The Great Perhaps (33 page)

O
NE MONTH,
two weeks, and some fifteen minutes later, in the final seconds just before he dies, Henry Casper will still be smiling.

F
OR YEARS,
Thisbe will later think of that one moment in the field as the only time she was ever sure of anything in her life.

I
T IS
J
ANUARY ALREADY AND SOMEHOW THE WORLD
has not ended. Through the windshield of the Volvo, Jonathan watches as the snow drifts through the air, dusting the top of the angular trees in perfect whiteness. Beside him, Madeline is singing along with the stereo, a song by John Lennon. In the backseat, Amelia is mostly quiet, staring out at the neighborhood as it flashes past in a parade of gray and white. She is reading
Parmenides
by Plato, on loan from William Banning, and she looks down at the pages with a certain fascination and a wide-eyed feeling of confusion and delight. The backseat, however, is missing its other occupant, Thisbe Casper. Jonathan notices this absence again when he glances in the rearview mirror. His youngest daughter has gone to the auditorium early, to get into costume, to put on her makeup, to be nervous, to stand behind the curtain of the empty high school theater, and to smile at the thought of singing onstage. Above the trees of the near-empty street, the sky is full of clouds: they move and tumble like set pieces, shifting silently as the Volvo speeds along the wet Hyde Park thoroughfare.

The family finds a parking spot close to the auditorium’s entrance, then they take three seats near the back, in the second-to-last row, as Thisbe has requested, as far as possible from the flood of lights, so that when she glances up from the last line of the chorus, she will not see her parents and her sister and suddenly lose her nerve. The auditorium begins to fill up quickly. The band, mostly juniors and seniors, in formal black jackets owned by the school, begin to tune their instruments. Jonathan takes Madeline’s small white hands, warming them, as Amelia passes each of them a simple white program:
Gunga Din
, it says.
A musical, as adapted from the Kipling by J. R. Grisham.

B
ACKSTAGE, THE STUDENTS
help each other with their makeup and costumes, and Thisbe, with her eyes closed, grins, her dimples visible, as a girl named Marcie dabs a smear of rouge across her cheeks. “Hold still,” Marcie whispers, giggling.

“I can’t,” Thisbe says, and laughs. “It tickles.”

Marcie shakes her head, beginning to laugh, too, and as the other girl’s fingers gently outline her faint eyebrows, Thisbe feels like she just might die. Behind them, in a narrow half circle, the other girls in the chorus, all portraying nameless British sergeants, practice their opening song, borrowed from Kipling:

Mr. Grisham dashes past, muttering, “Five minutes. Five minutes, everyone!” and Thisbe blinks, overcome with excitement, nearly ruining her mascara.

H
ER PARENTS, SITTING
in the second and third seats in the second-to-last row, begin to clap before anyone else, as soon as a rushed-looking Mr. Grisham takes the stage. Amelia, folding her book closed, turns to them and says, “You guys are so lame,” and after some brief remarks, with admonishments about cell phones, the director exits, and the band begins to play. The music is rousing, exotic, a little out of tune and a little off-time. Jonathan is still holding Madeline’s hand. They will hold each other’s hand throughout the entire performance. They will proudly watch as their daughter, Thisbe, a captured Thuggee, commits suicide, overacting a little, but with ferocious commitment. When a spotlight accidentally falls from the rigging during the second act, smashing against the stage, the whole auditorium will echo with anxiety and concern and useless worry, but Madeline will turn to her husband and roll her eyes. Then she will smile. It will be a secret message and will mean at least one million different things. Seeing it, unsure of the message exactly, Jonathan will, in his heart, say
yes
anyway. After an unscheduled intermission, during which the damage from the fallen light is assessed and quickly cleaned up, the play will awkwardly resume, without much excitement or poetry. It will keep going, for half an hour too long. Jonathan will continue to watch the play, though after his daughter’s performance he will begin to daydream about a number of other things: his father’s death, only a week or so before Christmas, which came quickly and without much warning, just as his dad seemed to be doing a little bit better. Jonathan’s eyes will begin crowding with tears, thinking of his father lying in the hospital bed—his small hands and narrow face so gaunt, so distant already—and he will quickly try to think of something, anything, else to keep himself from crying. He will begin going over the early chapters of a book he plans to write about the evolution of defense mechanisms in prehistoric animals, or he will start planning another grant proposal for the Hausman Institute, this one about the biological imperative of flight versus fight, or maybe he will return to his considerations regarding the new data accumulated from the squid discovered off the coast of Hawaii. What wonderful thoughts roam through his head before he looks down and sees his wife’s knees, beneath white-colored nylons, dimpled with beauty. Hidden behind the fabric, with the lights from the stage playing off of them, they look like two flowers. Or two apples. Or two mountaintops. Jonathan will stare at them absentmindedly for the remainder of the play. After the curtains are drawn and the last note sung, the audience, composed of parents, siblings, and teachers, will do what they can to stifle their disappointment and weariness. When they all exit the theater, their station wagons, minivans, sedans, and SUVs will all be blanketed in perfect white snow. A father will gently sweep the snow from the windshield—the station wagon’s engine running, the heat turned up as high as it will go—staring inside at his family, each of them smiling, each of them content, for the moment, safe, for the moment, happy. The father will stand in the snow and wonder if the world will ever be as simple and as lovely as this again, this moment, this. With snowflakes in his hair, on his shoulders, in his beard, ignoring the weather, he will climb into the Volvo and ask if anyone would like to maybe go get some ice cream. The rest of his family will groan with disinterest but it will not matter. They will get ice cream and then argue with happy voices about the daughter’s first play.

F
OR NOW, THOUGH,
the lights in the auditorium go dim. The dark red curtains slowly open, the crowd of parents and siblings and teachers politely hushing one another. Thisbe, waiting in the wings of stage left, repeats the first line of the first song to herself, over and over again. The lights come up onstage and the audience begins to clap quite loudly. The actors begin to take their places, the music fades, and then what follows is both astonishing and quite ordinary.

A
LL MY LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO
Koren and Lucia. Many, many thanks to Sylvie Rabineau, Maria Massie, Tom Mayer (one of the best editors I’ve ever had the chance to work with), Johnny Temple (for his support and encouragement), Johanna Ingalls, Todd Baxter, James Vickery, Jon Resh, Cody Hudson, Todd Dills, Mickey Hess, Todd Taylor, Sean Carswell, Dan Sinker, Jonathan Messinger, Chris Abani, Felicia Luna Lemus, T Cooper, Randy Albers, Sheryl Johnston, Donna Seaman, Quimby’s Books, the Hideout Chicago, and the Columbia College Fiction Writing Department. I am also indebted to the scientific work of Temple Grandin, Neil Shubin, and Phil Eyden, whose astute research greatly informed the writing of this book. Thanks also go to the
New York Times
for their material on American internment during World War II. A very special thanks to Arthur D. Jacobs, Major, USAF, Retired, whose archival work for
The Freedom of Information Times
concerning his experiences in Crystal City, Texas, proved to be invaluable.