The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel

by Mira Jacob

  CHAPTER 2

  The next morning, the pounding would not stop.

  “Hullo? Ami? Hullo?” Fattened through the fish-eye lens, Sanji’s nose had turned into its own island of sorts, as craggy and pockmarked as any dotting the South Pacific in recent millennia. Her eyes, in comparison, were hard, distant stars. She turned her head, blinking rapidly into the peephole, and rang the doorbell again.

  “Who is it?” Amina stalled.

  “Surely you are not pretending that you haven’t been staring at me for the last half minute?”

  Amina opened the door. “Hi, Sanji Auntie.”

  Cool, flabby arms squeezed her around the middle hard, more a Heimlich than an actual greeting. She peered behind Amina to the empty hallway. “So? Where are your parents?”

  “Running a few errands.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. They didn’t tell me.”

  Sanji tugged her ear sharply. “Liar!”

  “Ow!”

  “They are in the hospital itself! Bala called me half an hour ago saying Chacko called her and your parents were checking in for some scans! Are you people going to talk to us or what? Because if you aren’t, we would like to know right now and be done with it!” Sanji breathed hard, dabbing at her upper lip with her chuni.

  “Done with it?” Amina asked skeptically, but her aunt’s glare was unrelenting. She shifted tactics. “How did Chacko Uncle know it was a scan?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Amina raised her eyebrow.

  “Well, of course he snooped around!” Sanji bellowed, incredulous. “You think that is some problem? One month and we haven’t heard one word from any of you, and now you want to talk patient-doctor confidentiality nonsense? Really?”

  Really, Amina did not. Really, she wanted to shut the door and go back upstairs, to try to get a handle on what she would need to shoot the Lucero wedding that weekend, or maybe just not think about anything at all.

  “Well, don’t just stand there looking pathetic,” Sanji ordered. “Give me some tea.”

  They walked back to the kitchen. Amina motioned to a counter stool, and Sanji took it, fluffing herself up and resettling like a pigeon in an airshaft.

  “Caffeinated okay?” Amina asked.

  “Decaf is for children and Americans.”

  The cabinet was stocked like a bunker, Typhoos, Red Labels, Darjeelings, and Assams packed tightly. Amina wiggled a box loose. “Dessert?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Mom made a crème caramel.”

  Sanji sniffed suspiciously at this information. “Just a bit, please.”

  Amina found the right Tupperware, spooned a generous amount into a dish, and handed it to her aunt, who was frowning at Amina’s hips.

  “Looking too thin, Ami.”

  “Am I?” Amina looked down in surprise. “Weird.”

  “Weird.” Sanji snorted. “My God, what I would eat with your no-tummy tummy! Pastries! Villages!”

  Amina turned toward the stove, adjusting the kettle and watching Sanji eat the crème caramel through the reflection in the microwave oven. It was actually nice to have her in the house, her solid, shouty anger a relief from all the other, undirected craziness.

  Milk, sugar, a bowl of mixture, two spoons, two mugs of tea. A minute later Amina set everything on the counter between them and sat down, instantly more jittery, like there was a panic button on her ass. She watched the cream cloud the tea and stirred as slowly as possible.

  “Ami?”

  She looked up, surprised by the reciprocal nervousness in her aunt’s face. “You’re okay, baby?”

  “I just don’t really know how to start.”

  “Perhaps the beginning?”

  There was a crack in the wall behind Sanji’s head. Amina watched it and said, “Dad has a brain tumor. He’s been undergoing radiation for a few weeks, and now he’s getting another scan to see if it’s helping. He can’t work because he’s seeing things that aren’t there.”

  Sanji’s face did not move. The rest of her did not move, either.

  “Brain tumor?” she repeated.

  Amina nodded.

  Sanji clapped a firm hand over her own mouth, but not before a gasp escaped, stabbing the air in a way that made Amina not want to breathe, for fear that the feeling was contagious.

  “It’s a glioma,” Amina continued after a moment, partly for clarity and partly to sop up the shocked silence seeping from her aunt. Couldn’t she just say something? Offer some twitch of reassurance? Several seconds slid by, each more damning than the last.

  “We’re taking care of it,” Amina added in desperation, and at last her aunt responded.

  “Oh, baby! Oh no!” Sanji lunged across the counter toward her and was bounced back by her breasts twice before she jumped out of her seat and just came around. Her hug was swift and brutal, a punch of perfume tinged with slight body odor. She stroked Amina’s back manically. “You poor girl! My gods, and I came here yelling at you!” She pulled back, patting a thick hand over Amina’s face. “Are you okay? Of course you’re not, all alone with this! Oh, why didn’t I just listen? Of course it wouldn’t be some simple-simple thing! Chacko himself said it must be bad, and Raj said no, Thomas would of course tell us, and then Bala said one of her sisters only told her last month itself about some lump in her breast five years ago—can you imagine? But then again, what does one hope to get from a far-away sister in that situation? Not like family in the same city, no? Where we can all take care of each other?” She looked beseechingly at Amina.

  “We didn’t want to worry anyone.”

  Her aunt was nodding before she could even finish. “Yes, yes, of course. And Mummy? How is she?”

  “Hard to tell.”

  “Ach.” Sanji squeezed Amina’s elbow. “Must be a terrible shock.”

  “I don’t know. I mean, part of me thinks that must be what it is, but after that first day, she hasn’t really talked about it, either. I think she just thinks he’s going to be okay.”

  Sanji’s eyes filled with worry. “It’s bad?”

  “That’s what Dr. George said.”

  “Anyan George? That young fellow?”

  “Yes,” Amina said, confused about whether this was an accusation of some sort. “And the radiologist.”

  “My gods,” Sanji whispered again, shaking her head. “And you, baby? How are you doing?” Amina shrugged, and Sanji kneaded her arms like they were dough. “Pish! What am I saying? Of course you are not okay! All this horrible business and no one to shoulder the burden! And now your mother has gone off and made French foods!”

  “It’s fine,” Amina said miserably, and Sanji squeezed harder.

  “But I don’t understand why you didn’t just call us. Not wanting to bother? Must have been terrible, all this testing and waiting without anyone else to help! We would have been there!”

  “Dad wasn’t up to it, and I just felt …” Amina shook her head, suddenly claustrophobic. She pushed back from Sanji, taking a deep breath. “Anyway, there’s not really much you can do.”

  Sanji tugged her own nose, looking perplexed. “And you say he’s seeing things?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What things?”

  “Just, you know.” Amina shifted. “Like, hallucinations.”

  “Rabbits?”

  “What? No, people. His family in India.”

  Sanji’s mouth fell open. “The ones who burned up in the fire?”

  “Yes. Although not just them. Apparently he had an incident at the hospital, which is part of the reason he’s not working for right now.” Amina stopped talking, wanting to tell Sanji about the previous night’s findings and yet feeling protective of her father’s standing in the family. What if Raj and Chacko thought less of him? What if Bala couldn’t keep her mouth shut?

  Sanji looked at her watch. “So they will be there all morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good.” She looked
around the kitchen and as if checking off an item on a to-do list, shoved one last good bite of crème caramel in. “So I’ll just go sit with them.”

  “Wait, now?”

  “Of course!”

  “But … well … I mean, they don’t know you know. I’m not sure if they want anyone to—”

  “Too bad! I’m going. And when the others know, they will come, too. Enough is enough. One more month hiding and you’ll all be mad, no? And then where will we be?”

  “But Sanji Auntie—”

  “No buting! You really think they will be so upset? Ridiculous!”

  “I just think—”

  “No thinking! Amina Eapen, you listen to me, okay? We are all we have here. Do you understand? That is it. And we can all talk about old times and Campa Cola and wouldn’t it be nice if we could go back, but none of us ever want to go back. To what? To who? Our own families can’t even stand us for longer than a few days! No, we are home already, like it or not, and that’s how we …” Sanji gulped furiously. “Your parents,” she began again, her voice trembling. “They welcomed us, no? Raj and I, all those one million years ago. Didn’t give one sticky fig who we were or where we came from, just invited us over for samosas and tea, and poof! Instant family. Bond made! And like that we’ll go on, nah?” She turned abruptly and began walking to the door, leaving Amina to follow. “So I will go and call later. And I’ll talk to Raj and Chacko and Bala, and don’t worry, I will tell her to keep her mouth shut for the sake of all involved. You’ve told Dimple?”

  “Not yet. I will.”

  “Do it today, okay? She should know. It’s not good to shut everyone out this way.”

  They had reached the door, and Sanji tugged it open, squinting into the flat midday light. She turned to Amina, folding her into one last hug before making her way down the stairs and back to the car she had left stranded in the middle of the driveway.

  Back up in her room, Amina looked out the window to the yard below, acutely aware of how quiet the house had grown. Lately, with Thomas not working and Kamala trying her hand at puff pastry, there was almost always someone around, someone shuffling below and making it feel like even if they weren’t quite in sync, they were a team of sorts, a little tight unit. Now, with Sanji on her way to the hospital, Amina was alone with the unease of having brought the others into the mix. It wasn’t that she doubted their love or intentions, but the weight of that love would be no small thing. What would they do with everyone else’s worry on top of their own? Thomas did not weather other people’s concern well. He was not going to be happy with her.

  She missed making her father happy. The realization came to her whole, like an egg dropped into a waiting palm, and she turned it over, surprised and embarrassed by its familiarity. For years, she had banked on being the person her father kept closest, but now, with her parents at the hospital while she hid in the house, she had to admit that this was no longer true. It had been weeks since Thomas had invited her onto the porch, and longer since she had seen him relax in her company. And while she knew he wasn’t petty enough to blame her for his diagnosis, she also knew that getting him to the doctor had tainted her somehow, leaving her outside his confidence. She chafed at the memory of the day before, his sullen look on the porch, the way she had kept hammering questions at him, as though that would have worked. And then Kamala, of all people, doing the right thing.

  The phone rang, startling her. She stared at it for a moment before picking it up.

  “We need to talk.” It was Dimple, sounding, if not frantic, then breathy, like she had just gone for a jog for the first time in thirty years.

  “Hey. Good. Yes.”

  “Good?”

  “No, not good. I just mean, good that you called. I was going to call you. We need to talk.”

  “I know.” Dimple hesitated. “Wait. Do you know?”

  The other line beeped. “Shit, can you hold on, Dimple? It’s probably my parents.”

  “No, wait—”

  “Just a sec.” Amina clicked over. “Hello?”

  “YOU LYING SHIT!”

  Amina’s heart skittered. “Jane?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Amina’s mind raced, her pulse beating uncomfortably fast. “You don’t like the quinceañera pictures?”

  “Don’t be coy with me, sweetheart. It doesn’t suit either of us.”

  “Jane, wait, just hold, okay?” Amina swallowed whole words, trying not to sound as scared as she felt. “I’m not sure what—but—can—let me just get off the other line.”

  “Don’t you DARE fucking—”

  She clicked over, the silence a welcome foxhole.

  “Ami?” Dimple asked. “Is that you?”

  “Holy crap.”

  “What?”

  “It’s Jane. She’s pissed. I’ve gotta call you back.”

  “NO! Talk to me first.”

  “What?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Later, Dimple, she’s—” Jane hung up, the sound of her disconnection sending a flare across the murk of Amina’s confusion. “Wait. Why is Jane yelling at me?”

  “Well, first of all, Jane needs to calm down and understand that—”

  “WHY IS JANE YELLING AT ME?”

  “Because she thinks the show is bad for business. Okay. So.” Dimple paused. “I went ahead and had ten of your prints matted and framed. I’m showing them with Charles White.”

  “What?”

  “Occasional accidental, the everyday tragedy.”

  The panic that filled Amina was both swift and unexpected, like stepping in a puddle and getting caught in a riptide. Her legs shook. She looked down at her knees and then up at her hand, which had locked around one of the bedposts.

  “Occasional slash accidental colon, documenting the everyday tragedy,” Dimple clarified.

  Amina squeezed the bedpost harder. “You …?”

  “Stop. Please don’t panic. It’s going to be amazing.”

  “You can’t do it.”

  “Of course I can.”

  “No, you can’t. She’ll kill me. I promised.”

  “No you didn’t. Not in writing.”

  “What?”

  “I checked.”

  Checked? Amina’s eyes spun around the bedroom. “Dimple, I told her I wouldn’t even take them. It will kill her business.”

  “Oh, c’mon. Is that what she told you?”

  “She’s right! People don’t want to see their bad shit memorialized—not by the hired help! What were you thinking? Oh my God, she’s going to sue me.”

  “She can’t sue you. I mean, she can, but she won’t win. They’re not her pictures.”

  “Yes they are.”

  “No, they are not. Jane doesn’t own the rights if the clients have bought their negatives. So as long as the clients sign the release, we’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Amina blinked, stunned. “You can’t really believe that.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “She took me in, Dimple. She trained me.”

  “Oh Jesus. You’re not going to, like, recite the entire script for The Color of Money, are you? Because the whole rookie-screws-the-master thing is played out. She didn’t teach you shit about taking these kinds of pictures. This is what you do. This is what you’ve always done. Jane doesn’t want anyone to see your best work? Fine. That’s her business. But it can’t be yours.”

  “They’re her clients. They’ll never use her again if they see them.”

  “That’s not what Lesley Beale says.”

  It felt like years since Amina had even thought about the Seattle socialite. “What the hell does Lesley have to do with it?”

  “I went to your office to see if there were more photographs, and found the one in the manila envelope on your desk. The naked bridesmaid on the coats with Brock Beale? Holy fucking hell. Amazing. The grimace on his face. It might actually be my favorite.”

  “Oh my God.” Amina sat on t
he bed. “What have you done?”

  “Stop acting like it’s bad, will you? I’ve gotten the permission to show your work from the clients who own the negatives.”

  “You showed Lesley that picture?” Her throat felt hot and vomity. “Yes, obviously. I had to. She loved it, by the way. I mean, are you kidding? And we can talk all day about her art history degree and the ‘truth of vision’ and the ‘integrity of the moment’—which we did, by the way, and which I might actually agree with if agreeing with that woman didn’t make me want to drive a stake through my own heart—but make no mistake: That photo is the best thing that could have ever happened to her claim to the Beale fortune, and she knows it. She wants it up. She wants the whole fucking show up so it doesn’t look like the vendetta it is. Why do you think she’s helping us?”

  “Lesley’s getting a divorce?”

  “Oh, right, you missed that. Yeah, it’s big news out here. Apparently that douchebag has been screwing half of the—”

  “Helping you?”

  “Us, Amina, she’s helping us. She’s calling the clients personally. Talking about the value of art, the honor of honesty, the exclusivity of being included, blah blah blah. Honestly, who fucking cares what she’s saying? It’s working. We’ve gotten six out of ten permissions so far. We just need to—”

  “No. Stop. I’m not going to do it.”

  “Because of Jane?”

  “Yes, because of Jane!”

  “So take her out of it. What’s she going to do to you?”

  “I am not getting fired over this!”

  “Amina,” Dimple said, taking a breath. “You’re already fired.”

  “That’s not true.” She knew even as she said it that it probably was. Dimple was a bully, not a liar, and more to the point, it felt inevitable. Didn’t she always know Jane was going to find out and fire her? Wasn’t it exactly what she had feared every time she got another print?

  “She told her staff,” Dimple said. “Apparently there was some kind of shakedown over there this morning. She’s trying to figure out who else knew.”

  Amina hunched over, riding out the fresh wave of guilt that crashed over her. Had Jane sniffed Jose out, found evidence of his prints? “Did she fire anyone else?”