52
AS GOOD AS I REMEMBER
Menlo Park, California—2005
KRISHNAN
KRISHNAN PACES WITH PHONE IN HAND, BEGINS TO DIAL, THEN hangs up. He sits down at the kitchen table. This is ridiculous. Why am I so nervous? He spent most of the return flight from his conference in Boston thinking of what he wanted to say to Somer, and now he can’t even bring himself to make the call. His suitcase sits unopened in the front foyer, and a pile of mail demands attention on the kitchen counter. All he’s done since arriving from the airport is listen to the messages, disappointed to hear none from Somer.
He takes a deep breath and dials again. She picks up after the second ring.
“Hi, it’s me,” he says. “I just wanted to let you know I’m back in town.”
“Oh, good. So I’ll see you Sunday?” Somer says. Outside of their weekly joint calls to their daughter, Krishnan has called Asha a few times on his own, trying to be supportive of her search for her birth parents. The last time he called, Asha had just gone to the orphanage, but she was reticent to talk and responded vaguely to his questions. He found himself feeling nervous about this for the first time, worrying that Asha’s discoveries might somehow impact their relationship. For once, he empathized with Somer, he understood how this could unsettle her. Next weekend will be one of their last phone calls, since Asha is due to come home in a couple of weeks. Krishnan has no idea what she will return with, and how their family will be affected by it. He is anxious to reconcile with Somer before then. The slow simmer of longing and remorse he has felt during their separation has increased to a full boil with Asha’s imminent return. Now, at the age of fifty-five, he is once again awkwardly courting his wife.
“Yes. Hey, listen. I just picked up the photos from my trip to India and I thought you’d like to see them.” He takes another deep breath. “Maybe I can stop by sometime…tomorrow evening…if you’re free? We could get dinner?” In the pause that follows, Krishnan closes his eyes tightly and tries to come up with something better.
“Kris, I have to go into the city for an appointment tomorrow after work,” Somer says, then pauses before continuing. “I had an abnormal mammogram last week. It’s probably nothing, but I made an appointment for a biopsy just to be safe.”
“Oh.” Krishnan takes this in. “Well, why don’t I drive you up there? We can get dinner afterward.”
After another long pause, she speaks. “Okay. My appointment’s at four-thirty.”
“I’ll pick you up at three-thirty.” He hangs up the phone and shuffles through the pile of assorted items on the kitchen counter until he finds the camera. He picks up the phone again and dials the number he’s memorized for the local pharmacy.
“Hello? How quickly can I get photo prints from a memory card?”
SOMER GIVES KRISHNAN A SMILE AS SHE ENTERS THE CAR. THEY greet each other with a peck, and he notices how good she looks. Her face is glowing, and her sleeveless blouse shows her noticeably toned arms.
“Cal-Pacific,” she says, reaching for her seat belt.
The last time he drove his wife to that hospital was for her last miscarriage. The memory of that period of their lives unsettles him now. Krishnan takes Highway 280 to San Francisco, the slower and more scenic of the two freeways and the one Somer always prefers. He glances over at her, gazing out the window at the tree-lined hills.
“I found a small lump in my armpit,” Somer says, answering the question he has been hesitant to ask. “The week before last in the shower. I’m sure it’s just a cyst, but given my family history, I wanted to check it out. I had a mammogram last week, and the radiologist saw an abnormal mass.”
“Who was the radiologist?” Krishnan asks. “Do you have a copy of the films? I could get Jim to take a look—”
“Thanks, but that’s not necessary. I looked at the films myself, I got a second opinion. I want a biopsy just to be on the safe side.” Her voice is calm, with no trace of the worry or anxiety that overshadowed her while they were struggling with infertility, their last major medical issue.
“Who’s performing the biopsy? Mike does a lot of consults at CPMC, I could ask him who’s best.”
Somer turns to look at him. “Kris,” she says gently but firmly, “I don’t need you to solve this for me. I just want you to be there, for support, okay?”
“Okay.” He tightens his grip on the steering wheel and feels moisture on his palms. He reaches for the air-conditioning and struggles to stay calm while risk factors run like headlines through his mind. Caucasian, midfifties, no biological children, mother with breast cancer: all factors that increase Somer’s risk. The only factor in the other column, ironically, is the one that has already caused so much grief—the fact that she stopped menstruating twenty years earlier than she should have.
“Did I tell you I got an e-mail from Asha last week while you were gone? She went to someplace called the Elephant Cave.”
“Elephanta Caves. Yes, I told her not to miss it.” Krishnan smiles. “It’s on an island in the harbor. They’re these ancient caves, with sculptures cut right into the rock. It’s a big tourist attraction. I never took you there?”
“Don’t think so. Apparently there are monkeys all over the place, and they jump down on the people visiting—the tourists and everything—they jump down on their shoulders looking for food. Asha sent a photo of her feeding a banana to one. She looked like she was having so much fun. It reminded me of when she was little. Remember how she loved the monkeys at the zoo?
“Hey, look,” she says, “Red’s Java House. Can you believe it’s still standing there after all these years?” Somer points out the window to the small white shack where they went for burgers on the weekends when they lived in San Francisco.
He forces a smile. “Yeah, hard to believe. What’s it been—twenty years or so?”
“Twenty-…seven since we first moved up here. Gosh. Older than Asha. Did we ever bring her here?”
“Hmm. Don’t think so. We could afford a little better by the time we had her.” They both laugh. The greasy food at Red’s was nothing special, but they could both eat for under five dollars, the most important element on their residents’ salaries. It feels good to laugh, and Krishnan feels some of the tension leave his shoulders.
AT THE HOSPITAL, WHILE SOMER COMPLETES PAPERWORK AT THE reception desk, Krishnan notices the muscular definition of her legs visible below her knee-length skirt. He feels a sudden urge to walk across the room, lift her hair, and kiss the back of her neck. Instead, he crosses his legs and picks up a magazine. After a few minutes, she sits down next to him and peers over his shoulder.
“Good Housekeeping? I didn’t know you were looking for Weeknight Chicken Meals,” she says, noting the article at which he’s been staring.
He puts down the magazine. “I’m a bit distracted, I guess.”
“Show me the pictures,” she says.
“Pictures?”
“From your trip to India.”
“Oh. I think I left them in the car.”
“Dr. Thakkar?” a nurse calls into the waiting room.
Krishnan looks up with a jolt until Somer lays her hand gently on his. “Not this time, Dr. Thakkar.” She smiles, pats his hand, and follows the nurse.
While he waits, Krishnan permits his mind to wander to the worst places. Mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy. Survival rates for breast cancer are relatively good, but Krishnan has been around illness enough to know there is usually a cruel injustice about the way it strikes. Cranky patients defy the odds, while the kind ones, the ones who bake him cookies or bring him tomatoes from their garden, always seem to die early. Mortality rates utilize the law of averages without consideration for who is most deserving. This can’t happen. Not to her. Not now.
The last several months have been difficult. Home, where he spends as little time as possible, is full of reminders of their life together. He never thought he would miss the mediocre meals Somer had simmering in the kitc
hen when he got home, or the way her clothes were casually strewn on their bed at the end of the day. And the mornings. The mornings, when he woke at dawn to perform surgery, as he showered and dressed, her body was conspicuously absent from the bed. There was no one to kiss as he left for the coldness of the operating room, nothing to look forward to coming back to. His home and his work had come to take on the same sterile feel without her presence.
He stands up and paces, passing in front of the reception desk so many times the woman sitting there stops looking up in anticipation each time. From somewhere inside the purse Somer left here, her cell phone rings. He doesn’t like this, the waiting. He thinks of the hundreds of times he has walked into a waiting room to speak to a family, to deliver devastating news. Just yesterday, he told a woman not much older than himself that her husband was brain-dead. He encouraged her to call family members, to say good-bye while he was on the ventilator.
“Good-bye? He’s still alive, isn’t he?” the woman said to him with absolute conviction.
Krishnan never understood why some of his patients’ families clung to them long after brain function was gone and their bodies were empty shells. But now he does. Because it happened like this, in an instant. One moment you were laughing in the car with your wife, and the next, you heard a terrible diagnosis in a hospital waiting room. In an instant. The brain, even with all its amazing neural pathways and capacities, with all the mysteries he had grown to respect, could not handle this kind of news. Those families still saw the person they loved somewhere in there, amid the tubes and machinery keeping them alive. They hung on to the dreams they had, of going to their daughter’s wedding, holding their grandchild, growing old together. Now he knows, in the same way, it would not be so easy to let Somer go, even if it was what she wanted.
She reappears in the waiting room and sits down next to him. “Everything go okay?” he asks her. She nods. “Your phone rang,” he says.
“Oh. Probably my yoga teacher. I never miss class on Tuesday.” Krishnan nods, worried about the strength of his voice. “Hey, thanks,” she says, pulling her purse onto her lap, “for coming with me today. I’m really glad you’re here.”
“Of course. Where else would I be?” He squeezes her knee and leaves his hand there.
“When will you get the results?”
“They’re putting a rush on it. Hopefully in a day or two.”
Krishnan is surprised by the sudden burst of emotion he feels, the lump rising in his throat. “Come on, let’s get out of this place,” he says, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and holding her body close to his. “I’m taking you out for dinner, anywhere you’d like to go in this wonderful city. You name the place.”
IT IS A RARE SPRING DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO, SUNNY AND CLEAR, such that they can see the Bay Bridge perfectly from their picnic table in front of Red’s. Somer’s hair, usually tied back, is blowing around her face in the gentle breeze.
“It’s not quite as good as I remember,” she says, holding the foil-wrapped burger in front of her face. She smiles in a way that makes her look ten years younger.
“I think our tastes have changed a little in the last few decades,” Kris says.
“Not to mention our metabolism. I bet these fries end up directly on my hips tomorrow morning.” She laughs lightly.
“You know you look great, honey,” he says.
“You mean, assuming I don’t have cancer?”
“No, I mean you really look great. Really toned, fit. You’re doing yoga?”
“Yes, and now I’ve got my mom doing it too. After her last surgery she was having a lot of difficulty raising her arm and lifting things, she was getting frustrated. You know how she likes to do things for herself,” Somer says. “So I took her to a few classes with me here, and got her some videos she could use at home. It helped the scar tissue heal, her range of motion improved, and her energy level is much higher.”
“That’s great.”
“I was amazed at the difference it made, and so was her oncologist. I wrote an article for Stanford Women’s Health magazine on the benefits of yoga for breast cancer survivors. The Cancer Center asked me to give workshops for patients. I think I’m going to have Mom come up and do them with me. She can demonstrate the yoga poses while I go through my slides.”
“She’s lucky to have you looking out for her,” Krishnan says. “We all are.” He smiles at Somer, the strong, intelligent, confident woman whom he fell in love with, showing a side he hasn’t seen in a long time. Has she changed that much in the last few months, or did I just become blind to her over the years? And yet, it’s not only Somer who seems changed. The whole nature of their interaction feels different. Whether it’s the time apart, the distance of Asha, or the scare of the biopsy, it feels as if a bright light is now shining on them, exposing everything they have suppressed for years. And just as it is on his operating table, while those truths might be unpleasant, seeing them clearly is the first step toward healing.
Somer smiles and plays with the pendant of her necklace, reminding him of their days of overt flirtation. And with that, they leave behind all the unspoken discussion of disease, death, and fear and instead, for the first time since they separated, talk in detail about what they’ve been doing while living apart. Somer tells him about her biking trip to Italy and the personnel changes at the clinic. He tells her about his upcoming tennis club tournament and the broken water heater in the house. Conspicuously absent from their discussion is the topic of their daughter. Krishnan’s photos remain untouched in his car. They sit outside until the roaming seagulls have finished off the rest of their dinner, until the air turns chilly and twinkling lights illuminate the outline of the bridge.
“We should probably go.” Somer wraps her arms around herself, shivering.
The drive home passes quickly, and Kris realizes he has driven them to their house, where he’s been living alone. They sit inside the car in the driveway, like a couple of high school teenagers. He turns off the ignition. “Listen, do you…do you want to spend the night?” he says, feeling strangely sheepish. “I know we still have a lot to—”
She interrupts him by placing two fingers against his lips, and smiles. “Yes.”
IN THE MORNING, KRIS OPENS HIS EYES TO SEE SOMER’S SUNNY hair spilled out over the pillow. He sighs and feels the sudden rush of emotion he used to when he was first falling in love. He rolls out of bed, careful not to wake her. Walking down the stairs, he realizes the fridge is still empty from his week away and considers making a quick run to the store for breakfast. While he fills the coffeepot, he notices the red light blinking on the answering machine. The message is from his mother in India. She doesn’t say anything except to call back, but even through the crackly telephone lines, Krishnan knows something is not right.
53
A FAMILY MATTER
Mumbai, India—2005
ASHA
ASHA FALLS ASLEEP ON THE TAXI RIDE HOME FROM THE TIMES office, so the cabdriver has to wake her up when they arrive. She pays him and enters the building. She’s been awake for thirty-six hours now, and most of it is a blur—writing, filming, editing—images of the women from Dharavi flash through her mind. She reminds herself to call her mom in the morning. Asha yawns, knocks on the door to the flat, and waits for Devesh’s familiar footsteps. She pulls Sanjay’s card out of her pocket. A promise is a promise. She’ll call him in the morning too, now that she finally has the full story herself. After several moments of waiting and hearing sounds from inside, Asha turns the doorknob to find it unlocked. Inside, she sets down her bag, steps over the assorted chappals littering the front hallway, and walks toward the drawing room, where she hears the murmur of low voices. Who could be visiting at this hour?
Dadima is on the settee, flanked on each side by women who share common looks of concern. Dadima’s head is bowed, but even before she sees her face, Asha knows something is wrong. “This is Asha, my granddaughter from America,” Dadima says as she looks u
p. “You’ll please excuse us for a moment.” She stands, shuffles over to Asha, and takes her hand.
“Yes, yes, of course,” the ladies say in harmony, bobbing their heads side to side.
Dadima walks silently toward the small room Asha has come to call home over the past year. She sits on the bed and gestures for Asha to sit next to her. “Dhikri, your dadaji’s time has come. He went peacefully in his sleep early this morning.”
Asha’s hand covers her mouth. “Dadaji?” She looks around the room, toward the door. “Where…?”
Dadima gently takes her hands. “Beti, they’ve taken his body. He passed early this morning, very peacefully.”
This morning, while I was…working? Dadima’s voice is steady, but her red-rimmed eyes tell Asha the rest of the story. She looks down at the hands lying in her lap, two pairs intertwined: Dadima’s bony fingers with green veins visible below the sagging skin, and her own, firm and full of youth. As tears slowly parch the varied brown landscape of their hands, Dadima grips hers tighter and whispers hoarsely, “I must ask you to do something, Asha. Your father will not be here to fulfill the eldest son’s role, so you must take his place. You must light the pyre at your dadaji’s cremation ceremony. I have spoken to your uncles and they will be there next to you, but I want you to do the lighting.” She pauses before continuing. “It is your duty to your family,” she says firmly, to quell any forthcoming protests.
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