Philosophy Made Simple (4 page)

When Rudy came downstairs, TJ was demonstrating his parallel universe thesis to Dan and the girls. They’d propped up Helens old projector on the dining room table so that the beam of light was aimed at two tiny slits in a piece of tinfoil that had been fastened with a clothespin to a makeshift frame made out of a coat hanger.

“Like Plato’s cave, Rudy, don’t you think?” TJ said. Rudy, who had drawn a new sketch of Plato’s cave while they were sitting at the kitchen table after supper, pulled up a chair and sat down.

“Right, Rudy?” TJ said. “We’re in the cave, and this little beam of light on the wall is all we can see of the reality of the world. But what can we conclude from this little band of light? That’s the question. Can we use our minds to explore the world outside the cave?”

Rudy was afraid he couldn’t have concluded much himself.

“What you see,” TJ explained, “is that the two slits have divided each color — each wavelength — into two waves. When the crests of these waves overlap, you see a band of light on the wall; when a crest and a trough come together, they cancel each other out. If this were a laser projector, we’d see just light and
dark, but with white light we see a rainbow The principle is the same, though. Each photon has a particular wavelength that will determine the angle at which it will have interference maxima, bright spots. The separation into different angles is what causes the rainbow effect.”

Now this was something Rudy could almost understand. Or, if he couldn’t understand it, at least he could imagine understanding it; but he couldn’t follow the argument any further, couldn’t understand how the pattern of light on the wall led to the theory of parallel universes.

What he really wanted to know was if these parallel universes were like Plato’s forms or ideas, but he couldn’t pin TJ down.
TJ’s ultimate truths were not geometrical, like Plato’s; they were probability waves.

What he really wanted to know was if Helen might be living with Bruni in a parallel universe, and if it might be possible to visit her. But he didn’t ask, because he didn’t want to appear foolish.

Nobody said anything about the
FOR SALE
sign till it was almost bedtime and they were finishing off the last of a bottle of wine in front of the fire. The dogs were on the side porch, banging to get in. TJ and Dan were still at the dining room table.

“I see you’ve got the house up for sale,” Meg said.

“Oh, that.”

Molly got up to let the dogs in. Rudy suddenly realized that she’d quit smoking.

“Molly and I’ve been talking,” Meg said. “We think it’s a great idea. This place is too big for you. You must rattle around here all by yourself. You’d be better off in an apartment, or one of those new retirement condos. Dan and I heard them talking about one on the radio on the way down, Carleton Estates,
something like that. You’d have everything you need right there. A pool, a sauna. You’d have your own kitchen if you want to cook, but there’s a dining room too. The best of both worlds.”

A
pool? A sauna? What do I need with a pool and a sauna? “
What about Margot?”

“She’s twenty-nine years old,” Molly said. “Its about time she got a place of her own. You’re too protective. She’s got to get out in the world.”

“Where do you think she is? She sure as hell isn’t upstairs in her room. And what about the dogs?”

“They’re getting old, Papa. How much longer do you think they’ve got?” Molly ran her fingers through her hair. She was the beauty of the family She had Helen’s red hair and Helens golden freckles. Repeated applications of freckle cream when she was a teenager had failed to dim their luster.

“Well, I dunno. They don’t look so old to me.”

“We could take the dogs, Pop,” Meg said. “We’ve got plenty of room now. We were thinking of getting a dog anyway It would be good for the boys.”

“If you go back to work you’ll be gone all day.”

“You’re gone all day too, Pop. We’ll fence in the backyard. They’ll be okay.”

“This neighborhood could go downhill, Papa,” Molly said, “but these old places are still trendy. It’s good you’re selling while you’ve got the chance. In three months I’ll have my license. I’ll take care of everything for you, the listing, showing,
financing, closing, the works.”

“You going to have a license to practice in Illinois?” Rudy asked.

“I’m planning to take the test for Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, New York, and California. How about something like this: Victorian fantasy. Shingle style. Four bedrooms, study, two
bathrooms. Parquet floors. Baccarat crystal chandelier. Leaded glass windows. Butlers pantry. Beautiful millwork. Fireplace.
Modern kitchen, laundry room. Full basement. Excellent condition.

“How does that sound? You’ll get a good price for this place, 1 promise you.”

Rudy didn’t know what to say. Fie was dumbfounded. “You might as well get on the phone and call the undertaker right now,”
he said. “Tell him to bring the hearse around to the back door. Or call the knacker, for cryin” out loud. I’ve lived in this house for over thirty years. You don’t think I’m going to pack up and move out just like that, do you? After thirty years?
Your mother and I paid eighteen thousand dollars for this house. Why, you couldn’t build a house like this today for a quarter of a million dollars.”

“Papa, that’s not what we meant and you know it.” Meg unfastened her hair and shook it loose. “What we meant is that we want you to do whatever you want to do, and that if you want to sell the house, it’s okay with us. You don’t have to worry about us, we’ll go along with anything.
You’re
the one who put it up for sale without saying anything to anybody.”

“Suit yourself,” Molly said, “if that’s what you really want to do.”

About an hour later the phone rang. Rudy was sitting at the kitchen table filling stockings and he grabbed it on the first ring. There was a click and the phone went dead, and he froze. The phone always clicked like that and then went dead on overseas calls. It would ring again in a little over a minute, and the overseas operator would be on the line. It was a special kind of click. He knew it was the same for good news as for bad news, but it made him uneasy anyway

Spread out on the table before him were six large gray wool
hunting socks with red tops and six piles of stuff: oranges, apples, dried apricots and raisins (wrapped in saran wrap),
chocolate kisses in foil, salted peanuts, ballpoint pens, mechanical pencils, little bars of scented soap for the girls, penknives for Dan and Tejinder, crayons and protractors for Daniel and Philip. He’d always filled stockings and he didn’t see any point in stopping now. He opened one of the penknives and tested the blade. His pulse was speeding up, his chest was tight, his arm was going numb. He had to get hold of himself. The house was strangely silent except for the occasional clink of a metal dog collar and a strange pounding that might have been his heart. It was strong enough to rattle the copper saucepans hanging from a rack over the table.

The phone rang again. It was Margot, all right. At first he didn’t pay any attention to what she was saying. He was listening for something else, like a mechanic listening to an engine idling.

“Is it really you, Papa? I had trouble getting through. Say something.”

“How are you?”

“Oh, Papa, I’m so happy. I’m in love, really in love. Head over heels. Can you hear me all right? I don’t want to say it too loud.”

“Where are you?”

“At the post office.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning here. What time is it there?”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“Is it Christmas yet?”

“It’s still Christmas Eve. I’m filling the stockings. I gave yours to Molly’s boyfriend. His name’s Tejinder, but she calls him TJ. He’s from India; his father’s dead and his mother lives in Assam. She runs a tea garden.”

When he knew she was all right he was tempted to scold her:
Why didn’t you write? Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you come home? You promised..
. But he was too overwhelmed, too happy.

“Well,” he said. “That’s wonderful. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“He’s an Italian.”

“Married?”

“No, Papa. Well, yes, but he’s getting a divorce. He’s from the Abruzzi. He’s the head restorer for the whole region of Tuscany.
He’s working on the frescoes in the Lodovici Chapel in the Badia. You remember the Badia? The monastery, where they had the foosball game in the cloister? It’s still there.”

Rudy’d gone to Florence back in 1953. Ike had moved into the White House in January; the Soviets had tested their first H-bomb;
the Braves had moved to Milwaukee; Jonas Salk had developed a vaccine for polio; and Helen had started her affair with Bruno Bruni. He’d gone to Florence to bring her back home, but he’d come back alone. The foosball game he remembered, after all these years, but that was about all — the foosball game, and the big piazzas and the little coffee bars, and the trip to Venice,
and how he felt sick to his stomach the whole time.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “And the Martini
Annunciation.
1 sent you a postcard of it. Didn’t you get it?”

“I got it; it’s up on the refrigerator.”

He tried to picture her in the post office. He couldn’t remember anything about Florence. He’d been too upset to pay much attention to the city But he imagined Margot in a booth, with her friend — her lover — standing outside, waiting, impatient,
eager.

“What are your plans? I mean, are you coming home, or what?”

“We’re going to the Abruzzi sometime in January to see Sandro’s parents, and then to Rome.”

“Have you written to your boss at the Newberry? He called here the other day To tell you the truth, I don’t think you’ve got a job anymore.”

But she didn’t hear him, and he didn’t repeat himself. It might just be possible, he thought to himself. A mature man with a good job, a responsible position. But married?

He suddenly realized what was shaking the saucepans. It was the bed upstairs, in Molly’s room. The Indian was humping his daughter. They were shaking the whole house with their lust. It gave him a hard-on, just the cruel fact of it. It made him ache for Helen the way he’d ached for her in Florence, and they hadn’t made love once the whole time he was there.

“I didn’t know you could get a divorce in Italy,” he said.

“It’s an annulment. It’s the same thing. You’ll see. Don’t worry, Papa, I’m all right, I’m fine, I’ll write to you, I really will. I have to go now”

“Take care of yourself.”

“You take care of yourself too. I love you. Tell everyone I love them.” That was all she said. But it was enough. He was sorry now that he’d tried to stop her from going, had refused to pay for her ticket. He could see now that she’d needed to get away, to reinvent herself. She was tired of being a mousy librarian. And now she was in love with a married man in Italy.

He finished filling the stockings and carried them into the living room, where he spread them out on the coffee table in front of the fireplace. He moved the TV into a dark corner in the dining room, ate the cookies the boys had left for Santa and wrote an answer to the note they’d left, which was what his father had done for him, and what he’d done for the girls.

Thanks for the milk and cookies. Be good.

—
Santa

He filled the humidifier, turned down the thermostat, let the dogs out, turned off the tape deck, which had been left on,
let
the dogs back in, put the garbage container up on the kitchen table so the dogs wouldn’t empty it. The house had started to shake again, the pots and pans to rattle. Rudy got a hammer out of his toolbox, pulled on his jacket, and went outside to take down the
FOR SALE
sign.

He still had a hard-on, a great lump of sensation swelling against his trousers. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt,
and even though he didn’t know what he could do about it, he was grateful. It was good to be alive. He felt like a young man,
young and strong, the way he’d felt when he and Helen had moved into the house, which looked just the same now as it had then.
They’d kept the red trim. Cardinal red. Rudy thought of the first Christmas they’d spent in this house, after his fathers death, and of Mr. Ballard, the previous owner, whose downstate paving-brick business had fallen into the hands of the receivers,
and who had driven off to California with his whole family in a broken-down Pierce-Arrow And he thought of the French doll-house and the steamer trunks that the Ballards had left in the attic, and the letter that Ballard had sent him about a year later,
telling him about the house: how Harald Kreutzberg, the famous German dancer, had been entertained there, and Cornelia Otis Skinner, and Matthew Arnold, and Aleka Rostislav, who was Princess Galitzine and whose husbands father was the brother of the last czar, and many other famous people. Rudy kept the letter in a fireproof box on the shelf on top of the big desk,
along with Helen’s will and her other papers and the girls’ school records.