The Abundance: A Novel Page 3

  * * *

  While Abhi took Shailesh and Henna back to the airport, I went to the supermarket and stocked up for Mala’s visit. I kept moving. I set chickpeas to soak and Osterized the mint leaves for chutney until they tasted as bright as their green color. I rinsed the blades and ground some walnuts for dessert that evening—a roar as loud as a construction site. I felt better making that noise to fill the house. It scattered the blackbirds off my nerves a while.

  It was not yet time for Mala’s dutiful daily call, and for that I was glad. I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t let the shock slip, or reveal it in my pauses or my tone. I made my first call to Ronak’s cell. Hey, this is Ron, leave me a message, thanks. Brusque, unwelcoming. I left no message. He would see the missed call—maybe he had already seen it and silenced the ringer. Left to himself, he would return it later in the week. I planned to try him more than once. Hey, this is Ron. We hadn’t named him Ronak with a mind to its American abbreviation. We had kept to easy, two-syllable names for both children precisely to prevent that. “Ron” made things easier, of course, in his line of work. Amber mingled the two versions: she called him Roan. A horse whose dark hair is interspersed with white.

  I had shortened Abhi’s name from Abhishek, but not to something American. (At least “Ron” had some logic: we knew a Vrijesh once who did business as Mike.) I liked Abhi’s shortened name more. Abhishek means the bathing of an idol. Abhi means now—in both English senses, the present moment and immediately. I valued, more than ever, the urgency and the short-term focus of that name. Naming the one I loved, I said how long I would have him.

  When Abhi got home that day, the rice cooker’s light had blinked off, and the rotli dough held the smooth divots where my fingertips had tested it. I loved working little rips of dough into balls. The palms were held parallel, circling each other, a few ounces of softness between them. The rolling got easier until there was no friction at all. Then the dough was worked smooth and flat by the pin. The dough seems heavy compared to the rotli itself, bright with brown pocks, steam-swelled. I had the stovetop fan going and didn’t hear Abhi come in. He still had his coat on.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  “How is the pain? I didn’t ask you this morning. Did you take those pills they gave you?”

  “I’m not in any pain. I’ll take the pills if I am.”

  “I’m worried you won’t.”

  I looked down into the black round of the tawa. “Are you ready to eat?”

  “I talked to Ronak.”

  “I called him earlier today. I got a message.”

  “I was persistent.”

  “How many times did you call him?”

  “He picked up on the fourth call.”

  “Four calls? He will suspect something is wrong.”

  “He didn’t sound like he did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said they’re going to his in-laws for Christmas, as they do every year.”

  “You told him we wanted the twenty-sixth, right? After Christmas? Even the twenty-seventh would do. Mala will still be here.”

  Abhi unzipped his coat and turned from me, sliding it off his shoulders. “I wouldn’t count on him.”

  “What did he say, exactly?”

  “He said he would check with Amber.”

  “Maybe I should talk to Amber.”

  “She picks up her phone, at least.”

  He left to hang his coat. I was used to this bitter abdication in matters pertaining to Ronak. Abhi felt he had no control. In earlier years, he used to raise his voice because he still believed shouting might accomplish something. He would shout, always in English, at Ronak’s closed door or closed stare. The reproach would start with phrases like how dare you or by what right. Sometimes he would repeat the words I am your father, as if that settled things. He was appealing to bygone rules of hierarchy and submission. How late Ronak came home on weeknights, his social drinking, the never-acknowledged but never-denied girlfriends or (Ronak’s phrase) friends-who-happened-to-be-girls—in America, this was normal teenage behavior, as natural as any physiological change. In Ronak’s case, it was harmless: he was too keenly self-interested to do anything that would give him a record. No matter how late he stayed out, we never got a call from the police, unlike some parents we knew. And he used this as a counterargument: Have you ever gotten a phone call? Ever? As if we ought to praise his moderation. In those years, the voice deepened, the height increased, the tongue grew cutting. All to be expected. Yet in India, we never saw such things. Who are you to tell me, Dad? We had never spoken that way. No stranger had to remind us, I am your father.

  * * *

  I cooked a lot those first weeks after the diagnosis. Usually I did not like making food and freezing it. It troubled me to see the furry crystals, the way tilting the container didn’t tilt the sauce, the potatoes embedded as if in a rock. I felt an unease, irrational I know, about living flavor hardened to tasteless ice. It could not come back the same once it had known such cold. And after that, the microwave, and the unnatural way microwaves heated the periphery first. The heart could still be icy though the container hurt the fingers. I preferred reheating dishes on the stove the few times I did freeze them. I would use a spoon to break a Tupperware-shaped square into floes that would soften, flatten, merge, and settle into a comfortable simmer. I distrusted my own food after its artificial wintering. I would bring a spoon to my lips critically, half expecting the spices to have blunted or the vegetables to have gone to slime.

  But the food never really altered. The resurrection matched the life. So, those first weeks after we knew, I stocked and stored as industriously as a wintering squirrel. Who knew for how long I could keep these little crowns of blue gas going, four at a time, like plates spinning on sticks? Who knew when my own dials would click, click, click, click, and nothing would flare? Better do this while I could.

  Abhi brought home a small refrigerator. I noticed that he had come home late and stayed in the garage long after he pulled in. It had gotten very cold that week. After waiting for him to come inside, I investigated. He had unpacked the gift and was plugging it in. The refrigerator was a white cube, knee high, and he had tucked it between the unused bikes and two sacks of black soil I had never gotten around to using.

  “For overflow,” he said, opening and shutting the door.

  My hands covered my smile and I clapped them gently. “Perfect!”

  “You’re happy?”

  “Of course, Abhi. This is perfect. I was running out of room.”

  “You’re happy.” He tapped the refrigerator distractedly. “You know … this is only for now. They will deliver a bigger one tomorrow. Full size.”

  He had only just had the idea, I could tell; he had probably gone to the appliance store, debated between the two sizes, and chosen the smaller, cheaper one. Now, seeing how happy it made me, he regretted his choice. “What will I do with two full-size refrigerators?” I said. “I can’t possibly fill two.”

  I thought about the huge refrigerator a year from now, silent, its triple-pronged plug resting on top. Its freezer the same temperature as the garage. Nothing in it except an open box of Arm & Hammer.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Your face changed.”

  “I just remembered. I have the gas on.” I looked beyond him to the parallel tire tracks in the driveway snow and the salt stains speckling the lower half of the Camry. A blue sedan passed the house. It must have been parked outdoors, because its speed blew the snow off its roof. It rode ahead of a halo.

  I was right about Abhi’s decision to buy the bigger refrigerator after he saw my pleasure. He hurried into his study, called the store, and gave his credit card number over the phone before he came to have his after-work snack. An apple or a few pretzel sticks were all I allowed him. Come dinner I wanted his appetite. It’s the same in all things. Satiety is an honest judge, but hunger
is a favorable jury.

  Mala checked in by phone every day, out of love, out of habit, out of obligation. I kept to the planning for their trip and asked what Vivek preferred to eat now.

  “Mostly mac and cheese,” she said.

  “That I can make from a packet. I want to make something.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mom. It’s what he wants. That and those veggie dogs. Did you pick those up?”

  “There must be something I can make.”

  “Mom, we’re dealing with little kids here. They’re picky. It’s how they are at this age.”

  “I will make a variety. We can see if they like any of it. Good food.”

  I shouldn’t have said that; it was very easy for Mala to assume I meant she wasn’t feeding her children good food. Sure enough, her voice went hard, defensive.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but things haven’t changed since last time. He’s just not showing interest yet, Mom.”

  “He won’t show interest on his own. You have to offer options.”

  “I do offer him options.”

  “Let him be hungry one meal. That way, next time, his stomach won’t let his tongue refuse.”

  “I’m not having him go hungry, Mom.”

  “It is your duty to teach him what to want.” I used the wrong word. “Duty” sounds like a reproach. Maybe I should have said her right? But even right she could have taken wrong: she’d think I implied I had rights, too, over her, and indirectly over Vivek.

  “My first duty,” she said, her voice rising, “is to treat my son as a human being.”

  “I know, Mala. I am trying to help.”

  “That means he has likes and dislikes.”

  “I know—”

  “And if one of his likes is a soy dog with no mustard, no ketchup, and no bun, I’m fine with that for now. I’m not going to force-feed him at every meal. If he’s thirty-eight years old and that’s all he eats, then yes, I’ve failed as a mother. But he’s five now, and you know what? I’m not worrying. Can we just not worry about it for now?”

  I sat back, phone to my ear, and wondered how the conversation had spoiled so rapidly. This was not the first time we had had this quarrel; we’d had this same conversation, with different words, the month prior. Mala and I had five or six regular quarrels. Our daily chats, usually affectionate, might dead-end in one of these quarrels by an infinite number of routes.

  In the silence after this one, though, I was grateful. I wondered whether part of me sought it out: bringing up Vivek’s diet, baiting her, watching her fume. Our quarrel was more than just a distraction. It was a routine from the old life. After Mala found out, she would behave differently. She would be careful. That occasional harshness of hers—I would miss it. Because harshness, paradoxically, is intimate. You have to be very close; you have to be family. My nearness to death will estrange me. My family will become as well-spoken as they are around strangers and acquaintances. Already Abhi is careful not to be short with me; already he is lingering in the kitchen after his early-evening snack. When had he ever idled in a chair while I cooked? Abhi never idled. Before, he would spend that hour in his study. Things are different since the diagnosis. I am different. He gives me company as if I am a guest.

  Of course, I feel like a stranger in my own body, so naturally I expect others perceive me as a stranger, too. If I were to ask Abhi why he lingers, his answer would be simpler, sweeter: that he wants to spend all the time with me that he can. Scarcity has made every minute precious. This is true for me, too.

  I love watching them sleep, daughter and granddaughter spooning, Shivani resting in the curve of Mala. I used to sleep with Mala that way. It is uncanny how some of the behaviors of love recur on their own, without being taught, as if particular configurations of embrace are encoded in the genes. Did my own mother hold me to her chest that way, too, and crook her arm beneath my temple, giving me the smooth pale swell of her inner arm as my pillow? I imagine slipping behind Mala so the three of us might layer like skins of a bud.

  Even better than watching Shivani sleep is being woken up by her. I am on my side, near the edge of the bed. Shivani comes over so she is face-to-face. Girls usually talk early, but Shivani is taking her time. She has only a few words. So I am awakened by her small hands patting my pillow. Perfect: first thing, my eyes open and see her face. Auspicious. Mala, too, is in a good mood, smiling from the doorway, her eyes half closed and her head resting against the door frame.

  Savor this, I think, looking at Shivani and her tiny brown fingers on the white pillowcase. Remember everything. The thought distracts me, detaches me, but only briefly. I lift my granddaughter and sit her on top of me. It feels like having Mala here again. There is no wakefulness like a well-rested child’s, no weight on her eyelids, thoughts whole and simple. Shivani doesn’t sit on me for long before she ventures into the valley between Abhi and me. Abhi rolls to look at us and closes his eyes again. I get up on my elbow and tell Mala I can change Shivani so that she can get more sleep if she wants, but Mala says she’s got it and claps her hands softly. Shivani raises her arms. Before Mala carries Shivani out, she tips her so she can give each of her grandparents a small, wet kiss; then coaxes her to use her words and say a froggy Good morning. I ease myself back down to the pillow and wait while the kiss cools and dries.

  My spirits are high. Between bed and toothbrush, I don’t think of it at all. Then my brushing slows. When I soap and splash my face, the protective sleep has gone. I have full knowledge again. I look in my mirrored eyes above the towel, and she and I both know.

  Downstairs, after opening the blinds, I peel and twist a cylinder of croissant dough. The soft, white-yellow dough pops through the cardboard. I don’t get these croissants usually, I don’t like the perfection of the triangles and the almost voluntary way they curl into their shapes. But Mala and the children like them. So I set them to bake. I hear the buzz of Vivek’s toothbrush from the top of the stairs and rush from the kitchen to catch him. He jumps up and down and starts talking—so happy to see his grandmother! Sachin, his brush still in his mouth, says, “Ho, buddy, wait till we’re done brushing,” and wipes a drip of toothpaste foam from Vivek’s pajama shirt. Vivek follows his father back up into the bathroom. I return to the kitchen and get out the two boxes of cereal I have gotten for their visit, Lucky Charms and Cheerios, not knowing which is in favor recently. I get two skillets going on low and tilt them to slide the butter squares. Everyone comes down, one after another, chatty. They are all here: Abhi doing his stretches in the light through the east-facing bay window, Sachin with his collar wet from splashing his face awake, Mala with her hair up in a bun, holding Shivani, who is pointing at the cereal boxes, Vivek jumping on the couch and being ordered off it. Booster chair and high chair, and the chairs where the parents wait with spoonfuls dripping, open up, big bite, come on. Bowls and plates and silverware clash on the table. I bask in the joyous hubbub of a family morning.

  I made sure to shower quickly and dress before everyone came down. I even put on a touch of foundation and a brush of rouge. I rarely wear makeup and certainly not at home. But this morning I knew my face would give me away if I didn’t cover it somehow. So I closed the bathroom door and painted my shadows bright.

  They say flesh is grass, and flesh does grow and wither the way grass grows and withers, but not so that the eyes notice. You need an old photograph to realize how much you have changed, or the exclamation of a friend you haven’t seen in years. Or word of your mortality from a pale bespectacled man in a long white coat, practiced in giving sympathy and news—a chart of the circulation system on the wall behind him, a swath of crinkly paper on the examination table, the back of your gown open to the air.

  After the examination in Dr. D’Onofrio’s office, I had gotten dressed again, and we had waited for twenty minutes, saying nothing. Abhi had brought a travel magazine from the waiting room—he turned its pages but stared past the impossibly blue seas at the f
loor. The nurse practitioner came and said they needed the examining room, could we wait in the discussion room, where the doctor would meet us shortly? Abhi got to his feet and followed her out. This left me to gather my purse and both our heavy winter coats.

  I walked down the hall, my arms full, raging silently. I am carrying his coat. The discussion room was smaller and contained a round table and a rack of patient information brochures. Abhi had found new reading material. I stopped at his downturned head, waiting for I don’t know what, waiting for him to sense me glaring. You had me carry our coats. You had me carry our coats even though I am the one dying! Through the whole discussion with Dr. D’Onofrio, my slender manila chart laid open before him, his voice slow and dry, I kept thinking how I had to walk down the hallway with my arms full. My mind gnawed at the dry leather of anger. It was a better chew toy than fear.

  Later, I told myself Abhi had been distracted, but I knew that wasn’t it. Over years I had let him get into the habit of ignoring the small chivalries. I was uncomplaining. I always made things out to be more trivial than they were—the opposite of some wives I knew (the opposite, too, of Mala). I waited out my anger in silence. And the anger went away eventually, like an itch fizzing away to nothing. On the drive home, I thought of my anger with detachment and said nothing of it to Abhi. What was the use? You couldn’t change a relationship this late. You could not force small kind gestures. They didn’t occur to Indian men, at least not to Indian men of Abhi’s generation. (I wonder if we need expectations to perceive ingratitude. Was that why I could think of Ronak or Mala as ungrateful, but never Abhi?) Still, the larger love was there. The larger love I never had cause to doubt. Just as on every other occasion, I was happy I hadn’t spoken my anger. Abhi was a good husband. Plenty of philanderers came home with brooches and tennis bracelets for their wives, making up ostentatiously for hidden transgressions. Abhi was a good husband, a good man. So what if he didn’t open doors for me? So what if he didn’t pull out chairs for me the way Ronak did for Amber?