The Abundance: A Novel Page 5

  Ronak is used to her and smiles serenely. “You know, they’re good people, Mala. Bibles and all. You keep talking like that, and I may just take offense someday.”

  “All right, all right. But think about what it looks like. You here, them there.”

  “I know what it looks like. And it’s not like that.”

  Abhi chases Vivek around the coffee table and between brother and sister, shouting, “I’ve got you, I’ve got you!” It is intentionally disruptive; he is breaking the tension. Mala, rebuffed, opens her magazine and sets it down forcefully on her knees. Ronak takes out his phone and brushes at its screen, wandering distractedly to the kitchen counter. At first I think he is calling Amber, but the screen has a graph on it, and all I can make out is uptick, uptick, uptick.

  Ronak.

  Mala is sometimes sweet, sometimes cutting. Her brother is neither. Better love that is quarrelsome than indifference, which is what I fear underlies Ronak’s perfectly unruffled composure whenever he comes home. With Mala, homecoming carries a charge. Without fail, at least once, she and I will fight and make up. The fault line is active. Ronak fights with no one.

  That may be what happens when the father is not a template. The boys born here could not look to the fathers for a model. To know how to hold himself, what to say, when to laugh, Ronak had to look elsewhere, and elsewhere meant friends. We set out love and waited for him to come home and be a son to us, as if his teens and twenties might be just a fitful phase. As if the man might resemble the small boy, everything in between an aberration.

  During those years, as now, there was no way to yell at him. At Mala we could yell. She wanted love, she wanted approval—and that meant we could say no. We could say, That is not how we do things, and it had an effect.

  I could stand in Ronak’s doorway and demand to know why he hadn’t answered me when I called his name. I had lunch warm on the plate for him. Ronak would pause his game and look at me over his shoulder, there in his mess of clothes and game covers. I demanded, rapid-fire, arms crossed: When had he last showered? Was this the third straight day? Yes, this was summer vacation, but had he slept in that T-shirt and shorts? He would eye me, bored, unmoved by my reproaches. “I’ll be down in a sec. I’m almost done with this level.”

  Why had we gotten that game system for him? Even his friendships were time spent in an elbow-to-elbow frenzy over controllers, laughing and shouting at the screen. The system and libraries of games he wanted—“needed”—changed every year or so, each system sleeker. Controllers grew crowded with buttons and cross-shaped pads. The screens were bewilderingly colorful and intricate. How could he keep track of his own tiny character amid so much activity? We shouldn’t have bought him those games. What if Mala had demanded something that cost over a hundred dollars, purely for her amusement?

  If not the games, though, it would have been something else. There’s no sure way to win, raising children. They turn out how they turn out. Sushila, a friend of ours, refused her son Vijay a Nintendo 64 and every system that followed it. Vijay went to books instead and studied writing in the university. He lives in downtown New York now, still single, and his apartment has no room for his parents’ luggage, much less for a guest bed or sleeping bags. Sushila hardly knows him; he makes next to nothing teaching books in a dingy city college there—Vijay, the son of a breast surgeon and an anesthesiologist.

  All you can do is set out love and hope they come. Ronak would eat the meals I made him, scarcely aware of what I had put on his plate. He took second helpings, but only to fill the hole with something. Not out of pleasure. Nothing was savored.

  The only time I saw him taking an interest in food was during sophomore year. His body had grown thin and hard, and a scrap of track shirt hung from his shoulders. I never thought of food as fuel. I always thought food, properly enjoyed, was close to rest and leisure, to a massage and hot bath, something to make you sleep well. Ronak ate for fuel’s sake before his track meets, tossing pasta brusquely into boiling water. I was never part of those carbohydrate meals. I offered to make him rotli, insisting it was just flour and a smear of ghee. He said that pasta was “better” before a meet, garnishing his steaming rotini with oregano and Sriracha—apparently some ritual meal he and his teammates had come up with.

  Whatever he was, he became by watching other people, frantically recombining himself from the boys around him. He collected comics in seventh grade because his friend Nick collected comics. He tried out for track when his best friend, Philip, tried out for track. The team was a kind of family. I didn’t know about Amber, but she was part of his life by then, too. He slept at our house, but that was all.

  One day, I could see no higher than Ronak’s chest. One day, I picked up the phone, and his voice was deeper than his father’s. He ate more, but the fat on him disappeared, it seemed, over a single summer. With that softness went the last of his childhood. I saw him from behind and thought: Who is that? Is that man my son? Yet I never felt older. I thought sometimes, too, of some girl’s white hand tracing the sharp loveliness of his shoulder blade—and never felt more fearful for his future.

  Abhi, in the days when he had more of a temper, used to call his son lazy—but how ferociously Ronak ran at the gunshot, palms cutting the air, like those sprinters in the Olympics! His back was straight, and I could see how tall he was, even compared to the American boys on either side of him and often behind him. I cheered from the bleachers with the other parents. If we had stayed in India, he never would have grown into such height and grace. He would have hunched over his notebooks the way we did at that age, learning things by rote.

  Here a boy grows a foot taller than his father. Here he raises a fist as his legs slow their rhythm and the losers go slack, walk, spit, stop, put their hands on their waists, and bend. Here, even a boy can experience triumph. But the triumph made him proud, and pride made him still more distant. Ronak would glance up at the stands where we were waving at him, nod once, and raise his hand. An acknowledgment. Yes, we know each other. And a caution. Now, don’t embarrass me.

  * * *

  This country gave us clean quiet luxury and charged us nothing but our children.

  Abhi had four brothers, I had one. We left them behind. They didn’t score as high as we did. We put sixteen hours and thousands of dollars between us and our widowed mothers—and then dared complain to each other, years later, about a son who applied to a college two states away when there was a good one in town.

  Still worse: in college, Ronak studied neither mathematics nor science—economics, something Abhi considered inferior. After that, with no postgraduate training, he got a finance job in Manhattan. These two choices bothered Abhi more than any others. Ronak took the talent he had inherited and pursued a worldly, debased form of mathematics. Numbers-work, yes, but in a suit and tie, shuffling and dealing. Meanwhile, the father, in his study at 1 AM, inked square-root signs like a bygone Brahman drawing the bar above Sanskrit.

  Numbers were sacred to Abhi. He had no gods. He downplayed his dedication, of course. His code for “leave me alone” was “I’m going to go doodle for a while.” Then he would disappear into his study. Those doodles made him famous. Six years ago, we watched him stride onstage at the University of Berkeley, a star. The professors there thought him miraculous because he had no training. He did his neurologist’s work day after day until six, sometimes seven in the evening. Then, after eleven, when we were all asleep, he would stay up writing in the graph-paper notepads his brother sent over in bulk from Ahmedabad. Always the same brand: black cover, weak thready binding, and the smell that reminded us both of school. Abhi said that smell prompted his best insights—as if he had known all of mathematics once, in his childhood or in a past life, and the smell of the notebook triggered his memory. We had learned math and penmanship in those books, each letter in its own square.

  Of course he disapproved when Ronak twisted that inborn love of numbers into love of money. Ronak thought his job placement su
ch a triumph, he gave us the news with a small involuntary pump of the fist. He never understood why his father’s face fell. Abhi muttered only to me. “You don’t know what that kind of banker does. Ronak is a gambler now. Our son will gamble for a living.” Abhi divided professions into noble and ignoble ones, and lucrative did not necessarily mean noble. Abhi would have been more pleased had Ronak become a schoolteacher. Medicine and teaching were noble. Playing the market for a living was not.

  For everyone but Abhi, though, richer meant better. I confess: at dinner parties, I passed on the stories Ronak told me of recruiters and their thousand-dollar wine bottles. I enjoyed the envy. Our circle was all doctors and doctors’ wives. Their children were premed. Our son alone had made it to a higher level of wealth. How proudly I claimed Ronak for my own when he was away! When he came home—just once, that first year—I was reminded how he was mine in name only. New clothes, new shoes, a new watch, and his hair no longer parted on the left like his father’s.

  I asked him whether he made any Indian friends in Manhattan. He grinned a new grin, only one side of his mouth rising. He was thinking, probably, how old-fashioned I was to make these distinctions. “Oh sure,” he said. “There’s a huge Desi singles scene, too.”

  Day-c; it took me a while to realize that was our word for other Indians. His offhand comment made me wonder, helplessly, what kind of girl he would bring home. Whoever it was, we would have to acquiesce. When had we squandered the right to say what we thought? To say, We don’t like this girl. To say, We want someone who will fit in this family.

  I realized, as I watched him cut open a bag of coffee he had brought from New York (how specific his tastes had become!), that we had no say. Even if he did find someone in that Desi singles scene, it would be some Asha on the neighboring gym equipment in his apartment’s workout room, some party-scene Sheena behind colored contact lenses who could talk with him about wines. This Desi singles scene was the only time he mentioned dating. Still, I thought, Indian would be better than white, even if Indian meant Bengal or Uttar Pradesh or the south.

  So I came to expect an Asha or a Sheena. My accent—which is slight; I barely have an accent anymore—and my cooking wouldn’t be completely foreign, at least. I listened for hints or slips when he spoke of ski trips with friends. What friends? Who else had gone? He didn’t tell us until he was ready, and it came as a surprise. Amber accompanied him on his Christmas visit home nine years ago. I opened the door and thought this young couple had the wrong house. His smile—another new smile—made his face unrecognizably joyful. She was standing just behind him, slightly wary of me, her slender gloved hand in his.

  In those first seconds, as I understood that this was it, this was her, I eyed her cruelly, coldly, as I never would afterward. She was shorter than Ronak and her legs were thick at the thighs. This was not the athletic, high-cheekboned white woman I had always worried about. Amber’s cheeks were as round, and her body as plump, as any Gujarati girl’s. I thought, If this is what he wanted, I could have found it for him. It was twenty degrees outside. Amber’s cheeks and ears had turned red. Brownish-blondish hair under her hat, a purple scarf. I did not sense wealth or finance or Manhattan from her clothes and boots. Her skin was the white that burned before it tanned. I thought, Mixed with that skin, his children will look completely American. I could not see her figure under her puffy jacket, but she seemed full at the bosom; the scarf gave her the appearance of a small bird puffed against the cold. I wondered: Does he know what childbearing will do to a figure like hers? And: Americans age worse than we do—is she at least a few years younger than him? Shamefully petty, snobbish thoughts, but I thought them. She isn’t, compared to other white women, what Ronak is compared to other Indian men.

  When he led her inside, I could judge her figure better, though blurred by a snowflake-printed sweater. I said distractedly, as Ronak took her coat, “That is a lovely scarf.” I paused and formed the next word. “Amber.”

  “Why thank you, ma’am,” she said, lighting up. Briefly I thought she said mom, but it was too early for this; she had said ma’am. Her green eyes met mine directly, and I looked away. “My grandmother will just love to hear that. We get one from her every Christmas. In fact she’ll probably knit you one for next time we visit.”

  I looked from her to Ronak and back, and I could not connect them. This girl with a local, almost a country accent, speaking of her grandmother; Ronak, distant, money-minded, this his second time home all year. Out of her coat and hat now (was that my Ronak putting her coat on a hanger?), in the gold glow of our chandelier, animatedly speaking, her hair free over her shoulders, Amber was transformed. Her liveliness changed my perception of her. Everything that seemed plain in isolation or awkward when motionless now appeared as beauty. She exercised a calm command over Ronak that did not seem like domination. Abhi glanced at me incredulously when Ronak pulled out her chair at the dinner table. How had she made him a gentleman? We could not have imagined that Ronak was capable of monitoring another person’s comfort.

  “I did not know,” I apologized, not specifying what it was that I hadn’t known—that Ronak was bringing an American guest to dinner. (He had intended to spring the visit as a surprise so that he wouldn’t have to deal with us “throwing a fit,” he told us later.) “I fear I made only Indian food.”

  Ronak said, “It’s no problem, Mom. She loves Indian food.”

  “Even more than Roan does. Roan’s always wanting Italian or Mexican, and I’m always the one pushing for Tandoor Oven.”

  “You mean the Tandoor Oven here in town?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I like the aloo gobi there. That’s what I like, right, Roan? The aloo gobi?”

  “That’s right. She also likes onion naan.”

  Abhi and I knew the owners. Mr. Mishra or his wife or both were at the restaurant every night. Sharmila handled the seating. I flushed. She had known. Sharmila Mishra had known about them. Who else had known?

  “Roan tells me you’re a great cook. I’ve been looking forward to this. Good Lord, look at all these dishes. This must have taken you days!”

  “You haven’t seen Mom cook,” said Ronak with what I was surprised to hear was pride. “She’s so fast, she could run a restaurant. How long did this take you, Mom?”

  “Not too long, an hour and a half or so,” I murmured. I pointed at the eggplant bhartha. “This may be a little spicy for you, Amber.”

  She threw her head back as she laughed and touched Ronak’s arm. “Don’t worry about me, I can handle spicy. Your son’s the one always asking for more water at Thai restaurants.”

  Ronak nodded. “She’s amazing like that. She and Dad should have a contest.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Abhi, who hadn’t said much until then, watching the three of us. “Help yourself, Amber.”

  She said she was dieting, but Amber ate with great pleasure, and it was a delight for me, seeing such obvious relish in my food by someone other than Abhi. Mala usually took thimble-sized portions; Ronak ate without recognizing what he put in his mouth; Indian guests gave formulaic praise. Amber actually inquired about what I had put into each dish. Had Ronak told her how to ingratiate herself with me, or was she naturally friendly? She accepted seconds when I pressed them on her. She ate the bhartha without resorting to her glass of ice water.

  Abhi began putting the questions I wanted to ask but didn’t. How, when, where had they met? How long had they known each other? The answers saddened me. They had met in biology class. Biology? But wasn’t that … eighth grade? It was. Ronak and Amber had been paired for an owl pellet dissection. They had been going out for that long? Oh no, of course not. They didn’t go out until tenth grade. I had imagined girlfriends, but he had been faithful to this one girl all along. He had loved her and never told us. And college in Pennsylvania? And the job in New York? “On and off, you know,” murmured Ronak. “But mostly on.”

  “And you didn’t feel you could tell us? All these y
ears?”

  Ronak said nothing.

  “We made the decision together,” said Amber lightly. “We waited till it was the right time. No point rushing things, right?”

  Abhi nodded and looked at his plate. I thought I could read guilt in the way he pushed his dahl about in the bowl, using the back of his spoon. I know I felt it. Guilt, but also embarrassment at not knowing this immense fact about our son.

  Growing up in India, we hadn’t had this kind of love to conceal from our parents. Ronak’s or Mala’s children, a decade and a half from now, would never have to conceal their boyfriends or girlfriends. But during the in-between years, during the shift from Indian to American, love, for our children, was both treasure and transgression, a joy they could not bring home. Ronak had been caring and dutiful—but in secret.

  No wonder he seemed remote to his parents. He had sent an effigy to live with us. His feeling self had escaped to her.

  * * *

  Without being asked, solely because she had noticed, Amber refilled Ronak’s water. She did it the way I would have done it, tilting the pitcher slowly so the ice cubes caught at the fluted lip. He held the glass steady while she poured, his whole hand around it. I had poured for him hundreds of times, and he had never held the glass.

  I foresaw, in that moment, the mother she would be someday. I saw the dark blue minivan with cheddar cheese Goldfish crushed into the mats. The sinkside rack where she would dry the sippy cups she had handwashed in hot water. The cart at Walmart with her toddler’s creased thighs sticking through the upper basket, two cubes of Huggies stowed below. The toddler would be fair-skinned and have light brown hair: no trace of us. And then, beyond that, my teenage grandchildren unplaceably handsome, unplaceably beautiful. Maybe once, for some relative’s wedding reception, a granddaughter would be brought to me so I could dress her in Indian clothes. And she—what would they name her? something easy and dual-purpose, Maya, Nina, Sheela—she would look the way attractive white women look wearing Indian clothes, sharp-featured, strangely hard underneath, like those too-tall, too-slender mannequins at saree stores.