Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

One morning, he walked all the way to the end of the dock, where he sat down on the bench, propped a pad into the bend of his cast, and attempted for a few minutes to draw the view. At one point, I watched him lower himself to the deck, then lean slowly over the side until he could splash water onto his face.

That evening, a parcel arrived — a wheelchair, folded into a box. He watched Cle unwrap it, assemble the parts, and stand it in the corner by the door. Then he got up and walked over to it. “Who’s this for?” he said.

—

THE TIME AFTER dinner was still his most lucid — that stretch between the last meal of the day and the final mercy of his bedtime pill. He’d emerge from his nap and begin to talk. Cle would pull her seat close, not speaking but placing herself in his sight. Mom would stand in the doorway. Even Paulie liked to be near. She didn’t say so; but I saw her lingering. Some evenings, as the light grew amber through the screens, then gray-blue, he’d rise from the daybed on the porch and make his way into the living room, where he’d take a place on the sofa and tap out a cigarette. Paulie had thrown away a case of them, but Dr. Gandapur had brought over another, smiling his courteous smile.

If Dad was in the right mood, he’d lean back heavily against the cushions and light one. He could still talk. The words never left him.

One evening, he told the story of a trip to Helsinki for a conference. The crossing of the Atlantic on the Queen Mary . The nighttime brightness as they steamed through the Gulf of Finland. Cle was leaving the next morning for Chicago — she wanted to give our family a few days alone — and I could see her watching him in a different way, as though to fix him in her mind. On the couch next to him she sat blinking. Mom was in the doorway, and Paulie was at the table across the room, working her laptop; I leaned in alongside my sister as she pretended to read her email. The sun was low, and the chop on the water made it look as though, all across the cove, matches were being struck and extinguished.

“A Spanish girl,” Dad said, leaning back against the cushions. “Married to a millionaire. I met them both at dinner. The captain’s table — I’d already won the Fields, you see. The husband was a raw capitalist and a thoroughly ignorant man, and I could see that his beautiful bride was bored. I was sitting between them.” He glanced from my mother to Cle. “Beauty prefers truth,” he said.

Cle guffawed.

“To riches, that is,” said Dad.

“You misunderstand beauty then,” said Cle.

He glanced at her, his smile excited. “In her own stateroom, between dessert—”

Paulie slammed shut her laptop. “Disgusting!”

“It’s okay, Paulie,” I said. “It was before they were married.”

“We don’t want to hear it! Don’t you understand that? Either of you? Don’t you know the first thing about any of us!”

When the door banged shut, one of the framed pictures that Cle had so carefully hung dropped off the wall.

TWO DAYS LATER, on a clear, windless morning, a rental car pulled up the drive, and Niels stepped out of it, followed by Audra. Then, after a moment, Emmy. Emmy seemed puzzled, staying close to the car and looking down at the sand. She’d been in woods like these before, but she’d never in her life seen her grandfather.

He stood leaning against the doorframe at the top of the stairs, waving.

Niels had never seen him, either. But he trotted forward and climbed the steps. At the top, he held out his hand. “You’re my grandpa,” he said.

“Looks like I am.”

“I’m your grandson, Niels.”

“I figured as much. And who’s this?” Dad moved to the edge of the porch and looked down at the car. “Is this the other young person I’ve been hearing a little about?”

“That’s my sister. We’re late because she forgot her toothbrush and we couldn’t find one at the hardware store.”

“I’d imagine not.”

“It was a general store,” said Emmy. “Not just a hardware store. And I did not forget it. I needed a new one the whole time.”

“Do you have one for her, Grandpa?”

“Well, I might, young man. I might.”

When Audra reached the stairs, Dad bowed and kissed her on the back of the hand. Audra doesn’t blush, but when he did that, her other hand rose to her neck.

Emmy had remained in the driveway, and Audra beckoned her now. But it was only when my mother appeared in the doorway that Emmy finally moved, running quickly up the stairs and sidestepping Audra and Dad to bury her head in her grandmother’s blouse. “Little Miss,” said Mom, “it’s so nice to see you here. Now please say hello to your grandpa.”

But Emmy wouldn’t. She merely looked down, bending and straightening her knees.

—

THAT EVENING, WHEN Dad woke in a bright mood and leaned back on the cushions to talk, Emmy watched him from the kitchen door, twirling a pretzel ring around her finger. Niels was sitting next to him on the couch. Dad beckoned to Emmy, but she still wouldn’t come. He lit a cigarette and smiled through the smoke at her.

“Milo,” said my mother from across the room. “Please put that thing out.”

He drew luxuriously on the end, then slowly lifted his cast to lay it across Niels’s knee. “Why? Does smoke not agree with you, young man?”

“Actually,” Niels said, “I find the smell kind of interesting.”

Paulie laughed from the porch, then glanced at me. “Such an agreeable young gentleman.”

“What about this, young man?” said Dad. He lifted his glass from the table.

“That’s okay with me, too, Grandpa. It smells like cough medicine.”

He chuckled. “Well, actually, it’s a pretty good bourbon whiskey.”

Mom marched across the room then, snapped the glass from his hand, and carried it to the kitchen. A moment later, she came back for the cigarette.

—

“SOME PEOPLE MIGHT say she was a little late with that,” whispered Audra.

“Well, I’m not one of them.”

We were whispering because we were in a room at the Lakeland Suites, and on the other side of the wall, Niels and Emmy were pretending to be asleep. Through the sheetrock I could hear every crack of the bat from what must have been a Yankees highlights reel on TV. This was Niels, of course; but I also knew that Emmy would be going along with it. Sometimes I think that even with all her talents, she’ll always be following him.

“Mom had enough to think about when we were kids,” I said. “She did what she could.”

“Yes, you’re right. I guess she did.” Audra was next to me in the bed, staring up at the ceiling fan. “Still — she might have done some thing about it. At a time when it could have made a difference.”

At that moment, the Yankees must have pulled off something impressive, because Niels let out a shout, and a second later Emmy followed with a whoop. I tapped the wall. I needed to sleep: in a few hours I’d have to get up in the dark and drive to the cabin to give Dad his shot. Then I’d spend the last half of the night there.

The sound of the TV went off, and we lay there in silence for a while, looking up at the fan.

“It was hard for me, too, you know,” said Audra. “But I did it. I stopped you.”

“Well, you were in a different situation.”

“Was I?”

“Of course you were.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I still didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. To you or to me or to any of us.”

“What do you mean, what was going to happen? What did you think I’d do — just leave you all and never come back?”

She didn’t answer, just turned over onto her side and closed her eyes.