor.

  I sit up straight, dragging my eyes over the wreckage. The shuttle drawings, the escape-pod plans—they have been torn from their place, tacks scattered in a dangerous constellation on the floor. All that is left of the sketches and equations are long, thin strips of graph paper and the now-indecipherable markings of pen and pencil. And there, close by on the floor, is the wicker bin, overturned.

  I know what I am going to find before I right the bin. Even so, the sight makes my heart thump hard against my ribs. The project has been destroyed. Wires have been ripped out, lights broken, walkie-talkies smashed apart. It is the work of angry hands and shoe heels and, most likely, a hammer.

  I realize now how stupid I have been to assume Jill would know nothing. That she wouldn’t eavesdrop on my adult conversations with Dad.

  Of course Jill knows. She is always the first to notice everything, from the dead collie to the lightning-struck steeple to the two boys from Red Sun outside Vine Street Salon. She is the sleuth, just like her heroes.

  And now I am her enemy: the culprit.

  A letter from Diane Mercer, written July 20, 1969

  Please believe, it is not your fault. Sometimes only life is to blame, not people. I don't blame any of you.

  I wish I'd known, before I was a wife and before I was a mother, that I could not be a wife and could not be a mother. I cannot be enough for you, and you cannot be enough for me.

  I need to use my mind for more than errands and your meals. I need more than what I can find in this town. I need a city, I need a job, I need an outlet for all the things I was before.

  I can't have those without leaving you.

  And I can't leave you and live with myself.

  That is why I must leave in this way, for good. Please understand. I hope one day you will.

  21

  Galliard

  TUESDAY, AUGUST 16

  I don’t know what the hell happened.

  I mean, I do on the surface.

  Stella kissed me.

  I ticked.

  She left.

  And I haven’t heard anything since.

  That’s on the surface, but it sure doesn’t mean I know what’s going on below. What actually happened.

  Archer’s been merciless.

  “You had the chance,” he railed on Sunday night, when we were closed up in our room. “You had every chance.”

  “I was going to tell her. I was building up to it. I didn’t think she’d kiss me.”

  “She wouldn’t have kissed you if you’d told her first. So stop whining about it. Stop. I don’t want to hear you talk about it until you’ve fucking done something, for real.”

  Since then, Archer’s been flinging all kinds of jabs in my direction. (“Hey, Galliard! Or wait, is that really your name? I hear there’s some confusion.” And “Will you tell Thunder—no, hang on, I’d better tell him myself; don’t want him thinking it’s coming from you.”)

  I don’t fend them off. I deserve them.

  There’s one important detail I didn’t tell Archer: how badly the kiss ended. It would be too humiliating. Especially after Cynthia.

  Cynthia and I were friends growing up. Then one day we were holding hands on our way from morning prayer to Dining Hall. And then we were making out. And touching. Nothing more than that, though.

  The Council doesn’t condemn sex for us youth, but it does advocate safety. We got an earful about protected sex and how to be smart about it when we turned thirteen. It’s this grand speech repeated annually by one of our residence leaders or by Saff herself, and accompanied by the talk on how we’re allowed to take on friends and lovers, but we must never think of ourselves as individual family units; instead we’re a part of the greater family of Red Sun, in which there is neither mother nor father, and the children are every member’s responsibility. It’s particular familial bonds that are discouraged, not procreation.

  So it wasn’t guilt or anything that kept me and Cynthia off each other. I guess it was that neither of us felt ready. I was fourteen, and she was fifteen, and we kept stopping at the part where it’d be pretty damn usual to take off each other’s clothes. It was that way for a few months. And then she stopped kissing me. And then she stopped holding my hand. And then she started holding hands with Cal—the one who got hit by a car on Crossing. Cynthia and Cal have been together ever since.

  And I was left like I am now, wondering what happened.

  Though I’ve got a big hunch.

  Eventually, someway, somehow, I fuck everything up. Sometimes it’s the tics that do it, and sometimes it’s just me, but the fucking up? That part is a sure bet.

  Even J. J. said it. He said I wouldn’t make it on the Outside, the way I am. I can barely make it on the inside as is. I can’t even get a girlfriend here, or the job I want. How much worse would it be in a world where people don’t support one another the way we do at Red Sun? What kind of living hell would that be?

  I thought my gods had a plan for me. I thought they wanted me to give this Outside thing a go, while I have the chance. I thought they wanted me to be daring, take risks the way they did. Maybe I got it all wrong, though. Maybe I misinterpreted the signs, and really the blood rain and the lightning and the raging winds have been warnings—or, worse, punishments. Maybe I was never supposed to have set foot out of Red Sun.

  Sure, the idea of leaving Red Sun is a nice one, in theory. Life on the Outside would be different and new and even exciting. When I was with Stella, though, I forgot how ugly the Outside can be. It’s also a place where people get hurt, and no one around them gives a fuck. Where they throw you against walls and talk about you like you’re not even in the same room.

  So Red Sun’s music selection isn’t extensive. I can make my own music.

  So my assigned job isn’t the best. It’s not the worst, either.

  So I couldn’t bring back that Queen LP. It’s a small price to pay for the community I’ve known my whole life.

  And, as Opal reminds us during our monthly meetings, contentment is the key to happiness.

  I remind myself of that now, and I tell myself to think of my gods’ signs a different way. I decide to try my hand at being content. Contentedly, I attend morning prayer, and I pray to Jimi for cool about Stella Kay Mercer. I pray to Janis for the strength to not punch Phoenix in the face every time I see him around. I pray to Buddy for understanding about my situation, locked into cooking green beans every damn day.

  Will they answer my prayers? Will they show mercy on their wayward son? It’s too soon to say.

  I’ve resumed my work at the Moonglow, which the Council reopened after a full day of clear skies. Life goes on, and as the days pass, it seems our strange weather has finally ended. The skies are clear, and at night I can see my gods shining down. The Life Force seems to be saying, There’s a good boy, Galliard. Stay here, and it’ll be fine.

  • • •

  Tuesday morning the Council calls a special meeting. We adult members leave our usual tasks and gather in Common House.

  Opal speaks first. “We know the fear and concerns that have been circling Red Sun. There’s been an excess of negative energy due to the strange events in past weeks. That is only natural. However, we on the Council believe it is time to now purge that negativity from among us and refocus on our callings.”

  Rod takes over from there. He tells us, not for the first time, that these frightening events are due to pollution and the misuse of precious resources by those on the Outside. He tells us we should mourn for this ignorance, but that we must focus on our community, asking ourselves what we can do to combat the damage outsiders wreak daily upon the earth.

  None of this is new to me. I’ve heard the same explanations thrown aroun
d in whispers and dinner conversations. The outsiders are to blame for this, and we must be the better people. We must choose the higher path. That’s what everyone says.

  Today Rod adds to that sentiment with some practical steps. He tells us the Council will hold new weekly “unity” meetings, during which we will share our fears and lift one another toward the Life Force.

  Then he tells us, “Due to various concerns, we’ve decided to indefinitely suspend Crossing. It’s too volatile a situation outside our walls, and we cannot guarantee the full safety of our youth. For this reason, no one will be allowed out of our gates until we can be sure of stability in the town and surrounding area.”

  Thunder, one of Archer’s usual Crossing crew, calls out, “But it’s almost over anyway!”

  “I’m aware of that,” says Rod, raising his hands. “We understand your frustration. However, safety comes before special privileges. Remember, we allow you Crossing rights. This isn’t a restriction on your freedom; it’s a precaution for your well-being. We don’t want any of you to be caught outside the safety of Red Sun, should a new anomaly visit us and a panic break out in town.”

  “Fuck that,” Archer mutters beside me. “Like there won’t be panic here.”

  Here’s the thing: If I were truly content, the way I’m trying to be, I wouldn’t be upset about Rod’s announcement. Sure, I was putting off going out one last time to find Stella and tell her the truth. But for Rod to say I can’t? Seeing her again would be uncomfortable. Not seeing her again isn’t a possibility. I have to see her. I have to finally make this right. It’s my final business on the Outside.

  Now, instead of having two weeks left to cross, I have zero. No weeks, no days, no hours. My chance is over. No more considering, no more flirting with the Outside and its possibilities. Rod, fucking Rod, has made my decision for me. And even though I’m trying to be content, I’m not. I’m pissed.