A Doubter's Almanac (58 page)

“Any still under there?”

She rose, allowing herself a small smile. “It’s amazing what a child will believe, Hans. I remember thinking that maybe I hadn’t been a good-enough mother.”

“To raise crayfish?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Paulie,” I said. “You’d be an excellent mother. You’d
still
be one.”

“Thank you.” She lowered herself to the mattress and closed her eyes. “Can I ask you something? Are you sleeping in here?”

“I’m in Mom and Dad’s room.”

She looked over. “Then where’s Dad?”

“On the porch. I don’t want him climbing stairs.”

“Oh. Then where—”

She stopped.

“She’s in the other room, Paulie. The downstairs bedroom. By herself.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Well, that’s good news, anyway. Count your blessings.” She stood up and went to the closet. “This whole place, though—don’t you smell it? It’s being taken over by some kind of fungus.”

“Well, I cleaned it as well as I could.”

“And all that furniture. Did you buy all that for him, too?”

“As a matter of fact, Paulie, I didn’t.”

She glanced over.

“Cle did,” I said.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I know. But he didn’t seem to mind.”

“And if there’s anything
she
won’t do for him, then
Mom
will? Is that the idea?”

“Oh, come on, now—look at him. You don’t expect him to have the energy to keep this up all by himself, do you?”

“Well, what about when we were young?”

“He had other things to think about.”

She smirked.

“Oh, come on, Paulie. You can’t fight him all your life.”

“I know that. But you can’t
glorify
him all of yours.” She turned and lifted the shade again. Outside, the three of them were still together on the dock, but they were laughing now. Cle’s shoulders shook. Even Mom was grinning. Dad bent sideways, reaching for a glass.

“God,” she said. “He got everything he wanted, didn’t he?”

She let the shade drop, then reached under her hair and placed one tiny earring, then the other, onto the dresser. When she sat again on the mattress, the springs creaked. She shimmied against the headboard and folded a pillow beneath her back. Then she closed her eyes and said, “How’s he doing
,
Hans—
really
?”

“He’s looking a lot better than when I got here.” I handed her the pillow from my bed. “But the truth is that he’s not in very good shape at all.”

“Is he in pain?”

“I’d say he’s in
some
. But I think what’s really bothering him is watching it all happen. I think he’s pretending to be fascinated by it.”

“That’s the way he always was.”

“Well, not exactly.” I sat down next to her. “I think he
knows
now
,
Paulie.”

She looked up. “Oh, God,” she said. She reached behind her neck, and the bun unwound onto her shoulders. Then, as though the hairpins had been a dam, she began to cry. “Oh, God,” she said. “I knew it. I knew it would happen like this.”

She still cried the way she had as a girl, the tears beading like drops of solder at the corners of her eyes. She leaned back against the headboard, shuddering. One at a time, the tiny pearls budded, grew, and wandered down her cheeks.

—

“W
ELL,”
I
SAID
to my mother that night. “You came after all.”

“Of course I did.”

In the dark, I heard the rising pitch of the wine filling her glass; then the squeak as she fitted back the cork. “It’s hard not to help when he’s suffering.”

“It must be particularly hard for
you
.”

She looked over.

I pointed up at the house, where Cle was standing in the flicker of the kitchen bulb, drying the pots with a towel. “I mean, with
her
here
.
”

“Oh, please. I couldn’t care less about your father as a husband.” The bottle clanked against the boards. “And I already have my grandchildren. Do I look like the kind of woman who’d be jealous of another man’s wife?”

She tilted up her profile.

“I don’t know, Mom. There’s not enough moon to see.”

Her laugh sounded like one of Paulie’s. In a moment, her footsteps moved away from me. When they returned, she set something down. I heard a grating sound. Then I saw the glow: the old dynamo lantern. “Well,” she said, “how about now?” She pumped the handle and tilted her face into the light. “Do I look like the kind of woman who’d be jealous of some tycoon’s wife?”

“No, Mom. You don’t.”

“Thank you.” She stopped pumping, and the bulb flickered for a few seconds before it went out.

“Paulie’s upset,” I said.

“Of course she is.” Then she added, “That’s why we came.” She moved up next to me. “And that’s why we didn’t call. She wasn’t sure she could actually go through with it.”

“She’s still mad about things that happened when we were kids.”

“That’s just grief.”

“Well, she was mad about them
then,
too.”

“And that was the same thing, honey.” She touched my hand. “It was always just grief.”

Up at the cabin, another light went on, and my sister appeared behind Cle at the kitchen sink. Cle reached up and closed the blinds.

“Mom,” I said. “Were you ever in love with him?”

“Was I ever in love with your father?” She let out a sigh. “I was in love with what he’d done, I suppose. I was in love with his mind. I mean, think of what he brought into the world. Think of what he built from nothing.” She sighed again. “I never know what to make of all the rest. Half the time he was unendurable. But the other half—”

“I know.”

She lowered the lantern over the lake and pumped it again. In the ring of light, a pack of water striders froze like thieves. “I suppose it might have been a mistake. But how can you ever be sure? I don’t know—for better or worse—he was an extraordinary person.” Up at the house, the lamp came on in the downstairs bedroom now, and Cle opened the curtains there. Then it went off again, and when she reappeared at the glass, a candle was flickering in her hands.

“What do you think about
her
?” I said.

“I guess I don’t know what to say to that.”

After a while, I said, “You’re right, Mom. I’m sorry I asked.”

We sat there, listening to the water tapping the dock posts.

“Hans,” she said, “did he ever tell you about her?”

“He did, Mom.”

“Well, I suppose I don’t want to know.”

“You probably don’t.”

She looked up at me then with an expression I didn’t recognize. “She’s fancy,” she said. “She’s educated. She seems to have a bit more money than she knows what to do with.” She sipped her wine. “And I gather she has a
staff
.” Then she said, “Bah.”

“You’re more elegant.”

“Bah again.”

“Well, you
are
.”

“Don’t worry, Hans. I know what I am.”

But she moved closer to me then, and on her skin I smelled the faint bitter-grass scent that she sometimes emitted. Up at the house, the curtain was still open, and in the wobble of the candle I could see Cle standing back from the glass. Mom rose to her feet.

I reached for the dynamo, and when I found it, I started to pump. Light rose on the filament, like a glowworm climbing a string. Before us, a small halo of cove came into being: the moths, the minnows, the tracts of celery weed swaying in the undercurrent, like rows of hands waving from the bottom. “You’re more beautiful,” I said.

“
Oh, please,
Hans.” Then, after a moment: “Well, thank you.”

She set the glass at her feet now and stepped out into the ring of light. Before me, in its lunar brightness, she straightened her skirt and blouse. I kept the dynamo going, and in its glow the ivory of her skin began to luminesce. She placed her hands on her hips and brought her neck straight. She arched her spine and tilted back her head so that her hair fell across her shoulders. She held that pose, like an actress under a klieg lamp. For a long, white-lit moment, she was a young woman again, standing on a brass-railed pier, looking over a rocky New England lake.

Then there was a pop, and behind her, the stars came back into the sky.

—

“T
HE MAGIC BULLET,”
Dad said, pointing through the trees to where the three of them were sitting by the shore. Paulie was dressed in a pleated skirt and Mom in her patched-up overalls, but their likeness was striking. The same drawn-up posture. The same long limbs, despite neither being tall. And Cle, strangely, who sat sideways in her chair, could have been the sister of either of them. “Look at that,” he said. “Who wouldn’t be cured by that?”

He took a drink and set the glass on the desk. The shed smelled even more like mildew than the house had before I’d cleaned it. The roof must have been leaking.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Evidently, your father is a monster. I’ve been told this fact by your mother. And by your mother’s lawyer. And by your sister, many times. But you should know—neither your mother nor your sister believes it. What they actually believe is that they’re my salvation.” He swirled his drink. “And that I’m theirs.”

“Okay.”

“You see?” He pointed. “They don’t even mind each other.”

“I think Mom might.”

“You mean she minds that she doesn’t hold the monopoly anymore?”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Well, she’s the one who came up. I didn’t invite her.”

I stood and moved to where a pile of journals lay on the rug. I hadn’t cleaned out here, and he obviously hadn’t bothered to pick them up himself—for years, it seemed. Above them on the shelves stood a line of volumes from an old library set. Leather bindings and gold-lettered titles. I ran my fingers over the spines: Augustine, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Russell. A row of philosophers arranged in alphabetical order. “Is this what you’ve been doing all this time?” I said. “Reading philosophy?”

“I’ve been attempting to understand the human being, Hans, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“And this is the method you’ve adopted?”

“I’m waiting to hear a better one.”

“Well, you could just walk outside and talk to a few real ones.”

“Your generation is so predictable,” he said. “It’s all about the connection, isn’t it? The connectors have gained the upper hand. We isolationists languish in the caves. Take my word for it, Hans, I’ve tried.” He turned and regarded me frankly. “The monster isn’t very good at chitchat.”

“No one ever said you were a monster.”

“Your mother and sister did.” He filled his glass again. “And I imagine they’ve convinced you.”

“I believe you don’t have much control over it.”

He spit, laughing. “Is that the brainwashing they gave you?”

“It wasn’t a brainwashing. I had a problem.”

“Ah—step one.”

When he saw my face, he said, “Oh, come on, Hans. Relax. It’s not so dire. Have a drink with your old man.” He swirled the bottle. Then he probed beneath the desk until he managed to wrangle out another glass. “Come on, it’s your dad offering. I’m feeling better today.” He tipped the bottle at me. “Have a drink with your old man, to celebrate. I mean, booze wasn’t your problem, anyway, was it? Your problem was those drugs.”

“The drugs were the symptom.”

“And the problem?”

“I’m working on it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And this is the method you’ve adopted?”

“Funny, Dad.”

“Look,” he said, filling the other glass, “you can go round and round with it, but in the end the proofs are worthless. All you’re left with is first principles.” He pointed at the shelves. “Augustine versus Pelagius. I’m with Augustine. Every one of us is flawed.”

He wiped the glass with his shirt and held it forward. In those days, I didn’t much like the taste of bourbon; but after a moment, I took it.

“Thank you, Hans.”

“You’re not welcome.”

He turned and looked out the window then, to where the three of them had risen from the chairs. They were picking their way up the path toward the house, like a trio of deer on a hill. I watched him watch them.

“Dad,” I said, “do you really think you wasted your career?”

His eyes came back.

“When I told you I’d wasted
mine,
” I said, “I mean,
wasted the
mathematics,
you said that that made two of us.”

“Look. I don’t even know what that means.” He shook his head and took another swallow. “A mathematician is a mathematician not because of anything he’s done, Hans. In fact, most mathematicians understand that in the end they’ve done nothing at all.”

“But you did a lot.”

“Did I? You could say that the only thing we ever really figure out is that the thing we want to know next is just one rung up on the ladder of ignorance.” His gaze drifted to the window. “A mathematician is constantly aware of having
no understanding at all
. He does what he does mostly because such ignorance rankles him. That’s the thing he seeks to remedy. Otherwise, there are a thousand more suitable pursuits.” He turned the bottle in his hand. “There’s no answer that ends the search, you know. Obviously, there never will be. The artist seeks to capture the world because the nature of every single object is a mystery to him. The philosopher addresses human nature because he’s a stranger to every part of it. It’s the same for mathematicians. It’s all ignorance, Hans. Ignorance and wounded shrieking.” He took another drink. “But it’s all irresistible, too, isn’t it? That’s how we’re made. We want what won’t have us.”

“Fuck you, Dad.”

He smiled—with real pleasure, it seemed, for the first time in years. “Fuck you, Son.”

After a few moments, I raised my glass. “It’s true, Dad. You can still talk.”

“Ah, yes, Hans. I always could.”

—

I
CAME ACROSS
the notepad one morning when I was straightening the kitchen. It had been buried under a cluster of bills and retirement magazines. Dark rings on the cover. There were other drawings in it, too, quick sketches of the trees and the cove and the view across the lake, all of them arresting in their own right, even in their simplicity. I took my time leafing through the pages, though I knew exactly what I was looking for. I found it a few down from the top.