Read Pascal's Wager for Free Online Page A

“Find out what’s happening in your life.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWhy? Because you’re my mother, and I haven’t had a whole conversation with you in six months.”
    â€œI’ve been busy. And as you can shee—
see
—I’m fine.”
    I got nowhere from then until the food arrived. From the way Mother had ordered, I expected her to devour it like a half-starved dog, but she picked at the crust of her potpie with her fork and then set it down. It occurred to me vaguely that I had never seen her eat a potpie anyway.
    â€œDo you want to order something else?” I said.
    â€œSince when did you start prashtishing—prashticing—your maternal instincts on me?”
    And since when did you start talking like you have a mouth full of couscous?
I wanted to say. I did muster up the courage to get out, “Is there anything wrong? I mean, are you feeling all right?”
    Big mistake. She slid her plate aside so she could get her elbows on the table and fold her hands close to my face. Her small, blue eyes were intense as they locked right onto mine. My upbringing snapped into place—the thousands of times I’d been told to
look
at my mother when she was speaking to me.
    â€œThere is nothing ‘wrong’ with me,” Mother said. “I am perfectlyintact, functioning quite normally, thank you very much. Now rather than
insinuating
for the rest of the afternoon, I suggest you get to the point.”
    I was actually relieved that my mother had suddenly returned—collected, eloquent, and razor sharp. Until she abruptly snatched up her handbag and lurched out of the booth.
    â€œI have to get back,” she said.
    Then she gave that vacant grin I’d seen on the night of her award banquet and literally bolted from Marie Callendar’s, nearly mowing down Perky en route to the door. I stared after her until long after my French onion soup had gone cold.

THREE
    T hree nights later I realized how much of my think time was being consumed by the mental video of my mother. On my nightly run on the Stanford Loop, it occurred to me that for the last three nights I hadn’t clocked myself, checked my heart rate, or monitored the effectiveness of my pre-run hydration. The minute I hit the first hill, I was completely preoccupied with the memory of her flipping back and forth from sloppy drunk to coherent doctor to schizophrenic bag lady.
    My life at that point was neatly compartmentalized, and the Loop was where I went to concentrate on the fitness compartment. I’d turned into a runner in high school, when my mother had informed me that I had to take up a sport so as not to become lazy. The fact that I was already in advanced placement classes, National Honor Society, two academic fraternities, and private piano lessons three times a week made cross-country track the only option. Six weeks in the fall and it was a done deal, and it was enough to assure my mother that I was not going to lapse into a vegetative state.
    Secretly, I fell in love with running—not the competition, but the idea of being out there alone on the road with no one in my face. Everywhere I’d been since high school—at Princeton for undergrad work, at Mercer County Community College in Trenton when I was teaching—I’d always found a place to end the day with a run. Here the place was the Stanford Loop.
    Situated in the Stanford hills west of the main campus, towardthe ocean side of the peninsula, it consisted of a long, hilly, winding trail that challenged me physically—or, to use the vernacular, kicked my butt. At its highest point, you could see the San Francisco Bay, the Dunbarton Bridge, the San Mateo Bridge, and Hoover Tower—the main landmark of the Stanford campus. On clear days you could make out the Bay Bridge and sometimes even the city itself, though most of the time the fog curled around San Francisco like a pair of protective