Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“I’ll bet.”

He spit his coffee then, smiling as though I’d finally said something funny. But after a moment he winced, and the smile dropped. He rubbed his shoulder. “Goddamn,” he said. “Whatever this is, it still hurts.”

—

THE NEXT AFTERNOON, the phone rang: it was Cle Wells.

She wanted to come up.

I covered the receiver with my hand. Dad was on the couch, blinking from a nap. “When?” he mouthed. “When?”

“Next week, I guess.” I held out the phone. “Come over and talk to her.”

“No. Tell her it’s fine. Just tell her to call in advance. Tell her to call when she’s an hour away!” He swung his feet around and stood.

“He says he wants you to call before you get here.”

“An hour before!” Dad whispered.

“When you’re an hour away.”

“He hasn’t changed much,” she said. “Has he?”

“I don’t know. When’s the last time you saw him?”

She paused. “It was a while ago.”

“Well, then he might have.”

“What’s she saying now?” said Dad.

“Nothing.”

“Is she coming alone?”

“Christ. Tell him to pick up the phone himself.” She raised her voice. “Milo!”

I held out the extension.

“Just ask her, Hans.”

“He’d like to know if you’re coming by yourself, Mrs. Wells.”

“Good Lord.” She took a long breath. Then she said, “How’s he doing?”

“He looks pretty good to me.”

“Tell him Monday then. Early afternoon.”

“Did she say we ?”

“Dad, why don’t you just ask her yourself?”

“Remind her to call when she’s an hour away!”

“I just did, Dad.”

“Hans, I’m looking forward very much to meeting you.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Wells.”

“Please,” she said. “Call me Cle.”

—

THE NEXT MORNING, we walked together to get his hair cut. There was a lady at the end of the cove who ran a salon out of an RV. Dad’s stride was steady. He made it all the way out to the turn where the new two-story houses and then the big church came into view with the salon resting on blocks behind the parking lot. He climbed the steps and plunked himself down onto a stool.

She was country-waitress pretty. Reddish curls that bounced when she leaned down to tie the bib over him. But he just sat there silently before her. The scissors snick-snick-snick ing behind him. The clippings so white they disappeared into the linoleum.

On the way back, his stride wasn’t as steady. Sweat darkened the front of his shirt. But the haircut flattered him. He kept touching it. As we walked he told me the story of coming to Princeton, of meeting my mother in the mathematics office. “I told her I was an assistant professor,” he said, stepping slowly up the drive, “so she told me she was an assistant secretary.”

“She sounds charming, Dad.”

“She was.” At the cabin steps, he paused. “But I didn’t love her.”

I took his arm and started us both up toward the door.

“I asked her to marry me, Hans. But I never had the feeling. I loved someone else. It was all a mistake.”

“Mom deserves more than you gave her.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m only telling you the facts as I know them.” He took his arm out of mine and laid it on the railing. “It was a programming error, Hans. Once it was made, it just kept compounding itself.”

—

THE NEXT MORNING, he woke up and said, “Let’s clean the place.”

So we did. It was hard to fathom all the things that could go wrong with a house like that, sitting out there in a damp woods with only Dr. Gandapur to help my father with it. But we managed to set a lot of it right. It was the anti-universe of Physico. I clipped roots and unwrapped vines. I drove trunkfuls of trash into town and pulled mouse nests out of cabinets. I cleaned every screen. Dad would help a little, breaking for rests while I kept going. Every noon, we ate lunch in Felt City, and when we got back he’d take his afternoon nap. I’d work outside while he slept. When he woke, in the hour or two before dinner, he’d talk.

Something in him had loosened. He started telling me everything.

—

WHEN THE PHONE rang on Monday afternoon, he rose from the daybed, pulled on a pair of pressed pants from the closet, and went into the bathroom to shave. “How do I look?” he called out.

“Handsome as ever.”

He went to the window and sat down, looking out into the trees. For some time, he just sat there. Then, finally, he rose and went outside. In his nice clothes, in his new haircut, stepping purposefully across the clearing, he looked like a respectable man.

At the kitchen window I stood watching. He sat down next to the plantings. The same spot where he’d been sitting when I pulled into the driveway myself, a week before. The same rusted chair. His feet in the same thin patch of strawberries. He laid a trowel at his feet and picked up a hoe. Behind him, the garden hose trailed back to the cabin. He set himself up carefully and looked out at the lake.

When the car finally appeared, turning briskly at the far end of the inlet and driving fast along the stretch, he reached back for the hose, opened his hand, and splashed water all over himself.

—

“PROFESSOR,” SHE CALLED, emerging from the driver’s seat. It was a French car — a Citroën. “Professor Andret!”

A striking woman — shrewd featured, slender in the way of the wealthy, her chin angled up and her white hair pulled back in a bun. The trunk lid popped up, and at the same time the rear door swung halfway out, then shut. Then pushed out again. Somebody was struggling with it.

She strode briskly around behind the trunk, and when she appeared again she was pushing a wheelchair. The passenger door finally opened, and a pair of feet flopped out onto the ground. She bent over and snapped down the chair’s stirrups, then stepped back. With both arms, a dark-suited man leaned out, grabbed the rails, and jerked himself into the seat.

“Professor,” she called again. More cheerily this time. She gave the chair a push and bumped it ahead of her across the furrows. Her head was already cocked toward the rear of the house, where Dad was leaning forward in the lawn chair. “Milo!” she called brightly. “Milo, we’re here!”

—

“OH, HANS,” SAID Audra. “That’s so sad.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s sad. Romance isn’t everyone’s expectation. It could mean any number of things.”

“What could? That he never loved your mother?” I heard her set the phone down on the counter. It was five o’clock: almost dinnertime. When she picked it up again, she said, “He must have been afraid she’d never love him .”

In the background, I heard the metronome click on and Niels begin a scale on the piano.

“He’s been talking,” I said. “He’s told me things that I doubt he’s ever told anyone.”

“What kinds of things?”

“You wouldn’t want to hear. Old flames he’s gone to bed with. Ones he’s been in love with. Plenty of it I didn’t want to hear myself.”

“Is he drinking?”

“Of course he’s drinking.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s doing things to his brain now.”

The blender whirred. When it stopped, she said, “Well, then maybe you don’t have to believe everything. Maybe you shouldn’t be taking everything to heart. Just listen for a while. That’s why you’re there. You don’t have to decide whether any of it’s true.”

The blender whirred again. Then came the sound of a spoon banging a bowl. The tk-tk-tk of the stove burners.

“It is , Aud.”

“What is?”