“Whoa, mister. You just missed getting a time-out for the rest of your eighth year on Earth.”
His grin firmed, and he returned to scouting the river. But a mile down that winding mountain road, he put his hand on my shoulder. I was just joking, Dad.
I watched the road and told him, “Me, too.”
We stood in line for the Ripley’s Odditorium. The place unnerved him. Kids his age ran all over, forming bands of improvised mayhem. Their screaming made Robbie wince. Thirty minutes of the horror show and he begged me to leave. He did better with the aquarium, even if the stingray he wanted to sketch wouldn’t hold still for its portrait.
After a lunch of french fries and onion rings, we took the lift to the sky platform. He almost vomited all over the glass floor. White-knuckled, jaw clenched, he declared it fantastic. Back in the car, he seemed relieved to have gotten Gatlinburg out of the way.
He was thoughtful on the drive back to the cabin. That would not have been Mom’s favorite place on the face of the planet.
“No. Probably not even in her top three.”
He laughed. I could get him to laugh, if I chose my moments.
That night was too cloudy for stargazing, but we slept outside again, on our rustic cushions with their parades of elk and bear. Two minutes after Robin snapped off his flashlight I whispered, “Your birthday tomorrow.” But he was asleep already. I recited his mother’s prayer softly for the both of us, so I could reassure him if he woke up horrified at forgetting.
HE WOKE ME IN THE NIGHT. How many stars did you say there are?
I couldn’t be angry. Even yanked from sleep, I was glad he was still stargazing.
“Multiply every grain of sand on Earth by the number of trees. One hundred octillion.”
I made him say twenty-nine zeros. Fifteen zeros in, his laughter turned to groans.
“If you were an ancient astronomer, using Roman numerals, you couldn’t have written the number down. Not even in your whole lifetime.”
How many have planets?
That number was changing fast. “Most probably have at least one. Many have several. The Milky Way alone might have nine billion Earth-like planets in their stars’ habitable zones. Add the dozens of other galaxies in the Local Group . . .”
Then, Dad . . . ?
He was a boy attuned to loss. Of course the Great Silence hurt him. The outrageous size of emptiness made him ask the same question Enrico Fermi did over that famous lunch in Los Alamos, three quarters of a century ago. If the universe were larger and older than anyone could imagine, we had an obvious problem.
Dad? With all those places to live? How come nobody’s anywhere?
IN THE MORNING I PRETENDED I’d forgotten what day it was. My new nine-year-old saw through me. While I made super-deluxe oatmeal with half a dozen mix-ins, Robin bobbed in place, pushing off the counter and pogo-sticking with excitement. We set a land speed record eating.
Let’s open the presents.
“The what? You’re making a pretty big assumption, aren’t you?”
Not assumption. Hypothesis.
He knew what he was getting. He’d been bargaining with me for months: a digital microscope that attached to my tablet and let him display magnified images on the screen. He spent all morning trying out pond scum, cells from inside his cheek, and the underside of a maple leaf. He would have been happy looking at samples and sketching notes into his notebook for the remainder of our vacation.
Afraid of pushing him over the top, I wheeled out the cake I’d bought on the sly at the little 1950s grocery store at the bottom of the mountain. His face shone before he caught himself.
Cake, Dad?
He made a beeline for the box, which I’d failed to hide. He studied the ingredients, shaking his head.
Not vegan, Dad.
“Robbie. It’s your birthday. That only happens, what . . . ? Barely once a year?”
He refused to smile. Butter. Dairy products. Egg. Mom would not have gone for it.
“Oh, I watched your mother eat cake, on more than one occasion!”
I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth. He looked like a timid squirrel, not sure whether to take the outstretched goodness that he craved or to flee back into the woods.
When?
“She made exceptions now and then.”
Robin stared at the cake, a carroty, sinless thing whose virtue would have disgusted any other child. His brief little birthday Eden had just been overrun with snakes.
“It’s okay, champ. We can feed it to the birds.”
Well. We could try a little, first?
We did. Every time the taste of cake made him happy, he caught himself and grew thoughtful again.