Siddharth nudged his brother.
The waitress arrived to clear their salad bowls. “We all set with drinks here?”
“I’ll have another beer,” said Mohan Lal.
“I’ll have one too,” said Arjun.
Ms. Farber told Arjun that he would make a great history professor. She told him that he would be a big help with the book Mohan Lal was writing about India.
“I highly doubt it,” said Arjun.
Siddharth didn’t like the way his brother was smiling, sensing trouble.
The waitress arrived with their beers, and Mohan Lal took a long sip. “You doubt it?” he said. “Son, what is it that you doubt?”
“Forget it,” Arjun responded.
“Be a man,” said Mohan Lal. “Speak your mind.”
“You want me to be a man? What does that even mean?”
Ms. Farber squeezed Mohan Lal’s wrist. “Arjun, I think your father just wants you to communicate a little more clearly.”
Arjun drank from his green bottle, then shook his head. “What I’m saying is that I want no part of that thing. I’m saying that I could never work with someone like him.”
Siddharth gave his brother a light kick on the shin. Arjun then stomped on his toes, and he had to bite his own wrist to keep from yelping.
“You’re a hater, Dad.” Arjun said Mohan Lal had taught them how to hate since they were children—hate Gandhi, hate Nehru, hate the Muslims. “I guess I shouldn’t blame you. You were programmed by the British. They programmed your whole generation so they could control you.”
“The British?” Mohan Lal thumped his hand on the table.
“Guys, let’s keep it down,” said Ms. Farber.
Siddharth had been about to say the same thing, but it didn’t sound right coming from her. She wasn’t family, and she shouldn’t have butted in.
Mohan Lal leaned in toward Arjun. “Let me tell you something about the Britishers. If it wasn’t for them, we’d still be shitting in the trees. And as for your Nehru and Gandhi, these fools were British agents. Look what they did to your beloved Muslims. Look what they did to Jinnah.”
“That was politics,” said Arjun.
“Politics? What about Abdul Ghaffar Khan?”
“Who?” said Arjun.
Mohan Lal smirked. “You’re the one in chains, my son. The chains of a pseudointellectual.”
Arjun opened his mouth to speak. Siddharth knew that he was about to say something bad, something he wouldn’t be able to take back. Fortunately, just at that moment, Mustafa and the pimpled busboy arrived with their meals.
“Wow, what a feast,” said Mohan Lal.
“Buon appetito,” said Mustafa.
Mohan Lal said, “Mustafa, tell me what to do.”
“Why, what’s wrong?” asked Mustafa.
Mohan Lal grinned. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that my son is a bloody pinko.”
Siddharth watched Mustafa chuckle, and the combination of his smile and his thick mustache made him resemble Bugs Bunny.
Mustafa said, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about it. He’s just an intellectual, like his pops.”
“Please,” Mohan Lal replied, “speak some sense into him. Tell him the truth about Gandhi.”
“Gandhi?” said Mustafa. “That guy was a crook. My pops, back in Pakistan, he said they were all a bunch of crooks. Gandhi, Nehru—Jinnah too.” He pawed his jet-black hair. “It’s the same with all the politicians. We work, and they stuff our money in their pockets. Only good one was Reagan. He locked up the crooks. He did something about all the welfare.”
* * *
After Mohan Lal paid the bill, they agreed to skip the movie and go straight home. Nobody said a word as they drove through the darkened streets of South Haven. Arjun put a hand on Siddharth’s knee, but he stared straight ahead at the pale hairs of Ms. Farber’s neck. For a moment, he wondered if he hated Arjun. He contemplated telling Mohan Lal about Arjun’s Pakistani girlfriend. But then he realized something: His mother would have wanted him to prevent Mohan Lal and Arjun from fighting. She would have wanted to keep them together. He swore that he would never tell his father about Arjun’s girlfriend, not for as long as he lived. He thought about Mustafa, which made him hopeful. If Mustafa could be so nice—so normal—then maybe Arjun’s Pakistani girlfriend would be normal too. If Mohan Lal could get along with Mustafa, then maybe he wouldn’t go ballistic about Arjun’s girlfriend.
When they walked into the house, the television was on, but the sofas were empty.
“Marc!” yelled Ms. Farber, peeking into the kitchen.
Siddharth found the remote control and started flipping through the channels.
Mohan Lal headed for the dining room; Siddharth knew it was for a whiskey.
“I hear music playing,” said Arjun. He walked toward the guest room and was soon yelling at the top of his lungs: “Dad, Rachel! You better get over here!”
Siddharth sprang up and sprinted through the kitchen, passing his brother, who was walking in the opposite direction and smiling. Somehow, Ms. Farber made it to the guest room before him. She was standing in the doorway, her bony fingers covering her mouth.
“Oh, Marc,” she said. “Marc, what the hell is going on?”
Siddharth was now behind her, and when he peered inside the room, his knees buckled.
Marc was on the guest room bed fastening his belt. Dinetta was next to him, buttoning up her checkered shirt. On the pink love seat, underneath the family portrait, sat Andy Wurtzel and Liza Kim. Andy was wearing plaid boxers, holding his face in his hands. Liza was swathed in a green blanket, one that Mohan Lal liked when watching late-night television. Various articles of Liza’s clothing were in a pile by her feet. There was a black bra, a pair of jeans, and a peach-colored T-shirt. Siddharth glared at Marc. How could he have done this? Liza was supposed to be for him.
Dinetta was bawling and babbling, saying, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Kaufman, I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not my goddamn name, Dinetta.” Ms. Farber’s teeth were clenched, and her nostrils were flaring. “I expected this from you, Marc—but not you, Andy. What am I gonna tell your mother?”
Marc stood up, his face red and sweaty. “Chill, Rachel. What? You and Mo are the only ones who get to have any fun?”
“Shut up, Marc,” said Ms. Farber. “For once, can you just shut up?”
Siddharth felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to find his father standing there with a drink in his hand.
“Jesus,” said Mohan Lal.
“Just go, Mo,” said Ms. Farber. “Girls, put on your freaking clothes.”
Mohan Lal whistled. “What’s going on?” He stepped forward, his eyes wide and furious.
“Mo, you need to leave right now,” said Ms. Farber. “You need to let me handle this.”
Siddharth stared at Marc, who was gesturing at him and jerking his head toward the floor. He followed his friend’s movements and noticed Mohan Lal’s bottle of Old Monk rum on its side.
“Kick it,” whispered Marc.
He moved closer to the bottle. He knew that if he gave it a light tap, it would roll under the bed and might go undiscovered—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
* * *
That night, Siddharth’s AC wasn’t working, so he went to bed with the window open. It was hot, and the cicadas were loud and relentless. He found it difficult to sleep. He stared up at an old hook that was screwed into the ceiling. His mother had put it there to hang a pole, from which his stuffed animals used to dangle. Had she done that for his birthday? Or was it just for the sake of it? He couldn’t remember, which made his chest feel even heavier. It was hard to think coherent thoughts with all that had happened. Ms. Farber and Marc had left with Marc’s friends. Mohan Lal had raised his hand behind his ear, the way he did when he was really pissed.
“Mo, take it easy,” she’d said.
“You want that I feel easy?” replied Mohan Lal. “This go easy mentality is t
he bloody problem.”
“The problem?” said Ms. Farber. “And what problem is that?”
“The problem, Rachel, is you. The problem is that you cannot control your son.”
“Right, you’re an angel,” Ms. Farber had said angrily, dabbing her eyes. “You’re parent of the fucking year.”
As Siddharth lay in his room, he wondered if this was the beginning of the end. If it were, would that be good or bad? His clock flashed 11:42. He wished his brother would come and check on him. He wished his brother wouldn’t give their father such a hard time. Mohan Lal had done so much for them both despite all that he had been through. But it wasn’t like things had been easy for Arjun either. He would be leaving tomorrow, and Siddharth felt horrible that his trip had gone so badly.
He got up out of bed and made his way down the hallway, scraping his fingernails against the wallpaper. His shoulder bumped one of his mother’s paintings, but he didn’t pause to straighten it. Mohan Lal was slouching on the sofa, a whiskey glass resting on his bulging belly. Siddharth rushed past him to the guest room.
Arjun was on the bed, shirtless, reading his India book—the one by Romila, or Brunehilda, or whatever her name was. His eyes were a little red, and Siddharth knew he’d been crying. Nothing made him feel more hollow inside than seeing his brother cry. He seated himself beside Arjun, resting his head on his thigh. He listened to the soft crackle of his brother turning his pages, to the cries of the ceaseless cicadas.
Arjun closed his book. “So I take it your friend has a girlfriend.”
“Kind of.”
“What about you?”
Siddharth shrugged. “That Korean girl—Liza—I hooked up with her once.”
“What do you mean, hooked up?”
“I mean I kissed her.”
“You’re lying,” said Arjun.
“I swear to God.”
“I don’t believe in God,” said Arjun. “Swear on my life.”
“Look, we French-kissed. At least she’s not a Pakistani.”
Arjun returned to his book, underlining a passage in pencil.
Siddharth cocked his head to one side and examined his brother’s beard. It looked neater now. Arjun had shaved his neck. A few bristles on his hairy chin were red, which Siddharth thought was a good thing. Perhaps some English blood cells flowed through their veins after all.
Arjun cleared his throat. “I just want you to remember that it’s not your fault.”
“What’s not my fault?”
“This whole thing with girls.”
“What whole thing with girls?”
“Listen, when the time comes, you might find it hard to get a girlfriend.”
“But I already told you—I hooked up with Liza.”
“It was hard for me too, you know.” Arjun smiled. “The white girls, they wouldn’t give me a second look. But that’s the way they’ve been conditioned. They’re attracted to guys who remind them of their fathers.”
“You don’t know everything, you know,” Siddharth muttered.
Arjun returned to his book once again. Siddharth lay down beside him and stared up at the white swirls on the ceiling. He remembered a day many years ago when Barry Uncle and Mohan Lal had painted the entire guest room. His mother had made them fresh puris, and everyone had seemed happy. He fought to keep his eyes open but was soon asleep.
He woke up to Arjun’s gentle snores and the singing of a bird. The lights were off, but morning was softly glowing outside the window. His elbow grazed the flesh of his brother’s back. Arjun’s skin felt nice, so he touched it with the tips of his fingers. He was dreading the day ahead of him. He was dreading the entire school year.
PART IV
1
Pussy Man
Eli Whitney Junior High was a drab single-story building, a part of which seemed much taller due to the vaulted ceilings of the gymnasium. A concrete slab in the school’s foundation announced that it had been built in 1958. Arjun had gone here six years earlier, and the trophy case in the lobby still contained two of his photos.
In one photo, Arjun was standing with his cross-country track team, which had come in second place at the regional finals that year. The other photo was of him, Iris Chang, and William Evans, all three of them with braces and glasses. They had just won a statewide science olympiad for ninth graders. During Siddharth’s first days of school, he occasionally paused to stare at these photos on his way to the bathroom. But he never mentioned them to any of his friends.
The school combined kids from three different elementary schools—Deer Run, Lower Housatonic, and Rolling Ridge. Siddharth had attended two of these schools in his short academic career, so there was no dearth of familiar faces in his seventh grade class. But during the first days of junior high, he dreaded reconnecting with the students from Rolling Ridge, where he had spent first through fourth grades. Those kids would always talk to him in that irritating formal tone, which said it all: We feel bad for you, you single-parent loser. To those kids, his friendship with Luca Peroti or Marc Kaufman would never matter. He would always be the boy with the dead mom.
He dreaded seeing his neighbor, Timmy Connor, who was now an eighth grader at Eli Whitney. Siddharth had successfully avoided the Connor boys over the past couple of years, ducking down in Mohan Lal’s minivan when they passed them on the road, or staying out of the backyard when Timmy and Eric were cutting the grass. But now he was on the same bus as Timmy, so it would be almost impossible to escape him.
During the first two days of school, he timed it so that he was a solid five hundred feet behind Timmy on the three-quarter-mile trek to his new bus stop in front of the rickety Miller farmhouse that belonged to Sharon Nagorski’s great-uncle. When he got to the top of his street on the third day of school, however, he found Timmy waiting for him. He was standing there with his faithful mutt, Naomi, wearing white jean shorts and a black tank top. His hair was spiked, with little lines shaved into the sides of his head.
They greeted each other with a handshake and walked in silence, kicking a gray stone back and forth to each other. As they neared the farmhouse, Timmy finally spoke: “Yo, what’s up with those people who are always over at your house?”
“Which people?”
“That woman. The one who’s always with that tall kid.”
“Marc Kaufman? He’s my best friend. She’s his mom.”
“Kaufman?” said Timmy. “Wait, I’ve heard of Marc Kaufman. Isn’t he, like, nuts?”
“Nuts? He’s really nice, actually—really cool.” He tensed up, preparing for an avalanche of further questioning.
Fortunately, Timmy changed the subject, telling him that his brother Eric was dating a hot senior. “They haven’t done it yet, but he’s doing her up the butt.”
“Gross,” said Siddharth.
“Why, you gay or something?”
“Nah. I’m just more of a pussy man myself.” He looked over at Timmy and was relieved to see he was smiling.
“Yeah, me too. But he doesn’t wanna get her pregnant.”
* * *
Even though things were going smoothly with Timmy, Siddharth still dreaded seeing his ex–best friend, Chris Pizzolorusso. He had slept over at Chris’s house at least a dozen times when he was younger, and his mother had been friendly with Chris’s mom. After the accident, Chris had tried to be nice. Every time he called, he said, “I’m here if you wanna talk.” Siddharth had found that shit suffocating, so he cut himself off.
For the first week of seventh grade, he glanced down whenever he passed Chris in the hall, or took refuge in the lavatory upon spotting him at lunch. One day, as he was squirting ketchup onto his fries in the cafeteria, he felt someone touch his shoulder. He turned to find Chris standing there with a smile on his face. He had braces now, and was much lankier.
When Chris started going on about a summer fishing trip to Lake George, Siddharth loosened up. He even made a couple of jokes, saying how their new English teacher must do her hair in
the morning by sticking her finger in a light socket.
Chris laughed, but then suddenly got serious. “Yo, I gotta ask you something.”
“What?” said Siddharth, grinding his teeth.
“Those shoes—are they, like, suede?”
“Yeah. Yeah, they are.” He breathed out in relief. “Of course they’re suede. I don’t wear that fake-ass shit.”
“Dude,” said Chris, “I gotta get me some of those.”
* * *
The person he most dreaded seeing was Sharon Nagorski, and when he spotted her in the back corner of his first-period English class, he made a plan: he would have his father call up his guidance counselor and get him transferred to another class.
His English teacher, Mrs. Wadsworth, was a tiny elderly woman with a bloated belly, which made her appear pregnant. She had a crown of jet-black permed hair, but her curls were so thin that the purple dye stains on her scalp were visible underneath the flickering tube lights. On the first day of school, Mrs. Wadsworth recognized his surname while taking attendance. “Arora?” she said. “I have fond memories of an Arjun Arora. Would you by chance be his son?”
“His son?” said Siddharth. “Uh, he’s my brother.” Several students laughed. He wasn’t sure if they were laughing at him or with him. He recalled Arjun’s observation: The funniest kids are the coolest ones. “If he was my father,” Siddharth continued, “he would have had me when he was, like, seven. They’d probably put him in The Guinness Book of World Records or something.”
The class erupted with laughter.
“Well, he was a beautiful writer,” said Mrs. Wadsworth. “I’ll be expecting great things from you, Mr. Arora. And no funny business, because I know your mother too. My husband was a veteran of the Second World War—God rest his soul—so I had the privilege of making her acquaintance.”
Siddharth stared down at his desk, telling himself that most of the other kids didn’t know a thing about him or his family. And the ones who had known probably didn’t remember. But he felt a pair of eyes on him and turned to find Sharon looking in his direction. Her hair was much shorter, and a little darker, and pimples now marred her cheeks. She offered him a faint smile, but he ignored it, returning his attention to the front of the classroom.
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