She brushed her hair from her creased cheeks and faced the ocean warily. She’d slept for almost ten hours. “A second honeymoon,” she said.
But it wasn’t a honeymoon. It was the opposite. It was a separation gift, the last they’d see of each other for a while—they didn’t know how long. When Sunil had called Ariel back, to deliver up her daughter, she’d given them a long weekend on the Cape. She’d already made nonrefundable reservations, so Sunil couldn’t refuse.
Doors opened and closed, and water rushed through old pipes. At the breakfast bar, Sunil met an older woman from Philadelphia who told him it was going to rain tomorrow, so he and his lovely wife should enjoy the beaches today. How had she pieced him and Amy together? He was momentarily relieved. Their life problems—their shock and grief at his father’s death, their differing reactions—had sometimes pushed them physically apart. They did not often exude togetherness anymore, not since coming back from Nairobi.
“What did you think the first time you saw the ocean?” Amy said, peeling back layers of croissant.
“Boston Harbor? It seemed kind of small and smelly.”
“You never saw the ocean before you moved here?”
He shook his head. “Midwestern boy.”
She pulled him to the white railing and leaned forward over it, resting their twined forearms on the bar. “Do you ever think that getting married set off this bad chain reaction? If we hadn’t married, we wouldn’t have gone to Kenya, your parents wouldn’t have stayed so long at your aunt’s, your father wouldn’t have died, you wouldn’t have broken off with your mother …”
He had thought that, yes. He couldn’t help it. But it was a mistake. He said, “If my parents hadn’t been born in Nairobi, they wouldn’t even have gone back there for a visit.”
Another breeze brushed the side of his face, rushed under his nose a floral scent Amy had last night called sea lavender, but there was an undercurrent of something dark and spongy, some kind of seashore muck, an odor of rot.
“But getting married, we had control over that,” she insisted. “We’re responsible.”
“Then we should also regret not keeping my father from going on a walk the day he died. We had no reason to keep him—we didn’t even know he’d gone—but you can always stretch farther back, impose counterfactuals.” Hadn’t she herself told him that thinking this way was both useless and wrong? “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I feel it! I feel regret! It feels awful.”
He didn’t know how to talk her out of it. And what did it matter, she’d soon be so far away.
The inn gave them a brown paper bag with picnic lunches. They pedaled through wooded paths, up and down, around smooth curves, straining to hear the promised tremor of birdsong. When they reached the dunes, they sweated in the humid sun and stared, again, at the ocean.
“Sort of the same view as from the inn,” Amy said.
Sunil stretched his legs; the ride had done him good.
They left their bikes and walked along the water’s edge, ate their sandwiches on a grassy knoll, beachwalked some more, holding hands but not talking much. He couldn’t help thinking Amy had given up on him. Then again, if he didn’t finish his dissertation, he’d give up on himself. And then how could he expect Amy, or anyone else, to have faith in him?
For a while she lay with her head on his stomach and they read their books, pointing occasionally at clouds or dune birds, but they couldn’t sustain this until sunset, so at dusk they headed back in the direction from which they came.
Nestled in the grass near the parking lot, they noticed a bizarre spat of graffiti etched into a piece of driftwood: fuckhoneys. Sunil laughed, but not fully, not all the way to joy. Amy pulled out the small L-shaped wrench they’d loaned her at the bike shop to adjust the height of her seat and drew a long, confident line under the word.
Sunil remembered this on the third and last night of their long weekend, as they floated next to each other in the most delicious and billowing bed they’d ever slept in. The plump pillows molded to his head and the sheets were soft and the blankets not too heavy nor too thin; each morning he had woken up feeling mournful that his time in this bed was shorter than it had been when he’d gone to sleep. That last night they made love, and afterward Amy slept like a log, like a deep dreamer, like a woman determined to make the best of it. Sunil kissed his wife at the corners of her eyes, and he lay on his back feeling the fleeting support of the perfect mattress, his eyes closed but his stomach flapping with the constant, anxious wings of a honeybee.
10.
If her husband were here, he’d remind her of what she already knew: Nairobi had been her home once, but its rhythms were no longer first-hand. Columbus was home. It was not a question of belonging, but of making the best of it.
She missed these gentle reminders.
Urmila didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep standing up by the register, braced with a cramped arm, until the phone rang. A small, buried hope dusted itself off: Sunil? What she wouldn’t do for his pure laughter, his impish joy reading a misprinted sign, his slim beautiful face.
“I’m closing up for the day and thought you might want help packing. I can bring dinner. Or ice cream?”
Urmila said she’d already eaten. “Come over this weekend. I’ll make lunch.” Maddy’s food was too plain, everything tasting somehow sweet like bananas or potato-starchy, and her friend didn’t quite understand being vegetarian. Last week she’d triumphantly brought chicken: “White meat!”
“Are you sure? Tonight’s no trouble. Extra pair of hands in that full basement. Going once, going twice … Hon, I know it’s overwhelming. When Jim moved in with his new girlfriend, and Connor at school, every day I woke up and walked through the house and made lists, so many lists, but until my sister came, I couldn’t do the work.”
“The weekend is better, please.”
It was true that Urmila had not made much progress. Little more than putting things in piles and dragging these piles, plus to-be-filled suitcases and boxes, into the center of every room. But she’d done the hardest part: Premchand’s things. Yanked all the clothing off the hangers and into garbage bags. Shoes, medical books. When the clinic called to ask if they might deliver to her home a box of “personal items” from his office, she had told them to throw them away. What would he keep there instead of here?
And then she was done with his part. He had saved no cards or letters or photographs, no souvenirs. The two of them had never exchanged birthday or anniversary gifts. It made sense a bullet in his brain had killed him. A bullet in his heart he could have survived.
When the time came, one week from now, professional movers would pack up the furniture that would fit in her new apartment, a carpeted block of rooms in a shabby suburb. But there was an Asian grocery and a video store, and the new place was a shorter drive to her store. This had been Maddy’s advice, and she had followed it to the letter. It was the store she had chosen to fight for. She would slim down, shape up, tighten everything. See if she could squeak out a living. While Maddy was supportive, Urmila wished she were more confident about the odds—the likelihood the store could be saved. Once or twice her friend had asked her, “And what would you do if the store can’t succeed? Just hypothetically.”
Tonight Urmila would tackle the kitchen. She drove home and changed into loose black pants and sandals and the only sleeveless shirt in her closet. She’d found it in the back of a drawer, left behind by Meena when she’d visited the States years ago. Urmila never showed her shoulders in public, and her exposed armpits now felt like embarrassing holes, prickly with hair, yet this evening she loved the defiance of reaching an arm over her head in front of the window and showing, casually, her savage side.
She microwaved a samosa and ate it at the counter, leaving the crumbs and grease to clean up later. The house was quiet, except for an insect buzzing on a wi
ndow screen. One by one, she sorted pots and pans, serving dishes, wooden spoons, tea strainers, tins of leaves and spices. Clear baggies of turmeric and cumin sealed off with twist ties; jars of cinnamon sticks; rainbow sacks of dal. Her new kitchen would be an “efficiency,” which meant, she understood, very small. Maddy had suggested she keep only one of everything. But how could she give up these tools of her life? Watching her sister bustle about in Nairobi, Urmila had realized just how attached they were to these implements, like a butcher and his knife. When she held the handle of the strainer, in some small but important way her body remembered all of the many moments before that, standing against the sink the way her mother had stood in her kitchen. But now she made tea only for herself.
Urmila selected one frying pan, one pot with a well-fitting lid, one wooden spoon. Two mugs. She had Maddy, after all.
The insect on the screen buzzed again, maybe a third time, loudly now, and so insistent she realized it would not cease until she let it go. Urmila followed the sound to the door, which she pulled open and said, “Shoo!” Shoved her arms into the screen—and hit a man in the nose.
“Oh!”
“I’m so sorry!” he said. “I rang the doorbell, but …”
He looked a little familiar. The stork-like face and flapping ears topped with hair completely gray. Light-brown suit without a tie, the collar open at the neck. She smelled the lilies before she saw the bunch wrapped in cellophane in his hand.
“What is it?” she said.
“Do you remember me? Jon Samuel? I worked with Dr. Chandaria? He hired me, actually.”
“Haa, yes, the broken thumb, the baseball game,” she said.
“Right! You have a good memory. That was the softball game in Cheshire Park. Gastroenterology versus infectious disease. Must be twenty years ago.”
“It was comical,” she said. “You ran into the fence.” It had been a good laugh. For months, Sunil had mimicked the doctor crashing into the wooden boards, hamming it up. During the game, Premchand had stood aimlessly in the outfield, mild amusement on his face.
On the sidewalk beyond Jon Samuel, a teenaged couple was crossing in front of her house, ice cream cones in hand. Contented smiles. They were absorbed by something in her direction. Her—they were looking at her. Urmila remembered her appearance with a pang: her exposed jellied shoulders, the gray hair under her arms!
“Come in,” she told Jon Samuel. “Sit down. Clear a space—just a minute.” Metal mixing bowls were displaced to make room. She ran to the bathroom, hurriedly splashed cold water on her face and ran a cloth around her neck, across her back and chest and under her arms and toweled off. Ran a brush through her hair and exchanged her indecent shirt for one with sleeves, and pockets over the breasts.
The way the doctor sat, unbalanced, amid her kitchen rubble made her want to laugh. Baking sheets clanged when he shifted his weight.
“Tea?” she said.
“No, thank you. I don’t want to trouble you. And I’m sorry for coming by so late, but I heard you were moving, and I didn’t know where I’d find you again.”
“I’m not going far,” she said.
“Moving in with family?”
“No.”
He looked down uncomfortably at the flower stems gripped in his reddening hands.
“I can’t take those,” she said. “Thank you, but I have no place to put them—you can see. And let me tell you, for the next time you want some very nice flowers, spend your money in Always in Bloom. A new business owned by my good friend. I am like a consultant there.”
There was something else in the doctor’s hand, Urmila noticed as he looked around at the walls, as if he expected to find some information embedded there. He said, “I came by to deliver some personal things we found in Premchand’s office. I know you said to throw them away, but Lisette worked with your husband for a long time and she felt sure he wouldn’t want us to toss these.” He waved the manila folder in his hands. A folder neither thick nor thin.
“Lisette?”
“Fiske. Our office manager. She was going to bring them by herself, but she’s on vacation this week, and as I said, I heard you were moving. Also, I’m terribly embarrassed, I feel as if I must have missed the notice of his funeral. We all did.”
“We held the service in Nairobi. Where we were born. It was too much to have another here.”
“I see. I could help you organize a memorial service here. Should I do that?”
Urmila shook her head. He didn’t see, but it didn’t matter. If she didn’t get him out of her house very soon, he would begin to apologize again. “Thank you for coming by,” she said and stood up.
“I miss him,” Jon Samuel said as he followed her to the door. “I want you to know that. He was an excellent colleague. Conscientious, generous, always pleasant.” He stood unmoving on her steps. Shook his head. “Isn’t there anything I can do? A scholarship fund or charity the office can contribute to? We’d be honored, really—”
“No. Thank you.”
He nodded sharply. “Good luck with the move. Please call if we can help in any way.”
After he’d gone, she remained in the driveway, hands on her hips, the humid heat of the day rising up from the asphalt. The sky was finally beginning to darken, but the relief she had expected when she’d looked forward to sunset an hour ago did not come. The shade on the day is drawing, her father used to say, some proverb. She said it now out loud. The shade on the day is drawing. She waited for something to happen, for the blue-gray to be suddenly eclipsed and the lights of the neighborhood to switch on in unison; some nights it felt like the other houses acted in concert, knowing the unwritten rules. Then she noticed that Jon Samuel had set the lilies on her doorstep. Urmila tossed them, glass vase and all, into the bushes.
She made a cup of tea and ate half a Hershey bar. Scanned through the evening’s television programs. Checked her email and the economic reports, stared at the unringing phone. She ached with loneliness.
Whatever she had expected to find in the folder, it was not these simple mementos of Sunil’s childhood. School report cards, pencil drawings, newspaper clippings from high-school athletics. A few soccer goals had launched his name into the paper. Because they were boys’ games, she had never considered going; she didn’t imagine any mothers had been there. Had her husband gone? She found also Premchand’s certificate from medical school in Ahmedabad, and his board certification. Paper-clipped to this was an envelope, and, inside, a letter.
Dear Dad,
I’m going to call you again next week, but I first wanted to give you some warning. I’m quitting pre-med. I’m no good at it. It’s both boring and far too hard for me. I’ve tried to call, but you’ve been too busy. Mrs. Fiske said you read your mail. Mom is going to be furious, so I hope you can soften her up for me. The last thing the world needs is another miserable doctor, right? I’m hoping to make a go of it in philosophy, a field where I might be able to contribute. I can at least see if they’ll let me try.
Your favorite son,
Sunil
Urmila left the loose square papers on the counter, in the center, clearing a space for these life moments that felt now like bricks of grief. Pushed all the things she didn’t want to the floor. Tomorrow, she’d stuff all the rubbish into Hefty bags.
There was a sale on color printing, so Urmila requested ten large signs with red ink and posted them throughout her store, including several in the windows. It was back-to-school season, which meant a pickup in foot traffic. Mothers ventured in looking for interesting decorations for their children’s dorms. White girls like the one who’d tried to steal from Urmila bought much of the loose, printed clothing, and the kikoys, which she decided to market as a wrap skirt after seeing one of the teenagers try it on that way. Maddy brought friends who purchased dozens of olive-wood salad bowls and matching tongs. Urmila was touched, and ene
rgized. What should she do with the revenue? Maddy advised her to restock her three most popular items, spend a little on marketing, and sock the rest away in the bank.
Urmila kept an eye on the store mail, listened for the phone. She had sent the folder of papers from her husband’s office to Sunil in Boston. She did not expect to hear from him, but still she hoped.
The strange thing, she told Maddy now, was that a few days ago she’d received a message from Amy’s mother. They sat in two folding chairs at a small round table—all her new kitchen/dining space could accommodate. Last week, they’d scrubbed away every speck of mildew. Urmila shook her head. “Now she wants to talk! No, she did not want to talk before the marriage. We could have fixed things then.”
“There was nothing either of you could have done. Kids make their own decisions these days.” Maddy ran a fork through the mung dal and sampled a tiny bite. Mostly her friend ate the breads, the pooris and parathas and rosemary naan; the other things she poked with polite curiosity.
“Why should I want to talk to her?”
Maddy put down her fork. “Why not? She is the mother of your son’s wife.”
Urmila stared at her, surprised, a bit hurt by the reprimand.
“Let’s go for a walk, check out your new neighborhood,” Maddy suggested.
They slipped on their shoes and took the elevator down two flights, then cut through the complex’s parking lot. Urmila made sure her car was still there, though Maddy had assured her that the people who lived here were other seniors with grown children who had downsized, so there was nothing to worry about.
Walking alongside a new strip mall with a Walgreens, Maddy pointed out Opening Soon signs in the storefront of a hair salon and Chinese takeout. “New businesses coming in, that’s a good sign. No pun intended.” She smiled.
“I bet she is disappointed,” Urmila said.
“Who?”
“Her mother. Jewish mothers want their daughters to marry high achievers, smart boys, other Jewish boys. Boys who love their families.”
The Limits of the World Page 22