The Explanation for Everything (12 page)

“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.

B
UT
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 made 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.

“No, of course,” she said, quickly. She held her mug with both hands. “I didn't mean to sound like I was—”

“My wife was killed by a drunk driver,” he said. And again, why say this? Except the look on Melissa's face, of fresh horror and shame, made him feel stronger. Powerful. What had happened to him could still horrify people. And he was drunk, he'd admit it, four glasses in four hours, but he was drunk with something else too, loneliness, he supposed, and it felt an awful lot like being drunk on alcohol, the same resentment, the same headache. He thought about how he'd treated Sheila, like he didn't know better, except he did, and he felt guilty about that, and resentful that Sheila made him feel guilty, and all that plus having to live every day with Louisa's ghost.

“I knew your wife was gone,” Melissa said. Her eyes looked damp. “I didn't know why.”

“Forget it,” he said. “It's nothing we have to talk about.”

“I didn't know what I was saying. I'm sorry.”

Andy was quiet. Melissa looked down at her tea bag, plopped it up and down a few times in the hot water to leech out the tea.

“She's in heaven, you know.”

“Melissa,” he said. His head was pounding. Tomorrow, Sunday, a long Sunday with the girls at home, and if he remembered right the weathermen were calling for snow. What would they do with themselves all day? Homework? Would he have to supervise homework? Would the girls feel trapped, start picking on each other, bickering, would he have to send them to Jeremy's house? Would he have to sit there and make chitchat with Sheila while the kids shot at each other on Jeremy's PlayStation? Would he have to change Sheila's lightbulbs? Fix her faucet? Stay for dinner?

He wanted Melissa to leave right away but also he wanted her to never leave.

“I know you don't necessarily believe what I believe,” Melissa said. “I tease you and everything but I know you don't really believe in a loving God the way I do, and I'm really not trying to change your mind.”

Let an undergraduate into your house and she'll think you've let her into your heart.

“And I would never say this to the girls, don't worry—we never talk about their mother and I never would bring that up—but I just want you to know . . .” She trailed off.

He could have stopped her there, but, again, he didn't. All his life he'd been like that, forgoing the small good decision in favor of entropy, letting the chips fall where they may. “I want you to know that her spirit lives on, Professor Waite,” Melissa said.

Above her the clock read 12:03.

“She watches over all three of you, all the time.”

She kept her voice low. She was looking down at the table, cheeks red. She knew she was taking liberties, but still she took them. It was perplexing to Andy that he'd never been better at stopping other people or himself from doing the wrong thing. If he'd been as powerful as he believed he might not even be at this kitchen table right now. And yet he wanted her to keep saying what she was saying, because she believed it, and it felt wonderful to hear her proclaim this particular belief.

“She's always there.”

In that moment, he saw that everything Melissa had introduced him to—the books, the beliefs, the way she interacted with his daughters—it had all brought him more comfort than anything else he had found since Lou's accident. Posttraumatic grief counseling and the awkward words of the therapist, the hugs of friends and family, the good, quiet time alone, the self-help books—none of it felt as good as Melissa's quiet affirmation, the Clings' affirmation. Lou was with God, watching over them. It was so simple. What would be the point of resistance?

He put his fingers on his temples and rubbed. “You know, this is nothing I've ever really talked about before.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't apologize,” he said, but could think of nothing else to reassure her. Really she shouldn't be talking about his dead wife at all. Really he should have stopped her. And yet the comfort of thinking his wife was alive, watching them, the comfort of this large awkward girl in his house . . .

She took their mugs to the sink, rinsed them. She was hunched again. She picked up a dish towel to dry the mugs.

“Melissa, it's late. I can do that.”

“Okay,” she said, but she finished wiping the mugs clean anyway, and that simple domestic gesture—he was exhausted, half-drunk, dreading tomorrow, full of entropy, unable to use force—and something in that simple domestic gesture made him fall in love just like that with this girl. Melissa believed in something. Melissa believed his wife was looking down at him. He wanted to borrow her belief. He loved her in that moment for having belief he wanted to borrow.

“Melissa,” he said. “Can I ask you something? Is God merciful? Or is he just? And don't say both—”

“He is just,” Melissa said, definitively. She didn't ask him why he wanted to know. And before he could stop himself—he was terrible at stopping himself—he was behind her with his hands on her shoulders and she had turned around and turned her face up at him, her broad face, damp eyes, but somehow pretty when she was happy, and he pressed his lips against hers. Why? Why? He tilted her chin with his finger.

Maybe he was just hoping to be slapped awake.

But she did not slap him; instead she pressed herself more firmly against him, opened her mouth a bit so that their tongues pressed against one another's—and how odd, this feeling, another woman's tongue, but how pleasurable too. Had he been celibate for seven years? Almost entirely he had. A quickie at the Academic Biology conference in Fresno four years ago, and then another at the same conference, a year later, in Atlanta. That second one he stuck around for breakfast, where he got his first good look at the woman, a grad student, at least fifteen years younger than he was. She was impoverished-looking, scooped up her hotel coffee shop eggs like a starving person. She didn't say much but kept smirking up at him from behind droopy lids. “You going to eat that?” she asked, pointing to his bacon.

And then, a few months ago, Sheila.

And that was it. In seven years.

He put his arms, gingerly, around Melissa's wide, firm waist. She pulled him closer. They could have moved to a couch or a chair or even the bedroom, but instead they stayed where they were, leaning against the kitchen sink. He put his hands in her soft hair. She ran a tentative hand against his waistband. God, he had those condoms in his pocket. Had he known in his subconscious, when he stole them from Marty's marble powder room? Had some part of him known or planned this?

“Melissa,” he breathed into her hot puffy hair.

She moved her head back and he looked at her face, pink-cheeked, pink-lipped. She wore a smile, half-apologetic, as though she had been the one who instigated this.

“I've never done this before,” he said. “I mean, since my wife died—I've rarely—and especially not a student.”

“I know,” she said. “You're not the type.”

The type? He took a step back. “I don't—I can't take advantage of you. You should go home.”

“I don't want to.”

“I know, but—”

“I won't tell anyone.”

He sighed, heavily, as his heart ticktocked. “Melissa,” he said again; her name was wonderful to say. Together they had done something they would have to keep secret. It had been a long time since he'd kept a secret, and the idea of it thrilled him. He kept his hands on her firm sides. He still felt that grace, that comfort, from just having her around. He leaned forward again. His mouth was on hers again. She pulled back, smiled, kissed him once more, and they stayed that way for many long minutes, Andy's head swimming, her mouth soft and pliant, and above him—could he hear it?—watching over him, forgiving, understanding, Lou among the chorus of angels.

Eventually he walked her to her car. He felt pleased and horny like a teenager. “Will I see you again?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said.

He didn't touch himself after he got into bed; instead, he assessed his bedroom, his shelves, clothes spilling out of them, coffee cups leaving rings on the nightstand, the journals. He wondered if he was losing his mind. Perhaps he was—but didn't he deserve to, for just a little while? He'd held out for so long. Beside him, one of Melissa's books. It made him happy just to hold something that was hers:
The Mystery of Intent.
He opened it up to the first page. “What believers understand,” said the author, but in his head he heard Melissa's husky voice, “is that there is no peace like the peace that comes from trusting God. If you don't believe, ask yourself, what do you have to lose by turning to belief? And what might you gain?”

Heart singing, angels singing, Andy thought to himself that really he had nothing to lose, and already, just from considering the possibility of belief, he had already gained so much. God is just. God wanted Oliver McGee in jail. He'd had a feeling this was how it was supposed to be.