The Explanation for Everything

by Lauren Grodstein

  “Ah,” Andy said, letting his butt sink down to the floor to ease the twinge in his back. Poor Lionel. The kid wore dirty sneakers, loose jeans. He probably weighed 130 pounds. Andy knew he was on a full scholarship, and there was that underfed, vulnerable look about him, that full-scholarship look. “But why don’t you write letters to the editor, that sort of thing? It might get more done. I mean, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here but what’s the point of a protest if there’s nobody here to see?”

  Lionel shrugged. He fiddled with his iPod. He’d been listening to someone British read the Bible.

  “My sister’s an existentialist. Do you know what that is?”

  “An existentialist?” Andy said. “In Delaware?”

  “She’s actually my twin. She goes to community college. Her name is Sara.”

  “That’s my daughter’s middle name,” Andy said, to make a connection. Lionel didn’t bite.

  “She thinks that there’s no point to anything. That we could live or die, and it doesn’t really matter, and anyone who thinks it matters is a fool. She reads a lot of French writers.”

  “It’s a pretty French idea,” Andy said.

  “And she’s very dismissive of the way I think, that there’s a God who’s watching over us. And I think she’s as wrong as anyone can be, but then I look around at the stuff we do to each other, the stuff we teach, and then I think maybe she’s not so wrong, you know?”

  “Which scares you.”

  Lionel shook his head no, and Andy remembered he should never accuse a young man of feeling scared. “It just makes me sad.”

  “I’m not an existentialist, Lionel,” Andy said. “I don’t know if that makes you feel better or not. I believe that life matters.” As he said that, he felt it to be true, although he also knew this wasn’t always what he felt.

  “But how can you believe that without God?”

  “Because, Lionel, I don’t need the supernatural to give my life meaning.”

  “Then what gives you meaning?”

  There was some pabulum for this, something about nature being enough of a miracle, or about how life itself contained meaning, but Andy forgot what the script was. He had been focusing on the tiniest substructures in mouse brains for hours now, and there was pain between his eyes, and in his back.

  “Without God,” Lionel said, “all we have is a materialistic view of the world where there’s no morality, no good and bad. Everything’s random, therefore nothing matters. That’s where existentialism comes in.”

  “You know, Lionel, there’s a strong argument to be made that morality evolved right alongside physical characteristics,” Andy said. “You can see protomorality, or at least a sense of compassion, even in toddlers who are too young to know religion. Even in animals.”

  Lionel nodded. “Of course you can, because God created us all. Even the animals.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And I hate to point out,” Lionel said, “that dictators like Hitler and Stalin used evolution to support their genocides.”

  “Oh, come on, Lionel,” Andy said, pinching the bridge of his nose to wipe out the incipient headache. “Let’s not bring those two into this.”

  “It’s true. Mein Kampf is all about evolution. Hitler believed that the most evolved races, which in his mind meant Aryans, had the right to exterminate the less evolved, which in his mind meant the Jews, the gypsies, the handicapped. You know, everyone else.” Lionel’s owlish eyes bugged out a little when he soliloquized. “But if you’re a Darwinian evolutionist, this should only seem natural, right? I mean, isn’t that what evolution does? Separate the strong from the weak? The more evolved from the less evolved?”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It totally is,” Lionel said. “And Stalin thought the same thing, which is why he exterminated native peoples from Azerbaijan to Siberia. Stalin is responsible for more deaths than even Hitler is. Which is a lot of deaths we can attribute to Darwinian evolution. But, you know, whatever, Professor. Teach what you need to teach, like it doesn’t matter.”

  Oh, God. “Lionel, you can’t just slap the words Hitler and Stalin onto something you don’t agree with and call it a reasoned debate.”

  “So let’s take Hitler out of it,” Lionel said. “Let’s remove Stalin and Hitler and still think about a world where we’ve agreed in survival of the fittest. The strong vanquishing the weak. What have we got then?”

  “Again, Lionel, I think you’re deliberately misunderstanding the nature of Darwinian evolution.”

  “No more welfare, no more public health care, no more hate crime legislation, since what is a hate crime if not a crime of the strong against the less strong? You like that world, Professor? You want to live in that world?”

  “Lionel, enough.”

  But the kid was on a roll. “Morality, human obligation toward one another, comes from the idea that life has purpose. Evolution takes away that purpose. It makes everything an accident. Everything becomes random. It takes away the necessity for humans to look out for one another.”

  “That’s not true,” Andy said, as Rosemary gave him a worried look from down the hall. “Darwinian evolution is not the same as social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is this ugly thing that people use to justify the mistreatment of others. Darwinian evolution is the simple idea that life forms have changed in a variety of ways in response to the environment.”

  “And what happens to those that don’t change successfully?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, according to Darwinian evolution, what happens to those forms of life that don’t change in response to their environment? Or that don’t change very well?”

  “What do you mean, don’t change very well?”

  “They die out,” said Lionel. “That’s what happens. They die.”

  As though this meant more than it did—as though species didn’t go extinct all the time, as though everything that was born didn’t eventually die.

  “Do you still talk to Hank Rosenblum?” Lionel asked.

  “I’m sorry?” Andy said. His relationship with Rosenblum—his former relationship—was one he tried to keep to himself.

  “He thanked you in one of his books,” Lionel said.

  “You’ve read Rosenblum?”

  “I’m taking your class for the second time, Professor,” Lionel said. “Of course I’ve read him.”

  “Right, but I mean you read Religion’s Dangerous Lie?”

  Lionel nodded. “And I have to say,” and here he started to lose his Hitler-and-Stalin cool, “I have to say that when I think about that poor girl Rosenblum murdered, and I think about the fact that this is a man who’s on our syllabus, and then I think that you just keep teaching it—that’s when I start to see my sister’s point a little, that really nothing matters. That I’m a fool for trying to make the world a better place. That I should just go to class and nod my head and become a machine—”

  “Lionel—”

  “That you should just go out in the world and know that when you die you’re just dead, that’s it, there’s no God, there’s no nothing.” He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrists.

  “Lionel, stop.”

  “That you can just murder someone—”

  “Okay, enough. Nobody was murdered. Rosenblum didn’t murder anybody.”

  “I read the news reports online.”

  “Then you should know Rosenblum was never accused of murder,” Andy said, and those feelings that he had pushed away—he had a new baby, he was trying to find an academic position, and Jesus, Hank, what was wrong with you? how could you have done that?—came back, gurgled in him. “Nobody was murdered.” And then, to calm him down, or just to change the subject, he said, “You know, I’m doing that independent study.”

  Lionel took a moment to collect himself. “What are you talking about?”

  “With your friend… your friend…” God, how had he become so terrible with names? “With that friend y
ou sent me.”

  “Oh, Melissa.” Lionel sighed. “She’s not really my friend—I met her at a Campus Crusade meeting. I think she’s a transfer student. She wanted to do—”

  “Intelligent design, I know.”

  “And you said yes?” Here Lionel allowed himself a small smile. His face was mottled. Andy thought that his sister should be proud of him. He also thought about the bitter way Lionel spit out that line: when you die you’re just dead.

  “I thought it might be interesting.”

  “You just want to change her mind.”

  “So?” Andy said. “You just want to change mine.”

  “Yeah, but you have a position of power,” Lionel said. “Who am I? Who is Melissa? How are we supposed to confront people like you, like Rosenblum—”

  “All right. Enough with the self-pity,” Andy said. He stood, wiped his jeans, motioned for Lionel to stand up too. “You’re young, you’re healthy, you have a voice. I’m middle-aged and exhausted. Rosenblum is in hiding on Long Island. From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s you who has the power, not me. So stop feeling sorry for yourself. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Don’t cry in my hallway.”

  Lionel hung his head.

  “And really, kid, stand up straight.” Andy felt, oddly, refreshed by this interaction, a chance to buck up poor Lionel Shell, with the existentialist sister and the fear of death that crouched around all of them, even the young.

  “Okay,” Lionel said. “But can I ask you one question—you know that book Rosenblum thanked you in? Religion’s Dangerous Lie?”

  Andy nodded. It was an inflammatory little paperback Rosenblum had sold for a mega-advance and dedicated to a few of his favorite people, including, for better or for worse, Andy. It had climbed to the top of the Times best-seller list and perched there for months, leading to appearances on Oprah for Rosenblum and a certain notoriety, even embarrassment, for Andy.

  “So do you really believe that? That religion is a dangerous lie? My sister does.”

  “I don’t believe that exactly.”

  Lionel smiled his underfed smile. “So then you believe it’s a good thing?”

  “I didn’t say that, either,” Andy said. He thought about how little he liked to talk about these things, and then he thought, without warning, about Lou. When you die you’re just dead.

  “So you’re an agnostic.”

  “There are no agnostics in foxholes,” Andy said, which he knew wasn’t exactly how the saying went but at that moment he would have said anything to keep from saying Lou’s name out loud. “Listen, Lionel, if you want to protest, by all means protest, but don’t be so downhearted about it. Gird yourself for the fight!”

  Lionel shrugged.

  “And also, if you are going to protest, please don’t do it on a Friday afternoon. You’re freaking out the secretary.”

  “Okay,” Lionel said, and then added, for no particular reason, “thanks,” and then picked up his sign, brushed it off tenderly, and walked the opposite way down the hall, past Louisa’s ghost, whom he didn’t notice at all.

  THAT EVENING, AS he drove down twisted Stanwick Street, Andy saw that the Halloween decorations were already up—plastic pumpkins in windows and scarecrows on lawns. Roberta Hayes, who kept chickens, had decorated their coops with paper skeletons. Halloween was still important to his girls, who relished their princess costumes and refused to put winter coats over their tulle bodices. But they hadn’t mentioned anything about costumes so far this year and he wondered if they might be growing out of it, and if so, what new trick might replace princesses.

  He pulled into the driveway just in time to beat them home from Janet Goldsmith’s, where they spent most Friday afternoons. He put a pot of water on to boil—Friday was spaghetti night—and thought about whether it was time to turn on the heat. The house relied on oil, like so many houses in the pines, and it was expensive. A small six-room place like theirs could easily run two thousand dollars for the season. But when the girls walked in they kept their coats on, so Andy reluctantly moved toward the thermostat. “Thanks, Dad,” said Rachel, who noticed these things.

  They bustled while he finished dinner, mulling on the findings of the day. When would his mice act like themselves again?

  How on earth was he supported to win an NSF grant with inconclusive results based on inconsiderate rodents? This chewed at him, as did the money the oil heat was costing them, and the fact that Rachel, when she took off her coat, was wearing a sparkly shirt that seemed teenagerish, and tight.

  To distract himself from these worries, as they sat around the linoleum-topped table, eating spaghetti, he asked his girls what their thoughts were on Halloween. They shrugged; the radio in the background hummed the evening news.

  “Maybe princesses?”

  “Maybe,” Rachel said, but something in her voice said she was humoring him. “We’ll figure it out.” Then they were quiet for a while. He thought about telling them about the problems with the alcoholic protein but doubted they would understand. He also thought about telling them about Lionel Shell, but he didn’t know quite how to explain him, and worried that the story might make them feel sad.

  “I think you could have done something more with this spaghetti,” said Rachel, finally, after a few minutes more of listening to the radio, the inconsequential market report.

  “You do, huh?”

  “Definitely.” Rachel had recently taken to the Food Network, and to her own little experiments in the kitchen, which was interesting to him because at the same time she’d started talking about dieting, sugar, and carbs. “I mean, what is this? Spaghetti from a box and a jar of Ragú?”

  “You’ve never complained before.”

  “I like it, Dad,” said Belle. “I think it’s awesome.”

  “It’s not awesome,” Rachel said, “I mean, it’s fine, it’s certainly edible.”

  Andy smiled; he couldn’t help it. Picked on all day by all these spoiled brats.

  “But I mean, couldn’t we make our own sauce?” Rachel jumped up to the celery-colored fridge. “Look, we’ve got garlic, we’ve got onions—why do you even buy this stuff, Dad, if you’re not going to use it? We’ve got carrots, bacon. We could make our own sauce.”

  “So you should make your own sauce,” he said.

  “I will,” Rachel said. “Although maybe not with bacon. Nitrates suck. And another thing—”

  “Don’t say suck,” said Belle. “You’re not supposed to say that.”

  Rachel shrugged her off. The evening was dark around them, but the house, percolating with oil heat, felt warm. There were pools of light in the kitchen, above the table, over the sink, over the range. The rest of the room receded into pleasant darkness. “Another thing I’ve been thinking is that I should have a key to the house. I don’t need Mrs. Goldsmith to babysit me anymore.”

  “She’s not babysitting,” Andy said. “Don’t you like hanging out with Tiffany?”

  “Oh my God, how many times do I have to tell you Tiffany Goldsmith is like the biggest loser in school—”

  “Rachel,” he said, sharply.

  “What I mean,” she took a breath, “what I mean is that it doesn’t matter how I feel about Tiffany. What I feel like is that I’m old enough to be allowed to come home after school with a key. I’m almost eleven. I’m not a baby, and I’m not—”

  Her argument was interrupted by a rap on the window of the kitchen door. “Jeremy!” Belle said, jumping up, while Rachel rolled her eyes. “Hey! Look, it’s Jeremy!”

  Jeremy, and Sheila, whom he had barely seen in the weeks since whatever had happened between them had happened—passing her with a smile and a quick word at school drop-off, and once stopping to chat by the benches in front of Our Lady of Lourdes—they stood huddled outside his front door, filling Andy with an unpleasant anxiety. She hadn’t mentioned anything about their encounter, and neither had he, and he assumed that whatever awkwardness it had engendered would soon enough evaporate in t
he repetition of their day-to-day routine. But she hadn’t been in his house since that night, and her presence there now felt enormous. Without wanting to, he imagined her wide white body, that sturdy underwear. He opened the door. They came in, stood by the door.

  “Hey, guys,” he said, standing, affable. Sheila had her hands in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “Anybody want some spaghetti? Rachel here was saying that we should start making our own sauce, but I don’t know—”

  “Actually, what I was saying was that I should have my own key to the house. Jeremy has his own key, right? And he’s eight.”

  “Rachel—” Andy said.

  Now they were all standing, and Sheila looked apologetic, as though her very presence had started a fight. “We were just taking a walk home from pizza and saw your light on. We thought we’d say hi.” She paused. “It’s been a while.”

  “Isn’t that right, Mrs. Humphreys? Doesn’t Jeremy have his own key?” Rachel had a hand on her hip.

  “You know, Rachel,” Sheila said, her expression turning from plaintive to responsible, “what your dad decides about you and your safety has nothing to do with whether Jeremy has a key—”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Do you guys want to play foosball?” Belle asked. They’d found a foosball table at a rummage sale the previous weekend, set it up in the corner of the living room.

  “Argh,” said Rachel, who could see she was getting nowhere. Jeremy, who was short and malnourished-looking (all those chicken nuggets) followed the girls out of the room. And then Andy was alone with Sheila, in his house. Outside, the crab apple tree was just starting to shed.

  He turned to the sink, began washing the pans.

  “I haven’t seen you much,” she said, picking up a plate and ferrying it to sink.

  “You don’t have to do that,” he said, taking the plate from her hands. They were standing under the light by the sink, but the moody darkness was all around them, and Andy suddenly felt alarmed by how poor the lighting was in this room. Surely he could buy some lamps, some better bulbs.

  “I just wanted to make sure—make sure everything was okay.”

  “Of course it is,” Andy said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”