Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“Obviously not.” He shook out a cigarette and tapped it on the chair. “But neither am I. That’s life, isn’t it? We make the best of it.” He flicked closed the case. “Smoke?”

“No thanks.” When he snapped the lighter, tilting his chin, I saw what it was about his eyes: the pupils were pinpoints.

“Are you in pain?” I asked.

“Lord” was all he said.

—

ALL THAT MORNING, while Dad slept, Earl conducted business on the phone from the side room, his voice ringing through the walls. He was working on some kind of private equity deal with a venture capitalist on the West Coast who seemed to be having second thoughts. For hours it ran on, Earl alternately ranting and flattering and cajoling. Hanging up and calling back. Speaking testily with his assistant in New York and obsequiously with the guy on the coast. The chair squeaking against the baseboards and bumping against the desk. Cle had gone into town for something. In the kitchen I turned up the radio.

Near noon, he finally quit. A few minutes later, when he rolled out into the living room, there was a dumbbell on his lap. He deposited it at the center of the rug and said, “But I don’t let it stop me.”

“All right.”

“The pain.” He unfolded a gym towel and spread it on his legs. “I’m sorry if I lost my cool yesterday. You had a problem. You tried to solve it.”

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“You want my guess?”

“Do I want it?”

“Blow.” He tucked the towel around his legs. “Am I right?”

I said nothing.

“Typical.” He pushed his hands into a pair of half gloves. “I mean, typical for a guy like you.” He pinched and pulled the fabric over his palms. “It’s the same old story. I’ve seen it a hundred times. You all make the same mistake.”

He closed his eyes then and sat there, taking himself through a series of breaths that gradually slowed until he was hardly moving. Finally the chair rolled forward. At the center of the rug he scooped up the dumbbell, pressed it over his head, and set it back down. Fifty times he repeated this. Then he rolled backward, pivoted in the chair, and did the same thing again with the other arm. At last he sat still at the center of the room, sweat rolling off his temples.

“The real nature of your desire,” he said. “That’s what you’re missing. It’s the hole that can never be filled.”

He dried his face with the towel. Then he closed his eyes until his breathing calmed, almost to nothing again. When he opened them, he jerked himself forward and repeated the whole routine.

—

THAT AFTERNOON, AFTER I’d driven Earl back to the hotel, a truck appeared in the drive. The back doors swung open, and two men started unloading furniture: a table, a set of chairs, a rug, a sofa. The rug was a Persian and the sofa was dark leather. They brought everything inside, then came in with a box of framed prints — black-and-white daguerreotypes of small-town Main Streets from the last century. Cle followed the men around, directing where everything should go.

As soon as they were done, Dad sat down on the new couch. He’d made no objection to any of it. Out had gone the chipped linoleum table and the ramshackle chairs. The cracked wooden bench beneath the window. When the old, thready couch was tilted through the door, he followed it with his eyes; but he said nothing. As the truck pulled away, Cle unpacked a box of candles in pewter cups and set them along the window ledges.

That night at dinner, she lit them. She’d picked up her husband by then, and he’d taken his place at the far end of the table. He didn’t even seem to notice that anything had changed. His eyes were dull, staring out the window. While Cle served the meal, he turned his chin away and gazed into one of the candles. His lips were pale. My father, at the other end, ate steadily, clinking his fork, talking with the elegant woman beside him. Every now and then, he would turn his attention to Biettermann, but Biettermann didn’t even look back.

With dessert, the conversation between Cle and my father at last quieted. Then came the evening silence. Out the window, the last light of day flared, the shorebirds cheep-cheep ing in the scrub.

Dad had eaten most of a steak, a salad, and a plate of pears. Now he leaned back in one of the new chairs, the sun angling up through the windows onto his cheeks. A line of violet flamed the row of prints on the wall. He lifted his head and gazed at them, his eyes lowering then to our faces. On Biettermann’s they rested the longest.

—

THE NEXT EVENING, Cle walked up from the dock to ask if I would mind picking up her husband for dinner. She’d been sitting on the bench with Dad, watching a row of thunderstorms over the far hills, and now she walked back down again and sat beside him.

As I drove toward town to get Earl, charged air rolled through the car. The sky above was clear, but from the west, the thunder was steadily rumbling, like furniture being moved in the distant part of a house. I took the long route, pulling into the Speedway station at the crossroads and taking my time with a cup of coffee.

When I finally walked up the ramp at the Lakeland Suites, I heard banging from inside the room. The curtains were drawn. I stamped my feet a couple of times, then knocked. The banging stopped. Then it came again — one, two, three times, shaking the floor. When the door opened, Earl was standing in front of me.

“Oh—”

“What?” he said. “Where’s my wife?”

The wheelchair was pushed against the bed.

“I’m sorry. I thought—”

“You wouldn’t be the first.” He screwed up his face, threw one arm out against the doorframe, and made a stiff-legged lunge, pushing off the wall with his fist so that he landed on the mattress. He pulled the wheelchair close and lifted himself into it.

On the drive to the cabin he told me the story: rainy night, fancy motorcycle — a handmade Ecosse racer that he’d been trying out for a friend. Full-face helmet and Kevlar suit. And just a couple of blocks from home. A teenager running a light.

“Are you ever going to be able to walk again?” I said.

“Not many have.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?”

“That you could stand up like that.”

“And what? Lurch?”

“Walk.”

“I can’t walk.”

“All right.” By now, I was guiding the car over the ruts at the dark end of the cove. Night had fallen and the rain still hadn’t hit, but across the lake, lightning was flaring the horizon. At the mailbox, I tapped the horn a couple of times before I turned in to the drive. I was distracted, and maybe for that reason, I said, “Well, it could have been worse.”

He spared me by not answering. We pulled up to the cabin, and I’d already shut off the engine by the time I noticed what the headlights were shining on: Dad and Cle, still sitting together down by the dock. They hadn’t even come up yet to start dinner. I couldn’t find the light switch, so I tried opening the door. But the lights stayed on. Next to me I could hear Earl’s steady breathing. He just sat there, looking implacably down at the two of them, until finally, with a click, they disappeared back into the night.

—

THE NEXT MORNING, when we sat down to breakfast, I looked out the window and saw that the ramp had been removed. “Where’s Earl?”

“Back in New York,” answered Cle. “He has a busy week.”

Dad looked up from his plate and smiled.

SO THAT WAS how we lived, at the beginning of that summer. Just Cle and Dad and I, out in the woods in that tumbledown cabin, now nicely furnished. I called New York and extended my leave. What could Physico say? They’d have a pretty hard time replacing me.