A Doubter's Almanac (54 page)

“Nobody expects you to.”

“I’m done helping.”

“I know, Mom.”

We were silent. Presently, she said, “It’s serious, though, this time, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid it is, Mom.”

“Shoot.”

“But he’s strong, you know. He’s very strong. You know that, don’t you?”

“Well, no. He’s not.”

Then, as though to change the subject, she leaned over the railing. At the corner, a tow truck had pulled to the curb, and the driver was positioning clamps around the wheels of a car. He climbed back into the cab, and the car began rocking. Then suddenly it levitated, swinging in its noose. “They don’t give you much of a chance around here, do they?” Mom said.

I nodded. I suspected she was remembering her old life in Tapington; I myself was remembering my own. In the truck’s revolving strobe, the spreading ginkgo at the corner looked a little bit like our old mulberry.

She said, “I just can’t care anymore.”

“I know you can’t.”

“He had his chance. He had lots of them.” She looked away. “Okay, honey. I’ve said it now.”

From up the avenue then, the sound of a street sweeper arrived. Mom’s glass began rattling; soon the whole table was shaking. A moment later, the vehicle appeared: a hunched, roaring beetle, nosing up a pair of brightly shining eyes from the alley.

“
You
go help him,” she said.

“I will. I’m going back out there. For as long as he needs.”

She looked out at the street again. “And what about your job?”

“And what about it?”

She took my hand. “Oh, God, Hans. I truly am sorry. I’ll help
you
. I’ll help Audra. I’ll do everything for Niels and Emmy. But—”

“I’ll take care of him, Mom. Don’t worry.”

She squeezed my hand. “This is just the way things have to go,” she said. “Your father simply can’t take anything more from me.”

The Truth at Last

B
Y THE TIME
I left for Michigan again, later in the month, it already felt like summer in New York. At LaGuardia, the limos were dripping puddles onto the concrete. Ninety minutes later, when the door opened in Grand Rapids, a maritime chill came hurtling through the cabin like water through a breached hull.

In another rented Audi I took the shoreline route. South of Holland, I pulled over onto the shoulder of the Blue Star Highway and watched the lake piling in behind the dunes. Here, winter was still in the air. The huge swells were slashed with white, and above the bluffs, the hawks were stopped dead in the air. I got back into the car. When the road bent east again, the shadows of the clouds darkened the countryside like another set of lakes, this one moving inland with me through the fields. Midstate, spring arrived. I opened the windows and breathed the familiar air.

At the cabin, Dad was in the garden.

Covered in sweat. Digging steadily. Planting something: more bulbs. A heap of them thrown down beside the tomato plants. Leaning forward from a rusted gardener’s chair, the radio blaring a piano sonata into the woods. What I saw immediately was that he looked healthy. From the rear—except for the crazy white hair that hung past his shoulders—he looked no different from the man I used to know.

“Ouch!” he barked, when I tapped him on the shoulder.

“Did that hurt?”

“No, but you scared the Jesus out of me.”

He kicked away the bucket at his feet and stood, sweat dripping from his chin. His shirt was soaked. His face was streaked with earth and his pants clung to his thighs. “Dad,” I said, “you don’t even look sick anymore. You’re out here working yourself into a lather.”

“That’s because I’m
not
sick. Doctors are full of it.” He raised and lowered the trowel in his hand like a dumbbell. “I’m on the upslope. Diet and exercise. Study and moderation.”

He was still thin. When he spoke, the tendons moved in his neck.

—

“T
HIS IS BECAUSE
I drained him again,” said Dr. Gandapur. He’d joined us for dinner, then stepped out onto the deck with me after the meal. Earlier in the evening, Dad had grilled steaks on the patio, then retreated to the couch. Now he was asleep on it.

“He is slim and determined,” said the doctor, “so no doubt he will look healthy to you. However, I will tell you”—he opened his fingers—“that he will fool us both. I took off four liters of fluid, you know, which is rather a lot. But it will return, Hans. This is something we will not be able to solve in the long run.”

“I see.”

“But yes,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “You are absolutely right. He looks remarkably healthy, does he not? He has been doing exceptionally well. This is what we should be grateful for.”

—

“D
ON’T WORRY,”
D
AD
said, pushing away his plate. “I’ll pay.”

I’d taken him for lunch in Felt City, but the toothpicks were still in his sandwich. The diner was in the back corner of the general store, and as I ate I watched him eye a couple of customers who were shopping for hardware. Suddenly he said, “When you were a young man, you were using that drug.”

“I’m clean now.”

“Well, good.” He nodded. “That’s good.”

“I don’t think I’ve told you yet, but I was in treatment recently.”

He looked at me. “Don’t tell me you actually believe in that stuff.”

“It’s possible that I do.”

“It’s
possible
?” He raised an eyebrow. “Well, at least the doubt will serve you.”

The waitress moved past our table then, and he pointed to his coffee. “I could use a refill about now.”

She swept on without answering.

He called after her, “Just dip me one out of the lake.”

He peeled back the tops on a handful of creamers and emptied them into his cup. When she passed again, he raised his finger, but she walked right by.

He leaned toward me. “Rolled in the hay with her once. Now she likes to make me wait.”

“I don’t think I want to know.”

“Of course you don’t. But it wasn’t bad.” He poured another creamer. “At this point, I thought you might be interested in the truth.”

“Well, in this case, I’m not.”

It occurred to me that the illness might be doing something to his brain.

“I was still with your mother.”

“I said I don’t want to know.”

He smiled. “Look at her, will you? I love the small-time ones.”

“Dad, really. I’ll leave.”

When she bent over the pie cooler now, he turned all the way around. But then he turned back and mumbled, “All right, you win.” He rubbed his arm, stretching. “You know,” he said. “I never cared about money.”

“I don’t care much about it, either.”

At that one, he slapped the table.

“By the time I was your age,” he said, “I already had you and your sister. That’s the only reason I thought about earning a living at all. But you know, the money didn’t mean a thing to me.” He sipped his coffee, making a sour face. “For that matter, I wouldn’t have said that you kids were a big part of my life, either.”

“I’m aware of that. We both are.”

“That’s just how it was in those days. I was working. That’s what we did.” With a pinkie, he traced the pattern in the table. “I did my good work early,” he said.

I finished my sandwich and sat back in the booth. The truth was, when he was my age, he hadn’t even met my mother yet.

The waitress was laying out her dinner settings now, moving through the rows of tables. Dad was smiling at her, but she still wouldn’t look at him. He snapped his fingers, but she didn’t even turn.

“She’d had a bit to drink,” he said.

“I’ll bet.”

He spit his coffee then, smiling as though I’d finally said something funny. But after a moment he winced, and the smile dropped. He rubbed his shoulder. “Goddamn,” he said. “Whatever this is, it still hurts.”

—

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON,
the phone rang: it was Cle Wells.

She wanted to come up.

I covered the receiver with my hand. Dad was on the couch, blinking from a nap. “When?” he mouthed. “When?”

“Next week, I guess.” I held out the phone. “Come over and talk to her.”

“No. Tell her it’s fine. Just tell her to call in advance. Tell her to call when she’s an hour away!” He swung his feet around and stood.

“He says he wants you to call before you get here.”

“An
hour
before!” Dad whispered.

“When you’re an hour away.”

“He hasn’t changed much,” she said. “Has he?”

“I don’t know. When’s the last time you saw him?”

She paused. “It was a while ago.”

“Well, then he might have.”

“What’s she saying now?” said Dad.

“Nothing.”

“Is she coming alone?”

“Christ. Tell him to pick up the phone himself.” She raised her voice. “Milo!”

I held out the extension.

“Just ask her, Hans.”

“He’d like to know if you’re coming by yourself, Mrs. Wells.”

“Good Lord.” She took a long breath. Then she said, “How’s he doing?”

“He looks pretty good to me.”

“Tell him Monday then. Early afternoon.”

“Did she say
we
?”

“Dad, why don’t you just ask her yourself?”

“Remind her to call when she’s an hour away!”

“I just did, Dad.”

“Hans, I’m looking forward very much to meeting you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Wells.”

“Please,” she said. “Call me Cle.”

—

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
we walked together to get his hair cut. There was a lady at the end of the cove who ran a salon out of an RV. Dad’s stride was steady. He made it all the way out to the turn where the new two-story houses and then the big church came into view with the salon resting on blocks behind the parking lot. He climbed the steps and plunked himself down onto a stool.

She was country-waitress pretty. Reddish curls that bounced when she leaned down to tie the bib over him. But he just sat there silently before her. The scissors
snick-snick-snick
ing behind him. The clippings so white they disappeared into the linoleum.

On the way back, his stride wasn’t as steady. Sweat darkened the front of his shirt. But the haircut flattered him. He kept touching it. As we walked he told me the story of coming to Princeton, of meeting my mother in the mathematics office. “I told her I was an assistant professor,” he said, stepping slowly up the drive, “so she told me she was an assistant secretary.”

“She sounds charming, Dad.”

“She was.” At the cabin steps, he paused. “But I didn’t love her.”

I took his arm and started us both up toward the door.

“I asked her to marry me, Hans. But I never had the feeling. I loved someone else. It was all a mistake.”

“Mom deserves more than you gave her.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m only telling you the facts as I know them.” He took his arm out of mine and laid it on the railing. “It was a programming error, Hans. Once it was made, it just kept compounding itself.”

—

T
HE NEXT MORNING,
he woke up and said, “Let’s clean the place.”

So we did. It was hard to fathom all the things that could go wrong with a house like that, sitting out there in a damp woods with only Dr. Gandapur to help my father with it. But we managed to set a lot of it right. It was the anti-universe of Physico. I clipped roots and unwrapped vines. I drove trunkfuls of trash into town and pulled mouse nests out of cabinets. I cleaned every screen. Dad would help a little, breaking for rests while I kept going. Every noon, we ate lunch in Felt City, and when we got back he’d take his afternoon nap. I’d work outside while he slept. When he woke, in the hour or two before dinner, he’d talk.

Something in him had loosened. He started telling me everything.

—

W
HEN THE PHONE
rang on Monday afternoon, he rose from the daybed, pulled on a pair of pressed pants from the closet, and went into the bathroom to shave. “How do I look?” he called out.

“Handsome as ever.”

He went to the window and sat down, looking out into the trees. For some time, he just sat there. Then, finally, he rose and went outside. In his nice clothes, in his new haircut, stepping purposefully across the clearing, he looked like a respectable man.

At the kitchen window I stood watching. He sat down next to the plantings. The same spot where he’d been sitting when I pulled into the driveway myself, a week before. The same rusted chair. His feet in the same thin patch of strawberries. He laid a trowel at his feet and picked up a hoe. Behind him, the garden hose trailed back to the cabin. He set himself up carefully and looked out at the lake.

When the car finally appeared, turning briskly at the far end of the inlet and driving fast along the stretch, he reached back for the hose, opened his hand, and splashed water all over himself.

—

“P
ROFESSOR,” SHE CALLED,
emerging from the driver’s seat. It was a French car—a Citroën. “Professor Andret!”

A striking woman—shrewd featured, slender in the way of the wealthy, her chin angled up and her white hair pulled back in a bun. The trunk lid popped up, and at the same time the rear door swung halfway out, then shut. Then pushed out again. Somebody was struggling with it.

She strode briskly around behind the trunk, and when she appeared again she was pushing a wheelchair. The passenger door finally opened, and a pair of feet flopped out onto the ground. She bent over and snapped down the chair’s stirrups, then stepped back. With both arms, a dark-suited man leaned out, grabbed the rails, and jerked himself into the seat.

“Professor,” she called again. More cheerily this time. She gave the chair a push and bumped it ahead of her across the furrows. Her head was already cocked toward the rear of the house, where Dad was leaning forward in the lawn chair. “Milo!” she called brightly. “Milo, we’re here!”

—

“O
H,
H
ANS,” SAID
Audra. “That’s so sad.”