Calculator

CALCULATOR
APRIL PERPENDICULAR could never balance a checkbook. She would forget to write down the checks she wrote, or the ATM withdrawals she had made, or the purchases with the debit card. And then, at the end of the month, the bank statement was a complete mystery.
The difficulty her husband had in keeping the records balanced stemmed from a different problem. True, he wrote everything down: and not just the actual amounts withdrawn and deposited, but the descriptions of the transactions as well: the date, the check number, the recipient, etc. Everything. But Joe could not keep the account balanced either. He was horrible at math. And so, as an attempt to remedy, he bought one of those little pocket calculators--one without any batteries; rather, it was powered by light: sunlight, electric light, probably even moonlight (which, of course, is just reflected sunlight).
Across the top panel, just above where the numbers appear, were the little light collectors. Sometimes, when a number stretched out across the top row, Joe would place a finger over the light panel and watch the numbers slowly fade away to nothing. Then he’d remove his finger and watch the numbers reappear and come back into focus–-into existence. He liked to see how long he could cover the light panel before, when he removed his finger, the number would return to just the zero. And, when he thought about it, he liked the idea that there was a difference between zero and non-existence.
* * * * * * *
It should have been obvious. April was 24 when they met; Joe was 49. But they made a go of it anyway. And for awhile it worked–-worked quite well. And for quite awhile. But age matters; the age difference matters. Numbers matter--or at least what they represent.
* * * * * * *
The calculator helped. And April got better at recording her transactions. But at the end of the month the bank statement was still off. The two numbers–-the one in the checkbook and the official balance on the statement–-always came up at odds. True, they were getting closer, but still they never quite matched.
April and Joe began to wonder if it were even possible to balance a checkbook. They took it as a special challenge. And so, the next month, they decided, they would meticulously record each transaction–-together, the two of them–-and check with each other at the end of each day–-to make sure that each check written, each ATM withdrawal, each debit purchase, each deposit–-was entered and recorded and calculated.
They did a good job of it.
But not good enough. For when they got the bank statement at the end of the month, again it was off. This time by just a few dollars, but still the two figures did not match.
* * * * * * *
The first time they made love, Joe had said, immediately afterwards, "Are you OK?"
"Yes."
And then: "I feel so relaxed."
"Good."
Or during the first few months after they’d gotten together: "I feel so comfortable with you." Or: "I am who I am. This is me. You’re seeing who I really am." And, "I’m not being someone else for you." And again, "I feel so comfortable with you."
"Me too."
Fairly soon it was, "I love you."
And, "I love you."
A year later, Joe turned 50, and April 25. Half his, twice hers.
Joe had said, "This is very good: the best."
"I know."
"But look at our ages. This’ll never work."
"Sure it will. I don’t care about numbers. I care about you."
"And I about you. But . . ."
"But what?"
"Well, . . ."
"Well what?"
"I’m confused."
"About what? Do you love me?"
"Entirely," he said, "but age matters."
"Love is what matters."
* * * * * * *
April had done her job: she wrote down every transaction in the checkbook, and the bank statement verified it. Joe did too; but still, things did not match.
Joe got out his calculator and redid the math. He did the math from the checkbook; he did the math from the bank statement. And then at one point–-at check number 333–-he found the error. The preceding balance had been $666.66. Check number 333 was for $33.33. He had written, in the checkbook the month before, the balance, after the check, as $633.30. But wait a minute, he said to himself. That’s wrong. Joe took out the calculator and re-did the math: 666.66 minus 33.33 equals 633.30.
Joe stared at the numbers. He knew that sixty-six minus thirty-three was thirty-three, not thirty. How can a calculator be wrong? He called in April. "Look at this," he said.
"What?"
"The calculator made a mistake!"
"Calculators don’t make mistakes."
"Then look at this: I subtracted 33.33 from 666.66 and got 633.30."
"So?"
"So, sixty-six cents minus thirty-three cents is thirty-three cents, not thirty. Six minus three is three, not zero."
April looked. It clicked in. "Let me see that." And she grabbed the calculator. Entered sixty-six minus thirty-three. Hit the equal sign. Thirty.
"Holy shit!"
Joe grabbed the calculator back. He entered the same equation. Hit the equal key. Thirty-three. What?! It’s doing it the right way now. He hit the numbers again. Thirty-three again. And again and again. More and more. Joe entered the problem ten times in a row, and now got the correct answer each time: thirty-three. He stood looking off into space.
April took the calculator into her hands and entered the equation. Hit the equal sign: thirty-three. Again and again: thirty-three; thirty-three. She looked at Joe. He looked back. The calculator had made a mistake–-and had then corrected itself. And Joe and April had seen it--had caught it in the act.
* * * * * * *
The whole first year that Joe was falling in love with April Perpendicular, he was also resisting. "This is crazy," he had said. "Look at us–-the age difference," he said. "Look at it. Do the math. This is impossible."
"I don’t care."
"I don’t care either, but look at our ages. This is crazy. It’ll never work."
"It’s working now."
"But it can’t."
"But it is."
"Yeah, but. . ."
"If it doesn’t matter to me, why should it matter for you?"
But still he resisted–-for a full year–-for a full year and a half--at the same time that he felt drawn toward her. Pulled toward her. And she toward him. He felt so comfortable with her. It was the best relationship he had ever had. That’s what he had said; that’s what she had said. And he believed her. He had believed it himself. As if age–-and the age difference–-no longer mattered. But age does matter; the age difference matters–-love matters--both literally and in what it represents.
"This is crazy," he kept saying, shaking his head.
And she had returned, "But not impossible."
* * * * * * *
Joe found himself spending more and more time with the calculator. Not just trying to balance the checkbook at the end of each day; or trying to identify where they had gone wrong each month. Sometimes, after April had gone off to bed, Joe would sit in the rocking chair and work with numbers. He’d do squares and square roots. He did decimals and fractions. He did pi, knowing full well that the numbers actually stretched out far beyond the decimal and the right-hand margin: into the space that was occupied by air: 3.142851. He memorized the number. He knew it by heart: 3.142851. But then one time, using the calculator, he came up with 3.142852. Joe looked long and hard. "This is crazy," he said.
* * * * * * *
Two-and-a-half years after they met, they decided to marry. April was 26; Joe, 52. Twice her age, half his. It seemed right. And things kept going well--for awhile. Joe’s kids achieved adulthood; April’s adolescence. Hers were seven and five; his, twenty-two and twenty.
* * * * * * *
Joe and April continued to try to balance the checkbook. Without much success. Usually, they could not even find the error. The two numbers–-the one in the checkbook and the one on the bank statement–-never matched. Once they had gotten as close as five cents--a measly nickel. But still, no precise, exact match. Usually, they could not even discover where they had gone wrong.
April went to bed.
Joe stayed up, working with the calculator, moving beyond the trivialities of a checkbook or bank statement. Moving numbers around. Pressing buttons. Checking out how the machine he held in his hands worked. Basic stuff. Looking for flaws; mistakes; errors. Anything. Looking for understanding.
For example, he could never understand why, when he multiplied a positive number with a negative, the result was always a negative. Or why, when he multiplied two negatives, the result was positive. It made no sense to him: It made no sense to him. No sense to him did it make.
But he accepted it on faith.
And he went on from there.
Without understanding.
But with trust.
At times he stayed up late into the night, early into the morning, while April slept. While April dreamed.
Once he tested out his theory. One night, after she had gone to bed, he took out three apples from the fridge and placed them in one pile. He did the math on the calculator: three apples times one pile equals three apples. He looked at the three apples; he counted the three apples. He took out three more apples from the fridge. Put them in a separate pile. Did the math again: three times two equals six. He counted the six apples on the counter. He took out three more apples from the fridge. Put them in a third pile. Did the math: three times three equals nine. He counted the apples. Nine.
He removed two of the piles. Put them back in the fridge. Kept the one pile out. Placed the three apples under the counter where he could not see them: Negative three. Counted the number of piles he could see: Negative one. Did the math on the calculator: Negative three times negative one equals positive three. He looked at the apples, which had, as if by magic–-or logic–-or math--reappeared on the counter.
* * * * * * *
Perception often plays funny tricks with reality. In the same way that reality can sometimes play strange tricks with perception. Joe didn’t know it; April didn’t know it. But there was a look in April’s eye that Joe could not detect-–that April herself was unaware of. Not then; not now. Not yet. But it was there nonetheless.
How long had it been there? And how long would it take before it would be detected? And who would be the first to see it? And what would they do with that information, once they had it?
Perception often plays tricks with reality.
Morticians usually say that the mouth is the hardest part of the face to get "right." But that may be because they’d long ago given up on the eyes; they don’t even bother with the eyes anymore: just close ‘em and sew ‘em up.
In college Joe had always been puzzled by the comments he’d heard about Mona Lisa’s smile. What was she smiling at? What’s she smiling for? What does her smile mean? What does any of it mean? And when they talked about her smile, they talked about her mouth. But for Joe the real mystery of her smile was not in her mouth, but in her eyes.
Joe had always thought that April’s eyes were beautiful. He didn’t know what color they were because he was color blind. But the beauty in her eyes was not in the color. The beauty in her eyes was in the way they looked back at him, an expression that told him that she was seeing the same beauty in his own eyes, which had nothing to do with color either, but everything to do with beauty.
In college, back in the Sixties, Joe had discovered the music of Tim Buckley. Buckley’d had a small but loyal core of fans who had followed his career as it began in folk, moved briefly into pop, and then--before his untimely death on June 29, 1975, at the age of 28, from a heroin overdose--merged into some of the more experimental aspects of jazz, especially voice. His vocal range covered three octaves. His second album, Goodbye and Hello, was the one that nearly brought him some popular success. Two of the cuts, "Morning Glory" and "Once I Was," Joe thought to be two of the finest songs to have come out of that era of the Sixties, both musically and lyrically:
Once I was a lover,
And I searched behind your eyes for you;
And soon there’ll be another
To tell you I was just a lie.
Joe and April, like most humans, slept with their eyes closed. Joe slept on his side; April on her back. Not often, but sometimes April would snore. Never loud, but sometimes loud enough to wake Joe. Joe liked to hear her snore because he knew that her snoring, even if it woke him up, was a part of her, and he loved her dearly–-entirely, all of her--and if snoring was a part of her, he loved that too. And he’d lie there on his side for awhile, listening and loving her snoring--her breathing. When he was ready to go back to sleep, he’d inch over toward her softly and touch her hip with his hip, or her leg with his leg, or sometimes even her head with his head. When he did that, she’d rustle a little in her sleep, stir momentarily--perhaps disturbing a dream. And then the snoring would stop, and they’d each return to their sleep, often falling off at the same time together.
* * * * * * *
Once, after making love--after having made long, slow, beautiful love–-April had said to Joe, "You know, I’ll be OK without you."
Joe looked back at her, blankly. "What?" he said.
"You know, the age difference. The math. You are older, remember. You’re not going to be around forever."
He kept looking.
She saw his response, but held her ground. "That’s a good thing, isn’t it?"
* * * * * * *
He should have stuck with addition and subtraction. He should have stuck to just trying to keep the checkbook balanced. The multiplication thing baffled him. Positives and negatives made no sense whatsoever. Negatives and negatives were out of the question. That being the case, he should have realized that he had no business trying his hand at division. Long division. Long, complex, difficult division. The kind that continued way beyond the decimal point, right on past the right-hand margin of the calculator and into empty space. The kind that never seemed to work out, but just kept going on and on and on. The kind of problem that had always been difficult for him to solve. But he knew that the calculator would make what was once difficult easy. And so he tried it again, as he knew he must.
And for awhile, like the marriage, it worked; it worked well. That is to say, it worked adequately. Which is to say, he kept trying, often going on to the next equation before the previous one had been fully understood. And because the two things were related, Joe moved back and forth between the marriage and the math, between multiplication and division. While April slept. While April dreamed.
But Joe moved backwards as well, backwards into memory, back to the day when he had first bought the calculator, back to the first time that he had covered up the little light panel to watch the numbers fade away to nothing–-not even to zero, which was at least something--back to the time before he had loved April, before he had met April, back before he had even known Lulu. Or anyone. Or anything. Back to the time when he was nothing. When there was nothing.
What he did know now, calculator in hand, was that a number divided by itself was one: one divided by one is one; one hundred divided by one hundred is one; one billion divided by one billion is still one. Infinity itself divided by infinity is--and has to be, logically–-one. Logically speaking, then--logically thinking, then--zero divided by zero should also be one. Amazing, he thought. To get something from nothing. And: "Beautiful," he said aloud.
Or, as he continued thinking, should it be zero? A number multiplied by zero is zero. Because multiplication and division are so closely related, a number divided by zero should also be zero.
Joe took out the calculator. Entered the numbers: Zero divided by zero. He hit the equal sign. Looked at the panel.
Instead of a number-–instead of the numbered answer he was looking for--another, different response appeared. Not a number at all, but a single word, in small capital letters: ERROR.
* * * * * * *
When Joe first bought the calculator, he and April had worked together as partners to balance the checkbook. But after awhile, when it became apparent that they were never going to get things to match exactly--that things were just not working out and probably never would--she began to lose interest in the process. The calculator’s imperfections no longer interested her--no longer surprised her. Even when the calculator began to give its answers in words, rather than with numbers, she’d already moved on. And so Joe, knowing that April’s interest had waned, worked alone. He seldom brought in the new and wonderful and complex mysteries to show and to share with her anymore. He’d walk into their bedroom at night, lights off, calculator in hand, after she’d already gone to bed, and stand in the doorway watching her sleep, listening to her snore, smelling her hair and her body. He loved her. Then he’d turn and go back to his work. She was 27, he was 53--no longer half his age, no longer twice hers.
* * * * * * *
Joe had always hated square roots. He’d learned in high school how to do the thing the long way. The hard way. The long, hard, tedious way: all the speculating and estimating and then trying to have it match up. Or something like that. He could never quite remember how it was done because he had hated it so much and because it had all been so long ago.
So the calculator was a kind of relief. No longer would he ever have to do that long, hard, horrible, impossible long division. To be sure, his faith in technology was anything but absolute–-as was his faith in humanity. He nurtured a healthy distrust of both, at the same time that he also knew that without trust there was nothing. So he did the equations he already knew–-to see if the calculator really worked. To see if he could trust it. Or to see if it too changed its mind, like everything else.
Square root of twenty-five? Easy (click): five.
Square root of a hundred? Easy again (click): Ten.
Of a thousand? (Click): 31.622776. Wait a minute!
Joe cleared the calculator. Did the math again. Square root of a thousand: 31.622776. He looked at the number. Tried another one: Ten thousand. Hit the square root button: One hundred.
Okay, Okay. Joe felt safe again. On solid ground. Faith restored.
He decided to go small. Stick with the known; stick with the safe; stick with what he already knew:
Square root of nine: three.
Square root of four: two.
Square root of one: one.
Square root of zero: zero.
Amazing stuff, he thought.
The night grew late with numbers:
He thought of his kids--his kids’ ages, and how they had changed as their ages had changed; and how they had become different people from the ones he had once known. And his own age --his own aging--and how he had been denying the fact of his own mortality for so long; and everyone else’s; everything else’s. And April’s age; and her own children’s. And the enormous differences among them all: him and her, she and he. The differences mattered.
And he thought about the things that are out of one’s control: like age; and love; and loss; and how sometimes you just jump in. And hold on anyway.
Joe got up and peeked into the bedroom. April was no longer there.
He walked back to his chair and looked at the calculator in his hand and put in the number he had been so curious about: negative one. He hit the square root button.
No number appeared. But the words that showed up were smaller than the numbers that had appeared when numbers were all that mattered. Or even the single word "ERROR," when it had shown up on the screen two weeks before. But it made sense to Joe now: The words had to be smaller in order to fit into the little space below the little light collector panel. "Imaginary Number," it read. In both upper and lower case letters.