The Abundance: A Novel Read online

  Mala is making rotli, so I am here to ball the dough for her and give her company. She has gotten very good at the mindful repetition of rotli. Seconds of inattention can roll a seam into the dough or pock the underside black. But circle after circle becomes sphere after sphere. I worry about what she thinks during this phase of it; there’s no creativity involved and nothing to learn, just the brisk execution of a task. She does not complain, and I could not take over, at this point, for more than a few.

  Ronak is flipping TV channels: black-and-white jackboots stomp to sinister orchestral music, followed by a gray-haired veteran whose testimony comes in subtitles I can’t read from my distance. Girls dance in a music video, flash flash flash, each camera angle and close-up lasting less than a second. He stays on this channel a little longer than on the others. Then a dark-haired, slightly overweight woman pours two whispers of sherry into a sauce pan. Ronak brings out his phone; someone has texted him. He starts typing something back.

  Sachin has skipped down the stairs.

  “Come on, Mom,” he says playfully, “Mala is stacking hot rotli and you didn’t call me down?”

  Mala smiles and grabs the swelling rotli off the flame with her fingers instead of the tongs she has used until then. “Here.” She sets it on her growing stack, slaps it, and picks up the margarine stick, its paper splayed apart like a shirt with its top buttons undone. She holds it down for two eyes and pulls it across for a smile.

  Ronak finishes texting and strolls over.

  “You know, this is pretty amazing, I have to say.”

  “What is?” asks Mala without looking over her shoulder.

  “You cooking. I’m seriously impressed.”

  “Mala is a wonderful cook,” I say defensively.

  “I know. Like I said, I’m impressed.”

  “All right, this really isn’t the time or place, okay? I mean, even you should see that.”

  “Mala,” Ronak says, sounding hurt. “I’m being serious here. I love that you two are doing this. And Amber was telling me about your cookbook?”

  Mala checks over her shoulder to assess his face. She decides he is sincere. “Yeah,” she says. “I’ve got, like, forty recipes at this point.”

  “You haven’t seen it?” Sachin asks Ronak, taking a bite of his second fresh rotli. “It’s a masterpiece. Pictures and everything.”

  “Just simple pictures. I took them with the phone.”

  “She’s being modest! It looks professional. She’s writing everything up. Wait here. I’m going to get the computer.”

  “You can finish what you’re eating. Don’t go upstairs just for—”

  But Sachin has already stuffed the rotli steaming into his mouth and left the kitchen. He sprints upstairs and comes down with the folded MacBook on his palms like a waiter’s tray.

  “What’s the file name? ‘Cookbook’?”

  “‘Mom,’” says Mala quietly. “It’s right there on the desktop.”

  Sachin finds the file and scrolls down so Ronak can see our recipes and the corresponding pictures. Ronak starts scrolling, pausing on a recipe here or there.

  “You put a lot of work into this,” he says.

  “I didn’t want it all on note cards. This way I have all the recipes in one place.”

  “Amber would love this.”

  Sachin nods. “Has she seen it, Mala?”

  “We talked about it, but—”

  “Can I get this onto my thumb?” Ronak asks, sliding his keys across the counter. He left them there next to his wallet. His key chain is his thumb drive. I am about to say yes, please do; Mala is, I realize, about to say she would rather he didn’t. Right then a beach ball bounces downstairs, fleeing an avalanche of boys. Shivani takes the stairs more slowly, hand on the banister, as cautious as Mala was reckless at that age. Once she sets socks on the floor, she starts running after the boys. Amber is the last one down. Ronak’s thumb drive flickers its blue light, drinking. In a moment, the whole file has crossed over.

  Sachin points at the screen. “These are all the recipes Mala has collected.”

  Her eyebrows rise in delight. “We were talking about this!” She scrolls. “Photographs and everything. Wow.”

  “I’m getting it for home,” says Ronak.

  “You know, Mala, you should have this printed out in color and bound. They can do it at Kinko’s. It’ll be like a real book.”

  “I’ll look into that,” Mala says without turning. “I’m still adding stuff, tweaking stuff. It’s a work in progress.” Her voice drops a little. “It’s going to be a work in progress for some time yet.”

  “Make sure you e-mail me the final version when you’re done,” says Ronak.

  Amber nods at the screen. “I’d love to make these dishes.”

  “We’re lucky guys!” Sachin smiles at Ronak.

  “You know, I need to take down my grandmother’s recipes. She knows all these old German desserts and things.” She stops scrolling. “Did you make a table of contents, where you list all the recipes?”

  “Like I was saying, it’s still a work in progress. Nothing’s alphabetized or classified yet.”

  “Is there one for chicken biryani? Nik won’t eat hardly any Indian food, but he loves chicken biryani.”

  “That isn’t in there,” I say.

  “Mom doesn’t cook meat,” Ronak explains. “You knew that.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “You can cook the chicken separately and put it in with the rice,” I say. “There’s a recipe for pulao in there. It’s the same thing. Add chicken and it’s chicken biryani. Biryani just means rice.”

  Amber nods. “Look, can I help out in here? I fear I haven’t done a thing all afternoon.”

  “You watched the kids so I could do this,” says Mala. “That was huge.”

  “Let me at least set out the plates.”

  “I’ll help,” declares Sachin, and does. Ronak, caught up in the sudden mobilization, finds himself spreading a stack of bowls across the dinner table, counting spoons from the drawer, catching ice from the dispenser in a glass pitcher. When he is done, he remembers to eject his sated drive from the computer. The sum of my theology has been preserved on an inch of plastic, to be grabbed off a hook on the way out, to dangle from the ignition, to be stuffed into a jacket pocket as all four car doors lock at once.

  * * *

  The visit is going well until I make the mistake. I do it right before they leave; I make a happy trip end unhappily. Everyone is careful not to ruin things and then I ruin things. It happens by accident. I try to get myself milk to quiet the burning in my stomach.

  It is three in the morning. I don’t want to wake anyone. Mala is sleeping next to the children. Abhi has come to bed late, as he always does, and has just fallen asleep. I knew I wanted milk, or at least water, when he came to bed. I should have asked him then but I didn’t.

  I navigate the hall by moonlight and the night-light. My eyes are adjusted well enough. My hand finds the hallway light. I turn it on. The night-light in its shin-high socket blinks off. Are the glasses in the dishwasher clean? I usually know, but Mala and Amber finished up because I was tired. I had gone to the couch and stayed half-awake, half-asleep. Did they run the dishwasher before they came upstairs?

  I hold a glass up to the light. When my hand and eyes rise, the dizziness surges. I hurry and set the glass upside down in the rack, and it makes a sound too loud for what I have done. I get my fingers in the rack and ease myself to the floor. The glasses and bowls rattle, but not too noisily, I think. The clatter feels distant. My ear can’t judge. I am on the ground. Did I just fall? Let me sit a while.

  I sense the glow of more lights coming on behind me, and the pounding of feet on the stairs.

  “Mom!”

  Mala’s loose hair swishes over my face. Her breathing is frantic and shallow. She is shaking me.

  “Mom!”

  “Stop,” I murmur, putting my hands on her shoulders. “Stop.”
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  “What happened?”

  In quick succession, Sachin, Ronak, and Amber all arrive in the kitchen. They stare at me from above.

  “I had to rest.”

  “Did you fall? Did you hurt yourself?”

  “I had to rest,” I say again, directing the words past Mala to my new audience. “Go back to sleep.”

  Sachin kneels next to Mala. “Ma,” he asks in Gujarati, “do you feel pain anywhere?”

  I flush. He called me “Ma.” I feel elderly, asked this question in Gujarati.

  Amber murmurs something at Ronak’s elbow, and Ronak nods.

  I answer Sachin in English. “I got a little dizzy. That is all.”

  “Why were you out here?”

  A grandchild starts crying upstairs. The cry is contagious. Mala looks at Sachin, Ronak at Amber; in a moment, it is just me and my two children. The crying upstairs peters off grandchild by grandchild, then stops. We are silent until it does. Meanwhile Ronak sits down next to me with his back against a cupboard. Mala, her arm around me, whispers urgently, “Why did you come out here by yourself?”

  “To get something to drink.”

  “What was Dad doing?”

  I say nothing. Ronak holds up a finger. “Listen.” We hear a soft, rhythmic scrape of breath over throat.

  “That’s what he’s doing,” says Ronak, with a bitter smirk.

  “He has just fallen asleep,” I say.

  Mala closes her eyes, striving impatiently for patience. “You can wake me up, you know. You can wake me up.”

  Ronak mutters, “You can wake him up.”

  “Why should I wake him up? I can get a glass of milk by myself.”

  “Is that what you think, or is that what Dad thinks?”

  Mala glares at Ronak. “This is not the time, all right?”

  “No?”

  “Go back to sleep, Roan.”

  “She’s down here on the floor, and he’s in there snoring. Isn’t it exactly the time to bring this up?”

  I feel anger on my cheeks and forehead. “He was working until late.”

  “Yeah. Up in the space station.”

  “Ronak.”

  “Sorry. In the study. Are we forgetting that he does this mathematics thing because he wants to? That he’s doing it for himself?”

  “Why bring this up, Roan? Why?”

  “He needs to pull his weight.”

  “Right now, of all times. With her like this.”

  “With me like how?”

  “Mom—”

  “With me like how? Let him say what he wants. We are all up now. No going back to sleep. Let him talk.”

  All of this is happening in increasingly hoarse whispers. No matter how much anger I feel, I am still worried about waking Abhi and the grandchildren.

  “Nothing,” says Ronak sullenly. “Bringing up anything is just a disaster. I open my mouth in this family, and it’s a disaster, every time.”

  “Roan, come on.”

  “Just keep the status quo, just keep the machine running for him, and it’s all good. And thanks for the backup there, Mala. Especially when you were the one who brought it up in the first place.”

  Mala shakes her head, but she is not looking at me.

  “What were you two saying about your father?”

  They stay silent.

  “I want to know. What were you two saying behind his back?”

  “Look, Mom,” says Mala. “We’re worried about the weekdays. The weekends, one of us can make it here.”

  “You don’t have to come on the weekends. Who said you have to come, ever?”

  “We want to come.”

  “That’s why we’re here, Mom. We want to be.”

  “I have your father to take care of me on the weekdays.”

  “Right, Mom, but how much is he around?”

  “What do you want him to do? Quit work? There are copays, you know. There are deductibles. What is happening to me, it isn’t free.”

  “Why don’t you come stay with one of us?”

  “What will your father do?”

  “He can stay here and come—”

  “I am not leaving your father alone. I am not leaving this house.”

  “Okay,” says Mala, palms out. “We didn’t mean permanently.”

  “I am not leaving this house.”

  “Okay, okay,” Mala keeps repeating. “We had to ask.”

  “Amber’s at home,” Ronak says quietly. “She says she would love it if you came to stay a while. And at both our houses, mine or Mala’s, you could have the kids around you every day. Just think about it.”

  “You don’t want to come here, I never said come here. It is inconvenient for you. I know. I know. I don’t need you.”

  “It’s not inconvenient,” sighs Mala.

  “And you do need someone.”

  “Ronak, listen to me. I have your father.”

  “Right. That you do.”

  I cannot tell if this is sarcasm, so I study his face. Does he know how much like his father he looks? “Ronak?”

  “What?”

  “I have your father. He is so good to me. He pays so much attention to me. All the time.”

  Ronak does not look at me. He unfolds his legs and stands up wearily. “Of course he does.”

  Mala helps me to my feet. My body is slack in her embrace, though inside I am tense and raging. “All right, Mom,” she whispers. “Slowly.”

  I stare at Ronak. “What do you two say about him?”

  Ronak opens the refrigerator door. “Did you still want your milk?”

  “No. I don’t want anything from anyone.”

  “Jesus Christ.” One frustrated shove shuts the door.

  “Okay,” breathes Mala at my ear.

  “What do you two say about him?”

  “Let’s go, Mom. I’ve got you.”

  “What do you two say?”

  My body. I think about what has been taken from me, what remains, what functions, what doesn’t. But I try not to dwell on all that. I don’t want to flatter the suffering by photographing each symptom and giving it a caption. The details are at once trivial and humiliating. Like: I nearly fainted going to the bathroom this morning. Opiates can do that to a person. This was during the week, so no one was home. I sat down, started urinating, and went dizzy and nauseous and sweaty all at once. I dropped my head between my knees to get some blood to it. That didn’t work. I knew what to do. It’s a maneuver I have. I lifted my shirt, dropped forward off the toilet, and pressed my stomach to the cold tiles. If Abhi had found me there—facedown on the bathroom floor, pants at my shins, sweat on my forehead—he would have called 911, even if I told him not to with my own firm voice. I looked like a catastrophe, like this was it. But I was in control. I waited while my heart slowed down. I savored the cold of the tiles. I could feel my aorta pounding inside my abdomen; I hadn’t felt that since my skinny girlhood.

  I sat up, as refreshingly harrowed as if I had vomited. A surprising lot of urine had wet my thighs and underwear. I felt the pants bunched now between my ankles. I wet a washcloth, cleaned my skin, cleaned the floor. I changed. I walked to the couch. Here I am. I could write a book about this slow sloppy business of dying. People do. I am not one of those people.

  I am never more alive than when family is with me. Even if it is Mala without the children. Vivek has kindergarten now. Mala is spending extra days with me, tacking a Thursday–Friday or a Monday onto a weekend. Her partners accommodate her. I hope she is not building up too many debts. She will have to pay them back later, when days off are less precious to her. Their nanny knows about the “situation” and has agreed to extra hours.

  This coming weekend, only Mala is supposed to come. Sachin is staying in St. Louis to take care of Vivek and Shivani by himself. I marvel at his devoting his whole weekend to the children. Four PM Friday, when he picks them up, until 9 PM Monday, when he picks her up. Mala’s tone on the phone sounds as if it were a natural arrangement.
“He understands,” she says flatly.

  On Friday around noon, I am busy imagining a menu for us. I have run out of basic dahls and subjis; I am moving on to parathas with potato bits in the dough, and the delicate fishing-out of jalebi from a basin of hot oil. I write down the supplies we’ll need. I have had two weeks since her last visit, but I put off this happy task so I wouldn’t grow impatient with the remaining days.

  This is when I get a phone call from Ronak. My pulse races when I see his name on the caller ID. Usually Amber’s name shows up when a call comes from their house; she is the conscientious one. Ronak himself is calling, from his own phone.

  “Ronak?”

  “Hey Mom. I’ve got good news.”

  This is the same voice and words he used three times before to tell me Amber was pregnant. I sit up and brush aside my grocery list. “Yes?”

  “I’ve got a surprise to tell you about. You and Mala. I’ve got to tell you both.”

  “What is it?”

  “I said, it’s a surprise, Mom.”

  Something in me still hopes. “Are you and Amber…?”

  “No. God, no, Mom. Isn’t three enough?”

  “You don’t have a daughter.”

  “Okay, it’s not that. But it’s a good surprise. I’ve got to tell you both.”

  “Mala’s flight gets in at seven. Or you can conference call.”

  “I’m telling you in person.”

  “You are coming?”

  “Tonight. I’m hopping a flight. I want to be there.”

  “What is it?”

  “Listen. Can’t you wait, like, seven hours? I’ll see if I can arrive around the same time as Mala.”

  “It’s going to be expensive, booking a flight at such short notice…”

  “I’ll use my points. If my arrival time’s later, I’ll just take a cab from the airport.”

  “Oh no, Ronak, I don’t want you taking a cab.”