The Constant Heart by Craig Nova Page A

heart attack a couple of years later when he was at a convention of state commissioners. This was just after Sara had been arrested. Ketchum died in a room with a nineteen-year-old hooker, who at first just thought, as the police said, that Ketchum was very satisfied, and she was waiting around for a tip. When my father heard of Ketchum’s heart attack he said something that made me certain I would never be ashamed of him.
    He said: “That’s a shame.” He said it as sincerely and as definitely as anything I have ever heard. When I heard his voice, I immediately thought of that region of space where galaxies collided in a gilt-colored mist. But that’s what he taught me and one of the things that is disparaged these days. A standard of behavior, of feeling, of knowing that when you feel a nasty thing, or screw someone over to get ahead, it isn’t that you are getting somewhere, but are being reduced, made into less of a human being. The notion of dignity, these days, is a hard one; it’s this tension that makes it hard to be a decent man. Of course, it is difficult to have beliefs that are hard to live up to, but sucking it up and going about your business aren’t looked upon as anything but the kind of thing a foolish man does.
    This time, when the commissioner’s job came available, my father didn’t apply for it, but they offered it to him anyway, and he took it, not with the same joy as he would have had the first time, but with the air of a man trying on an expensive secondhand suit.
    We used to go fishing from time to time at a place called Furnace Creek, and what my father said when he heard about
the job was, “Jake, you know what? Furnace Creek is going to be in my territory. What do you think of them apples?”
    My mother brought home a bottle of champagne, already chilled. My father opened it. They sat at the kitchen table, and my father said, “I guess we can get the house painted.”
    â€œYes,” said my mother. “It’s funny how things work out.”
    My father had a glass of the champagne, the little bubbles in it looking polished.
    â€œDo you think the police told Ketchum’s wife about the prostitute?” my mother said.
    â€œYes,” I said, “I bet they did.”
    My father looked at me. He sat down at the table.
    â€œHmpf,” he said. “Well. I guess they did.”
    â€œThey wouldn’t let a chance like that slip by,” I said.
    â€œNo, of course not,” said my father. “Understanding comes at a price, huh, Jake?”
    â€œWhat price?” said my mother. “What are we talking about?”
    â€œThe price is knowing the cops would blab,” my father said to me. “Isn’t that right? You know that cruelty has an instinct to show itself. Goddamn it.”
    â€œOh, come on,” said my mother. “Drink up. Is this a celebration or not?”
    â€œYes,” said my father. “Of course it is. Of course. Here, Jake, have a glass of champagne.” He closed his eyes when he had a sip. “And, of course, we have something else to celebrate. You got into Berkeley. That’s something. It makes me happy and proud,” he said. “What are you going to study?”
    New books came into the library, and one of them must have weighed fifteen pounds. Page after page of equations,
of graphs, of summations. A short history of calculus, lives of Newton, Planck, Einstein. Then a section on integral equations.
    New photos from the Hubble Telescope were at the back of the book. One was of a part of the universe where two galaxies collided, the clouds of stars making a glow, bright as gold and more mysterious, the births of stars giving the center of the photograph an elusive gilt coloring. And drifting away from it there was a cloud, dark, misty, filled with an obvious . . . fertility, or something that comes even before fertility: the possibility of new worlds.
    I still