The Explanation for Everything: A Novel

by Lauren Grodstein

  “Me?” The various piles of papers on his desk looked lopsided, ready to fall, his research grant oversized and heavy—he reached out to straighten it, avoiding Melissa’s narrowing gaze.

  “How else are you going to understand my independent study? If you don’t read these books how will you know what I’m doing? Besides, I agreed to read your books.”

  “Right,” he said. “Well, you understand I’m busy. And also, as professor, it’s my job to assign and yours to read.” He stopped fiddling with the stack, picked up The Macroevolution Myth.

  “So maybe you could look at just a few? Like five or six?”

  Andy grunted. “How is it possible,” asked the jacket copy, “for random mutations to turn one species into another? Is this the best Darwinians can come up with? Shouldn’t there be a better explanation to this most important of human questions?”

  “I think you’ll like that one,” Melissa said, settling herself on the chair. “It’s pretty good. And here,” she said, flicking through her notebook, “I’ve outlined the dimensions of my study, the paper I’m going to write at the end. My thesis is that intelligent design is a more realistic alternative to Darwinian evolution, if you think that sounds okay. Or something—maybe you can make it sound smarter than that for me. I’m not sure I’m in love with ‘more realistic alternative.’ ” She pondered this for a moment. “But anyway I realized I never had you sign the paperwork, so I brought a pen, if you could just—”

  “Do you even understand the basics of Darwinian evolution yet?” He channeled Rosenblum. “Have you read anything that I’ve asked you to read? Or are you going to start debating something you don’t even really understand?”

  She hunched her shoulders, a silent harrumph. “I understand Darwinian evolution,” she said. “I read the books you assigned, and I took Bio 101 at County.”

  “So what do you think it is, exactly?”

  “Evolution? Uh, you know,” she said, sarcastic. “Survival of the fittest. Natural selection.”

  “Right,” he said, “but what do those things mean?”

  She sighed, heavily. She didn’t like being underestimated. “Single-celled organisms evolved over countless generations, via the accumulation of small genetic mutations. The organisms that survived and passed on their genes continued to breed, and the ones that didn’t went extinct. Eventually, these single-celled organisms evolved into all the different animals and plants and fungi and bacteria on the planet.”

  “That’s right,” Andy said, pleased with her succinct response, having grown accustomed, when asking questions of undergrads, to much more hemming and prevarication.

  “But just because I can define it doesn’t mean I believe it.”

  “Because?”

  “Because it’s patently ridiculous,” she said. She stopped fiddling with her necklace. “If you’re willing to accept that life came about because, I don’t know, lightning struck some organic material in the primordial soup—and this, by the way, is not something I’m willing to accept—then fine, that’s how life began. But to think that random mutations could be so miraculously beneficial as to create the eye, the wing, the lung—can’t you see how silly that is?”

  “Melissa,” he said, “just because your books say it’s silly doesn’t mean your books are right.”

  “Why are you willing to ridicule books you haven’t even read?”

  “I’m not,” he said, then started again. “It’s just—books like these, with these unprovable arguments—” He stopped. He was going about this the wrong way. How would Rosenblum have done it? With more sarcasm, of course, but also he wouldn’t let the undergraduate frame the argument.

  “Well?”

  “Look, why couldn’t random mutations develop into an eye over eons? In fact, why wouldn’t they? If you started, say, with cells that just happened to be slightly more photosensitive than others, and if organisms that were able to detect light through these photosensitive cells had that much of an advantage, in a hostile world, over organisms that couldn’t detect light, why wouldn’t successive generations of selection refine those photosensitive cells into, you know—something like an eye?”

  “I think a better question is why would they.”

  “Because that’s how evolution works. We have all evolved, mutation by mutation, from single-celled organisms that existed hundreds of millions of years ago. There’s molecular evidence. There’s proof!” And here he wished he really was Rosenblum, who always had the numbers at his disposal, the right way to recount the history of DNA.

  “Your argument is so circular,” Melissa said. “Evolution exists because we’re the products of evolution.”

  “Is that what I said?” He feared it was.

  Melissa sighed again, but this time she seemed almost disappointed, or, far worse, compassionate. “Sometimes I think Darwinians don’t know how ridiculous they sound. Like we’re the ridiculous ones, when all you have to go on are mutations—”

  “That’s not all we have to go on,” said Andy.

  “Mutations!”

  Andy, who had never before found himself mocked for holding fairly conventional beliefs, was even more annoyed with himself than usual. Why did she have to keep saying “mutations” in that tone of voice?

  “So that’s why we’re here, then,” she said. “Instead of God, you choose mutants.”

  “All right,” Andy said, “I get it. Enough.”

  What he knew of evolution was what he’d learned as an undergraduate and applied to the rest of his research: that genes were hereditary, that mutations in those genes expressed themselves in different behaviors or traits, and that the different behaviors or traits that led to more successful reproduction were the ones that were more likely to be passed on. This was the way of life. If it wasn’t, he couldn’t conduct his research. He couldn’t teach biology.

  “Here,” Melissa said, opening The Macroevolution Myth to a passage she’d highlighted in pink. “Listen, Professor Waite. Just so you can see where I’m coming from. I’m quoting: in order for supposedly ‘helpful’ mutations to randomly arise in organisms, an organism would have to wait approximately 216 million years, according to conservative estimates, to see this mutation arise. If one accepts the secular estimation that life on this planet dates back 3.5 billion years, one only has to do simple math to realize that enough time simply hasn’t occurred since life began to account for every single mutation necessary to create something as complex as the human heart, much less the brain.” She closed the book triumphantly. “See?”

  “You realize this language isn’t particularly convincing,” Andy said. “What do you mean ‘conservative estimate’? What is a ‘secular estimation’?”

  “Do you really want all the numbers?” Melissa asked. “I mean, there are footnotes if you want them—”

  “I don’t need to see the footnotes,” he said. “I just—listen—” and here his mind went, without bidding, to his NSF grant, his mice, the volcano he and Belle were supposed to make for her presentation on North American geology, “when I said I would oversee this independent study with you, I suppose I was hoping you’d go with a different thesis.”

  “Well, what thesis were you hoping for, exactly? That intelligent design is wrong? That the Great Biological Powers That Be are right because everyone says they are?” Frustration put an appealing flush in her cheeks, which Andy noted and dismissed.

  “Why don’t we take out the right and the wrong,” he suggested, letting his voice grow more gentle, supportive. “How about we revise your thesis to be that intelligent design represents an alternative to Darwinian evolution that’s, I don’t know—that’s worth investigating. As opposed to what you have now, which is that it’s a better alternative. Because it’s not, and I can’t support your investigation into an untruth.”

  Melissa rolled her eyes. “That just sounds flaky,” she said. “And also it’s not what I want to say. I want to talk about intelligent design. I want to make an argu
ment for it. I want to prove that the world is simply too complex, too perfectly designed, to be a product of,” here she wrinkled her nose again, “mutation.”

  “But you’re only saying that because the only literature you read supports your beliefs.”

  “I could accuse you,” she said, “of the same thing.”

  His grant was only a quarter finished, and the first part was due in a month. He hadn’t done laundry all week. Dinner, homework, the volcano.

  “So are you in or are you out?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, scratching his cheek.

  Melissa’s face went slack with horror. “I need these credits, Professor Waite!”

  “I mean, I’m in. But only because I said I was in. Not because I think you’re going to convince me that,” he picked up one of her books again, Saint Jesus of the Test Tubes, “that God is a rainbow.”

  “Fine,” she said. “As long as you sign.” She bent down again to her backpack, took out a folder, removed a blue sheet of paper—the official Independent Study Faculty Agreement—and a white sheet of paper, which laid out her goals for the year: to read and analyze the following books and articles, to put together a bibliography of useful materials on intelligent design, and to write a thirty-page research paper.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “No problem,” Andy lied.

  She put her haul into her backpack and stood. Now that she was standing straight, Andy realized how tall she was. “You have young daughters, right, Professor Waite?”

  How did she know? But the proof was all around him, in the photos tacked up to the bulletin board on his wall, the lunch sitting on his desk, packed in Rachel’s old Mulan lunch box.

  “If you ever need a babysitter, you know, I love kids.”

  Andy smiled. Once upon a time, he imagined, female students offered up their bodies. Now they offered up their Friday evenings. “That’s nice of you, Melissa. I don’t go out much, though.”

  “Well, just in case,” she said. “And thanks for signing those papers.”

  “You bet,” Andy said. As soon as she was gone, he removed Rosenblum’s letter from the drawer.

  What kind of man have you become, anyway?

  The kind who can’t slam-dunk a fight with a creationist. The kind who can’t prove a simple hypothesis about drunken mice.

  But, he thought to himself, reading Rosenblum’s letter for the fourth, fifth, sixth time, the kind who would take on Melissa in the first place. The kind who would find the time to debate her. The kind who takes reasonable care of his girls, who’s a decent enough neighbor, who tries to be cheerful most of the time. The kind who, when he becomes too resentful about the life fate has handed him, looks in at his daughters sleeping in the same bunk and feels a renewed ability to go on.

  There are worse men out there, Hank.

  When he was a child in Shaker Heights he would walk to Horseshoe Lake with his mother on chilly March mornings to collect paramecia. They would each have two big jelly jars, and they would crouch by the creek and dip in their jars and collect all sorts of terrific things: paramecia and amoebas and sometimes, accidentally, tiny golden fish arching like thumbnails. They would take them back to their living room and Andy’s mother would pull out the microscope, set it down on the kitchen table. She’d make pond-water slides, stick them under the scope, adjust the magnification. There the paramecia would flutter, the hydras would bulge. Andy’s mother would turn up the magnification and suddenly Andy would be able to see the insides of the tiny creatures, the micronucleus and macronucleus, the vacuoles, the dozens of quivering cilia.

  “Life exists on scales beyond our imagination,” his mother would say, her face warm next to his by the microscope.

  What kind of man have you become, Andy?

  The kind who still sometimes remembered that the world is full of wonder.

  He put Melissa’s books in his backpack and headed home, thinking more frequently than he wanted about the way her cheeks flushed and her fleeting smile.

  THAT NIGHT, THE volcano flowed over the kitchen counter, onto stacks of dirty dishes and the remains of Rachel’s chicken and broccoli casserole (low-fat sour cream, low-fat cheese). Belle squealed in delight, reminding Andy of his own reaction when his mice behaved the way they were supposed to (why wouldn’t they behave the way they were supposed to?).

  “This is some serious lava flow, Dad,” she said, mopping up the floor with a rag. “This is like some Pompeii-level stuff.”

  “I was going to send Dad in with those leftovers tomorrow, FYI,” Rachel said, glaring at the mess from her perch at the kitchen table. She was engaged in a back-and-forth with someone on Google Chat, which was a program Andy wasn’t sure he’d permitted. House rules dictated that all computer use had to stay in the kitchen, under public eye, because Andy had read one too many articles about perverts trolling and high school bullies sexting and whatever else happened in the grubby corners of the Internet and he was not going to let any of it happen to his girls.

  “He could still eat it, if he wanted,” Belle said.

  “Excuse me? It’s been volcanoed.”

  “It’s not real volcano, idiot,” Belle snapped. “It’s soda water and vinegar. Oh, and I guess a little dish soap, but not that much.”

  “I know you didn’t just call me an idiot.”

  “Girls,” Andy said. “Enough.”

  They cleaned the kitchen and bathed with a certain amount of persnicketiness and fell asleep in their respective bunks. After Rachel was out, Andy went to the laptop to see what she had been typing with such ferocity, and to whom.

  Lilybeansxox. He didn’t really like the sound of that at all. Rachel’s handle (racherache) at least had a sort of alliteration thing happening. Who was this lilybeansxox and what did she (that was a she, right?) want with his Rachel?

  Was it wrong to spy on his girls? Andy bit a nail. Perhaps it would have been if he’d had any idea what they were talking about, but the whole back-and-forth between Rachel and Lily, set up in choppy little lines, was so full of acronyms and references to things he didn’t understand (what was a 303, a DGT?) that he didn’t really feel like a spy as much as a visitor from another planet. What did AYTMTB mean? BBIAS?

  His daughters were studying Spanish in school but they already spoke another language. This disconcerted him, as it was a language he knew he would never master, while the various languages he spoke (as parent, grown-up, biologist) would all be available to his girls should they want to know them one day. They were privileged in a way he wasn’t. It didn’t seem fair, that he should be raising them and yet they should be, in so many ways, profoundly unknowable.

  Still they murmured in their sleep, he thought. Still he could admire them and know how lovely they were, and maybe that was his compensation. But on the other hand, what the hell was an IWIAM?

  It was midnight, but the idea of getting in bed seemed depressing. He went out to the porch, fingered a cigar. He could go see if Sheila was around but—but no, he didn’t feel like seeing Sheila. Four houses down, her downstairs light was still on, and he knew she’d keep him company, but the thought of her loose breasts came to mind and he inadvertently shuddered.

  Back inside, he thought, well, I could work on the grant. A page at a time and by the end of the month he’d be done—but the truth was as long as his mice refused to behave the way he wanted them to, it seemed silly to ask for any more government money. Almost half a million dollars, and it would certainly come in handy, but there was no way the NSF would write him a check without first approving of his findings. And right now, for reasons that were beyond him, his findings were a mess. What would the tenure board say if they knew? Who would give him tenure on the basis of a half-dozen failures?

  Still, maybe he was just looking at things the wrong way.

  He opened his briefcase to take out his notebooks, but the first thing he grabbed, glossily bound, was one of Melissa’s paperbacks. God Is a Rainbow. He opened it, too
k it to the bathroom, where he often got his best leisure reading done. But waiting for him in the basket next to the john was a copy of The Onion he’d been meaning to read, and so he sat there, chuckling to himself, until his back started to hurt, which was a sign that he was an hour closer to death and it was time to go to bed.

  SEVEN

  Three months after Rachel was born, Lou admitted smuggling her into church. “It wasn’t my fault,” she said, after she’d confessed. “I was compelled.”

  “What do you mean, compelled?” Andy had asked, annoyed, betrayed, but also consumed by tenderness the way he always was when he watched Louisa breast-feed.

  “It was like—it was like something had taken over my body.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “It was almost like I was possessed.”

  “Give me a break, Lou.”

  She shrugged.

  In the months and years before in the NICU, Lou witnessed the hospital chaplain perform baptisms every few months on her tiny patients, touching them gently with thumbs moistened from flasks of holy water. Once, when nobody could find the chaplain, a devout nurse performed an emergency baptism on a boy who had been born at twenty-three weeks, plum purple and monkey-faced, and who died a few minutes later. The boy’s parents had asked her to do it; they watched as he was blessed and held him, together, as he died.

  Throughout her pregnancy, Lou would come home and report on these baptisms, Andy listening patiently as she told him about the chaplain and the nurse and the dead babies, gauging him for his reaction. What did she want him to say? Of course he understood: if ever there was a time to be suspicious, to think toward miracles, it was when your child was struggling for life, when the distance between life and death could be measured in milligrams. And if these ritual blessings gave parents comfort . . .

  “So you understand?”

  “I understand,” he said. “That doesn’t mean I approve.” For even then it was hard to discount his years with Rosenblum: fairy tales were meant for children. Adults should find their consolation in the truth.