The Explanation for Everything (25 page)

“I just think—I think I'm going to head in other directions. See some of the country. Spend time with my girls.”

“What, is it tenure? You'll get tenure!” Andy didn't know if he should be flattered or worried by the craziness in Lionel's voice. “I'll write to people! We'll figure things out! We
need
you, Professor Waite! Without you—who will lead us brights here on campus? Who will be our voice?”

“You're your own voice, Lionel. You always have been.”

“No. No! I'm a reflection of yours! And I've realized that religion is a failed idea, just as you've been teaching! Religion is a failed idea, and if we don't spread the word soon then our whole world will be endangered! Just like you said! How can you just walk away from what you've been teaching all these years?”

Andy stood. He needed to collect his briefcase, put away his mice, go back home. “It's not a failed idea, Lionel. You should know it's more powerful than that.”

“Are you serious, Professor?”

He nodded, walked toward the exit. “Listen, Lionel, wherever you head next, don't forget you needed God once and you might again.”

“I can't believe you just said that,” the kid squeaked. “Are you some sort of traitor? You sound like a traitor.”

“I'm sorry, Lionel,” Andy said, and then he closed the door.

He was unsurprised then to see Louisa standing at the other end of the hall, almost out of sight. She was walking away. He called her name; she didn't stop.

“Louisa,” he said again.

She kept walking, but just as she was about to disappear from view, she looked at him, and she was smiling.

EPILOGUE: SUMMER BREAK

The day after he turned in his final grades, Andy woke up, as had once been his routine, at five thirty. He hadn't realized how this organizing principle of his life had disappeared, but it had—he hadn't been writing his letters, and he missed them.

Down the hall, the girls slept deeply in their own beds. Now that Belle was baptized, she said she felt safer at night, wasn't scared to sleep by herself. Evidently Madeline had told her that if you were baptized, then when you died you went to heaven, no questions asked. “So nothing bad can ever really happen to me, right? I mean, if worst case I go to heaven—”

“Belle, don't talk about that.”

“Yeah, but I mean if like worst, worst case—”

“Belle, stop it,” Rachel said. “We're not interested in the hereafter.” They had been eating Rachel's eggplant parmigiana, and Andy wondered where she had learned the word
hereafter.

At a quarter of six he was in front of his laptop on the kitchen table. “Dear Oliver” he wrote. For some reason he felt that now they were on a first-name basis.

It has come to my attention that your sentence has been extended another two years, and I know that the next two years will seem agonizing to you. I have visited Okeechobee Prison only as far as the hearing room, and even that place is difficult to spend much time in. I can only imagine how much you must want to leave.

Andy stretched his hands, cracked his knuckles. Continued.

Your mother has brought it to my attention that, while in prison, you earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Florida in the arts. If I remember correctly, Oliver, you were a fine artist before your incarceration, and your teachers said that you were especially good at drawing.

Through my contacts at various research journals and textbook companies, I know that, periodically, assignments come up for medical illustrators. If that kind of work seems appealing to you, then once you are released I would be happy to put you in touch with the right people.

Andy struggled with the next paragraph. Should he apologize for his role in Oliver's parole case? Should he apologize for even offering to help? For the awkwardness? The forced-seeming nature of the gesture?

I wish you the best as you get through the next two years of your sentence. If you see your mother, please tell her I wish her well too.

Sincerely yours,

Andy Waite

He pressed “print.” It had taken him an hour and a half to write these few paragraphs, but he was happy with them. For the first time, he addressed the letter to Oliver, put a stamp on the envelope, and stuck it in his mailbox to await the postman.

Then he went back inside to wake up his girls.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I couldn't have written this book without the generous help of the following friends, family members, and institutions:

Julie Herbstman and her colleagues at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health, along with Steve Moffett and Joe Martin of Rutgers-Camden's Biology Department, explained their research, let me tour their labs, and fact-checked my science. The nurses and pediatricians of the Englewood Hospital NICU, who took such loving care of my son, provided comfort and inspiration. My high school buddy, the pastor Richard J. Lee, gave me insights into life at the Bethany Well church. James Brust provided the college motto. Lauren Butcher at New Jersey's Raptor Trust and the biologist Erik Charych shared their enormous expertise. The writers Carmen Adamucci, Elisa Albert, John Biguenet, Kelly Braffet, Lise Funderburg, Kate Kelly, Owen King, Stephen King, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Rolf Potts, and Lisa Zeidner offered all the right support at the right times. The Moriuchi, Colletto, and Ferner families provided crucial reinforcement on the home front. The books of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Francis Collins, and of course Charles Darwin brought me knowledge and pleasure.

I am endlessly lucky to have Jerry and Adele Grodstein, Elliot and Mychi Grodstein, and Jessie, Iain, Owen, and Natalie Kennedy as my shoulders to lean on. And where would I be without Kathy Pories and the amazing people of Algonquin Books? Where would I be without my dearest Julie Barer? No place good, that's for sure.

And finally, for their love and their patience, and for bringing me such joy, I dedicate this book to Ben and Nathaniel Freeman.

Praise for
A Friend of the Family

“Stunning . . . An unqualified success . . . Grodstein's sentences are finely made and precisely fitted to one another and her story . . . She has written a novel that will leave her reader sitting up, sifting the evidence in the dead of night.” —
The Boston Globe

“A gripping novel . . . Told with great understanding and sensitivity, gripping readers so that they will find the book hard to put down.” —C
hicago
Tribune

“Horrifyingly plausible and deeply poignant . . . Will leave you shaken and chastened—and grateful for the warning.” —
The Washington Post Book World

“What a wonderful and compelling read. This book is full of insights and honesty; you will have a hard time putting it down . . . Grodstein's skills at storytelling are unwavering.” —Elizabeth Strout, author of
Olive Kitteridge

“A persuasive indictment of a certain kind of privileged narrow-mindedness . . . In the best tradition of parenting gone catastrophically awry.” —
O: The Oprah Magazine

“Involving at every level: character, plot, language. One of the more complicated portraits of a father's love for his son we've ever read . . . Highly recommended.” —
McSweeney's

“Suspense worthy of Hitchcock . . . This is less a novel about one imperfect citizen than a sharp account of the status- driven suburban culture that turned him into a monster of conformity.” —
The New York Times Book Review

“Grodstein's harsh, honest prose makes this haunting tale worthwhile.”
—People

“Spot-on in its depiction of affection and jealousy among longtime friends; boozy suburban bashes; unrequited love; and adjusting to middle age.”
—USA Today

“A gripping portrayal of a suburban family in free-fall . . . The structure of compromise and principle supporting a happy family is precariously perched to begin with, and in Grodstein's skilled hands love is an unstable element.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“In her wonderful second novel, Grodstein traces a suburban crisis and gives especially perceptive attention to the father-son bond . . . An astute dissector of male aspiration, Grodstein brings great insight into a father's protective urge for his son in this gripping portrait of an American family in crisis.”
—San Francisco Examiner

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2013 by Lauren Grodstein.

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

ISBN 978-1-61620-343-6