Gwendy’s Final Task

After dinner, Gwendy stops by the weather deck. Her work is done for the day, but she’s not quite tired enough to call it a night. She also doesn’t want to return to her room just yet. Ever since the upsetting incident involving her running shoes, the button box’s voice has grown louder and more insistent and more difficult to push away. She’s hoping that staring into the enormous telescope for ten or fifteen minutes will be just the ticket for her beleaguered brain. But that’s not the only reason she likes coming here.

In some ways the Many Flags weather deck—with its own gigantic window like a hanging glass ornament, and its softly humming monitors—reminds Gwendy of Our Lady of Serene Waters Catholic Church back in Castle Rock. She finds the atmosphere calming for both the body and the soul, and it provides her a sort of celestial cathedral in which to reflect. And the view is—no pun, just truth—downright heavenly.

All of this is a miracle, she thinks, staring out at the dark expanse of … everything. How many other worlds exist in this endless sea of stars and planets and galaxies? How many other life forms might be staring back at me right at this very moment?

She remembers a warm July night when she was eleven—the summer before the button box first entered her life. A month earlier, just before the end of the school year, Gwendy’s fifth grade science teacher, Mr. Loggins—who more often than not taught his daily lessons with a big green crusty booger visible in one or both nostrils—had taken the class on a field trip to the planetarium. Most of the kids, already snared in summer vacation’s web of promise, spent those ninety minutes in the dark throwing jelly beans at their friends, gossiping about who was and who wasn’t invited to Katy Sharrett’s end-of-year pool party, and making fart sounds by stuffing their hands into their armpits.

Not Gwendy. She had been fascinated. When she got home from school later that afternoon, she’d immediately begged her parents to buy her a telescope. After intense negotiations involving her weekend chore duties, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson agreed to share the cost with their daughter (75% mom and dad, 25% Gwendy). On the first Saturday afternoon of summer break, Gwendy and her father drove out to the Sears store on Route 119 in Lewiston and picked up a Galaxy 313 StarFinder at thirty percent off the ticketed price. Gwendy was ecstatic.

On the July night she’s thinking about, the telescope was set up in the corner of the backyard, just a few paces away from the picnic table and grill. Her father, who had come outside earlier, was snoring in a lawn chair, a couple of empty cans of Black Label lying beside him in the freshly cut grass. After awhile, her mother appeared and tucked the fuzzy red blanket from the den sofa over him. Then she joined her daughter by the telescope.

“Take a look, mom,” Gwendy said, stepping aside.

Mrs. Peterson peered into the eyepiece. What she saw—a twisting band of shimmering stars as brilliant and bright as rare diamonds—stole her breath.

“It’s the constellation Scorpius,” Gwendy explained. “Made up of four different star clusters.”

“It’s beautiful, Gwendy.”

“Some nights, when it’s clear enough, you can see a huge red star right there in the middle. It’s called Antares.”

Fireflies danced in the darkness around them. Somewhere down the street a dog began barking.

“It’s like looking through a window at heaven,” Mrs. Peterson said.

“Do you …” All of a sudden Gwendy’s tone was unsure. “Do you really think there’s …”

Mrs. Peterson stepped away from the telescope and looked at her daughter, who was no longer staring up at the night sky. “Do I think what, honey?”

“Do you really think there’s a heaven?”

Mrs. Peterson was instantly struck with such an overpowering swell of love for her daughter that it made her heart ache. “Are you thinking about Grandma Helen right now?” Mrs. Peterson’s mother had passed away earlier in the spring as a result of complications from early onset diabetes. She was only sixty-one. The entire family had taken it hard, especially Gwendy. It had been her first intimate experience with death.

Gwendy didn’t answer.

“You want to know what I believe?”

She slowly raised her eyes. “Yes.”

Mrs. Peterson glanced over at her husband. He had rolled onto his side with his back to them and was no longer snoring. The blanket had fallen into the grass. When she looked back at her daughter standing there in the dark, Mrs. Peterson was shocked at how small and fragile the eleven-year-old looked.

“First of all, I want you to pay special attention to exactly what I just said. I asked if you wanted to know what I believed, right? I didn’t ask if you wanted to know what I thought. There’s a difference between the two. Does that make sense?”

“I think so.”