by Ann Bauer
And then there was nothing for a very long time.
She awoke in a tangled nest of bedclothes, her mind wiped free of dreams, thinking only of her thirst.
“Mom?” It was Michael next to her, his voice deeper than she remembered. He stood and put his hand—cool, long fingers—on her forehead, as if checking for fever. “Are you okay?”
She looked into his face and saw that he was frightened, then down at the pillow that was covered with fuzzy bits of hair.
“You’re bald,” Michael said.
“Totally?” Carmen reached up with two careful fingers and ran them across the moonlike bumps of her skull. She shivered. “This is not a great way to wake up,” she said and grinned at him. Michael made a sound in his throat and took a step back. Carmen focused and straightened and looked into the mirror opposite the bed; she was a wraith, white with stretched-looking skin and a jack-o’-lantern smile.
“Get me that,” she said, pointing, and Michael brought her the scarf that lay on a chair in the corner. Moving slowly—her muscles ached as if she had run a marathon—she wound it around her head. “How long have I been in here?” she asked. Judging from the weight she’d lost, it had to be a month.
“Four days,” he said, squinting. He was trying to compute her new face. “Grandma said one more day and you had to go to the hospital. Do you need to go to the hospital now?”
There was a hopeful lilt to his voice. What teenager needed another parent lying around the house, waiting to die? Carmen hesitated then spoke gently. “Not right now,” she said. “But if I get sick again, I think I will.”
“Alright.” Michael sat back down. He was examining her in short stints, as if dipping himself into cold water, getting used to the temperature. “That guy was here. The one from the baseball game.”
Carmen blinked. There had been no baseball game in her dreams. She shifted—it was an effort—to review the actual time before her last chemotherapy session, before her lunch with …
“Danny!”
“Yeah, that guy. He came a couple days ago and talked to Grandma.”
“Really?” Carmen worked to contain her curiosity. Danny was just a family friend, right? Someone who had come out of concern, who took fatherless boys to baseball games and called housing inspectors and researched mathematical formulas in his spare time. “What did they talk about?”
“Math experts, mostly,” Olive answered as she appeared behind Michael, tired-looking but proper in a zippered velour warm-up suit and Keds. “Also, his hair. It’s quite lovely but too long, I think, on an adult man.”
Carmen looked at the hair on her pillow then back in the mirror, where her alien self stared back: white, cratered head propped on the stalk of a neck. “Which math experts?” she asked faintly, as Michael slipped from the room.
“How do you feel, dear?” Olive stood over her, lips pursed. She was twitching, as if trying not to laugh. Or cry. “We came very close to calling for an ambulance last night. Though Mr. Woo said …”
“Doctor,” Carmen interrupted.
“Oh, yes, how strange. I suppose I was thinking about that old movie with Lon Chaney.”
“Funny, I always think about that song by Steely Dan.” And she sang in a warbling, cracked voice: “Katy tried / I was halfway crucified / I was on the other side / Of no tomorrow.”
“Dear me, how frightening.” Olive sat in Michael’s chair. It felt to Carmen as if she was holding court: Each of her subjects came in, one by one, to be heard. “I was worried you were going to the other side of no tomorrow. But Dr. Woo said he thought this was the worst of it. The second treatment often is—they have no idea why—and unless you ran a very high fever or became dehydrated, there was nothing they could do for you that we couldn’t do….” She held her hand out, swept it around Carmen and Jobe’s bedroom. “Here.”
“I remember. You were all giving me water.”
“Yes. You should be very proud. Siena and Luca each took their shifts. Three hours apiece. They are good young people. You raised them well.”
Carmen sighed, spying Jobe’s bathrobe—still hanging on its hook in the open closet—out of the corner of her eye. “We raised them well. Which is a miracle.” She paused. “Speaking of miracles, I saw. Or rather, I dreamed. Jobe was, um, here.”
“I’m sure he was, dear,” said Olive, rising. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he did his three hours as well.”
Carmen’s head buzzed with frustration, or possibly confusion. “Why are you acting so unmoved by all of this? It’s like I never even knew you. Were you running séances in your living room all these years and just not letting on?”
Olive had been heading for the door but now she stopped and turned. “No,” she said.
“Then what changed all of a sudden? How come you just accept that your dead son is floating around talking to people?”
Soberly, Olive assessed Carmen. “I suppose,” she began. Then confused, she paused. “There have been so many awful things. Jobe’s”—she struggled to say the word—“death. And now, your illness.” She checked the hall before continuing, quietly. “Luca, his problems. You know I love him even more than the others, in a way. But I wish for him so many things that will never be.”
Carmen shrugged, an effort that made her breathless. She lay back on the pillows regarding her mother-in-law. “But that’s life. It’s always been that way.”
“Not my life.” Olive smiled but it was shaky. “Up until I was about forty, nothing ever really went wrong. I was born wealthy. When I was a little girl, we vacationed every year in France. I married someone who loved me. We had friends. My boys were born healthy, smart.”
“What happened?” Carmen had been doing the math: Jobe was only sixteen when Olive was forty.
“One day I got an inkling that life wouldn’t be quite so easy for my child. Oh, Will did fine. He was very popular, good in school, a tennis player. And Nate has always had this … way about him. He’s happy no matter what. But Jobe was so lonely. Lost. He was always on the outside. He never had a girlfriend—during all of high school. My heart ached for him. It was the first time in my life having money and the right family did no good.”
Carmen snorted. “It’s hardly tragic, you know. Being an outcast in high school.” Though she had to admit that as a young woman she wouldn’t have felt that way at all.
“No, but it was the beginning. And I did what I knew to do. I waited until you came along and I used what means I had to fix things. To make sure you stayed here with us, married him, had a nice home. But then Luca was born and Jobe got sick.”
“And even you couldn’t fix them.”
“No.” Olive shook her head. “Even I. This did not fit into my worldview. It was incomprehensible, really.” She paused. “Then Jobe died and I realized what I’d done, that you had both in some sense been unhappy for all those years. My mixing into things, arranging them, had actually”—she swallowed—“caused my son and his son—and you—pain. There were a few very bad nights …” Olive looked at Carmen with wide, old eyes. “Then Jobe came to speak to me.”
“What did he say?” Carmen asked softly.
“He said I should stop trying to control everything. That things happen, you know …”
“Randomly?”
“Yes. I believe that’s even the word he used. Jobe told me I couldn’t see it yet, but there was an order to life. Your illness, your …” She blushed but went on. “Your romances. He said. I can’t express it but somehow I understood.”
She gazed at Carmen, suddenly regal again. All traces of sorrow and guilt were gone. Olive was back. “I’m going to make you some lunch now. Really, it’s high time you ate something. You’re like a pile of sticks in that bed.”
“But wait, you never answered my question!” Carmen called as Olive began turning to leave for the second time. “Which math experts?”
“There’s this young lady from Greece. Althea something, I think your friend said. He thinks she might …
”
“Yes, we need to bring her here. The money. I have the insurance money. I can buy her a ticket and get her a place to stay.” The words were pouring out of Carmen so fast, they sounded connected—like one long idea. “We can pay her whatever she needs to leave her position for a while. Bring her husband if she has one. We need her to come look at Jobe’s papers and see if the solution is there. It’s very important.”
Olive paused in the doorway, looking at Carmen. She smiled, very slowly, but it was like the sun breaking out. “Yes, dear. I was thinking the same thing. But no need to fret so; you just lie back while I get your lunch. It’s already been done.”
Carmen was bored. Only six hours had passed since she awoke with Michael in the chair at her side. Luca and Siena and even Troy had all come to speak to her, and Carmen had been shy at first. But Luca had acted as if nothing was different about her, casually answering her questions while gazing straight into her eyes. Troy, on the other hand, stared at his feet the whole time he was in the room. And Siena reacted in a way Carmen never would have predicted.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, examining Carmen. “You look terrible, Mom. I want you to lie here in this bed until you gain at least five pounds. And we need to shave your head.” Then she ran her hand over Carmen’s skull lovingly, like a mother. “You have bird fuzz.”
Troy, next to her, looked embarrassed. But Carmen laughed. “I promise I’m going to eat and get myself better soon. Because it sounds like you’ve been hanging out with Jana waaayyyy too much.”
And the morning then was pleasant. Carmen had eaten twice: a bagel with jam that Olive brought her and a cup of strong coffee she’d drizzled with heavy cream. Then an omelet stuffed with sausage and spinach and cheese that Luca brought her, which she insisted on sharing with him—trading the fork back and forth—until she had quelled the aching emptiness inside her gut.
“Food hasn’t tasted so good to me since I was pregnant with you,” she told him. But Luca only gave her a long look that could have been deep and wise or could have signaled he was unable to fathom what pregnant was exactly and how he ever could have lived tucked inside her. She started to clarify but couldn’t think of a way to do it that wouldn’t be demeaning so she stopped and simply let the moment pass.
By noon she was stuffed and warm, far too full to eat again for several hours. Troy had offered to pull a TV into her bedroom but the thought of lying back and watching daytime talk shows or soap operas only depressed her. She had seen all the movies in the house. She hadn’t started a new book since Jobe died, so her bedside table was bare. Carmen itched and shifted, as the afternoon marched on insistently sunny and empty, petulant and restless as a small child.
Finally, when she couldn’t stand the tedium any longer, she rose despite Siena’s admonishment and crept down the stairs. The children were nowhere to be found. It was early September and they were in school! Carmen realized they had been staying home to care for her, or in case she died. But now they were gone. Olive was lying on the living room couch, her shoes still on, legs angled crookedly so her feet were off the cushions, eyes closed. Carmen envied her mother-in-law the satisfying fatigue of hard work. She wandered into the kitchen. Never had her home seemed less her own: Olive, or someone, had purchased groceries with unfamiliar brand names; they could have come from France or New Zealand, for all Carmen knew.
She went into the dining room. The table gleamed. Had Olive taken time to polish it in the midst of ministering to Carmen and taking care of all three kids? That made no sense. But as she neared the table she saw her own reflection appearing—a dark, wavering sepia image, as if she were looking into a river of chocolate—and smelled the oil and lemon. Jobe’s boxes were stacked against the wall under the thermostat. But Carmen didn’t like seeing them there. It was too risky. Someone could mistake them for Goodwill offerings, or outdated tax documents, and toss them out.
She tried lifting one. It contained only papers but it was immovable. She must have been severely weakened by the past week. Giving up on that task, Carmen opened the box and began fishing pages out. She took them to the table but reconsidered when she got within a couple of feet of that smell. The oil would stain them, might even bleed through and smudge the pen marks. Carmen stood for a few seconds, considering. She turned and went upstairs to the linen closet, then came down again on the creaking wooden stairs, peering over the banister every few steps to see if she was disturbing Olive, carrying an old sheet that flowed behind her like a veil.
It was thick muslin, vintage linen that she’d bought out of romantic desire when she was first married. But one after another the children had stained it with various body fluids, liquid acetaminophen, and popsicle juice. Now they used it for picnics, or to soften the edges of furniture when it was being moved. Carmen flung the sheet high over the table—breathless with effort—and let it drift down. At the same time she saw an image of the white drape settling down over Jobe’s coffin. It fluttered similarly at the edges. Carmen caught her breath, feeling a moment of fear. But the picture in her mind was replaced by that trail of golden zeros and she felt, rather than heard, his voice say, Don’t worry, you will be fine in the end.
Once the table was covered, Carmen withdrew a sheaf of papers and sat down to make some sort of arrangement. She sorted the first three sheets into separate piles but couldn’t discern the reason why, when she looked carefully at them. Moving the pages closer, she scanned each one and looked for anything she could use to help categorize. Strands of Jobe’s dinnertime conversation from throughout the years floated back to her: Restricting the range of prime numbers … An analytic continuation of the zeta function … What hasn’t been proven yet is the distribution of zeros … Real part must always be one-half. These words cleared up nothing, even as she stared at the figures he’d written in long, sentencelike strings.
But over the next hour, a few patterns emerged. There were papers containing only one or two formulas with cryptic, slantwise notes in the margins; others looked like dictionary pages with solid paragraphs of math. Carmen recognized one symbol again and again: the zeta, which looked like an elegant, unfinished uppercase E. Jobe drew this almost like a Chinese figure, with calligraphic flourishes of his pen. She put all of these documents into a separate pile.
There was a soft scuffle in the other room: a door opening and feet, first clipping across the floor then muffled by carpet. Olive must be up. Carmen continued dealing the papers out like playing cards; now that she’d developed a system, it was satisfying to do this. Though she couldn’t have said what function it might possibly serve.
“What are you doing?” The voice was not what she expected and Carmen jumped then had a fierce desire to hide. Danny stood in the doorway, looking at her. She pulled her bathrobe even tighter but this was a mistake. She was wasted, with hardly any real body against which to pull the fabric. It had never bothered her to be naked in front of Danny but now she felt ugly and exposed, drowning in her own clothes.
“I’m just …” She reached up and felt her head, which was rough and patchy. When she drew her hand away, there was a fine down of hair covering the palm. “What are you doing? It’s the middle of the day.”
“It’s Tuesday,” he said. “My—you know, our—afternoon off.”
“Oh.” She backed up, feeling cornered. Had he meant to be hostile?
“I thought I’d just come over to see how you are.” He was wearing his sunglasses and a black shirt, sexy faded jeans, his waist-length hair loose. An affront.
“I’m fine,” Carmen said stiffly. No, I’m not. I’m ugly. I’m bony and bald and disgusting. You’ll never want to sleep with me again.
“What are you doing?” he asked, gesturing at the papers in front of her. “Your, uh, Olive talked about bringing Althea Markos here to look at those.”
“I know. She told me.” Carmen paused, awkward. “Have you seen her, Olive?”
“Yeah, she’s asleep on the couch. She looks really beat.” He peeled
off his sunglasses as he said this.
Carmen stepped forward. “And I look horrible.”
“You look sick.”
They stood facing each other, cold space between them. Finally, Carmen spoke. “We should get out of here if we’re going to talk. The children will be home any minute.” Actually, she had no idea if this was true: Michael could very well go to Jeffrey’s, Siena to Troy’s or to work, and Luca was enrolled in a new program this year. She couldn’t remember what the schedule was.
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.”