Lauren Grodstein - The Explanation for Everything

He wanted Melissa to leave right away but also he wanted her to never leave.

“I know you don’t necessarily believe what I believe,” Melissa said. “I tease you and everything but I know you don’t really believe in a loving God the way I do, and I’m really not trying to change your mind.”

Let an undergraduate into your house and she’ll think you’ve let her into your heart.

“And I would never say this to the girls, don’t worry—we never talk about their mother and I never would bring that up—but I just want you to know…” She trailed off.

He could have stopped her there, but, again, he didn’t. All his life he’d been like that, forgoing the small good decision in favor of entropy, letting the chips fall where they may. “I want you to know that her spirit lives on, Professor Waite,” Melissa said.

Above her the clock read 12:03.

“She watches over all three of you, all the time.”

She kept her voice low. She was looking down at the table, cheeks red. She knew she was taking liberties, but still she took them. It was perplexing to Andy that he’d never been better at stopping other people or himself from doing the wrong thing. If he’d been as powerful as he believed he might not even be at this kitchen table right now. And yet he wanted her to keep saying what she was saying, because she believed it, and it felt wonderful to hear her proclaim this particular belief.

“She’s always there.”

In that moment, he saw that everything Melissa had introduced him to—the books, the beliefs, the way she interacted with his daughters—it had all brought him more comfort than anything else he had found since Lou’s accident. Posttraumatic grief counseling and the awkward words of the therapist, the hugs of friends and family, the good, quiet time alone, the self-help books—none of it felt as good as Melissa’s quiet affirmation, the Clings’ affirmation. Lou was with God, watching over them. It was so simple. What would be the point of resistance?

He put his fingers on his temples and rubbed. “You know, this is nothing I’ve ever really talked about before.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he said, but could think of nothing else to reassure her. Really she shouldn’t be talking about his dead wife at all. Really he should have stopped her. And yet the comfort of thinking his wife was alive, watching them, the comfort of this large awkward girl in his house…

She took their mugs to the sink, rinsed them. She was hunched again. She picked up a dish towel to dry the mugs.

“Melissa, it’s late. I can do that.”

“Okay,” she said, but she finished wiping the mugs clean anyway, and that simple domestic gesture—he was exhausted, half-drunk, dreading tomorrow, full of entropy, unable to use force—and something in that simple domestic gesture made him fall in love just like that with this girl. Melissa believed in something. Melissa believed his wife was looking down at him. He wanted to borrow her belief. He loved her in that moment for having belief he wanted to borrow.

“Melissa,” he said. “Can I ask you something? Is God merciful? Or is he just? And don’t say both—”

“He is just,” Melissa said, definitively. She didn’t ask him why he wanted to know. And before he could stop himself—he was terrible at stopping himself—he was behind her with his hands on her shoulders and she had turned around and turned her face up at him, her broad face, damp eyes, but somehow pretty when she was happy, and he pressed his lips against hers. Why? Why? He tilted her chin with his finger.

Maybe he was just hoping to be slapped awake.

But she did not slap him; instead she pressed herself more firmly against him, opened her mouth a bit so that their tongues pressed against one another’s—and how odd, this feeling, another woman’s tongue, but how pleasurable too. Had he been celibate for seven years? Almost entirely he had. A quickie at the Academic Biology conference in Fresno four years ago, and then another at the same conference, a year later, in Atlanta. That second one he stuck around for breakfast, where he got his first good look at the woman, a grad student, at least fifteen years younger than he was. She was impoverished-looking, scooped up her hotel coffee shop eggs like a starving person. She didn’t say much but kept smirking up at him from behind droopy lids. “You going to eat that?” she asked, pointing to his bacon.

And then, a few months ago, Sheila.

And that was it. In seven years.

He put his arms, gingerly, around Melissa’s wide, firm waist. She pulled him closer. They could have moved to a couch or a chair or even the bedroom, but instead they stayed where they were, leaning against the kitchen sink. He put his hands in her soft hair. She ran a tentative hand against his waistband. God, he had those condoms in his pocket. Had he known in his subconscious, when he stole them from Marty’s marble powder room? Had some part of him known or planned this?

“Melissa,” he breathed into her hot puffy hair.

She moved her head back and he looked at her face, pink-cheeked, pink-lipped. She wore a smile, half-apologetic, as though she had been the one who instigated this.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said. “I mean, since my wife died—I’ve rarely—and especially not a student.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re not the type.”

The type? He took a step back. “I don’t—I can’t take advantage of you. You should go home.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I know, but—”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

He sighed, heavily, as his heart ticktocked. “Melissa,” he said again; her name was wonderful to say. Together they had done something they would have to keep secret. It had been a long time since he’d kept a secret, and the idea of it thrilled him. He kept his hands on her firm sides. He still felt that grace, that comfort, from just having her around. He leaned forward again. His mouth was on hers again. She pulled back, smiled, kissed him once more, and they stayed that way for many long minutes, Andy’s head swimming, her mouth soft and pliant, and above him—could he hear it?—watching over him, forgiving, understanding, Lou among the chorus of angels.

Eventually he walked her to her car. He felt pleased and horny like a teenager. “Will I see you again?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

He didn’t touch himself after he got into bed; instead, he assessed his bedroom, his shelves, clothes spilling out of them, coffee cups leaving rings on the nightstand, the journals. He wondered if he was losing his mind. Perhaps he was—but didn’t he deserve to, for just a little while? He’d held out for so long. Beside him, one of Melissa’s books. It made him happy just to hold something that was hers: The Mystery of Intent. He opened it up to the first page. “What believers understand,” said the author, but in his head he heard Melissa’s husky voice, “is that there is no peace like the peace that comes from trusting God. If you don’t believe, ask yourself, what do you have to lose by turning to belief? And what might you gain?”

Heart singing, angels singing, Andy thought to himself that really he had nothing to lose, and already, just from considering the possibility of belief, he had already gained so much. God is just. God wanted Oliver McGee in jail. He’d had a feeling this was how it was supposed to be.

Too thrilled to sleep, head still half-pounding, Andy got out of bed and stood by the window, leaned his forehead against the window. He stayed that way, head soothed by the cold, until the first fat snowflakes started to fall.

The girl’s name had been Anita Lim. She was the daughter of Korean immigrants who had established a small grocery store in Brooklyn during the first year of the Reagan administration, and who had hung by their shop’s front door a large framed photograph of that president, along with a reasonable facsimile of a handwritten note from him, thanking them for their good wishes in the wake of his shooting. It spoke to how well the Lims were liked in their part of Brooklyn that none of their friendly and pushy customers ever gave them shit about that photograph, even as the old conservative Italians died out and were replaced by tattooed mothers pushing fancy strollers and novelists buying cigarettes at two in the morning.