Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

When there was no response, he said it louder. “Bullshit!”

Of course, I also knew exactly what he was talking about. My mother’s imperturbable kindness was infuriating even to me — although, being young, I was confused by such a feeling.

“Okay,” she said gently.

“You know,” he said, “you are such a fucking Pollyanna.”

“What I said was the truth, Milo. No mathematician can come near what you achieved in the field. Not for a long, long time, anyway. Some work just puts an end to debate.”

He slowed the car. “Why, might I ask, are you such a goddamn fucking apologist?”

My mother turned to look at me in the backseat, then at the traffic behind us. “Sweetheart.”

He slowed further. A van roared past. Bernie barked.

“Milo. This is a highway.”

“I wrote a fucking brilliant proof, Helena. And no one’s taken it up. Not one fucking single other mathematician. Not one in twenty fucking years.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“Not that much of one. It’s a goddamn insult.”

“It’s just another mark of its power, sweetheart. That’s all. Nobody followed Newton, either. Now please speed up a little.”

My father continued at the same rate, working the eleventh empty back into its plastic ring as first one car, then another, pulled out to pass us. I glanced out the rear window, where a line of traffic was building.

When the Leinie cans were back in their place, he withdrew his hand and drummed his fingers lazily against the wheel, like a farmer plodding along in a tractor. “By the way,” he said, glancing up into the mirror. “That’s completely absurd. Barrow preceded Newton, and Leibniz followed Newton. You don’t know a goddamn thing about it. You don’t know the first thing about a goddamn thing about what you’re goddamn talking about.”

All of this was said slowly.

“We can discuss it,” said my mother, “anytime you’d like.” Then: “Will you kindly respect the speed limit?”

“Okay,” he said, shifting his foot to the accelerator. “Kids, your mother says we should respect the speed limit.” The engine growled. We roared forward, pulling close behind one of the cars that had just passed us. A moment later, our engine shaking, we passed it. Then the two ahead. He pulled in finally for a semitrailer coming in the other direction, then pulled back out to pass.

I looked over the headrest: the speedometer was on eighty.

“Okay,” my mother said calmly. “What’s next, Milo? What exactly are you planning to do next? Children, are your belts on?”

“What’s next is nothing!” But rather than jerking the wheel or stomping even harder on the accelerator, as I somehow hoped he would do, he simply slid back into line and laid off the gas until we had slowed again to fifty-five; and then, just like that, we were driving peaceably. My mother offered him another pretzel, and he took it straight from her fingers into his mouth. When the salty tidbit appeared to soothe him further, she handed him a few more.

My mother in those days had become quite adept at calming him.

Many years later, of course, when I understood what was happening to my father, I learned about the cognitive changes that can accompany a condition like his; and I have to say, as I read those medical articles on the Internet in his dank and ruined house — a father myself at that point — I was forced to rethink many of the things I’d believed about him. Nobody likes to do that. Especially if you’ve nursed a grievance of mistreatment for a good portion of your life. But this is part of why I tell this story — to understand the truth about him, including the idea that he can’t entirely be blamed for what he did to us, and for what he did to himself, and for what happened to him.

At any rate, it was later that afternoon, at the Macon Dalles, that the real event took place. There was a liquor store not far from the park entrance, and as usual it lifted him into a brighter mood. We managed to have a pleasant hike, winding our way through a grove of sycamores that cast a thousand permutations of green onto the spring grass that was just coming out of seed along the paths. At the river, we turned south. Below us, in the first run of boulders, the water began its concert. When we arrived at the spot where the path moved onto the stone ledge above the channel, my father bent down and lifted Paulie onto his shoulders. An uncertain smile crossed her face. As we moved along the narrow sill of rock, he began wobbling like a tipsy horse. Bernie ran up behind him, barking. An iron railing was built into the outcropping, and when he leaned over it my sister squealed. I wasn’t sure whether it was a squeal of terror or a squeal of delight, but when he leaned back to safety again I saw that her smile had deepened. She pressed her knees against his flanks.

“Milo,” said my mother.

He leaned over the railing again, and Paulie squealed anew, letting go of his shoulders this time and waving her hands in the air as though her roller-coaster car had paused at the peak of the hill.

“Milo. Please.”

Bernie nudged Dad’s leg, trying to move him back from the edge, but my father pretended to stumble toward the water.

My mother inhaled sharply.

“Mom, it’s okay,” said Paulie. She rolled her eyes.

“No, it’s not okay, honey. It’s not okay at all. Milo, please set her down.”

“It’s okay. I like it, Mom.”

“Set her down, Milo.” Then, louder: “Milo!”

He turned and looked at her, shaking his head. Then he complied. As soon as Paulie was on the ground, he bowed to all of us with an exaggerated flourish, like a rickshaw driver.

“Wow,” said my sister, rolling her eyes again, “Mrs. Kill-the-Party.”

“Thank you, Paulette.”

“Miss Fall-off-the-Cliff-and-Break-Your-Neck,” I said.

“Nobody’s going to fall anywhere,” said my father. “Are they, Bernou?” Then he said, “Here, boy,” and patted Bernie on the head.

This was the end of the conversation. We walked on, and when we reached our picnic spot, my mother spread out the meal. Ham salad and coleslaw and sugar cookies, all of my father’s favorites. We ate. But I could tell that the incident had upended his optimism. He sat so that we couldn’t see his face, his head turned toward the churning water, and rather than let his wife fix his drinks for him in the glass tumbler that she’d lugged up the trail, he kept his liquor-store bag next to him and lifted it straight to his lips. The paper had formed itself to the neck of the bottle. As soon as he finished his sandwich, he took the bag with him and walked to the edge of the cliff.

The rest of us remained behind, sitting cross-legged on the checkered red blanket that was covered with our half-eaten sandwiches. I remember his silhouette that day, standing against the cellophane sky. There weren’t many places in Ohio where a man could oversee vastness; but that was what he was doing, his somehow heroic frame contemplating the remaining westward reach of a continent that, over the last decade, he’d been slowly recrossing.

“Your father’s feeling philosophical,” said my mother. She’d risen to her knees and was putting away the utensils and sliding the uneaten coleslaw from his plate onto mine. His sandwich was being finished off by Bernie.

“He was fun today,” said Paulette.

“Yes, he was,” said my mother. “Your father does enjoy these outings.”

Just then his silhouette bent forward at the waist, and over the rumble of the water we heard a staccato cough. His free hand went to his mouth, and the one with the bag in it went out to the side, to steady his balance. He remained bent forward for several moments before he stood again, still facing away from us. Then he brought the bag up to his lips.