The Weight of Heaven: A Novel

by Thrity Umrigar

  There was a slight pause, but when she spoke, Ellie’s voice was flat. “It had just happened, Frank. It stormed a few times when you were away—the, the last time. I talked him through it.”

  Despite the dark, Frank closed his eyes. It should’ve been me, he thought. I should’ve been the one to have calmed my son’s fears. Resentment filled his mouth. “Maybe that’s why he got sick,” he said, spitting the words like pits from a bitter fruit. “You know, maybe the stress of suppressing his fear in front of you was what—”

  “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. Even for you, that’s a new low.” Ellie shifted away from him so that their shoulders were no longer touching. There was a loud roar of thunder, as if the heavens themselves were emphasizing her words and she waited for it to subside. “You know, I’d like to have just one fucking evening of peace. But if you can’t just sit with me and be decent, Frank, I’ll go indoors, okay? Because I’m not going to sit here and wait for you to come up with one more theory of how I killed our son. If you think I don’t hurt as—”

  “Ellie—” His hand shot out and covered hers. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I…I’m sorry. It’s just that watching thunderstorms is really hard, you know? It’s like everything is wrapped up—” He cut himself off, wanting to say more, to reveal to his wife the altered shape of his heart, but being unable to.

  In the dark, he sensed rather than saw Ellie blinking back her tears. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just forget it.” But her voice wobbled, and his throat tightened with remorse. You’re a fucking bastard, he chided himself. You think she hasn’t suffered enough that you’re doing this to her? Not for the first time, he wondered if he should talk to someone, to Scott maybe, to confess his miserable treatment of Ellie. He wouldn’t seek understanding or sympathy—what he wanted was someone to give him a much-needed kick in the pants, to knock sense into his head, to ask him whether he wanted to lose his wife also, because he couldn’t accept the loss of his son. Scott adored Ellie, Frank knew, and would defend her against his own brother. Maybe he would call Scott in New York from the office tomorrow, maybe Scott could say something profound, the one true thing, that would help him make his way back to Ellie.

  He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her back into the cradle of his arm. For a few seconds she rested stiffly against him, but then her body relaxed and she rested her head on his shoulder. They stayed that way for a few moments, and then it began to rain.

  “Remember how we used to run all the way back from campus in the rain?” Frank said.

  “Yup.” She pulled away from him a bit, and he felt her eyes on his face. “Wanna go for a walk along the beach?”

  “You mean right now?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “I can’t. We’ll get soaked.”

  “Well, that is the point of walking in the rain—getting soaked.”

  “Funny. No, that is, normally I would, you know? But Ramesh is going to come over in a bit. He has a math test tomorrow, and I want to go over some problems with him.”

  He felt Ellie shift ever so slightly. “I see. Okay.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, say it. You’re obviously unhappy about something.”

  She turned to face him. “You know exactly what I’m unhappy about, Frank. I’m unhappy that we can’t go for a walk because there’s a little boy who’s forever coming over needing something or the other from my husband. And I’m—”

  He half rose from the swing. “Jesus Christ. I don’t believe this. You’re jealous of a nine-year-old kid. Just because I don’t jump when you—”

  “It has nothing to do with jealousy, Frank. It’s just that you don’t know what’s appropriate and what’s—”

  “Appropriate? What the hell are you talking about? I see tremendous potential in Ramesh and so I tutor him a few evenings a week. You’re the one who acts like some goddamn saint, talking about our responsibility to those less fortunate, but when I try to help the son of our housekeepers, you—”

  “That’s the question, Frank. Who are you trying to help? Who are you helping here?”

  The phone rang inside the house, but they both ignored it. Frank sat on his right hand so that it wouldn’t involuntarily curl its way around Ellie’s long, graceful neck and choke it. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. Do you know what it’s doing to Edna and Prakash to have you take over their son’s life?”

  “Edna and Prakash? I don’t believe this. You think either one of them has a clue about anything? Hell, if I could work with that boy for two years, he’d be MIT-bound, someday. Why doesn’t Prakash drink less if he cares so much for his son? And why doesn’t Edna stand up to him? All I’m trying to do is improve the kid’s life.”

  “That’s not all you’re trying to do.” The phone was ringing again, but this time they scarcely heard it. They were staring at each other, breathing heavily like boxers in a ring.

  “What—?”

  “Frank, Ramesh is not Ben—”

  “Shut up,” Frank interrupted. “Don’t say it. If you know what’s good for you, don’t say it.”

  Ellie stared at him for a long second. Then, as if she’d lost some battle, her shoulders sagged. “Okay.” She shrugged.

  But it was too late. She had stripped him naked, Frank thought. With four indiscreet words she had torn off his clothes, removed the layers of resisting muscle and skin, and gotten to his heart. His heart that had been so dead until a dark-haired, sharp-eyed Indian boy had restored a few of its beats. A boy he had grown close to precisely because he was the opposite of his dead son—dark-skinned in contrast to the light-skinned Benny, noisy and shiny where Ben had been serene and thoughtful. Ramesh was sunshine to Benny’s moonlight. Benny had been good at art and history and English and lousy at math and science; Ramesh declared that history was boring, that most books were too long to read, but was a natural at science and math. The first time Frank had helped Ramesh with his math homework, he was blown away by the boy’s smarts. Within months he had insisted that the boy be transferred to the missionary school and that he would pay the monthly fees. Edna had been grateful at the time.

  “Frank, I’m sorry.” Ellie’s voice was soft, muffled by the harsh patter of the rain. “I don’t want to hurt you. Dear God, we have to stop hurting each other like this. Please, hon. I don’t know how to do this alone.”

  He fought the urge to respond to the pleading in her voice. This time, Ellie had gotten too close, had left too deep a gash with her words. There was a time when he had thought of Ellie as his second self, someone who knew his deepest yearnings and thoughts. But everything that Ellie had given him—love, companionship, a home, and above all, Benny, holy God, above everything she had given him Benny—she had also taken away. Taken away by her carelessness, her thoughtlessness. He couldn’t forget that. And now she was doing it again, with Ramesh. With the only thing in his life that gave him any solace, any sense of normalcy in this chaotic country that Ellie had come to love and that he was constantly confused and repelled by.

  Well, he knew how to turn his heart into a rock. For most of his years with Ellie he had not needed to use that trick. She had softened him, made him believe that it was okay to lean on another person, to trust, to not carry himself in a constant state of war and wariness. In the years that they were a family all the old, ancient feelings—of being on guard, of believing that everything valuable had to be earned, that nothing was freely given, nothing was grace—all those feelings had vanished. But now he knew they had just gone below the surface. That he could access them, as easily as a file on an old computer.

  His father had walked out on them when he was twelve. But Gerald had lived with them long enough to teach his younger son some invaluable lessons. Of how to turn his eyes blank so that no hurt would show in them. Of how to swim deep within himself, and not bob to the surface until the storm of Gerald’s violenc
e had ebbed. Of how to turn his heart into a rock so that Gerald’s flinty, ugly words would bounce lightly off its surface.

  Frank called on that knowledge now. Ignored his wife’s upturned hand, not-seeing the sadness in her eyes or the heartbreaking curve of her mouth, not-hearing her plea for reconciliation, for going back to the way they used to be. Deliberately, he got up from the swing. “I’m going in,” he said.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Ramesh will be here soon, anyway.” He collected their coffee mugs, aware of Ellie’s eyes on him, knowing without looking the sadness and hurt and confusion that they held. It tore at him, this knowledge that he was responsible for the light going out of his wife’s eyes, but his grief was paradoxical—it seemed to abate only if he duplicated it in Ellie, only if he caused more of it. Any moment that he spent berating himself for what he was doing to Ellie was a moment he didn’t remember that he had to face the rest of his life without Benny.

  The phone rang again the instant he walked into the living room, and he glanced at the clock. Eight o’clock. Could be Ellie’s friend Nandita. Or Scott, for that matter. He remembered his earlier resolve to phone Scott tomorrow. Let it be Scott, he thought. He could take the call in the guest bedroom. Maybe Scott would say something that would allow him to approach Ellie again tonight, to salvage the evening.

  “Hello?” he said, and knew immediately from the texture of the connection that it wasn’t an overseas call.

  “Sir?” the voice at the other end said. “This is Gulab Singh. Sorry to disturb at home, sir, but there’s trouble at the factory.”

  Frank’s stomach muscles clenched involuntarily. “What kind of trouble?” He hoped it was nothing serious enough to require him to go in tonight even as he knew that Gulab, who was the head of security at the factory, would not have called him at home over a trivial matter.

  There was a pause, long enough for Frank to wonder if he’d lost the connection. Then Gulab said, “It’s about that union chap—Anand. You remember him, sir? Anyway, sir. Problem is—Anand is dead. Unfortunately.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Trouble’s coming.

  Frank had been gone for at least ten minutes, but still Ellie sat cross-legged on the swing. A dull fear was creeping up her limbs, but she was doing her best not to fan its flames, willing her mind to ignore what her body was trying to tell her. That trouble was on its way.

  A particularly rude clap of thunder shattered the cocoon of mindlessness that she had built for herself and jolted her back into the world. The road leading to the factory will be dark and muddy at this time, she thought. Even though Satish was an expert driver, she was worried. She thought of calling Frank to ask him to let her know when he arrived at the factory, but the memory of the ugliness of their fight stopped her. Also, something terribly serious must have happened for them to have disturbed Frank at this hour. He did not need an anxious wife to add to his troubles.

  She had had no time to ask him what was making him rush back to work so late in the evening. After he’d gone in to answer the phone, she’d heard him dial a second number—calling Satish to come pick him up, Ellie now surmised—and then she’d heard him fumble around in the bedroom before coming back to poke his head in the door and announce that he’d be gone for a few hours. She had merely nodded dully. A few minutes later, she heard the kitchen door slam and later, the sound of a car pulling out of the driveway at the side of the house.

  Now, she cocked her head to hear better her body’s fearful mutterings. What kind of trouble? she wondered. And was this a premonition or simply the sour aftertaste of the argument she’d had with Frank? What was frightening her so? Fear that Satish would make a wrong turn in the dark and that the car would spiral out of control? Fear that she and Frank were treading on dangerous ground, drifting apart, so that this grand experiment, this hope that India would heal them, would all be for naught? Ellie listened deeply to her body, the way she’d always advised her patients to. The body is wise, she’d often said to them. It often knows more—and sooner—than our brains do. But you have to learn how to listen to it, learn its language, the way you learn to understand an infant’s gobbledygook.

  But the rain and thunder were distracting her, throwing her off. The scent of the earth, the coolness of the rain-soaked air, the flashes of the lightning, were too overpowering, pulling her in too many different directions, like Benny used to when they went to the Michigan State Fair.

  Still, those two words, steady as a knock in the dark. Trouble’s coming.

  I wish Frank would settle the labor dispute already, she thought, and then she was backing into the source of her fear. Almost immediately, her body relaxed as if, having relayed its message to her brain, it could now take the evening off. But what the fuck could be so wrong that they had to call him at home tonight? She realized she’d said the words out loud, but the rain coming down so hard erased the distinction between thoughts and words. Besides, she was annoyed now at how abruptly Frank had left, withholding information from her, leaving her to rock restlessly on the swing, her earlier serenity replaced by agitation and fear. “Screw you, Frank,” she said loudly, making sure that the rain could not drown out her words.

  Fear had made her sit still; now, a simmering anger at Frank replaced it and it made her restless. She pushed the button on the large, cheap Timex men’s watch she had bought at Agni Bazaar last month, and its dial lit up in green. Eight twenty, it read. She thought quickly. If there was something going on at the factory, surely Shashi would’ve heard about it. As the owner of a large four-star hotel in the next town of Kanbar, Shashi employed the relatives of many of the men who worked for HerbalSolutions. And his wife, Nandita, Ellie’s best friend, also kept a close watch on the situation at HerbalSolutions. Shashi went to bed early, but Nandita would definitely be up. For the first time, Ellie was grateful that all the relaxation techniques she had taught Nandita to help with her insomnia had not taken.

  She had just gotten her feet into her slippers and was heading for the phone in the living room when she heard the timid knock on the door. She stopped. What the hell? And then she remembered. Of course. It was Ramesh, coming over to do his homework with Frank. In the unusual excitement of the phone call and Frank’s abrupt leaving, she had forgotten all about Ramesh.

  Before she could reach the kitchen, the door opened and Ramesh walked in. Ellie felt a mixture of bemusement and irritation. A few months ago, she had taught the boy that it was bad manners to walk into someone’s home without knocking. So now he knocked in a perfunctory manner and then let himself in. She was debating whether it was time for Lesson 2, but Ramesh had spotted her in the living room and, dropping his books on the blue-painted kitchen table, he skipped toward her. “Hi, Ellie.” He grinned. And before she could reply, “Where’s Frank? I’m having two tests tomorrow and so much homework.”

  No self-respecting American boy would look so gleeful at the thought of homework, Ellie thought. But then, she knew that the enthusiasm was not so much for the homework as for the bliss of spending another evening with his beloved Frank. She smiled ruefully to herself at the realization. Watching Frank and Ramesh together made her feel like the odd man out, like the third wheel, like—what was that Hindi expression Nandita used?—something to the effect of the bone in the meat kebab. So different from the close, joint-circuit feeling she used to have when she watched Frank and Benny indulge in their usual horseplay or when all three of them walked around their neighborhood together and Benny had eyes only for his father, playing tag with him, racing up Fair Hill with him, or playing that silly game where they counted the numbers on the license plates of passing cars to see if they added up to 21. They would cajole Ellie to join in, and she, wanting only to take a relaxed, leisurely evening walk, would refuse. And father and son would mock her for not being into competitive walking and climbing and counting. But somehow even their teasing, their mocking, included her, made her feel part of a triangle, valued, a straight man to the
ir clowning around.

  “Where’s Frank?” Ramesh said again, and she forced herself to pay attention to the boy.

  “He’s out, sweetie. I’m afraid he won’t be home until late tonight.”

  Ramesh looked outraged. “Where he go?”

  So direct, so blunt. It was a trait she had noticed in many of the Indians she’d come in contact with. Was there an Indian Miss Manners, she wondered, someone who could teach them the virtues of evasion, of subtlety, of telling the truth slant? But most of the time Ellie felt happy to be among people who did not play games, to whom the very expression “playing games” meant a vigorous game of hockey or cricket. A practical, literal people. Frank, she knew, was appalled by how bluntly his employees spoke, saw it as rudeness, crassness. And in the beginning she, too, was unnerved by it, by the lack of artifice, by the absence of the sheen of politeness that covered all interactions in America like Saran Wrap. Except for the clerks working in the fancy shops of Bombay, no one in India said inane things like “Have a nice day.” Once, soon after they’d moved to Girbaug, Ellie had told Edna to have a nice day and Edna had replied, “Only if God’s willing, madam, if God’s willing.” And Ellie had heard what Edna had not said—that having a nice day was not up to the will of mere mortals but depended upon the benevolence of a kind God. She had never used the expression again. And volunteering at NIRAL, the clinic that Nandita had started for the villagers, counseling the women about mental health and domestic violence issues, Ellie had grown to appreciate the direct, guileless way in which they spoke. Husbands were roaches and rats and kuttas, dogs. The women used words like Satan and evil casually and without irony. The ease with which they spoke about the devil and of evil reminded Ellie of the Christian fundamentalists in America, their vocabulary so different from that of Ellie and Frank’s liberal, secular friends in Ann Arbor. When the women in the village found out that a husband had gambled away his family’s life savings, they tracked down the man and removing their rubber slippers beat him with them. Last year, when a corrupt politician who had broken every promise had the audacity to visit their village before the next election, they had made a garland of their dirty, filthy slippers and placed it around his neck. The man tried to beat a hasty retreat to his air-conditioned car, but the mob of women chased him, hooting and hollering and jeering and hissing.