The Great Perhaps: A Novel

by Joe Meno

  Within a few days, it has all grown very silent. Jean, glancing up from the tent of his folded hands, stands, pulls on his cap and decides it is in the best interests of the ship, the crew, and himself to take a look.

  Quietly shifting the captain’s heavy armoire from its place in front of the door, holding the captain’s flintlock pistol in his hand, Jean Caspar follows the rope through the abandoned ship, searching for life. There is none. Two men, Baudin and Monod, lie beside one another, their necks split, blood frozen like a thousand pennies surrounding their heads. Rich men, Jean thinks gravely. He steps slowly over their corpses and finds Chardin with his right hand missing, having bled to death, lying near the foremast. The last, Isidore Duperrey, a bright-eyed boy of nineteen or twenty, has been stabbed several times in the chest. In his frozen grip there is a crucifix, the wooden cross split from the wretched cold. Jean places his hands against the young man’s eyes to gently lower his lids. He would like to grant him the kind of peace that he, as an inexperienced and cowardly captain, could not offer the young sailor in life, but the skin is too cold and will not give. Death and this awful clime deny the guilt-stricken officer the chance to make a final gesture of apology. It is this particular insult that forces Jean Caspar to do what he has already been planning, not yet mentioned in any of his silent prayers. Like some of his men, he will meet his end by his own hand, with the quick and surgical certainty of lead.

  Fearing that the Inuits will do something savage to him when they discover his body, Jean decides to climb up the splintered mainmast, hoisting himself up to the lookout’s perch. He surveys the empty wasteland of the north once more, before he closes his eyes and asks for one final forgiveness. He puts the captain’s pistol to his right ear and fires one time.

  Before the lead shot makes a decisive rearrangement to the interior cavity of Jean Caspar’s skull, the cowardly officer imagines this: a great, singularly luminous cloud, rising from the distant mist, moving with such force that it must be directed by providence. The cloud glows with a luminous silver sheen. Jean Caspar, having already pulled the trigger, the lead having not yet made its way through the quiet mass of his brain, stares at this cloud and, at once, realizes he is in the presence of some great, unknowable entity. There are a thousand questions he would like to ask it, all the puzzles that arise over the course of the life of a man, and yet, with the pistol forced against his right ear, the shot already traveling up the barrel, he knows it is too late. He does not regret the great silence, however. For as the magnificent cloud hangs above him, its contours drawing dark lines of shadow upon his face, he realizes the wondrous brilliance of so many possibilities, of so many questions never to be answered, a world of infinite probabilities, of infinite promise. Jean has the harrowing, joyous excitement of what a supplicant must feel upon first meeting God: soon his brain is filled with a new, astounding, inexpressible glow. It is exactly as he always imagined it: absolute, unadulterated beauty. And then the cloud fades, vanishing into unfurling mist, a vaporous haze. Now a second cloud forms around Jean’s head, its fog filling his mouth and ears and throat. It may be the gun smoke. In that moment, then, the lead does its appointed duty. The sound of the shot is swallowed by a gust of wind and the shifting of the ship, entrenched in the unending formations of ice. Then there is silence. Then the cloud disappears, drifting elsewhere.

  Twenty-six

  ON FRIDAY MORNING, JONATHAN WAKES UP TO THE sight of white sheets hanging over his head, then sighs, crawling out from under the makeshift tent. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, checks his watch, then begins to get dressed. It’s just past seven a.m.—and visiting hours at the retirement home begin promptly at eight. After that he has his afternoon class. And then a departmental meeting. Jonathan lurches into the bathroom and washes up. He stares at his face in the mirror with both disappointment and a little disgust, his beard looking like some horrible undersea growth. He opens the medicine cabinet. There, on the bottom shelf, is the orange plastic vial of pills. He looks at the label for a few seconds, twists off the white plastic top, and places a single silver pill in the palm of his hand. Today he will not flee from that which is uncomfortable or difficult. Today he is going to try his best. When he is dressed and ready, Jonathan leaves a short note for the girls on the kitchen table: Went to visit Grandpa, class, then a Meeting at School. Eat some Breakfast, See you Tonight. He stumbles around the house looking for his car keys, finds them, and staggers into the garage. The garage. The Volvo is still gone. He gazes at the empty gray space for a moment, then crawls into the Peugeot and starts it up. While he is backing his car into the alley, he pauses once more, still imagining the shape of his wife’s missing car, of her behind the wheel, the shape of her mouth, of her eyes, of her face, then slowly he drives off.

  AS JONATHAN PULLS the Peugeot into the parking lot of the nursing home just past eight o’clock that morning, he can see that there’s been some kind of trouble. A police cruiser is parked out front and, near the entrance, two nurses are arguing with a uniformed policeman. Jonathan tries to hurry past them, but Nurse Rhoda, her large hoop earrings dangling above her pink scrubs, stops him with a frown.

  “Your father took off again,” she mutters.

  Jonathan is stunned. “No.”

  “Uh-huh. And he can stay gone as far as I’m concerned. We were all worried about him. We all thought he was at death’s door.”

  “How long ago? When did you notice he was missing?”

  “Well, he ran poor Jeff over and then he disappeared. It was about an hour ago, I guess.”

  Jonathan makes quick, heartfelt apologies to Rhoda and the rest of the nurses and then runs back to his car. The Peugeot refuses to start. As the engine whines and stutters, Jonathan closes his eyes and murmurs, “Don’t do this to me, please don’t do this to me,” then tries the ignition once more. The engine finally gives, spinning dully to life, and Jonathan speeds out of the parking lot, hurtling down the boulevard as fast as he can, flying toward the expressway.

  O’HARE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT looks like a city on the moon, full of glossy metal and plastic buildings; the structures extend out in odd, cubist directions and at unusual angles. It also looks a lot like a maze. Jonathan searches for the short-term parking lot, and when he is unable to find it, he pulls up in front of one of the departure terminals, putting on his blinkers, and hurries from the vehicle. There is no way to know what airline his father might try and take. He could be at any one of the other terminals, and even running as fast as he can, it might take hours to find the right one. And by then his father might be gone. Jonathan pauses, trying to breathe. The busy passengers rush all about him pulling their baggage, signs and electronic monitors glow in his periphery, people kiss hello or goodbye, children cry. Who are all these people and how can it be that they are all alive on this planet at the same time? Jonathan thinks, before turning back to retrace his own steps. Okay, where is he? Where would he be? Jonathan turns once more and hurries up to the next available ticket agent. He smiles at the dark-haired woman, wiping a sweaty palm against his forehead.

  “Can I help you?” she asks.

  “I’m looking for my father. I’m afraid he might be lost.”

  “Do you want me to contact security?”

  “I don’t know. I’d like to try and find him myself first. But maybe we should.”

  “Sir? Would you like me to contact security?”

  Jonathan turns, shaking his head, following his steps back outside again. He stops and looks over at his car: the windshield has already been decorated with two bright orange parking tickets.

  “Okay, Dad, where are you? Where did you go?”

  And just then Jonathan remembers his father’s last escape attempt: Japan. He rushes back inside, up to the same service counter, and asks the same ticket agent what’s the next flight from Chicago to Japan.

  “There’s one at around noon, and another this evening.”

  “Nothing before that on any other airli
ne? Can you please check that?”

  “Just a moment,” she says, typing the computer keys thoughtfully.

  “There’s one leaving in half an hour from United.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The International Terminal. Terminal Five.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Terminal Three.”

  “Okay, how do I get to the International Terminal?”

  “You can walk or take the tram.”

  “Which way is it?”

  The ticket agent smiles, then points outside, to her left. Jonathan returns the woman’s smile, shakes her hand, then flies off, his lungs on fire, his whole body trembling.

  AT THE INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL, Jonathan tries to explain to one of the security guards the specifics of his father’s situation, but without a ticket he is not permitted anywhere beyond the lobby. Jonathan tries to speak with another security guard but he, too, only reiterates the simple rule: no ticket, no entrance beyond this point. In a frenzy, Jonathan hurries over to the ticket counter, checking his watch every few minutes, then purchases a one-way ticket from Chicago O’Hare ORD to Tokyo, Japan TYO for $1,827.10. He puts it on his credit card and hopes, somehow, some way, it will be refundable, knowing in his heart that it will not. Because he is traveling alone, without any baggage, with a one-way ticket, because he is sweating profusely, the security officers take him aside to search him more thoroughly, and when he has finally passed this final hurdle, Jonathan is almost completely out of breath. He glances down at his ticket, searching for the gate number, M15, then he limps toward it, trying to breathe slowly, his face sweaty, his knees weak. He feels like he might faint at any moment, the fluorescent lights swimming all around his head. “Okay, just a few more gates,” he whispers to himself. “Just three more, two more, one more, there, there,” he gasps, hurrying over to gate M15.

  But he does not see his father in the crowd. Jonathan lets out a sigh and stumbles into one of the uncomfortable gray plastic chairs, dropping his face into his hands. Overhead, the electronic voices repeat dizzying information about changed flights and gates, and Jonathan, having failed, thinks he might begin to sob. By now he realizes he will not make his afternoon class. It will be the third time he has canceled this semester. When Jonathan lowers his hand from his eyes, fighting back the accumulated tears of failure after failure, he spots an old man in a wheelchair, staring out the large square window at the enormous airplanes parked just beyond the glass, the sounds of their engines a constant drone, a kind of song maybe, the old man not staring off at the airplanes themselves so much as their shapes, the ideas they suggest, dreaming of what they might somehow become.

  Jonathan rises, catching a few small tears with the corner of his sleeve, then steps beside his father. He places one hand on the old man’s shoulder, startling him for a moment. As his father turns, wheeling the chair around, Jonathan sees his expression isn’t one of dismay, of disappointment, it’s a look of surprise, of sudden, pleasant joy.

  “Dad? What are you doing here? You scared us half to death.”

  His father frowns, then smiles, clutching his son’s hand.

  “I can’t let you get on that airplane, Dad. I wish I could, I wish we could let you go, but we can’t. You know we can’t.”

  His father does not stop smiling, still grasping at his son’s hand.

  “Dad. Why do you keep doing this to us, Dad?”

  Jonathan’s father squeezes his hand, then points at Jonathan’s heart, then at his own, suggesting something Jonathan can’t even begin to guess.

  “What? What are you telling me, Dad?”

  His father repeats the gesture, tapping Jonathan’s chest, then his own, pointing out the window at the open blue sky.

  “What?”

  He repeats the same gesture once more, very slowly.

  “You want me to go with you?” Jonathan whispers.

  His father nods, proud that this most secret of messages finally makes sense.

  “I can’t do that, Dad. I can’t. I have the girls, and Madeline is still gone, and there’s work. I wish I could, I really do, Dad, but I can’t. Okay? Okay. Come on, let’s go see if they towed my car yet. Maybe I can find a pay phone to call the nursing home and let them know you’re all right. Okay, come on, Dad, let’s go.”

  But his father doesn’t respond; he only turns to stare off at the planes taxiing back and forth outside.

  “Dad. We have to go.”

  His father does not make a movement or a sound.

  “You’re not going to talk to me? You’re not going to answer me?”

  His father refuses to look at him now, his bright eyes on the curves and lines of the mammoth airplanes outside.

  “Dad, please, say something.”

  But there is only silence, silence and the noise of a thousand people hurrying all around them.

  “Dad. Say something. Tell me I’m an awful son, I don’t care. Just say something.”

  Only silence, only the myriad human sounds of the airport.

  “Dad? Dad, why do you want to make this hard for everybody? It’s hard enough…I mean, with what’s been happening in my life, I don’t know why you want to make things so difficult for me. Jesus.” Jonathan looks away and then murmurs, “Come on, Dad, let’s go.”

  His father slowly frowns, staring up into his son’s face, quietly realizing the apprehension and pain he has been causing. He reaches out one emaciated hand and gently touches his son’s cheek, then mutters a single word, a single sound, and in speaking it, he hopes to say everything he has been too afraid to murmur, everything he has kept to himself—from the early silences of his long-ago childhood, to the unspoken quiet of their relationship as father and son, all of the shame, all of the loss, of having done nothing worthwhile, of having been part of something horrible, worse than criminal, something brutal and thoughtless and destructive, of having built nothing that mattered, nothing important—and then, seeing his son, he understands he is wrong. What comes out then is hard to hear, inexact, a little weak—the sound of the invention of which he is most proud.

  “Jonathan.”

  Jonathan smiles softly, feeling his father’s shrunken hand against his face. “Dad?”

  “Jonathan,” his father repeats, looking up into his son’s face. “Jonathan. Jonathan.” And that is all. Father and son stare at each other for one moment longer, then the son stands, touching his sleeve to something in the corner of his eye. He steps beside his father, gently pushing the wheelchair forward, down the long tile hall, past the food court and magazine stands, out past the lines waiting before security, the word still resonating in the air, its actual meaning imprecise and unimportant now.

  ONE OF THE RAREST of modern phenomenon then: the Peugeot has not been towed. Jonathan stares at the number of orange tickets it’s accumulated in his absence, a whopping ten altogether. He helps his father into the front seat of the car, folds up the wheelchair and slides it in the back, then turns to make sure his father has buckled himself in.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I wish I hadn’t found you. I really do. But I did. And I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t know where you were. I’m sorry, Dad, I really am.”

  But his father does not seem to have heard, his grayish green eyes having gone hard, his face stern, his gaze rapt, staring at the planes taking off and landing. Finally, as they pull back onto the expressway, his father again breaks his vow and quietly whispers, “Thank you for coming to find me.”

  ON THE CAR RIDE back to the retirement home, both Jonathan and his father are silent. His dad stares out the window at the city moving beside them, the identical-looking houses, trees, cars vanishing as quickly as they appear. Soon they are returning to Hyde Park, soon the familiar University of Chicago campus is in view, then it, too, is gone, and finally, there, in the corner of the windshield, is the bleak-looking rectangle of the South Shore Nursing Home. Jonathan pulls into the parking lot, shuts off the engine, and begins to unbuckle his seat be
lt. Just then, his father places a weak-looking left hand on his son’s wrist, then slips his right beneath his black suit jacket. From within the suit’s worn lining, his father retrieves a folded piece of paper, carefully placing it in his son’s hands.

  “What is this?” Jonathan asks.

  His father smiles for a moment, then holds a finger up to own lips and whispers, “Shhhhhh,” before turning to unbuckle the seat belt, not speaking another word.

  AFTER JONATHAN HAS finished explaining everything to the nurses, when he is done apologizing to the nursing home’s director, when his father is once again installed in the same gloomy, semiprivate room, Jonathan kisses his dad’s forehead once, then rushes off, down the elevator, across the parking lot, and back to his car. He checks his watch: he’s late again. He’ll have to hurry if he’s going to make the one o’clock faculty meeting. Surely they are expecting him to attend. There will be awkward questions and serious reprisals for his having canceled as many classes as he has. Twelve thirty-five p.m. He has just enough time to go home and change and get ready for the end.

  WHEN JONATHAN IS ALONE a few moments later, sitting in the front seat of the Peugeot, he starts up the car, glances through the back windshield at the wide blue sky, and then, without knowing why exactly, he puts the car back into park. He digs through the front pocket of his windbreaker, finds the note from his dad, and stares at it. It is nothing. Nothing. Jonathan, baffled, finally sees that it is a small paper flower. He is both surprised and confused, staring for a moment at its puzzling white shape. What is this supposed to be, Dad? It’s something so odd, so precise, so out of place, this small paper blossom. What is it? Is this supposed to be some kind of sign?

  Clutching the flower in his palm, Jonathan begins to smile. It is a secret message, he quietly thinks. It’s an apology. He begins to inspect the tiny bloom, studying it like a fossil, like a pen from his beloved prehistoric squid, and what he sees now is how old it is, how worn the paper looks, how intricately folded, how brilliantly complicated it is: lines intersecting lines, each bent to a perfect slant, each in its own thoughtful place. What Jonathan feels next is an odd sort of wonderment at the paper flower’s certain and uncertain angles, at the curious complexity he now holds in his hand. And then he thinks: It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful because it’s complicated. Because there’s not one thing. There’s not one thing that makes sense of everything.