If she paints any more now, she’ll ruin the entire composition.
She abandons the painting and goes to the closet where the answering machine waits, winking its malicious Cyclops eye. She jabs the replay button. A line from a movie she once saw flits through her mind:
Life gets in the way of art.
That pretty much sums up my existence, she thinks.
But as she’s told Belle, she’s not complaining. Compared to how things were three years ago, when she’d just moved out and was waiting for the divorce to come through, her life is roses, roses all the way.
Sonny called her apartment every morning those days. His messages, excruciating in detail, were always the same. He didn’t understand why she was doing this to him. Whatever she thought he’d done, he was sorry for it. They (he really meant
she
) had made a terrible mistake, they needed to get back together. He adored her. He used his most helpless, guilt-generating voice.
“I wouldn’t pick up,” she told Belle, “but he knew I was there, listening. He knew I wouldn’t be able to paint anything decent the rest of the day. After a month of those calls, I was ready to kill him.”
“Then what happened?” Belle asked.
“He stopped.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah,” she said, but inside she wondered, as she had often before, if her mother had had anything to do with it.
Sonny’s message says: Dearly beloved Riks, this is just to inform you that Jo and I are taking off up the coast for Mendocino. Paul says there’s a bunch of whales up there, some blues even. He says we can bunk with him for a couple of days, maybe go out on the water in his boat. Jo’ll miss a bit of school, but I’m sure you won’t mind. She’ll be learning more important things from the great university of life.
She hates it when he speaks in clichés like that. He knows this. That is why he teases her with them. Here are some other things he knows: She disapproves of Jona missing school—her daughter has little enough stability in her life. She disapproves of Paul, who’s an okay photographer but who smokes far too much pot to be trusted with a boat or a child. She hates it when Sonny upsets the routine she’s worked so hard to establish for Jona and herself, and exposes her daughter to dangers both physical and moral. And all without asking her permission.
Okay, okay, she tells herself. Let’s not get melodramatic.
You’re just afraid Jona will have too much fun with Sonny,
interjects her whisper voice, which never misses an opportunity.
You’re afraid she won’t want to come back to you.
I’ll deal with you later, she tells the voice.
The second message is from Belle. It says, “Rikki, please please please come down to the shop right away. Something terrible has happened.”
She sighs. She loves Belle (a.k.a. Balwant Kaur, though not even her parents are allowed to call her that) and always has, ever since they were roommates during their freshman year at Berkeley. They’ve nursed each other through romantic troubles, failing grades, bouts of flu and the pressures that only Indian parents know to apply to their offspring. They’ve loaned each other money and underwear, courage and lipstick, and held each other’s heads when they threw up after drinking too much at parties to which they shouldn’t have gone. They’ve confessed to each other things that they’ve never dared to tell anyone before, and seen themselves newly through each other’s eyes. They’ve stayed up nights talking about how Rakhi sometimes feels too American, how Belle would love to shed the last vestiges of her desi-ness. Without Belle, Rakhi doesn’t think she could have survived her divorce. Belle knows her weak points, her stubbornness, her suspicions, her passion for her art, and her fear that she’ll never be good enough at it. How hard it is for her to change her mind once it’s made up. How she can’t bear to let a mystery be. How much she hates Sonny and loves her mother. How much they both aggravate her. Rakhi accepts Belle’s wildnesses, the way she’s often restless, as though something’s gnawing at her insides. The way she moves from boyfriend to boyfriend, never letting them become important. Her constant fights with her parents, good country folk bewildered by their hummingbird daughter who refuses to let them pull her back into their safe Sikh nest. She knows how Belle loves the store and how she loves drama, a combination that often lures her into exaggeration.
It’s probably the espresso machine broken down again, she thinks. Still, she pulls off her painter’s smock and pauses only to soak her brushes in a jar in the sink.
The small kitchen is in its usual disarray of good intentions gone awry. The dinner dishes haven’t been washed. The mung beans she soaked with virtuous resolution three days back, intending to cook dal, have begun to sprout. She’ll have to call her mother and find out what one can make with mung that has sprouted already. The table in the dining alcove is piled with library books and art catalogs and a big blue bowl filled with apricots from the landlady’s tree—and unpaid bills. (Ah, the banality of bills, another curse in the artist’s life.) Leaning on the western wall is an oil painting, almost done: sunset on the peaks of Kanchenjunga. She has left it there so she can examine it from time to time and ascertain what needs to be added. Jona’s discarded tights and ballet slippers lie by the window, next to the avocado plant she’s been trying to grow in Rakhi’s favorite mug. The eastern wall has been given over to Jona’s artwork, rainbow drawings of dwarflike people with intense black-markered eyes.
Rakhi likes the comfortable clutter of her life, the things she loves gathered around her like a shawl against the winterliness of the world. It surprises her (when she thinks of it, which is deliberately not often) that she used to be such an anxious housekeeper when she was married to Sonny, arguing with bitter fervor about picking up wet towels from the bathroom floor and replacing caps on toothpaste tubes. She feels a certain pity when she thinks of that time, that self. Such an earnest wife-self, wanting so much, her stance one of perpetual leaning forward, as though perfection was a town just a little farther down the road. She didn’t know then that perfection had nothing to do with happiness.
And now you’ve learned that happiness lives in messy rooms?
her whisper voice taunts.
Tomorrow, she tells herself as she makes her way to the door, wincing as she steps on a sharp piece of Lego camouflaged by carpet. I’ll clean it all up tomorrow. Be a good example to Jona. I’ll even vacuum.
Yeah, right,
says her whisper voice.
4
FROM THE
DREAM JOURNALS
In the night I dreamed of a golden chain breaking. I could hear the links, snap-snap, like chicken bones. When I woke it was three A.M. The tendons in my back ached with my attempts to hold the chain together. I knew I wouldn’t sleep again.
I went to the landing and looked out on the sickle moon. When I opened the window, the night was full of the smell of wild fennel, which doesn’t grow anywhere near our house. The elders used to say fennel healed internal wounds. We cultivated it in the caves and gave it to the dreamers who came to us. Could I take it as a hopeful sign?
But as I stood there the wind turned, and now the smell was of salted fish. I went and sat on the empty bed in Rakhi’s room, where she sleeps with Jonaki when she comes to visit. I touched the pillow to gain a little comfort. It was hot to my hand. In troubled moments, the elders would recite from the
Brihat Swapna Sarita.
I did the same now, though I have forgotten many of the cantos:
The dream comes heralding joy.
I welcome the dream.
The dream comes heralding sorrow.
I welcome the dream.
The dream is a mirror showing me my beauty.
I bless the dream.
The dream is a mirror showing me my ugliness.
I bless the dream.
My life is nothing but a dream
From which I will wake into death,
which is nothing but a dream of life.
But in the morning, after my husband has left for work, when the woman comes (as I knew she would), it makes it no easier to tell her what I must say.
She’s older than I thought she would be, with gray woven into her short, curly hair and crinkles cut into the edges of her eyes.
She says, We’re thinking of having a baby. We’ve been married just a year now, but we met late and we’re not getting younger. That’s why I came to see you. People say you can tell if this is a lucky time for me, or not.
Have you had a dream recently? I ask. One that you remember?
I dreamed of a hillside twice, she says, grasses swept by wind.
I ask what color the grasses were, were they dry or living, but she cannot remember.
Far away there was a light. She knew it to be the light of her home. It glimmered welcome, but she couldn’t find the path to it. There were thorns; they pricked her feet.
Was there pain?
But no blood, she says. Her voice pleads for me to say something hopeful.
Then, halfway up the hill, her husband appeared. He held out his hand. From the concern in his eyes she could tell how much he loved her. Her voice grows shy and grateful as she says this.
She put out her hand and miraculously, their fingers touched. But it wasn’t her husband anymore—the face was a stranger’s, dangerous and attractive.
What was he wearing?
Her brows crease. Maybe a coat, or a shawl.
Was it gray, like fog? Was it white, like bones?
Maybe, she says doubtfully. Then she lowers her eyes.
I wanted that man more than I’ve ever wanted anything. I was ready to leave my husband and follow him. The longing was like someone had thrust a knife into me. My stomach ached even after I woke up.
How can I tell her of the cancer that has started spreading its web through her? Soon the pain will be so bad that one half of her will long for death while the other half struggles to escape it. And her husband, paralyzed by his own misery—he won’t be strong enough to help her.
Who
is
that strange man? she asks.
The elders, who believed in saying the truth whole, would have told her. But I broke from their ways long ago. I say, The dream is a warning to take better care of your health.
It is? she says doubtfully. That’s what those images meant? But I
do
take good care. Exercise, vitamins, soy powder, breast self-exams—you name it. I feel pretty healthy.
I’d advise you to make an appointment with your doctor right away.
But what about what I asked you? The baby? Should we try for one now? Is this a lucky time?
She holds my hands in hers. I look down at them. Pale, bloodless, cold as coffin earth. But only I can see this.
I make myself smile. I make myself say, No point worrying, and no point waiting.
Let the closeness bring them some joy. Who knows, perhaps it will strengthen the bond between them so it won’t snap as quickly. I have been wrong in reading dreams before, though not often.
But make that doctor’s appointment anyway. Make sure you get everything checked. Promise?
You’re as bad as my mother! Okay, I promise. Thank you. Thank you so much. At the door she turns, diamond-eyed. If it’s a girl, we’ll name her after you.
5
Rakhi
I can sense Belle’s anxiety even before I enter the Chai House, even before I see her face. It’s written all over her back, the way she’s stiffened it like a threatened animal. The way her hair, which is usually gathered into a sleek ponytail, snarls over her shoulders. Even so, she’s careful with the muffins she’s setting out on their tray. Chocolate chip, blueberry, bran, carrot, almond. They form a warm mosaic of browns and oranges, dotted with the astonishing purple of the berries. Next to them are lemon-glazed Danishes, and then a plate of the crumbly sugar-and-cinnamon cookies we’ve christened Delhi Dietbusters. The smell of strong coffee spills out onto the street. And freshly baked bread.
Once I said to my mother, As long as there’s fresh bread in this world, things can’t be beyond repair.
She nodded. But I could read her eyes.
My poor Rakhi, to
place so much belief in bread!
I’ve never worked out the following: am I naïve, or is my mother cynical?
I draw in a deep breath. Naïve or not, I love this place—and I’m fortunate to have it. Because if it weren’t for this store, I might not have Jona today either.
It had been touch-and-go while we were battling for custody—with surprising fierceness. I hadn’t thought Sonny would want the bother of caring for a three-year-old who wasn’t quite toilet trained yet, but he’d surprised me. Sonny’s lawyer had argued eloquently that, as the number one DJ of a popular nightclub, he would be a far better provider for Jona than I would. But the Chai House had swung the balance in my favor. Otherwise Jona would have been spending three weeks out of every four under the care of Sonny-the-infuriating.