I don’t get home until after ten. The phone rings once I’m in bed. Macon says, “You didn’t phone back. Please tell me that the baby was born healthy? I’ve been worried.”
I can’t believe he’s called me. It sounds like him again, not someone guarded and angry. “I didn’t want to bother you all on Pablo’s birthday. Lily Rouse Amarnath. She is perfect in every way.” I smile into the phone. If he were here I would throw my arms around him.
“Well, that’s a very impressive name.”
“And a beautiful one.” There’s a long silence now. I don’t know what else to say. I could gush. I could tell him how much I love him and then he might hang up.
“Would you meet me at the train station tomorrow if I came in?”
“I would do that.” I remain restrained. But I allow myself another small, relieved smile. “You know I would do that.”
I
GET TO
the Gare du Nord the next night at seven-thirty, five minutes before the commuter train from Chantilly arrives. Will he be on it? I hold my breath. He’s been gone long enough for me to forget the exact shape of his face. Then he’s moving down the platform with his beat-up backpack. He comes to me, and I put my arms around his neck. Then his hands reach for my waist and we stand together like that without saying anything.
When we get in the cab he says, “What I don’t understand is why you planned it without telling anyone.”
“But I didn’t plan it. I’m not asking you to understand.” I move closer to him on the seat. “I was trying to please her. I wanted to make her happy. It’s my genetic predisposition. I’m not making excuses. But it’s hard for me not to give people the things they say they want.”
“I missed you. I missed holding you and listening to you, but that doesn’t mean I forgive you. Are you wearing a dress?” He stares and takes me in. “I’ve never seen you in a dress.”
He pays the driver at Rue de la Clef, and we climb out onto the
sidewalk. I got the dress last year at a flea market in Neuilly with Luke—sleeveless and vintage and pink. Macon smiles. “Promise me you will wear this dress every time I have to leave you.” I do a small twirl for him inside the elevator. “If you wear this dress every time I have to go away from you, I will undress you slowly with my eyes whenever I see you in it. Then I will take you home and ask you to stand very still so that I can unzip this silver zipper.”
He pulls on the zipper inside my front door until the dress opens. Then he slides his hand down my back and slips each shoulder strap off and tugs at my hips until the dress is on the floor.
“I’ll wear it,” I whisper. “Will you always come back?”
He kisses me slowly on my face, and finally at the end, as if in answer, on my mouth. I take his hand and walk him to the bedroom. He steps out of his jeans and takes off his T-shirt and we lie down on the bed holding hands. “You’re back.”
“Tell me where it feels good,” he whispers. Then he licks along the edge of my underwear.
“In words?” I don’t want to say a single thing.
“In words, Willie. I’m going to keep this underwear on you.” He kisses the inside of my thigh. “Until you tell me what you like.” I keep my eyes closed. The underpants feel wet from where he’s touched. “If you can’t tell me, I’ll stop.” He sits up.
“But don’t stop.” I open my eyes. “I think that would be a very bad idea.”
He brushes the inside of my thigh with his face. “So you like the kissing?” He looks up.
“I like it.”
“I thought you did.” He focuses on the small strip of silk between my legs.
“That’s what I want.” I smile.
“What do you want?”
“For you to do that.”
“To do what, exactly?”
I blush. He keeps running his fingers over my underpants. “I want
you to take these off,” I whisper. “I want you to take these off me.” And he does. I’ve never been able to say it out loud like this before. I’ve never wanted to name these things, but he makes speaking them feel right and natural.
A
WEEK PASSES
. Macon brings a few clothes over in his backpack. I begin to trust that he’s really staying. My piles for India grow taller. Gaird takes Luke to Provence for a vacation. Luke calls me on Saturday and says, “We’re staying in some stunning château where they keep filling my champagne flute whenever it gets below the halfway line.” They mean to stay until Thursday.
“Do you love it there?” I’m in the kitchen watching Macon play guitar on the couch. I’ve been waiting for him to say that he’ll come to Delhi. He’s arranged for the days off at work. He’s convinced Delphine. But he hasn’t made peace with leaving Pablo.
My flight is on Wednesday night. The Air India ticket sits on the counter under the phone like an ultimatum. Departure Date: July 12, 11:00 p.m. What if something happens to Luke while I’m gone? What if he comes back from Provence and falls down on the sidewalk or something?
“There are lots of trees here,” he says. “The willows look like they have dreadlocks. Your namesake trees. I love trees, Willie. Have I ever told you how much I love trees?”
Maybe he really is drunk. “It’s so good you went,” I say. “You needed this.” I can’t hear any cough or shortness of breath. The virus is going to be more complicated than we think. I know this. And it will try new ways to reinvent itself. But right now he’s in Provence. This is more than any of us could have hoped for.
“You’ll be all right while I’m gone, Luke? You’ll do the injections and take the medications and you’ll eat? Promise me you’ll eat.”
“Gaird’s become worse than you at forcing delicious food on me. Truly I will be good. Go find the missing poetry. Go meet the crazy daughter. I’ll talk to you when you’re in India.”
“Have you called Dad, Luke? Have you told him anything?”
“Dad and I talk about the circumference of the pipes for the new Shaanxi project. We don’t talk about my health.”
“I’ll be looking for phones in India. I’ll be thinking about you. And if you’re not feeling good, then I’ll come home. It’s only a seven-hour flight.”
“Seven hours to India. Seven hours to a different world. I’m hanging up now. There’s more champagne here.”
“Hanging up now. I love you.” I put the phone down and stretch my back.
“How is Provence?” Macon asks.
“He’s drinking champagne.”
“Then there is no excuse, is there?” He leans the guitar on the couch. “For you not to get on that plane.” He walks into the kitchen and puts his arms around my waist and kisses me. Then he picks up my ticket on the counter and stares at it. “I don’t have any excuse. Pablo says India has elephants. As long as we take pictures of elephants for him, he sanctions the trip.”
“You’re serious?” I don’t believe him.
“I’m afraid I’m often much too serious.”
“You’re coming?” I take his face in my hands.
“I can’t miss this.”
“You’re coming.”
“I’ve got to get on the phone with the airlines. Delphine will be glad to have me out of the way.”
“What about the hearings? What about the kids?”
“That is why I have colleagues.” Macon smiles.
“You’re coming!” I kiss him on the mouth and put my arms around his neck and squeeze him. “Thank you for this! You’re going to love it. I’m scared to leave Luke, but I think this is going to be good. This is going to be okay.”
“I hope you thank me when I get us lost in some Indian village. I’m not the best with directions.”
“There are maps for that. I am very good at reading maps.”
On the cheap Aeroflot flight we get an apple and a baked potato and a block of white cheese for dinner. No one stays in their seats after takeoff. Women in saris walk the aisle and share samosas and chapatis from plastic bags. Many men stand and smoke. Russians with Russians and Indians with Indians and plumes of cigarette smoke fill the cabin. The fire alarm goes off again and again and no one seems to care. We’re in row 28, across from the bathrooms. I will the plane not to crash. I visualize the pilot in my mind and what he’s had for breakfast and how he said good-bye to his daughters. Then I wish him good luck and ask him not to let us crash. I can’t abandon Luke in that way. He’s the one fighting for his life. I can’t crash.
Before we left I made a list of the names of the towns we’ll be in and the hotels we’ll stay at. I gave a copy to Luke and one to Gaird and one to Sara. But there are going to be days out of reach on trains and buses. We’ll be in villages without phone lines. How will anyone find me if something goes wrong?
I’ve written three letters to Dharmsala this month to an address I hope is Sarojini’s daughter’s house. She never replies. Then I made two phone calls there and an older woman answered and said she’d been expecting me. Her name was Padmaja, and she screamed into
the phone: “Maybe I will let you see the manuscripts and maybe not! I won’t know until I meet you!”
So we’re on our way to meet Padmaja. I doze and wake up and read
War and Peace
. Then I make sure to wish the pilot more good luck. I will him not to fall asleep now. Not to get even a little bit tired. Not him. Not his copilot. Macon snores lightly for what seems like the whole flight. I can never really sleep on planes. Too much worrying to do. Too much piloting. We land in Delhi at dawn and haul our backpacks off the crowded luggage carousel. Then we walk outside the teeming terminal into a blast of sticky heat. The taxis are ancient—boxy yellow Ambassadors from the ’50s. Everywhere I look men in white tunics push staggering stacks of luggage on metal carts.
“Do you feed them?” I ask the cabdriver after we slide inside his car.
“Who, madame?” He looks in his rearview mirror at me.
“The cows.”
“Goodness no, madame. We are getting tired of the cows. We are wanting them to go away, but no one says so. They hurt business. But still we cannot get them into trucks and drive them. They have to go away on their own.”
“No one gives them food? Someone must feed them.”
“Tourists feed the cows. In the old city, madame. Yes, a shopkeeper, a Hindu, for example, will leave his garbage out from time to time for the cows when he closes. The cows are our mothers. The cows get fed, madame, this we know.”
Macon smiles at me and goes back to gazing out his window. It’s sweltering in the cab. He’s got sweat on his upper lip and looks rumpled and exhausted. For the second time the driver gets out and claps at a stubborn cow, who hoists himself up. There’s the idea of the book I want to write, yes, but this city with its cows and heat is so much wilder than I imagined. Why did we come, really? How did we get here?
The fields give way to cement shacks and one-room homes linked by corrugated roofs. We drive farther into the center. Women in saris
walk in the ditches with iron pots on their heads. I’ve been in France too long. I should have come to India sooner.
We get a room on the second floor of a tiny hotel jammed in the middle of a block in the old city. Crowds of people shop the storefronts and eat food from stalls set up next to the road. The walls inside the hotel room are pale violet. There’s a wooden bed and a matching bench. A decrepit, peeling bathroom is attached with a hole in the floor for squatting. The tin can of water next to the hole is called the
lota
.
“I know this.” I point to the can. “I researched this.”
“You researched the can in the bathroom next to the toilet hole?” Macon smiles.
“It’s the custom. It’s meant for washing the wiping hand.”
“What else did you research?” He takes me by the waist and pulls me down onto the bed and wraps his arms around me. We sleep the deep, drooling sleep of people who’ve been on an airplane for a long time.
Three hours later, a thin boy bangs on the door with his metal bucket. There’s no lock. He walks in and flushes the toilet hole with cold water from his bucket and washes the stone floor on his knees. I can hear the cows and motorcycle rickshaws outside. It’s not Paris. But what country are we in? India is only an idea in my hot sleep—a foreign land so far away from where I grew up in California that it seemed to be make-believe.
Then Luke’s sickness catches up with me, the way it must with him every morning, and I’m wide awake. Gita’s high-pitched laugh comes to me next. She told me I had to go to Jaipur. She was so direct. In this way she was unlike any student I’ve ever known. This is why I’m delivering her letter to her grandmother. It’s the least I can do. The heat in Delhi is wet and everything in the hotel room feels damp because of the monsoons—the sheets, my clothes, my skin, and my sweaty hair.
The boy leaves us, and Macon rolls over in bed, mumbles, and goes back to sleep. I walk to the window. Groups of men smoke cigarettes
and spit red juice through their teeth onto the street. Someone’s hung green awnings over sections of the food market, and pieces have ripped away and hang down like wallpaper. I go lie on top of Macon’s back and press my face into the side of his neck. “Wake up, my traveler.” He speaks in his sleep in a language I don’t understand. Estonian?
I walk into the bathroom. There’s my round forehead in the mirror glued to the wall. Sometimes I’ve thought it would be easier if I got sick with Luke. Is this normal or some kind of pathology? Do other people feel like this, too? The creases in my face are deeper after heavy sleep. There’s the dark mole on my chin. There’s the turn at the end of my nose, like Luke’s nose. Like my father’s nose. I know that holding on to some of my anger at my dad also connects me to him in a strange way. A current between us—and it keeps my mother alive to me.
Macon’s dressed when I come out. I pull on the black pants—wide and loose and made from some synthetic I don’t know the name of. We take the narrow stairs down through the cramped lobby, where the TV plays for no one and two white cups of tea sit unfinished on a card table. There’s a large color poster of the elephant god Ganesh above the television and a poster of Krishna on the opposite wall. Lots of black flies circle the tea.
We have one day in Delhi. We start out of the hotel on a road called Chandni Chowk, and pass more incense stalls than I’ve ever seen, and just as many shops selling saris. A small group of teenage girls pass us on the sidewalk, laughing. They remind me of Gita and Moona, or who Gita and Moona might have been if they’d stayed in India, born into different families. The distance between France and India feels huge. Insurmountable. The girls at the center have lived through long plane rides and train rides and buses and cars. They’ve journeyed so far to get to that place called France, where they were locked up.