The Forever Marriage (38 page)

But Danny nodded and then Carmen was stuck. She led him up the stairs and stopped in front of her bedroom door but remembered, suddenly, the night she’d considered bringing Danny here. She’d decided then never to bring him to Jobe’s bedroom. And she wasn’t ready to acknowledge that things had changed, becoming benign since her conversion into a crone, so sitting on a mattress with him would be as innocent as if she were his grandmother.

So she bypassed the door on the other side of which her un-made bed lay rumpled, as unromantic as a balled-up dishrag, and
continued up the stairs to the attic. Carmen hadn’t been up here in months. There was a CD player and an empty glass on the floor in front of the sectional; a fleece blanket was draped over the back of the couch.

“This is so weird,” Danny said. “It’s exactly like my mother’s living room when I went home from college the first time. She’d just redone it and—”

“How old
are
you?” she asked.

“Thirty-six,” he said. “Why?”

She laughed. It was a relief finally to know. “I guess I never had the nerve to …” Carmen looked at her wedding ring, heavy and loose, circling her finger. She and Jobe had been married for three years by the time Danny went away to college. “Nothing, it doesn’t matter. Anyway.” She sat.

“Carmen.” He sank down on the cushion next to her and took her hand. So formal. She half expected him to drop to one knee. “Are you okay? Should I be worried?”

“Well, I have cancer.”

“That’s not funny.”

She sighed. “No, I’m sorry, it’s not.” She drew herself up and resolved to be dignified. “The truth is, I’m not terribly comfortable being here with you right now.”

“I know,” Danny said, nodding.

He knew?
He was uncomfortable, too, seeing her like this. Uncomfortable in the way one is when they pass a hunched street person and throw a dollar into their hat. If it were possible for a person to shrivel, that’s what Carmen was doing. Overnight, she’d become haggard. Pitiful.

“I honestly never thought I’d feel guilty,” Danny went on. “I didn’t even think it was in me, frankly. But the more I get to know your kids … And Olive …” He looked down at his lap.
Who was this man?
He was acting as contrite as some character out of some old Frank Capra movie. “The strange thing is I even feel bad about Mega.”

Carmen took a sharp breath. Here it was. “I understand. So you’re saying you want to be done?”
Of course he wants to be done! What man could see a woman this way and want to touch her ever again?

“No,” he said, sounding miserable. “I’m not saying that. But I’m confused.”

Carmen stared. “You’re confused? C’mon. Just admit it: You don’t want this.” She pointed to herself, toward the spot between her own legs, which was now—perhaps permanently—papery and dry. “You can be honest, you know. Not that that was ever a part of the deal, but it might be time to start. I know what men like about me.” She swallowed. “What men
used to
like about me, I mean.”

“You are so full of shit.” The voice was scornful, and not Danny’s. “Jobe would have loved you if you had burn scars and a glass eye.” They both turned to see Jana in the doorway. “Hey, sorry to interrupt. This sounds real intense. But I could hear every word from the second floor and frankly, Carmen, you were being a real ball breaker.” Jana came farther into the room and extended one hand. “Danny, right?”

He gave Carmen a questioning look. “She knows?”

“Jana’s the only one, okay? I mean, I had to tell someone. And the only other person I confide in is Olive, but she didn’t seem to be the best choice.”

There was a pause, then Jana let out a loud braying laugh. Even Danny smiled. “Hey,” he said, shaking Jana’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”

She squinted, as if looking directly into the sun. “I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but it’s nice to meet you, too.”

Twilight descended, deepening at least an hour’s worth of shades, and still the three continued to talk.

Downstairs, Carmen could hear the noise of her children arriving home from wherever they’d been, their grandmother calling out to
ask how school was and if she could make them something to eat. Carmen was tucked under the blanket on a corner piece of the huge sectional between Danny and Jana. It was the oddest configuration she could imagine. Jana had scuffed off her shoes and tucked her feet under her denim skirt; Danny sat upright, almost primly—like a librarian, Carmen thought and chuckled to herself.

A contented warmth spread inside her, the words she’d spat at Danny mellowing in her mind the way things did after a drink or two. She knew this was only a reprieve but it was one she was glad to take advantage of, listening quietly while the other two talked. But after they’d spent an hour trading information—speaking with equal authority about Olive and comparing notes on what they’d observed over the past several days—Jana turned to Carmen.

“So. Should I get out of here and let you two continue your, uh, conversation?”

Her tone was mocking and now the room was divided again, the easy conviviality all but gone. It was Danny and Carmen—or Danny
versus
Carmen—with Jana looking on. Once Carmen’s advocate, now suddenly an impartial referee.

Carmen shrugged. “I don’t think there’s any …”

At the same moment Danny half rose and said, “I really should be …”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sit down,” Jana barked, glaring. Danny obeyed—lowering himself slowly back onto his seat—and Carmen laughed.

“Like magic, isn’t it?” she asked Danny, her voice conspiratorial. “I don’t know how she does it, but it works with the kids, too.”

Jana swiveled to face Carmen. “Yeah, the only one it doesn’t work with is you.”

There was a beat during which the three readjusted. This was, Carmen thought, like those endless shifting alliances you made in high school. Relationships were hard enough when there were just two, but exponentially more difficult when a third party joined the pair.

“Look, I don’t want to play life coach here,” said Jana. “It’s too late in the day and, besides, no one’s paying me. But just because you’re sick doesn’t mean you get to spout total crap. I happen to know that
he
”—she pointed at Danny, as if there were other people in the room to whom the pronoun might apply—“was here over the weekend, checking in, even though you weren’t exactly your sex goddess self. And if your husband were still alive …”

“What? What if Jobe were alive?” It felt wrong doing this in front of Danny. But it was, after all, Carmen who’d imagined the two men were connected when they met at the restaurant in Federal Hill. Maybe this—her deconstruction of one man in front of the other—was fate. The inevitable outcome of her warped fantasy.

“Why do you think Jobe got involved with me in the first place? Did you ever ask yourself that? I was an impoverished art student with very little talent and a screwed-up family. He was brilliant, he had money, he had parents who”—Carmen swallowed, recalling the way she had lusted after Olive as a girl—“loved him more than anything in the world. There was only one thing I was good for. One. But even that, I didn’t do quite right.”

“What do you mean?” Jana asked.

Carmen stared into her fleece-covered lap. Which of the two unsaid truths could she finally admit? Which would do the least amount of damage? It was more wrong, she ultimately decided, to trot out Jobe’s sexual problems for her lover. “I guess,” she said, apologizing silently to her son, “I felt guilty. I was supposed to be the perfect young wife, produce these adorable little babies. And then we ended up …”

“With Luca,” Jana said.

Carmen nodded but did not look up.

“I always wondered if it bothered you,” Danny said after a few seconds of silence. His voice was husky and warm, and finally Carmen raised her head. “But you never talked about Luca. And then when I met him, he just seemed so kind of …” Danny, never at a loss for words, paused. “I don’t know. Essential.”

For the first time Carmen felt simple affection for Danny, along with a pleasant tug of hunger. Whatever had overtaken her was done, she knew; she would be well now, at least until her next treatment. The idea of walking back into that chemo barn—as she’d begun to think of it—terrified her. But that was more than a week away. For now, the three of them were unified again and the attic was cozy and warm.

“When Luca was about three,” she said musingly, “this television show came on on Sunday nights about a family with a Down’s syndrome son. Remember that?”

Both Jana and Danny shook their heads. “Heartwarming. Not my style,” said Jana. “And I’m betting he”—she pointed at Danny—“was way too young.”

Carmen grimaced. “Anyway, it was lovely. This really sweet story about a boy who lived above his parents’ garage in an apartment. I think he even got married at the end of the show. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought: If only that program had been on when we found out. We might have watched it together. It’s amazing how much of a difference something like that makes in terms of making you feel normal. As it was, we were just … terrified.”

They sat for a few seconds in silence. “I’m starving,” Jana said. “What’s for dinner?”

“How strange! I was about to ask you that,” Carmen said.

“Really? You’re hungry?”

Carmen nodded.

“Well, hallelujah. Let me go downstairs and see what I can pull together.” She stood in a jangling of bracelets and necklace pendants, like the sound of coins tossed in a soft, leather sack. “But don’t get used to this. I swear, next time I come over
you’re
cooking for me.” She bent to kiss Carmen’s cheek and into her ear whispered, “Don’t break his balls. I think he’s really trying.”

“I am trying, Car,” Danny said the moment Jana was gone. “But I’m in this situation where …” He paused and looked in the direction of the window, as if he wanted more than anything to run. “There’s
no way to do the right thing. I know. I put myself here. I get that. But doing the right thing by you means wrecking my marriage, and I’ve been such a shitty husband already. I have no clue why I even married Mega in the first place.”

“Because she’s a knockout?” Carmen tried to make her voice nonaccusing but failed.

“Yeah, probably. I was this geeky Indian guy who hung out with old-lady librarians. Having a hot wife helped my reputation. A lot.” He shook his head. “I don’t love her, never have. But the way I’ve gone about this is just wrong. So I’m trying to figure out, you know, what would Jobe—”

“If you say, what would Jobe do,” she cut in, “I will murder you on the spot.”

He grinned. “Okay. But tempting as it is to play the hero, I don’t really have the résumé for that role. And I’m honestly not sure, if we did …” He stopped, considered, then went on. “I don’t know if, in the end, I’d do the right thing by you, either. Maybe I’m just not built that way.”

What a cop-out
, Carmen wanted to say. But for once, she didn’t. Instead, she looked toward the window that Danny had been focusing on earlier and let her eyes go lazy. Everything blurred, the shadows and lights outside becoming like the streaming, watery scenes outside a moving train. At the edge of her field of vision, Danny rose—a flash of black: black hair, black clothes, black shoes—and approached her. He bent as if to kiss her, the way Jana had, but didn’t, only resting his cheek like a grandfather upon her patchy head.

Then he left quietly and Carmen sat still staring through the glass, until Jana shouted up the stairs to say she should come down, the food was done.

Carmen had slept—however fitfully—through more than four days of her between-treatment break, so the third chemo session came upon her before she was ready. But would she ever really be ready?
In the week that she felt strong enough to dress herself, to drive, to attend Michael’s beginning-of-the-year open house, Carmen had prepared herself as well as a person possibly could.

She ate her oatmeal each morning with fruit and heavy cream then spent long afternoons sitting in bakeries, sketching idly while she conducted the real business of filling her body with calories: éclairs, prune kolache, napoleons spackled with lemon icing. Jana had shaved Carmen’s head the night Danny left—neither of them mentioning him—then given her a neck and shoulder massage so languid that Carmen wondered briefly what it would be like to be Jana’s lover instead of her friend. Dr. Woo had told her that hair often was changed when it grew back: curly or gray or pure white. Perhaps some women’s sexual preference came back changed as well.
Now that would qualify as a seemingly random event, don’t you think?
she had asked Jobe inside her head.

This was happening a lot lately. She spoke to Jobe as easily as if he were an ever-present old friend. And though he never responded—nor had he appeared to her again after that last chemo-laced dream—she felt comforted. As if he were listening. Standing in front of the mirror each morning, she debated her choice of scarves and wrapped her head carefully. She had gotten good at this, making a knot that she tucked into the turban in back.
Ready now?
she would say to her own reflection. And from somewhere the answer would come,
Of course
.

Yet these were lonely days, too. Olive stayed until the end of the first week but announced one morning that she was no longer necessary, missed her own bed, and was going home. The children were absorbed in school. They seemed to have forgotten their mother’s brush with death, which Carmen knew was good. But so soon? Michael was involved in two fall sports, which meant he was rarely home for dinner. Luca had his first real job—a stocking position at a suburban Safeway that Olive and his social worker had arranged; afternoons, a bus picked him up for this three-hour shift, and after riding back through rush-hour traffic he, too, often arrived home after
seven. Siena was on the yearbook committee, working, and connected to Troy every other minute. Carmen joked to Olive that the two had begun to share a bloodstream. What she did not tell her mother-in-law was that twice she’d come home to a preternaturally silent house, only to find Siena’s door closed and little mouse rustles and cries coming from within.