“Is he okay?”
“Go back to sleep, sweetie. They’re going to be a while. They’re still talking, I guess.” She squinted across the room at me.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Oh, Hans.”
I moved into the kitchen and sat down across from her.
“This all makes me a little nervous,” she said.
“You want to go back there, don’t you?”
“Oh, I don’t think I really know.”
“You’d have things to do.”
“I have plenty of things to do in Tapington.”
“You’d have friends.”
She sipped her wine. “I like the people in Ohio.”
“But they’re not really your friends.”
“Well — perhaps not. But they’re fine enough people.” Then she added, “And I have your father, and I have the two of you. I don’t need any more than that. We don’t know what’s going to happen, anyway. He’s probably just out here saying hello to Dad.”
“Dad’s not your friend.”
She laughed. “You’re wrong about that, Hans.”
“You wish you had real friends.”
“He is my real friend.”
Out on the lake, a boat engine started up — a flashlight fisherman, out for catfish. We watched the red bow light slide east in the darkness, then shift to green as it turned north.
“You make a decision,” I said, still looking out the window. “Then you turn it into the right one.”
“That’s right,” she answered.
—
SOMETIME LATER, WHEN I woke again, the moon was low in the screens. I tiptoed into the living room, where Mom was slouched in a chair. In the dark, I could see Dad’s overcoat in a heap on the floor. On the couch behind her, then, I saw him, sprawled across the cushions.
Later still, when the slam of a car door woke me for good, the lake was in full light. The silver car was in the driveway, and my father was standing alongside it. Knudson Hay looked up from the steering wheel. Dad was in his usual pose, his hands against his sides, his gaze to the ground. They shook hands through the window. Hay gave a short salute and turned to back out. My father watched him move up the drive.
By the time he was inside, I was dressed.
“Good morning, everybody,” said my mother, ducking to peek out at the road. She sat down on the couch. “Come in, honey,” she said to Dad. “Why don’t you sit down and tell us what happened?”
My father didn’t move from the door. “It was a long evening. We talked about a lot of things.”
Paulie walked in from the porch, rubbing her eyes.
“Well,” said Mom, “did he?”
“Did he what?”
“Ask you, sweetheart. Did he ask you to come back?”
Dad looked out the window. Then he said, “What do you want to hear, Helena? Yes, he did. You were right.”
“Oh, honey.” She turned to smile at Paulie and me. “That’s wonderful.”
Now Dad went to the window and leaned down to see all the way to the water. “I just need a little more time to think about it,” he said.
“Of course you do. There’s no hurry.”
He shielded his eyes and gazed out at the cove. “Look at those boats, kids. You built a couple of marvelously seaworthy craft out there. They’re quite something, aren’t they?”
“Well, thanks, Dad,” said Paulie.
My parents were not affectionate people — certainly not my father — but my mother rose from the couch then and crossed to him, smoothing the front of her blouse. At the window she reached her arms around his neck and rested her head for a moment on his chest.
“Who’d like to have a sea battle in one of those things?” said Dad.
“I would,” I said.
“I think we all would,” said Mom. “Wouldn’t we, Paulie?”
“Good,” said Dad. “Because that’s just what we need right now — a good old sea battle. A good old Battle of Trafalgar. How about it, everyone?”
The Real Are Almost All Irrational
AT DINNER THE next day, my mother made pork chops and applesauce and scalloped potatoes, my father’s favorites. She left everything heating in the pans until we heard the shed door slap shut. When we saw him making his way down from the woods, we all sat at the table. He was finishing off a cigarette, and his cheeks were sunburned from our day on the lake. Something about him seemed quite different. Mom clicked her tongue and whispered, “Don’t say a word till he’s had a chance to eat something. He’ll bring it up when he’s ready.”
He came in and sat down. He took a sip of water, then turned his head and glanced back up at the shed.
“You look stricken,” said Paulie.
“Shh,” said my mother.
“Well, no. I’m not stricken at all.”
My mother dished out his applesauce and went back to the stove for the potatoes. “Well, how did your work go out there today?”
“It went fine, Helena.”
“Tell us,” said Paulie.
“Sweetheart,” said my mother.
“What do you want to know?”
“Paulie — shhh, please.”
“Are we going to move or not?”
“Paulie!”
“No, I’m happy to talk about it.” He leaned over and crushed his cigarette into the ashtray on the windowsill. “What do you want to know?”
“Well, okay then,” said Mom. She looked at Paulie. “In that case, I, for one, would like to know how he asked.”
“In the normal way, dear.” He took a bite of pork chop and slowly chewed it. “There’s a position open, in topology.”
“Oh, Milo!” My mother set the applesauce at the center of the table and slid back into her seat. “That’s perfect.”
He cut off another bite of pork. “It’s not perfect.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s algebraic topology, Helena.”
“Well, close enough.”
“Close enough? To what?”
“To what you do.”
“It’s not close in the least to what I do.”
“Well, that’s okay.”
“It’s a bunch of equation hashers.”
“You’ll just have to make it your own, then.”
“I’ll just have to do what?” He dropped his fork and turned to the window. Then he said, “And it’s probationary, on top of that.”
“Well, what does that mean?”
“It means it’s an”—he could hardly say it—“it’s an assistant professorship.”
There was a silence. My mother reached for the water pitcher and refilled our glasses. “Oh dear,” she said. Then, after a moment, “Well, I think that must be procedural.”
“Procedural?”
“I just don’t see Knudson doing anything like that himself. Remember, you’re a Fields Medalist.”
“You’re damn right I remember that.”
“It’s some kind of university work-around. I’m sure it’s a technicality.”
“The technicality, Helena, is that they’d have my balls in a nutcracker.”
I laughed. Dad glanced over.
“No, they wouldn’t,” said Mom.
“I never expected to have to go begging.”
“You didn’t, Milo. They begged. Knudson came all the way out here to ask you.”
“So what? If it were an endowed chair, I might consider it. But it’s not. It’s an assistant professorship. An assistant. Fucking. Professorship.” He pushed back his chair and got up. Then he moved into the kitchen and bent to drink from the faucet. Over his shoulder, he called out, “But at least the pig’s out on his ass.”