Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“I’m sorry.”

“When I was a kid, he’d never said a word to me about anything from his past. Like a lot of fathers, I guess. Then I went out to see him, in the woods where he’s living now. And he told me things I never knew. Like that he was in a place like this himself once.”

“And you never knew about it?”

“No, I didn’t. His department at Princeton made him go. They sent a security guard on the plane with him to make sure he got there.” I laughed. “Dad brought along a bottle, of course.”

“I’d expect no less.”

“They took it away.”

“Not unusual, either. When was this?”

“Right before he lost his job and my parents moved to Ohio. Probably a year before I was born.”

“And did the treatment work?”

“He went AWOL.”

He glanced over. “You’re free to leave, too, you know.”

“I know that.”

“Tell us what happened afterwards,” said Audra.

“You know what happened.”

“Tell Matthew.” She turned to him. “His dad destroyed his career. Then he abandoned his family. Then he almost ruined our family.”

“He didn’t almost ruin our family.”

“He didn’t? Look at you.”

“What about me?” I reached out my hand.

She ignored it.

“You don’t agree with your wife?” said Matthew. “You don’t agree that he almost ruined your family?”

“I don’t think my father has anything to do with it anymore.”

At these words, Audra actually laughed. “Sometimes, you’re so thick,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Audra, why don’t you tell us what’s on your mind then?”

“What’s on my mind is obvious. Hans was hoping to be caught. Weren’t you? Obviously, you wanted me to stop you.”

“Why would I want that?”

“Because you couldn’t just let it go on. You needed it to stop.”

“Well, I don’t—”

“Shhh,” she said. “Just be quiet. Just think about it for a minute. You must have known it for a long time — that unless something changed—” Here she closed her eyes.

Matthew handed her the box of Kleenex. After a time, he said, “Well, Hans?”

“I guess she means that unless something changed, I’d eventually be in the same shape as my dad.”

“And?” said Audra.

“And I guess I don’t want to think about what that would have meant for our kids.”

—

“THAT’S ONE OF the reasons we’ve never let them meet him,” Audra said. It was her last session with me before she went back to New York in the morning.

“Your children have never met their grandfather?”

“It’s not that we forbid it,” I said. “It’s just that it doesn’t ever seem to happen. He certainly never expresses any interest.”

“I don’t know if Hans told you this,” said Audra, “but he didn’t come to our wedding.”

“Was he invited?”

“Of course he was,” she said. “But he must have been afraid to come.”

“Afraid?” said Matthew.

“Of seeing my mother, she means.”

“Do you agree with that, Hans? Do you think he was afraid of seeing her?”

“Well — yes, I think he was. And he was probably afraid to see Paulie and me, too.”

“I can understand that.” This was Audra again. “I can see why he wouldn’t want to show up if all of you were going to be there. It was probably too painful. He was probably so ashamed of what he’d done.”

“My wife is being generous.”

“You see it differently?”

“I just see it as the way he is. He’s a frightened person.”

“Frightened of what?”

“Hard to say. Of people, maybe. Of human beings as unpredictable functions. I don’t know how else to put it. I don’t think he was actually ashamed. I don’t think he operates that way. It’s much more elemental, in my opinion. I think he was bewildered, and being bewildered scares him. He wouldn’t know what to say to the woman who was about to marry his son. He wouldn’t know what to say to her family. And he probably wouldn’t know what to say now to our kids. That’s why he drinks. That’s why he stays away.”

“And you prefer it that way?”

“I didn’t say I do.”

“But you do, ” said Audra. “You’re afraid of his influence.”

“Well, aren’t you ?”

Matthew let Audra think about that one.

“I don’t know,” she finally said. “Of course I am. But it’s already there, don’t you think? I mean, honey— look at our two children.” She laughed. “They certainly don’t get it from me .”

—

“THERE’S ANOTHER THING,” I said. Audra had gone home now, and Matthew and I were in our afternoon session alone. It was my last week at Stillwater, and I’d realized that I was probably going to make it. “When I was at my dad’s cabin,” I said, “I found something interesting — the same mathematics journal that someone had once sent to me at my office in New York.”

“I don’t understand.”

“A few years back, someone sent me a copy of a mathematics journal. And I guess they sent one to Dad, too. The same article had been circled in both of them. But it didn’t have anything to do with either of our fields. It was combinatorics. I was surprised to find it on his shelf.”

“Combinatorics?”

“Pascal’s triangle. The Rubik’s Cube. How objects are ordered. I don’t know much combinatorics, and I don’t think Dad does, either. It was by a man named Benedek Fodor. There was one sentence in it. It wasn’t even in the article, actually, it was just a footnote.”

“Which said?”

“It said ‘It has not escaped my attention that such a finding is at odds with one of the foundational proofs of twentieth-century topology.’ ”

Matthew sat back in his chair. “You know it from memory, I see.”

“A sentence like that — well, for a mathematician, anyway — it’s the strike of the sword. Fodor was referring to my father’s proof.”

“Of the Malosz theorem?”

“Yes.”

“Then, you mean — there’s a problem with it?”

“Well, that hasn’t been shown. But there might be. There might be a problem with it. It can take a long time for a question like that to actually be sorted out. It can take decades. That’s how it goes with these things. The Kepler conjecture was solved years ago, but still nobody’s completely sure if it’s right. Some people are still trying to verify it, and other people are still trying to find a flaw. And the Malosz conjecture might be even more difficult than that one. But yes,” I said, “when a mathematician like Benedek Fodor says something like that, it casts doubt on what Dad did.”

“Did your father ever tell you about this problem — this potential problem?”

“No. Of course he didn’t.”

“But wouldn’t he have known about it?”

“Possibly. Not certainly. A proof like his takes years of work. Not many people in the world can even read a paper like the Malosz theorem, let alone track it. Fodor’s article was in an obscure journal. It was published in Europe. It was a single sentence. It was another mathematician’s thinking, in another field, in a footnote. All it did was raise a doubt. Dad might not have even heard about it.”

“But the journal was on his shelf.”

“Along with a hundred others.”

“Still,” he said, “it’s a doubt that concerns you.”

“I don’t know whether it concerns me or not. It would take me as long to figure that out as it would any other mathematician. Longer, probably.”

Matthew closed his eyes — he appeared to be thinking. “So your theory is that the same person might have sent the journal to both of you? Why do you think someone would do something like that?”