I Married You for Happiness Read online

  She starts to open the medicine cabinet but changes her mind, the contents are familiar.

  She looks at his toothbrush in the glass, at his toothpaste lying next to it—again, he has forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste tube—she looks away.

  Drying her hands on a towel, she turns to open the bathroom door. Hanging on the hook are his striped pajama pants and a white cotton T-shirt. The T-shirt is so old it is transparent. The older and softer the T-shirts, the more he likes them. Next to the T-shirt and pajama pants hangs the pretty, cambric nightgown she bought in Rome a month ago.

  While Philip is attending lectures, Nina sightsees and shops. In addition to the nightgown, she buys an expensive brown leather shoulder bag with a gold clasp in a store near Piazza di Spagna—the leather, the saleswoman says to convince her, is indestructible. Feeling guilty, Nina does not show Philip the shoulder bag. Later, she tells herself, she will.

  Now she never will.

  In the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, Nina stands in front of Rest on the Flight into Egypt and stares at the red-haired angel and his outstretched black wings. Except for a swirl of white cloth, the angel, his back to the viewer, is naked; he is playing the violin for the Holy Family as they rest. Only Joseph and the donkey are listening; holding the baby Jesus in her arms, Mary is fast asleep.

  Nina cannot move away from Caravaggio’s angel.

  Time for lunch, Philip says, impatient.

  Wait, she pleads.

  She tries to remember what the conference in Rome is about. Something to do with computational and scheduling problems: finding the shortest route that takes a salesman to every city exactly once, finding the most efficient way to pack a truck or pack a bin. Problems for which there are no algorithms, problems that do not interest her.

  She packs the nightgown and the new shoulder bag in the bottom of her suitcase. No problem.

  She will give the shoulder bag to Louise, all of a sudden, she decides.

  The decision and its suddenness pleases her.

  As for her pretty nightgown, it might as well be made out of burlap.

  Take it off, he always says.

  It has stopped raining and, again, she goes and opens the window and leans out. The trees stand as massive shapes in the garden; above them the sky is dark. She cannot see any stars.

  All is quiet.

  Shutting the window, she goes back and sits next to him, by the side of the bed.

  How was your day? Again, she asks. This time she will listen. How was yours?

  I began a triptych. The first panel is going to be a calm sea, the second a stormy sea, the third—she stops and shakes her head.

  Has she drunk too much wine?

  Holding up the bottle, she tries to read the label in the dark. An Italian wine: Flaccia—she cannot make out the rest.

  His arms around her in bed, he whispers endearments in an Italian accent. He makes up names to make her laugh.

  They are trying to conceive.

  He touches her breasts.

  Tell me again who Fibonacci was?

  A thirteenth-century mathematician.

  And what did he discover?

  His hand is on her stomach.

  A number sequence where each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 …

  He puts his hand in between her legs.

  Tell me about the rabbits.

  You start with two rabbits, a male and a female, born in January, and two months later, they give birth to another pair of rabbits, and two months later, that pair of rabbits gives birth to another pair, and each new pair of rabbits produces another pair who …

  His fingers move quickly, confident.

  The question is how many pairs of rabbits will there be in a year? In two years?

  What if a rabbit dies? She is having trouble speaking, she is about to come.

  The rabbits don’t die; the rabbits are immortal.

  After two years there are 46,368 pairs of rabbits, he says as, with a groan, he gets on top of her.

  And in less than a year, there is Louise.

  He finds Fibonacci number sequences everywhere: in flower petals, in pinecones, ferns, artichoke leaves, the spirals of shells, in the curve of waves.

  In Louise’s newborn face.

  When Philip first holds her in his arms, she is a day old. He weeps.

  She has never seen Philip cry before nor has she since—not when his brother Harold died, not when his father died. Then, he looked pale and perturbed but he did not shed a tear.

  The last time I cried—really cried—he tells Nina, is when my dog died. I think I was fourteen. The dog was a mixed breed—half German shepherd, half something else. His name was Natty Bumppo. He was a great dog—he had a sense of humor. He used to bare his teeth and grin at me.

  How about when Iris died? she wants to ask but does not.

  She pictures him, dry eyed and stricken, in his one dark suit as he slowly makes his way down the church aisle.

  Instead, she asks, How did the dog die?

  Not too bad, Philip says, as he puts the booties on Louise’s tiny feet. A perfect fit.

  What are you going to knit her next? Nina asks. A sweater set?

  Across from the hotel where the conference was held, Philip explains, there was a crafts shop. I have no idea why I went in—something must have caught my eye—a big basket full of wool right by the door. Big balls of natural wool and the woman in the shop said knitting was relaxing. Anyone could knit. She sold me the needles, the wool, the instructions. I went back to the airport and while I waited for my flight I began to knit and, she was right, it helped calm me down. On the plane, too, as luck would have it, the woman seated next to me offered to help. I had dropped some stitches, she said.

  What, Nina wonders, caught Philip’s eye? Or, more likely, who? A lonely, talkative woman who sells wool and who dresses in an earth-tone smock and wears noisy wooden clogs? To her outfit, Nina adds an abstract-shaped silver pendant—the work of an artist friend—dangling on her unsupported breasts. She is not Philip’s type. Instead, Nina imagines, a tidy blonde with an engaging, bright smile, who sits next to Philip on the plane and points out the dropped stitches.

  Gray, shapeless, despite the fact that Nina washes them repeatedly, the booties smell of oil and sheep. The first time Louise wears them outdoors as Nina is pushing the stroller, one of the booties slips off her foot, drops in the snow, and is lost.

  Natty Bumppo was poisoned. Someone, Philip tells her, threw poisoned meat out of a car window. A lot of the dogs in the neighborhood died. So did a few cats and squirrels. The street was a mess, full of dead animals.

  Did Philip know he was dying?

  He looks composed, his eyes are closed. He does not look afraid. He looks the way he does when he is asleep. Perhaps he is, she thinks, and this is a mistake.

  A terrible mistake.

  Philip, she calls to him.

  Philip.

  And did his entire life flash by in front of his eyes? Or just a few memorable incidents: falling out of the tree, solving his first quadratic equation, the first time he has sex….

  Was he happy?

  Did she make him happy?

  They are happy on the windswept island of Pantelleria, in the two-room dammuso they rent for a week. The dammuso is built from local volcanic stone and the thick walls keep the house warm in winter and cool in summer, the vaulted roof allows the rain water to fall into a cistern below. There is no running water. Every morning, Philip hauls several buckets of water and brings them into the bathroom and into the kitchen. The bathroom is in a separate small building; a branch full of purple blossoms that grows outside serves as a curtain for the window and provides privacy.

  Capers grow on the terraced hillsides; the vinelike bushes are abloom with blue flowers.

  Iris.

  No. She forces herself not to think of her now.

  The capers are large, grainy, salty; they eat them every day
for lunch with tomatoes, bread, and olive oil along with the local wine. Afterward they lie down in the dark cool thick-walled bedroom and sleep—a heavy, drugged sleep—for the rest of the hot afternoon. When they awake, they make love—slow, solicitous love—then, still naked, Philip gets up and hauls up more water from the cistern so they can both wash.

  They swim in warm green inlets, aquamarine caves, and dark, colder grottoes that are divided by outcrops of rocks and lava pillars with Arab names. Above them rise the sheer cliffs of the island; perched on one is the village of Saltalavecchia—old lady’s leap—where at midday they stop to buy bread and fill the car up with gas.

  Perché lei é saltata in mare? Nina asks. Un marito perso? A lost husband? Un figlio perso? A lost son?

  The baker shrugs his shoulders, he does not know.

  Nor does the garage attendant, or he has forgotten.

  Saltalavecchia is just a name, a boy, pumping air into his bicycle tires, tells her. Like Firenze or Venezia or, for that matter, Roma. He says this without looking at her.

  One morning, a thin brown and white dog comes and sits on the terrace steps. Nina fetches a bowl of water for him.

  Careful, Philip says. You never know here.

  He looks friendly enough.

  During breakfast, she feeds him some leftover toast, buttered toast.

  Now, you’ve done it, Philip says.

  What shall we call him? Nina asks.

  Philip shrugs and shakes his head.

  Roma, she says. It’s just a name.

  At night, curled up like a ball, the dog, Roma, sleeps outside their door; during the day, he stretches out flat on his side soaking up the sun on the stone terrace; from time to time, he sits up to scratch himself. He eats everything: tomatoes, bread, rice, fish—whatever Nina gives him. He eats greedily, wagging his tail. When Nina and Philip leave to go swimming or, in the evening, when they go out to dinner, he lies on the top step leading up to the terrace, his head resting on his paws, and waits for them.

  What’s going to happen to Roma when we leave? Nina asks. Maybe we could take him home. We could find a vet, a crate, a—

  No, no. Philip shakes his head emphatically.

  Although Nina makes inquiries, no one wants a dog.

  Another mouth to feed! is what they all say.

  At last, Anselmo, the waiter at a restaurant they frequent, agrees to take him, and on the last day, a few hours before they are due to leave, they put Roma in their car and drive to Anselmo’s house. Nervous, Roma sits panting and drooling in the backseat. Half turning, Nina pats his head as he tries to lick her hand.

  He knows, she tells Philip.

  He’ll be fine, Philip answers.

  You’ll have a good home, Roma, she says.

  They have difficulty finding Anselmo’s house, which is located in the interior of the island, a desolate, uncultivated area they have never been to before. The dirt road is rutted and bordered by stunted, twisted olive trees. It is near the airport, which, however, remains invisible to them, even as a small plane flies in low over their heads, nearly—or so it seems—grazing the roof of their car, its wheels down, ready to land.

  We’re going to miss our plane if we don’t find his house soon, Philip says.

  Anselmo, his wife, and his children are pleased to see them arrive. They offer refreshments but Philip and Nina are in too much of a hurry.

  La prossima volta, Philip promises.

  Anselmo and his wife laugh. The children make a show of putting their arms around Roma and hugging him.

  Before leaving, Philip hands Anselmo an envelope full of money. Money to look after the dog, he says.

  Non si preoccupi signore, Anselmo repeats, il cane sará felice con noi. Io sono felice, tu sei felice, egli è felice, noi siamo felici, she repeats to herself. In school, she learned how to conjugate Italian verbs and recite them by heart.

  And which past tense should she use now—the near past io sono stato felice, or the past perfect io ero stato felice, or the remote past perfect io fui stato felice?

  Or, still yet, the conditional past io sarei stato felice.

  Several weeks go by before Nina telephones the restaurant—Anselmo does not have a home phone—and she is told that Anselmo no longer works there. Anselmo, the person who answers the phone says, left a month ago. When she tries to ask about the dog, the person who answers the phone says he knows nothing about a dog.

  Taking another sip of wine, Nina again thinks about how Philip, a Midwesterner, was drawn not to fields of grain or to vast green plains but to the sea and to islands: Martha’s Vineyard, Belle-Île, Pantelleria.

  And how he became a keen sailor.

  His Hinckley Bermuda 40 has a sleek, French-blue hull, a solid butternut and teak interior, and shiny bronze fittings. The boat sleeps four comfortably, six uncomfortably, and, on it, they have sailed the cold waters of Maine and Canada—even, once, as far as Nova Scotia where, on account of the Gulf Stream, the water was surprisingly warm.

  Hypatia—Philip names the boat after the first known female mathematician.

  But, unfortunately, Hypatia met a gruesome end, Philip tells Nina.

  How?

  She was attacked by an angry mob of monks who peeled off her skin with oyster shells. She was skinned alive, then dismembered and burned.

  How horrible. Why?

  Her teachings were considered heretical. She wore men’s clothes and drove her own chariot through the city of Alexandria. She did not know her place as a woman.

  For a while, Nina resists sailing with Philip but, in the end, she gives in.

  In the end, too, she grows proficient: taking the wheel while Philip puts up the sails, catching the mooring without his having to come about twice, reading charts and cooking meals on the tricky gas stove. She walks Hypatia’s deck on her sea legs without holding on to the wire guardrail, and, finally, she has grown accustomed to falling asleep to the lap-lap of the waves against the boat’s hull and has grown to like the sound.

  Hypatia, Nina mouths to herself.

  Bradycardia, she says.

  Once a month, on Sundays, Philip stays in bed for most of the day—Winston Churchill, he has heard, did the same. Not to have sex, but to restore himself.

  Philip has breakfast and lunch in bed, but by midafternoon the bed is full of crumbs, spilled drinks, the Sunday paper, books, journals, pencils, his laptop, and Philip is forced to get up. While he showers, Nina tidies and makes up the bed.

  I feel like your maid, each time she tells Philip, who has come out of the shower and is drying himself with a towel—a towel he drops on the floor.

  He is whistling a tune.

  You should have married Paul Erdös, Philip teases her.

  Paul Erdös, he tells her, lived out of a suitcase. Instead of a shirt, he wore his pajama top; he had no money, did not eat meat, washed his hands compulsively, and did not know how to tie his own shoelaces. But he wrote or coauthored 1,475 academic papers. More than any other single mathematician in history.

  Philip has published with someone who has published with someone who published with Paul Erdös.

  Philip’s Erdös number is 3.

  Lorna, too, lived out of a suitcase—or nearly. Disorganized, unreliable, brilliant, she worked at the Center for Particle Astrophysics in Berkeley until she overdosed. The housekeeper found her in her bed; Lorna had been dead for several days already. Hard not to picture the decomposing body: Lorna’s curls framing her once beautiful, now discolored and disfigured face.

  Accident or a suicide? Everyone who knew Lorna was curious to know.

  So is Nina.

  Why do so many mathematicians commit suicide? Is it because their discoveries make them feel isolated and alienated? Or is there some other reason? she asks Philip.

  Instead of answering, Philip says, I should have gone over to her apartment when she did not answer the phone. I had a feeling something was wrong.

  Philip spends that night in his office workin
g—or so he says. Or, perhaps, he spends the night driving around Marin, where Lorna lived. In the morning, when he finally comes home—Nina hears him climbing up the stairs to the bedroom—his limp more pronounced than usual.

  Suppose we were to fly through the entire universe in a spaceship, Lorna says one evening, early on in the semester, when she comes to Nina and Philip’s house for dinner, the way the early explorers circumnavigated the globe, we might just end up where we started. She laughs nervously, waiting for Philip to reply.

  Are you saying that the universe is finite, edgeless, and connected? Philip asks her.

  Earlier, Nina notices that Lorna’s shoes, ballet flats, are of two different colors—one black, one silver.

  She hesitates before pointing this out.

  Oh. Looking down, Lorna’s face turns pink. I must have been thinking of something else.

  What else did Philip and Lorna talk about? Theories of the early universe, chaos, black holes.

  Nina has set the table; she has cooked the dinner—a picky eater, Lorna does not eat meat or fish. After they finish the main course, Nina gets up and clears the dishes.

  But isn’t it absurd to think that the universe might be infinite, Lorna says, returning to the same subject as she pokes at the dessert on her plate with her fork.

  A pineapple upside-down cake Nina has baked especially.

  For if, say, we go beyond Einstein’s theory—if we find an ultimate theory of everything—the theory will prove that we humans are created from the same basic substance as the universe, and that we and the universe are just different manifestations of the same thing. How then could the universe be infinite when we ourselves are finite?

  Lorna speaks in short, almost inaudible, nervous bursts, so that one has to lean in close to hear what she is saying. She is small-boned and her arms are covered with freckles. She does not know how to drive a car and after dinner, Philip takes her home. To Nina, it seems as if the drive takes him longer than necessary. He is gone for two hours.

  The traffic, he claims when he finally comes home. And an accident on the highway.

  You shouldn’t have mentioned her shoes, Philip also tells Nina. You embarrassed her and it was childish.