She was holding death in her hands. The thought unnerved her and she hastily set the bird down. But then she remembered, and she grimaced. She was holding death in more than just her hands—her entire goddamn body was playing host to it, throwing it a grand old party. To take her mind off the subject she checked her watch again. Still too early to hear from the others. The others. After all these years, that’s still how she thought of them. Laleh, Kavita, and Nishta. Would they find Nishta? Find her in time? She so badly wanted to see the three of them again. But now, only now, while her body was still hers. Still hers, most of the time. Not later, when things would get ugly, when her diseased brain would be calling the shots.
Armaiti pushed herself off the ground and for a second the earth wobbled before righting itself again. But the next instant she was distracted by a sharp stab of pain in her knee as she rose. She usually thought of all pain as something to ignore, like a person with bad table manners. Today, she noticed. For the past two weeks, ever since the biopsy report had come back positive, she had been attentive to every whisper and whimper of her body.
She went into the wooden shed behind the garage and returned with a trowel to dig a hole to bury the birds. She laid them side by side in the small grave and then covered them with dirt. Later this week, she thought, she would plant some petunias over the spot.
It was getting too dark to stay out in the yard much longer. And Richard and Diane were indoors, putting together a dinner she knew she’d be too tired to eat. Still, she would try. For their sake. She had brought enough heartbreak into their lives, for the second time in five years. First the divorce, and now this. Diane, now a junior at Harvard, had still been in high school back then.
Why had she been so resolute to divorce Richard? Armaiti wondered as she put away the gardening tools. He had begged her not to go through with it, had sworn that Blossom Greer meant nothing to him. But what had sealed their fate was that Richard had no explanation for the affair. He looked as bewildered and incredulous as she felt. And that unnerved her. If there was no reason, no discontent that explained his infidelity, then it meant that something restless and untamable lived inside of Richard. Armaiti found it unacceptable, this mysterious threat to their life together, whose very ordinariness was their greatest triumph.
“What if it happens again?” she had said to him.
“It won’t,” he’d stammered.
“How do you know?”
“I . . . I . . . just . . .”
Two days later she called their lawyer.
But although Richard had been out of the house for five years, he still was what he had always been—her closest friend in the United States. Now it seemed to her as if they’d just been play-acting—the cheating husband, the outraged, unforgiving wife. How silly, how unnecessary it all seemed now. As she crossed the lawn and walked toward the house, Armaiti was struck by a thought: she had been afraid of the dangerous, unpredictable thing residing in Richard’s heart, and it turned out that she had been carrying her own dangerous, unpredictable thing, nestled in her brain. As she pushed open the screen door, she marveled at the bleak irony of fate.
They had broken the news to Diane five days ago, and it had not gone well. They had waited until she came home from Harvard for the summer to tell her. And as if the shock of telling your only child that you’re dying of a brain tumor—how lurid those words sounded, even now—and that you have six to eight months to live—like lines from a cheap movie—wasn’t bad enough, she also had to break the news about her decision to refuse treatment.
Diane had remained calm, had kept her emotions under control as they told her about the unexplained headaches, the MRI, the biopsy. Her demeanor reminded Armaiti of the old days, when her four-year-old daughter would put on her lipstick and wear her shoes around the house, convinced that stepping into her mother’s shoes made her a grown-up.
The trouble came a few minutes later. “When’s your next appointment?” Diane said. “I wanna go with you to discuss treatment options.”
“There isn’t going to be any treatment, honey. I decided against it.”
Diane looked puzzled. “Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning I’m not going to get better. Even with treatment. It’s a glioblastoma—a very aggressive tumor. Inoperable. Did I already tell you that?” Armaiti willed herself to go on, even though Diane looked as if with each word she was hammering a nail into her face. “I have six months or so, Diane. Maybe more. Who knows? You can’t ever pin these doctors down. Not that they would know, either. How could they?” She heard the jittery quality in her voice and forced herself to slow down. “And I don’t want to ruin that time with radiation and all that nonsense.”
“ ‘All that nonsense’?” Diane’s voice was shrill. “Mom? We’re talking about something that could save or extend your life.” She shifted in her chair to face Richard. “Dad? Say something. This is nuts.”
Richard’s face was blank. “I’ve spent all week arguing with her, honey. Her mind’s made up.”
Diane looked incredulous. “Are you guys frigging kidding me?”
“Watch your language,” they both said automatically but Diane interrupted them. “Screw my language,” she said, rising to her feet and looking around the room wildly. “This is bullshit. I can’t believe—”
“Diane,” Richard said. “Control yourself.”
She flung her father a hostile look. “I can’t believe you’re letting her do this. That you’d just let her . . .”
“He’s not doing anything.” Armaiti’s voice was more emphatic than she’d intended it to be. “It’s my body. If I can’t choose . . .” Her voice shook with outrage. But the next second her anger faded, as she took in her daughter’s stricken face. “Listen. You don’t know what I’d give to spare you this.”
“Then start with the treatments. I’ll take next semester off. I’ll help you through it, I promise.”
Armaiti reached out and pulled Diane back down on the chair next to hers. “I don’t want to, honey,” she said. “I—I watched my mother go through cancer treatment years ago. It was awful. And in the end it didn’t make much difference.”
“But that was more than twenty years ago,” Diane said fiercely. “And it was in India. Things are so much more advanced now.”
Armaiti nodded absently, remembering the small, dark bedroom in which her mother had died. After staying up half the night holding her mother’s hand she had finally dozed off for a few minutes. When she awoke her mother’s hand was cold and she was dead. Armaiti had sat holding that hand, taking in the bald head, the sunken eyes, the bony forearms whose papery skin was covered with bluish-black marks. She had not cried. Not then. Instead, she’d gone into the living room and phoned her Uncle Jamshed and asked him to call for the hearse. Then she’d padded into the other room and crawled into bed with her sleeping husband, letting some of his warmth seep into her. She had not awoken Richard until she’d heard the ambulance pull up outside the building. Then she shook him awake and he knew by her expression, and they stared at each other for a long moment before she rose to answer the doorbell.
“Mom? Are you listening?” Diane’s voice had the streak of impatience that she’d first developed at thirteen and never lost. But now Armaiti heard something else in that voice—concern and fear, as if the fact that her mind had wandered for a second was proof of something more sinister, of the danger lurking in her cells. Get used to it, she told herself grimly. She had noticed that same thing in Richard already, a dual note, an undercurrent, a second melody that ran under the first one. Never again would she be allowed the old luxuries of forgetfulness or unpredictability. Now they would be measured against the backdrop of her illness.
“I am, darling,” she replied. And then, realizing that Diane was waiting for a response: “I’ll see. Let me think about it.”
“Yeah, right,” Diane said. “We all know what that means.” She rose from her chair and looked down at them. “I’m going out for a w
hile.”
“When will you be back?” Armaiti asked automatically, hating herself even as she did.
Diane looked away. “I don’t know. I need some air.”
They heard the side door slam a few moments later. “I wish she had a boyfriend.” Armaiti sighed. “It would make this so much easier for her.”
“Armaiti,” Richard said quietly. “We’ve just told the kid that her mother is . . . is . . . very sick. And refusing treatment, to boot. I don’t think a boyfriend would lessen the shock.”
Armaiti smiled ruefully. “You’re right.” She turned to face Richard. “I know you don’t agree with me, either. But I need you to support me, okay? I’m not sure I can fight Diane by myself.”
He made a small gesture with his right shoulder. “I’m here,” he said simply.
Richard stayed with her until Diane came home, at nine that evening. There was a faint smell of alcohol on her breath. Armaiti fought against the lecture that percolated on her lips. Diane was a good kid, responsible. She’d probably had no more than a beer.
“Listen,” Richard said as he rose to leave. “I have a meeting downtown tomorrow. Why don’t you guys meet me at Roxy’s for lunch?”
Armaiti turned toward Diane. “Hon?”
She shrugged. “Whatever.”
It was another warm, breezy spring day the following afternoon, and despite Diane’s sullenness and monosyllabic responses during the drive downtown, Armaiti felt her spirits lift as they walked toward the restaurant. But the momentary uplift was soon flattened by another, contradictory, emotion—for the first time since the diagnosis, a needle-sharp regret threaded through her. How lovely, how light, how pleasurable this afternoon would have been without the knowledge of what was to come, and of what already was lurking in her body. It would’ve been an afternoon like any other, an untroubled day in a long chain of such days. There would be none of this ticking awareness of how finite, how precious, this time with her daughter was; she wouldn’t have been aware of the miraculous sun on her face, wouldn’t have wanted to run her fingers lightly but greedily over the surface of the beautiful stone buildings they passed. She was storing memories, she realized, imprinting this day onto her mind, and for a moment Armaiti thought she could cry over what she had lost—the ability to live unselfconsciously, unreflexively. Involuntarily, her hand reached out for her daughter’s, and, to her relief, Diane let her grip her hand.
“I love you,” she said. “More than I can ever say.”
Diane gave her hand a squeeze. As they reached the restaurant, they spotted Richard sitting at a table by the window and waved. He rose as they entered the restaurant and approached him. “How’s my beautiful family today?” he said, and suddenly Armaiti felt beautiful. He’d always had this ability, Richard.
They were through with lunch and sharing a chocolate torte for dessert when Richard said, “Oh, by the way. Jordon called this morning.” He wiped a piece of dark chocolate from his mouth before adding, “She wanted to know if we’re going to Nantucket this year. I told her—under the circumstances—I don’t suppose we will.”
They had been to Nantucket every summer of Diane’s life, to a cottage Richard and his sister had inherited from their parents. Armaiti swallowed her disappointment. “Guess not.” She knew that Richard was just being sensible, of course. But a small part of her resented him for not asking her before telling his sister no.
“Do you feel like going anywhere this summer?” Diane asked and Armaiti thought she heard a plaintive note in her daughter’s voice.
“Actually, I do,” she said, surprising even herself. “I feel like traveling to Bombay. To see everybody . . . one last . . . again.” She had no idea if she’d said this just to spite Richard for not consulting with her about Nantucket.
There was a short silence. “That will be hard, won’t it, hon?” Richard said quietly. “I mean, it’s a tough city even at the best of times.”
Two things happened as Armaiti heard those words. One, she realized that she was posturing, that she had no real desire to navigate, in her present condition, the hot, humid, crowded city of her birth. But it was the second realization that took her breath away. It was a longing so acute, so piercing, that it felt like a living thing, something that dwelt in her heart silently, invisibly, and was now making its presence known.
Bombay! The cool, tranquil rooms of Jehangir Art Gallery. The crazy, colorful, exuberance of Fashion Street. The intoxicating freedom of walking down the seaside at Marine Drive in stormy weather. The gastronomical ecstasy of biting into a chicken roll at Paradise, the mayonnaise, golden as the sun, oozing off the side.
And, above all, the company of the other three. The four of them taking the train to Lonavala, leaning out of the open doorway, feeling the wind on their faces. Spending entire afternoons listening to music at Rhythm House. Watching reruns of The Way We Were and Spartacus at Sterling on Saturday mornings.
Laleh, Kavita, Nishta. The names blended into one and became a prayer, souvenirs from a paradise lost. “Babe? You okay?” Richard was asking, and Armaiti nodded, unable to speak.
She looked up, saw their puzzled faces, and pulled herself together. “I—I was just thinking of—old friends, and I suddenly . . .” But her words were so weak, her description of Lal, Ka, and Nishta as “friends” so inadequate and small, that Armaiti stopped. Jane Stillman was a friend, and so was Susan Jacobs. But it wasn’t the same. She had never been on a demonstration with Jane; had never held hands and stared down a line of policemen with Susan. Laleh and the others had not just been friends, they had been comrades. And although the word had fallen into disrepair since the Wall came down, it suddenly felt alive and shiny to Armaiti, plump with meaning and significance, as luminous as love.
She had not known that she was crying until she heard Diane’s voice, immeasurably mature and older than it had any right to be, say, “It’s okay, Mom. You need to cry. It’s good for the soul.” Hearing the words she’d said to her daughter on numerous occasions made Armaiti want to laugh. She realized that they thought she was crying about the diagnosis but there was no way to explain that she was grieving not so much over her aborted future as over her aborted past. The four years of college now seemed to have gone by too quickly. There was no real explanation for why she had not stayed in closer touch after leaving for the U.S. Unless it was this: coming to America itself was a kind of defeat—the inaudible but clear admission that their days as young radicals had drawn to a close.
“Mom,” Diane said, a new urgency in her voice. “Is there anything you want to do? I mean . . . other than visiting India? And even that”—Diane turned to flash her father a defiant look—“if you really, really wanna go, we should just do it. I’ll go with you. It’ll be okay.”
Armaiti smiled. Diane reminded her of Laleh in some ways—the indignation, the puppy-dog fierceness, the relentless desire to protect. It seemed preposterous that Laleh would never get to know her daughter. And Ka. There was that unresolved thing with Ka. She remembered how brittle Kavita had been around Richard at the time of the wedding. What a shame.
Diane was waiting for an answer. “Your dad’s right, honey,” Armaiti said. “Traveling to India would be very difficult at this time.”
“So have them come here to see you.”
Armaiti glanced at Richard. You can jump in at any moment, her look said, but he stared back at her, his face impassive. She sighed. “It’s not that easy, darling,” she said. “I’m sure they have their own lives. Besides, I haven’t spoken to Ka and Nishta in donkey’s years.”
“Mom,” Diane said. “These are your oldest friends. I heard you talk about them all through my childhood. I’m sure if you called and—I’m sure if they knew how sick you were, they’d come see you.” She scowled suddenly. “And maybe they can knock some sense into your head. I certainly can’t.”
But there’s so much you don’t know, Armaiti thought to herself. Of how complicated things got, despite our love for each oth
er.
“Mom?”
“I know you mean well, sweetie. But I haven’t really kept up with the others. So it would strike me as a little selfish to ask them to disrupt their lives just because I’m . . .”—she forced herself to say the word—“. . . dying. Don’t you think?” All the while thinking, When did I become this sensible, practical, middle-aged schoolmarm?
Richard cleared his throat. “Now, that’s ridiculous, Armaiti. First of all, you have no idea what their reaction will be. And, second, I’ve met your friends, remember? I suspect they’ll be more than glad to do whatever they can.”
“That was a long time ago, Richard. Times—and people—change.”
Richard leaned back in his chair and gazed at her. “Well, all you can do is ask. We can cover all their expenses.”
She opened her mouth to argue but just then saw Diane lean slightly toward her father. It was a sign she had come to recognize—and dread—over the years. It meant father and daughter had joined forces against her. “That’s settled, then,” Diane said, as if Armaiti had just acquiesced.
They had talked about it all the way home and there was no denying the dance her heart was doing at the thought of a reunion. Besides, even if they didn’t come, it would be nice to be in touch with the others again. Maybe she could just talk to them on the phone every few weeks.
Still, she was nervous. Except for an occasional e-mail, she hadn’t been in touch with Laleh for several years. And now, out of the blue, to lay this on her and Kavita. What she was asking for was preposterous, no question. “You’re sure?” she’d asked Diane just before picking up the receiver the next morning.
“Mom,” Diane groaned. “For Christ’s sake. What’s the worst that can happen? Just call.”
“Okay. Okay.”
She dialed half of Laleh’s number and then stopped, struck by a thought. “When should I ask them to come? Which month?” she asked Richard.
The World We Found Page 2