Certainty Read Free

the Netherlands, in the hope that he would be able to decipher it.
    “I still remember telling Gail the story,” Scott says, turning to Ansel, “sitting on the front steps of your house.”
    After the dishes are cleared away, they move out onto the back porch. Ed picks up his banjo and strums a few strings, then father and son do a duet: “Good Night” by the Beatles, but with the rhythm plucked up so they’re tapping their feet. The song goes from three minutes to about forty-five seconds. Ed waves off the applause and segues into “Never My Love.” Mrs. Cho creaks back and forth on the rocking chair, singing along, “Da da da da, da da. Never, my love.” She tells Ed, “I’m so glad you’re my age.” He puts his soul into the bass walk up.
    “I never thought I’d enjoy this on the banjo.” Glyn is standing apart from the group, leaning her back against the house.
    Scott turns to her. “You’d be surprised how many people say that. The weird thing is, Dad didn’t even pick it up until he was in his fifties. It’s not something from his childhood, or from his lost country roots. It’s a new thing for him.”
    Ansel leans over the railing. From here, he can see his own house, where he has left the bedroom light on accidentally. In his red wine haze, it makes him think that someone is waiting up for him. That someone is reading in bed, and when he comes home, he will lift the open book off her chest and set it on the table. When he turns around, he sees that Matthew has already gone upstairs to rest. Clara and Mrs. Cho are having a conversation that moves from Cantonese into English and back again. Glyn, Ed and Scott have gone back to talking about the mind. Ed is saying, “At some point, when they’ve figured everything out, the new kind of human being may have to live without mystery. And I wonder where that will lead us.”
    Glyn twirls the glass in her hand, then shakes out the last few drops of wine into the air. “That seems to be something that all the scientists can agree on. That the mind was never made to understand itself. Its first job was to collect information from the senses, find some way to unify that knowledge so that the body could escape danger.”
    Ed shakes his head. “If I could live my life again, I’m not sure what I would do. The world is endlessly fascinating. When you get to my age, that’s the main reason for hanging on. Just to find out a little bit more.”
    “You could join me in radio. The medium of the imagination.”
    Ed looks at Ansel. “What about you, doctor? If you could start over again, what would you choose?”
    He thinks for a short while but comes to no conclusions. There are too many doors and not enough time to open them. He shakes his head. “I’ve no idea. Some mysteries, I think, were never meant to be solved.”
    The three of them laugh. Ed plays a decisive chord on the banjo, and the notes hang on the air for a long time before they are carried away down the block, slowly fading. There’s a moment when the sound will dissolve past the range of what Ansel is capable of hearing. One moment of separation. He closes his eyes and waits.
    That night, after the dishes are done and the house is still, Clara goes into her sewing room. Above her, the skylight frames a handful of stars, a square of night.
    On her cutting table, the newspaper is open to an article about the origins of empathy. She read the story this morning, and its contents have remained in her mind, a background to her thoughts. All acts of empathy, of compassion, the article says, arise out of needs of the individual, and, as such, no act is selfless. “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism,” says one scientist, “because we are born selfish.” Carefully, she clips this article and lays it on the table in front of her. So many things that we do, she thinks, so much in the name of those we love. In her own life, Clara has witnessed acts of selflessness, of empathy, whose