Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“Really?”

“Well, certainly not your father. And the two of you — maybe not as much as you might think. Mostly that’s true. Mostly it’s been okay.” She stepped into the hall and moved toward the bedrooms. “Living without the two of you has been a little hard sometimes.”

“Well, you’ll have me now, Mom. And your grandchildren.”

“And Audra. And Paulie. Paulie will fly out to see us.”

We stepped into my old bedroom now. The books on the desk there, the smell of the sheets, the hammock springs inside the mattress — it was all an artfully preserved diorama. The only thing changed was the ficus, which had grown at least a foot and a half. It looked like a teenager I hadn’t seen in a couple of years.

Next to it by the window, Mom lifted herself up onto the ledge and sat bumping her heels against the wainscoting. She actually did appear to be happy. There was something about her that was still girlish. Was more girlish, even, than before. She was sixty-one. “The ficus looks good,” she said. “Doesn’t it?”

“You dust the leaves, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do.” She rubbed her thumb across one of the tips. “Otherwise they don’t breathe.”

“Amazing.”

“I’m just a housewife.” She shrugged. “And not even a very good one, at that. I couldn’t even do that very well. Your dad was right. Maybe I would have been better off with another kind of person.”

Out the window, a pair of squirrels began shaking the mulberry. I peered out at them. They were hunched in the seam of a bough, chattering, and now and then one of them would race up and down the trunk. When I was a boy, my father had given me my first lesson in differential calculus under that very bough. “I hope you don’t really believe that,” I said.

“Believe what?”

“That you didn’t do it well. That you didn’t belong with someone like him.”

“Well, part of me does.”

“Dad was ill, Mom. He was — I don’t know—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She turned, crossing her arms. “Your father’s astonishing,” she said. “That’s what you need to remember.” She hopped from the ledge and began folding towels from the laundry basket. I rose and turned the ficus on its saucer. The soil was dark with moisture, the surface dotted with tiny beads of white.

“You keep fertilizer on it, too,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“And I rotate it. For the light.”

I looked at her.

“I don’t have that much to do, honey.”

“Did you ever find anything in here, Mom?”

She raised an eyebrow. “What would I find in there?”

“Here. In the ficus pot.” The loam came up in moist clumps in my fingers.

“Hans, what on earth are you doing?”

“Did Dad ever tell you?”

“Tell me what ?”

“About me ?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She went back to folding the towels, but in a moment she looked up again. “What would he have told me about you, sweetheart?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

—

“AND DID YOU tell her?” said Matthew.

“No, actually. I didn’t.”

“What?” said Audra.

“Not then. But I did. Eventually.”

“Eventually?” said Matthew.

“The other day.”

“You just told her now ?” said Audra.

“Well, yes.” I attempted a smile. “I skipped a couple of steps.”

“And what did she say?” said Matthew.

“She was really surprised. Shocked, I guess.”

“You didn’t expect anything different, did you, honey?”

“I’d always thought — I don’t know — I’d always thought that she did know. Once Dad did, anyway. Even though—” I shook my head.

“Even though, what ?” This was Matthew.

“Even though I knew that Dad wouldn’t tell her himself.”

“And he didn’t?”

“I guess not.”

“Honey, if she’d known, of course she would have said something. Your mother? She would have worried her hair out.”

“I didn’t think about it like that.”

“So you somehow convinced yourself that she knew,” said Matthew. “Just because your father did — even though you were well aware that he’d probably never tell her.”

“And you convinced yourself that if she didn’t care—” This was Audra now.

I shrugged. “Yeah, then why should I ?”

“It’s strangely logical,” she said.

Matthew smiled. Then he let a silence fall. The silence went on. With one hand he crumpled a sheet of paper and threw it across the room into the trash can.

“Nice shot.”

“But that’s not all,” he said. He crossed his arms and looked over at me.

“Not all of what?”

“You’re not telling all of it.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Why did you not tell your mother?”

“Because I figured she already knew. Either Dad would have told her or she would have figured it out.”

“Yes, you’ve said that much.” He crossed his arms and stared again. Then he glanced out the window. He crumpled another sheet of paper and without looking threw it into the trash can. “Well?”

“I’m a mathematician, Doctor.”

“Indeed you are. Although I’m no doctor.”

“Mathematicians require proof.”

“And there’s no proof?”

“No.”

“But tell me, don’t mathematicians play their hunches?”

“Yes, of course they do. But they don’t publish them.”

“Why don’t you just give us your hunch then?” said Matthew. “Off the record. Why did you tell your father but never your mother.”

He crossed his arms once more and stared at me in his placid way. So did Audra, in her own placid way. She actually crossed her arms, too, as though the two of them had trained together.

I finally said, “Because I didn’t want to betray her.”

I HEARD THE click of the cabin’s front door and a few moments later the sound of things being set down on the table, then of the kitchen cabinets opening and closing. Finally, shuffling on the stairs. When the bedroom door opened, a tall, finely dressed man stood holding a medical case. He looked startled, then pleased.

“Your son, I presume?” He set down the case and offered me a hand. He was Indian or maybe Pakistani, the skin on his face still youthful but the eyes genially wrinkled. He might have been Dad’s age. “Daneesh Gandapur,” he said, bowing.

“Danny,” said my father. “Or Dr. G. That’s what I call him. Everyone else around here calls him Gandhi.”

“Well, they couldn’t be more wrong about that.”

“A pleasure, Dr. Gandapur. Hans Andret.”

“Sir, the pleasure is mine.”

Dad pulled out a cigarette. “Hans is here for a couple of days.”

“Ah, yes. Very good, then. See, Milo, it is nice to have a little company, is it not?”

“I told you, I don’t need company. Don’t need anything from anyone.”

The doctor set down his belongings. “Not even your own son?” He glanced over at me.

“All I want is to be alone.”

Dr. Gandapur shook his head.

“Dad said you’re taking good care of him,” I offered.

“As well as can be achieved under the circumstances.” He glanced at the cigarette in Dad’s mouth. Then he bowed again slightly, first to Dad, then to me. “And it is permissible for me to continue while the young man is present?”

“I suspect the boy’s seen worse, Danny.”

“I suspect he has.”

The doctor arranged his supplies on the edge of the bed like a vendor arranging his wares. Dad watched, still puffing on his cigarette. But his eyes gleamed now as though he were about to receive a fix of the most astonishing drug in the world.