But what could she do? He was too far gone for her help. He stood from the chair, feeling only space between his ears. He didn’t know why he’d come here. “I have to go,” he said. She called after him, but he kept walking.
Outside, the sky was changing. The rain clouds separated from the sky. As Sunil stood motionless, the gray air became infused with a yellowy green light he’d seen only in the apocalyptic glow of movies. Insects hummed, and with each step, pain registered in every joint.
He thought of his father, of the times in his childhood when Premchand had disappeared wordlessly, leaving Sunil to bear the weight of his mother’s irascible temperament; and now, again, as an adult, he’d left, carrying so many unfinished sentences. He was bereft.
The terror his father must have felt in his final moments. The thought nearly knocked Sunil down. His father’s stubborn, oblivious, vulnerable head pressed against a merciless gun. Had he cried? Had he felt resignation, or even relief? Sunil was overcome by all that he couldn’t know and didn’t do, and he stood, weeping, on a busy corner outside the university gate.
Amy wore an apron and checked the lasagna in the oven. Monica had given them a set of kitchen knives as a wedding present, and Ariel had contributed the apron and a stack of cookbooks. Amy looked satisfied now, if not exactly back to her bouncy, goofy self, as if her acts had the power to renew.
Sunil found a corkscrew and popped open the wine. Amy took in his blotted face and embraced him tightly. Her neck smelled of soap and garlic. Her hands pressed into his back. “You miss him,” she said.
“I feel so bad for him. He must have been terrified.” Again his face swelled, tears escaped, and he sat down heavily.
Large pours for both of them.
There was nothing else for her to say, but he wanted more of her talk. More of all of her, to fill the room, press up against the walls, and squeeze everything else out.
She said, carefully, “No funding?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’ll have to move.” After so many stops and starts, he should be used to this feeling of obliteration. But he wasn’t, and no physical action, nothing he could say, could alleviate this guilty weight.
Amy lifted her glass and clinked it gently against his. “Not so fast. I have good news. I got a job today.”
“You did?” He hadn’t known she had an interview. It was just like her to quietly arrange things then surprise him. “Love, amazing!” He clinked glasses again, with more force, and the liquid sloshed. She’d run the numbers, rent and everything?
She had. She had figured in all their expenses. She’d not included his funding as income—she’d known there was a chance he’d lose it. Amy paused. “You still have to get your work done.”
“I know.”
“I’m serious. Not just for a job, but for you.”
For us, he thought. He nodded. “So what’s the job?”
“Executive assistant to a Blue Cross vice president. It will be useful to know how health insurance works from the inside.”
“Oh no.” He put down his glass. “You’re not taking a secretarial job. Not because of me. You worked hard for your degree.”
She served them generous squares of meaty, steaming noodles and wedges of steamed broccoli that smelled, as it always did, a little bit like garbage. She looked doubtfully at the plate she handed Sunil.
“I can eat it,” he said.
She took off her apron and sat, the picture of competence. “Everything from scratch, except the noodles.”
“Impressive,” he said. “But love, you shouldn’t take the job. It’s beneath your skills. You’ll hate it. And if it hasn’t happened already, you’re going to start resenting me and I’ll hate myself even more than I do now for putting you in this position.”
“I’m young. I can do a stupid job for a year. Lots of people do. And it will be useful.”
“No it won’t. And you know it won’t.” His stomach turned. This job would be bad for them. He could feel it. “You’ve already had a lot of lame jobs. Now it’s time for a good one. I don’t want you to lose hope by working in an insurance agency. Seriously, I’m worried about that.”
He saw that she knew she would be bored. She knew what she was signing up for. Amy saw the world clearly, without his warping idealism.
Still, it wasn’t right. It wouldn’t work. He said, “I’ll get a job. How’s that for innovation?”
“You? Like what? What do you have in mind? Making cappuccinos?” She had not yet tasted her food. Underneath one eye was a smudge of mascara. She was still wearing the pearl choker she’d worn to the interview, but had changed into a T-shirt and cotton skirt. One of her feet flip-flopped on the linoleum.
She was right, of course. Sunil had no bankable skills. He had only ever been a student. “I could teach, at a community college or something. I actually have some ability there, I think. Or, yeah, cappuccinos, why not?”
“Even community colleges require a PhD. You know that.” Amy left the kitchen to wash her face and head to bed. Work started tomorrow.
He did know. He also knew, as she did, that her proposal would allow them to stay together in this apartment for a while.
Water running, soaping plates and forks with an eroded sponge, lasagna pan soaking on the counter, Sunil imagined Amy not as he previously had, in a small, bright room of her own, her worn childhood thesaurus split open on her cluttered desk and a framed picture of their honeymoon on a nearby shelf, but burrowing through a sterile gray hallway lined with ringing phones, carrying coffee for some suited man. She waited patiently, nodding to a stream of instructions peppered with as soon as possible and personnel and productivity. He didn’t know what went on in an office, but it depressed him to imagine. Of course, Mr. Smith. Anything else, Mr. Smith?
Putting away the leftovers in the fridge, Sunil reached for a carton of eggs, but his fingers slipped and the whole mess thudded and cracked with a snapping sound that dredged up the breakage of the Blixen house porcelain. Of his father and him on their knees. In his helpless bare feet, Sunil now stepped viciously into the mess he had made, crushing the unbroken shells with his furious, hairless toes.
7.
The shortest distance, bedroom to teakettle, left Urmila grasping the counter for support. Wheezing. She slowed, drank tea, read the paper, too much television. She did not answer the phone, even early in the morning when the callers would only be her siblings.
Urmila left on the radio, and the windows open to hear the neighborhood. She did not enjoy American music; what she liked to hear was talk burbling through the house. By the end of the mourning days in Nairobi, Urmila had felt stifled, craved space to stretch her arms without hitting someone. Yet it was too quiet here, too still. She tossed the condolence cards, barely glancing at return addresses. Floral arrangements arrived from neighbors who’d seen the obituary. None, thankfully, from her Indian friends, who knew better, who knew that Jains treasured the soul of every living thing.
The cut flowers wilted, keeled, and began to rot. Only one gift flourished: the bleeding heart Maddy Forrester had sent, which greened and blossomed on the windowsill where it received morning sun. Urmila followed the plant’s care instructions scrupulously.
At the Asian market she bought little plastic trinkets for Raina, cute socks and reflective jewelry, but the items simply piled up on the mail table.
In one swift incident, cut off from both husband and son.
Of course she had not meant go away. She had not meant to reject him; she hadn’t known what she was saying. She shouldn’t have opened her mouth. But still, he should know better! What mother as strong and loving as she meant what she said in such a distressed moment? All the times her own parents had threatened and smacked her, he wouldn’t believe. But Sunil hadn’t spoken to her after what she’d said, even on the last day when she’d hug
ged him goodbye. She’d asked him to call her. But he’d looked away. Urmila had even reached out to Amy in a quick private moment, nearly pleading. But so far, silence.
At the end of June, Urmila resumed her routine at the store. As she was settling in, Sharon, who worked at the Gap, popped in: “Thank goodness, I thought you were never coming back!” The cashier at the Wok n’ Roll smiled: “Nice seeing you!” More friendliness in two days than in the previous decade. She thought it might be the result of pity, but they did not express condolences, did not appear to know anything of her loss.
Her first shipment from the new suppliers arrived in perfect condition. Flawless soapstone candlesticks. Kikoys and dashikis that had previously carried the odor of human hands were now folded and smelled of incense. Yet the newness, the orderliness, the timeliness were not the balm they should have been. The items did not sell, and each new shipment was another rebuke from that corrupt, violent country, the home that had forsaken her and murdered her husband. The perky wooden animals perched on the shelves, the sharp spears, the loud clothing, the dung-crusted jewelry—she hated it all. Every stitch, every drop of paint, every carving. Yet she could not give it up. The store was her engine. Had been for the past twelve years. And now would be even more so. Like the bleeding heart, it needed attention, and in giving it, she herself was nourished.
She wasn’t old enough for Social Security, and in a terrible blow Urmila discovered she had only Premchand’s pension to live on. When she got around to examining her stock portfolio, she found that she’d been cheated. The money had nearly vanished. She’d read something about a “bursting tech bubble,” but she’d assumed that, like so much economic news, it was exaggeration, that her own investments would be protected—the CNN advice had also been affirmed by their accountant friends, after all. She immediately sold the remaining stocks and transferred the cash to a savings account. She could not afford to let the money out of her sight.
During her long days at the store, she couldn’t buy more supplies or spend money, but she could clean. Spraying Windex, wiping in circular motions with a soft cloth, she remembered Bimal’s hospital room. Her sister-in-law had never apologized for kicking her out, but in the days after Premchand’s murder Mital had brought over a large bowl of rasmalai, strongly spiced, just how Urmila liked it. She ate all of the curd over the sleepless nights. Another day, Bimal brought Raina over and Urmila held the girl tight, walking in circles in the backyard. Braving the driveway, with its gun-wielding askari, was out of the question. She sang in Raina’s ear rhymes she hadn’t known she remembered: Mummy na bhai te Mama, Pappa na bhai te Kaka, Mama ni vau te Mami, Kaka ni vau te Kaki. Songs she’d sung to Sunil, too, not that he remembered.
One day late in the month, Urmila closed the shop early and drove to a suburb on the far side of the city. She passed Taste of India, where she used to eat years ago, before the store, back when she lunched regularly with a small group of women, East African Indian transplants like herself. But once she’d had her store to tend, it had not been convenient to come out in the middle of the day. She’d suggested moving their date to the weekend, but this conflicted with when the other women saw their children. They had to cook two days for Sunday night family dinner, a practice Urmila had abandoned long ago from lack of time but also because she felt it didn’t matter to either her husband or her son. This was one way, she thought ruefully, that she had become American, this and playing the stock market, losing out like everyone else.
Craning over the steering wheel, she slowed and sped up, trying to read the avenue numbers. Drivers leaned on their horns. One rolled down his window to swear. Another—a young girl with a high ponytail—smacked the back of her hand through the air as if across Urmila’s face. And she felt it, she felt the air move, her face burn. The last few weeks she’d been so low, hovering so close to the ground, no sound could rouse her. Now she screamed into the closed space of the car, the rebounding sound hitting back. The last time she’d cursed, facing down the dreadlocked dashiki thief in the mall in her bare feet, she’d been defending her property. Today she fought just to feel herself alive. And anyway, Americans screamed when they drove. She knew this. She’d seen it. Because sometimes they had been screaming at her.
Just like in her own shop, a doorbell echoed in the back as she stepped inside Always in Bloom, into clusters of woven baskets and ribbons, painted clay pots, cards, and colored envelopes. The strong, tropical perfume of lilies hit Urmila full on, reminding her of all the condolence flowers she’d received that had slowly decomposed in her dining room.
Maddy found Urmila leaning against the rose case, mascara running under her glasses. Maddy gently led her to the coffee shop next door. Ordered chai and coffee cake. She said soothing words that Urmila could not hear but whose tone she appreciated.
“I’m so glad you finally came to see me. I didn’t want to bother you at home, and during the day I’ve been so overwhelmed, though that’s not a good excuse.”
Urmila sipped the terrible chai and ate all of the cake.
Maddy looked different than Urmila remembered. In her mind, the woman was disheveled, in baggy clothes, skin splotchy like an infant. Hair only the suggestion of blonde with gray roots poking through. Today her hair was a bright, natural-looking yellow pulled back into a low, neat bun. Her skin shone a healthy pink. She wore a fitted V-neck sweater and black slacks that traced the outlines of her thighs.
Urmila shook her head. “You’re a good friend. The email you sent me in Nairobi made me cry. I received it the day he died.”
“Let me help you.” Maddy said. “What do you need?”
“Oh, today, just stopping by to say hello. To see that your business is booming and that you don’t need any help.”
Near their table, a mother bundled a baby into a carriage, but the baby fought back. Others talked on phones and typed into computers. Happy, occupied people.
“Things are busy, that’s for sure. I know they’re talking about the dot-com bust, but around here people still like to send flowers. I’m just so grateful, you know?”
Urmila stressed again how she desired to help Maddy, drawing on her many years of working in import and export, knowing the American market, but Maddy only nodded silently, not understanding. Nodding was sometimes the opposite of agreement, as Urmila had discovered talking to Amy, who nodded as if she was listening, but did not accept. Urmila finally came out with it: “I need to work more. You have something for me?”
The café’s cash register jammed and made a terrible cranking noise; the cashier muttered under her breath. Urmila had never asked for help from someone she was not related to. She didn’t know how it was done. She felt awkward and foreign, struck with a deep sense of unbelonging—her hair, her speech, even her way of sitting. Yet she hoped. Hoped she had understood this friendship.
She thought of Sarada, of the two of them and their cousin-sisters going in a gaggle to Whiteway and Laidlaw, where the ceiling and walls of the foyer were mirrors. They had stood underneath and looked up at themselves, skinny as pencils, their heads black erasers. They kicked their feet and whirled their arms, performing dandiya raas without the sticks, craning their necks to see themselves from as many angles as possible. “When you grow up, you’re going to look like the Pink Lady,” Urmila used to say to her sister, using their private name for the sketched, elegant woman in the choli advertisements. To Urmila, the girls said, “How will you get a husband if you scowl like that?” Once in a while, Urmila had stopped at Whiteway by herself during the quiet hours—when she was supposed to be studying at MacMillan Library—to practice her demure look. She pinched and stretched her cheeks to soften them, rubbed her lips to red. Tried to appear as others wanted and expected.
Maddy shrugged back into the plastic chair, her hands loose and open on her lap. “Oh, honey. Oh. The shop is still so new.”
Shame tunneled down into her body like a frantic anima
l. Urmila stood and gathered her purse, said thank you too many times.
“What did you have in mind?” Maddy said. “Please sit down. Talk to me.”
Urmila stood still, had not managed to gracefully exit. “I am just saying that I have some experience you are missing. I could be helpful to you.”
Maddy was quiet for some time. She then explained that she’d taken out a loan for a large greenhouse. But it would be built slowly, over the next couple of years. “Right now I have only one employee. She’s going back to school at the end of the month and I’ll need to replace her, but, Urmila, I pay her minimum wage.” For twenty-five hours a week, the girl took home $168.25.
“How can I run my shop if I’m over here twenty-five hours a week?”
“I don’t think you can.”
“When they gave me the bank loan for the store, I felt like a citizen. The American dream, you know?” Urmila’s knees trembled. “Mostly we used our savings, but I wanted to do the application. Recognition from the bank. He didn’t understand. He was already a part of it. My son is the same way, not seeing how lucky they are. Men, I am talking about.” So small already, she shrank more. “My husband leaves me nothing, savings have disappeared; my son, too, has abandoned.”
Maddy looked down at Urmila’s hands as if to take them in her own. Some part of her wanted to be touched, but Urmila clasped her wrists behind her back. The mother with the baby had succeeded in strapping it down into the carriage. Its face was red, but it was no longer screaming. Despite the warm day, the mother spread a blanket over its squirming body.
“I felt the same way when I was going through my divorce. The house was falling down around me, there was green mold all over the basement, and I thought nobody cared, that I would have to do everything myself.” Maddy sat forward, looked up at Urmila with clear, blue eyes. “Listen to me. We’ll figure it out, I’ll help you. I know that right now you have two big expenses, the store and the house.” She was saying Urmila couldn’t afford to keep both.
The Limits of the World Page 20