I Married You For Happiness

I MARRIED

YOU FOR

HAPPINESS

LILY TUCK

Dedication

In memory of

Edward Hallam Tuck

Epigraph

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts.

—Blaise Pascal, Pensées (#47)

There is nothing more terrorising than the possibility that nothing is hidden. There’s nothing more scandalous than a happy marriage.

—Adam Phillips, Monogamy

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

The Beginning

Acknowledgments

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Beginning

His hand is growing cold; still she holds it. Sitting at his bedside, she does not cry. From time to time, she lays her cheek against his, taking slight comfort in the rough bristle of unshaved hair, and she speaks to him a little.

I love you, she tells him.

I always will.

Je t’aime, she says.

Rain is predicted for tonight and she hears the wind rise outside. It blows through the branches of the oak trees and she hears a shutter bang against the side of the house, then bang again. She must remember to ask him to fix it—no, she remembers. A car drives by, the radio is on loud. A heavy metal song, she cannot make out the words. Teenagers. How little they know, how little they suspect what life has in store for them—or death. They may be drunk or stoned. She imagines the clouds racing in the night sky half hiding the stars as the car careens down the dirt road, scattering stones behind it like gunshot. A yell. A rolled-down window and a hurled beer can for her to pick up in the morning. It makes her angry but bothers him less, which also makes her angry.

A tune begins going round and round in her head. She half recognizes it but she is not musical. Sing! he sometimes teases her, sing something! He laughs and then he is the one to sing. He has a good voice.

She leans down to try to catch the words:

Anything can happen on a summer afternoon

On a lazy dazy golden hazy summer afternoon

She is almost tempted to laugh—lazy, dazy? How silly those words sound and how long has it been since she has heard them? Thirty, no, forty years. The song he sang when he was courting her and a song she has rarely heard before or since. She wonders whether it is a real one or a made-up one. She wants to ask him.

Gently, with her index finger, she turns the gold band on his ring finger round and round. Her own ring is narrower. Inside it, their names are engraved in an ornate script: Nina and Philip. Over time, however, a few of the letters have worn off—Nin and Phi i. Their names look like mathematical symbols—how fitting that is.

Nothing is engraved inside his ring. The original ring slipped off his finger and disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean while he was sailing alone off the coast of Brittany one summer afternoon.

A lazy dazy golden hazy—the tune stays in her head.

In the morning when he leaves for work, Philip kisses her good-bye and in the evening, when he returns home he kisses her hello. He kisses her on the mouth. The kiss is not ­passionate—although, on occasion, it is playful, and he slips his tongue in her mouth as a reminder of sorts. Mostly, it is a tender, friendly kiss.

How was your day? he asks.

She shrugs. Always something is amiss: a broken machine, a leak, a mole digging up the garden. She never has enough time to paint.

Yours? she asks.

What was his answer?

Good?

He is an optimist.

We had a faculty meeting. You should hear how those new physicists talk! Philip shakes his head, taps his forehead with his finger. Crazy, he says.

But Philip is not crazy.

Despite the old saying—said by whom?—about how mathematicians are the ones who tend to go mad while artists tend to stay sane.

Logic is the problem. Not the imagination.

With her fingers, she traces the outline of his lips. Her head fills with images of bereaved women more familiar than she is with death. Dark-skinned, Mediterranean women, women in veils, women with long messy hair, passionate, undignified women who throw themselves on top of the bloody and mutilated corpses of their husbands, their fathers, their children, and cover their faces with kisses then, forcibly, have to be torn away as they howl and curse their fate.

She is but a frail, wan ghost. With her free hand, she touches her face to make sure.

On their wedding day, it begins to rain; some people say it is good luck, others say they are getting wet.

She is superstitious. Never, if she can help it, does she walk under a ladder or open an umbrella inside the house. As a child she chanted, Step on a line, break your father’s spine. Even now, as an adult, she looks down at the sidewalk and, if possible, avoids the cracks. Habits are hard to shed.

He is not superstitious. Or if he is, he does not admit to it. Superstition is unmanly, medieval, pagan. However, he does believe in coincidence, in good luck, in accidents. He believes in chance instead of cause and effect. The probable and not the inevitable.

What is it he always says?

You can’t predict ideas.

The rain has briefly turned into snow. Flurries—most unseasonal for that time of year. She worries about her shoes. White high-heel satin shoes with little plastic pink rosebuds clipped to the front. Months later, she tries to dye the shoes black but they come out a dirty brown color.

She should have known better. Black is achromatic.

A country wedding—small and gloomy. The tent for the reception, set up on her parents’ lawn, is not adequately heated. The ground underfoot is soggy and the women’s shoes sink into the grass. The guests keep their coats on and talk about the U-2 pilot who was shot down that day.

What is his name?

Mark my word, there’s going to be U.S. reprisals and we’re going to have a nuclear war on our hands, she overhears Philip’s best man say.

Someone else says, Kennedy’s hands are tied as are McNamara, George Ball, Bundy, and General Taylor’s.

The best man says, Kennedy is a fool.

What else can he do? a woman named Laura asks him.

Don’t forget the Bay of Pigs. Our fault entirely, the best man replies. He is getting angry.

Let’s not talk politics. We are at a wedding. We are supposed to be celebrating, remember? Laura says. She, too, sounds angry.

Laura, the last she has heard, is living in San Francisco with another woman who is a potter. The best man was killed in an avalanche. He was skiing in powder down the unpatrolled backside of a mountain in Idaho with his fourteen-year-old daughter. She, too, was killed. Her name was Eva Marie—named after the actress, she supposes.

Anything can happen on a summer afternoon

Stop, she thinks, putting her hands to her ears.

Rudolf Anderson—the name of the U-2 pilot who was shot down.

Strange what she remembers.

How, for instance, once, in Boston, when she was in college, she caught sight of Fidel Castro. She still remembers the excitement of it. Dressed in his olive green fatigues, he had looked good then. He was thirty-three years old and he wore his hair long and sported a shaggy beard. Catching her eye, he smiled at her. Of this she is certain. But she was not a true radical; on the contrary, looking back, she appeared timid.

Pretty and timid.

Again she thinks about those dark-skinned, Mediterranean women, women in veils, women with long messy hair, and she wishes she could beat her breast and wail.

For their honeymoon, they go to Mexico, to look at butterflies.

Butterflies? Why? Nina tries to object.

Monarch butterflies. Millions of them. It’s still early in the migratory season, but I’ve always wanted to see them. And afterward we can go to the beach and relax, Philip promises.

The car, an old Renault, is rented, and the roads are narrow and wind steeply around the Sierra Chincua hills as they drive from Mexico City to Angangueo. There are few cars on the road; the buses and trucks honk their horns incessantly and do not signal to pass. There are no signs for the town.

Donde? Donde Angangueo? Philip repeatedly shouts out of the car window. Standing by the side of the road, the children stare at him in mute disbelief. They hold up iguanas for sale. The iguanas are tied up with string and are said to be good to eat.

Supposedly they taste like chicken, Philip says.

How do you know? Nina asks.

Instead of replying, Philip reaches for her leg.

Keep your hands on the wheel, Nina says, pushing his hand away.

In Angangueo, they stay in a small hotel off the Plaza de la Constitución; there are no other tourists and everyone stares at them. Before they have dinner, they go and visit the church. On an impulse, Nina lights a candle.

For whom? Philip asks.

Nina shrugs. I don’t know. For us.

Good idea, Philip says and squeezes her shoulder.

The next morning, when they get out of bed, their bodies are covered with red bites. Fleas.

Following the hired guide, they hike for over an hour along a winding, narrow mountain path, always going up. They walk single file, Philip ahead of her. Tall and thin, Philip walks with a slight limp—he fell out of a tree and broke his leg as a child and the tibia did not set properly—which gives him a certain vulnerability and adds to his appeal. Occasionally, Nina has accused him of exaggerating the limp to elicit sympathy. But most of the time, his limp is hardly noticeable except when he is tired or when they argue.

The day is a bit overcast and cool—also they are high up. Eight or nine thousand feet, Philip estimates. Hemmed in by the tall fir trees, there is no view. It is humid and hard to breathe. How much farther? She wants to ask but does not when all of a sudden the guide stops and points. At first, Nina cannot see what he is pointing at. A carpet of orange on the forest floor. Leaves. No. Butterflies. Thousands and thousands of them. When she looks up, she sees more butterflies hanging in large clusters like hives from tree branches. A few butterflies fly listlessly from one tree to another but mostly the butterflies are still.

They look dead, she says.

They’re hibernating, Philip answers.

On the way back to town, Philip tries to explain. There are two theories about how those monarch butterflies always return to the same place each year—amazing when you think that most of them have never been here before. One theory says that there is a small amount of magnetite in their bodies, which acts as a sort of compass and leads them back to these hills full of magnetic iron, and the second theory says that the butterflies use an internal compass—

Nina has stopped listening. Look. She points to some brilliant red plants growing under the fir trees.

Limóncillos, the guide says and makes as if to drink from something in his hand.

Sí, Nina answers. By then she is thirsty.

From Angangueo, they drive to Puerto Vallarta, where they are going to spend the last few days of their honeymoon. In the car, Nina shuts her eyes and tries to sleep when all of a sudden Philip brakes and she is thrown against the dashboard. They have hit something.

Oh, my God. A child! Nina cries.

A pig has run across the road before Philip can stop. His back broken, the pig lies in the middle of the road, squealing. Each time he squeals, dark blood fills his mouth. Within minutes and seemingly from out of nowhere, men, women, and children have gathered by the side of the road and are watching. Philip and Nina get out of the car and stand together. It is very hot and bright.

Putting her hand to her head to shade her eyes, she says, Philip, do something. The pig sounds just like a baby.

What do you want me to do? Philip answers. His voice is unnaturally shrill. Kill it?

A man wearing a straw hat approaches Philip. The man is carrying a stick. Philip takes his wallet out of his back pocket and, without a word, gives him twenty dollars. The man takes the twenty dollars and, likewise, does not say a word to Philip.

Back in the car, Nina and Philip do not speak to each other until they have reached Puerto Vallarta and until Nina says, Look there’s the sea.

Then, he tells her about Iris.

An accident.

In bed that night, Philip says, I wonder if the guy in the hat carrying the stick was really the pig’s owner. He could have been anyone.

Yes, Nina agrees. He could have been anyone.

These flea bites, she also says, are driving me crazy.

Me, too, Philip says, taking her in his arms.

She believes Philip loved her but how can she be certain of this? Knowledge is the goal of belief. But how can she justify her belief? Through logical proof? Through axioms that are known some other way, and by, for instance, intuition. Who thought of this? Socrates? Plato? She does not remember; she only remembers the name of her high school philosophy teacher, Mlle. Pieters, who was Flemish, and the way she said Platoe.

She should reread Plato. Plato might comfort her. Wisdom. Philosophy. Or study the Eastern philosophers. Zen. Perhaps she should become a Buddhist nun. Shave her head, wear a white robe, wear cheap plastic sandals.

She hears the wind outside shake the branches of the trees. Again, the shutter bangs against the side of the house. Now who will fix it?

Who will mow the lawn? Who will change the lightbulb in the hall downstairs that she cannot reach? Who will help her bring in the groceries?

How can she think of these things?

She is glad it is night and the room is dark.

Time is much kinder at night—she has read this somewhere recently.

If she was to turn and look at the clock on the bedside table, she would know the time—ten, eleven, twelve o’clock or already the next day? But she does not want to look. Instead, if she could, she would reverse the time. Have it be yesterday, last week, years ago.

In Paris, in a café on the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain and rue du Bac. She can picture it exactly. It is not yet spring, still cold, but already the tables are out on the sidewalk so that the pedestrians have to step out into the street. It is Saturday and crowded. The chestnut trees have not yet begun to bloom, a few green shoots on the branches give out a hopeful sign.

She remembers what she is wearing. A man’s leather bomber jacket she has bought secondhand at an outdoor flea market, a yellow silk scarf, boots. At the time, she thinks she looks French and chic. Perhaps she does. In any event, he thinks she is French.

Vous permettez? he asks, pointing to the empty chair at her table.

She is drinking a café crème and reading a French book, Tropismes by Nathalie Sarraute.

Je vous en prie, she says, without looking up at him.

She works at an art gallery a few blocks away on rue Jacques-Callot. The gallery primarily shows avant-garde American painters. The French like them and buy their work. Presently, the gallery is exhibiting a Californian artist whose work she admires. The artist is older, well-known, wealthy; he has invited Nina to the hôtel particulier on the Right Bank where he is staying. He has told her to bring her bathing suit—she remembers it still: a blue-and-white checked cotton two-piece. The pool is located on the top floor of the hôtel particulier and is paneled in dark wood, like one in an old-fashioned ocean liner; instead of windows there are portholes. She follows the artist into the pool and as she swims, she looks out onto the Paris rooftops and since night is falling, watches the lights come on. Floating on her back, she also watches the beam at the top of the Eiffel Tower protectively circle the city. Afterward, they put on thick white robes and sit side by side on chaise longues as if they are, in fact, on board a ship, crossing the Atlantic. They even drink something—a Kir royal. She slept with him once more but they did not go swimming again. Before he leaves Paris, he gives her one of his drawings, a small cartoonlike pastel of a ship, its prow shaped like the head of a dog. Framed, the drawing hangs downstairs in the front hall.

Philip begins by speaking to her about Nathalie Sarraute. He claims to know a member of her family who is distantly related to him by marriage.

At the time, she does not believe him.

A line, she thinks.

She hears the phone ring downstairs. As a precaution, she has turned it off in the bedroom—why, she wonders? So as not to wake him? She reaches for the receiver but the phone abruptly stops midring. Just as well. She will wait until morning. In the morning she will make telephone calls, she will write e-mails, make arrangements; the death certificate, the funeral home, the church service—whatever needs to be done. Tonight—tonight, she wants nothing.

She wants to be alone.

Alone with Philip.

She is not religious.

She does not believe in an afterlife, in the transmigration of souls, in reincarnation, in any of it.

But he does.

I don’t believe in reincarnation and that other stuff and I don’t go to church but I do believe in a God, he tells her.

Where were they then?

Walking hand in hand along the quays at night, they stop a moment to look across at Nôtre-Dame.

Mathematicians, I thought, weren’t supposed to believe in God, she says.

Mathematicians don’t necessarily rule out the idea of God, Philip answers. And, for some, the idea of God may be more abstract than the conventional God of Christianity.

At her feet, the river runs black and fast, and she shivers a little inside her leather bomber jacket.

Like Pascal, Philip continues, I believe it is safer to believe that God exists than to believe He does not exist. Heads God exists and I win and go to heaven, Philip motions with his arm as if tossing a coin up in the air, tails God does not exist and I lose nothing.

It’s a bet, she says, frowning. Your belief is based on the wrong reasons and not on genuine faith.

Not at all, Philip answers, my belief is based on the fact that reason is useless for determining whether there is a God. Otherwise, the bet would be off.

Then, leaning down, he kisses her.

His eyes shut, Philip lies on his back. His head rests on the pillow and she has pulled the red-and-white diamond-­patterned quilt up to cover him. He could be sleeping. The room is tidy and familiar, dominated by the carved mahogany four-poster. Opposite it, two chairs, her beige cashmere sweater hanging on the back of one; in between the chairs stands a maple bureau whose top is covered with a row of family photos in silver frames—Louise as a baby, Louise, age nine or ten, as the Black Swan in her school production of Swan Lake, Louise holding her dog, Mix, Louise dressed in a cap and gown, Louise and Philip sailing, Louise, Philip, and Nina horseback riding at a dude ranch in Montana, Louise and Nina skiing in Utah. Also on top of the bureau is a lacquer box where she keeps some of her jewelry. Her valuable jewelry—a diamond pin in the shape of a flower, a three-strand pearl necklace, a ruby signet ring—is inside the combination safe in the hall closet. Closing her eyes, she tries to remember the combination: three turns to the left to 17, two turns to the right to 4, and one turn to the left to 11 or is it the other way around? In any case she can never get the safe open; Philip has to. And, next to the lacquer jewelry box, the blue-and-green clay bowl Louise made for them in third grade in which, each evening, Philip places his loose change. The closet doors are shut and only the bathroom door is ajar.

When is a door not a door? When it is a . . .

Stop.

Perhaps she should put on her nightgown and lie down next to him and in the morning, when he wakes up he will reach for her the way he does. He will hike up her nightgown. Take it off, he will say. He likes to make love in the morning. Sleepy, she takes longer to respond.

She has not bothered to draw the curtains. Outside, above the waving tree branches, she can make out a few stars in the night sky. A mere dozen in a galaxy of a billion or a trillion stars. Perhaps death, she thinks, is like one of those stars—a star that can be seen only backward in time and exists in an unobservable state. While life, she has heard said, was created from stars—the stars’ debris.

What did he say to her exactly?

I am a bit tired, I am going to lie down for a minute before supper.

or

I am going to lie down for a minute before supper, I am a bit tired.

or something else entirely.

She is in the kitchen. Spinning the lettuce. She looks up briefly.

How was your day?

She half listens to his reply.

We had a faculty meeting. You should hear how those new physicists talk! They’re crazy, Philip says, as he goes upstairs.

She makes the salad dressing, she sets the table. She takes the chicken out of the oven. She boils new potatoes. Then she calls him.

Philip! Dinner is ready.

She starts to open a bottle of red wine but the cork is stuck. He will fix it.

Again, Philip, Philip! Dinner!

Before she walks into the bedroom, she knows already.

She sees his stocking feet. He has taken off his shoes.

What was he thinking? About dinner? About her? A paper he is reading by one of his students, arguing that Kronecker was right to claim that the Aristotelian exclusion of completed infinites could be maintained?

Infinites. Infinite sets. Infinite series.

Infinity makes her anxious.

It gives her nightmares. As a child, she had a recurring dream. A dream she can never put into words. The closest she comes to describing the dream, she tells Philip, is to say that it has to do with numbers. The numbers—if in fact they are ­numbers—always start out small and manageable, although in the dream Nina knows that this is temporary, for soon they start to gather force and multiply; they become large and uncontrollable. They form an abyss. A black hole of numbers.

You’re in good company, is what Philip tells her. The Greeks, Aristotle, Archimedes, Pascal all had it.

The dream?

No, what the dream stands for.

Which is?

The terror of the infinite.

But, for Philip, infinity is a demented concept.

Infinity, he says, is absurd.

“Suppose, one dark night,” is how Philip always begins his undergraduate course on probability theory, “you are walking down an empty street and suddenly you see a man wearing a ski mask carrying a suitcase emerge from a jewelry store—the window of the jewelry store, you will have noticed, is smashed. You will no doubt assume that the man is a burglar and that he has just robbed the jewelry store but you may, of course, be dead wrong.”

Philip is a popular teacher. His students like him. The women in particular, Nina cannot fail to notice.

He is so sanguine, so merry, so handsome.

Vous permettez?

He is so polite.

Too polite, she sometimes reproaches him.

They do not go to bed with each other right away. Instead he questions her about the well-known American painter.