I Married You for Happiness by Lily Tuck Page B

three turns to the left to 17? Or three turns to the right to 17? Nina says.
    Asymptotic freedom shows that the attraction between quarks grows weaker as the quarks move closer to each other and, conversely, that the attraction grows stronger as the quarks move farther apart. Are you ready, Nina?
    Nearly.
    The discovery established quantum chromodynamics as the correct theory of the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces in Nature.
    Didn’t he and his wife write a book together? Philip, I still can’t get this safe open.
    Yes—about how scientists arrive at their theories of the universe and why there is something instead of nothing. His wife, too, is a brilliant mathematician. Nina! What are you doing in there? We are going to be late, Philip almost shouts.
    Here, let me.
    How many times have I showed you? Philip says more quietly, when he has the safe open. It’s so easy.
    Easy for you, Nina says, suddenly close to tears.
    I just don’t want us to be late, Philip says.
    In the car on the way to the dinner, fingering the diamond flower pin to make sure it is securely fastened to her dress, Nina says, Let me tell you about my theory of the universe, Philip.
    Her theory of the universe is that there is no theory.
    Their last visit to Père Lachaise is on a winter day. The tree limbs are bare; the cypresses loom dark and forbidding. The pots of too-bright artificial flowers placed around the tombs make the sky, by contrast, appear grayer, more somber.
    Damp and cold, Nina shivers in her down coat. Don’t you want to be buried next to me? she asks.
    They are stopped in front of the tomb of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
    Putting his arm around her shoulder, Philip says, And don’t forget to throw my ashes to leeward or else they’ll blow back in your face.
    Sitting next to the bed, she shuts her eyes for a moment and replays the scene of their meeting in Paris.
    Vous permettez?
    Je vous en prie.
    Ordinary and familiar phrases that give her pleasure.
    What is your book about? he also asks her.
    Afterward, they walk together along the boulevard Saint-Germain toward the boulevard Saint-Michel. She notices his limp but says nothing. By then, they have established that they are both familiar with the same city back home, the same shops and restaurants, which may be enough reason for them to see each other again. On the way, they stop at a bookstore where she locates the works of Nathalie Sarraute. She pulls
Tropismes,
the book she is reading, off the shelf for him.
    I’ll buy it, Philip says. A promise to her, perhaps, that they will see each other again.
    She should reread
Tropismes,
she thinks, opening her eyes.
    She should make a list:
War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Middlemarch;
all of Dickens, Jane Austen, Trollope …
    The novels of Balzac, Zola, Flaubert.
    A few days later, they argue.
    Did you read it? Nina asks Philip.
    They are having dinner together in an inexpensive restaurant in the Latin Quarter, a few blocks from the gallery where she works. It is late and she is tired.
    Read what? Philip is looking through the wine list. Is a Côtes du Rhône all right?
    The book you bought.
Tropismes.
    Already, she has decided that she is not going to sleep with Philip. She orders the snails cooked in garlic.
    Philip frowns and shakes his head. I tried, he says.
    He orders the soup.
    I couldn’t get past the first page.
    Really? You couldn’t read it? Nina is offended. Those beautiful interior monologues?
    They’re incoherent, Philip answers.
    Ils semblaient sourdre de partout, éclos dans la tiédeur un peu moite de l’air
—he recites.
    And who is this cousin of yours related to her by marriage? She interrupts, changing her tactic. I am not sure I believe you.
    I’ll introduce you, he says, smiling.
    Many years later, in Boston, Nina goes to hear Nathalie Sarraute read. Old, elegant, and imperious is how she describes her to Philip.
    I am not surprised, he says.
    Oh, and what about her cousin? You