The Forever Marriage (40 page)

The big difference was that unlike Jobe, she had no idea what to look for. Danny had described Althea as young, a graduate student. But beyond that, Carmen had nothing to go on. She kept looking for lone women, dark ones, emerging goddesses, when there was a knock on her window. Carmen turned sharply, expecting to see a police officer who would order her to pick up her party or drive on. Instead, she looked directly into the face of what appeared to be an Iowa farm girl: plump and rosy-cheeked with wild red hair caught back in a cloth scrunchie—the kind that American women had abandoned fifteen years before. It was only upon noticing this that Carmen realized she’d forgotten to do anything about her own head.

Carmen pressed the button to lower her window and watched the girl’s face drain of color. “Apparently, no one told you I’ve been sick,” Carmen said as levelly as she could. “Don’t worry. Get in. I feel better than I look.” She yanked down the sun shield, lifted her sunglasses, and glanced in the mirror. The woman who peered back at her had a pointy, hairless, ratlike appearance. “Much better, actually.”

Althea clumped slowly to the back of the car and lifted the
hatch, shoving two huge bags inside.
Was she planning to stay for a month?
Carmen wondered. She’d forgotten to ask Danny this, too.

They were mostly silent on the drive through rush hour back to Carmen’s house. Once, she asked Althea how the trip had been and the girl shrugged then said, “It is okay,” in an accent so exotic that Carmen looked directly toward the passenger seat, then remembered she was driving and turned back just in time to brake behind a bus.

“You’re not from Greece?”

Again the girl shrugged. “Romania,” she said in the voice of a fairy-tale spirit, with the vowels broken in unexpected places and a soft whisper underneath the R and the N. “My mother is Greek, my father Romanian.”

It seemed unbelievable to Carmen that this simple person would be able to decipher Jobe’s work. She had a twinge of fatigue and wondered, too, if the chemotherapy was closing in and about to make her wretchedly ill.

Thankfully, they had reached the edge of Carmen’s neighborhood. “I’m afraid I haven’t done much in terms of dinner. I’ve been out all day….” She stopped, not ready to discuss it with this person. “You’ll be staying with my mother-in-law. But she had a commitment for tonight.”
Because my former lover made the arrangements to fly you in and communication between him and the mother of the man I cheated on with him has been a little difficult
.

Carmen almost laughed but caught herself. She took a long breath and the cloud of weariness abated. “Anyway, I hope you don’t mind takeout.”

“I like Wok and Roll.” Althea grinned, as proud as a third grader, and her wholesome face lit up, becoming as beautiful as any Greek goddess Carmen could imagine.

“How do you know Wok and Roll?” Carmen turned onto their street.

“From when I live here before,” the girl answered, but said nothing else.

They left the suitcases in the car, though Althea removed a small
mesh bag from one that Carmen could see contained female supplies: mascara, lip gloss, tampons. She ached briefly to be a woman who needed only those things to freshen herself. Then she followed Althea inside.

Luca was there, waiting in the living room as if he’d known the precise moment they were due. Carmen introduced the two and watched carefully as Althea warmly shook her son’s hand with both of hers. There was none of the shock in her face that Carmen’s appearance had provoked. Althea must have known about Luca; Jobe must have told her. But Carmen could not imagine a circumstance in which her taciturn husband would be moved to do such a thing.

Siena was out with Troy, and Michael was in his room, playing Halo. It was not quite five o’clock, which felt too early for dinner, so Carmen offered Althea a cold drink and showed her around the main floor, purposely ending her tour in the dining room where Jobe’s papers lay in three neat stacks on the table. Althea recognized them instantly and stood as if in supplication. Carmen hung back and barely breathed; she wouldn’t have been surprised to see Althea bow or genuflect. “Would you like to look?” Carmen asked.

And despite what must have been a fourteen-hour flight, Althea nodded reverently. She walked toward the table slowly, as if she were approaching something living. Carmen could have sworn there was a glow emanating from the girl.

She left to fetch soda water and took her time preparing two glasses with ice and cutting limes. “Would you like one?” she asked Luca when he wandered into the kitchen.

“Yeth,” he said. He stood watching as Carmen filled a third glass and garnished it with two lime wedges. Then, as she handed it to him, he spoke. “I like her.”

This was uncharacteristic. Luca rarely offered his opinion, unless asked, and tended not to judge people—good or bad. Still, Carmen had noticed he had an uncanny sense: He had always steered away from Fred Lang, for instance, despite the fact that her boss had oozed interest in Luca’s direction. “Why?” Carmen asked, almost fiercely. “Why do you like her?”

Carmen was desperate for guidance. It was imperative that she know whether she could trust Althea, but the girl left her conflicted. One moment Carmen wanted to confide in her, the next she felt something surreptitious. But if Luca liked Althea, that might mean Carmen was imagining the latter. Perhaps chemotherapy had interfered with her ability to read people, the way it had altered her senses of taste and smell.

Luca stared at his feet for a moment then shook his head, like a cow lowing. “Ah don’t know,” he said. “Ah just do.”

Carmen was growing more tired by the second. She had to muster all her will to go into the other room. When she did, she saw that Althea had in that short time completely rearranged the pages, taking some from each pile and arranging them in a circle. The rest she had laid out at various intervals. She raised her head when Carmen came in. “Do you have, ah …” She made a pushing gesture with her thumb. “Tape?”

“Of course.” Carmen crouched to put Althea’s glass on the floor, away from the papers, and was swept with vertigo as she rose. She tilted, spilling half of the other glass she’d been carrying. And suddenly Althea was there, holding her, supporting her with strong farm-worker arms against a soft, generous chest.

“You sit?” she asked, her mouth as close to Carmen’s ear as a lover’s. Carmen nodded, and together the two propelled toward the large, armed dining room chair at the table’s end. Althea lowered Carmen into it, settling her gently. “Here, I take,” she said, prying the half-full glass from Carmen’s hand.

Once Carmen was settled, her pointy body slumped in the vast chair, Althea left the room and Carmen could hear her talking to someone rapidly. Surely it was Luca, and she was speaking English. But the distance and Althea’s accent combined to make it sound as if the words were in a foreign language, some mystical combination of Romanian, Greek, and math symbols. Carmen shook her head, trying to clear it. But now that she was seated, she did not feel dizzy so much as sunk into a thick, golden haze.

Althea came back with a roll of paper towels and squatted, efficiently
mopping up the puddle on the floor. She also, Carmen was amused to note, had the Scotch tape in her hand. Either she’d consulted Luca or she’d simply pawed through the kitchen drawers until she found it. Once she’d dried her hands thoroughly, Althea started anchoring down each page with two strips of tape.

“Is it there, the solution to Riemann?” Carmen asked weakly from her chair. “Have you had enough time to look?”

“Of course, it is here.” Althea moved around the table and frowned, jumping one paper over another before securing them both down. “But it always is here. We are waiting only for you.”

Carmen squinted, having trouble making sense of this. “What are you saying?”

But Althea didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled out her cell phone and began taking pictures of the design she’d made.

“I have a digital camera,” Carmen said. She had made her decision: Althea was to be trusted with Jobe’s work. Whatever clandestine thing she sensed, it had nothing to do with this. “Go into my room. Top of the stairs, to the right. The camera is on top of my dresser. You’re welcome to use it.”

Althea stood for a moment, hesitating. Then she said, “Thank you,” and strode toward the stairs. No one would know she’d been awake for more than a day; or perhaps she was one of those calm, robust people who can sleep on planes.

Carmen pondered the possibilities, and when Althea returned, with the sleek silver camera in her hand, Carmen asked the question that kept blossoming in her head. “Have we met?”

“Yes.” Althea hardly responded, and just started clicking pictures. “It is maybe eighteen month.”

“Jobe was in remission.” Carmen saw a look of confusion and struggled to clarify. “The cancer was … on vacation. He was not sick.”

“Yes.”
Click, click, click
.

“Were you one of his graduate students?” For the first time, Carmen saw Althea wince. But she recovered quickly.

“I am on … ex-change.” The word clearly was hard for her to pronounce. “For one semester. To work on Riemann.” This she pronounced like a song. European names, Carmen mused, always sounded better in the mouths of those from the Continent. It had been that way in Italy, too.
Giovanni. Parmigiana. Ferrari
.

She straightened. Again, she’d been drifting. Now she looked intently at the girl who stood in front of her, dangling the camera by a strap. The truth dawned on her slowly, not coming through the voice that had been speaking since that day in the MRI machine but coming, rather, from her own heart and mind.

“You were in love with him.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. Carmen half expected it to bring a laugh, derision. She was the failing, envious widow, making up stories. On the other hand, if it were true, Althea might tearfully confess. But rather than react in any of these ways, Althea said nothing. She only stood, eyes level. They were, Carmen noticed, an ordinary hazel but glinting with tiny sparks of gold. Also tired.

And in them was some measure of assent, so Carmen went on.

“You were involved with my husband, but he wouldn’t …” she stopped, not out of propriety but because she couldn’t think of a word that Althea would understand.
Consummate? Commit adultery?
“He wouldn’t go to bed with you.” It was nearly triumphant; Carmen expected perhaps fury, for the girl to storm from the house.

Instead, Althea slowly shifted her eyes down toward the floor and Carmen grew completely still. “He did?” Her hands and feet felt very far away, as if they were floating in space.

Althea nodded and finally, a tear rolled down her cheek. This, Carmen could see, was due more to the fact that the girl had been awake for more than a day and was exhausted. Without thinking it through, she used her foot to push a chair away from the table. “Here,” she said gruffly. “Sit.”

“We were. Once.” Althea knotted and undid and reknotted her hands in her lap. “He know that you have … lovers. That you do not like the marriage. We work so late.” She was really crying now, and
Carmen, rather than angry, simply felt uncomfortable. Also relieved that someone wept so for Jobe.

“It is spring.” Her accent was even harder to understand through the guttural sound of tears. Carmen leaned in, to hear. “We are so … close. To Riemann. He think he has the solution. It is.” Althea lifted her face to the heavens, as if giving thanks. “And we kiss.” She checked quickly. Would Carmen strike her, order her out? “Then we go to my room….” Althea made a strange motion with her fingers, like the children when they acted out itsy-bitsy spider.

Did this bother her? Carmen stopped to check and was genuinely surprised by the answer, which was yes. And it was not only her pride that was hurt. Because inside her, deep down somewhere, was a stinging, regret-filled pain. She put one hand on her stomach as if she could calm it, and strangely this did some good.

“But then, three days later,” Althea went on, holding up her thumb and first two fingers, “he come to me and say we cannot. Anymore. He is not presenting Riemann.” Althea shook her head.

“Why?”

“Because.” She drew a ragged sob. “He say you take care of him, always. You love him. He say it is all his fault. He is too afraid to love you in, ah”—Althea gestured, as if trying to pick words from the air—“many right ways.”

And despite Althea’s broken English, Carmen could almost hear the echo of Jobe. It was the night they’d bumped into Danny and his wife at the Federal Hill restaurant. After she and Jobe had made love, just as she was falling asleep, he had whispered something in her ear.
What was it?
She concentrated but his voice in her memory was like wind.

She had been exhausted that night, and satisfied. Not as she would have been with Danny—there were no shuddering aftershocks, no ragged breathing—but in the quiet way of a late-night swim. Talking might have ruined it, so she’d curled like a possum and pressed her head against the wiry hair of his chest. All she knew was that he had apologized for something, pulling her ever closer.

“It’s okay,” Carmen remembered muttering in response. But she had wanted nothing more than to sleep and would have done anything to get him to stop talking, even if that meant letting him wrap his long arms around her and lying snugly inside as if he were holding her in a cocoon. Without thinking about what she was doing, Carmen crossed her own arms around her narrow chest and held herself now.

“So, you left?” she asked Althea, imagining the scene between her husband and his assistant that had followed that night.

The girl shrugged. This was, Carmen realized, a universal symbol of disavowal, one Althea used often. “He will not publish,” she said. And this, it was suddenly, luminously clear, was the central issue. Not whether he would divorce his wife and move in with Althea, not whether he loved her. “I leave. He say
you
must decide about Riemann”—she pointed at Carmen—“once he is gone. He will publish only for you.”

“Jobe once told me …” Carmen’s nose wrinkled with the haunting scent of curry. “At least he knew I wouldn’t throw out his papers after he died, the way Bernhard Riemann’s housekeeper did. I think he was, kind of,
testing
me.”