The Forever Marriage (17 page)

The next few hours went by in a slow-motion dream. Luca came by and ran his hand along the length of her arm, the way a little child might with a wall or banister. Then Michael, who’d been told only that his mother was sick, came behind him and did exactly the same thing. Carmen settled in then, feeling blessed, wondering if the boys had performed the same sacrament on Jobe. Despite the outcome in his case, she wished for this continuity. Their children’s touch anointing both parents. Keeping them—even her—pure.

Carmen dozed while Jana had the kids help her make fajitas: Michael chopped vegetables under Siena’s supervision while Luca grated cheese. When they finally sat at the table, Carmen was woozy but ravenous. She was sore under the bandage and found that using her left arm made this worse. Without asking, Siena assembled a fajita for her mother and handed it over with a pleading look that said,
Don’t make a big deal
.

“Thanks, sweetie,” Carmen said softly, remembering the dozens of times at the end when she’d had to cut Jobe’s food and hold the fork up to his mouth.

By eight o’clock, Carmen was exhausted and she could see Jana was, too. There was a reason Jana hadn’t had children; she didn’t care for the dailiness of it or the mundane constancy of their requests. “I don’t understand my math,” Michael announced after the dishes had been cleared. “Can you help me?” It wasn’t clear whom he was asking;
his question went out to the room. But Carmen was dumb with pain and Vicodin, and Siena had gone off to call Troy, and Luca had never mastered anything beyond subtraction, which still sometimes confused him.

“Okay, why don’t you bring it to the table?” Jana said so sweetly that Carmen knew—even through her haze—that her friend was nearly at the end. They worked through word problems while Carmen and Luca sat stumplike in their various places. It was as if an evil spell had been cast over their house. With Jobe gone, something had shifted and deadened; quiet as he’d been, he must have added some kinesis to the atmosphere.

At nine o’clock, Jana shooed the children off. “I’ve had my fill of you,” she said, and they knew she meant it, so they went to their various rooms. Then she brought a bottle of white wine to the couch along with two juice glasses. “Here.” She poured Carmen’s all the way up to the brim. “I don’t know how you do this every fucking day. It’s enough to make me want to shoot myself in the head.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t going to be this way.” Carmen lolled her head back, alcohol mixing with the drugs so she felt as if she were being pulled down by something heavy.

“How was it going to be?” Jana fell back into a huge easy chair. She was already nearly done with her glass.

Carmen squinted, as if she could see the answer in the air. And then she could: a series of days from two decades before. Young, smiling Jobe. Sunday dinners at his parents’ house where Carmen now belonged. She could wander the estate at will and ride the two horses they kept at a close-by farm any time she chose. Often, when they arrived, Olive would kiss her cheek and tell her how beautiful she was, then mention they were having strawberry shortcake for dessert, because it was Carmen’s favorite. Olive always smelled wonderful back then, not like an old woman but something almost magical—sandalwood or cedar. The time Carmen came bearing a picture of Esme’s two big-eyed little boys Olive’s face had changed, becoming nearly tearful.

“Aren’t they miraculous?” she’d said, running one finger over the surface of the photograph. “You would have children like this, too.”

But telling Jana about this—about how she’d gotten pregnant more for Olive than for Jobe—would make her sound stupid, like someone who deserved to get stuck in a loveless marriage. Jana would never make such a ridiculous mistake, so Carmen mentally edited the story to preserve her pride.

“I suppose,” she said, “there were absolutely no money concerns. So it was like this huge barrier, the thing you said, you know, ‘We’ll start a family once we can buy a house,’ or ‘when we can start saving for college.’ All that was removed in our case.”

Jana nodded. This was making sense, so Carmen forged on. “I thought it would help, I guess. I thought it would make me grown up, and maybe I wanted to show my sister I could.”

“Not a great reason to make a lifelong decision,” Jana said, moving a pillow so she could recline sideways in the chair.

“No.” Carmen poured herself more wine. The night felt unreal around her. Everything glowed. “God, I was young and stupid. It just kills me when I look back. But Esme was always telling me what a fuck-up I was; she had a husband and a little house of her own and two adorable babies. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I found myself living in this
palace
. I married a man who was so brilliant …” She stopped for a moment and stared at nothing, feeling a wrench of pure pain. “Jobe was so good he got tenure the minute he stepped onto a college campus. But Esme, she told me once—way back—that she was afraid her husband was having an affair. That he might leave her. At least I knew Jobe would never cheat on me.”

“Are you sure?” Carmen stopped and looked over at her friend, who was suddenly slit-eyed. “How do you know Jobe never cheated?”

“Because he just … wouldn’t have. It wasn’t in him.” She swallowed, unwilling to disclose the real reason. Jobe didn’t deserve to be humiliated that way, even in death. “Besides, he was socially withdrawn, and not very, you know, smooth.”

“You know what?” Jana sat up. “Sometimes, I think you’re a bigger bitch than this sister you’re always talking about.”

“Am I?”

“Are you what? A bitch?” Jana was getting ready to leave and Carmen didn’t want things to end between them this way. But she felt anchored, suctioned to the couch.

“No, am I always talking about my sister?”

Jana stopped and thought. “Actually, you’ve only mentioned her a couple of times. That was an exaggeration. But I’m sorry, this whole thing just reeks of really bad karma. You get married to show up your sister, despite the fact that you don’t even love this guy who would gladly throw himself under a truck for you. Doesn’t hurt that he’s obscenely rich, of course. And then you spend the next couple of decades living off his family and wishing him dead.”

Wait
, Carmen wanted to say.
Let’s go back! I didn’t tell you about Olive, about how much she wanted a daughter and a grandchild
.
A miracle, she said, and I wanted badly to make that come true
.
And there were moments I loved Jobe, even when he wouldn’t touch me. He saved me in London. He brought me his T-shirt in the bathroom. Have I ever told you about the way he danced?

It was too late; Jana wouldn’t believe her selfless motives now. So she reclined instead and watched while Jana collected the knapsack she carried instead of a purse and slipped on her shoes.

“Listen, forget what I said, I’m just really tired.” Jana kissed Carmen on the forehead. “I really hope the biopsy results are good. Let me know, okay? And just send the kids over to the café when they’re hungry. I guess they do kind of grow on you. If I’d bludgeoned one of them earlier, I’d be really sorry by now.”

Carmen had been planning to go back and see the doctor alone. But when Pete called to check on her and set up the consultation to go over the pathology results, there was something in his voice. “Who’s
coming to the appointment with you?” he asked, too brightly. And as on that day in the garden, she knew.

It was ten o’clock, a likely time for Olive to be out playing bridge or at her garden club. But she happened that morning to be home. Carmen told her first about the mammogram, leaving out the part about Danny, letting Olive think the comet was detected during her yearly screening. She heard Olive inhale sharply.

“The surgeon said he’s sure he got everything,” Carmen lied. “But they had to examine the, uh, tumor”—she hated that word—“so I’m going back today to get the results.”

“What time?” Olive asked.

“Three,” said Carmen. “And it’s not necessary, but …”

“I’ll be there at two-twenty,” Olive said, and curtly hung up.

Her Mercedes glided up at precisely two-nineteen.
Greenwich calls Olive for the correct time
—that was always Jobe’s joke. “Thanks for coming to get me,” said Carmen, climbing into the car.

“How are you, dear?” Olive wore a pair of sunglasses with amber lenses and she drove intently, never more than fifty miles an hour.

“Pretty good, now that the drugs have worn off,” Carmen said. “The nights have been a little strange.” Of course, she didn’t tell Olive about how she climbed into bed with Jana’s disapproving voice ringing through her head, or about taking another pill simply to make the words recede. So many things needed to be hidden from this woman she adored. What did that say?

Even moving slower than the rest of the traffic, it took less time to get to the hospital than Carmen anticipated. This was some sort of trick of Olive’s. They walked through the electric doors and found the surgeon’s waiting room with ten minutes to spare. He was running late, the receptionist informed them. It would be more like three-thirty. So they chose adjoining chairs near the back of the room. Carmen picked up a soft, tattered magazine from two years before.

“I can’t believe this,” Olive said suddenly.

“What?” Carmen looked around.

“This! After everything else, Luca’s difficulties and Jobe’s illness.” Olive never used the word
death
; Carmen was pretty sure she couldn’t—at least not where Jobe was concerned. When George had died two years earlier, of a heart attack that struck him exactly like lightning on the golf course, when his nine-iron was raised, Olive had been resigned. Nearly businesslike. She’d planned a grand funeral and wafted through it dressed in widow’s weeds. Even the drab black dress failed to conceal that at seventy-three her body was perfect. The woman had never lifted a barbell in her life, but she held up like Sophia Loren.

An idea dawned in Carmen’s mind: Olive had never loved her husband, either. She had been far more vibrant than he, a brick shit-house of a lady who easily could have had men—gardeners, chauffeurs—on the side. George’s death simply hadn’t been something to mourn. She also had been waiting to be free, only her sentence was much longer than Carmen’s: nearly fifty years. And it would follow then that she, too, might feel guilty, perhaps responsible for her son. Carmen shivered and took Olive’s hand, which the older woman clearly interpreted as a sign of apprehension. “It will be fine, dear. I’m sure the surgeon took care of everything and there’s only a little bit of tidying up to do.”

Carmen giggled and gently squeezed her mother-in-law’s fingers. No one else would refer to cancer treatment this way; she would have to remember to tell Danny, who always appreciated the stories about Olive and her dry way of assessing the world. They sat like this for some time before releasing each other to read their respective outdated magazines.

The receptionist knocked on her window. “Doctor is ready now,” she said. Carmen rose feeling creaky, as if she’d been sitting for hours. Beside her, Olive popped up with no apparent problem. And together they went through the door.

“Carmen,” the doctor said. Instead of shaking her hand, he took it in both of his and patted it for a few seconds. “I see you’ve brought your mother. I am Ernest Woo.”

Olive smiled mildly and extended her hand. “Olive Garrett,” she said, but nothing else.

“So sit, sit.” The doctor appeared anxious, like the host at a party. “I have some things I want to talk to you about.” Yet when he sat behind his desk, he folded his hands and stared at them. It appeared as if he were waiting for her to start.

Carmen was just about to ask what the pathology report had showed when he began to speak. “So we have completed the surgery and it went very well, yes?” He looked questioningly at Carmen and she nodded.
Oh, yes, she’d enjoyed that very much
. “The margins looked clean. I took five lymph nodes.” He held up one hand with all the fingers splayed to demonstrate. “And they were all clean. Perfectly clean. This made me very happy.”

Carmen was relaxing, melting into her chair a little. She still felt hung over from the anesthesia and now, also, from her relief. She’d been expecting the worst. So much for intuition. A little light radiation—maybe two months—that’s what she’d read online about this kind of contained cancer. It was probably ductal, in situ, that’s what she’d been hoping for. It was the breast cancer equivalent of having a mole removed. Thank God. It was time to go home.

“However …” Dr. Woo had shifted, his face becoming drawn and dark. He pulled a manila folder from the neat pile on his desk and opened it. “Then we received the lab results and I was not so happy.” He had seemed to be addressing both of them, but now he turned to Olive. It was as if he thought they were having a private conversation and would decide later how to break the news to Carmen herself. “The pathology of this particular tumor is problematic in a patient of this age. It is what we call ‘estrogen-receptor positive,’ which means it tends to recur and grow in the presence of estrogen. And as you know, prior to menopause the female body produces large amounts of estrogen, each month, even when it is no longer necessary for childbearing.”

Carmen blinked. Was she supposed to feel guilty about this? Her wild body with its naughty estrogen dance.

“We have found …” Finally, the doctor turned to her and his eyes looked weary, sad. “The best way to combat your kind of cancer is to shut down the body’s hormone production completely.” He made a motion with his hand, like closing a door. “I am a cautious man, so in order to be safe, here is what I recommend: three months of chemotherapy to eliminate any growth we may have missed, two months of radiation, and at the same time I’m going to give you a drug called tamoxifen. This will put you into menopause immediately. I think it’s our very best chance.”

Carmen was dumbstruck. Olive, thankfully, was not. “Is the chemotherapy really necessary?” she asked, and Carmen knew she was thinking of Jobe, the endless rounds of needles and X-rays that probably ended up killing him in the end. “You said you were able to take out the entire tumor, and I’m sure you did.”