Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

What kind of man have you become, Andy?

The kind who still sometimes remembered that the world is full of wonder.

He put Melissa’s books in his backpack and headed home, thinking more frequently than he wanted about the way her cheeks flushed and her fleeting smile.

THAT NIGHT, THE volcano flowed over the kitchen counter, onto stacks of dirty dishes and the remains of Rachel’s chicken and broccoli casserole (low-fat sour cream, low-fat cheese). Belle squealed in delight, reminding Andy of his own reaction when his mice behaved the way they were supposed to (why wouldn’t they behave the way they were supposed to?).

“This is some serious lava flow, Dad,” she said, mopping up the floor with a rag. “This is like some Pompeii-level stuff.”

“I was going to send Dad in with those leftovers tomorrow, FYI,” Rachel said, glaring at the mess from her perch at the kitchen table. She was engaged in a back-and-forth with someone on Google Chat, which was a program Andy wasn’t sure he’d permitted. House rules dictated that all computer use had to stay in the kitchen, under public eye, because Andy had read one too many articles about perverts trolling and high school bullies sexting and whatever else happened in the grubby corners of the Internet and he was not going to let any of it happen to his girls.

“He could still eat it, if he wanted,” Belle said.

“Excuse me? It’s been volcanoed.”

“It’s not real volcano, idiot,” Belle snapped. “It’s soda water and vinegar. Oh, and I guess a little dish soap, but not that much.”

“I know you didn’t just call me an idiot.”

“Girls,” Andy said. “Enough.”

They cleaned the kitchen and bathed with a certain amount of persnicketiness and fell asleep in their respective bunks. After Rachel was out, Andy went to the laptop to see what she had been typing with such ferocity, and to whom.

Lilybeansxox. He didn’t really like the sound of that at all. Rachel’s handle (racherache) at least had a sort of alliteration thing happening. Who was this lilybeansxox and what did she (that was a she, right?) want with his Rachel?

Was it wrong to spy on his girls? Andy bit a nail. Perhaps it would have been if he’d had any idea what they were talking about, but the whole back-and-forth between Rachel and Lily, set up in choppy little lines, was so full of acronyms and references to things he didn’t understand (what was a 303, a DGT?) that he didn’t really feel like a spy as much as a visitor from another planet. What did AYTMTB mean? BBIAS?

His daughters were studying Spanish in school but they already spoke another language. This disconcerted him, as it was a language he knew he would never master, while the various languages he spoke (as parent, grown-up, biologist) would all be available to his girls should they want to know them one day. They were privileged in a way he wasn’t. It didn’t seem fair, that he should be raising them and yet they should be, in so many ways, profoundly unknowable.

Still they murmured in their sleep, he thought. Still he could admire them and know how lovely they were, and maybe that was his compensation. But on the other hand, what the hell was an IWIAM?

It was midnight, but the idea of getting in bed seemed depressing. He went out to the porch, fingered a cigar. He could go see if Sheila was around but—but no, he didn’t feel like seeing Sheila. Four houses down, her downstairs light was still on, and he knew she’d keep him company, but the thought of her loose breasts came to mind and he inadvertently shuddered.

Back inside, he thought, well, I could work on the grant. A page at a time and by the end of the month he’d be done—but the truth was as long as his mice refused to behave the way he wanted them to, it seemed silly to ask for any more government money. Almost half a million dollars, and it would certainly come in handy, but there was no way the NSF would write him a check without first approving of his findings. And right now, for reasons that were beyond him, his findings were a mess. What would the tenure board say if they knew? Who would give him tenure on the basis of a half-dozen failures?

Still, maybe he was just looking at things the wrong way.

He opened his briefcase to take out his notebooks, but the first thing he grabbed, glossily bound, was one of Melissa’s paperbacks. God Is a Rainbow. He opened it, took it to the bathroom, where he often got his best leisure reading done. But waiting for him in the basket next to the john was a copy of The Onion he’d been meaning to read, and so he sat there, chuckling to himself, until his back started to hurt, which was a sign that he was an hour closer to death and it was time to go to bed.

Three months after Rachel was born, Lou admitted smuggling her into church. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said, after she’d confessed. “I was compelled.”

“What do you mean, compelled?” Andy had asked, annoyed, betrayed, but also consumed by tenderness the way he always was when he watched Louisa breast-feed.

“It was like—it was like something had taken over my body.”

“Yeah, but—”

“It was almost like I was possessed.”

“Give me a break, Lou.”

She shrugged.

In the months and years before in the NICU, Lou witnessed the hospital chaplain perform baptisms every few months on her tiny patients, touching them gently with thumbs moistened from flasks of holy water. Once, when nobody could find the chaplain, a devout nurse performed an emergency baptism on a boy who had been born at twenty-three weeks, plum purple and monkey-faced, and who died a few minutes later. The boy’s parents had asked her to do it; they watched as he was blessed and held him, together, as he died .

Throughout her pregnancy, Lou would come home and report on these baptisms, Andy listening patiently as she told him about the chaplain and the nurse and the dead babies, gauging him for his reaction. What did she want him to say? Of course he understood: if ever there was a time to be suspicious, to think toward miracles, it was when your child was struggling for life, when the distance between life and death could be measured in milligrams. And if these ritual blessings gave parents comfort…

“So you understand?”

“I understand,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I approve.” For even then it was hard to discount his years with Rosenblum: fairy tales were meant for children. Adults should find their consolation in the truth.

Lou stuck her feet in his lap. “I don’t know, Andy, if only you could be there—it’s really beautiful to see these parents watch their children get baptized. It gives them strength to keep going, you know? And also, when you’re in there for so long, and there’s so little to get excited about, it’s nice to have a ceremony. Something to welcome the baby into the world, not just get ready for another intervention. Worry about whether or not he’s going to die.”

“But isn’t that what baptism is? Protection against death?”

“Andy, come on, it’s more than that. It’s like a declaration of love.”

“Were you baptized?”

“You know I wasn’t,” Lou said.

“And didn’t your parents love you?”

“Oh, cut it out.” Lou had been raised in Arizona by parents who explored various faiths with fleeting but passionate resolve: Unitarianism and Zen Buddhism and for a brief, uncomfortable moment, Scientology. Lou and her sister had announced to their parents in early adolescence that they would no longer participate in their religious experimentation; since then they had only rarely visited a house of worship or even wished someone a happy holiday. Her father had died of cancer an evangelical Christian; her mother lived peacefully in Sedona as a yogi. Before Lou met Andy, she’d spent most Christmases by herself, handing out sandwiches to homeless people; now she and Andy did that together. But she was never as vitriolic about her faithlessness as Andy was, nor was she as smug. She had never had Hank Rosenblum as a professor.