The Explanation for Everything

by Lauren Grodstein

  “Please,” Marty said, looking around his cherry-paneled living room, the oil paintings of hunting dogs on the walls. “What do they do? Listen, I worked three jobs to get my ass through Yale. I stocked groceries at night. You think any of these kids do that?”

  “Some of them might.”

  “They drive nicer cars than I do,” Marty said, which was certainly true for some of them, but Andy had always suspected that Marty drove his rusty Ford just so that he could point out that his students drove nicer cars than he did.

  “We have a lot of kids on financial aid. Two thirds of them, I think.”

  “I don’t know,” Marty said, shaking his head dolefully. “I look at the student parking lot, it’s full of Audis. You know how much I’d like an Audi?”

  “So buy yourself an Audi,” said George Hayad.

  “Jane would never let me. Jane doesn’t like German cars.”

  “Ah,” George said, and the three men stared into their scotch, then at each other, trying to determine what to say next.

  “So I’ve been trying to finish up an Advancing Theory of Biology grant for the NSF,” Andy said, as the grant was his conversational Audi, impressing his colleagues into hushed submission. “I’m thinking we could really upgrade our lab equipment with the funding, maybe even hire a postdoc or two.”

  “Federal funding is impossible now,” George said.

  “You think we need a postdoc?” Marty smiled, unimpressed. Andy had overplayed his hand. “For what, may I ask?”

  “Well,” Andy said, “my research is complicated.”

  “Ah,” Marty said. “You still doing whatever it is with the mice?”

  “He cuts off their heads. It’s like an abattoir down there.” George pronounced abattoir with a French accent.

  “That’s how animal research gets done,” said Marty. “Don’t be a philistine.” But he and George laughed together for quite some time, leaving Andy to stare into his scotch.

  “Well,” said Marty, after a few minutes of fraternal chuckling, “here come the ladies. Is it time to eat?”

  “Mmm,” said George. “Smells like roast.”

  Over dinner, Sheila was quiet and deferential. She mentioned twice that she was just a dental hygienist, had never even gone to college, and that she had never sat around at a table with so many doctors before. At this, Andy wanted to say that they weren’t actually doctors, that none of them could cure cancer or even prescribe a Valium, but of course one was never supposed to say that to a PhD, even if you yourself had a PhD, and also Andy had somehow forgotten how much people drank at these parties. (Had he forgotten? Or had he just not felt like remembering?) He himself was drinking more than usual, had already put down a glass and a half of red by the time the soup was cleared, plus the scotch.

  “So Sheila, tell us, do you ever see any really gory teeth?” asked Nina Graff, whose own teeth were stained wine red. “Like just disgusting mouthfuls you cannot believe?”

  “Oh man, I could tell you stories.”

  Please, thought Andy, don’t.

  But Sheila was suddenly in her element; she launched into detailed accounts of the various malocclusions and enamel rot she encountered day to day, unaware she was being humored (was she being humored?) while the biology department sliced and swallowed their tenderloin. And then, soon enough, it was time for cake—“puds,” said George, who had studied eight million years ago at Cambridge—and then it would be over, and Andy could go home to his girls, his little house.

  “And toddlers are the worst. Parents putting juice in their kids’ bottles.”

  “Really?” Nina said, putting down her glass. “I don’t believe you. Who would do such a thing? Who would do that?”

  “It’s true. And not just poor kids, either. Educated parents give their kids milk all day, not knowing milk has sugars that rot kids’ teeth. I’ve seen two-year-olds who need their entire mouths replaced.”

  “But that’s horrible!” Nina said. “Oh, don’t go on. I can’t bear it. Two-year-olds? I just can’t bear it.”

  “Nina gets very exercised,” said Nina’s husband, the orthopedist, and then he kissed his drunk vegan wife on the head, and this was the moment that Andy realized it was late, his head was pounding, he really had to go.

  “So many parents have no idea how to handle their kids’ oral health.” Sheila put down her ice water, made a large gesture with her hands. “You ask them if they brush their kids’ teeth, they say no, they let their kids do it themselves. I’m like, great, I’m all for self-directed kids, but you’re talking toddlers! Twenty months old, they know how to brush their own teeth?”

  “Can you see it?” asked Nina. “When you look in their mouths?”

  “Of course!” Sheila laughed. “Brown teeth, soft spots. You want to shake these parents, you really do. And then the best one, one time we find a two-year-old with eleven cavities. So clearly, the kid’s going to need anesthesia, which is a major thing on a small child, and probably at least one root canal—and then he comes back for a follow up visit and he’s drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola!”

  “No!” said Nina and Linda as one.

  “I swear. Our receptionist wanted to call the authorities.”

  “I can’t say I blame her!” Nina said. “I would have called them myself!”

  “Except it’s not a crime to give a kid a bottle of Coke.”

  “Under some circumstances,” Nina said. “Under some circumstances it certainly is a crime.”

  “Nina believes in the nanny state,” said her husband.

  “I’m just reasonable,” Nina said. “I’m sorry, but I think I’m just a reasonable person.” She flushed. Sheila was nodding her head in agreement, pouring herself more ice water.

  “Well, it’s probably time to get going.”

  Nina looked alarmed. “Andy, Andy, you can’t leave! We haven’t even talked about you yet.”

  “What is there to say?” He pushed back his chair but did not stand.

  “Did you know,” Linda asked, addressing the table, picking up her glass as though she were about to give a toast, “did you know that Andy here is sponsoring an independent study with some student on—get this—intelligent design? I couldn’t believe it. The paperwork came by my desk just the other week.”

  “You’re kidding,” said Nina. “An independent study in ID? But is that even science?”

  “That’s what I thought. I thought, Andy, is this even science?”

  “It’s a route to science,” Andy said. “It’s a…,” and this was where he relented, poured himself a final half glass, “it’s a pathway to talk about real issues in evolution,” he said. “So that she’ll have to confront the full scope of the science.”

  “Who’s the student?”

  “Melissa Potter. She’s a community college transfer.”

  “What would your old friend Rosenblum say to that?” Nina asked, chuckling. “To you taking on a community college student’s work on intelligent design? I bet Rosenblum would be very annoyed.” Nina had met Rosenblum once twenty years ago at a book signing and still liked to talk about the meeting, her momentary encounter with infamy.

  “Actually, he’d love it,” Andy said. “And she’s not in community college anymore. She’s one of ours.”

  “Oh, but Andy, honestly,” Nina said. “I mean, honestly.”

  “Melissa Potter?” George wondered, aloud. “Do I know her?”

  “Big girl,” Marty said. “I’ve seen her.”

  “Well, don’t you think she’ll come around?” Linda said. She reached, with her fingers, for a scrap of Jane Reuben’s sugar-glazed orange cake.

  Andy knew he should bid his leave, but didn’t. “What do you mean?”

  “She’ll separate truth from fiction,” Linda said. She leaned back in her brocade chair, expansive, chewing on cake. Her husband gazed at her adoringly. “Don’t you think you’ll be able to open her eyes to see the world as it is? Not the world she wants it to be? I mean, I think
that’s your responsibility as her teacher, Andy. She’s old enough to stop believing in fairy tales. And you’re such a good teacher. You can get her to stop believing in that garbage.”

  His head pounded. The buried sizzle of heartburn. “But it’s not garbage—it’s not a fairy tale to her.”

  “Garbage, bullshit, pick your terms,” said Linda. “I prefer fairy tale. That the world was created in seven days, etcetera, etcetera.”

  Though Sheila kept a pleasant smile plastered on her face, he could tell she was lost. Weren’t they just talking about dentition? She took frequent, anxious sips of her ice water.

  “It just—I don’t think it helps to call it a fairy tale,” Andy said. “She has done a lot of research into irreducible complexity, Behe’s work in the theory.”

  Sheila fiddled with her bracelet. “Sheila, that’s the idea,” Linda said, kindly, “that certain organisms are so complex that they couldn’t have developed generation after generation, via selective pressure. According to this guy Behe, a scientist out of—where is he, Nina?”

  “Lehigh.”

  “Lehigh!” Linda snorted. “A legit school! Anyway, this guy proposes that a particular part of a kind of bacteria contains parts that would be useless on their own, and therefore would never have arisen independently. The flagellum had to be designed, he said, because it’s too complex to have come about via evolution.”

  “Oh,” Sheila said.

  “It’s nonsense, of course. Total crapola, as they say. But reassuring to the Jesus crowd, I suppose. Lehigh! Amazing.”

  “You’re really supporting this student’s research?” asked Marty, pouring himself another. He was growing out his beard, gray-striped, like a skunk. “Do you think that’s morally sound?”

  “Of course I do,” Andy said, trying to keep the peevishness from his voice. “Why wouldn’t I? How could it be unsound to support a student’s inquiry into—anything? Isn’t the point that she’s inquiring? Isn’t that a good thing?”

  “Yes, but for her to inquire into a belief system rather than a scientifically provable theory—at the very least, it seems a waste of time,” Marty said. He stroked his fledgling beard.

  “Look, the fact that she wants to research an avenue of science seems laudable to me. Besides, she believes what she believes, and if we demean it—”

  “Of course she believes it,” Linda said, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t lead her to the truth. You’re such a sweet guy, Andy. You respect your students, which is great. But you’re a biology professor, first and foremost. It is your job to inform the students about the realities of biology.”

  “Your realities,” Andy said.

  “What? No,” Linda said. “The realities. This isn’t subjective, Andy. You know that, right? Science is objective? As is the truth?”

  “I—sure,” he said. He knew science was objective, and that truth was objective, but what every person needed to get through their lives—that was not quite as black-and-white. “Listen, I better get going,” he said. “Sheila needs to get back.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Oh, but Andy—you didn’t finish your cake! Let me wrap up some for you, for the girls. Sheila, could I get you some to take home?” and before he could stop her Jane Reuben was up and bustling, the conversation was once again bustling, Linda was pontificating about something new but still she stopped for a second to give Andy what seemed to be a distinctly wary eye.

  “Before you go, just tell me—you aren’t going to validate Melissa Potter’s intelligent design crap, are you, Andy? Irreducible complexity?” Linda said. “You’re not going to stamp that crap with department approval, are you?”

  “I don’t have a stamp, Linda.”

  “Just tell me you’re not. This is a serious biology department. Nina? Wouldn’t you say we’re a serious biology department?”

  Nina was half-slumped. “It is so serious, Linda. We are so very serious.”

  Andy drained his glass, stood to go. Sheila stood too, smoothed her dress.

  “The thing is, Andy, it has to start with us. We have to be the bulwark,” Linda opined, from her comfortable seat in the beautiful house. “And I get it, Andy, you’re such a sweet guy, you want to be nice to your students, but remember you’re doing them no favors if you let them believe in lies.”

  “Gotcha,” Andy said.

  “You can’t validate the lies.”

  “Jane, where’s the bathroom?” Andy asked, even though he knew. Under an oil painting of a sunrise, Andy took a long, dribbly piss. Then he rifled through a basket under the sink for an aspirin but he found only tampons and condoms. For whom? What kind of guest bathroom stored condoms? Tantalized, rebellious, he pocketed a handful.

  “Sheila, it was so nice to meet you,” Linda said, as Andy took his Tupperwared wedge of cake, his pocketed condoms, Sheila to the door.

  “Thank you,” Sheila said. “Thank you. I had the loveliest time.”

  The condoms felt heavy in his pocket. Sheila offered to drive, but he said no, he was fine, he would do it.

  “Who is this Melissa character?” she asked him as they departed Lace Point, got back on Church Road toward their own forsaken strip of New Jersey. “They certainly seemed up in arms about her work.”

  “Oh, just a student,” Andy said. “She’s nobody.”

  “Then why were they so freaked out?”

  “You ever hear of the Scopes monkey trial?”

  “Tennessee, right? William Jennings Bryan?”

  Andy was surprised; he hadn’t expected her to know it. “Well, Melissa might have come out on the other side.”

  The lights which led them out of town abruptly turned dark as they crossed an invisible border. They were in the country.

  “So she’s a religious fanatic,” Sheila said.

  “If you believe in God are you automatically a fanatic?”

  “Hey, whoa,” Sheila said, pressing an imaginary brake with her palm. “That’s not what I said. I’m just trying to figure out why you seem defensive when you talk about her.”

  Andy didn’t say anything. The road twisted into the pines.

  “At dinner, I mean.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be defensive.”

  “Well nobody ever does—”

  “She’s my babysitter.”

  “Ah,” Sheila said. She smiled like she understood. “And you like her.”

  “I trust her with my girls,” Andy said. When he pulled in front of her house, she did not immediately open the door to get out. He wondered if he was supposed to open the door for her. Well, he wouldn’t. He was tired and his head still pounded.

  “So,” she said, “you have a babysitter?” She turned to him with a heavy-lidded smile.

  “Yes,” he said. “And I better get back to her. It’s late.”

  “Oh,” Sheila said. “Okay.” She paused another second before opening her car door. “Well, thanks again. I really had a lovely time.”

  “Me too,” Andy said, and because he was a gentleman, he waited to make sure she was safely in the house before backing out of her driveway to his own darkened home.

  BUT WALKING TO his own front door, he felt lighter. Melissa had heard him jam his key into the lock and opened the door for him, smiling, leaning against the jamb. “Hey, Doctor.” She was so young, so untainted by that preposterous dinner party. And now that they hung out more often she called him Doctor, or sometimes Doc, although not Andy, never Andy.

  “The girls were good?”

  “They were great,” she said. “Noncombative.”

  He followed her into the kitchen. It was starting to get icy out, and the windows were steaming; water was boiling in the kettle. She had put out a mug with a tea bag in it. Two mugs, in fact; two tea bags. She planned on staying, and she knew where he kept the tea bags.

  “So did you like hanging out with the other biology teachers?” she asked. “What did you guys talk about? Did you talk about your students?” Here she turned and ma
de a kissy face, the first adorable gesture he’d ever seen her make.

  “Eh, nothing important,” he said, ignoring Melissa’s adorability, watching her pour water into the mugs.

  “What’s nothing important?”

  “Politics,” he said. “Family. I don’t know, what people talk about. Not students,” he lied. “There was too much booze, but otherwise it was fine.”

  “You didn’t drink, though, did you?” Melissa asked, as she sat down with the tea, pushed a mug toward him across the table.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You didn’t drink, right?” And here Andy wondered if he’d committed some foul, because when he counted up everything and included the scotch, he drank four alcoholic beverages over four hours, which wasn’t enough to become impaired but which was certainly more than he ever drank in ordinary circumstances. In ordinary circumstances, in fact, he didn’t drink at all! Should he tell her that? He couldn’t remember whether alcohol was specifically against whatever religious rules Melissa subscribed to but he didn’t feel like apologizing for it. She had never been subjected to one of Marty Reuben’s dinner parties and never would be.

  She blew on her tea, casual. “Just because, you know, you had to drive. So you wouldn’t want to be drinking.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She sipped her tea. She probably wasn’t aware that she was needling him. She was twenty-one, with a twenty-one-year-old’s idea of right and wrong, a twenty-one-year-old’s unmalleable morality. And she had no real idea of his biography.

  “Well, anyway, the girls really were great tonight,” she said. “I helped Rachel with her science homework. She’s doing a project on rock porosity? So we’ve been soaking those rocks. You’ll see, we left a bunch of buckets in their bedroom.”

  “Melissa, I don’t drink and drive,” Andy said, although he knew he must be drunk, at least a little, to even begin this conversation. Why was he defending himself? Why were they drinking tea together? The clock above the sink said it was almost midnight and there was no reason for her to still be in his house. She had a Honda Civic parked in his driveway. He could give her money and she could leave.