Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“What’s happened, Dad?”

“Entropy.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. It’s not okay at all. I’m sick.” He lowered his head. Then, in his strange new voice, he added, “I’m sorry, Hans. I truly am.”

—

IN THE KITCHEN I heated a hot dog in the skillet and brought it upstairs on a piece of bread. The hot dog and the bread were the only things I found that weren’t inside a bottle.

“Entropy always wins,” he said.

“I guess it does.”

“What are you doing here? Did she call you?”

“She did, Dad. If you mean Cle.”

“It’s none of her business.”

“Well, it’s my business now. How come you didn’t tell me?”

“What was there to say? I have something wrong with me. Dr. Gandapur can tell you the rest tomorrow.”

“Does Mom know?”

He turned slowly to the wall. Then he looked down at a newspaper that was trampled on the floor. After a moment, he said, “Wait a minute — today’s not Tuesday, is it?”

“It’s Sunday.”

“Well, the doctor comes tomorrow anyway. Every Monday and Wednesday.” He smiled weakly, then returned his gaze to the window. “Turn off the light.”

“What?”

“Just turn it off. Then come over here.”

In the dark, the smell was stronger: bourbon and sweat and a sweet rankness like an open can of corn.

“Look at this,” he said. “You can see the road.” When I reached him, he managed to lift an arm to point. “I can see all the way to the end. Saw you drive up. Saw you poking around down there.” He was panting. “It’s all changed, hasn’t it?”

Through the glass we watched a car advance along the cove. Halfway around, it turned in at a driveway, then stopped at a house. The garage door slid up. A flat of light elongated itself onto the surface of the lake, then retracted.

After a time, he looked up. “Well,” he said, “thanks for coming, anyway.”

“AND IT SURPRISED you?” said Matthew. “It surprised you that your wife was so upset?”

“I have to say that it did.”

“My God,” said Audra.

Matthew was my therapist. I didn’t know his last name. Stillwater didn’t use last names. He was a bristling, muscly guy in his fifties — retired military, maybe — with an unexpectedly kind face. A powerful combination. And he did things his own way — a fact that I’ve since come to appreciate greatly. The first thing he ever said to me was “Welcome to Vermont, Hans, from one addict to another.” Coke, booze, and gambling — those had been his own particular musketeers. This kind of matchmaking was one of the reasons the place was so expensive.

“And Audra,” he said, turning, “tell me. You mean to say that you didn’t know your husband had been using for — for what is it now, Hans?”

“I don’t know. A couple of years.”

He glanced.

“Two or three, or so,” I offered.

He glanced again.

“No, I didn’t,” said Audra. “I didn’t know.”

“I’m sorry, honey. I just needed something to calm me.”

“You needed cocaine to calm you?”

“Yes.”

Matthew smiled. Familiarly, it seemed. “And why do you suppose”—he turned to me—“why do you suppose you picked that way to do it, Hans? Why in front of your wife, and with your daughter right there in the next room? Most addicts I know would have gone out of their way to hide it. Most addicts would have made it their number one priority to hide it.”

“I wasn’t doing it in front of my wife. And I wasn’t thinking about my daughter. I was just doing it. In my own house. On my own time. They happened to be around.”

“We were in our kitchen.”

“Okay. In the kitchen.”

Audra glanced at Matthew. Matthew cocked his head.

Audra said, “ Please, Hans.”

“Really,” I said. “There really wasn’t any other reason. The balloon was coming down. I just needed to get it back up in the air.”

—

THAT WINTER, WHEN I’d stopped off in Tapington to help Mom ready the place for the realtor, she’d picked me up at the Springfield Airport. (Her new car was five months old by then, and it had a total of 235 miles on the odometer, including the 35 she’d driven to pick me up.) When we arrived at the house, I found that she’d been in the middle of packing up Dad’s things. At that point, he’d been gone for close to ten years. He’d left nearly everything, and it looked as though most of it — if not all of it — was still there. She was sorting things into boxes. “You’re not taking any of this with you,” I said, “right?”

“Right, honey. I’m giving it away.”

“Well, good, Mom.”

I don’t think she’d ever really hoped for his return; but maybe she’d thought it was important to keep his memory there for Paulie and me.

Or perhaps it was just that she’d always felt insignificant without him. That’s possible, too. My father might have been right about that.

In the house, the living-room shelves were still crowded with his mathematics books. A boxful of tumblers was still taking up a corner of the pantry. I even found his winter coat still hanging on the metal bar in the hall closet. When I lifted it, it gave off the faintest odor of cigarettes.

The house looked entirely the same.

“I only kept it this way for you and Paulie,” she said. “Just in case one of you decided to come back. But of course, neither one of you did. I can’t say I blame you.”

“I liked growing up here, Mom.”

“Well, that makes me happy.”

Slowly, we worked our way through the rooms. On the windowsill of the upstairs bath, the faded spine of my old Scientific American puzzle collection stood among the books. When I slid out the hardback next to it— Women Artists of the Romantic Era —a gold pendant dropped out. “What’s this?” I said. “It looks like some kind of saint.”

“Oh, that? Yes — I think it must be Saint Francis.”

“Is it yours?”

She reddened. “Yes, it’s definitely Saint Francis, for what it’s worth. Of Assisi. I guess I didn’t feel right getting rid of it.”

“What’s on his head?”

“A sparrow.” She took it from my hand. “Saint Francis spoke to the birds, you know.” She shrugged. “I’m sure your father would have said he was crazy.”

“Yes, he would have.”

She shook her head. “You know, Dad once stole something from my apartment. Can you believe it? Just after we met.”

“What was it?”

“A crucifix. He pulled it right off my wall.”

“Ha.”

“I took it to mean he was sensitive.”

I laughed.

“Anyway, that’s why I kept Saint Francis in the art book, because I knew he’d never look here.” She folded its chain and nestled it behind the cover again. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

“What?”

“That I don’t need to hide it anymore.”

“I’m not thinking that, Mom. But you’re right, you don’t.”

She lifted the window shade and glanced out at the stream behind the house. At that time of year, it was nothing more than a curled ribbon of ice. Some kind of dull-gray winter bird was hopping on it. “Just so you know,” she said, “I don’t believe in any of it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t console me.”

“How’s it been out here, Mom?”

She let the shade drop. “Cold. But not so bad.”

“I mean, how’s it been living out here by yourself?”

“Oh, that’s such old news.” She pulled a dried washcloth off the shower rod and dropped it into the laundry chute. “After a year or two, I didn’t even miss anybody.”