She peeled the outer layer off the onion and began to slice. What did Jenn see in Arun? What does it mean, “more or less good”? How much can a twenty-five-year-old understand? In the same situation, hadn’t Maggie herself said next to nothing about Paul? Her mother would never have understood. Yes, Paul had beguiled her. She’d admired his strength of character and single-mindedness; she’d thought his noble ambitions more than enough for both of them. She never imagined he wouldn’t be satisfied with a respectable career and a normal home. Looking back, her naivety embarrassed her. Choosing Paul had been playing with fire. But he hadn’t asked her to follow him halfway around the world. It was the enormous distance that made the thought of Jenn’s marrying Arun unbearable.
The knife slid on the top of the onion and sliced into Maggie’s knuckles. Bright red blood welled in a straight line across three fingers. Maggie gasped and stepped to the sink to run water over her hand.
“What happened?” Jenn said.
“I wasn’t holding the onion properly. You know, fingers tucked under. It’s not serious.”
“Let’s see.”
Jenn turned off the faucet and took her mother’s hand in hers. The cut was clean and bleeding steadily. “Let me get my first aid kit. I can bind this for you. Do it all the time in India. Keep your hand over the sink. I’ll be back in a minute.” She limped away quickly.
Blood leaked out of the cut and down into the sink, staining the pale green flesh of an eggplant. Maggie flexed her fingers and the wound began to sting. She felt foolish. She should have paid better attention. She would need flexible fingers to do her chores: the elaborate dinner for four, the tax forms for All Saints’, tomorrow’s Pilates class with Ellen. Then her date for lunch. She would ask Jenn to minimize the bandages.
Jenn’s footsteps, joined by Arun’s, sounded overhead. Maggie considered getting the bottle of alcohol beneath the downstairs bathroom sink to disinfect the cut. But Jenn had told her to stay put. She waited, wanting to show Jenn that her mother listened to her, whatever the circumstances.
Maggie looked over the edge of the restaurant balcony onto the hustle in the atrium lobby of Grand Central Station. People made beelines across the marble floor to pick up food from vendors doing a noisy lunchtime business. Across the table, Robert Stamford waited patiently while she, embarrassed by needing to talk to him and disturbing his busy day, toyed with her salad.
She’d summoned Robert to lunch because he was good to talk to in a crisis and because she knew he’d come. They’d first met when Robert and Paul were in graduate school. She’d realized soon after that he had a crush on her. He was either too good a friend to Paul or too insecure to chase her. He hadn’t married, and over the years his crush had gentled into a friendship, which she gladly returned. Their encounters, when Paul’s business threw them together, pleased and gratified her. He was attentive and clever. And reassuring: when Jenn broke her leg and Paul was out of town, Robert arranged excellent care at the hospital and talked her through the procedures. She sighed and returned to the conversation.
“Bottom line, Paul hates Arun and Jenn adores him, and I’m trying to be objective, but he throws up a philosophical smokescreen.” She looked into Robert’s friendly eyes. “I’m stymied.”
“To be honest, I don’t really understand why you and Paul have disqualified the young man. Perhaps you simply need more time with him.”
“I’m so on edge it’s painful.”
Robert reached into his sport coat and withdrew his phone. He fiddled with it a moment. “I’ve sent you contacts for one of the senior physicians. He’s an Indian and a good man, and I’m sure he will be able to clarify questions of philosophy. Use my name.” He replaced the phone.
“Thank you. That’s very kind,” but, she thought, unsatisfactory. The problem transcended philosophy.
“Have you tried talking to one of Jenn’s friends to get the younger generation’s perspective?”
She considered talking to Ellen’s son, a little younger than Jenn but plenty worldly. “Good idea. Maybe dating Indians is the new trend. You are giving me hope.” She smiled at him to signal gratitude for his trying to cheer her. She hoped he couldn’t see that he hadn’t.
In an uncharacteristic move, Robert laid a hand on her arm. “I must ask. Why have you come to me? Are you and Paul at odds?”
How to respond? Yes, they were at odds, circling each other like suspicious dogs. Wasn’t that why she wanted Robert to comfort her? But if she told the truth . . . Did she want him to close up the proper distance between them? She had never found Robert physically attractive; it was his kindness that endeared him to her. But perhaps that could change.
“No more than usual. We’re both so busy we don’t always talk. You are so sensible. I treasure your advice.” She willed his hand away.
Robert released her arm. She could count on his behaving well. She picked up her purse.
“I should go. My train’s ready to depart. Service to Pelham is spotty in the afternoon.”
“Shall I accompany you?”
“Oh, no. You have a hospital to manage. Thanks for lunch.” She gathered her jacket as he called for the check and sped away. He would notice her haste but make no remark, and his courtesy would appease her conscience.
The New Haven Local slid north along its rails, and Maggie indulged in fantasy. If she had chosen Robert over Paul, would she now live in a penthouse and entertain on weekends? Robert would need a different kind of wife than she had been, more of a social animal. Would there have been children? Would they still have sex? She shied away from the image of a naked Robert, soft and rotund, ever so carefully palming her breasts. No, no children with Robert, not even in fantasy.
But perhaps a different lover.
She’d had no real boyfriends before Paul. In the early years, he’d been lusty, and good at making her lusty. Without alcohol or weed, just the two of them in daylight or in dark, plain vanilla, good sex. Then she’d gotten pregnant, recovered, and grown more demanding, hotter and quicker. Paul said the change was due to residual vasculature from pregnancy. She thought she’d grown into womanhood, which meant owning her desires. And then he stopped coming home every night. Their lovemaking grew less frequent. She stopped expecting him to climb into bed beside her, hungry for her. She suspected he didn’t always sleep alone the nights he stayed in the city. But they had Jenn and the dog and a reasonable life. At some point, she realized she didn’t miss sex with Paul all that much, but she missed the intimacy. She wanted sex with intimacy. Could she have sex without intimacy?
If she were to take a lover, he would be the opposite of Robert, a man of the flesh, not the mind. A man who enjoyed simple animal sex. A hard, lean man like Brian Sayler.
Sitting at her desk upstairs, Maggie sorted through the letters Jenn had sent from India, looking for clues to the hold Arun had over her daughter. At first Jenn had written on airmail stationery.
Dear Mom and Dad,
I am sitting in a restaurant where I had lunch with an Italian guy I met on the train. He didn’t speak much English, but he knew German and I remembered some from college, so we actually had a good time, gesturing away. I follow advice to eat only hot things (I stick my finger in the food and if I can keep it in, the food’s not hot enough). So far, so good, I am well. Right now two American girls are walking by wearing miniscule shorts and T-shirts with scoop necks showing their bras. They are oblivious to the stares and leers they provoke. I watch their insensitivity and lack of caution, and I shudder because they reinforce the bad name American girls have here. Thank goodness I’m not that kind of American. But if there’s anything I’ve learned so far, it’s how American I really am. For example, you go into the bathroom in the restaurant and there’s a neat-looking marble sink. But when you turn on the faucet, water spills onto the floor because the marble basin wasn’t sealed onto the marble counter. Why bother to seam the sink, or to check the seam, since the tourists won’t be back anyway? (My Italian friend
said someone paid off the building inspector.) I know I sound finicky, but the sink is a symptom of a kind of fatalism that I encounter all over the place. People don’t seem to want to deal with issues, big or small. I suppose most people in old societies with rigid hierarchies are acting rationally when they throw up their hands and walk away from intractable problems. But I want them to do something about problems, even if they’re tough to fix, because I’m a can-do American. My ancestors were frontiersmen, and pioneers are nothing if not self-reliant. I try to imagine how I would feel if I had grown up here—no can do! Seriously, growing up in relative riches and security, I am in no position to judge any Indian’s attitude towards fate. . . .
She riffled through the short stack, looking for the more telling bits.
Yesterday, as I climbed down the temple wall (there were no barriers or fences to protect the ancient artifacts or to stop tourists from falling and breaking their necks) a dark-skinned man, not old but wizened with gaping teeth and tattered clothes, walked up to me and asked if I was American. When I said yes, he asked how I felt about India. I said, India is wonderful, and he burst into a huge smile. I was touched that my American opinion mattered so much to him. I couldn’t tell him everything I feel about India because that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. India IS wonderful. AND terrible. Wonderful for the beautiful colors (even poor women have lovely saris), and the spicy smells, and the chaotic mix of old and new (donkeys, pedicabs, motor scooters, and BMWs barrel down the street together), and the profusion of life in so many forms. Terrible for the crowding, the beggars, what they do to baby daughters they don’t want, and to girls with insufficient dowries, and to widows. Suttee has been illegal forever, but women still throw themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. In the twenty-first century!!! The contrast between wonderful and terrible tears at my heart. Life is so vivid here (death, too, I guess). It makes me feel that so many of the philosophical concerns I had in college, the words we used and the way we would rationalize things “at another level of analysis,” just don’t apply. I feel like academic philosophy is a luxury. They need something more fundamental here, as do I. It’s beginning to jell for me, I think, but I’m not ready to say. . . .
These seemed like the musings of the daughter she knew. But then Jenn switched to email. Maggie powered up her computer and opened the “Jenn” file.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: My school
I’m writing from an Internet café about a mile and a half from this school attached to an ashram in the countryside north of Delhi. Sorry you haven’t heard from me in a while, but I’ve been busy, and it’s hard to get to the café. I have a job! Volunteer because I can’t get paid, but a job, teaching English to children whose families don’t have the money to send them to the public school, which is free but far away. They don’t have transportation or books or uniforms and they (the children) need to work. But the ashram made friends with the adults and set up the school on the side (of course it’s part time but some schooling is better than none). It’s fascinating. My teaching is pretty rudimentary, but I’m getting close to the kids, and starting to understand the parents’ lives and the value the ashram brings. My head is full of ideas! There are several foreigners staying here, including a Brit married to a half-Chinese woman who grew up in the British compound in Shanghai and went to Oxford, of all places. So I have some remarkable people to help me sort out my overflowing head. This is why I came to India, to get experience that clarifies my life.
All’s good. Love to you and Dad.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Catching up
Sorry to be so sporadic. It’s a long way to the café in this heat, and the cell service here sucks, and the ashram’s satellite phone is only for emergencies. My teaching is going well, I think. There’s no way to judge, not that it matters, I’m satisfied with the work. And the kids are teaching me Hindi! Spoken Hindi, in their dialect, with a child’s vocabulary, which covers the essentials and so suits me fine.
The ashram invited a new guy to talk with the adults. He’s an odd little Indian, but I like his aura (don’t worry, I’m not turning New Age on you). This guy seems at peace, even when we’re joking around—maybe because he went to college in America—so we share a lot. It’s nice to have someone solid to talk to about the people we work with. The children’s resilience continues to amaze me. Arun (his name, rhymes with moon) says some of the adults can still bounce back. He says he can restore resilience to some of the others. I am eager to see his results. If there’s anything India needs (and the world needs) it’s a formula for restoring health after crisis, individual or planetary. As you see, I’m still interested in ideas, and being in the boonies helps me concentrate.
All’s good. Love to you and Dad.
The rest of the emails were short. Maggie typed “ARUN” in the search function.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Our little community of seekers
Since I last wrote (sorry it’s been so long) our work has really blossomed. Arun and I have figured out how to link our activities so we get at the whole family. I get the kids talking, and he discusses what the kids say with the parents. He says it’s the best way to stimulate authentic conversations. He spends a lot of time in the villages around the ashram, then he comes back and tells the monks and the foreigners and the school teachers (we now have a second volunteer) what’s going on. I love these meetings. People have such different takes on the problems, although our goals are compatible. I’ve learned that there are no easy solutions in developing countries because everything is connected in ways outsiders can’t predict. Villagers think differently. People without the tools money can buy have to depend on each other more than we do. I like it, although of course life would be far better and more comfortable with more infrastructure. Do I sound like a policy wonk? Relax, no World Bank in my future. I think that kind of “aid” does very little to alter people’s lives. The kind of work we do is better, helping people develop their own resources to accomplish what makes sense to them.
All’s good. Love to you and Dad.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: Bangalore and more
Arun offered to show me Bangalore (he had to visit his parents and suggested I come along—we flew Air India, which is another story). Walking around his parents’ neighborhood I thought I was in southern California, clean streets, modern stucco buildings, tended semitropical gardens. As unreal as Disneyland to someone coming from the countryside.
The best part was meeting Arun’s family. His parents are both such warm, gentle people. You wouldn’t know they have demanding professional lives. Both of them are doctors and they run a clinic together, but they seemed so unhurried when we talked. Of course they have servants for cooking and cleaning and the like, everyone middle class here does, but I don’t think that explains their poise. Especially Arun’s mom. You can see how lovely she must have been as a girl. She’s still beautiful in a “mature” way and she seems so wise about the world. I hope I get to see her again. I so enjoyed her presence.
When we got back to the ashram, we got bad news. The head monk wants to decommission the school, not sure why. So Arun and I are making plans to continue our work elsewhere. He has many contacts. I must admit I’m a little concerned, but I trust him to figure it out. I’ll write again when I know our next address.
All’s good. Love to you and Dad.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: [email protected]
SUBJECT: I am a new woman
We have landed on our feet so well that I feel like I’m dancing. Arun was invited to take over a community that an NGO started, and I am running the school. I have free rein to design my program, in consultation with Arun and the other teachers, and, of course, the kids
. It gives me such joy to live my philosophy rather than just think about it. This is everything I’d hoped for, and more. Can’t wait to make our dream happen!
All’s excellent! Love to you and Dad.
The remaining emails were perfunctory, with Jenn claiming that she was too busy to write more. Maggie turned off the computer, still in the dark, too uncomfortable for words.
NINE
Jennifer was born on May 20, and three months later, on a red-letter day in science, Paul fell in love with her. He hadn’t wanted a child so early in the marriage, at a time when his research had just started producing results, but Maggie had conceived and life took over. Falling in love had come as a surprise. He felt more like a teenager with a crush than a father, or at least the father he imagined he would be when responsibility descended on them. He found himself inventing a hundred nicknames—Jenny, J-girl, Jennipooh, Kidlet, Baybarooni, Midget, Missy—as the months passed and his affection blossomed.
Paul’s own father, a bitter, drinking man, had taken his family to Indianapolis fifty years after the Adler clan had moved to the Midwest to farm. The older generations had been successful but eventually sold out to a big company. Paul’s father worked in a Lilly factory for a decade, until his job disappeared and his wife took sick—Paul was ten, Lenny almost thirteen—and then he turned sour, punishing Lenny for nothing at all, bullying both sons whenever he drank. He blustered continuously and lost his welcome at church, among relatives, and in the men’s fraternal organizations. The boys feared their father but at the same time defended him to their friends. In secret, Paul swore he’d never be like his dad; he would be successful and admired. No one would mock him behind his back, least of all his family.
Appetite Page 8