Ethan Canin - A Doubter's Almanac

“My mother is a saint.”

“Ah.” He closed his bag and turned to the window. Dad was struggling with a stalk; when it came free, he staggered, then recovered and set it on top of the pile in the wheelbarrow. He pushed himself up the line, his eyes fixed on the back of Mom’s legs. After a moment, he turned and looked at Cle’s.

“I am afraid I cannot agree,” said Dr. Gandapur.

“With what?”

He reddened. “My apologies to the good fathers of Lahore,” he said, crossing himself, “but if there is one thing I have learned in this life, it is that there is no such thing as a saint.”

—

“BUT SHE IS, ” said Paulie. “If she can still care about him ”—she pointed out at the dock, where he was sitting between Mom and Cle—“anybody who could still care about him — oh, God, look at that — she’s more than a saint. She could be deified .”

We were in our old bedroom upstairs, watching from the window.

“You look good, by the way,” I said. Her outfit was divided by two sets of matched creases, as though the skirt and blouse had been pulled a few minutes ago from the same packet of dry cleaning. She was wearing heels, too, which was new for my sister, and her hair had been pinned back in a bun. “You look like the lord mayor of Zanzibar, Paulie.”

“Well, Hansie, you look like one of my savages.”

We hugged.

“I’m glad you decided to come.”

“Well,” she said, “we’ll see about that.” Her gaze dropped to my hand.

“Grapefruit juice.” I raised the glass. “Scurvy, you know.”

She laughed. Then she moved to the wall, where her bed was still made under the old yellow blanket. Next to it, under the old green one, was my own. She picked up the goldfish bowl from the table between them. “I used to keep my crayfish in here,” she said.

“I remember. Mom used to have to throw the water out whenever we got the call from the department of public health.”

She looked over at me. “What?”

“You knew that, Paulie. They stunk so bad, we had to hold our noses with clothespins when she brought them down to the lake.”

She set down the bowl. “I guess I had a dream once that they just climbed out. Maybe that’s why I forgot. I used to be afraid of stepping on them when I had to go to the bathroom.”

She leaned down and peeked under the bed.

“Any still under there?”

She rose, allowing herself a small smile. “It’s amazing what a child will believe, Hans. I remember thinking that maybe I hadn’t been a good-enough mother.”

“To raise crayfish?”

“Don’t laugh.”

“Paulie,” I said. “You’d be an excellent mother. You’d still be one.”

“Thank you.” She lowered herself to the mattress and closed her eyes. “Can I ask you something? Are you sleeping in here?”

“I’m in Mom and Dad’s room.”

She looked over. “Then where’s Dad?”

“On the porch. I don’t want him climbing stairs.”

“Oh. Then where—”

She stopped.

“She’s in the other room, Paulie. The downstairs bedroom. By herself.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Well, that’s good news, anyway. Count your blessings.” She stood up and went to the closet. “This whole place, though — don’t you smell it? It’s being taken over by some kind of fungus.”

“Well, I cleaned it as well as I could.”

“And all that furniture. Did you buy all that for him, too?”

“As a matter of fact, Paulie, I didn’t.”

She glanced over.

“Cle did,” I said.

“That’s what I thought.”

“I know. But he didn’t seem to mind.”

“And if there’s anything she won’t do for him, then Mom will? Is that the idea?”

“Oh, come on, now — look at him. You don’t expect him to have the energy to keep this up all by himself, do you?”

“Well, what about when we were young?”

“He had other things to think about.”

She smirked.

“Oh, come on, Paulie. You can’t fight him all your life.”

“I know that. But you can’t glorify him all of yours.” She turned and lifted the shade again. Outside, the three of them were still together on the dock, but they were laughing now. Cle’s shoulders shook. Even Mom was grinning. Dad bent sideways, reaching for a glass.

“God,” she said. “He got everything he wanted, didn’t he?”

She let the shade drop, then reached under her hair and placed one tiny earring, then the other, onto the dresser. When she sat again on the mattress, the springs creaked. She shimmied against the headboard and folded a pillow beneath her back. Then she closed her eyes and said, “How’s he doing, Hans— really ?”

“He’s looking a lot better than when I got here.” I handed her the pillow from my bed. “But the truth is that he’s not in very good shape at all.”

“Is he in pain?”

“I’d say he’s in some . But I think what’s really bothering him is watching it all happen. I think he’s pretending to be fascinated by it.”

“That’s the way he always was.”

“Well, not exactly.” I sat down next to her. “I think he knows now, Paulie.”

She looked up. “Oh, God,” she said. She reached behind her neck, and the bun unwound onto her shoulders. Then, as though the hairpins had been a dam, she began to cry. “Oh, God,” she said. “I knew it. I knew it would happen like this.”

She still cried the way she had as a girl, the tears beading like drops of solder at the corners of her eyes. She leaned back against the headboard, shuddering. One at a time, the tiny pearls budded, grew, and wandered down her cheeks.

—

“WELL,” I SAID to my mother that night. “You came after all.”

“Of course I did.”

In the dark, I heard the rising pitch of the wine filling her glass; then the squeak as she fitted back the cork. “It’s hard not to help when he’s suffering.”

“It must be particularly hard for you .”

She looked over.

I pointed up at the house, where Cle was standing in the flicker of the kitchen bulb, drying the pots with a towel. “I mean, with her here.”

“Oh, please. I couldn’t care less about your father as a husband.” The bottle clanked against the boards. “And I already have my grandchildren. Do I look like the kind of woman who’d be jealous of another man’s wife?”

She tilted up her profile.

“I don’t know, Mom. There’s not enough moon to see.”

Her laugh sounded like one of Paulie’s. In a moment, her footsteps moved away from me. When they returned, she set something down. I heard a grating sound. Then I saw the glow: the old dynamo lantern. “Well,” she said, “how about now?” She pumped the handle and tilted her face into the light. “Do I look like the kind of woman who’d be jealous of some tycoon’s wife?”

“No, Mom. You don’t.”

“Thank you.” She stopped pumping, and the bulb flickered for a few seconds before it went out.

“Paulie’s upset,” I said.

“Of course she is.” Then she added, “That’s why we came.” She moved up next to me. “And that’s why we didn’t call. She wasn’t sure she could actually go through with it.”

“She’s still mad about things that happened when we were kids.”

“That’s just grief.”

“Well, she was mad about them then, too.”

“And that was the same thing, honey.” She touched my hand. “It was always just grief.”

Up at the cabin, another light went on, and my sister appeared behind Cle at the kitchen sink. Cle reached up and closed the blinds.