Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“I can’t help thinking,” she went on, “that another chance would have rekindled him. Would have spurred him to accomplish one more thing that would have been worthy of his talent.” She raised her chin. “That we all would have been — that we all would have been — even the children—”

She turned to the window.

“I’m sorry, Helena.”

“If only he’d been humble enough when he needed to be.” She was still looking away.

Hay cleared his throat.

She turned toward him, dabbing again at her eyes. “Thank you for your courage, Knudson. The Andrets will always be grateful.”

He reached out then and touched her shoulder, lightly, before withdrawing his hand. Then he leaned back and took a protracted sip of tea — I could see him deliberating. As he set the cup back onto the saucer, he looked up at her with an expression of kindness. “I still don’t believe—” he began. “I still don’t believe in holding an important conversation on the telephone. And I didn’t in those days, either, Helena. That’s why I came out here to see him.”

Mom was honestly surprised, I think, by the words that followed. He laid them out precisely, as was his unremitting nature, all the while holding out the box of tissues. When he’d finished, his hand went forward briefly again and touched her on the shoulder, then descended to the table, where it closed for a moment, rather tenderly, over her wrist. Then it retreated. Either the gesture or the news seemed to still her — to still her deeply — as if he’d plucked from her shoulders a lifelong cloak of worry.

There were tears in her eyes. Presently she turned to me, a smile emerging almost involuntarily. “Did you know this, too, Hans?”

“No, Mom.” I took her hand. “I didn’t. But I suppose it doesn’t surprise me.”

What Hay had told us was that when he’d made the trip up to the cabin all those years ago, he’d done so only to alert my father to a paper he’d heard about, a paper that Benedek Fodor was about to publish. This had been the sole reason for his visit. There had never been any offer to return to Princeton.

THAT NIGHT, WHEN I bent to give him his medicine, he startled. “They beat me,” he said.

He twisted his head, trying to shield it with the cast.

“It’s all right, Milo,” said Mom.

His body was shaking.

“It’s all right, Dad. It’s us — it’s Hans and Mom. We’re not going to hurt you.”

—

IN THE MORNING, Danny Gandapur arrived again. He knelt by the pillows with a tiny electric saw and cut away the cast. Beneath it, Dad’s arm was green and yellow, still bent in two places, covered everywhere with a strangely plush layer of hair. The doctor wrapped it in a sling and drew the cinches tight.

That afternoon, the pain returned. He arched his back and moaned. The fist of his good hand, bony and gray, beat the floor.

“Come on, Dad,” I said. “It’s time for your medicine.”

“I don’t want any.”

He went on writhing. I waited a few moments, then slid in the needle. For a time, I had to grip his fist to keep the bones from breaking on the floor.

—

“HE AND MY mom used to lie in this same bed,” I said that night. Audra had arrived a few hours before. “They used to lie here worrying about Paulie and me.”

She reached over and took my hand. I’d just come upstairs after checking on Dad. There was a breeze outside, and below us, the waves were laying themselves against the pebbles. I didn’t feel sorrow, really, just a washing sort of fatigue.

“And one day Emmy will be in her own bed,” she said, “and Niels will be in his, worrying about their kids. It’s strange to think about.”

The wind was blowing through the big pines, brushing their needles along the roof. “You know,” I said, “it’s pretty much impossible to define time. Nobody has ever succeeded.”

“That’s very strange,” she said.

“I suppose so. The physicists have been working on it the longest, and I guess they’ve come the closest.”

“Well?”

“They say it’s the thing you measure with a clock.”

She laughed. “You know who once said that same thing to me?”

“Who?”

“Emmy. That exact thing. She must have read it somewhere.”

“Of course she did.”

“But you know who thought like that, too, don’t you? Your father. Your father and your daughter — they both get absorbed by the same kinds of things.”

She turned over on her side then, which is what she does before sleep. I didn’t want her to. I felt like I was losing her into the sea.

“Aud?”

“I’m right here.”

“I think pain is something like that. I don’t think Dad believes it truly exists. Not the way we think of it, anyway. Maybe it exists as a measurement of suffering — like a clock does — but not as an essence. I think he truly believes that there’s something he hasn’t figured out about it yet. If he can think about it long enough, maybe he can define it, and then maybe he’ll be able to alter it. I think that’s what he’s doing down there.”

—

DAD WOKE, BLINKED his eyes, and turned onto his side. He took a sip from his glass, then raised his face. When he saw Audra behind me, he started to smile. She stepped close, knelt beside him, and kissed him on the cheek.

Even now I saw the pleasure on his face.

When I withdrew the needle, he rolled back down and lifted his neck to see her again. Finally, he let his head fall. “Where the wood ducks rest,” he said.

He slept for a moment.

“Where they rest,” he said. “I lie down on the water.”

“It’s okay, Dad.”

He pointed at the shelves.

“I’m sorry,” said Paulie.

She was standing in the doorway.

After a moment, Dad said, “What was that, sweetheart?”

“I wanted to say that, Dad — I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

Audra rose and left.

Dad gestured to Paulie. She crossed and stood before him.

“Were you ever sorry?” she said.

“For what?”

“For everything. For leaving us.”

With her fingers, she was worrying her skirt. He raised his arm, and she knelt to let him take her hand. “I was sorry a long time before that,” he said.

—

“ FORETHOUGHT,” HE SAID the next morning. He turned toward me. “That’s the word I was looking for.”

“Wow, Dad. You’re awake. That’s quite a good memory.”

“They do not,” he said slowly, “tax their lives”—he took a breath—“with forethought of grief.”

“What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a poem,” said Audra from the doorway.

He lifted his eyes.

Then he let them fall. I took his hand. The fingers were chilly, and as he drifted, they squeezed mine in a slow rhythm, the way Niels’s used to do when he was first walking, his tiny fingers gripping my own — tighter, looser, tighter — as he labored to cross a room. “I should have—” he said, waking.

The eyelids fluttered.

Later in the morning, he turned. We stayed on the porch with him, but he no longer lifted his head. Mom propped him on the pillows. His eyes were open, but they wandered, the pupils darting back and forth as though tiny insects were hovering in the air in front of him. Early in the afternoon, his mouth twisted and his hand went to his belly. It pressed down along the flank.

He moaned. “Tell Earl,” he said. “Tell him I’m ready.”

“Earl’s gone, Dad.”

He gritted his teeth, looked up at the ceiling, searched weakly with his hand along the flesh.

Then he rose all the way to his elbows.

“Go get him,” he said. “Tell him I’m ready to travel.”