Pascal's Wager

by Nancy Rue

  “No, Dad.”

  “What do you have to do to change that? Who do I have to call?”

  Nobody if you ever want him to be tenured! I thought. One conversation with you and the poor guy will be blackballed from academia forever.

  “I’m not trying to change it,” Sam said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s no surprise.” Hercules gave Sam a long look over the top of his glass, shook his head as if he’d just seen something disgusting, and drained half his drink. When he spoke again, it was to me, in a voice embittered by liquor and whatever old baggage he’d just opened.

  “You probably don’t know this, Jill,” he said, “or maybe you do. You seem like a pretty sharp cookie yourself. My son is brilliant. Near genius, I’d say.”

  “Hardly,” Sam said.

  Hercules pointed his finger at Sam, though he was still talking to me. “But you see? You see what he does? He pretends not to recognize his own potential so he’ll have an excuse not to live up to it. He’s always been that way—incredibly intelligent and lazier than heck.” He gave his head another derisive shake on the way back to the Scotch. “What a waste.”

  The only reason I didn’t respond was that I was torn between anger for Sam that this man would humiliate him in front of someone he didn’t know and anger at Sam for not reaching across the table and grabbing him by the chest hairs—which, I noticed, were peeking out of his too-far-unbuttoned shirt. I was growing more mentally nauseous by the minute.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Sam said easily. “This is where we agree to disagree, remember?”

  Hercules looked at him, grunted, and shook his head.

  “If we’re going to do that,” he said, “I’m going to need another drink.” He looked at me. “You sure you don’t want anything stronger, honey?”

  “It’s Jill,” I said. “And no—thanks.”

  At that point, Sam steered the conversation back to his father’s business ventures, during which there was a great deal of name-dropping, geographically speaking. We stayed on that somewhat safer ground until Hercules had polished off three-quarters of his next Scotch and said to Sam, “So, have you heard from your mother?”

  “Yeah. We talk at least once a week.”

  “And? How is she?”

  I assumed by this time that Sam’s parents were divorced. I couldn’t say I blamed his mother. Her husband had probably been running around on her for years—or maybe just trying to. I couldn’t imagine any woman with an ounce of self-respect falling for a man who virtually drooled over his prey. He made Jacoboni look like a prude.

  “Has Sam told you that his mother left me for another man?” Hercules said.

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  “Nor does she want to hear it from you, Dad,” Sam said. There was still no clear annoyance in his voice, but he wasn’t thrilled with this line of questioning either, I could tell that by the way he was toying with the silver napkin ring.

  “Up and left me after twenty years of marriage,” Hercules said. “Is she seeing anybody now?”

  “You’d have to ask her,” Sam said.

  “Not possible. She hangs up on me every time I call her.” He looked at me. The whites of his eyes were turning into road maps. “Why would a woman you raised a family with do that to you? Why do you think?”

  “What? Hang up when you call her?” I said.

  “Yeah. You’re a woman—and a beautiful woman. Have I told you that?”

  “Several times, Dad,” Sam said.

  “So you oughta know why a man’s ex-wife won’t give him the time of day.”

  “I’ve never been an ex-wife,” I said. “So I couldn’t even venture a guess.” Besides, you don’t even want to hear my theory on this.

  “How old are you?” Hercules said suddenly.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” I said, “but I’m thirty.”

  His eyes lit up. “I like this woman, Sam. Why have you been hiding her?” He looked back at me. “So, if you’re thirty, why haven’t you ever been married? I know it’s a personal question. I’m just curious.”

  No, you’re just nosy. And obnoxious. And smarmy. Sam must have gotten his personality genes from his mother.

  The appetizer arrived—some kind of seafood concoction made with fish flown in from the Canary Islands. Max would have been in ecstasy. The server’s arrival at our table created enough commotion to divert attention from Hercules’s question, and Sam again jumped in to redirect the conversation.

  “So, Dad,” he said. “Have you been back to the cardiologist?”

  “Are you kidding?” Hercules said. “I’m not going back to him. Why should I pay three hundred and fifty bucks to have him tell me to quit drinking and quit smoking and slow down, none of which I have any intention of doing?”

  “Do you have any intention of living much longer?” Sam said.

  I glanced at him. He was serious. He actually cared whether this man dropped dead or not. I had to give him the Compassion Award for that. If he’d been my father, I would have practically been wishing for a nice myocardial infarction.

  “Don’t start in on me with your lifestyle lecture,” Hercules said. “I’m going to live my life to the fullest, and I’m going to die doing it. End of discussion.” He shifted his focus to me, though by this point the word focus was an overstatement. “I had to end the discussion, because the next part is where he tries to convince me that I need to get religion before I keel over.”

  “I have never tried to convince you to get religion,” Sam said.

  It was the first hint of real tension I’d detected in Sam’s voice all evening. In spite of the subject matter, I wanted to say, Atta boy, Sam. That’s the spirit!

  “What do you call it, then?” Hercules said. “I have it memorized, Jill. ‘I’m still praying for you, Dad.’ ‘Just hear me out, Dad, because I know you’re hurting.’ Oh, and here’s my favorite—”

  “That’s enough, Dad.”

  Hercules grinned at me slyly. “That’s not my favorite.”

  “This is where I draw the line,” Sam said. “You can ride me about my financial status and my social life and anything else—but stay away from my spirituality. I mean it.”

  Hercules gave him another long look, but this time he didn’t shake his head or grunt in disgust. I could see him having to force the grin onto his face.

  “I’m in trouble,” he said to me. “You think he’ll ever speak to me again?”

  “Not if he’s smart,” I said.

  He threw his head back and laughed. I didn’t.

  The evening went downhill from there. Sam diplomatically suggested that Hercules lighten up on the Scotch, so he switched to brandy. With relative aplomb, over the lamb shank and the paella, Sam kept further discussion away from things spiritual and navigated us through politics, sports, and social issues. When we finally got through dessert—which both Sam and I refused, but found ourselves presented with anyway—Sam borrowed my cell phone to call his dad a cab.

  With Sam otherwise occupied, Hercules grabbed my hand, and I didn’t try to pull away. It was too much like being stuck in one of those Mexican finger toys.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he said thickly.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “You’re not churchy, huh?”

  “‘Churchy? I’d have to say no, I’m not churchy.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you don’t have your sights set on Sammy. He wants a church lady, you know.”

  We hadn’t exactly discussed Sam’s preferences in women, but I nodded.

  “He’s told me that himself,” Hercules said. “It’s a good thing you’re not hearing wedding bells for you and Sammy, because he’s definitely looking for a church lady.” Hercules gave me a pull, bringing me close enough to see every turn of the ever-reddening maze of capillaries in his eyes. “Now me on the other hand, I’m looking for—”

  “Dad,” Sam said. He was standing behind him, hands on Hercules’s shoulders. “The cab’
s on its way. Come on, I’ll wait outside with you.”

  Hercules, of course, had to have the last word. He pulled my hand to his lips and gave it a wet kiss. I waited until Sam had him pointing in the other direction before I wiped it with my napkin.

  “Wait for me, would you?” Sam said over his shoulder.

  Only so I can get even, I said with my eyes.

  But when Sam came back, the look on his face melted my resolve to lay into him for putting me through that. It had obviously been a whole lot worse where he was sitting.

  “Your father’s quite the character,” I said.

  Sam sank heavily into the chair next to mine. “I didn’t know he was drinking that much now or I wouldn’t have dragged you here. He’s still obnoxious when he’s sober, but he’s not quite as sloppy about it.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Blaze,” I said. “I know why you had me come.”

  His eyebrows went up. “Why?”

  “So I could see that things could be worse for me. I thought I had the parent from Hades—at least, at one time I thought she was.”

  Sam leaned back and toyed with his dessert fork.

  “You handled it a lot better than I ever did,” I said. “And I didn’t even have the alcohol to deal with. How do you sit there and let him rake you over the coals?”

  “I feel sorry for him.”

  “Why? He could get it together if he wanted to. He’s obviously intelligent. He isn’t unattractive. I mean, he looks just like you—”

  Whoa. Had I said that? I longed for a delete button. Sam was looking at me oddly.

  Here it comes, I thought. He’s going to say, “Oh? You find me attractive?”

  But he said, “You think we look alike?”

  “Except for the age difference, you could be identical twins,” I said. “Until he opens his mouth and lets his personality out. No offense, Blaze, but the man borders on loathsome.”

  “So we look alike, but we don’t act alike.”

  “Are you fishing for a compliment?”

  He looked at me with genuine innocence. “No, I’m not. I really want to know.”

  “You definitely don’t act alike. In terms of behavior, it’s hard to believe he sired you at all. Were you separated from him at birth or something?”

  Sam laughed. “No.”

  “It’s like he’s you—only you with some ingredient missing.”

  “You’re right about that. I was just like him until I added the ‘ingredient.’”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Yes way. I was going to follow in his footsteps—do the whole pull-yourself-out-of-the-blue-collar-pit, make-a-pile-of-money, take-charge-of-your-world thing.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I found God.”

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “Well, God and a group of believers who help people shed their false skins.”

  “Explain,” I said.

  “Christianity is supposed to help believers get rid of the false self we start forming the first time we do a no-no and have to deal with it. Like about age one. By the grace of God, I fell in with a group of Christians whose main goal was to get every member stripped down to the heart.”

  “So you got stripped of everything on you that was your father. That’s why you’re different.”

  “Not quite. You can’t just empty out without filling up with something else.”

  “You’re going to say it was God, aren’t you?”

  “I’m going to say it was knowing God and discovering that Christ is the real center of me—not some self I created.”

  “So your father is you, only without the God.”

  Sam’s mouth formed a smile. “You’ve got it.”

  “Yeah, but I know people who are nice, decent human beings, and they don’t necessarily have God in their belief system.”

  “Like who?”

  I pretended to have a sudden desire for my abandoned dessert so I could think of someone. That list was about the length of the one containing the people who did embrace God. Did I actually know anybody who was nice and decent?

  “Max Ironto,” I said.

  “Max is an atheist?” Sam said.

  “No, he claims to believe in God.”

  “But you’re not buying it.”

  “Okay, not Max. Nigel Frost. My advisor.”

  “Nigel Frost?”

  “You know him?”

  Sam’s grin got bigger, if that was possible. “He’s in my men’s group. We have a bimonthly prayer breakfast. I don’t know a more godly man.”

  “Nigel?” I said. “He’s never said a word about God to me!”

  “Nigel comes from a more genteel background. He doesn’t bulldoze like I do, and since I’m sure you never broached the subject—”

  “It doesn’t come up that much in K-theory”.

  “It could,” Sam said. His eyes were sparkling behind his glasses. That was something old Hercules’s eyes had not done.

  “We haven’t completely proven the theory yet,” I said.

  “We haven’t disproven it, either.”

  “So for now I’ll concede that I have seen what you would be if you didn’t have God.”

  Sam leaned toward me. He didn’t try to kiss me. He didn’t touch me. But his voice wrapped itself around me and held me.

  “Jill,” he said, “you are beautiful.”

  He couldn’t have sounded less like Hercules Bakalis if he’d tried.

  SIXTEEN

  The next day, I made an appointment to see the Hopewell Care Center on Saturday. Then I teetered on the edge of indecision for the next three days.

  One minute I was certain I needed to just take Mother with me to the interview and check her in on the spot; the next minute I was picking up the phone to call and cancel. It was Mother herself, in a sense, who clinched it for me.

  When I got home on Friday, Freda III was sitting in the foyer with her sweater on, purse in hand, looking like she was waiting for a bus. The instant I opened the door, she was on her feet, babbling out paragraphs she’d obviously been saving up for me all afternoon. It was such a muddle, I didn’t understand a word she was saying.

  “Wait. Time out,” I said. “Let me just put my stuff down, and we can sit down and talk—”

  “I’m through sitting and I’m through talking,” Freda cut in. “After what happened today, I’m through with all of it.”

  My heart started racing, and I dropped my bag on the bottom step. “What happened? Where is my mother?”

  I hurried toward the living room, but Freda said, “She’s in her room napping. I’ve been sitting here ever since she laid down, staring at that bedroom door, so unless she’s climbed out the window, which wouldn’t surprise me, she’s still in there.”

  I was inclined to go see for myself, but the way Freda III was heading for the front door, I didn’t dare leave the foyer lest she bolt and leave me clueless. As it was she was red-faced and breathing hard. The next thing I knew she’d be having a stroke.

  “I’ve stayed on, Jill,” she said, “because I knew the fix you were in, but today takes the cake. I can’t handle any more.”

  “What—”

  “I’m standing in the kitchen. She’s at the table. I turn my back for no more than fifteen seconds, I turn around again, and she’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “After I nearly lost my mind looking for her, I found her out in the backyard.”

  “I thought we agreed that she wasn’t to leave the house without someone with her.”

  Freda gave a grunt. “You and I agreed. We must have forgotten to tell her. I got out there, and there she was, in the pond, on her stomach, splashing all around.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Hon, I am serious as a heart attack, and I had a devil of a time hauling her out of there, I can tell you that. It’s a wonder we didn’t both drown, but if she had, it would be my fault, and I can’t take that kind of responsibility.”


  “But that’s what you do! You take responsibility for sick people.”

  “Sick people who are in a bed—not ones I have to watch like a lifeguard.”

  I could feel my eyes narrowing. “When I interviewed you, I asked you if you’d had experience with dementia patients, and you said yes.”

  “Yes, with people who are talking out of their heads. She doesn’t talk. She just goes!”

  I pulled both hands through my hair. “All right, look, I’ll call Burl and get him to come over and put some different bolts on the doors or something.”

  “You can do that, but don’t do it on my account.” Her face was fading to a merely flustered pink, and she reached over and patted my arm. “It’s not like I’m leaving you high and dry. You were going to put her in a home anyway.”

  “I’m considering it.”

  Freda III hiked her purse strap over her shoulder and set her face. “Well, then, hon, maybe now you’ll just have to do it.”

  Lady, I wanted to tell her, I don’t have to do anything!

  But I couldn’t say it, because I didn’t believe it. It did seem as if all decisions were being moved just beyond my reach. Other people, on the other hand, were making choices right and left.

  Freda III left, and Max arrived shortly thereafter. Over dinner, I filled him in on the afternoon’s events.

  “I guess we’ll just have to take Mother with us tomorrow,” I said. “She should be okay as long as we keep an eye on her so she doesn’t wander into somebody’s shuffleboard game. Can you be here at 9:15 so we can get to Hopewell by 9:30?”

  Max didn’t answer. He appeared to be studying his mortadella.

  “You do support me on this, right?” I said. “You’re the one who talked me into it.”

  “God help me, I did,” Max said, but he still wouldn’t look at me. “It’s the right thing to do. I know it.”

  “Then what’s wrong? Just say it, Max.”

  He set down his fork. “I can’t go with you tomorrow. I can’t go to that place and know that that’s where we could be abandoning Liz.”

  “We aren’t abandoning her. In the first place, we’re just going to go look at it.”

  “I can’t. I know I’m a coward, but I just can’t. I’ll break down.”