by Cary Groner
Peter remembered Alex’s confrontations with Cheryl, how they’d become more volatile as Alex grew older. A few months previously, for the first time, the long war of nerves had erupted in a physical skirmish. Cheryl slapped Alex, who quickly grabbed both of her mother’s wrists, lifted them over her head, and pinned her against the wall. “Let me go!” Cheryl shrieked, and Alex said, “Fuck you,” and then Peter, who’d heard the fight start from the other room, broke it up.
After that, Cheryl fell back to ragging on Alex about her bookishness and her appearance, not to mention whatever personal slights from Alex she imagined herself suffering on a given day, but she shrank from open confrontation to a sniping insect whine. Alex just started ignoring her and grew more confident by the week.
Alex looked durable enough there in the clinic, and Peter was proud of her. The kid was a survivor. It was she, in fact, who’d suggested they make a public display of acquiescence to Mina.
“You’re to do whatever Mina wants, no questions asked,” Peter said now, trying not to sound too theatrical. Mina stood by, her arms folded across her chest, eyeing the two of them skeptically.
“Sure,” said Alex.
“Listen and learn. Give selflessly.”
“You know me, Dad.”
“See, Mina? She’s ready.”
Mina regarded Alex calmly. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?” she said.
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What really got to her, it turned out, were the children. The fourth case of dysentery that afternoon was a baby with stick limbs and an abdomen like a soccer ball who had an abscessed fistula leading right into his small intestine. His fever was 105, he was leaking liquid shit from a dime-sized hole an inch above his navel, and his mother, of course, had no money for the hospital.
Peter was paying attention to the baby, but he was also keeping an eye on Alex. She had turned pale, and she hovered a few feet back from the table.
“Get me a bag of saline and a line, will you?” Peter said, wanting to keep her busy. She went to the cupboard, looking relieved to have a task that would allow her, even momentarily, to turn away. “While you’re there, bring a bag of Rocephin. We’ll hang them both.”
Mina came in and held the baby while Alex hung the two bags on the IV stand and connected the plastic line. Her hands were shaking. Mina watched her, then looked at Peter.
“Pull off the cap and attach the needle to the end of the line,” Peter said, and Alex did. Peter inserted the IV and taped it, then started the drip. They put the child and his mother in a room in the back. He told Mina to assure the woman that they would get the boy to Kanti, the children’s hospital, and negotiate something. Mina spoke to her in Nepali and then left. When they were alone, Peter sat Alex down.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Is he going to be all right?”
“With stamina and surgery and luck, he might last the night. He also might not. If he makes it to tomorrow he’ll have a better chance.”
She looked like a damp sheet trembling on a clothesline. “How often do you see stuff like this?”
“Ten times a day, more or less.”
She began to cry. He had had a pretty good idea something like this was going to occur, knowing what he knew of his daughter’s sensitivities. Now that it was happening, though, he was nursing doubts, but he didn’t have time to coddle her.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, handing her some Kleenex. “Try to hang in. We’ll talk later.” He squeezed her shoulder and headed out to the next catastrophe.
Soon someone from Kanti came and took the child. Alex stayed in the room for a half hour or so, then finally emerged, still ashen, and tried to make herself useful again. When she saw Mina she dipped her head and sidestepped gawkily out of the way, her deference apparently genuine this time. Mina gave Peter a brief smile of understanding.
“She’s a good kid,” she said quietly, when Alex was out of earshot. “She’ll be all right.”
Before Peter could respond, she turned away and walked down the hall to her next patient. He watched her go, dumbfounded.
There were a couple of other bad cases that afternoon, and three hours later Alex was silent as they rode home together on the Hero. When Devi met them at the door, Alex took her in her arms and started weeping again. They went upstairs. Peter checked in with Sangita, who said she didn’t need any help and waved him away. He poured a glass of wine, went out to the back porch, and sat down in a lawn chair under the jacaranda.
Had he done the right thing? Maybe she had enough on her plate without this. He’d also begun to wonder what went on upstairs between those two, after school and in the evenings. Were these innocent teenage sleepovers or what, exactly? Alex had had two or three boyfriends in junior high and high school, but nothing had ever become serious. Peter had figured this was a result of her dedication to her studies and to basketball, not to mention her guarded and appropriately self-protective response to such matters in general, given that her experience consisted primarily of the wildly dysfunctional relationship between her parents. But now he wondered if he’d drawn the wrong conclusion. He’d had lesbian friends since college, and he knew plenty of mainly straight women who’d experimented when they were young. He wanted to think he could take something like this in stride. Besides, she was seventeen, and more of her affection would naturally be directed to friends than to him—and for that matter, he was glad she had a friend.
It was getting past the point where it was really his business, but it still felt like his business. Sangita seemed untroubled, but was this her usual equanimity or just that she was too busy to pay attention? And anyway, how much of this had to do with an unexpected jealousy he’d begun to feel—that Alex had a close relationship and he didn’t?
Tiny birds of some kind chirped in the tree. The wine was sweet and oaky and deep, from the Napa Valley. He hadn’t even known you could get American wine here. It was unsettling that something from home, experienced in a new place, could begin to seem exotic. As if he himself had changed without knowing it, beginning with the most primitive sense, taste.
He tried to relax. Even if Alex had changed majors, it was a surprise but certainly not a catastrophe. Devi seemed like a good kid. At least he could let their relationship unfold under his own roof, a shelter from the bigotry of the bigger world.
He listened. Alex’s window was closed, but that didn’t completely block the sound. What had been sobbing now seemed to be something else.
Sangita came out. Their eyes met.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Peter asked quietly.
She averted her eyes. “Maybe,” she replied.
“Do you know when this started?”
“Not sure.”
Peter swirled his wine pensively. Silence was uncomfortable, because then they could hear. “I’m fresh out of wisdom. Say something wise.”
She looked away, over the trees. “America, this how seeing?” she asked.
“Some people think it’s natural, some think it’s a sin,” he said. “I’m in the ‘natural’ faction, at least in the abstract. How about here?”
“Nepalis more conservative,” she said. “Tibetans … mmm … not so much care, in general.”
“And you? How do you feel about it?”
“You mind?” she asked, looking at his glass. It was a most unservantly request, just the kind of thing he’d learned to like about her. And anyway, it seemed they’d become unofficial in-laws.
“Help yourself,” he said, and held it out.
She took it and sipped, watching the sky and apparently savoring the wine. She handed back the glass. “Well, bright side looking,” she said, sounding resigned. “Nobody pregnant, hm?”
“If it lasts, it might cut our chances for grandchildren, I suppose,” Peter said. Sangita smiled at him warmly, as if she’d been considering the same thing. She turned to go back inside.
He followed her and refilled his glass as she finished fixing dinner. Her h
usband, Sonam, wasn’t feeling well, so she left for home without waiting to eat. Peter thought it was perhaps a convenient exit, but ke garne? Soon the girls descended, looking rumpled and somber. They ate quietly, then did the dishes together and adjourned to the living room. Peter sat in the chair, and the girls sprawled on the couch, one at each end with legs intertwined, as had become their habit.
“We should probably talk, Dad.”
“Okay,” he said nervously. He knew he was going to have to appear calm no matter how he felt.
Alex crossed her arms, apparently pondering how to put it. “Will you think I’m a wimp if I don’t come back to the clinic?”
This was what she wanted to discuss? He had to fall back and gather his wits. He almost laughed. “No,” he said, at last.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “But, um, I think you should come back.”
“Why?”
“Because Mina will definitely think you’re a wimp.”
She considered this. “Since when do you care what Mina thinks?”
The question caught him off guard. “Since she got to say whether you stay or go, I guess.”
“Who is Mina?” Devi asked.
“Sooner or later you’ll get to meet her,” Alex said. “You can decide for yourself who she is.”
Devi grinned. “Oh, you mean the psychopath?”
“That’s not quite how I’d describe her, actually.”
“Come on,” said Peter, trying to recover his poise. “You’re giving her too much credit.” But this felt false, even as it passed his lips.
Alex just eyed him. “Dad, Dad, Dad,” she said.
NINE
“Franz is doing this to torment us, just to show who’s boss,” Mina said. “You don’t need my halting, half-baked Tibetan when you have your little Devi along to translate for you.”
She had recovered her usual prickly demeanor, and Peter found her mercurial changes increasingly hard to navigate. If a river was frozen, you knew how to cross it; if it was warm and flowing easily, you knew how to cross it. If it went back and forth by the hour, you had trouble on your hands.
“I wouldn’t call her little,” said Peter. “She’s taller than you.”
The girls snarfled with laughter in the backseat. Peter suspected he knew why they were laughing—they were reading something into this testy exchange—but he was fairly certain they were wrong.
They headed out of town in a borrowed jeep, north on Maharajganj, past Ring Road, through the shantytowns, then up into terraced rice fields and villages. From there they wound their way up a mountain; in places the road was barely wider than the jeep and was littered with rocks as big as grapefruit, which tilted them violently from side to side. Mina drove, sitting on the right, and Alex sat behind her, hanging on to the roll cage for dear life. Every time a big rock tipped them toward the edge she got an inspiring view of a five-hundred-foot vertical drop. Her fingers were white from gripping the steel bar.
Peter hadn’t been in territory this rough for a long time, and old habits quickly resurfaced. He began to scan the rock faces, looking for interesting routes up them. In Yosemite or Smith Rock he would have seen little chalk blotches on the cliffs, revealing the passage of other climbers. Here there was nothing but pristine granite. A shiver went down him as he remembered the day he’d quit climbing, the terror he’d felt. His palms began to sweat. He looked away from the cliffs to try to redirect his thoughts.
They entered a high mountain valley where the road leveled off and followed a stream. Peter figured they were up at about seven thousand feet. He felt pleased that he would actually get to ply his trade as a cardiologist for a change, though he was nervous about the patient, a Tibetan lama with heart trouble. Peter didn’t know much about lamas, but Devi had warned him that the old man had a formidable reputation; she’d heard about him for years but had never seen him, since he rarely ventured from his monastery. She was excited but also apprehensive at the prospect of meeting him.
“Hey, Tibetan chick,” said Alex, between clenched teeth. “You digging this?”
“I am so getting in touch with my roots,” said Devi, but there were jitters behind her flippancy.
The jeep crabbed up a steep, muddy grade and bounced over a crest; then suddenly they were on top of the ridge. Mina braked, and they came to a halt by a small iron gate. Beyond it stood a cluster of low, square, whitewashed dwellings. Several monks in burgundy robes walked about or sat together, talking. Farther up the hill a bigger building perched on the highest part of the ridge, alight in the late-morning sun. A monk approached, waving, and opened the gate.
“Tashi delek!” he called.
“Tashi delek, Lobsang,” said Mina. She jumped from the car and gave him a hug. Peter was astonished to see her so affectionate. He found himself wondering what the monk had that he didn’t, and the answer came to him immediately: vows.
Mina gestured at Peter and the girls. “I’ve brought fresh meat for the lion.”
“Ah, good!” said the monk, looking them over. “Lion very hungry!” He laughed as he sized up the dusty, rattled occupants of the jeep. He was about thirty, broad-shouldered, and wore a red tzen thrown over his left shoulder and a matching monk’s skirt. His brown, callused feet were slipped into rubber flip-flops. He had just a little stubble of black hair, along with a couple of razor cuts in his scalp from the last time his head had been shaved. He was almost alarmingly good-humored.
He came over to Peter’s side of the jeep. “You doctor?”
“Yes, I’m Peter,” he said, and they shook hands. “This is my daughter, Alex, and her friend, Devi.”
“Hi,” said Alex.
“Tashi delek,” said Devi, attentive and respectful.
“Oh—you Tibetan?” asked Lobsang.
Devi nodded and smiled. There followed a brief, animated conversation, during which he took both her hands in his and they gazed at each other like old friends. They spoke quickly, through grins, seeming always on the point of laughter.
“You getting any of this?” Peter asked Alex.
“Not a word.” She sounded irritated.
Lobsang mussed up Devi’s hair as if she were his kid sister; she narrowed her eyes teasingly and said something that sounded vaguely cutting, and he jumped back, mouth wide open, fists on his hips in mock indignation. They both laughed again, and Lobsang waved her off, then came around and hopped up on the front of the jeep. Mina got back in and hit the gas. They sallied forward, bouncing up a rutted, muddy track to the base of a stone walkway that led to the main monastery building. When Mina braked, Lobsang slid off the hood right onto his feet, as if they’d done this a dozen times.
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On the top floor, Lobsang opened the heavy wooden door and let them into the lama’s quarters. To their right, through a row of windows, the Kathmandu Valley spread out below as cloud shadows drifted over the city and outlying farms. The windows on the other side of the room revealed the jagged ridges of the Himalayas to the north, great plumes of snow blowing off their summits.
Lama Padma sat opposite them, cross-legged, on a cushioned wooden platform with an ornate backrest. A small table in front of him held a vase with a handle and a spout, topped with peacock feathers, as well as a two-sided wooden hand drum with skin heads, a bell and its companion implement called a dorje, and a tall red ceramic tea mug with a lid.
The lama nodded to his visitors and smiled. “Tashi delek,” he said.
He was about sixty, his face etched with laugh lines. He was sun-baked and bald on top, with a wide band of close-cropped white hair around the outside of his head. He wore the same kind of red tzen as Lobsang, over a gold sleeveless shirt. He didn’t look nearly as scary as Peter had feared; in fact, his eyes were kind and humorous, though he clearly wasn’t well.
Peter looked around. The place was in serious disrepair. Jagged cracks laced the walls like veins, and a couple of small saucepans stood on the worn plank flo
or to catch leaking rainwater. Thangkas, paintings of deities, festooned the walls, and to the left of the door stood an elaborate, terraced shrine on which rested bronze deity statues, a long row of water bowls, a couple of vases of wildflowers, and dozens of butter lamps. The small golden flames shifted in the draft from the open door, as if a flock of tiny finches had suddenly changed direction in the sky. Lobsang shut the door, and the flames returned to rest on their wicks. Incense drifted up from an intricately carved box and formed a layer of whitish smoke just below the ceiling. It smelled of juniper.
Lobsang poured the lama fresh tea from a pot, then sat down quietly on a small rug to the left of the platform.
Mina approached Lama Padma and bent low, as apparently was the custom, offering a long white silk scarf, a katak. He smiled, took it from her, and draped it around her neck. Devi pulled a katak out of her pocket and did the same. As Lama Padma was putting the scarf around her neck, Lobsang said something quietly to him, and the lama’s eyes lit up. He and Devi spoke together in Tibetan for a few moments, then he smiled and put his hand on her head.
They all sat on a long rug on the floor in front of the lama while Lobsang brought them tea. Peter started with the usual questions as Devi translated. The lama said that for two or three years he had had discomfort in his chest, under the sternum, as well as in the left arm and jaw. The pain was sometimes more intense with exercise and seemed to be getting worse. Lately he’d been short of breath.
“He ignore, always,” said Lobsang. “To get him to see doctor, we must beat him with stick.” He playfully mimed whacking the lama, and they both chuckled.
Peter watched their interactions, their easy fondness with each other, and felt himself begin to relax. The smell of the incense, the soft light coming through the windows, and the cool, fresh air all seemed to permeate his body and settle him down in some palpable way.
“Does he feel weak?” he asked.