The Explanation for Everything: A Novel

by Lauren Grodstein

  Belle nodded. “I thought I was going to have to dive into a swimming pool. That’s what someone at school had to do.”

  “Nah,” Pastor Cling said. “Like I said, we don’t go in for that kind of stuff here at Hollyville.”

  He ushered Belle into the pool of light, and gently turned her chin up so that her forehead tilted back. The silver net of her princess gown caught the light and shimmered. The pastor dipped his fingers into the bowl. “You ready, Belle?”

  “I’m ready,” she said, and despite his reservations, Andy felt chills.

  “I hereby baptize you, Belle Louisa Waite, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” He sprinkled the water on Belle’s small smooth forehead three times. Her eyes were closed. The water beaded and fell down her face, but she kept her neck tilted, as though looking at the sky.

  “And I would like to add, if I may,” Pastor Cling said, his hands now on Belle’s shoulders, “I would like to add that Belle, you are a truly lucky young girl, for you were born to a family that loves you, and you are now part of God’s family too. When you need protection, when you need reassurance, you will always be able to turn to your family, and turn to God. You will never be alone.”

  Melissa, beside him, squeezed a tissue into Andy’s hand.

  “I know that life has dealt you some unfair blows, and that you must miss your mother something awful. I can only imagine what it is for a young girl to grow up without her mom.”

  Andy put his arm around Rachel. Was the water dripping on his daughter’s face baptismal? Tears? He wrapped Melissa’s tissue in his fist. He wanted to dry Belle’s face.

  “But if I know anything in the world, I know this. Your mother is with God right now, and she is watching you. She knows that you have been baptized in his name, and she knows that when your long and wonderful life is over, she will take you in her arms again, and that you and she will live together, in eternity, in God’s house.”

  Pastor Cling bent down again, so that he could look at Belle squarely. He tipped her face down toward him, and Andy thought he had never seen Belle look so understanding, so wise—so old. “And listen, Belle, there’s something else you should know. This God who loves you is a God of love and kindness and mercy. If you make a mistake in your life—and of course you will, for you’re a human being, a little girl—if and when you make mistakes, know that God loves you anyway. God knows your good heart, Belle. His love is merciful and unconditional.”

  Merciful and unconditional.

  Andy felt snapped like a rubber band.

  Who was this God? Hadn’t Melissa said that God was foremost a God of justice? Isn’t that what he’d asked her, and that’s what she said? Hadn’t she repeated it in his office, God is just? And there she stood in that chapel, beaming at him and his daughter.

  Which one was it, Melissa? Justice or mercy?

  Pastor Cling touched Belle’s forehead again, and the spot where he touched her glistened. He had anointed her with oil.

  Justice or mercy? Justice or mercy? No, no, he told himself—it could not be both.

  Belle wasn’t crying, but Andy could feel his own eyes start to prickle, and this worried him. He did not cry in front of his daughters. He hid his eyes behind a tissue.

  And who was he crying for, anyway? His daughter? His dead wife? Oliver McGee? Oliver’s mother? Rosenblum? Himself?

  “Okay, Belle. Congratulations.” The pastor picked a small square of paper off the table next to the bowl of water, and handed it to Andy. “This is Belle’s baptismal certificate. Keep it in a special place.”

  Andy blotted his eyes. “I will,” he said. He shook Pastor Cling’s hand. This God was a merciful God. He wanted to live in God’s image. He wanted God to stay near him, to keep Lou near him. He didn’t want to lose what he had worked so hard to gain. This God understood him. This God took pity on him, on his poor wretched soul.

  “And if you ever want to come back—”

  “Thank you, Pastor—”

  “Please do come back.” The pastor walked them out into the sunshine. “Melissa will tell you, our doors are always open.”

  And so, with a hug for Melissa, and a hug for Rachel and Belle, and another handshake for Andy, the pastor retreated back into the church, leaving the four of them on the sidewalk in front of the church where shopping carts used to idle.

  “What should we do now?” Rachel asked. “Philadelphia, maybe?”

  “Absecon!” Belle said. “I want lobster!”

  “You do?” Andy said. The sunlight felt too bright. “Since when do you like lobster?” He shielded his eyes from the sun.

  “Ever since we had it at Jeremy’s house,” Belle said.

  “You liked that?”

  “I loved it! They were so good!”

  Rachel let out an annoyed sigh, but Belle was unstoppable. “Please, Dad? You said it was my special day.”

  The voices wouldn’t stop. Once upon a time it had only been Lou, but now it was a whole chorus. He had invited God in but instead of hearing God all he heard was this chorus.

  Melissa, sitting next to Andy in the front seat, wore the look of disquiet that he imagined was on his own face.

  “Are you okay?”

  She had said God was just. Rosenblum had said God was to protect us from the dead. From our fear of the dead. Oliver was going to rot in jail. Joyce McGee was losing her only son.

  “Come on, Dad, start the car. I want lobster.”

  “Dad, what’s wrong with you?”

  “But you said. ”

  Mechanically, silently, he found his way to the Garden State Parkway, to the exit for Absecon, just across the bay from Atlantic City. He had done nothing wrong. He had done nothing wrong. And yet the guilt was heavy like a stone.

  “Keep going,” Melissa murmured, as they passed signs on Route 9 for the beach. He realized that he hadn’t heard her voice the entire drive.

  “Where are we going, Dad?”

  “To the ocean,” Melissa said, turning around to answer. “After that we can go get lunch.”

  Mechanically, silently, he followed the signs. He parked in the empty parking lot by the beach. “What now?” he asked Melissa.

  “Get out of the car.”

  The sky was brilliant and the air less chilly than it had been in Hollyville, but the breeze brought in a frosty kick of salt. He followed Melissa out of the car, and the girls followed him. When Melissa took off her shoes by the plywood staircase to the beach, the girls and then Andy did too.

  “What are we doing, exactly?”

  “We’re washing it off,” Melissa said. “We wash it off, we come out clean. We come out new.”

  Belle, in her princess dress, surveyed the landscape. Sandpipers hopped back and forth across the shoreline, crossing over and back again the long skatelike track of a horseshoe crab.

  “So are we going in?” she asked.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Andy said. “The water’s freezing.”

  “I’m not scared of a little cold water,” Rachel said. “Are you?”

  “Guys, don’t even joke,” Andy said. “You’re not going in. It’s probably fifty degrees.”

  But Melissa was holding each of their hands.

  “You coming, Andy?” she asked.

  “You’ll get pneumonia,” he said. “You are not going in.”

  The three of them looked at each other and shrugged. “Wash it off,” Melissa said. “Wash it clean.”

  And then, with a whoop, the three girls raced across the empty beach and into the frothy surf, Belle’s dress sparkling in the froth, up to their knees in the frigid water. From where he stood, he could hear their giddy screams.

  “Dad! Dad, you’ve got to come!”

  “Absolutely not!” he yelled, but he knew they couldn’t hear him. He thought, again, of Joyce McGee, and her son, Oliver. Another two years at least. Oliver, who had earned his bachelor’s. Oliver, who was suffering. He had prolonged the boy’s suffering. That was
not merciful, nor was it just.

  “Dad!” Was that Rachel? Was that Belle? “Dad!”

  He walked down to the edge of the water. The touch of surf on his toes felt like ice. How could his daughters jump around in the frosty ocean? But he remembered, they were like seals. They were born in pools of water. They jumped in, they splashed, they washed it off.

  He bent his face toward the Atlantic but he did not come out clean.

  FIFTEEN

  Reading Rosenblum felt like spending time in the company of a friend, and it felt good to spend the night with a friend’s troubles, distant as they were, instead of his own. As he read, the style of the manuscript emerged as confessional, discursive, not at all like the direct and impatient Religion’s Dangerous Lie or the more scientifically reasoned earlier works. The only thing it read like was a meditation, thoughts circling around other thoughts.

  Reading, Andy thought to himself: why didn’t I know Hank was such a religious man?

  After my exile from Princeton, I spent a few years traveling the world, knowing but trying not to care that if the Lims won their civil suit, whatever I had in the bank would be theirs. What did I have in the bank, you’re asking? Unfortunately, a tidy bundle. A healthy nest egg. Oh, why be coy? I had just under six million dollars, plus my dusty little house in Princeton, plus the dustier place in Vermont where I liked to retreat, ski in my younger days, write as I got older. These properties were liquidated and the proceeds handed to the Lims in 2007, when the court’s verdict rendered me guilty of criminal harrassment. The Lims got my nice Lexus with the heated seats and my retirement fund and every asset I had ever relied on, celebrated, jetted off to Paris with. However, because I’d had the foresight to spend a lot of what I had when I had it, the Lims weren’t able to touch the trips I’d taken (the Himalayas, Cartagena, Cape Verde, Siem Reap) nor the cigars I’d smoked (Cohiba, Arturo Fuente) nor the ex-wives, whose favors I’d once won with diamond jewelry and fancy dinners. The Lims would never get their greedy hands on my fancy dinners. But they had everything else that had once been mine; I was bankrupt; I was old; I was supposed to be penitent.

  I remember that day in 2007 looking in the mirror, and seeing, reflected back, a man much older than the one I had remembered. I had gone fat and bald, my beard had turned mostly white, and when my lawyer said, “Well, listen, Hank, we’ll appeal,” I told him there was no way in hell. I was done, you see. Very much done. I looked like the prophet my former admirers had once thought me and I decided it was time to live like a prophet, like a mystic, like a crazy old hermit in the woods. A man I knew who appreciated my books offered me his cabin on Long Island, on the outskirts of Montauk, a place I had never been. “You’ll like it,” he said. “You’ll learn to fish.” I had fantasies of growing my beard down to my belly and writing my great manifesto. I had fantasies of coming back to Princeton infirm but triumphant. Instead, I moved to this cottage on Montauk, which had not been renovated since the 1950s, and wasn’t really winterized, and didn’t have the right wiring to support a space heater, and I put my books on the bookshelves and decided I would love it. I would learn to love living there in the salty air and the freezing cold. It felt right to be cold.

  But what was I affirming? Why did I need to live in this place, broke and alone? Had I done something wrong? Did I feel that I had? The Old Testament (I went to yeshiva as a boy, and it has become impossible lately to rid myself of that decrepit testament) tells the story of Moses dying within sight of Israel, but before he is allowed to finally put his tired feet down on that blessed land. Moses, who has freed the Jewish people from the Pharoah’s shackles, who has led them across the desert, who has engaged in a half-dozen mano-a-mano’s with the Lord our God himself, is not allowed into the Holy Land. He is not allowed to fulfill his life’s dream. This is his punishment, God says, for the sins of vanity and faithlessness. God tells Moses this just before he dies, the crabby bastard. “You are being punished.” So Moses dies in exile, as he lived.

  I risk sounding grandiose here, but it seems that I will die like Moses, having seen the promised land of life’s beginnings but never having stepped foot in its truth. Anita offered the promised land of truth, of knowledge, but now she is gone. And I was never the scientist to find this truth for myself. My gift was always to make the most of what other people uncovered. Anita died and took with her the promise of knowledge, and I was left with my vanity and my faithlessness, or my faith in her, unanswered.

  (When people ask me what religion offers I tell them a host of lovely parables.)

  A few people demanded, after Anita’s death, that I expound about how terrible I felt. Stupidly, I railed against them. I told them to go to hell, to join Anita there. People gasped. But what did they want me to say? Apology has never been my form, even though the truth is that I have never recovered from her death. I am here, in this freezing cold cabin, because she died. And I do not grieve for what her loss cost me materially, truly; I grieve only for her.

  Still I do not think her death was my fault—and this is something I’ve interrogated myself upon for many, many days now. For days and months and years. I do not think I did anything wrong, and I can’t imagine having done anything differently.

  Of course, Andy thought. Hank Rosenblum never thought of doing anything differently. The first time he saw him in the classroom, smelling like pipe smoke, expounding for hours about the stupidity of those Americans who taught their children to love Jesus, about the idiocy of grammar school teachers in the Bible Belt, about the losers in Kentucky and Texas who wanted to make sure their biology teachers taught that evolution was an unproven idea—that first day he excoriated more than he taught, even as grad student after grad student slipped out of the classroom. Hank lived up to his reputation as a man whose brilliance was outweighed by his crankiness. At the end of the screed, Hank wiped his mouth with both his hands and smiled at the few who were left. “So I have eight of you, huh? Eight true believers.”

  Andy looked around. Actually there were only six, including him. It had never occurred to Andy to leave; he’d loved the heat of Hank Rosenblum’s lecturing and hectoring, the way he confirmed everything his mother had ever told him about meddling school boards and idiot parents who threatened to fire her for teaching Darwin. Rosenblum was standing up for reason and what his mother had taught him—standing up tall, with spittle in the corner of his mouth.

  Andy himself had always been mild and agreeable—or at least that’s how he considered himself—and his professors had always been mild and incomprehensible. But here, his first day of graduate school (Princeton, fully funded!) was the man who would teach him to be smart and furious, a fully formed adult.

  Andy thought back to his twenty-one-year-old self. How long human beings take to grow up. At twenty-one, he was still young enough to mistake Hank Rosenblum for a fully formed adult.

  It is night in my cabin in Montauk as I write this, and night as I imagine you reading this, my good reader. I am typing by the light of a 60-watt desk lamp. But when the pain becomes too much, I stop for a few minutes and let my mind wander (the privilege of this life is that my mind can wander far and wide and nobody asks it to come home). I have been thinking tonight of my four ex-wives, three of whom are still alive, each of whom enjoyed a happy and profitable marriage after their brief dalliance with yours truly. They have eleven children between them and two of them still count me as a friend. Those two still look out for me, and think it very sad that I will die alone. I imagine they will sit together at my funeral, shaking their heads at the waste. If I am to have a funeral at all. I still haven’t decided. Who would pay for it? Who, besides these ex-wives, might come?

  I would come, Andy thought.

  But enough about death! Now onward, friends, to immortality.

  The immortality I believe in is the immortality of DNA. Our bodies have been designed and refined over generations, innumerable generations, for one purpose: to protect the dogged DNA inside each one of our cell
s. That is it.

  But if another kind of immortality pleases you, the kind where people live forever, and not just the DNA inside them—well, I have thought about it, and I believe in this type of immortality too. And if you are the sort to take heart from what a deranged old scientist with a long white beard thinks—

  Here, again, Andy put down the page. He was just the sort to take heart from what a deranged old scientist might think. He had taken heart twenty years ago and would take heart now. He needed to take heart from someone, and right now Melissa, Pastor Cling, C. S. Lewis—they weren’t working for him. It was too late at night, too close to dawn.

  Was Rosenblum going to tell him that life was eternal? Had Rosenblum decided to believe? Give him permission to believe too?

  Lou’s ghost, in the corner, smirking. He hated how angry he’d been with her and for how long. A fight came back to him, one of the worst they’d had after the girls were born. She told him that life would be easier if they had more money. Louisa made a crack about leaving him for the rich old grandfather visiting some baby in the NICU. Andy was just then combing through grant applications, and the joke was unkind, and he yelled at her and went out and slammed the door on his way. A week later, she died going out for McDonald’s.

  “Louisa?” he said, the first time he’d spoken out loud to her in many months. Could he have her back even if he didn’t take God too? Or was this the only way: to believe in Louisa’s immortality was to unwrap the entire package, the heavens above, the long white dresses, the angels strumming lutes, the Lord our Father, the crabby old bastard who denied Moses a foot in the promised land for reasons mostly of touchiness.

  “Lou, I miss you so much.”

  In the days after she died, he found himself believing she was everywhere: she was the seagull watching him in the parking lot, the blinking light on the tip of an airplane’s wing. And then her ghost started showing up in the kitchen, the bedroom, while he was alone. She never talked to him, but she had such an expressive face that he could tell what she was thinking: Cool it, Andy. Calm down. The girls will be fine. I’m here. I love you too.