“So?”
“So, I never know if he’s going to come out here with some idea like this or just sulk around like an asshole inside that shed.”
I whistled.
“Shut up. It’s the truth.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no better word.”
“Which word, Paulie? Asshole? Or shed?”
“Unreliable.”
“Oh, come on.” I touched her elbow. “Things could be worse.”
She looked at me as though I’d slapped her. “Not really. There aren’t many things that could be worse. Not for a girl, anyway. There’s not much worse than having an asshole for a father.”
I held a length of tape against the gunwale, and she pushed it sullenly into place. I drew out another, and we attached this one across the bow. But when I handed the roll to her for the other side, she wouldn’t take it. Her eyes were damp.
“You don’t understand, Hans. It’s like quicksand. I keep trying to push myself up, but the ground keeps sinking. That’s him. He’s the quicksand I grew up on.”
—
WHEN I ENTERED, Dad was at his desk, using a screwdriver to scrape the rust off of something. Mom had sent me out to the shed with a sandwich.
“What’s that?” I said.
“Humanity,” he answered. He set down the screwdriver. “Humanity trying to defeat its limitations. Otherwise known as a dynamo. This one powers a lantern.”
“Okay.”
“But it’s just another example of man against God.” He blew rust from the desk blotter. “Which, if anyone asks, happens to be the purpose of life. Look at this.” He held up what looked like a flashlight crossed with a pistol, set onto a stool from a dollhouse. When he squeezed the handle, a metal gear turned, and after a few pulls a bulb on the end began to flicker.
“God appears to be winning.”
He laughed. “For the moment perhaps. It’s still pretty rusty.” He bent forward and began digging at the teeth again.
“Can I ask you a question, Dad?”
“You already did.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you, back. What’s the question?”
“Are you happy?”
“Nope. Nobody is.”
He hadn’t even stopped to think about it.
“What about when you’re working?”
“Working?”
“On mathematics.”
He set down the dynamo and looked straight ahead, so that I saw his face in profile. In the corner of the shed I could see that there were a few other rusty gadgets, too, along with some old tools. “Do I look like I’m working?”
“No.”
“Do I look happy?”
“I guess not.”
I glanced up then and noticed that there were also more boxes on the rafters. All of them, at least all the ones that I could see, said WRONG.
“It’s not about happy, Hans. It’s about not giving up.”
He turned back to the dynamo then, and I set down the plate with the sandwich on it.
“Happy isn’t even a real idea,” he said. “It’s just like love. A reasonably skeptical person doesn’t even know what it means.”
—
AT SUNSET, PAULIE and I unveiled the second boat. I waited in the shallows while she walked up to the cabin to retrieve our parents, who took their places on the beach. At the side of the dock, the Victory and the Royal Sovereign were tied toe rail to toe rail. Stable of keel, shallow of draft, moored abreast of each other in the lowering sun. In the perfect calm, they looked as though they’d been set out for display on a glass table. Next to them, the minnows made their perfect shadows of the hulls, now in silver, now in black.
Mom held her hand over her mouth. Dad stood beside her with an appraising look.
The Reluctant Cartesian
AS WE WALKED up from the water a few mornings later, my father glanced back at the dock, where the boats were still moored. They looked like a pair of naval statues glinting in the sun. “Impressive,” he said. “Quite impressive.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He turned and peered into the distance, toward the curve where the road left the highway and crossed into the meadow. He knocked me on the shoulder. “Our Trafalgar,” he said amiably.
“Our Trafalgar,” I answered, just as amiably.
Today was the day Knudson Hay was arriving.
When we entered the cabin, I saw that Mom had already changed into her yellow dress and her cocoa-colored stockings. She was sweeping the floor, but the way her wide belt held her upright made her look as though she were holding her breath as she worked. When she was finished, she walked through the rooms turning on table lamps. Bernie had already been brushed.
When Knudson Hay’s car appeared, a silver glare between the trees, we all went to the windows. A few minutes later, when it nosed out of the woods and began crawling down the narrow driveway, my mother smiled at my father like an actress. “Go,” she said, pushing him toward the porch. At the threshold, she rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Dad nodded, then opened the door and stepped outside. I heard his strangely jovial call. “Well, you don’t say, Chairman Hay! Up here in the north woods! An honor, Professor, an honor! Up here with us in the great north woods!”
—
“I REALLY DON’T care,” said my mother.
“Neither do we,” said Paulie.
It was early evening, and Paulie and I were sitting across from my mother in a booth at the back of the Green & White, a truck stop on the state route north of Felt City. My father and Knudson Hay were twenty minutes farther up the road, at the Belle View Supper Club, the only establishment within an hour’s drive of the cabin that served a steak.
“Life’s just fine in Tapington,” said my mother. In her cinched dress, she still seemed to be holding her breath. “I have to admit, though, it would be nice to be able to go shopping every once in a while.”
“Like at Lord and Taylor,” said Paulie.
My mother smiled. “Yes — well, that’s true, isn’t it? There’s one on Fifth Avenue near Grand Central. I once bought a purse there.”
Paulie sucked thoughtfully on her Coke. “How far would we be from New York?” she asked.
“Well, from Princeton Junction it’s seventy-five minutes on the train. And then you’re right in the middle of Manhattan, on Thirty-fourth Street.” She sipped her tea. “It’s quite thrilling, actually.”
“So, what exactly is he here for?” Paulie said.
“I’m not sure, sweetie.”
“Yes, you are,” I said.
My mother wouldn’t smile. “Well, for one, they haven’t seen each other in fifteen years.”
“Why don’t you just say it?” I turned to Paulie. “They’re talking about Dad getting his old job back.”
“We know that, Hans.”
“Then why’d you ask?”
“Because I wanted to hear what Mom had to say about it.”
“It’s important to remember,” said my mother, “that life is fine where we are. We don’t need anything more than what we already have.” She looked meaningfully across the table. “Tell me that both of you understand that.”
—
THAT NIGHT, WHEN the phone rang, I rose from bed and leaned through the doorway. “Was that him?” I said.
“It was, honey.” Mom was at the table with a glass of wine. The clock radio on the counter flipped to 1:12. Behind me on the porch, Paulie snored softly.