The Great Perhaps: A Novel Read online

  The Great Perhaps

  Other books by Joe Meno

  NOVELS

  Tender as Hellfire

  How the Hula Girl Sings

  Hairstyles of the Damned

  The Boy Detective Fails

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir

  Demons in the Spring

  The Great Perhaps

  A Novel

  Joe Meno

  W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

  NEW YORK LONDON

  Copyright © 2009 by Joe Meno

  All rights reserved

  All illustrations by Koren Zelek

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110

  Production manager: Anna Oler

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Meno, Joe.

  The great perhaps: a novel / Joe Meno.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-393-07137-5

  1. Family—Fiction. 2. Cowardice—Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3563.E53G74 2009

  813'.54—dc22

  2008054280

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

  www.wwnorton.com

  W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

  Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

  For family, new and old

  One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war.

  —Kurt Vonnegut,

  University of Chicago graduate school alum

  Where there is an unknowable, there is a promise.

  —Thornton Wilder,

  University of Chicago faculty member

  The Great Perhaps

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  One

  ANYTHING RESEMBLING A CLOUD WILL CAUSE JONATHAN Casper to faint. Jonathan, a quiet, middle-aged professor, suffers from an odd form of epilepsy; seeing the shape of a cloud—a cumulus, its appearance like a magnolia tree in bloom, a stratus, as bleary as a pigeon startled to flight, or a cirrus, with its vague, ghostlike veil—and he will immediately collapse, his heart beating irregularly in perfect terror, his breath slowing to a whisper, his arms and legs going weak. These symptoms may only last for a few moments or up to several hours, depending on a number of unknowable factors, such as the size of the cloud, its color, and its height. The cause of Jonathan’s disorder—first documented in a 1961 article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled “The Boy Who Feared the Sky”—was thought to be hereditary in nature, as other, distant relations had been beset by similarly strange defects. Jonathan’s condition was later named as its own neurological disease, Casper-Cerebrovascularitis, when he was eight. The medical community marveled at the shocking, undeniable effects which could be duplicated whenever a doctor, medical student, or neurological researcher showed the boy a picture of a “cloud” on a small flash card exactly like this—

  —the boy suddenly fainting, falling lifelessly from his seat. An antiseizure medication was introduced when Jonathan was ten, addressing all of his ongoing and awkward symptoms, allowing him to step outside without collapsing, as long as he remembered to take the unusual-looking silver pill each day. The antiseizure medication was such an astounding success that, afterward, the boy came to hold an unshakable belief in the infallibility of science. By then Jonathan had begun to prefer the relative safety of his schoolbooks. Discovering, by accident, the unlikely existence of the giant squid sometime during a sophomore biology class in high school—the giant squid, a creature who, like Jonathan, favored the solitude of darkness to the unsafe spectacle of the clouds above—the young man began to learn all he could about this gloomy animal and its outsized ancestors, finding at last a world unthreatened by the perils of an irregular sky.

  AS A PALEONTOLOGIST specializing in Triassic mollusks and a tenured professor at the University of Chicago, Jonathan, age forty-eight, is now able to ignore this strange medical problem, finding himself lost in a cloud of his thoughts—imagining the elusive, prehistoric giant squid, a world of wavering seaweed, of dark blue shadows, of ageless creatures armed with razor-edged beaks and endless grasping tentacles, leagues and leagues beneath the silent plane of the sea. Many, many moments in Jonathan’s life are spent safely indoors, dreaming of the colossal invertebrate, studying his ink-stained notes, lost in a cloudiness of gray ideas. Rapt in his research lab, scratching at his bristly blond beard, adjusting his thick bifocals, staring down at the fossilized remains of what may or may not be the great mantle of Tusoteuthis longa, unaware of his two graduate assistants bickering nearby or, standing before his enormous lecture class, enduring his students’ nearly intolerable and blank stares or, hiding in his office at home, listening to his wife and daughters as they argue, Jonathan finds this cloudiness is often caused by the antiseizure medication, phenytoin, which he is supposed to take daily.

  TODAY IT HAPPENS when the family goes to the zoo. Behind the wheel of the ancient silver Volvo, Jonathan has forgotten to take his antiseizure medication, and because of this, the atom-sized world of his family will soon be upset. Madeline, his wife, doesn’t seem to have noticed that anything might be wrong. She looks happy sitting there in the passenger seat, staring out the window, humming, her short brown bob held in place with a hairpin. Their teenage daughters, Amelia and Thisbe, are both silent in the backseat. The stereo plays a song by the Beatles, and because the Volvo is actually Madeline’s car, it’s always her turn to pick the music, even when she’s not driving. The sun is bright and glorious, a lovely Sunday afternoon at the beginning of October, a month of indecision: though there haven’t been any acts of terrorism lately, everyone is still doubtful about everything. The upcoming presidential election is a month away, while the war in Iraq continues on without much hope. There are billboards and ads with political slogans suggesting this uncertainty everywhere. A cobalt-blue BMW passes the family’s Volvo on the left, a BUSH⁄CHENEY’ 04 bumper sticker blazoned on the rear bumper. Madeline, seeing it, immediately sighs.

  Jonathan turns to look at her and sees the smooth sheen of his wife’s bare legs. He glances at all the lovely freckles on her white skin and sees her dark hair blowing beside the open window and feels his heart strum a timorous chord. He places his hand on Madeline’s knee and smiles. It is impossible that they are actually married. It seems that she is too pleasant to be his wife. He immediately forgets the secret deliberations of his unsteady scientific mind and smiles at his wife in wonder. She is still so girlish, so bright-eyed, exactly like her younger self, but even more so now, somehow. She is talking to
him. She is telling him about something that has happened at work. Madeline is an animal behaviorist, also employed by the University of Chicago, though her field is avian research. She is explaining how a test group of pigeons she’s been studying have begun to commit murder.

  “It’s an incredibly difficult problem,” Madeline says. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Jonathan smiles, staring at a group of freckles on Madeline’s shoulder. He has forgotten how pretty his wife is. He has forgotten how badly he would like to kiss her.

  The Volvo, with its own innumerable bumper stickers—KEEP RELIGION OUT OF SCHOOLS and NO TO WAR IN IRAQ and ALL GREAT TRUTHS BEGIN AS BLASPHEMIES—GEORGE BERNARD SHAW—speeds down Lake Shore Drive, the windows partly rolled down, the family hearing the music beneath the sound of the wind whipping past, the city of Chicago appearing brilliantly before them. We are marvelous! We are amazing! We have won the war against nature! Jonathan thinks. We, this brave species, in our little indestructible cities, in our little indestructible cars, are much too smart, much too fast, much too happy to ever be harmed. We have somehow outsmarted the entire, cruel order of the natural world! We will live for one million years and then become marvelous, electric clouds of thought and nothing bad will happen to us or to anyone we know.

  “Dad? I was thinking,” Thisbe, his youngest, calls from the backseat.

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think I want to see the lions. Or the tigers. They make me want to cry.”

  Jonathan raises his eyebrows, scratching at his beard, looking over at Madeline to respond. He glances in the rearview mirror and sees Thisbe, fourteen, in a plaid outfit and red sweater, her brown hair hanging in her dark eyes, looking sulky.

  “We don’t have to see any animals you don’t want to,” Madeline says, turning around in her seat. “But I bet you’ll change your mind when we get there.”

  “I don’t know if we should go to the zoo at all. I think it’s cruel,” Thisbe says, definitely moody.

  “It’s not cruel,” Jonathan says. “It’s educational. I used to go to the zoo with my father all the time. It’s normal. It’s what normal families do. They go to the zoo and tell their dads how lucky they are for being their daughters and then they make up songs about how great their dad is. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  Thisbe just huffs, turning back to pout, staring out the window.

  “I don’t think God likes the idea of zoos,” she says.

  Jonathan smiles. Beside him, his wife shakes her head, rolling her eyes. Thisbe, a high school freshman, raised without a religious background of any kind, has begun to make bold arguments on behalf of God. To Jonathan it only seems like a silly—though perfectly natural—thing for a teenage girl to do, struggling to find answers to the compromising mysteries of her young life. Madeline, a former Catholic, does not find her daughter’s recent religious sentiments so very funny.

  “I don’t want to go to the zoo either,” Amelia adds.

  Jonathan frowns, glancing in the rearview mirror once more.

  Amelia, a junior in high school, age seventeen, is wearing that awful black beret again. Amelia has recently declared herself a Marxist. Though she is white, and whiter than most, with her mother’s pale skin, chestnut hair, and sad, haunting blue eyes, Amelia has begun to wear T-shirts featuring the likenesses of Che Guevara, Malcolm X, and others, with slogans like NO MORE PRISONS. Sitting at the dinner table, in their expensive little home, Amelia has begun to mention revolution, with strange facts like, “Did you know the CIA totally admitted to killing members of the Black Panthers and nobody even cared?”

  “I think the zoo is totally bourgeois,” Amelia says.

  Jonathan smirks, silently pleased by his oldest daughter’s growing political intelligence. He is also a little amused at her slight mispronunciation of the word. “Well, we’re going to the zoo today, guys. It was your turn to decide what we did last weekend. Besides, I’ve heard they have a baby tree sloth. Wouldn’t you like to see that? A baby tree sloth? It sounds pretty awesome. Or maybe you’re afraid of doing something pretty awesome?”

  “No,” Thisbe says.

  “No,” Amelia says.

  “We could go to the aquarium,” Madeline suggests in a whisper.

  “We’re not going to the aquarium. We’re going to the zoo today. That’s what’s been decided. We’re not changing the plan now. We stick to the plan. That’s what winners do. They stick to plans.”

  “This family is like some sort of oligarchy,” Amelia grumbles.

  “Great word choice,” her mother says with a grin.

  “This family is not an oligarchy,” Jonathan adds. “It’s a republic. Look it up.”

  “Thisbe, honey, that reminds me, how was your history test the other day?” Madeline asks.

  “Awful,” Thisbe mumbles. “I’m bad at history. And there’s this girl that sits behind me who has bad breath. I think I should say something but I don’t know if I should. I don’t know if God would want me to.”

  “Oh, my God,” Amelia sharply interrupts. “I forgot to tell you guys. I’ve figured out what I’m going to do for my science project this year. I’ve decided to try and make a bomb.”

  Jonathan does not know what to say to that. He turns and looks over at Madeline, who is also momentarily silent. Amelia keeps talking. “It’s like to prove how easy it is to make an explosive device and everything. Like how there are all these instructions online and you can use like cleaning products and everything. I need you to sign a permission slip for me.”

  “Amelia, why don’t you decide to do something a little more constructive?”

  “It is constructive. I’m constructing a bomb.”

  “No,” Madeline says, smiling. “Why not make something that isn’t destructive? I bet it would be much more challenging.”

  “I’m already doing that. I’m making a movie for my history class.”

  “What’s your movie about?” Jonathan asks.

  “Capitalism, mostly. Like how there’s all these different classes of people and how people need to overcome it.”

  “Well, that sounds like something,” Jonathan says.

  As the station wagon passes the exit for Thirty-fifth Street, Thisbe shouts, “Dad! We’re going the wrong way. Isn’t Grandpa coming with?”

  “Not today. He said he wasn’t feeling up to it.”

  “Oh,” Thisbe whispers with a small, disappointed sigh.

  “All he ever does is talk about airplanes,” Amelia adds. “It’s kind of embarrassing.”

  The family is quiet for some time after that, the Beatles playing “Yellow Submarine,” the sound of the open windows and the city hurrying past. Madeline turns in her seat and sees Thisbe sitting there with her eyes closed, her hands held together like a tiny steeple.

  “Thisbe? Are you praying back there?” she asks. Jonathan gives a look to his wife, who simply shakes her head.

  “No. I was just listening to the music,” Thisbe says, her face going red.

  THE FAMILY STARES out the windows of the Volvo silently. Jonathan, oblivious to the afternoon traffic, imagines an explosion of applause. He is standing behind a great wooden podium, reading the conclusion to a stunning speech on the solitary nature of Tusoteuthis longa, the prehistoric giant squid. “I want to thank the National Academy of Sciences for their award today. I believe it speaks to the great scientific ambition within us all.” Many, many hours are spent dreaming of this, while Jonathan pursues his work in the research lab at the Field Museum and within the smallish den of their Hyde Park home, which over the years has become an exhibit of drawings, maps, fossils, and charts marking the locations where remains of the prehistoric giant squid have recently been found.

  As strange as it may seem, Jonathan is trying to prove that the prehistoric giant squid, one of the most isolated species in the history of the natural world, is still alive, hiding in the ocean’s dark depths, and that—because of the squid’s relative solitude and lack of interaction
with early predators like the mosasaur and Cimolichthys nepabolica—it is the perfect case study for the theory of evolution. It is a theory that, of late, has come under considerable criticism. Jonathan’s hope is that the discovery of this lost species will present new evidence that will inform a unified idea about why the world is the way it is, and where, as human beings, we truly come from. In his search for the prehistoric squid, Jonathan is looking for a single, uncomplicated answer to the mystery of human life: there must be one somewhere, he is sure of it. An article on T. longa published nearly a year ago in Paleontology Today quoted Jonathan as saying:

  The prehistoric giant squid may be alive in our ocean’s depths at this very moment because of its preference for isolation. If found alive, it will certainly represent the last opportunity to observe a living prehistoric organism and to closely study its behavior, its anatomy, and its genetic material—a perfect specimen for better understanding the evolution of heredity. Surely, the discovery of this remarkable creature will begin to provide answers to our most important questions. What might we learn about ourselves as human beings, about our capacities to live without struggle, and who we truly are? Is it not important to note that all living species were, at one time during our evolution, also ocean-dwellers? Perhaps the promise of our future will be revealed with a better knowledge of our quiet, unproblematic past.