Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

For Paulie, I think, most of all.

After his first day on the floor, she moved her bed down to the sofa in the living room. She would go out to sit with him in the mornings and evenings while my mother took a break.

Mom spent hour after hour with him. She cleaned his face with a washcloth, massaged his feet, held a straw to his lips. She carried out his bedpan and changed his sheets if he soiled them. Even in the middle of the night when I went out to give him his dose, she would wake on the mattress behind him and — not wanting to disturb either of us, I think — watch the commerce in silence.

As for Paulie, I know it must have been a test for her in ways that I can’t truly comprehend. I can’t imagine what she must have felt, trying to take care of him at last, when it was so obviously too late, or even watching my mother take care of him, as she had for all their years together. The man who’d left us so remorselessly. The man who’d left all of us, obviously; but most grievously, somehow, had left my sister — at an age that now seemed strangely like the age she might remain forever.

—

ONE EVENING, AS I was cleaning the dishes, Paulie appeared in the kitchen. She was wearing a faded flower-print sundress like the ones she used to put on as a teenager. She seemed more at ease than I’d seen her in days.

“Did you talk to him?” I said.

She turned a quick twirl, and the fabric of the dress flared up. “I did,” she said. She moved quickly into my arms and buried her face in my shoulder. When she stepped back, she said, “He asked me about what I do.”

“And?”

“I told him. I told him about my work. And my teaching. But, you know — he seemed genuinely interested .”

“He is, Paulie. I know he is.”

“I asked him about his life, too.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“He told me a story about when I was a girl. One time when Mom had the flu he had to take us to his office. You weren’t even in preschool yet, so I must have been about two or three. He was starting on something new, and I wouldn’t be quiet, even when he held me. So he just lifted me up onto his shoulders. I guess I liked it up there. I sat like that for the whole afternoon, evidently, running my fingers through the hair on the top of his head, while he worked.”

“And?”

“And that’s all.” She was blinking.

“That’s a sweet story, Paulie.”

“Is it crazy to think that you can remember something that happened when you were two?”

“I don’t know, Paulie. Maybe not.”

“Because I can. All my life I’ve had that memory. I’ve always thought I invented it, that it was some recurring dream about my professional anxiety, or something like that. But I guess I didn’t. I guess it’s an actual memory. I’m sitting up there, looking at a blackboard, over the top of my dad’s head, and I feel so happy.”

—

LATER THAT EVENING, the phone rang, and the next morning a car pulled up the drive.

It was Knudson Hay.

I don’t know if Mom had called him or if he’d heard the news some other way. He’d flown in from Florida, then driven up at dawn from Detroit. When he saw Dad propped on the floor among the pillows, he pulled off his suit jacket and sat down on the rug next to him.

“Dad,” I said from the doorway, “it’s—”

“Chairman Hay,” whispered my father. “Punctual as ever.”

“Hello, Milo.”

Dad was able to reach his hand up a few inches. Hay took it.

“I’ll leave you two alone now,” I said.

My father glanced at his old boss, then at me, working his lips. “I was right,” he said slowly.

I waited at the door.

“About what?” came Hay’s temperate voice.

I could hear Dad’s lips smacking. “It didn’t matter,” he said.

“That’s okay, Milo.”

“No,” Dad said. “None of it — I was right. None of it mattered. None of it ever did.”

—

SOMETIME LATER, HAY shuffled into the kitchen. I looked out to the porch and saw Paulie sitting in the chair beside Dad now, reading. He was asleep, his mouth a gash against the pillows.

My mother heated a pot of tea, and Hay sat down with us at the table. My mother seemed strangely comfortable with him, and I must say, sitting between them in that old cabin in Michigan, it took several minutes of conversation before I suddenly recalled that for a decade she’d worked as a secretary in his department. Paulie was right: how ignorant we are of the lives of our parents. In the kitchen now, she poured him a cup of tea and brought out a plate of cookies, then moved to the counter, where, as they spoke, she made a sandwich for him and set it in a paper bag for his flight.

He was doing most of the talking. While my mother listened, first at the counter, then with her hands folded on the tablecloth next to him, he reported in detail about all the people they’d known. In retirement, he’d remained an elegant man, his hair still carefully combed and his summer suit starched in the shoulders. He went through all the old staff, remembering everything: names and dates; illnesses; children; grandchildren. He told her what the faculty had done and where they’d gone. He went on about a few students who’d made reputations in the field. He told her what he’d been doing himself in the years since his retirement.

At one point, from the porch, a snore drifted through the wall. As it did, a look of pain crossed my mother’s face.

Hay set down his tea. “There’s no use denying it,” he said. “He was a difficult man. We both know that.” He smiled musingly at her, then looked over at me. “And you, Hans — you know it, too, I’m sure.”

I nodded.

“But there was something in him that a few of us responded to, as well. Powerfully. You and I did, anyway, Helena. It was more than just his genius.”

“In a strange way,” said my mother, “it might have been his honesty.”

Hay rubbed his hands slowly together. “I guess I agree with that,” he said. “I don’t know if many other people would call it that, but I believe that’s what it was. Clarity, at least. Incorruptible vision. He had an unwillingness to ease anyone’s pain, including his own. No — maybe not an unwillingness. A complete inability to ease it. His or anyone else’s.”

My mother looked down.

Hay broke off a cookie and chewed it, and my mother poured more tea. “I’d always wished—” she said, setting aside her cup. “I’d always wished that when you came all the way out here to help him like that, that he would have had something left of his ambition. Enough to accept the job, anyway.” She touched her napkin to her cheek. “Or enough humility. Maybe humility was what he needed at that moment, more than anything else.” She smiled faintly, perhaps at the thought of my father being humble. “I know it’s long past,” she said, “but I’ve always wished it could have happened differently. I’ve always meant to thank you for your graciousness, too, Knudson. I imagine there must have been opposition. I should have thanked you years ago.” She touched at her lips. “It meant a lot, to all of us.”

“It did,” I said.

Hay looked up.

“Anyway,” she went on. “I suppose things probably wouldn’t have been—”

He rose, brought a box of tissue from the counter, and reseated himself next to her.

“Darn it,” she said. “I didn’t—”

“It’s fine, Helena.”

Another fitful snore came through the wall.

It was Hay’s small chuckle at the sound that allowed my mother, I think, to finally reclaim her poise. I must say, she was of striking beauty as she did. She blinked her eyes, wiped her cheeks, and then produced her familiar, forthright features again, as though they were items she’d merely stowed for a moment in her purse. When she sat straight, she resembled the woman she must have been when she first walked into the mathematics department offices, forty years before. And Hay, too, as he held himself squarely in the chair beside her and touched his pressed cuffs, one then the other, looked like a man of some distant and formal period. It was a visible transformation for both of them.