“That’s pretty good,” I say.
“But what I like most is that apart from the sun and moon, it’s the brightest object in the sky. Most people don’t know that.”
I like when he talks like this.
I want to hear more. “Were you always interested in space?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess so. In space, everything has its relative position. Space is an entity, right, but also limitless. It’s less dense the farther out you go, but you can always keep going. There’s no definitive border between the start and the end. We’ll never fully understand or know it. We can’t.”
“You don’t think?”
“Dark matter makes up the majority of all matter, and it’s still a mystery.”
“Dark matter?”
“It’s invisible. It’s all the extra mass we can’t see that makes the formation of galaxies and the rotational velocities of stars around galaxies mathematically possible.”
“I’m glad we don’t know everything.”
“You’re glad?”
“That we don’t know all the answers, that we can’t explain it all, like space. Maybe we’re not supposed to know all the answers. Questions are good. They’re better than answers. If you want to know more about life, how we work, how we progress, it’s questions that are important. That’s what pushes and stretches our intellect. I think questions make us feel less lonely and more connected. It’s not always about knowing. I appreciate not knowing. Not knowing is human. That’s how it should be, like space. It’s unsolvable, and it’s dark,” I say, “but not entirely.”
He laughs at this, and I feel silly for saying what I said.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m not laughing at you, it’s just funny. I haven’t heard anyone say it like that before.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. It’s dark, but not entirely. It’s true. And that’s kind of a nice idea.”
—Some of the rooms were vandalized, I heard.
—Yup, paint on the floor, red paint; some water damage. Did you know he put a chain on the door?
—Why did he do it in here?
—To make some selfish, twisted point, maybe. I don’t know.
—He wasn’t a vandal type, was he?
—No, but the strange thing is he’d started writing graffiti on some of the walls. We all knew it was him. People saw him doing it. He denied it, but volunteered to clean it off every time.
—That’s weird.
—That’s not even the weird part.
—What?
—The strange part was that he wrote the same thing every time. The graffiti. Just one sentence.
—What was it?
—“There’s only one question we need to resolve.”
—There’s only one question we need to resolve?
—Yup. That’s what he wrote.
—What’s the one question?
—I have no idea.
“We still have a while to go, right?”
“Yeah, a bit longer.”
“How about a story?”
“A story?”
“Yeah, to pass the time,” I say. “I’ll tell you a story. A true one. One you’ve never heard. It’s your kind of story. I think you’ll like it.”
I turn the music down a little.
“Sure,” he says.
“It’s about when I was younger, a teenager.”
I look over at him. At a table, he often looks slouchy and uncomfortable. Driving, he looks too long to fit comfortably behind the wheel, but his posture is good. I’m attracted to Jake’s physical stature through his intellect. His sharpness of mind makes his lankiness appealing. They’re connected. At least to me.
“Ready,” he says. “For story time.”
I clear my throat super dramatically.
“Okay. I’d been sheltering my head with some newspaper. Seriously. What? Why are you smiling? It was pouring. I’d grabbed the paper from an empty seat on the bus. My instructions had been simple: arrive at the house at ten thirty and you will be greeted in the driveway. I was told I didn’t need to ring the bell. You’re listening, right?”
He nods, still looking out the windshield at the road ahead.
“When I got there, I had to wait for a while—minutes, not seconds. When the door finally opened, a man I’d never met poked his head out. He looked up at the sky and then said something like he hoped I hadn’t been waiting long. He held out a hand palm up. He looked exhausted, as if he’d been awake for days. Big dark bags under both eyes. Stubble on his cheeks and chin. Bedhead. I tried to glance past him. The door was open slightly, a crack.
“He said: ‘I’m Doug. Gimme a minute, take the keys,’ and he flipped me the keys, which I caught like a punch, both my hands against my stomach. The door slammed shut.
“I didn’t move, not at first. I was stunned. Who was this guy? I really didn’t know anything about him. We’d talked on the phone, that’s it. I looked down at the metal key chain in my hands, which was just a large letter J.”
I stop. I glance at Jake. “You look bored,” I say. “I know I’m including lots of details, but I remember them, and I’m trying to tell a proper story. Is it weird that I remember these details? Is it boring because I’m telling you everything?”
“Just tell your story. Pretty much all memory is fiction and heavily edited. So just keep going.”
“I’m not sure I agree with that, about memory. But I know what you mean,” I say.
“Keep going,” he says. “I’m listening.”
“It was another eight minutes, at least two watch checks, before Doug reappeared. He fell into the passenger seat with a big exhale. He’d changed into worn blue jeans with holes in the knees and a plaid shirt. The seats in his car were mottled with orange cat hair. There was cat hair everywhere.”
“Mottled.”
“Yes, mottled to the nth degree. He was also wearing a black baseball cap, tipped back on his head, with the word Nucleus embroidered on the front in white cursive lettering. He seemed better suited to sitting than standing or walking.
“He didn’t say anything, so I started into the routine I’d been practicing with Dad. Slid the seat forward, adjusted the rearview mirror three times, and ensured the parking brake was released. I placed my hands at ten and two on the steering wheel and straightened my posture.
“?‘I never like the rain,’ Doug said. It was the first thing he said in the car. Nothing about instruction or how long I’d been practicing. I could tell how shy and almost nervous he was now that we were in the car together. His knee bobbed up and down. ‘Is there somewhere you want me to start?’ I asked. ‘It’s this rain,’ he said, ‘sort of throws things off. I think we’ll have to wait it out.’ Through the use of hand signals alone, Doug directed me to pull into the first lot on our left. It was a coffee shop parking lot. He asked if I wanted anything, a coffee or tea, and I told him I was fine. For a while we just sat there without talking, listening to the rain on the car. The engine was still on to keep the windows from fogging up, and I had the wipers set to a low speed. ‘So how old are you?’ he asked. He thought maybe seventeen or eighteen. I told him sixteen.
“?‘That’s pretty old,’ was what he said. His nails were like mini surfboards; long, narrow, dirty mini surfboards. His hands were those of an artist, a writer, not a driving instructor.”
“If you need to take a break from the story to swallow or blink or breathe, go ahead,” says Jake. “You’re like Meryl Streep, fully committed to your role.”
“I’ll breathe when I’m done,” I say. “He mentioned again that sixteen wasn’t young, and that age was a strange, inaccurate umpire for maturity. Then he opened the glove box and took out a small book. ‘I want to read you something,’ he said, ‘if you don’t mind, since we’re waiting and all.’ He asked if I knew anything about Jung. I said, ‘Not really,’ which wasn’t entirely true.”
“Your driving instructor was a Jungian?”
“Just hold on. It took him a moment to find the place in the book. He cleared his throat and then read this line to me: ‘The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.’?”
“Do you have that memorized?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“He gave me the book. I kept it. I still have it somewhere. He was in a giving mood that day. He said experience wasn’t just good for driving but for everything. ‘Experience trumps age,’ he said. ‘We have to find ways to experience because that’s how we learn, that’s how we know.’?”
“Such a weird lesson.”
“I asked why he liked to teach driving. He said it wasn’t his first choice for a job but that he had to do it for practical reasons. He said he’d grown to appreciate sitting in a car and talking to others. He said he liked puzzles. He said he liked driving and navigating with another person as a metaphor. He reminded me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, except he was a shy version of the cat.”
“It’s funny,” says Jake.
“What?”