Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

Faith and love — that’s what it comes down to.

And what of life’s other brilliances? I believe that my daughter is a good deal more talented in mathematics than my son, for example. It’s Emmy’s name that we might one day read in textbooks, the way we’ve already read my father’s. The thing is, Emmy would never know what anyone secretly needed. Niels, on the other hand, would know it deeply, without ever having to be asked.

—

ON THE WAY home that week from OSU, where my mother and I had both taken midterms, she turned to me in the passenger seat and said, “Are you worried about your father?”

“Not really.”

She kept her gaze on me. “Good,” she said. “You just focus your mind on your studies.” Then she looked back out at the road.

We were in the long stretch of empty land about three-quarters of the way back from Columbus. Whenever a car neared from the other direction, I could see her peering forward into the lights. My midterm had been on eigenfunctions, and hers had been on the circulatory system. “How’d you do on your test?” I said.

“Not bad. How about you?”

“Not bad, either.”

She smiled and lifted the milkshake to me from the carton between us on the dashboard. We always shared one on the way home, but tonight she hadn’t taken any. It was my favorite: strawberry.

“What do you think’s the matter with him?” I asked.

On the outskirts of Tapington, the traffic was thickening from a shift change at the appliance plant, and the cars turning in and out of the parking lot were lifting opals of light across her cheeks. “I really don’t know,” she said. “But I do know that you and your sister shouldn’t be worrying about it.”

—

“HANS,” SAID MY father. “Tell me how old you are.”

I glanced at him. “Is this a real question?”

“Absolutely. It’s not easy when you have more than one kid, not to mention a wife. The figures change at irregular intervals.”

“Let’s see — I’ve lived three hundred ninety-four million one hundred eighty-three thousand six hundred eighty-”—I glanced at my wrist for show—“eight seconds, Dad.”

“That’s what I thought.”

We were in his room again. He’d returned to the world now in most of his previous capacities, but whenever he came back from teaching he still went upstairs for a nap. I had the feeling that it had become a permanent habit. Every day, a little before four o’clock, just about the time Paulie and I returned from school, he retired to bed. While he slept, the rest of us went about the house quietly, and after I’d finished my homework and read a few pages from one of the science fiction novels that I’d started to enjoy in those days, it would be time to go upstairs to say hello. I would tiptoe along the carpeted hallway, then stand at the door to his room. After a moment, he would blink open his eyes, without turning his head, like a lizard.

Now, of course, I realize I was probably checking to make sure he was still alive.

“Did I wake you?” I would say.

“You’re implying that I was asleep.”

He seemed to move less now. In the bed, his arms lay across the blankets like pieces of wood. His hair was matted, his cheeks sallow, and his forehead devoid of all the old grimaces and narrowings that it used to display. He looked normal in every detail but somehow not yet himself. Like a statue of himself, carved by an artist who had technique but not soul.

“By the way,” he said, “as I know you know, that was just arithmetic. That three hundred ninety-four million seconds. You’re twelve years old. I’m well aware of that.”

“Okay.”

He sighed. “The true mathematics would be figuring out why every second seems like the last.”

“Clever.”

“Maybe, but not in any way true.” He appeared to think for a moment. “Or perhaps when you get older, you’ll see that it is indeed true. Just not mathematically so.” He patted the sheets, and another whiff of cologne reached me. “Anyway, twelve is about the right age for what I’m about to say.” He reached behind his shoulder and from under the pile of books on the headboard produced one of the bottles of Hennessy. “I’ve been tapering,” he said. “You’re about to witness the last drink your old man will ever take.” He shook the bottle to show me that it was nearly empty.

“The last drink in your life?”

“That’s right, in my life.” He tilted the neck, gulped down the last bit, and held out the bottle. “By the way,” he said, “it’s not as bad as they say.”

“I can get you something better next time.”

“I could get something better myself next time, if I wanted to. That’s the point. I don’t want to. You’re my witness.” He reached out and shook my hand. “So help me God.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“I’ve done some difficult things in my life, Hans. This is just go-ing to be one more.” He sat up now, swung his feet stiffly over the side of the mattress, and began pulling on his socks. “People said I couldn’t do some of those other things, either. But I proved them wrong.”

“What things?”

“Well, some difficult problems, for one. I’ve solved a problem that was thought to be unsolvable.”

“I know, Dad.”

“And I learned that only a small part of it is talent. The rest is determination. Stick to your ramparts, my boy, no matter who else is trying to shout you off of them.” He shifted around to look into my eyes. With his head turned, the arm on the far side began to quiver. “The will is everything,” he said.

“Okay.”

He held my gaze. “Look at me.”

“What?”

“Do you agree?”

“With what?”

“That the will is everything.”

“I guess so.”

“Then say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say, The will is everything .”

“I’m not going to say that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s corny. I don’t want to.”

“Well, why don’t you want to? Don’t you believe it?”

“I didn’t say I don’t believe it. Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t.”

“Say it, then. Say, The will is everything .”

“I won’t.”

“Just say it, Hans. Say, ‘I, Hans Euler Andret, will never give up.’ ”

“No.”

“Come on now, Hans. ‘The will is everything. I will never give up.’ ”

“No.”

“Say it!”

“No!”

He thought for a moment. Then he smiled. “Good,” he said.

I KNEW I could count on you to understand.

Did my father recognize something in me that I hadn’t known existed? Was he warning me about what was coming?

As it turned out, it was that very week that I, Hans Euler Andret — mathematics prodigy, namesake of mathematicians, aspiring Beaver, son of a woeful addict myself — began using.

Why? Believe me, I’ve thought about it — I’ve thought about it now for years —and I still don’t have an answer. Why then? Why at all? I’d just watched my father nearly bleed to death on a cliff, then practically succumb in his bed to delirium tremens, then vow in my presence to never drink again. Of course I should have taken it all as a warning.

But I didn’t.

I don’t think it was a desire for my own destruction, nor a claim on my father’s scant attention, nor a fear of unseating him (or an attempt at it), nor the will to differentiate myself from my sister, nor a stab, even, at shooting myself down from the dizzying trajectory at which I’d been flying — all theories that have been offered to me over the years, by my wife, my friends, my sponsor, and my shrinks. Instead, I think that it was nothing more than the long-delayed satisfaction of a physical craving that must have been inside me since birth. My clock had simply run down.