I Married You for Happiness Read online

  While she and Jean-Marc are in bed one afternoon, someone knocks at the front door and calls out Nina’s name—the landlady checking on the new refrigerator or leaving her some fresh lettuce from her garden.

  Un moment, Nina calls back down. J’arrive.

  Only half dressed and holding his shoes in one hand, Jean-Marc climbs out the bedroom window. Jumping, he lands squarely on his feet. In another moment, he leaps over the hydrangea hedge and is gone.

  Jean-Marc has the tight, muscular body of a gymnast.

  “But let us take another example,” Philip continues. “The probability of a person crossing a street safely is also 1 over 2 because again there are only two possible outcomes: crossing safely and not crossing safely. Yet the trouble with this argument is that the two possible outcomes—crossing safely and getting run over—are not equally likely. If they were, people would not want to cross the street very often or if they did, a lot of them would get hurt or killed. So therein lies the fallacy. The definition given by Fermat and Pascal applies only if one can analyze the situation into equally likely possible outcomes, which takes me back to my original example—and to put your minds at ease”—a few of the students laugh—”since I know my wife to be a truthful and loving woman, she is not likely to be unfaithful and to have had an affair.”

  General laughter and applause.

  Trust is a word we have put too much trust in, Philip also tells his class.

  Iris again.

  Was Iris, like Philip, a native of Wisconsin? A blonde beauty of Scandinavian origin—her hair so blonde it is white. And a musical prodigy. Nina has read about children who learn how to play the piano at age three, compose their first piece at five, debut as a soloist at seven—was Iris one of them? She pictures her sitting, small and demure, a bow in her hair, on the piano bench in front of the Steinway grand, her feet reaching for the pedals as she starts to play. Her little hands move swiftly and assuredly; the sound she makes is passionate. She plays Philip’s favorite Chopin polonaise—Nina can hear the melody in her head—which promises redemption and celebrates Polish heroism. Were they high school sweethearts and did they sleep together? Perhaps Iris is pregnant and she has just found out. Twice she has missed her period and every morning now she throws up her breakfast. She has screwed up her courage to tell Philip in the car on the way home from the party. The reason he drives off the road.

  Nina leans over Philip. Lightly, she touches his cheek. How can this have happened? How can this be?

  Philip is so robust, so healthy, so—she tries to think of the right words—so engaged in life.

  Come back, she whispers. Please, come back.

  How can he leave her?

  Without saying good-bye.

  Without a word.

  Please, she pleads.

  Putting her head down on his chest, she listens.

  At home, some evenings, Philip likes to play music and take her in his arms and whirl her in a quick two-step to La vie en rose, down the front hall, past the umbrella stand, the closet full of coats and past the pastel of a ship, its prow shaped like the head of a dog.

  The top of her head reaches his collarbone, she can feel his heart beating.

  His shoes are on the floor next to the bed. Old-fashioned, scuffed-up, lace-up brown oxfords. One shoe is lying on its side. Abandoned. Should she pick up the shoes and put them away in the closet? No, she will leave them there.

  She picks up after Philip. It annoys her—no, worse: it angers her. His socks, his underwear, left lying around for her to put away, to hang up, to throw in the laundry basket. At first, she scolds but then bored by her own aggrieved tone and the futility of her words, she stops.

  Untidiness in a man, she has read somewhere, is a sign of his having had a mother who dotes and spoils her son. Not so, in Philip’s case.

  Alice, Philip’s mother, lives twenty miles away in a nursing home. The last time Nina and Philip visit her, Alice is not certain who they are. Unfailingly polite, she speaks about people Nina has never heard of: Rick who built a fireplace made out of bricks—Rick rhymes with brick—nonsense. Nina lets her mind wander. She has brought tulips from the garden, which pleases Philip’s mother.

  I’ve always loved bougainvillea, she tells Nina.

  Tulips, Mother, Philip tries to correct her. Tulips from our garden.

  Francis, my husband, loved bougainvillea, Alice continues. Our garden in Ouro Prêto was full of bougainvillea.

  Ouro Prêto? Where is that? Nina asks, paying more attention.

  In Brazil, Philip answers. I’ve told you how the year after they got married, before Harold and I were born, she and my father spent a year in Brazil. Ouro Prêto was a mining town, originally, it means black gold. Now, there’s a university. It’s full of ornate, baroque churches—I’ve seen the photos they took. My father was doing some kind of research there. Afterward, they spent a year in Mexico.

  Strange what she remembers, Philip also says.

  How did you like living in Ouro Prêto? Nina leans forward to ask Alice. She feels a surge of tenderness for the old lady, who is sitting in her wheelchair dressed in a faded blue robe and whose pale, lined face has suddenly come to life.

  Oh, yes, Alice says. I remember how every evening after Francis finished his work, we walked through town up into the hills where we could see all of Ouro Prêto spread out below us. We could see the gold spires of the churches glittering in the setting sun. I remember we had a little dog. She smiles. His name was Kilo.

  What kind of dog? Nina asks. She wants Alice to remember.

  A little dog we found in the street. He was black and brown. And white, Alice adds before she closes her eyes.

  It’s hard to imagine your mother as a young woman in Ouro Prêto, Nina says on the way home in the car.

  But she can, easily.

  Alice in a full skirt and an embroidered peasant blouse; she is wearing sandals; her dark hair reaches her waist. Hand in hand, she walks with Francis on the town’s cobblestoned streets, the dog straining at the leash. When they reach the hills above the town, they sit for a moment under a tree. Perhaps they make love, Francis lifting Alice’s full skirt while Kilo barks excitedly around them. Only it is hard to picture Francis, a formal, courtly man, having sex.

  What are you smiling about? Turning to look at her, Philip asks.

  Nothing.

  Why, she wonders to herself, does she always have to picture people having sex?

  Philip rarely speaks about his parents. Not from any resentment but from a sort of pudeur—a reticence. His parents, too, were reticent and undemonstrative. They hardly ever raised their voices, they rarely got angry. In their presence, Nina always felt too loud and flashy, too frivolous, although she is none of those things really.

  Francis, Philip’s father, taught anthropology; like Philip he was tall and slender, but he had a thick white mustache that hid his top lip. For a few months, while they lived in Berkeley, Philip grew a mustache.

  I’m curious. I just want to see how it feels. Don’t worry, I’ll shave it off soon, he promises Nina. Only he doesn’t.

  It feels strange when you kiss me. And food gets stuck in it, it’s unhygienic, Nina says.

  She believes he has grown the mustache to annoy her.

  Also, he has gotten into the habit of stroking it.

  It makes you look weird, is what Louise says to him, and it embarrasses me in front of my friends. It is she, not Nina, who persuades Philip to shave it off.

  What will she tell Alice now?

  Nina tries to remember how long ago Philip’s brother died. Five, six years, maybe seven. She has lost track. Poor Harold. Short, jovial, the son of the milkman, he joked behind his father’s back. Harold married and divorced the same woman twice, which further subjected him to ridicule.

  How often does that happen? Nina wonders.

  More often than you think, Philip says.

  You have to be an optimist.

  Or an amnesiac.


  Harold worked for an airline as a navigator, flying all over the country until he was fired. Harold drank too much and died of cirrhosis of the liver. At Philip and Nina’s wedding, he passed out and Laura, one of her bridesmaids, found him lying on his back on the wet lawn, his fly open, his pecker out.

  Nina pours herself more wine.

  Most mathematical functions, Philip tells her, are classified as two-way functions because they are easy to do and easy to undo—take addition and subtraction, for example. The way turning a light on and turning it off is a two-way function. A one-way function is more complicated because, although it may be easy to do, you cannot undo it. Like mixing paint, you can’t unmix it, or like breaking an egg shell, you can’t put the egg back together again.

  Like opening a bottle of champagne—for once Nina is listening—you can’t put the cork back in the bottle. Or having a baby.

  On account of the snowstorm, Philip’s flight from Miami is canceled. He has to wait several hours before the runways at Logan Airport are cleared and he can come home.

  I was frantic. I couldn’t sit still or read, he tells Nina, when, breathless, his coat buttoned up the wrong way, he arrives at the hospital. I knew you were both fine but I wanted to be with you. I wanted to see her right away.

  He is holding day-old Louise in his arms. There are tears in his eyes.

  She touches Philip’s cheek—cooler now. With her fingers, she traces the slightly raised scar on his forehead; she touches the lobe of his ear, his neck, his shoulders. Again she puts her head on his chest. He is all there still. But what, she wonders, happens when people die in cataclysmic ways, in explosions or in plane crashes, and their bodies disappear entirely or become ash, spindrift—a word she has always liked—or, simply, atoms? Are they still dead people? This leads her into the difficult realm of metaphysics. A realm she does not dare enter.

  What about Philip’s soul? Has his soul departed and is it now floating somewhere in the ether looking for a place to settle?

  Outside, the wind arrives in strong gusts and she hears the tree branches shake; the shutter bangs again. Twice in quick succession.

  Several afternoons a week, Philip goes sailing with Jean-Marc. Jean-Marc is good company, intelligent, serious, Philip tells Nina. He plans to open a sailing school on Belle-Île and Philip gives him business advice. In return, Jean-Marc is teaching Philip a great deal—not only about sailing but about the sea, the tides, the region.

  You’ll have to come with us, Philip tells Nina. I’ll pick a good day, a day that isn’t too windy. You’ll like it, I promise. And, with Jean-Marc on board, you’ll feel safe, he adds.

  Yes, maybe, Nina, not yet keen on sailing, answers.

  But she prefers to stay home, to read, sunbathe, swim. Sometimes she works a little in the garden, trimming the hydrangeas. Also, that summer she has begun to paint watercolors. She tries to do them fast; she wants to not hesitate.

  How does it start?

  They are having dinner at La Mère Irène, a popular restaurant, in Sauzon. The dinner is noisy, lively. Jean-Marc is a local son, a hero of sorts, he knows everyone—the chef, the waitresses, the other diners. They shout across the tables to one another; the food is local and cheap. Everyone drinks a lot of wine.

  Philip is explaining Zeno’s paradox. She no longer remembers why or how the subject came up, but she remembers that she is wearing a backless sundress with a red zigzag pattern that ties at the neck and she has thrown a white cotton sweater over her shoulders; she is eating moules, cooked in garlic and white wine, and frites.

  This suggests that I can never cross a space, Philip says, holding up his glass of wine and pointing to the far side of the restaurant—he is sounding a little drunk—because I would have to pass an infinite number of points before I reach it. This also means that I would not be able to move any distance at all and motion itself would be impossible. Yet, of course, I can move, he almost shouts, which is why I believe that infinity, although an elegant and important concept in mathematics, does not hold up in the physical world. I don’t know of any simple resolution to Zeno’s paradox, but I know that I can walk across this room.

  To demonstrate, Philip jumps up from his chair. Knocking it over, he trips and when he tries to stand on one leg—the leg that did not set properly—he loses his balance. He falls heavily, cutting his forehead on his wineglass.

  Martine begins to cry.

  Head wounds bleed a lot, Philip says, holding first one dinner napkin to his head, then another.

  Jean-Marc accompanies them to the small clinic in Le Palais and stays while the attending doctor removes the imbedded shards of glass then stitches up Philip’s head. The doctor insists that Philip spend the night in the clinic so that he can be observed, although he assures Nina that the risk of a concussion is slim.

  Merely a precaution, he says.

  Jean-Marc drives her home.

  There are, she notices, bloodstains on the front of her backless sundress. She also worries about her breath—that her breath smells of garlic. Also, too late, she realizes that the white cotton sweater must have slipped off her shoulders and, now, lies forgotten on the floor of La Mère Irène.

  Zeno, Jean-Marc says, laughing and shaking his head, and untying her backless sundress.

  Where, she tries to think, was Louise that summer?

  It must have been the same summer Louise begs Philip and Nina to let her go to a girl’s camp in New Hampshire.

  What about Belle-Île? What about our sailing together? Philip is reluctant to let her.

  All my friends are going to camp. Why can’t I?

  I’m not going to France. I hate France, Louise also says.

  Look, I’ll tell you what, Lulu. We’ll toss a coin. Heads you go to camp, tails you go to France.

  That’s not fair.

  Why?

  Dad, please.

  In tears, Louise runs out of the room.

  Tossing a coin high up in the air, Philip slaps it down on the back of his hand. Heads, he shouts out to Louise. Heads, Lulu—you go to camp.

  Let me see, Nina says.

  It’s tails.

  Shivering, she hugs herself. The feel of the windbreaker’s rough texture is a slight comfort. She can still hear the wind blowing outside and the room is quite dark.

  In bed, Philip is an outline.

  Go back, she tells herself. Go back.

  She can feel his arms around her. His warm breath on her neck. Sweet, teasing, familiar. They have a good time together. They laugh a lot. Is laughter the secret to a good marriage, she wonders?

  They know each other well.

  Just what I was thinking, she says.

  You read my mind, Philip says.

  Is it the food they eat? The air they breathe?

  They nearly have the same dream once.

  In bed, she knows what he likes, what pleases him; he knows what pleases her, what gives her an orgasm. It is not complicated; it is not kinky, not an embarrassment. At times, it is perhaps too predictable, but as they get older and their options lessen, it is a comfort. They are both grateful. They are both gratified.

  It has begun to rain, a gentle rattle against the glass. She goes to the window and opens it. Leaning out, she lets the rain fall on her face. A light cleansing mist and she breathes deeply. She imagines the grass, the plants, the trees, growing taller, greener.

  Briefly, she wonders whether her studio windows are shut. No matter. The three canvases she is working on are of sky and water. Hard to tell where the water ends and where the sky begins. She uses a lot of white paint. White and yellow and some blue paint. Just a hint of blue. Both the sea and sky look like bolts of cloth thrown down at random. The paintings are to be a triptych.

  A triptych?

  How presumptuous.

  Who does she think she is? Hans Memling? Francis Bacon? Tomorrow, first thing, she will destroy the canvases.

  A car drives slowly by, its headlights blurry in the rain. Reluctantly, she
shuts the window and draws the curtains before she goes and sits next to him again.

  He drives too fast. Often, he is distracted.

  Look over there, he says, one hand on the wheel, the other pointing.

  A tree. A beautiful field.

  Look out, she answers.

  There’s a car making a turn.

  A truck.

  Part of her feels—part of her even knows it for certain—that she, too, like Iris, will die in a car accident. It will be an awful coincidence. At the same time, isn’t it true that events tend to duplicate one another? Like copycat murders. If there is a plane crash, instantly, there are two more.

  “And what would be the probability of such a tragedy reoccurring?” he might later ask his class, as he writes out an equation on the blackboard. “The probability distribution of the number of occurrences of an event where n is the number of successes and N is the number of trials that happen rarely but have many opportunities to do so is called the Poisson distribution, named after a French mathematician, Siméon-Denis Poisson”—Philip stops to write the name on the blackboard—”and it is also known as the law of small or rare numbers, that Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz”—again, Philip turns to the blackboard to write out the name—”made famous when, in 1898, he published a book, The Law of Small Numbers, in which, during a period of twenty years, he recorded the number of soldiers kicked to death, each year, by horses in the fourteen Prussian cavalry corps. This is commonly known as the Prussian horse-kick data and it shows that the numbers follow a Poisson distribution.”

  She pictures it exactly. Rain coming down in dark sheets, the wipers straining, barely keeping the windshield clear, the road invisible, except for the unsteady red back lights of the car directly ahead. On either side of them, trucks leave huge splashing waves of water in their wakes, and, finally, the radio so full of static she turns it off.

  We should get new windshield wipers, she says, in order to ease the tension she feels.

  Philip does not answer. Hunched over in the driver’s seat, for once, he is concentrating; next to him, she is in the passenger seat, the death seat.