Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“No.”

“Do I look happy?”

“I guess not.”

I glanced up then and noticed that there were also more boxes on the rafters. All of them, at least all the ones that I could see, said WRONG.

“It’s not about happy, Hans. It’s about not giving up.”

He turned back to the dynamo then, and I set down the plate with the sandwich on it.

“Happy isn’t even a real idea,” he said. “It’s just like love. A reasonably skeptical person doesn’t even know what it means.”

—

AT SUNSET, PAULIE and I unveiled the second boat. I waited in the shallows while she walked up to the cabin to retrieve our parents, who took their places on the beach. At the side of the dock, the Victory and the Royal Sovereign were tied toe rail to toe rail. Stable of keel, shallow of draft, moored abreast of each other in the lowering sun. In the perfect calm, they looked as though they’d been set out for display on a glass table. Next to them, the minnows made their perfect shadows of the hulls, now in silver, now in black.

Mom held her hand over her mouth. Dad stood beside her with an appraising look.

AS WE WALKED up from the water a few mornings later, my father glanced back at the dock, where the boats were still moored. They looked like a pair of naval statues glinting in the sun. “Impressive,” he said. “Quite impressive.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

He turned and peered into the distance, toward the curve where the road left the highway and crossed into the meadow. He knocked me on the shoulder. “Our Trafalgar,” he said amiably.

“Our Trafalgar,” I answered, just as amiably.

Today was the day Knudson Hay was arriving.

When we entered the cabin, I saw that Mom had already changed into her yellow dress and her cocoa-colored stockings. She was sweeping the floor, but the way her wide belt held her upright made her look as though she were holding her breath as she worked. When she was finished, she walked through the rooms turning on table lamps. Bernie had already been brushed.

When Knudson Hay’s car appeared, a silver glare between the trees, we all went to the windows. A few minutes later, when it nosed out of the woods and began crawling down the narrow driveway, my mother smiled at my father like an actress. “Go,” she said, pushing him toward the porch. At the threshold, she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.

Dad nodded, then opened the door and stepped outside. I heard his strangely jovial call. “Well, you don’t say, Chairman Hay! Up here in the north woods! An honor, Professor, an honor! Up here with us in the great north woods!”

—

“I REALLY DON’T care,” said my mother.

“Neither do we,” said Paulie.

It was early evening, and Paulie and I were sitting across from my mother in a booth at the back of the Green & White, a truck stop on the state route north of Felt City. My father and Knudson Hay were twenty minutes farther up the road, at the Belle View Supper Club, the only establishment within an hour’s drive of the cabin that served a steak.

“Life’s just fine in Tapington,” said my mother. In her cinched dress, she still seemed to be holding her breath. “I have to admit, though, it would be nice to be able to go shopping every once in a while.”

“Like at Lord and Taylor,” said Paulie.

My mother smiled. “Yes — well, that’s true, isn’t it? There’s one on Fifth Avenue near Grand Central. I once bought a purse there.”

Paulie sucked thoughtfully on her Coke. “How far would we be from New York?” she asked.

“Well, from Princeton Junction it’s seventy-five minutes on the train. And then you’re right in the middle of Manhattan, on Thirty-fourth Street.” She sipped her tea. “It’s quite thrilling, actually.”

“So, what exactly is he here for?” Paulie said.

“I’m not sure, sweetie.”

“Yes, you are,” I said.

My mother wouldn’t smile. “Well, for one, they haven’t seen each other in fifteen years.”

“Why don’t you just say it?” I turned to Paulie. “They’re talking about Dad getting his old job back.”

“We know that, Hans.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Because I wanted to hear what Mom had to say about it.”

“It’s important to remember,” said my mother, “that life is fine where we are. We don’t need anything more than what we already have.” She looked meaningfully across the table. “Tell me that both of you understand that.”

—

THAT NIGHT, WHEN the phone rang, I rose from bed and leaned through the doorway. “Was that him?” I said.

“It was, honey.” Mom was at the table with a glass of wine. The clock radio on the counter flipped to 1:12. Behind me on the porch, Paulie snored softly.

“Is he okay?”

“Go back to sleep, sweetie. They’re going to be a while. They’re still talking, I guess.” She squinted across the room at me.

“Are you okay?” I said.

“Oh, Hans.”

I moved into the kitchen and sat down across from her.

“This all makes me a little nervous,” she said.

“You want to go back there, don’t you?”

“Oh, I don’t think I really know.”

“You’d have things to do.”

“I have plenty of things to do in Tapington.”

“You’d have friends.”

She sipped her wine. “I like the people in Ohio.”

“But they’re not really your friends.”

“Well — perhaps not. But they’re fine enough people.” Then she added, “And I have your father, and I have the two of you. I don’t need any more than that. We don’t know what’s going to happen, anyway. He’s probably just out here saying hello to Dad.”

“Dad’s not your friend.”

She laughed. “You’re wrong about that, Hans.”

“You wish you had real friends.”

“He is my real friend.”

Out on the lake, a boat engine started up — a flashlight fisherman, out for catfish. We watched the red bow light slide east in the darkness, then shift to green as it turned north.

“You make a decision,” I said, still looking out the window. “Then you turn it into the right one.”

“That’s right,” she answered.

—

SOMETIME LATER, WHEN I woke again, the moon was low in the screens. I tiptoed into the living room, where Mom was slouched in a chair. In the dark, I could see Dad’s overcoat in a heap on the floor. On the couch behind her, then, I saw him, sprawled across the cushions.

Later still, when the slam of a car door woke me for good, the lake was in full light. The silver car was in the driveway, and my father was standing alongside it. Knudson Hay looked up from the steering wheel. Dad was in his usual pose, his hands against his sides, his gaze to the ground. They shook hands through the window. Hay gave a short salute and turned to back out. My father watched him move up the drive.

By the time he was inside, I was dressed.

“Good morning, everybody,” said my mother, ducking to peek out at the road. She sat down on the couch. “Come in, honey,” she said to Dad. “Why don’t you sit down and tell us what happened?”

My father didn’t move from the door. “It was a long evening. We talked about a lot of things.”

Paulie walked in from the porch, rubbing her eyes.

“Well,” said Mom, “did he?”

“Did he what?”

“ Ask you, sweetheart. Did he ask you to come back?”

Dad looked out the window. Then he said, “What do you want to hear, Helena? Yes, he did . You were right.”

“Oh, honey.” She turned to smile at Paulie and me. “That’s wonderful.”

Now Dad went to the window and leaned down to see all the way to the water. “I just need a little more time to think about it,” he said.