The Abundance: A Novel Read online

  “Dad will appreciate it, trust me. He’s not going to want to make a second trip. Most likely I’ll get onto something that times out right.”

  I am overjoyed and confused. “See you … tonight, then.”

  “All right. Look, I’ve got to go. I’m at work.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  After he hangs up, I sit with the phone in my hand. He didn’t ask me how I was feeling, but that’s not what bothers me. My condition so monopolizes the beginnings of conversations, I’m pleased to see it passed over for once. Rather it’s that phrase, “hopping a flight.” If it’s so easy for him, why doesn’t he do it more often? Why does he need some big news in order to hop a flight? I call Abhi to tell him.

  “Amber’s pregnant,” Abhi says right off.

  “I asked him. He says that’s not what it is.”

  “Then I don’t know why he’s coming. He said it’s a surprise. Maybe he bought you some expensive gift.”

  “What do I want? I don’t want anything in the whole world.”

  “Well, you want his company, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then think of that as the surprise.”

  I call Mala next. She is at work, too. Maybe that’s why her voice is hushed and her initial silence is long.

  “He’s coming tonight?”

  “Did he tell you?”

  “No.” Another pause, during which I suspect she is checking her phone. “He hasn’t texted me, either.”

  “What do you think the surprise is?”

  “He probably bought you something big.”

  “He said he wanted us both here.”

  “Well then, he bought you something big and wants me to know.”

  “You don’t think Amber is pregnant?”

  “Amber isn’t pregnant, Mom.”

  “You sound very sure…”

  “Amber isn’t pregnant. That’s not what it is.”

  “Okay.”

  “Guess we’ll see him tonight, then.”

  “I miss you, Mala.”

  “Miss you too, Mom. Hey, look—”

  “I know. You’re at work. You have to go.”

  “I would talk more if I could.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m literally at a nurse’s station right now. I really can’t—”

  “I know.”

  “Mom.”

  “Just come. Your father will pick you up. Ronak will probably get ahold of you once he has his flight time. If he forgets—”

  “I’m texting him as soon as I get off the phone with you.”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Love you.”

  * * *

  Ronak’s flight is due to land forty-five minutes after Mala’s: a short enough delay so they would not leave without him, but long enough for Mala to feel the wait. Ronak called Abhi earlier to insist he pick Mala up alone; she called a few minutes later insisting he wait for both. Abhi suspects some sibling spat from the tone of voice, and he knows Mala is the one not to cross. The benefit of Ronak’s borderline indifference is that he doesn’t hold grudges, which means we don’t have to worry about being forgiven. Mala would be hurt if we sided with Ronak.

  Still worse, his flight is delayed by half an hour. I stay in touch by cell phone. After a certain amount of waiting, you have to follow through to the end; otherwise, the time you’ve waited is wasted. I drowse on the couch and miss the call that says they’re driving home.

  The garage door awakens me. Ronak carries Mala’s luggage from the car into the hallway. I get to see him as he dresses for work: tie, gelled hair, dress shoes, thin black socks. It must have been a long day for him. He has come for me, bringing only the duffel bag he takes to his workout. He comes to embrace me. I smell old coffee, Right Guard, faded cologne: not entirely unpleasant, the smell of wealth, and exactly the way his father smells after work.

  Mala sits down beside me.

  “So out with it, Ronak,” she says.

  Abhi sits on the end of the chaise, arms crossed. “He hasn’t dropped one hint the whole ride home.”

  “Let me run upstairs and shower.”

  “Now you’re going for a shower! This better be good, Ronak, because you’re really hyping it.”

  He shakes his head. “I think I’ve built this up without wanting to. It’s not that huge. Let me just freshen up a little. I’ve been in these clothes since six AM.”

  He takes the duffel bag and goes upstairs. In his absence, we speculate. Mala is convinced he’s brought me a fortune in a velvet case, but I tell her jewelry would be absurd. He’d be slipping rings on the hand of a skeleton. (I don’t say that out loud, of course.) Abhi has no idea what it is—Ronak has never done anything like this before. Abhi confesses he called Amber, who also knows nothing.

  Ronak returns, hair wet, in his Umbro shorts and a T-shirt. Now I’m seeing him as he looks when he goes to the gym. He sits back on the love seat and puts his hands comfortably behind his head.

  “All right, Ronak,” Mala says. “Talk.”

  He resists a smile. “Why don’t we talk tomorrow morning? I’m a little tired.”

  Mala throws a pillow at his chest. He hugs it and laughs. “All right, all right.” He grins. “Here’s the story. I was in the city, and I was talking to this woman at a party. About the cookbook you’re doing.”

  Mala looks at him and waits. Finally she says, “Okay?”

  “You know how I had it on my thumb drive, right?”

  “Right. For Amber.”

  “So I was talking to this woman, and she said how she loved Indian food, and that the book sounded interesting.”

  “Was she Indian?”

  “White. Anyway, I went down and had Kinko’s make a color printout. High res, glossy paper.”

  “I was planning on doing that myself.”

  “You should. You really should. It looks great.”

  “It’s not done yet, Ronak. And there’re things we may have to change. Right, Mom?”

  “It’s not done yet,” I say. I do not want it to be finished, either. Ever.

  “Where is it?” asks Mala.

  “Listen. This woman.”

  “You just gave it to her? That’s Mom’s cookbook.”

  “Hear me out. She’s a literary agent.”

  Mala can sense, faintly, the coming news; she smiles an almost suspicious smile. “What were you doing chatting up a literary agent? You haven’t read a book since high school.”

  Ronak shrugs. “It’s New York, you meet people.”

  “Okay. So?”

  Now he is coy. “So what?”

  “What did she say?”

  A feigned, offhand air. “Oh, she showed it to some people she knows.” He tosses the pillow she threw in the air and catches it. “You know. People who publish that sort of thing.”

  Mala looks at me, then back at Ronak. “And?”

  “She thinks she can get an offer.”

  “And?”

  He takes out his phone. “Let me show you the e-mail.” He hands it to her.

  “You are kidding me.” She leaves her mouth open. She expands the screen and shows me the number.

  Ronak closes his eyes and lowers his head in a small, mock bow. “Mom? Your thoughts?”

  “That’s a lot of money,” I say, “for some recipes.”

  “You’re not kidding.”

  “Why would they pay so much?” I ask.

  Mala gives a one-note laugh. “God, Midas touch! How are you so good at wheeling and dealing, Ronak?”

  “Why would they pay so much for recipes?”

  “That is the number she believes she can get. You know how unusual that is for a book like this? If you agree to a few things, you’re going to be famous, Mom. You’re both going to be famous.”

  “For my recipes?”

  “Well, not just the recipes. It’s the whole story. That’s what keeps it from being just another cookbook. She was sayi
ng a book like this does a lot better if there’s, you know, back-story.”

  “What story?” I ask.

  “You know, the story.” He gestures at me, at Mala. “This.”

  Mala hands him his phone.

  Ronak watches us, sensing he has done or said something wrong, but not entirely certain what it is.

  “What do you mean by ‘this’?” Mala asks quietly.

  “You know. Mother, daughter.”

  “Mother, daughter, what’s the story there?”

  “You know, you two were, well, not the best of friends, at least not all the time, and then things change and, like, you guys bond over … food. It’s a great story. It’s heartwarming.”

  “You told the agent all this? About us?”

  “They’re in a business. You have to have something special in your pitch. A hook.”

  “You told them about Mom, didn’t you?”

  “Look. How many friends do you have in advertising? I went over the whole thing with Rakesh Gupta. I did breakfast with him even though I can’t stand him, and I laid it all out. He said if I left out the part about Mom, it wasn’t much of a hook. The book, as he envisioned it, would be a kind of book-club memoir for women, plus a cookbook. The story part first, then the recipes. That would be the hook.”

  “The hook. God, that word. That word.”

  On the other side of the room, Abhi, who has been listening with his arms crossed, stands. “You three sort this out. I will be upstairs.”

  “Wait, Dad, can everyone hear me out? It’s not like we were keeping this a secret. We kept it a secret for pretty much forever because that’s what Mom wanted, but it’s not a secret now.”

  “You three sort this out.”

  Ronak turns back to me and Mala, but our faces must clash greatly with what he dreamed on the plane ride over.

  “Abhi,” I say, “wait. Sit here. We are all four of us here. Okay?”

  Abhi returns to the place where he was sitting. Ronak is shaking his head, a faint incredulous smile on his lips.

  “Is this real? You guys are angry at me for trying to do this?”

  “Not angry,” I say, sitting forward in alarm.

  “Angry isn’t the word, Ronak. Morally appalled? Maybe that’s it?”

  “All right. I should have cleared this. I didn’t know you felt so proprietary about Mom’s recipes.”

  “That’s not it. It’s not that you sold a book. You sold—the story. You went and told some stranger about Mom.”

  “Mom and you. Why don’t you admit that? Mom and you.”

  “You know, what if it does get popular? What if people do say, aw, what a sweet story—mother and daughter reconciling over good old-fashioned ethnic cooking. Is Mom supposed to what? Do appearances? Go on TV?”

  “First of all, chances are, it will never get famous. These things usually don’t, ninety-nine point nine percent of the time. It’s just that we’ve got a chance here, enough of a chance that a publisher might gamble on it.” He points at his phone. “That’s what you’re seeing. Right there.”

  “Yeah, but what if hundreds of complete strangers are suddenly talking about our private lives?”

  “It is private,” I echo her. “It is all so private, Ronak.”

  “Even if we did write about ourselves—”

  “Mom’s written articles before.”

  “We’re not putting Mom through this! I don’t care how much money they offer, this is a stupid idea!”

  “Look, by the time this thing is even…” He doesn’t finish.

  Mala crosses her arms and sits back. “Finish that sentence,” she challenges.

  Ronak purses his lips. “You know, I try to be a part of this thing you two have, I try to be a part of it…”

  “Finish that sentence.”

  “I should have just let you two have this. I was stupid to try and be a part of it. This is your thing, Mala.”

  “Finish. That. Sentence.”

  Ronak swallows and shakes his head.

  Abhi stands up. “Enough. We all need to separate.”

  “What Ronak was about to say,” Mala says loudly, enjoying the kill, “is that by the time this thing is even published, Mom won’t—”

  Ronak leaps off the couch. I stare for a moment in panic. “Ronak!” My cry misses his back. I hear his feet go rapidly up the stairs.

  “Everyone relax, relax,” says Abhi in an even voice.

  I feel prickles up my neck. Will my boy leave? Will he call a cab, get a rental car, drive home in the middle of the night? Or change his flight to tomorrow morning instead of Sunday? I should have defended him. Why didn’t I? He was trying to please me. I get off my couch. I step on a splayed novel as I race after him. Mala shouts, “Mom!” Abhi and Mala stay to either side of me. Abhi begs me to please, please calm down. I hurry past them to the stairs and lurch forward to climb, clumsily, like an animal long standing on its hind legs giving up the pretense. Palms and feet thud stair and stair. My movements have never been so narcotic-sloppy as now. Can he hear me? Might he think I have fallen? If he hears me, he doesn’t come out of his room. I call his name again. He had to have heard that. He doesn’t come. In his room, he is doing what I feared: kneeling beside his duffel bag and stuffing into it his dirty clothes.

  I tumble to his side. My knee bumps the duffel bag askew. I pull his clothes out onto the floor and slam my hand on the bag. He shakes his head, his face calm, trying maybe to offset my wild-eyed stare.

  Don’t you dare go. Not like this. I don’t say that. I don’t have to.

  I see Abhi in Ronak’s profile, except his eyes and eyebrows, where I see my mother. Such a face. My husband and my mother. Everything beautiful to me is preserved there young. I kiss his face. I begin on his cheek. I grab the stone of his expression and reclaim it with my lips.

  He is so many people now, all of them so different from me, but there was a time when he was contained, whole, in me. I have this right. I keep kissing him. So hard I admit no space between us. My nose flattens on his temple, his forehead, his shower-wet hair. He flinches when I go too close to his eyes. He doesn’t jerk his head away, but he leans away from me a little. I hold him and keep claiming him. His hair is cold and smooth under my lips. I work around to his face. My hand goes to the back of his skull and cradles it, steadies it. I kiss him the way I used to when he was a toddler and I would pin his wrists together with one hand and cover his face. He would laugh and struggle, then grow more and more frustrated until the laugh became the beginnings of a cry. I would let him go just in time; his almost-cry would switch back to a laugh, and he would wait for me to do it again.

  I kiss my son. But even as I do, and feel the sobs fluttering under my ribs, there’s part of me that thinks, Why aren’t you crying, too? I am your mother and I am dying. And the kissing becomes spiteful, interrogative. What do I have to do? Doesn’t this love I am showing you override all quarrels?

  So when he turns and holds my face to stop me, nodding, his eyes shut, murmuring, “Okay, okay, Mom, okay, okay,” it’s a vindication, a triumph. I rise up on my knees; he crouches on his. I am above him; I hold his head to my chest.

  He submits, shaking in my arms. I have broken through to the old Ronak, which is to say, the young Ronak, weak as he once was, when I was all food and drink to him. When he would push away from his father and call to me. This is how powerful I used to be. When he got hurt and cried, I used to hold him. Like this, like now.

  In the morning, Ronak is on the treadmill in the basement. I hear the belt’s unlubricated whine and the thump of decade-old tennis shoes he salvaged from the garage closet. He needs clothes. I go upstairs and lay out clothes for him the way I used to: a running T-shirt that used to be baggy when he was younger, briefs from the drawer, a pair of Abhi’s bright green scrub bottoms. Mala is waiting at the table nursing the half glass of cold skim that is her breakfast. Abhi joins us, and we eat in silence. Finally Ronak makes it down after a quick shower, his cheeks flushed
with the workout, which he started at five in the morning. He must have woken up and been unable to fall back asleep.

  “Look,” I greet Ronak, “all four of us. Like old times.”

  I try to ignore the arguments and tears of last night. I fell asleep with my cheek on his cold wet hair. He must have carried me downstairs to my bed. I do not remember.

  Ronak opens a cereal box. I have set out a bowl and spoon for him.

  All four of us. There is sweetness when both families are here, but I cannot focus. Now I can focus. The sweetness is different, from an earlier time, Ronak and Mala still in high school, especially with Ronak in his old running shirt. I Run Therefore I Am.

  They pretend. Maybe Abhi told them to, for my sake.

  “How’s Shivani liking Montessori?”

  “She really looks forward to it. I thought it was going to be bad.”

  “No tears?”

  “No tears.”

  The carpet brightens. The blinds rise, and it is a sunnier morning. The breakfast table is populated with the English muffins I used to buy back then and the glazed strawberry Pop-Tarts Ronak liked. Abhi reads a real newspaper instead of his iPad.

  Abhi peels a grapefruit. “Did that new partner join, Mala?”

  “Two weeks ago.”

  “You said she was plastics?”

  “No. Peds.”

  “You said she was Indian, right?”

  “No.”

  “Wasn’t her name Ramalingam or something?”

  “That’s her last name. Her first name is Jocelyn.”

  “Having a peds specialist will bring all kinds of new business to the practice.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Sinuses and whatnot.”

  “Yeah.”

  The fat returns to my face, my arms, my hands. The ring does not spin so easily on my finger. We had different couches then, but they were in the same places. The past is not all idyll. There—that is where Ronak sat while Abhi scolded, You are absolutely not allowed to drink; this is the final warning; no one in this family has ever been a drunkard! That word, drunkard—Abhi had no idea it wasn’t in use. Cut off that last syllable and it was just drunk, the right word. Keep that last syllable, and it spoke of an English-medium secondary school in India. His rage antiquated itself in the saying.