The Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance by Lee K. Abbott
"The Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance" by Lee K. Abbott explores the intricate dynamics of family storytelling and the profound connections between generations. The narrative centers around Tyler, who recounts a story told by his father, known as Daddy, detailing a tragic car accident that significantly impacted his life. This act of storytelling allows Tyler to inhabit the role of a narrator, reflecting on the emotional weight of the tales passed down from his father.
As Tyler shares this tale with his wife, Nadine, he grapples with the complexities of his father's experiences, leading to a deeper understanding of their shared vulnerabilities. The story reveals a hidden aspect of Daddy's life, including the loss of his first wife, Annette, and the emotional turmoil that followed. Through vivid imagery and introspection, the narrative examines themes of grief, the fragility of life, and the transformative power of revelation. Ultimately, Tyler's journey of discovery illustrates how personal histories shape identities and relationships, leaving readers to ponder the delicate balance between memory and mortality.
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The Final Proof of Fate and Circumstance by Lee K. Abbott
First published: 1983
Type of plot: Metafiction
Time of work: The 1960's to 1980's
Locale: Texas
Principal Characters:
Daddy , a career army officerTyler , his son, the story's narratorNadine , Tyler's wife
The Story
Tyler is telling his wife, Nadine, a story that his father has told him many times before. Tyler passes his Daddy's stories on to Nadine, taking on the role of storyteller that Daddy has practiced for many years and that has become the basis of their father-son relationship.
Tyler starts by narrating one of Daddy's most compelling stories, in which Daddy killed a man in a tragic car accident when he was twenty-eight years old. What makes Tyler's rendition of the story so engaging is the quality of detail he occasionally adds to his father's story: "His car, as I now imagine it, must have been a DeSoto or a Chrysler, heavy with chrome and a grill like a ten-thousand-pound smile." As Daddy was meditating on some of the joys and tragedies of his life, he rounded a corner of a county road at high speed and smashed into a car, sending it some fifty yards down a gully. After realizing he was not hurt, he began the grim task of trying to find the driver's body. His anxiety increasing, he came on the body of the ironically named Morris E. Valentine, who, although still warm, was quite dead.
Tyler tells Nadine that Daddy had told him that story again today, as father and son were sipping on a bottle of Oso Negro rum, the best thing to drink while reminiscing, in their opinion. Tyler gradually begins to realize the profound experience he is having with his father on this particular day: "I was in that cozy place few get to these days . . . that place where your own father admits to being a whole hell of a lot like you." Once Daddy is able to acknowledge their emotional and psychological identification, he tells Tyler a story he has told no one, not even Elaine, his present wife and Tyler's mother.
Daddy relates this brand-new story in a third-person narrative, calling the main character "X." Tyler immediately recognizes X as his own father, but he makes no attempt to get his father to admit to that fact. It is Daddy's way of revealing to his son the deepest and darkest secret of his life. Daddy's first wife was a French woman named Annette D'Kopman, whom he had met at an army golf tournament in San Antonio when he was thirty-one. Although not a particularly beautiful person, she had a grace and charm of movement that was irresistible: "a method of getting from oven to freezer with style enough to make you choke or ache in several body parts."
Annette and X married and lived at Fort Sam Houston, where he was a supply officer and she the dutiful and erotically satisfying new bride. Although there was some drinking and fighting, their relationship was fulfilling. She died suddenly, and X, after the initial traumatic shock, felt nothing—neither grief nor heartbreak. X kept waiting for the grieving process to begin but felt only an empty numbness. About halfway to the graveyard, X ordered Munroe, the driver of the limousine, to stop and let him out. Munroe, a quasi-unconscious neurotic, was stunned by the order. The mourners following the funeral coach were even more troubled. X did not know where he was going; he only realized that he had to move away from the sorrow and death that had finally registered in his consciousness: He experienced a massive sadness and found it unbearable. The next thing he knew, he had walked into an ice cream parlor and ordered three vanilla cones, which, he declared, were the best he had ever eaten.
During this threshold experience, X felt neither bleakness nor happiness, shape nor beauty. He simply reveled in the sheer physical ecstasy of consuming the vanilla ice cream. Then X experienced the major epiphany of his life—a visionary experience in which he passed out. He felt light-headed and partially blind and sensed the walls tipping and closing in on him and the floor rising and spinning. He had experienced the moment of death, a moment combining both hope and doom.
Tyler tries to explain to Nadine what effect the revelation of his father's darkest secret has had on him as it coalesces with Tyler's equally important revelation. Nadine asks what the moral of this story is, and Tyler says it shows that everything is fragile. He does not tell Nadine what followed Daddy's revelation, as Tyler is torn between weeping and feeling much older. He had wandered about the house surveying his father's golf trophies, the contents of the medicine chest, and the other personal items that composed his father's life. Tyler decides that he will tell Nadine tomorrow that he entered his father's bedroom, listened to him snore, and beheld his father as a beloved yet fragile human animal who will someday lie in a grave.