Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  “No big deal,” Silvia said. “Let’s wait and see if they come. And if they do, you’ll start paying me an extra three hundred a month, and we’ll take care of it in no time.”

  Soli was grateful for her levelheaded cousin, but there were things she never could or would tell her. Silvia had a visa, had arrived in America whole and clean. How would Soli explain the daily desperation, the ceaseless grapple of trust and fear, the prospect of crawling from one country to another in a suffocating tunnel, saddled like a burro with sacks of white powder? How to tell the story of what grew inside her those days on the trains—not the child, but the will to fight?

  “Get a cell phone,” Silvia said. “Pay-as-you-go.” She bought one for Soli, and added the cost to the “owed” column of her accounts. Silvia taught Soli English. Soli already knew how to ask for the nearest hospital and say that it was raining, but Silvia taught her the phrases she’d actually need. Excuse me? instead of What? “You say what too many times and you start to sound estupida.” Same time next week? Should I do laundry? Can I have a raise? This one, she said, was not to be used right away. Or often. Will you leave a key outside? Sixty dollars. Eighty dollars. Twenty dollars an hour. This last one was Soli’s favorite. It rolled from her tongue like pillowy thunder. She said it like an American. Twennydollasanowah. “Don’t use that one yet,” said Silvia. “You’ll start at six.” She taught Soli the names of the cleaning products the gabachas liked, taught her the gabacha methods of polishing floors, cleaning tubs, washing dishes, buffing bathroom fixtures. “Don’t be leaving the kitchen sponge in a yogurt container full of water,” she said. “Those were the old ways. The gabachas like their sponges squeezed dry. And set to the side. Parallel with the sink.” She’d introduced her to the vacuum cleaner. This one looked nothing like a rocket. Soli played with it, flattened her hand to its belly, let it suck at the skin of her palm, until Silvia told her to cut it out.

  Silvia had other instructions: “The police. The second they stop you for anything—anything—they can call immigration. Just keep your head down.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t do anything wrong. Don’t even pick your nose!”

  “I don’t.”

  “And don’t cross the street unless the signal tells you to, okay? You don’t want a policeman asking you questions. You know the signals?” Soli shrugged. “White man walking? Means you can go. Big red hand? Means you stay put. Just like in Oaxaca.”

  “I’ve got it,” Soli said.

  “You’ve got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  For weeks Soli would stand very still at empty crosswalks, waiting for the walking white man, certain that the police would come blaring around the corner the second she stepped off the curb. She stayed put while others streamed past her. At crosswalks without a signal, she stood perfectly still, unsure of what to do in the absence of the white man. In most cases, she waited a good long while, made sure no one was watching, and ran like hell.

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING, Soli got off the bus at a corner of the city canopied by oaks. People streamed by in pairs and trios. Soon, Soli would know this corner well. She would know it was Shattuck and Vine, that in one direction lay the university, in another the water, and behind her the hills. Around her spread the Gourmet Ghetto.

  Let’s make one thing clear. Soli had seen ghettos. This was no ghetto. All she saw were women pushing their babies in strollers, a few fathers who looked like movie stars, the young on bicycles and the old in sunhats, seated at café tables. The salty warmth of baking bread drifted over the rooftops to nuzzle her, like a cat on her shoulder, the moment she stepped off the bus.

  In Popocalco, the young men had left. The town rattled with their absence, and only the newly built houses gave evidence that they still existed somewhere in the world. But Soli remembered them. And the roads, stretching empty, remembered them, too. In Berkeley, there were people everywhere. Students finished their degrees and dragged their feet, people left their high-paying careers and retired here. Streaming in constantly were the academics and vagrants of the world, with their doctorates and dogs on strings. Buying bungalows and hybrid cars were the young families who had good jobs and helpful parents and custom-built child-carrying bicycles. They all stayed and lived and took up room. They pulsed down the sidewalks and pushed into lanes of traffic. They stood in line at bakeries and pizzerias and surged through outdoor farmers’ markets as if fresh herbs and homemade kombucha were all that could matter in the world.

  She was learning that in Berkeley, even beautiful things were small. From the street, the Cassidy house was nowhere to be seen. It hid somewhere in a tumble of vines and crimson trumpet blossoms. She fought through the brush until she reached the front door, crossed herself, and kissed her thumb. Somewhere in that lovely mess of vines she found a doorbell, which she rang.

  A rush of toenails on the floor, sharp barking. Someone scolding a dog. “Toto! Toto! Toto, no!” The door opened and before her stood Toto the elephantine dog, a lady, and a little girl. “Down, Toto!” Soli smiled at the profanity, even as the dog leapt for her shoulders. The woman, struggling to grab the dog by the collar, was tall, with red hair. From where she stood, Soli could smell the coffee on her breath, and the sweet waft of a blossom that she recognized but could not name. The woman caught hold of the dog and dragged him into the house, calling, “Come in! And shut the door!”

  The little girl’s name couldn’t be pronounced. The mother said it easily enough, but it sat like a fuzz on Soli’s tongue. The mother said it twice more, and spelled it—S-a-o-i-r-s-e—which didn’t help. Soli worried for the little girl and her strange little name.

  “It’s Celtic,” Mrs. Cassidy told her, “traditionally Irish. It’s part of our heritage. We want her to be in touch with who she is, you know?” In Popocalco, women had names their grandmothers had, and their grandmothers before them. Only politicians spoke of heritage. She would call the little girl m’ija.

  The Cassidys lived in a bungalow that smelled of green plants and wood. That first morning, it was plain to see why they wanted her every day. This house would need a strict daily purge, just to keep it from soiling itself. The bookshelves were piled with ceramic trinkets, things that seemed to be made by schoolchildren but which, she found out later, were really quite expensive. The kitchen was more of a jungle than a kitchen, with plants that hung from the ceiling and pots of herbs crowding the windowsill above the sink. The sink! The sink was a work of art, a surrealist sculpture of balancing pots and a chicken carcass, dishes upon dishes upon dishes, a leaning tower of refuse. It smelled of old food and damp cloth. Soli’s stomach lurched and she feared she would be sick right there, that this house and the baby inside would not be getting along.

  From the kitchen the señora led her to the master bedroom. “Every day,” she said, “Every day? Yes?” Soli nodded. The señora pointed to the bed, the carpet, the dresser. “Questo,” she said. “Questo y questo, ma no questo.” She pointed to the closet. “Sí?”

  Soli followed her finger, piecing together what seemed to be a mélange of Spanish and Italian, when the señora gave up and switched to English.

  “I’m sorry about the mess, Soli. You can see why we needed you. Brett’s been in Hong Kong for a month and things are getting just completely wacky. I’m not a messy person.”

  Soli smiled.

  “But you can see that there’s a lot of work to do. So take your time, help yourself to anything in the kitchen. Okay? Mi casa es su casa. Or whatever.” She scoffed at herself and left the room.

  “Thank you” was all Soli could say. She sniffed a curtain and frowned. This was most certainly not her casa.

  8.

  Kavya had booked them into a bed-and-breakfast. That Saturday they drove to Calistoga, a bottle of prosecco rol
ling in the backseat. In her purse sat a hopeful bottle of lubricant. That morning, Rishi had found her sticking an ovulation test in her bag. “Please,” he’d said. “Leave that at home, will you?” She’d acquiesced, but soon after had snuck it back in. She was timing herself religiously now, waiting for mittelschmerz, that sharp ache in her lower abdomen that meant an egg was on its journey. She felt it that morning in the shower: The mittel had arrived, and she was schmerzing like a fiend.

  “Let’s get away!” Rishi had said, as he buckled his seat belt. She’d smiled. He was trying. But now as she watched him drive, his back hunched, his chin jutting up as he squinted past the steering wheel, Kavya thought a pep talk might be in order. But what to say? Chin up? His already was. Go Nads? She smiled to herself. Finally she settled on “Honey, we are going to have so much sex. This is going to be the most sex . . . filled . . . weekend ever.”

  Rishi smiled—sadly, she feared.

  “It’s going to be amazing,” she tried. “Sexoballistic.”

  Surely, this level of wordplay deserved some excitement. Rishi answered: “Does the exit have a number?”

  • • •

  SEXOBALLISTIC. When Kavya had first messaged him about the trip to Napa Valley, he’d indeed been excited. Kavya was the planner. Without her, Rishi would have spent the rest of his life going to work, eating pizza on weekends, attempting little else. The spa’s website featured a courtyard with a pool, a dimly lit dining room, and a couple holding hands across their pool chairs. He thought of driving into the sun, of swirling wine between his cheeks and sleeping in a bed that wasn’t his, after his own had grown creaky with child-making, with worry and apprehension and the gray chill of weekday mornings. The promised change filled him with lightness born of freedom, neutrality. He even sensed the old Kavya coming back. After months of fruitless effort, his wife had become a slave to a nonexistent child. Her cool independence had curled and blackened and burned away. The woman in his home wasn’t Kavya. His Kavya wasn’t helpless. He could have had any number of women who blew this way and that with gusts of fate, crying out to be rescued. He’d fallen for Kavya because she moved straight and strong as a bullet. And so, this trip to Napa felt like a step in the right direction, a refortification of Kavya’s will. Yes, they were taking the trip in order to have the sort of relaxed intercourse from which babies seemed to spring. But within this plan lay a reassuring sense of confidence, a certainty that if anything could conjure a child, it was wine stored in oak barrels, an afternoon of whirlpools and steam rooms.

  But when she’d turned to him in the car like that, squeezed his knee in that motherly way—Honey, we are going to have so much sex—he saw the hollow at the heart of this trip. She was hoping, without reserve. The bed in which they’d sleep—or not sleep—wasn’t neutral territory. It was a petri dish, acidic with expectation, doomed even before its covers were thrown back. If this trip didn’t conjure a child, he didn’t know what would become of Kavya, the girl he knew.

  Suddenly the prospect of spending a whole weekend alone with Kavya, in the compression chamber of a sauna, a hotel room, with nothing to do but stare into each other’s eyes, was more daunting than he’d expected. Better, perhaps, to spend their weekend crossing paths at home, stepping out to run errands, losing themselves in solitary Internet forays. But as rows of grapevines flashed past, the day started to feel right: the open sky, the reliable warmth of the valley, the roads growing wide and the wineries appearing, one after another, each with a stately sign at its entryway. His hesitation trailed off with the morning mist.

  • • •

  RISHI PULLED UP to a low stucco building with a Spanish-tiled drive. Inside, enormous wood chandeliers hung from the ceiling, and the lobby was lit with candles. It was meant to be romantic, and it was. A woman at the counter greeted them and led them to a sitting room, where a server brought glasses of cucumber water. This room too was candlelit. The sofa they sat on was velvet, soft, enveloping. Rishi sat back. Kavya sat upright. “Sit back,” he said. “You look a little tense.”

  He was right. She sat back.

  “This is nice,” he said, and reached out to smooth the crease from her forehead. She grabbed his wrist and brought it to the couch. It was like they were holding hands, but weren’t. Other couples moved in and out of the room. Through the gloaming, Rishi nodded at another man and woman. The other couple sat on a sofa on the opposite side of the lounge, linked hands, and gazed at each other.

  Rishi leaned in. He couldn’t help himself. “This is one of those places.”

  Kavya realized he was right. It was a place people came to save their marriages and conceive their children. Of course no one talked about it that way. What they called it was relaxation. A relaxation destination. She didn’t care what people called it. She’d try anything. She’d try a full-price room booking, expensive dinners, and inscrutable wine tastings, if they brought about a baby.

  In the name of relaxation, they booked a couple’s massage. In a darkened room that smelled of hot stone, they lay on parallel tables. She lay on her front, her eyes closed. Rishi’s eyes rested on the pale, small cushion of her breast that pressed against the table. He thought back to a much earlier vintage of his wife, the one he’d known in college.

  “Hey,” he said, his eyes fluttering to her breast.

  She followed his gaze. “Get lost,” she said, but smiled.

  It had been a very long time since they’d lain quietly, side by side, free from the racket of plans or worries or the clamoring unspoken. The failures of the past year had turned Kavya’s spine to a scepter of fear, and it took a good deal of work to get her to release. But when she did, the fear spilled out of her. It slid off her shoulders and trailed in quiet tears from her eyes. She saw him notice, and smiled at herself, extracting a hand from the white sheet to wipe at her nose and eyes. Rishi wanted to climb off his table and gather her up. Joint by joint, he would fold her together if he could. But Kavya’s eyes were closed now, the massage therapist working on her calves. All he could do was reach a hand out. She sensed this, eyes still closed, and reached out to meet him. For the rest of the hour, they held hands across their tables, like the couple on the website.

  • • •

  BEFORE DINNER, back in their hotel room, she slipped her arms around his waist. He had tweezed the center of his browline. His jaw was clean-shaven. He smelled of cedar. A drop of shower dew rested in the divot of his lip.

  She whispered, “I feel like I’m ovulating. Should we try now?”

  Rishi’s arms clenched. He let go of her, just slightly, but enough for her to notice.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t— I don’t— Never mind.” In Kavya’s eyes he saw a tremor, in her smile a lopsided incline.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I thought we would just see how things go, you know? Maybe go to dinner first?”

  “Really? This is a problem for you?”

  “Well, no—”

  “You’re really saying this?”

  “Yes. No.” He pressed his palms to his eyes. “No. I don’t know.” He cursed himself now.

  He didn’t want to think about conceiving, he told her. And he didn’t want her to ask him if he was ready. He didn’t want to make babies that weekend. He wanted to be with her.

  “Maybe this was a mistake,” he said.

  A long pause followed, during which neither of them moved or made a sound.

  It was quite clear, in that moment, that nothing would happen easily for them; that wasn’t the way Rishi and Kavya worked. They wouldn’t get their happy surprise, their unexpected blessing. Perhaps the happy surprise had come when they found each other. Easy gifts had come and gone, and left them only with each other.

  She stepped away from him. She’d put on a red dress, low cut, her hair still slick with massage oil. She wore lipstick and
her skin shone. But at her center, she was dried out, empty. Her eyes had lost their luster, two wood chips sunk deep in their sockets. When he took her hand, he felt the quake in her fingers. She slumped to the bed, as if her legs had given out. She sat hunched. Hollow.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. His wife. Wounded. He felt cruel. She wanted nothing more than to give love. He wanted nothing more than to bring her back.

  He picked up her limp hand. “Can we start over?” he asked.

  She neither spoke nor pulled away, but let him wrap his arm around her. He hugged her harder, and her head fell to his chest. They sat this way for longer than they should have and let the clock tick past their reservation time. When they descended to the dining room twenty minutes later, they sat at the bar and Rishi ordered two glasses of champagne.

  After dinner, they went back upstairs. The afternoon sun had baked the room’s interior, and by nightfall it was stifling. “We’re going to have a baby, Kavya.” His voice cracked, something that normally would have made his wife laugh. “You hear me?”

  She shook her head and lay down. He followed, and they lay on the covers, shoes on, facing each other. They spent many minutes this way, gazing at the walls, at each other. She seemed hardly able to look at him. He studied the plain of her cheek, watched as the words, the ones they’d been avoiding, found their way into her mouth, rolled over and under her tongue, and dropped out of her, at last: “Fertility treatments.” They weighed a ton, those words.

  He took her hand. “That seems to work for some.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s start there.”

  She searched his face. “Are you sure you want to try? Can we afford it?”

  Rishi couldn’t fathom the depth or the cost of such a project. He knew he wanted Kavya back. He knew she needed him to say yes. That was all he knew. “Yes.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. She hoisted herself onto her elbows and looked a long while at Rishi. “Okay.” She rose to her feet and walked to the mirror. He watched her smooth down her hair, straighten her dress, and throw back the fine sweep of her shoulders.