~ ~ ~
Abbott’s syllabus is six pages, single-spaced. It is thorough and exact, and in its very form suggests the comforting notion that the world can be known. Additionally, the detailed schedule of readings and assignments should serve to ward off catastrophe until mid-December, at least. The teetering planet cannot collapse on October 14; there is an essay due that day. The white sheets of the syllabi are still faintly warm from the copy machine, and Abbott always feels, as he distributes them, that he is giving students something nourishing, something prepared, some baked good. He imagines a professor’s apron and mitts. Abbott plans to speak for just ten minutes or so about the class, but he speaks for thirty-five minutes. He plans to be stern and intimidating, but he isn’t. He plans not to allow any students to add the course, but he admits four students without even asking for their hard-luck stories. He erases the blackboard and walks to his office. Colleagues in the hallway shake his hand and congratulate him, and Abbott makes jokes about sleep. In his office he stands in front of his bookshelves. Often he has the feeling, looking at his books, that they somehow represent his own achievement. He wipes the dust from his desk with a tissue and then sits down, his back to the doorway. Through his window he can see students playing Frisbee in the bright grass. Abbott knows about the empty pie tins of the Frisbie Pie Company (1871–1958), and so he has no need to research the origins of the pastime. He is free just to watch, and he does. One must of course be cautious in making any broad assertion about human nature, but it seems to Abbott that humans like throwing and catching things in the sun. He turns on the lamp that he found beside a dumpster. Occasionally a student comes by, knocks timidly on the open door. The students are nervous and sincere. Over the summer they read the books that Abbott recommended, and they loved them. They have busy semesters, jobs. Their parents don’t want them to change majors again. Abbott remembers their names. They all speak in a rush, stop abruptly, and ask if Abbott had a good summer. Yes, thanks, Abbott says, very good. He walks across campus, and the day is so beautiful that he notices it. On his skin he feels sun and breeze, the counterpoise of seasons. He is not thinking much of anything. In the parking lot he walks up and down the rows, up and down, searching for his car. Eventually he finds it. He drives, engaging the clutch, depressing the brake, tapping the turn-signal wand. At a crosswalk he looks for his sunglasses and can’t find them. The car takes him right to his driveway. Inside the house he changes clothes and takes his elder daughter outside to walk around the block. The girl walks twenty-five feet past the driveway and stops at the grate. Abbott picks up a small rock, puts it in his palm, and extends his palm toward his daughter. His daughter pinches the rock between her thumb and forefinger, then holds it over the grate for a moment before dropping it in. Abbott and his daughter listen for the sound of the rock hitting water — a faint, high-pitched
bloop that reverberates in the dark tunnel. The girl laughs when she hears it. A spry, gray-haired woman walks up. She asks about the baby. She says many years ago her children used to sit right here and drop rocks down this same grate. “What a blessing,” she says, and then she walks off. Abbott and his daughter drop a few more rocks, enjoying the sound of the rocks hitting the water. Then they walk around the block. Precisely halfway, the girl asks to be picked up, so Abbott picks her up and carries her back to the house. “You’re getting so big,” he says over and over. The baby is asleep, and Abbott’s wife tells Abbott to take a nap if he wants. Abbott sleeps for twenty minutes and wakes up disoriented. In the bathroom he does not look in the mirror. The baby is up now, and he holds her in the family room while his other daughter plays with a blue tractor and his wife makes dinner. With one hand he helps his daughter make a ramp out of a large book, and they roll the tractor down the ramp. He helps her make a wall of blocks, and they roll the tractor down the ramp and into the wall of blocks. She puts four necklaces on Abbott and tries to put one on the baby. “Let’s not do that,” Abbott says. Then the girl pinches her finger in the jewelry box and cries. “Ouch,” Abbott says. “Let’s take a look at that.” At dinner, the baby lies quietly in the bassinet while mowers drone outside. “This is not a good dinner,” the girl says, but she eats quite a bit. “These are the last of the great tomatoes,” Abbott’s wife says. After dinner, the girl jumps on her new trampoline and then takes a bath. Abbott sits on the floor of the bathroom beside the tub. The tub has a shower door that slides on a track, so he can’t sit on the edge. He examines the frame of the sliding door, wondering how difficult it would be to remove. He can only imagine what has grown beneath the metal. He could remove the frame, clean the tub beneath, install a hanging rod and shower curtain. It would be a nice surprise for his wife, who hates this shower door. The girl drinks bathwater out of colored plastic cups. There are at least twenty-five plastic animals in the water, representing numerous epochs and ecological zones. All of them sink except, inexplicably, Big Zebra. Abbott is not worried, at present, about lead paint on the animals leaching into the water, in effect creating a toxic lead bath. He dries the girl off and then puts on her diaper and pajamas. Abbott’s wife puts the girl to bed. The baby is happy in her bassinet, so Abbott cleans up the bathroom and then the kitchen. The dishwasher is old and ineffective, so he has to scrub the plates and glasses thoroughly in the sink before loading them. The falling sun slants through the window above the sink and illuminates the plastic oral syringes on the sill. When he’s finished with the dishes, he wipes down the counters. He needs a haircut. His wife walks gingerly through the kitchen and pats Abbott on the hip. “How do you feel?” he says. “Not bad,” she says. She turns on the girl’s monitor and then, grimacing, lifts the baby out of the bassinet. “You should let me do that,” Abbott says. He sniffs the sponge and props it against the Cold knob in the sink. Abbott’s wife nurses the baby while Abbott feeds the dog and the cat, then cleans up the family room. He puts the jewelry in the box, the buttons in the coffee can, the stuffed animals in the crate. On the monitor he can hear his daughter singing an English folk song about the bubonic plague. He lies on the carpet, listening. The sun goes down and the room grows dark. Abbott gets off the floor and turns on a lamp. Then he sits on the couch next to his wife and helps her stare into the baby’s face. It’s a second conception — together they bring her into the world.