They traversed the long, high bridge. Approaching the toll plaza on the far side, Maggie steered around an eighteen-wheeler braking into the exact-change lane. The rental, so much lighter than her own car, seemed to float from one lane to the next. She gripped the wheel, aware that she was being unnecessarily cautious. Too much caution could be as dangerous as too little.
As the car slowed, Jenn sat up. “Tell me about your accident.”
“There’s not much to tell. It was on the parkway. A car cut in front of me and I couldn’t avoid it. No one was hurt.” She shuddered inside, hearing the sound of metal crunching, seeing the squad car’s flashing lights, seeing Brian Sayler’s lean frame crouched beside her car. How annoying that he came to mind. Much as she disliked it, he had made an impression.
Jenn reached a hand out to touch her mother. Bangles on her wrist tinkled.
Warmth spread from Jenn’s fingers into Maggie’s arm. She loosened her grip on the wheel. Jenn could always soothe. As a child, she used to bring home mangy dogs and cats, and they would turn sweet under her care. When she got older, she brought home mangy teenagers. Jenn would feed them grilled cheese sandwiches and play their favorite music. Unkempt, rude kids who never looked Maggie in the eye, gawky boys and dumpy girls, one after another. Jenn thought them beautiful, or talented, or misunderstood. She never seemed distressed when they stopped coming to the house, when they dropped out of her life without a word of thanks. Maggie would ask about the latest missing person, and Jenn would flick her hand in exuberance and say, “She’s fine. I’m so proud of her!”
And now Jenn had Arun. Or Arun had Jenn. She feared Arun might spirit Jenn away before her mother had time to find out how she had grown.
Ahead, brake lights glowed red. Rush hour had crept up on them. Maggie turned off the highway onto a boulevard to take back roads into Pelham. As the car stopped at an intersection, Jenn looked out her window at the single-family houses nestled in lawns sprinkled with dried leaves.
“It’s so tidy compared to India. You can’t imagine the view alongside the road from Delhi to Agra. People crowded together, living out in the open, unprotected, unloved.” Jenn paused. “Is Dad coming home tonight?”
“Yes, later. He wants to hear about your . . . adventure. He’s going to wonder why you’re injured and traveling alone.”
Jenn flicked her hand. “Actually, this was my best trip yet on an Indian airline. Arun knows the system. We had to change my flight, and he put me in a wheelchair and told me to cry in the airport office. So I cried while he talked. We got the flight we wanted and the service was super all the way to Frankfurt. Arun said they probably bumped some unlucky Indian woman who’d been waiting a month for a seat. But it made the airport manager feel important.”
“And that didn’t bother you?”
“India is many things, but fair isn’t one of them. I’ve learned to accept the world as it is, not as I wish it to be.”
Maggie looked at Jenn’s face: no sign of irony. That was change.
They pulled into the driveway, and Jenn limped upstairs to draw a bath. Maggie went to the kitchen to make tea. The All Saints’ account books lay on the kitchen table. They would have to wait. She gathered the ledgers and printouts into a pile and placed them on a shelf in the pantry. Then she sat, sipped, listened for Jenn’s footsteps overhead.
Yellow ceramic tile covered the walls and even the ceiling of the 1920s kitchen; a crooked web of crazing had accumulated in the glaze, a gentle reminder of its age. No cabinets attached to the tile walls; everything had to be kept in the pantry: onions, potatoes, bread in a bread box, dishes, pots, brooms, detergent, newspapers, napkins. When they bought this old house, they told themselves they would modernize the kitchen as soon as they could afford to. But they hadn’t. Paul worked all the time, and Maggie raised Jenn and a succession of dogs, and she grew herbs in the rickety mudroom with its tall glass windows. As time passed, Maggie had grown fond of the mudroom, the yellow tile, the simplicity of tucking everything into a pantry. It pleased her to live deliberately, like her great-grandmother but with a better icebox. She respected the integrity of the old house. She wondered what Arun would make of it.
The mudroom door banged open. Paul walked in carrying a briefcase.
“You’re home early.”
“Where’s Jenn?”
“Taking a bath. Washing away her flight. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, I need to do some paperwork later. What’s up with her?”
“I’m not sure. She injured her ankle and wants to go for an X-ray.” Maggie rose and opened the fridge: Was there enough lettuce for three?
“Where’s the boyfriend?”
“Coming Thursday, but not to our house. He’s going to stay with us later.”
“I’m gonna make a few calls. Call me when she finishes her bath.” He disappeared down the hallway stairs to the basement.
They had finished half the basement, building an office that Paul used when he didn’t need to go into the lab and a guest room with a TV. They nicknamed the basement suite the Lion’s Lair because Paul roared when his favorite hitter got a run, or a pitcher threatened a perfect game. The only daylight entered from two clerestory windows; Maggie found the basement gloomy and worked at the kitchen table instead. She’d put Arun in the guest room, and she’d make it hospitable.
A moan, a wheeze, another moan, emanating from the living room, then a woman’s voice holding one long, clear note. When Paul and Maggie arrived, Jenn was fussing with the sound system.
“What’s all that groaning?” Paul asked.
“It’s a present for you guys,” Jenn said, turning down the volume on the CD player. “This style of singing grows on you. I’m really fond of it now.” She sat on the couch, long skirt trailing. “Hi, Dad. You look great.”
Paul kissed the top of her head. “You’re a sight for sore eyes! Are you home for good?”
“Of course not,” Jenn laughed. “But I’ll be here for a while.”
“You brought a sick cow with you?”
“It’s a hand organ. You pump it like an accordion. It takes a few pumps to get going and then it resonates behind the singer. Like the drone on a sitar. Street musicians carry them around.”
Paul sat beside his daughter. “Is that what you’ve been doing this year? Busking?”
“I wish. No one would pay to hear me sing.” She squeezed his knee. “But I’ve learned a lot about Indian music. There’s always singing and chanting at the kirtans we go to. Kirtans are like workshops.”
“What do you do at these workshops?”
“I help. Arun gives talks, and people want to meet with him, so I take care of them until he can.”
Paul frowned. “What does that mean?”
“I listen. I take notes. If they don’t know Arun’s work well, I give them an orientation. I’m not adept at his philosophy yet, but I do what I can.”
“Doesn’t sound like fun or profit.”
“You just wait. Arun bridges East and West better than anyone. We’ll be rich and famous one day.” She opened both arms with a flourish.
“Now that’s more like it.” He raised his hand for a high five, and she met it.
Maggie stood at the kitchen threshold, watching. Seeing them on the couch, bandage on Jenn’s ankle, took her back to the three months after Jenn broke her leg in ninth grade. Paul would come home from work, on the days when he came home early, and plunk down next to Jenn and make her laugh. It was Maggie who dragged Jenn to the doctor and physical therapy, all the things that caused Jenn pain. Sitting on the same couch a dozen years later, Paul and Jenn looked as comfortable as before. Jenn seemed ready to tell Paul whatever he wanted to hear. But he didn’t ask the questions that agitated her mother’s heart. Paul, out of tune with her heart, in so many ways. She turned into the kitchen to make dinner.
They ate at the dining room table so that Jenn could prop her ankle on the fourth chair. Jenn asked about Paul’s work. He
told her about the biochemical he was testing, something that works one way in normal cells and the opposite way inside a tumor. Maggie didn’t want to hear about cancer; she wanted to hear about the ashrams and Arun and what made Jenn happy so far from home. Twice she tried to interject a carefully worded question, but Paul was on a roll, explaining his new research grant, and apparently Jenn wanted the details.
They moved to the living room for baked bananas, one of Jenn’s favorites. Digging in, Jenn made happy “yummy” sounds. Maggie pampered her girl, cushioning her ankle, fetching tea, then honey. Paul asked about Delhi, and Bangalore, and Mumbai. Then he asked about Jenn’s plans but didn’t get an answer. Jenn stretched and yawned, arching her back extravagantly.
Maggie jumped in, “Should I make a doctor’s appointment for you tomorrow?”
“No thanks, Mom. I’ll take care of it. There’s a bunch of things I need to do.” She looked at her lap and smoothed a fold in her skirt. “I have to tell you guys. I wanted to wait for Arun, but I can’t. We’re going to get married. Here in the spring, and then we’ll go back to India and get married there.”
Maggie gasped.
Paul smacked his hand on his thigh. “You’re pregnant.”
“There are other reasons to marry, Daddy. I’d like you to get to know Arun. Then you’ll understand.”
“What if I don’t like him?”
Jenn flicked her hand. “I think you will. You both will. Give him a chance.”
“I’m surprised,” Paul said. “I thought you’d be more practical. What are you going to do for money? You can’t keep traipsing around India crashing at ashrams.” He rose, shaking his head no, and left the room.
Maggie felt a weight descend from her chest into her gut. There was no sense in protesting, and at least the picture was clearer. Or was it? She needed time to think. She picked up the dessert plates and forks. “I’m going to do the dishes. You must be exhausted. You need to sleep. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Jenn gathered her skirt and limped to the foot of the stairs. Maggie watched her climb; yes, indeed, something was terribly wrong.
She had almost finished loading the dishwasher when handorgan music blared again. It stopped abruptly, and Paul appeared in the doorway behind her.
“If that god-awful sound is a taste of things to come, watch out.”
“Jenn’s gone up to bed. Be careful she doesn’t hear you.” Maggie poured detergent into the cup in the dishwasher door.
“I don’t care if she does. She needs to know what I think.” Crossing the kitchen to the mudroom, he retrieved his briefcase, stopped. “I don’t get it. She’s got brains and guts. She could start anywhere and rise to the top. I don’t want her banging a tambourine for a huckster. Squandering her advantages.”
“Neither do I, but she wants what she wants.”
“Don’t tell me you approve.”
“We should hear her out.” She reached for the pots from the stove. “Maybe we can all talk about this tomorrow? Can you skip the Thursday seminar and come home for dinner?”
“I’m scheduled to make a presentation. It’s important.”
“So is your daughter’s future.”
Paul grunted and turned on his heel, heading for the basement. Over his shoulder, “I’ll make it work.”
Maggie lowered pans and a baking dish into the soapy water in the sink. She turned on the hot-water faucet. A mound of bubbles rose beneath the spigot, swelling and tipping toward the edge of the sink, threatening to fall to the floor.
This was what she’d feared: a man who might be twice Jenn’s age, a demanding man who spirited her away. Something must have happened in India. She turned off the hot water and dried her hands with a dish towel, leaving the pans for tomorrow. As she flicked the light switch, her eye caught on a photo on the refrigerator: Jenn, with short-cropped hair, wearing jeans and hugging the dog, just before graduation two years before. It seemed like much longer.
She climbed the stairs, passing Jenn’s bedroom. Light leaked from under the door. She rapped softly, and Jenn invited her in. Jenn sat propped up in bed with old scrap-books and photos spread on top of the covers. An empty shoebox lay to her left—left-handed, like her father. Paul and Jenn had teased Maggie for years about being to the right of them or always being right. She was neither.
“I’m making a slide show for Arun to email to his parents. You and Dad made a handsome couple. Not that you still don’t. We’ll have to take some photos to get up to date.”
Maggie sat on the foot of the bed, reflexively smoothing the chenille throw beneath her hand. “Are you comfortable?”
“I’m fine. You don’t look comfortable.”
True, but of course, Jenn meant no harm. Maggie’s brow furrowed as she weighed her words. “I’m concerned. You want to marry a man your father and I have never met. And go halfway around the world.”
Jenn pulled herself straighter. “You’re going to have to trust me. I’m making a good decision. It’s not what you or Dad would do, but it’s right for me. Haven’t you always encouraged me to follow my conscience?”
“But you can’t build a life around conscience.” Although, Maggie realized, she herself had been doing so these last few years. How many, actually?
“I’m not talking about good deeds and right action. I’m in love with a virile, passionate human being who understands the universe better than anyone else walking the planet, and he loves me.”
Maggie remembered herself at Jenn’s age, inspired by the grandeur of Paul’s vision, his determination to beat cancer. That vision had remained elusive for both of them. “But what about you? You need to find your own way.”
“I have found my way. It’s miraculous. Everything Arun says, everything of consequence, I think, ‘Yes, exactly so.’ I get so happy imagining a lifetime with him. We’ll make a difference.”
Back then, what could anyone have said about Paul that would have dampened her desire to marry him? She looked at her daughter’s glowing face.
“Tell me about Arun.”
“He has an amazing mind. He thinks everything is part of one consciousness splintered into a gazillion fragments but still one. So everything contains its opposite. You wouldn’t have day if you didn’t have night—there would be no need to distinguish day. Do you get it?”
Maggie nodded slowly. “Sounds like metaphysics.”
“Yeah, I thought so at first. It seemed too formal. But he knows how to apply his philosophy to everyday life. He helps people see where they’re tripping themselves up, tripping over illusory opposites. He frees people.”
“From what?”
“From their cares. First-world cares and third-world cares. Kids love him. I love him.”
Maggie found it all too abstract. Frustration tightened the muscles in the back of her neck.
Jenn said, “I think you’ll grow to appreciate Arun, but it may take some time.”
Jenn locked eyes with her mother and held steady. The girl’s confidence gave Maggie pause. Still, she had to ask. “How are you going to raise children when your cultures are so different? Won’t you be torn?”
Jenn laughed. “Arun and I are world citizens, and if we have kids, they will be too.” She began to pack photos into the box. “I’m starting to crash, Mom. Can we fight about Arun tomorrow?”
Maggie leaned forward and squeezed Jenn’s good ankle. She rose and left the room, closing the door behind her. The door to the master bedroom was open, meaning Paul was still downstairs. For the first time in what seemed like years, she thought about asking him to come up and sit with her awhile, rub her contracted neck. She felt as frightened as a child in the dark. She couldn’t banish the thought of Jenn vanishing into an alien world with no way back.
FOUR
Senior year at Ohio State, Paul had made two decisions: he’d gotten into cancer research and he’d snagged Maggie. Neither move was planned. He’d spotted Maggie in a literature class—he’d needed one more nonscience credit to finish
his biology major—and, on a whim, asked to borrow her notes. She blushed, which he found refreshing compared to the hard-edged radicals and ponytailed jocks on campus. She seemed like a sweet, approachable sort of girl. So he asked her out for coffee a couple of times; she was a good listener. He took her to the movies; her comments revealed a good brain. Then he asked her to his professor’s Christmas party, which turned out to be the clincher.
Growing up, Christmas had always meant disappointment. His father would drink and get meaner as Christmas Day unfolded. His mother would shrivel up. One year, he and his older brother, Lenny, escaped from the house to roam the streets of Indianapolis in Lenny’s ancient car. The only other people visible were winos and cops. A squad car pulled them over—the police had spotted two motley teenagers for troublemakers—and warned them off. Paul realized there was no getting around Christmas. At least not until you reached eighteen.
Growing up, the brothers had been close out of necessity. Both their parents were inaccessible, their father soaked in alcohol, their mother sickly. Lenny was a garrulous, pushy kid, often in trouble, while Paul, two years younger, hung back and watched the fray. Lenny stood up for Paul against their father and the neighborhood bullies. Paul felt grateful even as he resented Lenny’s superior strength. He longed to be as bold as Lenny and as admired by peers. Sometime during high school, Paul grew taller than his brother—and most of his classmates—and his perspective changed. He stopped idolizing Lenny and withdrew into himself, taking solace in baseball. But something happened to his arm; over three seasons they had to move him from third base to shortstop to second to first—hypermobile shoulders, and no coach caught it before the damage was done. He couldn’t talk about it at home, of course. He learned to hide from his old man rather than risk abuse, and it disgusted him. After high school graduation, Lenny lived at home fighting battles with their father over girls, money, booze. Paul got drafted and was glad to go.
The war in Vietnam was winding down by the time he finished boot camp. Paul had wanted to see what the fuss was about, not trusting what he heard from Lenny or at school or on the news, but the army stationed him in Texas. He passed a test and they made him a medic. He had been an indifferent student in high school, but the army taught him the value of work: if you wanted something, figured out the system, and you worked for it, it came. There was logic to it and justice in it. He adapted quickly. When he came home, he used his newfound smarts and the GI Bill to enroll in college in a different state, working part time to pay the rest of his bills. He spent vacations and summers on the job, not looking back. By senior year, he had caught the attention of his biology professor, who employed him as a research assistant, tending rats. It was Professor Kaufmann’s Christmas party and a dead rat that led him to his future wife.
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