by Anne Cherian
“You don’t know the kid, don’t go,” Harvey recommended, so Jay ended up telling him about Vic, their UCLA days, and Nikhil.
“Why didn’t you tell me you know Vic Jha, the CEO of VikRAM Computers?” Harvey demanded. “You could have gotten my son an internship for the summer. Instead, poor Bobby is going to teach swimming at the local YWCA.”
After that, Harvey kept asking Vic-related questions. “Did he tell you he was going to start his company when you were at UCLA?”
Vic had mentioned it a few times, but never in concrete terms. Jay had wondered whether it was more a fantasy than something Vic was really pursuing. Even when they had gone clothes shopping at Macy’s, Vic had said that if he couldn’t get an investor, he’d make use of the new suit for job interviews. It had given Jay the impression that Vic wasn’t committed to any particular path, as long as he made money.
“Why didn’t you join in on the ground floor? Imagine where you’d be today, huh?”
How could he tell Harvey that even though Vic was intelligent, he hadn’t thought his friend had the Western smarts to start and sustain a company. After all, the first time they ate in the cafeteria, Vic had been nonplussed by the plastic tray, the menu, the choice of toppings for a baked potato. As Jay had told Frances, referring to Vic’s favorite footwear, “This bloke is flip-flopping his way through school, good in the classroom but not anywhere else.” He had always assumed that his own upbringing, the fork-and-knife skills he had learned back home, would land him a great job that would take him straight up the ladder of success. He would not have been surprised if Vic had told him he was returning to India.
“College friendships are tight, so I bet this Vic will be able to help your kids if they decide to become computer people.”
Jay was sure that Vic would be willing to help out. It wasn’t just the ties they had formed in college; it was also the “we’re from India” connection. But Jay knew that he would never ask Vic, because he could not return the favor.
The sudden interest in Vic had left Jay uncomfortable. If even Harvey wondered at the disparity between them, Jay knew that the Indians at the party would find him severely lacking. They always judged a family by the man, and it was clear that he hadn’t provided for his wife and children the way Vic had.
He wished that they didn’t have to go.
He recalled Frances’s hysterical reaction to the invitation the day it had arrived, how she had yelled at Mandy. She hadn’t brought it up recently, and given that she got nervous before going to the annual Christmas party at her firm, he was surprised she wasn’t going on and on about the evening.
“We got the invitation, what, two months ago?” he asked Frances.
“At least that long,” Frances agreed, a little distracted as she searched for her favorite cup. “I bought the graduation card yesterday and remembered to get a clean hundred-dollar bill from the bank.”
“Don’t forget to add one dollar,” Jay reminded her, wishing they were able to give more money.
“Oh, right. I always forget about that odd custom. Goans don’t do it, you know.”
“Old Hindu tradition of not liking even numbers.” Jay peered out the window. “Looks like rain, though I guess Newport Beach has a different weather pattern.”
“I’m sure Vic’s accounted for that,” Frances said, just as Lily and Sam raced into the kitchen.
“We want pancakes,” Lily demanded.
“With syrup and jam,” Sam seconded.
“And just who do you think I am?” Jay, arms akimbo, inquired, glad to be taken away from thinking how his own life sagged when stacked up against Vic’s.
“You are Sir Jay, also known as our sir-vant,” Lily giggled.
“And you are to sir-ve us our breakfast,” Sam doubled up with laughter.
Frances loved the giddy exuberance, the sureness with which they ordered pancakes. It had been a long time since she had felt so—at ease. The Miller sale had done more than bring in much-needed money. It had restored her confidence, and she had, after much agony—thinking yes, then no—come up with a plan for Mandy. The fact that they were going to do something for Mandy had further settled her.
“Out of the kitchen, you two,” she said, shooing the children toward the family room. “We’ll call you when the pancakes are ready.”
Frances cracked an egg into the bowl. Jay watched the yolk hold its own, only dissolving into the albumen after Frances started to whip it with a fork.
He suddenly remembered telling five-year-old Mandy that an egg is like life: There is no knowing which way it will crack open.
“What did your egg do, Dad?” she asked him, but before he could answer, Frances had laughed and said that men don’t have eggs.
“I know, Mom,” Mandy had said, “men have sprite, I mean sperm.”
How they had laughed, eyes acknowledging that their daughter was, as her kindergarten teacher had said, precocious.
Everyone who met Mandy commented on the way her dark, shiny eyes snapped in the world around her. Now those eyes had stopped being engaged, and it depressed him that he, the father who had marveled at her from first sight, did not have the right answer for her problems. There was a time when Mandy actually thought he was like God and knew everything. But those days were in the dreamy past, and he had been feeling inadequate for months.
He and Frances had spent long nights arguing how best to recover the child they were used to, the little girl whose insatiable desire to know the most had made her such a gifted student.
Frances had thought up the solution that she and Mandy return to India for the year.
“My mother hasn’t been well, and I haven’t seen her in years, you know,” Frances said. “My sisters have been taking care of Mama, and this way I can give them a break. And Mandy can finish her last year in India.”
He knew the guilt that came from living far away, had experienced it firsthand when Papa had had bypass surgery two years ago. Frances had encouraged him to go, had assured him that this was not the time to worry about expensive last-minute tickets. He would never stop her from going home, especially since her last visit had been when Sam was a baby.
But he thought her plan was too drastic, so he suggested she go for the entire summer, alone.
“I don’t want to split up the family for a whole year,” he said firmly. “Lily and Sam will miss you too much.”
“Oh, Jay, don’t you think I’ll miss them too?” Frances had asked, tears in her eyes and voice. “This isn’t an easy decision for any of us. I had hoped that we could all go for the summer, so that we’d only be apart for the school year, but we don’t have the money.”
He knew that they could not afford five tickets, gifts, and the generous spending that people back home presumed from dollar-earners. Their families believed they were enjoying the perks of being rich immigrants, and it was easy to keep up the lie from this great distance. Papa didn’t know they had the smallest house on the block, or that they routinely bought secondhand cars. They even had ironclad reasons for the long years between visits home. Summer was a busy time for real estate, and the children’s winter break was too short to make the trip.
“What makes it bearable is that Lily and Sam constantly beg to stay after school. They think it’s a great treat, and this way they can have it for one year, you know,” Frances said. “Besides, tell me, what’s the alternative? Mandy hasn’t changed. We tried the therapist, and that didn’t work. You said give her time, but it’s near the end of the school year and she’s still getting C’s and D’s. What else can we do?”
“What makes you think she’ll do better in India?”
“I don’t know. But we have to try something. It’s breaking my heart to stand by and watch her flail.”
Once Frances made up her mind, she spent a lot of time figuring out the details. She researched schools and found an American-style one in Bangalore.
“It’s the exact same curriculum but with tougher teachers. If M
andy starts getting A’s, she will have a chance of getting into a good university. As you say all the time, America is a forgiving country. She can even write her college-application essay on why she had such a bad year in eleventh grade.”
Jay remembered his schoolteachers, each one a bulldog, never allowing him to fail. If Mandy really was like him, if she needed to be prodded, then India was the place for that. Perhaps she would rediscover her old curiosity, get back that wonderful euphoria that came from getting all A’s. Jay had hoped that Griffin would help, but though he came around more often, Mandy’s grades had not improved.
Frances even managed to come up with a good explanation in case people asked about the trip. “Remember that French girl in Mandy’s fourth-grade class who returned to Paris for one year because her mother wanted to give her a strong base for the language? Well, we’re doing the same thing, except not for the language, but for the feel of India. These days everyone knows about India, yet our children have been there only a few times.”
A few weeks later, she read an article in the Los Angeles Times about Indians returning to the homeland and said, “See? We’re not the only ones doing it.”
Jay didn’t want to tell her that those Indians were taking advantage of the fabulous jobs American companies were offering in Delhi, Bangalore, and Mumbai. They were returning as CEOs to live in American-style houses that were cleaned by an army of servants.
The decision had given her fortitude, a calm that Jay hadn’t seen in a while, and she was able to sleep through the night again.
Frances kept saying, as if to assuage her guilt, “If this fails, at least we tried, you know.”
Mandy had been hysterical when Frances told her that the tickets were booked for the end of June. “I’ll come back as soon as I turn eighteen,” she threatened them.
When that didn’t work, she cried and cried. “Please, Mom, Dad,” Mandy begged, tears wetting her cheeks, “don’t make me go.”
Jay had looked at Mandy’s quivering lips and felt, again, that this might not be the right decision. But as Frances said, what was the alternative? He didn’t have one, outside of hoping that Mandy would improve on her own.
But that night, after Mandy went weeping to her room, even Frances’s resolve had softened.
“Are we doing the wrong thing?” she asked Jay. “Remember when I forced Mandy to play with Cindy?”
That infamous play date was family lore, brought out every now and then as something that should never happen again.
Mandy had been invited to play with Cindy, who lived next door, but she hadn’t wanted to go. Frances had phone calls to make, so she told Mandy to stop being silly, that Cindy had new toys, and didn’t she remember having fun with her friend?
Less than ten minutes later, Mandy ran home with blood streaming down her face. Cindy had suggested a game of pirates, and though she refused to let Mandy have a sword, she wielded one herself and had cut Mandy next to her right eye. A few centimeters more and Mandy might have lost her eye.
Frances had cried all the way to the hospital. She sobbed even harder when Mandy told her not to feel sad, it wasn’t hurting that much.
“What if things get worse in India?” Frances worried as they talked about the logistics. Which sister should Frances stay with in Bangalore? Should she take a computer class in case she needed to change jobs when she returned? “As you keep reminding me, this isn’t something that can be corrected easily.”
Their office mates thought they were crazy. They insisted that every study showed that children should not move around, especially during their last year of high school. And one of them pointed out, “What good will one year do?”
“Maybe I should go to India for the summer, see Mama, and return by September,” Frances vacillated.
Then, in May, Mandy brought home a report card with two F’s.
“Please, Mom, Dad, give me another chance. This time I promise I won’t disappoint you.”
As Frances said later, those two words, this time, straightened her resolve, which Jay said kept leaning like the Tower of Pisa and driving him crazy because he never knew what he was coming home to. She had heard them repeatedly this past year. This time I’ll study for the test. This time I’ll be waiting when you come to get me. This time I’ll turn in my homework.
“You have exhausted your this times,” she told Mandy. “You told us the same thing back in January. This time I’ll study more, you promised us, I’ll bring up my grades. Now it’s going to be our version of ‘this time.’ This time you are going to a school where there are no excuses. I’m taking you to India, and that’s that.”
Jay finally concurred that the year away, while hard on everyone, might turn things around for their daughter. The more they talked about it, the more Frances was committed to going.
“I’ll be helping out with Mama, but the other benefit is that I’ll be home every afternoon when Mandy returns. I can be there for her in a way that I can’t here, you know,” Frances had said.
Jay wasn’t convinced that Mandy would do better just because Frances was around more, but anything was worth trying. The e-tickets had been confirmed, and Frances was going to stop in Delhi, see his parents, who lived a few hours away, then head down to Bangalore.
Nikhil’s party was the last hurdle before they took off for India.
As if she could read his mind, Frances said, “I’ve told Lily and Sam not to blurt out anything about the India trip this evening.”
The children were used to the firm family policy about keeping things private. When Mandy started doing badly in school, Frances explained that her grades were not to be mentioned to anyone outside the house.
“Like a lady’s age?” Sam had asked.
“Exactly like that,” Frances had agreed. “It’s only for our family to know.”
“But you told Mrs. Greenberg that I got a perfect score in my last CAT math test,” Sam offered.
“That’s because she asked me, you know,” Frances said. “She wants to put her daughter in your school, and your grades let her know that you attend a good school.”
“But what if someone wants to go to Mandy’s school?” Sam asked logically.
“I’ll tell them it’s a good school,” Frances said. “It’s just like yours, and you know how much you love your school.” Frances tried to steer her son away from the question.
“Hypocrite,” Mandy said softly, and Frances shot her a “keep quiet” look.
“What’s a hypocrite?” Lily, who loved new words, asked.
“It’s from the Greek and means an actor,” Mandy responded before Frances could speak.
“How do you know that?” Frances asked her daughter.
Mandy shrugged.
“Mandy’s clever,” Lily said, “but she’s wrong this time. You’re not an actor, Mom. You make people happy by helping them buy a nice house.”
Frances spooned batter into the skillet as she continued talking to Jay, “I also told them it’s Nikhil’s big day, and we don’t want to take anything away from his celebration. But we’ll have to say something, you know, because people will ask us about the children.”
“The less said the better,” Jay maintained. “We’ll tell them that your mother is sick, and you and Mandy are going to India to help her.”
“It’s the truth,” said Frances, flipping the pancakes.
“At least we won’t have to worry that Mandy will say anything.”
“I’m actually grateful that she won’t say a word. She’ll probably sulk in some corner—” Frances was interrupted by her cell phone.
“It’s the Millers.” Frances was surprised to read the caller ID.
She hadn’t heard from them since their house sold. Were they calling because something, somehow, had gone wrong? Frances took a deep breath and answered, even as she ladled another batch of pancakes.
Jay set the table and stayed in the dining room. He knew from experience not to disturb Frances while she was on a bu
siness call.
“Jay,” Frances called him back to the kitchen. “You won’t believe what just happened. The Millers called to say they had recommended me to their friends who want to sell their house in Toluca Lake. That’s going to be a huge sale.”
“But you can’t take it,” Jay reminded her. “You’re leaving for India in a few weeks.”
“I’ll get a partner. Susan Hayman has been asking me to partner with her for ages. If I get this listing—and the Millers seem to think it’s a done deal—I’ll have Susan take over if the house hasn’t sold by the time I leave for India.”
“You sure you can do this?”
“Of course I am. Why? Did you want me to look this gift house in the window and say, ‘Hmm, there’s a problem with the dates. No thank you, go elsewhere?’ ”
She almost sounded like him, turning gift horse into a gift house. “It’s nice to see you in such a good mood.”
“I really feel like things are finally getting better, touch wood.”
“Here, you can touch my head,” Jay offered. “Solid teak, unlike the pressed stuff they sell here.”
“The pancakes are done,” Frances knocked against his head and picked up the platter.
“Come on, everyone. Breakfast!” Jay called.
Lily and Sam came running. Mandy always had to be pried out of her room.
“I’ll go get Greta Garbo,” Jay said, but as he was walking toward her room, Mandy came out.
“Just in time for breakfast,” Jay said, “and just in time to celebrate your mom’s new listing.”
“Yay! Pizza tonight!” Sam said.
“Sam, let me look at your head.” Jay bent down and examined the black-curled skull.
“What do you see, Dad?” Sam’s voice was a little frightened.
“I was looking to see if you had Alzheimer’s.”
“Is that bad?” Sam’s voice was even more worried.
Lily, who knew what her father was up to, giggled into her napkin.
“It’s bad if you’re little. It’s something that happens to old people.”
“But you don’t see it in my head, right?” Sam ascertained. “Right?”