Sunil sprinted to the edge of the yard and kept going, across the next yard and the next, dogs lunging at leashes, cars braking suddenly and drivers swearing, anger whipping in his wake like hungry flames, afraid if he stopped or even slowed his intestines would unclench and release everywhere. He had never tested well in the timed mile in gym, and he’d chosen today shoes with worn, slippery bottoms instead of sneakers, but he ran as if it were his singular gift. He skirted mothers and sons and sisters and giggling girls. He didn’t care if they laughed. More dogs on leashes, a stroller, two strollers, and then the sidewalk ended and gave way to a main road and still he sprinted, kicking up pebbles. After many minutes—ten? fifteen? twenty?—his thighs ached intensely, his ribs collapsed into his chest, and he scoped out fences and parking lots and gas pumps. Where could he hide?
Soon he ran out of steam and fell, spent, bottomed out, treads-worn-down-to-the-foot-balls, against the wall of a Kroger’s.
The cashier came out. Clara, her name tag said. Pink-streaked hair cut across her eyes; she stepped over him on her way to the bathroom around back, then looked again at his dirt-lined face, grass-stained knees, and changed her mind. Went back inside. Emerged with Orange Crush, handing it over wordlessly.
He savored the soda, tasting it gently, furtively. His gratitude was bottomless. He dared not set it down on the ground but wrapped his fingers tightly around the can and enjoyed the sweetness sip by sip, until his mother found him.
Ramesh Uncle was driving. He looked as if he didn’t know if he should scold or laugh. “Never have I seen a boy who hates mowing lawns so much he runs away!”
His mother got out of the car. Her pants swished furiously. Time grew shorter, and shorter still. He was too tired to run any farther. He’d have to learn both Gujarati and Swahili in a hurry. Who would he live with? Would he even recognize his relatives at the airport? His mother’s face melted then reformed, sharpened. Then she grabbed his collar and he could smell the coconut oil in her hair. “What is wrong with you? Just after I praise you to the skies for the job you did on our grass? Ramesh Uncle calls and asks for some help and then you run away like a scoundrel thief!”
“You said you were sending me to Nairobi.”
“Just a little joking!”
Sunil felt sick to his stomach. “I didn’t know,” he whispered, and collapsed further into himself.
“Come now, Urmilabhen, take the boy to play,” said Ramesh Uncle. “Look, he is terrified, like we have tried to kidnap him.” He swished his hand through Sunil’s hair.
His mother was caught. She thought the boys at his school unserious, bad influences, and the arcade games too violent. “Okay, first you mow the lawn, then I take you to the mall.”
“Forget about the lawn,” Ramesh said. “I have two perfectly good legs.”
His mother sighed and gave in.
But Sunil couldn’t imagine facing Chris Altman now, after his mother made him so late. There was no way to explain, and Chris Altman never called again.
That night, Sunil sat in continued misery at the end of the dining table and watched his father eat. With one hand, he flipped the pages of the paper and nimbly ate with the other. Adam’s apple rose and fell. Once his father looked up to catch his son’s gaze and nodded politely, like to a stranger on a train.
After dinner, Amy perched quietly on the edge of a chair in the sitting room while the women chatted in Gujarati. He tried to catch her eye, he wanted to somehow telegraph: Go ahead, interrupt, but she was looking intently at his mother and aunt, as if trying to follow along.
Beside him, his father traced the rim of a glass with his finger. “This traveling,” he said, “it is exhausting. You are really not too tired?”
“I am. Wired, too. Being here feels very strange.”
The television turned on in the next room. “Probably they are watching the cricket match,” his father said. “Sri Lanka versus Zimbabwe. Go join your cousins. No need to stay here and talk with me.”
“But Dad, I haven’t seen you in two years. I want to stay here with you.”
“Has it been that long?” His eyebrows lifted.
“Yes. It has.”
Sunil glanced back and forth between his mother’s animation and his father’s stillness. Which of these had been funneled to Bimal? Which of them had he, Sunil, become? Who was Sunil compared to his brother, other than the lesser son?
“How is school?” his father asked.
Sunil was glad he asked, but he realized he wasn’t ready to talk about the problems with his dissertation. “Remember when I called to tell you I’d quit pre-med? I was so worried you’d be upset.”
“What makes you think of that?”
“When I see you I remember how I wanted to try and be like you.”
“Why would I have been upset?”
“Because I rejected your career. After failing at the most basic things. I still don’t know if I can succeed in philosophy. It might be years before I even have a job.”
Premchand shook his head. “Medicine is not for everyone. We just want you to be happy.”
Meena’s brother Nikhil came to fetch them then, putting Sunil on the floor and Premchand in a chair carried in from another room. All the men were now watching the game while his female cousins, mother, aunt, and Amy remained in the sitting room with the tea and the barfi, their voices carrying laughter and admonishments, Gujarati and English bleeding into each other, dominating and receding. His childhood returned to him powerfully in this heady mix of sounds and smells. But Bimal, his hopeful ally, was not here, causing a spring of worry despite the reassurances that he was improving.
On the television, Sri Lanka was bowling. Sunil had loved playing cricket with his cousins; it was the most fun he’d had in Nairobi. The matches ran for days, a lot of easy taunting. The grass was green and lush, the pitch a rectangle with the boundary marked by rope. Sunil was a better bowler than batsman. His aim was sharp and his fingers liked the hard leather seams. Except that in cricket, Sunil liked to take a long run-up and rely on speed and strength. Bimal also bowled, but he was a spinner, tossing the ball in a high, deceptive arc.
His cousins cheered, and Nikhil turned to smile encouragingly at Sunil. Sunil smiled weakly back, his head nearly too heavy to move. The room shifted if he looked around too quickly.
During a commercial he whispered to his father, “What about my grandfather—how come he isn’t here? Isn’t he the oldest one left?”
“Better ask your mother. She says he is suffering from dementia. We have not seen him.” Then his father pulled a small shiny object from his pocket and spun it in his fingers. Brought it to his lips then put it back in his pants.
“And when are we going to talk about Bimal? Can’t you imagine that it’s eating me up?”
His father looked at him with concern, almost pity, and said, “Yes, I can imagine. But again we have to wait for your mother.”
“Are you saying it was her decision not to tell me?”
His father shook his head. “No, that is not what I am saying.”
Sunil could see his father would not say more tonight. “Can I tell you something then, Dad? Something true. I’m finally happy. I got married and I’m in love with her.”
Premchand smiled with genuine pleasure then, the silvery hair of his eyebrows flickering like little stars in the glow of the TV.
The day they married, Sunil had surged with joy. The morning after his mother’s call, they woke early, called City Hall, and summoned Amy’s sister from DC. Air crisp, sky cloud-tufted, a cream of yellow light over the first tree buds. Monica had brought her sister a silver-blue backless dress and pulled Amy’s hair back into a single sweep tacked in place with pins. That neck. Those ears. Amy looked pearly like the secret interior of a shell.
Sunil had worn a pinstriped jacket and a stain-covering silk tie, both borrow
ed from Andrew. He and Amy held hands before a judge. “Tether me,” he said to Amy. “Or I’ll float away.”
“With pleasure.” He felt her hold him fast with her eyes and hands, her knobby knees.
Promises exchanged, they signed the paper absorbing their damp fingerprints. After a round of scorchingly expensive whiskeys, also courtesy of Andrew, at a bar near the courthouse, Monica took the newlyweds to a fancy French restaurant. Sunil had pointed, open-mouthed, at the prices.
The sisters had laughed. Amy kissed him. Champagne and hot, crusty bread. The women chatted and shifted comfortably in the cushioned chairs. Monica and Amy knew silverware rules and how to toast in several languages. The birthday parties and Diwali buffets of Sunil’s childhood were in the dingy basements of community centers. His parents and their friends didn’t drink. He felt momentarily lost at his own wedding dinner, as if he lacked the tools to celebrate, to join the world of adults. But all he had to do was find Amy’s face. “I’m your beacon,” she said, tipsily. She was ready to lead them, because she knew how life should be lived.
Everything glowed. The blue plates, the wine, the creamy foie gras with cherry sauce, all of it shocking Sunil’s tongue, which had grown accustomed to peanut butter sandwiches, fried eggs, and Indian takeout.
In the mirror behind Monica’s head, Sunil had caught sight of his father’s straight nose and brown-black eyes against the white of his shirt. White was a good color for his skin, dark brown with hues of purple. Like Indian corn, Amy said—the other Indians. With the backs of his fingers he brushed her yellow-pink arms. He wanted to put his mouth in every fold of her skin.
Amy said, “Husband, you look like you’re in shock. Let’s have a smile. A joke.”
“A philosophy joke? How about the one about the dog from Minsk.”
She rolled her eyes. “Definitely not. It’s a crime to even call that set of words a joke.”
“It’s so sad,” he said. “You just don’t get me.”
“That’s the wrong inference, my love.”
Monica watched them, smiling, shaking her head. “You dorks are made for each other.” Monica, who had brown curly hair and hazel eyes, looked far more Jewish than Amy, but the sisters resembled each other around the nose and mouth. For hammy laughs, they made wild, exaggerated faces, stretching their jaws and tongues and throwing their eyes into corners.
Monica said, “Mom and Dad are going to be furious with me.”
“Because you should have stopped us?” Sunil said.
“No, you’re right. They’ll be furious with you. I don’t envy you breaking the news.”
The Kauffmans were back from Jerusalem on Friday. On Sunday, Amy and Sunil would visit them, then fly from DC to Nairobi.
“I keep going over how to put it,” Amy said. “Truthful but not hurtful.” She flipped over a fork in her fingers, then pressed the tines, hard, into the spotless tablecloth.
Monica took her sister’s hand in hers, then pressed a palm on Sunil’s to form a warm triangle of love. A family.
Amy shook her head. “I didn’t know that acting on your own—being an adult, I guess—meant disappointing your parents, even if they disappointed you first.” He saw how much this pained her, this mutual disappointment; it drew down the corners of her eyes. In this moment, Sunil loved her more intensely than he’d thought possible. What she’d said about her parents wasn’t meant to be a bold strike, or a bid for sympathy. She was saying exactly what she meant, putting it in a way he’d vaguely sensed but hadn’t had words to say. This was how they would learn from each other, grow together.
The restaurant door opened, and the cool spring air, which they’d been ahead of all day, now caught up to them. Thin blades across their bare throats. “It’s inevitable,” Sunil said. “That disappointment.”
Amy looked unconvinced.
“And your parents?” Monica said. “I guess we already know your mother’s reaction.”
“At least Amy isn’t black,” he said.
Monica looked shocked.
He grinned, playing with Monica’s discomfort. “From her point of view, I mean.”
She shook her head, skeptically. “Sunil, be serious. Did they ask you that?”
In Kenya, there was no mixing. It wasn’t tolerated, he explained. “When my mom asked me what kind of family Amy came from, I think she was relieved by the answer. She said that Jews put their kids’ education first, just like Indians, which is ironic, given my mom doesn’t even want me in graduate school.”
“She’s just worried you won’t finish,” Amy said. “That’s how parents are. Philosophy isn’t exactly a sure thing.”
He was thirty; how could it still hurt him that his mother didn’t believe in him, didn’t ask him questions about school, still asked what was wrong with being a doctor like his father? He knew she didn’t talk about him with her friends because whenever he was home they said, “What are you doing with yourself these days?” But what, really, could he complain about? The other Indian kids he grew up with, they were still leashed, fulfilling their parents’ scripts. He was doing what he wanted, his father helped him out, he’d married a woman he loved. He would finish school, get a job; Amy too, a good one. They’d be happy.
“Another toast!” Monica said.
“To choices,” Amy said.
On the second floor of Sarada Aunty’s house, Amy washed her face and brushed her teeth, but she did not get into bed. His mother had cornered Amy after dinner. “She said I need to warm your cold shoulder.”
His stomach lurched. “What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t know where to begin. What she said was so vague.”
“That’s how she talks. You have to pin her down. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to her.”
“No,” she said. “Let it go. We agreed to give it a few days, remember? She’s obviously stressed. Her words just feel so intense—there’s this emotional tidal wave behind them.” Amy tugged at her cuff. “She loaned me this sweater.” An acrylic brown cardigan with fake pearl buttons. She glanced around the tall-ceilinged room. “It’s a big house. Big piece of property. I think I was expecting an apartment, or—I’m not sure what I expected.”
Sunil listened and did not push her.
Amy changed into thin cotton pajamas and put the sweater back on. “I like your aunt. She asked about my degree, though she seemed to think the jobs I applied for are unpaid because they’re at nonprofits. You know, I should hear back from the Welcome Group soon. Is there anywhere I can check my email?”
Sunil thought most of the jobs Amy had applied for were beneath her skills, and some of the places were so underfunded they didn’t even know if they’d have a job for her, but she was optimistic—about the Welcomers in particular. They had been excited about Amy, her grad-school-fresh skills, and she thought she could improve their data gathering and community outreach.
Sunil squirted toothpaste on his finger and rubbed it around his mouth, too tired to walk down the hall to the bathroom they shared with his parents. “I’m sure they have a computer. We’ll ask. You can’t just wander around Nairobi, it’s not safe.” He patted the bed. “Let’s get some sleep.”
The night was cold, the linens rough. Despite their fatigue they kept turning, pulling the sheets and blankets in opposite directions. They tried to press close, his arms around her, which felt good but didn’t help them sleep. Sunil repeatedly woke to unfamiliar walls papered with pictures of flower-strewn Indian temples, family photos taken on a beach with palm trees, and strangely patterned ceilings. Creaks in the floorboards, in the walls, startled him. Shook him, again, into this new-old part of the world. He reached for Amy and found her warm arm. He imagined them as old as his parents, loosely holding each other’s wrinkled hands.
This morning, the sun was out, and Amy’s side
of the bed was empty. At the window, she cupped her hands around her eyes, and he thought of all the mornings he’d woken up to her, her hands cool, the tip of her nose and toes touched with red.
My love her name is Amy, and she is in Nay-roh-bee, he began to sing, but then he stopped. Not here, he thought. His silly songs were for home.
Here was the smell of hot milk, of cumin. Air-conditioning buzz punctuated by car horns. At home they kept the windows open. They heard bicycle bells ringing up from the sidewalk. Sounds that drew him to the window in a welcome break from his work.
Before they left Cambridge, James had given Sunil an extension—a final extension. A chapter of his dissertation was now due two weeks after they returned from Nairobi.
But Sunil had no idea how he was going to continue writing. There was the age-old problem of getting something wholly new down on paper, but even more worrisome were the implications of his view: the conclusion that if there are moral truths, we can’t know them. Maybe not as stark a conclusion as Mackie or Nietzsche, not all the way to nihilism, but just as bad. For all we knew, evolution had foisted on us the powerful illusion that there was a moral reality in the first place. This was unpalatable to someone who felt justified in holding himself and others accountable, as Sunil did, and with more fervor than many.
The day before he and Amy had left for DC, Sunil visited Lieberman. He wanted her to tell him how he could shake the paralyzing skepticism. He sat in a chair in her office, its walls newly painted yellow. In one corner was a small shelf supporting an abstract swirl of blue glass. Her father was a glass-blower who made only useful things, she had told him. This was the only piece of art he’d ever produced. “I like it because it looks melting—molten, this is the word. And in Israel, it’s all desert. Things dry up but they do not melt. My father had an imagination after all.”
It had never occurred to Sunil to wonder if his father had an imagination. His father was nothing like that loop of colored glass; his father was the neat tiny shelf hammered into the wall.
The Limits of the World Page 9