Patty

Patty is one of the people who remains after Mike’s final departure, and her presence makes the ending both intimate and communal. She recognizes that the waiting is over, but she does not claim advance knowledge of what Mike would do. In the aftermath, she offers Jubal the love of those who have left, shares her serene acceptance, and describes a change in her developing Sight. Her closing actions turn grief away from solitary bitterness and back toward the shared life of the household.

Recognition and the End of Waiting

As Mike speaks with Jubal, he says he is ready and has grokked the fullness; then he looks toward the doorway and addresses Patty, saying he heard her and that the waiting is ended. Patty answers, “Yes, Michael.” The brief exchange places her at the threshold of the story’s final change: Mike’s readiness is not an abstract declaration but something she has called to him from beyond the room. Her answer confirms recognition without explaining the event or claiming control over it.

That distinction matters in the scene that follows. When Jubal asks whether Patty knew what Mike was going to do, she is puzzled and says she did not. She explains that waiting for fullness was necessary, but none of them knew what would happen. Patty thus distinguishes the discipline of waiting from foreknowledge. Her certainty concerns the right time, not the particular action Mike will take; the event can be accepted as necessary without being predicted in advance.

The Household After Mike’s Departure

The immediate setting after Mike’s departure is emphatically domestic. Patty interrupts the television’s transition from the inferno in the tank to a cheerful advertisement and announces that Anne and Duke are on their way back upstairs. She plans to let them through the foyer and then have lunch. When Jubal stops her to ask about Mike, she answers him, turns, and leaves. The contrast is characteristic of the ending: immense loss and spiritual understanding coexist with arrivals, meals, and the practical movement of people through the house.

Later, Patty is alone with the babble tank, which has been switched off. She looks up and asks Jubal whether he would like lunch. The quiet, switched-off room makes a small but significant counterpoint to the public spectacle still visible in the tank: the household’s next act is not a speech or broadcast, but feeding one another. Patty’s return to ordinary care does not erase Mike’s departure; it gives the survivors a way to continue together after it.

Carrying the Community’s Love

Patty tells Jubal that most of the others simply ate and left, but each left a kiss for him. She has gathered those gestures into one package and delivers them in full, joined with her own affection. Jubal feels strengthened by the collective expression of love, and Patty’s serene acceptance reaches him as well, leaving him without bitterness. She acts as a mediator for a community whose members have dispersed: their affection becomes something Jubal can receive, rather than a series of absent people he must confront alone.

The scene carefully separates this consoling role from any claim that Patty has made Jubal’s grief disappear. What she gives him is strength and an example of acceptance, not an explanation that cancels loss. Her care is concrete—the gathered kisses, the invitation to lunch, the movement toward the kitchen—and its consequence is to return Jubal to the others. The household’s shared affection becomes the means by which he can rejoin them.

Sight and the Ending’s Unfinished Future

Patty notices that the final scene in the tank seems to be changing, becoming somewhat smoky. Jubal solemnly agrees, although he cannot see any change himself and does not argue with her perception. Patty explains that she can see around herself except for herself; to see her back clearly she still needs a double mirror. Mike has told her that her Sight will eventually include it. The detail gives her new perception a precise limit: this is not all-seeing power, but an ability still developing and still incomplete.

The mirror also makes Patty’s condition a fitting image for the ending. She can perceive what surrounds her, yet cannot directly see herself; her knowledge, like her knowledge of Mike’s decision, has boundaries. She accepts those boundaries without alarm, saying no matter, and regards the extension of her Sight as something that will come presently. In a story shaped by waiting for fullness, Patty’s future remains open rather than finished at the moment of Mike’s departure. She stays within the household’s life, carrying its affection forward while continuing to grow into what Mike has taught her.