Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

My mother’s hand touched mine. “Hans.”

She rose and began moving toward him.

She was stepping gingerly, as though sneaking up on a bird, and as I followed her I did the same. At one point, her arm came back and found mine. He still hadn’t turned, and when we neared him she slowed again, approaching watchfully. She said, “Milo?” First she tapped his shoulder, then she took hold of it.

He turned, and his eyes were red. I wondered how she’d known.

“The thing I will never do,” he said, wiping his cheek with the bag, “is hurt them.”

“Of course we know that,” said my mother.

“I will never, ever, hurt my children.”

“Of course not, my love.”

Tears were on his cheeks.

I stepped up next to my mother. I should have turned away, should have given him the privacy he wanted, but I found, as always, that I couldn’t. I couldn’t ever turn away from him when he was like this, when the battle-dented armor behind which he spent his days had momentarily been lowered. For a moment I could see the man behind it.

“Never ever hurt them,” he said.

“Of course not.”

“Get away from here, Hans,” he said through a sob.

“Fuck you, Dad.”

He recoiled as though he’d been slapped.

“Hans!” said my mother.

“I was kidding. We always say that. It’s a joke.”

My sister came up behind. “Get away, Hans,” she hissed. “You’re making it worse.”

My father turned on her. “You,” he said, pointing. “You’re one, too.”

“One what?”

“One silly, fucking Pollyanna.”

“What?” Paulie sat down on the ground.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said my father. “All of you, get the hell away from me!”

“We’re right here,” said my mother. “It’s all right, Milo.”

“It’s not all right,” I said.

“Correct, Hans! You are correct .” He turned to us, smiling weirdly now, then emitted another sharp sound, something between a laugh and a hiccup, and covered his mouth again with his hand.

“Why don’t we all go finish our sandwiches,” said my mother.

He pivoted once more to the water. For a few moments, we all just stayed there, frozen, my father looking off into the distance, my mother smiling determinedly at his back, while from behind us came the hzz-hzz of Paulette’s sniffling and the ph-hah, ph-hah of Bernie’s panting. Then my mother touched him on the shoulder again. That’s when he wheeled. As though shooing a pernicious fly, he swung his hand and struck her backhand across the face.

She fell to the ground.

Paulie screamed. I grabbed Mom under the shoulders and stood her up, then led her away across the rock. At the blanket, I let go, and she slumped down into the ruins of the picnic. Bernie was baying. I turned angrily to my father, who’d resumed his posture on the cliff; then back to my mother, who lay crumpled on the ground like a dropped marionette, tears on her cheeks.

Paulette approached, sniffling.

“Shut up, Smallette. What’s the matter with you? He hurt Mom.”

“He hurt me just as badly. Did you hear what he said?”

Now my mother stirred. She rose, wiped her cheeks on her blouse, and looked around. Bernie was sprinting back and forth between the cliff edge and our blanket, as though doing line drills. “Please, you two,” said my mother. “Please, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?” said Paulie. “We don’t have to go back with him.”

“Then how do you propose we get home, Smallette?”

“We’ll leave him here.”

“Please,” my mother said again. “Please.”

“Are you sure you’re all right?” said Paulie. “You can tell us.”

“I’m fine, honey. I’m sure he’s terribly sorry.” But these words seemed to affect her almost as deeply as the slap had. She slumped forward again, and the tears came freely. She was leaning on all fours now, trying to control herself, her gasps punctuating the rumble of the river. I saw my father turn toward the sound, then back to the water.

He stood there like that, his back to us, for a good long time while my mother’s crying slowly diminished. Soon Paulette had stopped sniffling, too, and with a starched-blouse propriety she set about gathering up our picnic trash. She knelt rigidly and replaced everything in the wicker basket, her face a mask now of resolve. I think my sister had always imagined herself a war nurse; and here we were at last, at war.

I myself was passing the skirmish by rubbing my mother’s shoulders, and she was raising her head now and then to thank me.

It might have been a quarter of an hour later that my father, at the edge of the cliff, finally turned to us again. He leaned forward and set both hands on his hips, then dropped the bag to the ground.

My mother rose to her knees.

He tilted up his head so we could see his face — he was smiling, rather sheepishly, it seemed. My mother smiled back.

Then he coughed again.

Afterward, there was a moment marked only by the tympanic rumble of the river and by the wobble of his slightly swaying torso against the sky. The next cough was shorter but strangely crisp, like the snap of a stick. His hand moved to his breast pocket. When it came away, I saw it — the smashed pomegranate again. He looked up, frightened. The globule had attached itself to his shirt, like the gaping, purplish wound from a bullet. I swallowed. I was still on my knees, still patting my mother’s shoulder, and she was still looking up at me, still vaguely puzzled, as though I were a sympathy machine that she’d somehow forgotten how to switch off; but suddenly she shoved away my arm and sprang to her feet. The blanket was in her hand, and we were running. When she reached him, she pressed it to his face and lowered him to the ground. My father thrust away her attempts and cupped his hands over his own mouth. He was on his knees now, every few seconds spasming forward at the neck and emitting from his lips another crisp hack followed by a bright red stream of blood, a stuttering river that quickly became a spreading puddle below him, into which he leaned forward finally and collapsed.

LATER THAT MONTH, on the way home from the Southern Ohio Lutheran Medical Center, where Dad had been recovering, we stopped at the Greenway Shopping Center, and my parents went into the A&P together for groceries. Dad had been in the hospital for three weeks, and his gait was still wobbly. He was pale, and there were weirdly colored bruises all over his hands. As the doors of the A&P closed, I saw him bump into a shopping cart and almost fall over.

A few moments after that, as I watched from the backseat of the station wagon, I saw him emerge without my mother from a side exit and limp away down the alley. I couldn’t tell where he was going, but several minutes later when he returned to the car, I could see the bulge under his jacket.

Perhaps he did intend to try. I give him credit for that.

During those first weeks at home, he slept late every morning, took a nap every afternoon, and retired early every night. For my daily mathematics sessions, I sat on my mother’s side of the mattress. But he was clearly less interested in the material now, and we spent a good amount of time reviewing things I’d learned long ago. It wasn’t even clear to me that he remembered what he’d already taught me. “Hans,” he said one afternoon not long after his discharge from the hospital, “I don’t think this stuff is all that important, actually.”

“What? Why not?”

His eyes moved about nervously. “What we’re doing right now. Integration by parts. It’s heuristics, not mathematics. And it’s plainly obvious. Why don’t you just go outside and play?”