A Doubter's Almanac (62 page)

Would my father have laughed at such an idea? I actually don’t think so. He thought as much about life’s verities as any other man; it was simply that he was loath to speak of any of them until he understood.

I myself had realized long ago that he was dying. I’d realized it on the day I found out he wasn’t coming back from the cabin to live with us in Tapington. It was a cool afternoon in September, only a couple of weeks before I went off to college myself, and out the window of our house the leaves of the mulberry were already beginning to wither. I was upstairs in my bedroom, looking at a yellow pill in my fingers, when the phone rang in the kitchen. A few minutes later, I heard my mother’s slow step on the stairs, and in memory I suddenly saw my father’s face, grayed at its edges, newly marked—unmistakably so, in my mind’s eye—as it looked up at me from the desk in his shed. It seems strange to say that I knew then that he was lost to us. But I did. I hadn’t seen my way to the end of any proof, but for a moment, before it vanished, I’d glimpsed a path.

The day he came back from the hospital in his cast and took his place on the cabin’s new leather couch, I walked down to the water, then along the beach to the cluster of rocks at the end of the cove. Those rocks are bigger than most of the others on that shore, and there’s a remnant of order in their arrangement that reveals to me some figure out of the past, patiently digging them from the fields or wedging them up from the lake bottom for a long-forgotten reason of custom or beauty. I sat down on one and looked out at the water.

It was evening, and before long a pair of minks emerged. The minks appreciate those rocks because they’re a good place to hunt for the crayfish and ducklings that they feed on, but also because they’re big enough to play on. Minks are alert animals, and they seem to like to play. A mink’s face is vigilant—short ears canted forward and dark, attentive eyes—and a mink always seems to look at the world with an expression of surprise. There’s something about this that speaks to me of intelligence.

The pair of them chased each other through the riprap, both of them looping madly up and down in the crags, like a pair of dark-furred Slinkys bouncing along the shore. The sun had already set, but the western sky still showed color, and in the quieting cove I sat watching the two of them play in the boulders. When they realized I was there, one of them hid, but the other stepped to the top of a rock and looked straight at me. I don’t know why I saw sympathy in that face, but I did; and it was then, as the wind calmed and the sky darkened gradually from deep violet to indigo, that I finally wept.

—

D
AD WOULD HAVE
to eat early—a piece of toast just after dawn—or he’d throw up the first pill. A little past midday, I’d give him the second, with a cup of soup. The third came between dinner and bedtime. Once he’d been asleep, he couldn’t keep anything down, so for the nighttime dose I learned to inject him. Dr. Gandapur showed me how. I set the alarm for 2:00 a.m. and in the dark made my way down the hall to the bathroom. The sudden light and the silvery bubbles crowding the syringe—their weirdly jubilant chaos: it was a powerful feeling, knowing I could ease his pain.

Even at that hour, the air on the porch was warm, and he’d have kicked away the blankets. I’d lift the sheets, moving as quietly as I could, but his eyes always opened. He’d roll over, sighing, onto his back.

“Night nurse.”

“Leave me alone.”

The thin meat of the hip. The brief resistance, then the slip of the needle, as though through silk. When I pulled it out he’d grunt and roll back onto his side. That dose would take him through to breakfast. From then until nightfall, he could manage with the pills.

Sometimes they wore off early, but I learned to recognize the signs. If he was standing, he’d press his hand to the cast and lean back to breathe. Speaking, the words would begin to space themselves. Sitting, he’d shift his neck and rub his hand along the plaster, as though petting a cat that lay in the crook of it.

Now and then, as he sat on the couch, he’d wince.

Still, he was on his feet every day. To the kitchen for bourbon or coffee. To the edge of the cove for air. He didn’t eat much at meals, but Paulie was making a custard for him in the evenings that he took to bed and spooned extravagantly into his mouth.

One morning, he walked all the way to the end of the dock, where he sat down on the bench, propped a pad into the bend of his cast, and attempted for a few minutes to draw the view. At one point, I watched him lower himself to the deck, then lean slowly over the side until he could splash water onto his face.

That evening, a parcel arrived—a wheelchair, folded into a box. He watched Cle unwrap it, assemble the parts, and stand it in the corner by the door. Then he got up and walked over to it. “Who’s this for?” he said.

—

T
HE TIME AFTER
dinner was still his most lucid—that stretch between the last meal of the day and the final mercy of his bedtime pill. He’d emerge from his nap and begin to talk. Cle would pull her seat close, not speaking but placing herself in his sight. Mom would stand in the doorway. Even Paulie liked to be near. She didn’t say so; but I saw her lingering. Some evenings, as the light grew amber through the screens, then gray-blue, he’d rise from the daybed on the porch and make his way into the living room, where he’d take a place on the sofa and tap out a cigarette. Paulie had thrown away a case of them, but Dr. Gandapur had brought over another, smiling his courteous smile.

If Dad was in the right mood, he’d lean back heavily against the cushions and light one. He could still talk. The words never left him.

One evening, he told the story of a trip to Helsinki for a conference. The crossing of the Atlantic on the
Queen Mary
. The nighttime brightness as they steamed through the Gulf of Finland. Cle was leaving the next morning for Chicago—she wanted to give our family a few days alone—and I could see her watching him in a different way, as though to fix him in her mind. On the couch next to him she sat blinking. Mom was in the doorway, and Paulie was at the table across the room, working her laptop; I leaned in alongside my sister as she pretended to read her email. The sun was low, and the chop on the water made it look as though, all across the cove, matches were being struck and extinguished.

“A Spanish girl,” Dad said, leaning back against the cushions. “Married to a millionaire. I met them both at dinner. The captain’s table—I’d already won the Fields, you see. The husband was a raw capitalist and a thoroughly ignorant man, and I could see that his beautiful bride was bored. I was sitting between them.” He glanced from my mother to Cle. “Beauty prefers truth,” he said.

Cle guffawed.

“To riches, that is,” said Dad.

“You misunderstand beauty then,” said Cle.

He glanced at her, his smile excited. “In her own stateroom, between dessert—”

Paulie slammed shut her laptop. “Disgusting!”

“It’s okay, Paulie,” I said. “It was before they were married.”

“We don’t want to hear it! Don’t you understand that? Either of you? Don’t you know the first thing about any of us!”

When the door banged shut, one of the framed pictures that Cle had so carefully hung dropped off the wall.

4656534

T
WO DAYS LATER,
on a clear, windless morning, a rental car pulled up the drive, and Niels stepped out of it, followed by Audra. Then, after a moment, Emmy. Emmy seemed puzzled, staying close to the car and looking down at the sand. She’d been in woods like these before, but she’d never in her life seen her grandfather.

He stood leaning against the doorframe at the top of the stairs, waving.

Niels had never seen him, either. But he trotted forward and climbed the steps. At the top, he held out his hand. “You’re my grandpa,” he said.

“Looks like I am.”

“I’m your grandson, Niels.”

“I figured as much. And who’s this?” Dad moved to the edge of the porch and looked down at the car. “Is this the other young person I’ve been hearing a little about?”

“That’s my sister. We’re late because she forgot her toothbrush and we couldn’t find one at the hardware store.”

“I’d imagine not.”

“It was a
general
store,” said Emmy. “Not just a hardware store. And I did not
forget
it. I needed a new one the whole time.”

“Do you have one for her, Grandpa?”

“Well, I might, young man. I might.”

When Audra reached the stairs, Dad bowed and kissed her on the back of the hand. Audra doesn’t blush, but when he did that, her other hand rose to her neck.

Emmy had remained in the driveway, and Audra beckoned her now. But it was only when my mother appeared in the doorway that Emmy finally moved, running quickly up the stairs and sidestepping Audra and Dad to bury her head in her grandmother’s blouse. “Little Miss,” said Mom, “it’s so nice to see you here. Now please say hello to your grandpa.”

But Emmy wouldn’t. She merely looked down, bending and straightening her knees.

—

T
HAT EVENING, WHEN
Dad woke in a bright mood and leaned back on the cushions to talk, Emmy watched him from the kitchen door, twirling a pretzel ring around her finger. Niels was sitting next to him on the couch. Dad beckoned to Emmy, but she still wouldn’t come. He lit a cigarette and smiled through the smoke at her.

“Milo,” said my mother from across the room. “Please put that thing out.”

He drew luxuriously on the end, then slowly lifted his cast to lay it across Niels’s knee. “Why? Does smoke not agree with you, young man?”

“Actually,” Niels said, “I find the smell kind of interesting.”

Paulie laughed from the porch, then glanced at me. “Such an agreeable young gentleman.”

“What about this, young man?” said Dad. He lifted his glass from the table.

“That’s okay with me, too, Grandpa. It smells like cough medicine.”

He chuckled. “Well, actually, it’s a pretty good bourbon whiskey.”

Mom marched across the room then, snapped the glass from his hand, and carried it to the kitchen. A moment later, she came back for the cigarette.

—

“S
OME PEOPLE MIGHT
say she was a little late with that,” whispered Audra.

“Well, I’m not one of them.”

We were whispering because we were in a room at the Lakeland Suites, and on the other side of the wall, Niels and Emmy were pretending to be asleep. Through the sheetrock I could hear every crack of the bat from what must have been a Yankees highlights reel on TV. This was Niels, of course; but I also knew that Emmy would be going along with it. Sometimes I think that even with all her talents, she’ll always be following him.

“Mom had enough to think about when we were kids,” I said. “She did what she could.”

“Yes, you’re right. I guess she did.” Audra was next to me in the bed, staring up at the ceiling fan. “Still—she might have done
some
thing about it. At a time when it could have made a difference.”

At that moment, the Yankees must have pulled off something impressive, because Niels let out a shout, and a second later Emmy followed with a whoop. I tapped the wall. I needed to sleep: in a few hours I’d have to get up in the dark and drive to the cabin to give Dad his shot. Then I’d spend the last half of the night there.

The sound of the TV went off, and we lay there in silence for a while, looking up at the fan.

“It was hard for
me,
too, you know,” said Audra. “But I did it. I stopped you.”

“Well, you were in a different situation.”

“Was I?”

“Of course you were.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I still didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. To you or to me or to any of us.”

“What do you mean, what was going to happen? What did you think I’d do—just leave you all and never come back?”

She didn’t answer, just turned over onto her side and closed her eyes.

—

L
ATER THAT NIGHT,
at the cabin, I was jostled awake.

“Did you see?” he rasped.

“What?” I sat up in my parents’ bed: 3:58 a.m. I’d given him the shot an hour ago. “What are you doing up here, Dad?”

“He’s here.”

“Who is?”

“You know.”

“No, I don’t. Jesus, Dad—you climbed up here in the dark?”

“You forgot to lock the door.”

“We always leave it unlocked.”

He leaned down. “Well, he got in.”

“Who, Dad?”

“Erd
ő
s.”

“What?” I rose and wrapped him in my blanket. “Let’s get you back down to bed. Here, come on now. I’ll help.”

“He won’t leave.”

“Let’s go take care of him together then. Come on, Dad. He’s a good guy.”

“He took the bed, Hans. He won’t leave.” Dad was shivering. “You go tell him. I’m staying up here. You go down and tell him
no
.”

—

B
UT THE NEXT
morning, he was fine again. He slept late, and by the time he woke, he seemed to have forgotten whatever it was. At breakfast, he was cheerful even, and after an egg and bacon, he got up and walked to the window, where he leaned down to look out at Emmy and Niels playing along the shore and said, “How about we take the kids up to the creek?”

“You mean walk up there, Dad? It might be a little far.”

He turned. “For the kids, you mean?”

I glanced at Audra.

It was a beautiful morning. First he led us down the cove to the turn. Then he picked up a branch and turned north into the meadow. I expected the tall grass to tire him, but it didn’t. It was higher than his knees, but he just pushed right through it, taking his time and using the branch as a walking stick, never missing a step. When we reached the rutted path at the top, Audra slid in next to him and hooked her arm through the crook of his cast. I saw him puff up like a bird.

By the time we reached the paved part of the road, the sun was trickling through the leaves, and the lake was sparkling. Dad was walking with a straight back. I was at the rear, and I watched him talking to Audra, saying things that made her nod or shake her head or sometimes laugh. Her arm was still in his. Behind them, Niels ran from one side of the path to the other, picking things up to put in his pockets. Emmy followed at a distance.