by Lily Tuck
Like Pascal, Philip continues, I believe it is safer to believe that God exists than to believe He does not exist. Heads God exists and I win and go to heaven, Philip motions with his arm as if tossing a coin up in the air, tails God does not exist and I lose nothing.
It’s a bet, she says, frowning. Your belief is based on the wrong reasons and not on genuine faith.
Not at all, Philip answers, my belief is based on the fact that reason is useless for determining whether there is a God. Otherwise, the bet would be off.
Then, leaning down, he kisses her.
His eyes shut, Philip lies on his back. His head rests on the pillow and she has pulled the red-and-white diamond-patterned quilt up to cover him. He could be sleeping. The room is tidy and familiar, dominated by the carved mahogany four-poster. Opposite it, two chairs, her beige cashmere sweater hanging on the back of one; in between the chairs stands a maple bureau whose top is covered with a row of family photos in silver frames—Louise as a baby, Louise, age nine or ten, as the Black Swan in her school production of Swan Lake, Louise holding her dog, Mix, Louise dressed in a cap and gown, Louise and Philip sailing, Louise, Philip, and Nina horseback riding at a dude ranch in Montana, Louise and Nina skiing in Utah. Also on top of the bureau is a lacquer box where she keeps some of her jewelry. Her valuable jewelry—a diamond pin in the shape of a flower, a three-strand pearl necklace, a ruby signet ring—is inside the combination safe in the hall closet. Closing her eyes, she tries to remember the combination: three turns to the left to 17, two turns to the right to 4, and one turn to the left to 11 or is it the other way around? In any case she can never get the safe open; Philip has to. And, next to the lacquer jewelry box, the blue-and-green clay bowl Louise made for them in third grade in which, each evening, Philip places his loose change. The closet doors are shut and only the bathroom door is ajar.
When is a door not a door? When it is a …
Stop.
Perhaps she should put on her nightgown and lie down next to him and in the morning, when he wakes up he will reach for her the way he does. He will hike up her nightgown. Take it off, he will say. He likes to make love in the morning. Sleepy, she takes longer to respond.
She has not bothered to draw the curtains. Outside, above the waving tree branches, she can make out a few stars in the night sky. A mere dozen in a galaxy of a billion or a trillion stars. Perhaps death, she thinks, is like one of those stars—a star that can be seen only backward in time and exists in an unobservable state. While life, she has heard said, was created from stars—the stars’ debris.
What did he say to her exactly?
I am a bit tired, I am going to lie down for a minute before supper.
or
I am going to lie down for a minute before supper, I am a bit tired.
or something else entirely.
She is in the kitchen. Spinning the lettuce. She looks up briefly.
How was your day?
She half listens to his reply.
We had a faculty meeting. You should hear how those new physicists talk! They’re crazy, Philip says, as he goes upstairs.
She makes the salad dressing, she sets the table. She takes the chicken out of the oven. She boils new potatoes. Then she calls him.
Philip! Dinner is ready.
She starts to open a bottle of red wine but the cork is stuck. He will fix it.
Again, Philip, Philip! Dinner!
Before she walks into the bedroom, she knows already.
She sees his stocking feet. He has taken off his shoes.
What was he thinking? About dinner? About her? A paper he is reading by one of his students, arguing that Kronecker was right to claim that the Aristotelian exclusion of completed infinites could be maintained?
Infinites. Infinite sets. Infinite series.
Infinity makes her anxious.
It gives her nightmares. As a child, she had a recurring dream. A dream she can never put into words. The closest she comes to describing the dream, she tells Philip, is to say that it has to do with numbers. The numbers—if in fact they are numbers—always start out small and manageable, although in the dream Nina knows that this is temporary, for soon they start to gather force and multiply; they become large and uncontrollable. They form an abyss. A black hole of numbers.
You’re in good company, is what Philip tells her. The Greeks, Aristotle, Archimedes, Pascal all had it.
The dream?
No, what the dream stands for.
Which is?
The terror of the infinite.
But, for Philip, infinity is a demented concept.
Infinity, he says, is absurd.
“Suppose, one dark night,” is how Philip always begins his undergraduate course on probability theory, “you are walking down an empty street and suddenly you see a man wearing a ski mask carrying a suitcase emerge from a jewelry store—the window of the jewelry store, you will have noticed, is smashed. You will no doubt assume that the man is a burglar and that he has just robbed the jewelry store but you may, of course, be dead wrong.”
Philip is a popular teacher. His students like him. The women in particular, Nina cannot fail to notice.
He is so sanguine, so merry, so handsome.
Vous permettez?
He is so polite.
Too polite, she sometimes reproaches him.
They do not go to bed with each other right away. Instead he questions her about the well-known American painter.
I don’t want you to sleep with anyone else but me, he says. He sounds quite fierce. They are standing on the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain and rue de Saint-Simon, near the apartment where he is staying with his widowed aunt. A French aunt—or nearly French. She married a Frenchman and has lived in France for forty years. Tante Thea is more French than the French. She talks about politics and about food; she is impeccably dressed and perfectly coiffed; she serves three-course lunches, plays golf at an exclusive club in Neuilly, goes to the country every weekend. She refers to Philip as mon petit Philippe and, over time, Nina grows to like her.
A hot Saturday afternoon, the apartment will be empty. Across the boulevard, a policeman stands guarding a ministry. A flag droops over the closed entryway. Cars go by, a bus, several noisy motorcycles. They stand together not saying a word.
Come, Philip finally says.
Mon petit Philippe.
Nina smiles to herself, remembering.
He is so tentative, so determined to please her.
“The assumption that the man in the ski mask has robbed the jewelry store is an example of plausible reasoning but we, in this class”—is how Philip continues his lecture—”will be studying deductive reasoning. We will look at how intuitive judgments are replaced by definite theorems—and that the man robbing the jewelry store is in fact the owner of the jewelry store and he is on his way to a costume party, therefore the ski mask, and the neighbor’s kid has accidentally thrown a baseball through his store window.
“Any questions?”
Most probably a sudden cardiac arrest—not a heart attack—their neighbor, an endocrinologist, says. He tries to explain the difference to her. A heart attack is when a blockage in a blood vessel interrupts the flow of blood to the heart, while a cardiac arrest results from an abrupt loss of heart function. Most of the cardiac arrests that lead to sudden death occur when the electrical impulses in the heart become rapid or chaotic. This irregular heart rhythm causes the heart to suddenly stop beating. Some cardiac arrests are due to extreme slowing of the heart. This is called bradycardia.
Did he say all of that?
No, no, Philip has never been diagnosed with heart disease. Philip is as healthy as a horse. He had a physical a few months ago. That is what his doctor said. In any case it is what Philip told her his doctor said.
No, no, Philip does not take any medication.
Their neighbor, Hugh, looks for a pulse. He puts both hands on Philip’s heart and applies pressure. He counts out loud—on
e, two, three, four—until thirty.
Nina tries to count out loud with him—nineteen, twenty, twenty-one …
She has trouble making a sound above a whisper.
Poor Hugh, he does not know what to say—something about a defibrillator only it is too late. His dinner napkin is still hanging from his belt and he only notices it now. Blushing slightly, he pulls it off.
No. He must not call anyone.
Nina ran next door to fetch him just as he and his wife, Nell, are sitting down to their supper in the kitchen. Their dog, an old yellow Lab, stands up and begins to bark at her; upstairs, a child starts to cry. They have two children, one a month old. A girl named Justine. A day or two after Nell came home from the hospital, Nina went over with a lasagna casserole and a pink sweater and matching cap for the baby. How long ago that seems.
Hugh says, Call us any time. Nell and I … His voice trails off.
Yes.
Yes, yes, I will.
And call your physician. He’ll have to draw up the death certificate.
Yes, in the morning, I will.
Will you be all right …? Again, his voice trails off.
Yes, yes. I want to be alone. Thank you.
Thank you, she says again.
She hears the front door shut.
Bradycardia.
The name reminds her of a flower. A tall blue flower.
Iris.
An old-fashioned name.
The name of the woman killed in the car accident. She must have been pretty, Nina imagines. Slender, blonde. Both are young—Iris is only eighteen and he is driving her home after a party, it is raining hard—perhaps Philip has had one drink too many but he is not drunk. No. Around a curve, he loses control of the car—perhaps the car skids, he does not remember; nor did he when the police question him. They hit a telephone pole. Iris is killed instantly. He, on the other hand, is unhurt.
Nina wonders how often Philip still thinks about Iris. Did he think of her before he died? Did he think he might have had a happier life had he married her? In a way, Nina envies Iris. Iris has remained forever young and pretty in his mind while he has only to glance at her and see how Nina’s skin is wrinkled, her hair, once auburn or red—depending on the light—is gray, her breasts have lost their firmness.
Philip spoke of the accident on their honeymoon, on their way to Puerto Vallarta.
I just want you to know that this happened to me is what he says.
It happened also to Iris is what Nina wants to say but does not.
It took me a long time to get over it and come to terms with it is what he also says.
How did you come to terms with it? Nina wants to ask.
It was a terrible thing.
Yes.
Now, I don’t want to think about it anymore, he says.
And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Do you understand, Nina?
Nina said she does but she doesn’t.
What was she like? Iris? she nonetheless asks. She tries to sound respectful. Was she Southern? Iris is such an unusual name.
She was a musician, Philip answers.
Oh. What did she play? The piano?
But Philip does not answer.
When she first arrived in Paris, at the airport, she sees a man, in the immigration line ahead of her, take off his wedding ring and pin it to the lining of his attaché case with a safety pin that he must keep there for that purpose.
What about your wife? she wants to shout.
Sometimes, in her mind, she accuses Philip of losing his wedding ring on purpose. Her throat is dry; she finds it hard to swallow.
Downstairs, the lights are on. She goes to the hall closet, which is full of coats. Hers, his—a navy blue wool coat, a parka, a down jacket, a raincoat, an old windbreaker. The windbreaker must be twenty-five years old. She remembers how proud Philip was when he bought it. The windbreaker was bright yellow and on sale and, he claimed, would last him a lifetime. He is right. Now the windbreaker is faded, the collar and cuffs are frayed, without thinking about it, she takes it out of the closet and puts it on. Carefully, she zips it up. Her hands go to the pockets. Slips of paper—bills, a to-do list: car inspection, call George about leak in basement, bank, pick up tickets for concert. The list, she recognizes, is several months old; coins, paper clips, a ticket stub are in the other pocket.
She walks into the dining room. The chicken, the new potatoes, the salad are all on the table. Cold, waiting. Nina starts to pick up a dish to put it away and changes her mind. Tomorrow, she thinks. Tomorrow she will have plenty of time to put things away, to do the dishes, to do—she cannot think what. Instead, she takes the bottle of wine with the cork stuck inside it. Again, she tries to pull the cork out but can’t. Damn, she says to herself. She goes to the kitchen and gets a knife. With the handle of the knife, she pushes the cork inside the bottle and pours herself a glass of wine.
Still holding the knife, a sharp kitchen knife, she makes a motion with it as if to slit her throat. Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the dining room mirror, she shakes her head.
What would Louise think?
Holding the glass of wine, she goes back upstairs. Outside, the sound of a police car siren. From the bedroom window, she sees a blue light flash by in the dark, then rush past the house and disappear. She thinks of the car full of teenagers playing loud music and she imagines it smashed into a tree, the windshield bits of glittering glass as smoke rises from the hood and someone in the backseat screams.
Another siren. Another police car goes by.
Poor Iris, she says to Philip.
Again, the phone rings.
Louise.
Earlier, she left Louise a message. Louise, darling, something has happened. Call me as soon as you can.
Poor Louise.
Philip’s darling.
A beautiful, lively, headstrong young woman who looks like him—tall, dark, with the same gray eyes. Nina must answer the phone.
Hello, she says, picking up the receiver in the bedroom.
Louise?
Whoever it is hangs up.
A wrong number. In the dark, Nina looks for a caller ID on the phone but there is none.
She is relieved. She does not want to tell Louise.
It is three hours earlier in California, and Louise, she imagines, is having dinner. She is having dinner with a young man. A handsome young man whom she likes. Afterward, Louise will not pick up her messages, she will sleep with him.
For Louise, Philip is alive still.
Lucky Louise.
Nina takes a sip of wine, then, putting down the glass, reaches for his hand again. His hand is cold and she attempts to warm it by holding it between both of hers.
She loves Philip’s hands. His long blunt fingers. Fingers that have touched her in all kinds of ways. Passionate ways about which she does not want to let herself think—making her come. She presses the hand to her lips.
When did they last make love?
A Sunday morning, a few weeks ago. The house is quiet, the curtains are drawn, and the bedroom is dark enough. She is self-conscious about being too old for sex. Also, it takes him longer.
In Paris, too, in Tante Thea’s old-fashioned, shuttered apartment on the rue de Saint-Simon, where, on the way to Philip’s bedroom, she bumps into furniture—side tables, spindly-legged chairs, glass cases filled with porcelain figurines—and where in bed, afterward, Philip admits that he was nervous. Without telling her why, he says he had not made love in a long time. He was afraid, he says, he had forgotten how.
You can never forget—like riding a bicycle, Nina adds.
This or her trite remark makes him laugh and, reassured or, at least, not as nervous, Philip makes love to her again.
Has he been faithful to her?
She reaches for the glass of wine.
Also, not thinking, Nina reaches into the windbreaker pocket and pulls out a coin. It feels like a penny.
Heads? Tails?
“The probability of an event occurring when there are only two possible outcomes is known as a binomial probability,” Philip tells his students. “Tossing a coin, which is the simple way of settling an argument or deciding between two options, is the most common example of a binomial probability. Probabilities are written as numbers between one and zero. A probability of one means that the event is certain—”
When Louise is six years old, she begins to play a game of tossing pennies with Philip. She records the results along with the dates in a little orange notebook, which she keeps in the top drawer of Philip’s bedside table:
5 heads, 10 tails — 10/10/1976
9 heads, 11 tails — 3/5/1977
17 heads, 13 tails — 2/9/1979
The more times you toss a coin, Lulu, Philip tells Louise, the closer you get to the true theoretical average of heads and tails.
5039 heads, 4961 tails — 3/5/1987
For the last entry, Louise relies on a calculator.
“Another thing to remember and most people have difficulty understanding this,” Philip continues to tell his class as he takes a penny out of his pocket and tosses it up in the air, “is if a coin has come up heads a certain number of times, it will not necessarily come up tails next, as a corrective. A chance event is not influenced by the events that have gone before it. Each toss is an independent event.”
Heads, Philip tells Louise.
Heads, again.
Heads.
Tails, he says.
Nina, on an impulse, throws the coin she found in the pocket of Philip’s windbreaker up in the air. Too dark to see which way it comes up, she places the coin on top of the bedside table. In the morning she will remember to look:
Heads is success, tails is failure
And record the date in Louise’s orange notebook: 5/5/2005. 5 5 5
What, she wonders, do those three 5s signify?
Numbers are the most primitive manifestations of archetypes. They are found inherent in nature. Particles, such as quarks and protons, know how to count—how does she know this? By eating, sleeping, breathing next to Philip. Particles may not count the way we do but they count the way a primitive shepherd might—a shepherd who may not know how to count beyond three but who can tell instantly whether his flock of, say, 140 sheep, is complete or not.
