Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“Wow,” said Paulie. “Did you just see that?”

“I did, Paulie.”

“Is that—” She stopped. “Is that—”

“What other families are like?”

“Yeah.”

“I think it is, Paulie.”

Dad had apparently seen it, too, or at least the final part of it. He stood shielding his eyes. Then he turned, and I could see him taking his breaths again. After a moment, he bent his knees and slipped under. Without coming up for air, he made it all the way back to the sand. When he emerged, he dried himself with a towel, then walked up through the front door of the cabin, not even bothering to say hello as he passed.

—

BELOW ME IN the warm night, a creature the size of a softball bat was nosing the pilings. I’d been studying it from the dock. Whenever I pointed my flashlight, it would still its fins and look up at me; if I moved the beam to a different patch, all would be tranquil for a few seconds; then the minnows would part, and a moment later its pale body would glide stealthily back into the brightness, like a dirigible appearing out of the night.

When I heard Mom’s footsteps, I said, “I believe it appreciates the attention.”

“Of course it does.” She leaned down and poured something out into the lake.

“Oh, man — what was that?”

“Paulie’s crayfish.” With a clank, she set the bowl down on the wood. “She’ll just have to find new ones.” Her steps paused. “Oh, my Lord — what is that thing?”

“Some kind of suckerfish, I believe. Possibly a mutant. I’ve been watching it for a while.”

“Lord,” she said. “Bats. Mosquito swarms. Now suckerfish. What do you think we’re going to find next?”

I lifted the flashlight into the midsection of the pine tree alongside the house. Two pairs of glowing eyes stared back at us from the branches.

“Ah,” she said. “I guess we’ll need a garbage can with a lid.”

“Why are you still awake, Mom?”

“The heat. And the smell of those crayfish.” She nodded toward the cabin, where I could see the fan now, turning in the open window of their bedroom. “And listen.”

“What is it?”

“The sound of your father, in the wild.”

Amid the rhythmic trilling of the insects, I hadn’t noticed it until then. His snoring sounded like a hog snuffling at the edge of the woods.

“The heat and the stink,” she said, “ and that sound. That’s what’s keeping me awake. That sound has kept me awake most nights of my adult life, actually.” She leaned over the dock now and peered down into the water. “It looks kind of like a daikon, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. A huge, sorrowful daikon.”

She leaned farther out. “With a pinstripe down its back, floating alone in the dark.”

Although I might not have been able to say so at the time, that was one of the things I liked about my mother: that she was as interested as I was in the world. Together, we watched the creature’s gray-rimmed side fins open and close.

“Paulie likes daikon,” she said.

“I know, Mom. She likes it sautéed with ginger. And you like it plain.”

She regarded me. After a time, her hand brushed my shoulder. Presently, in a clearer voice, she said, “What I meant to tell you when we were talking the other day is that nobody ever chooses the right thing. I mean, exactly the right thing.”

“I’m trying to figure out what you mean by that.”

“I mean you can only choose what you choose. After that, it’s up to you to make it right.” She sighed. “Of course I’m happy I live in Tapington. And what I said the other day about Princeton — that stuff doesn’t matter. I was just feeling sorry for myself, for a moment . I enjoy my life a lot. I consider myself an exceptionally lucky person. I consider all of us to be exceptionally lucky people.”

She moved closer.

“Things are better now,” I said. “Aren’t they? Since he quit.”

“Yes, they are, Hans.”

Below us, a second creature slid out now from the dark, as big as the first and of the same depleted white. It began moving parallel to its comrade.

“Oh, good,” she said. “At least it’s not alone anymore.”

“And I guess it’s not a mutant.”

In the dimness we watched. Gradually their toil brought the two of them to opposite sides of the same post, where in chiral symmetry they undulated, facing each other across the hairy wood. Their tails beat long sweeps that kept their lips tightly pressed to the algae. It was as though a single pale suckerfish had come out in the night to look at itself in the mirror.

“What about you, Mom?”

“What about me?”

“Do you ever think you’re alone?”

“It’s the human condition, Hans.” Then, after a moment, “But it’s different when you have children.”

“I suppose it must be.” I flicked the light on and off. “I’m going away to college, though. And Paulie goes the year after.”

“Of course you are. But neither of you is leaving for a while yet.” She clicked her tongue. “And I’ll be fine when you do. I’ll be more than fine.”

For a few minutes then, amid the thrum of the crickets and the occasional hoot from the owl, we continued to scrutinize our two giants. Then she said, “Your father is a great mathematician, Hans. But he’s certainly done some things that haven’t helped his career.”

“I know that already.”

“You do?”

“Well, it’s not too hard to figure out.” I threw a pebble into the water and watched the creatures eye its descent. When it hit the bottom, they both nosed down and sniffed at it. “Mom,” I said. “What actually happened to him at Princeton?”

“Your father? Well, he did a few ill-advised things. It’s a long story.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

“He wasn’t getting along with people, for one. And then he allowed some unwise things to take place. But he’s still the same mathematician that he always was. I know it, and I think that they know it, too.”

“Shhh,” I said. “Listen.”

“What?”

“He stopped.”

“Did he?” She cocked her head. “Oh, yes, I think you’re right.”

Out beyond the cattails now, the bathroom light flickered on.

“I saw his Fields the other day,” I said.

“Did you really, honey? When you were at home together?”

“No. He brought it up here.”

She glanced over. Then she touched my arm again and looked out at the water.

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“His old boss is coming up to see him.”

“What?”

“Dad’s old boss from Princeton. He’s coming up here.”

She took hold of my shoulder and turned me toward her. “What do you mean? Are you talking about Knudson Hay?”

“You look shocked.”

“Well, I sort of am .”

“He has a conference in Ann Arbor, and then he’s coming up to see us. Dad told me on the drive back. I wasn’t sure if you already knew.”

“Well, no, actually, I didn’t . But thanks for the tip.” She turned again and looked up at the house, where in the tiny bathroom window now my father’s silhouette appeared. Then the light went out. She said, “I just wonder when he was planning to tell me.”

AND SO BEGAN one of the rare periods in my family’s life in which I can fairly say that together all of us might have been called — for a time, at least— happy . It was my mother’s influence, I think — as such things always seemed to be. After I told her that Knudson Hay was coming, something changed in her.

For this particular stretch of our existence, for those few high weeks of midsummer, she once again became capable of the persuasive, outspreading delight that I recalled so clearly from my younger days. She spent her mornings on her outdoor projects, singing lightly as she worked. The sound of her voice, even from a distance, was like another drug to me. My sister, who’d always been a barometer of my mother’s moods, came out and sang beside her.