Moby Dx: A Novel of Silicon Valley - Volume 1 Max Ebb

Chapter 34 The Courtship

Arianna knew all about why he would be returning to the US. She knew, too, she would follow him. “I went to lycée on Rue Saint-Jacques,” she told me, “and after that I walked across the street to the Sorbonne. Then, I was curator at the Musée only blocks away after graduating. I could have spent my entire life within a few steps of Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, only to die watching my grandchildren in the Jardin du Luxembourg, and be buried beside Mme Curie in the Panthéon.” She winked at me and laughed, conveying the unlikelihood that those hallowed catacombs would be her final resting place. After a moment, she went on. “I wanted more. I didn’t know whether I would follow as Ms. Frood, that’s all, and we didn’t talk about it.”

The Javaheris had come to enjoy Max’s intensity and they were looking forward to a wedding, even if their daughter would live across the Atlantic. That crossing was easy—farther, but easy—compared to the journeys they’d been forced to make before. Max was always on his best behavior around them, entertaining them, teasing them, showing appreciation for their generosity, trying to please them. He was open about his gambling, and they were at least a little impressed, although as uncomprehending as Arianna about why she never accompanied him. Her mothers, the two wise Vidas, expressed to her some worry that there was a secret he didn’t want revealed. That possibility worked away at the veneer of their good feelings about an impending marriage.

His homoerotic self, of course, he kept in the closet. Life had been simpler for him when there was no one to keep secrets from. There were a lot of moving parts, as he liked to say.

Arianna finished her bachelor’s degree a year before Max was to finish his doctorate. Professor Thuillier placed Arianna in a position as assistant curator at the Musée du Luxembourg. Max finished up his work on miniaturizing the componentry of DNA sequencing instruments and applied for teaching jobs at several of the first-tier universities that had made major investments in semiconductor processing research. When Arianna stopped in to see him, women in his lab remarked to her that Max had been kinder to them since the romance had begun.

Max and Arianna were in Paris already, so they needn’t have gone anywhere for a lover’s getaway, but they got away anyway. They travelled around in a Fiat Tipo that he’d bought with gambling money; they visited caves, vineyards, rugged beaches, battlefields, castles, cathedrals, museums, small hotels, and everywhere else but casinos.

They stayed away from casinos. He claimed that having her there would be too much of a distraction to his concentration. “It’s not fun, really, it’s work,” he said.

She suggested that they go so that she could see, and he wouldn’t even need to gamble. “Just a weekend in Deauville would be fun, wouldn’t it? I love Normandy. All that briny air? You could pay Mlle Ampère a special visit and we could wrap ourselves in sheets, eat in, eat out, stroll on the boardwalk. It would be delicious wouldn’t it?”

“No, it wouldn’t,” although the thought of her electrified gash had taken the edge off his hostility for a moment.

When her pleading began to morph into something more like a demand, he answered, “Absolutely not!

The force of his obstinacy hit her like a brick, and he too was surprised by it. He’d rather he’d said, “I’d prefer not to,” but in the face of her repeated request, he didn’t know what else to do. Saying yes seemed not to have been considered.

They barely spoke for a week. He burrowed into work and kept to himself. The secrets that might be revealed on a trip to one of his haunts were so dark that he was prepared to give her up, to find a way to hate her if he had to, rather than give in to her request. He didn’t call her before he left for Deauville.

Arianna disappeared into work and took comfort in family. She accompanied her little sisters, now finishing at the lycée, to cafes and on walks. Before this, she’d been too busy with school or Max, ignoring them. Now she could see them and how they needed her. She cried to her two mamas. They tried to console, but also, because the idea of that secret bothered them, they probed a little. “Why haven’t we met his family, Arianna?”

“He’s an orphan, Mamman.” She called them both Mamman.

To their cries of sadness for him, Arianna explained what little she knew at the time.

“I ask, but he’s secretive. His parents are gone and he’s estranged from the aunt who took him in. He gets angry when I ask him. A little bit like now. There are conversations he just won’t have.”

Aunt Vida said, “A marriage is long, if you’re lucky, chérie. Secrets corrode the bond. It doesn’t matter who has the secret. The bond holds both of you.”

“He’s a nice boy, Arianna, but maybe he should see a psychiatrist,” said her mother, the other Vida.

“I think so,” Arianna said. “A Froodian, maybe. Do you want to bring that up?” She wore a smile worthy of a thousand kisses, and they all laughed till they cried.

In private the Vidas agreed, “How they get out of this first quarrel will be an omen.”