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“A broad question, and one to which you should also know the answer even at your young age. There will be ups, there will be downs. There will be agreements and there will be arguments. But on measure, yes—the two of you will be happy.”
He somehow knew my mother’s maiden name, Phil thought. And Sally’s. The rest is just carny fortune teller guesswork. But why? For a measly twenty-five dollars?
“Tempus still fugits,” said the Answer Man.
The ticking of the oversized stopwatch seemed louder than ever. The hand was past 3 and closing the gap on 2. Phil had no sane reason to be relieved by what the Answer Man was telling him, because it was what he wanted to hear, wasn’t it? And hadn’t he already made his decision about Curry? Wasn’t all that “horns of a dilemma” stuff so much self-dramatization? And as for Sal… didn’t he pretty much know she would marry him even if he did make moving to rural New Hampshire part of the deal? Not for absolute sure, not a hundred per cent, but ninety?
Abruptly he changed direction. “Tell me where my father was born. If you can.”
Again the Answer Man did not hesitate. “He was actually born while at sea, on a ship called the Marybelle.”
Phil again felt like he had been socked in the jaw. It was an old family story, much treasured and often told. Grandfather and Grandmother had been returning to America after a pilgrimage to London, where their parents had been born and lived their early lives. Gram had insisted on making the trip even though she was eight months pregnant by the time they returned. There was a storm. Grandmother’s seasickness was so violent it triggered her labor. There was a doctor onboard, and he delivered the infant. No one expected baby John to live, but—wrapped in cotton batting and fed from an eyedropper—he had. And thus, Philip Yeager Parker, Harvard Law School graduate, became possible.
He started to ask again how the man on the other side of the table—hands still neatly folded—could know such a thing, then didn’t. The reply would be the same: Because I am the Answer Man.
Questions crammed his mind like a panicked crowd trying to escape a burning building. The stopwatch hand reached 2 and passed it. The ticking seemed louder than ever.
The Answer Man waited, hands folded.
“Will Curry prosper the way I think it will?” Phil blurted.
“Yes.”
What else? What else?
“Sally’s father… and her mother, I suppose… will they come around to us?”
“Yes. In time.”
“How long?”
The Answer Man seemed to calculate briefly as the single hand on his clock reached 1. He said, “Seven years.”
Phil’s heart sank. Seven years was a lifetime. He could tell himself the Answer Man had plucked that number out of thin air, but he no longer believed it.
“Your time grows short, Just Phil.”
He could see that for himself, but he couldn’t think of another question except how long will I live and the concomitant question, how long will Sally Ann live. Did he want to know either of those things? He did not.
But he didn’t want to waste his remaining forty or fifty seconds, so he asked the only thing that came to mind. “My father says there’s going to be a war. I say there won’t be. Which of us is right?”
“He is.”
“Will America be in it?”
“Yes.”
“How long before we’re in it?”
“Four years and two months.”
He was down to twenty seconds now, maybe a little more.
“Will I be in it?”
“Yes.”
“Will I be hurt?”
