The Abundance: A Novel (22 page)

“Don’t be so sensitive, Abhi. If you approach people like this, no one will be able to say anything right.”

“He is completely…” Abhi put two fingers to each temple and crushed his eyes in frustration. “Completely
inside his own head
.”

I nodded. “Some people are like that. They have trouble imagining how other people see things.”

“That’s what it takes to get ahead in politics the way that man has. You have to have a big ego.”

“What else did he say?”

“That he and Kamala want to pay a visit.”

“Oh,” I said, looking around uneasily. The mess had quickened as I slowed down. Rice Krispies were crushed into the tablecloth. The hand towels stank of sour damp. Ants had formed a long thread stretching across the kitchen floor to an ancient sticky patch of maple syrup. Paid and unpaid bills littered the counter as well as a sloppy stack of junk mail I had not yet trashed. Abhi offered often enough to hire a maid service. Sometime soon, I knew, it would be inevitable. But not yet. I could do it, but I needed time. I started calculating how quickly I could get the house clean or at least tidy. “Did he say when?”

“He’s going to call.”

We heard nothing from Milind for a week.

*   *   *

It is Saturday. He calls. Are we at home? They want to come over to give me a gift.

He is only a few minutes away. This could mean anything from five minutes to twenty-five minutes, but in any case, it’s not enough time to make the house clean. I am on the couch, propped on my three throw pillows. A book sits on the floor. I have not read more than five pages. Occasional sweeps of nausea make me feel like I’m reading in a car. My hands rest on the blanket. The knuckles look very bony. I hide them. It’s not as though they are going to shake my hand. I hear the doorbell. Abhi’s welcome is muted, no pleasantries, no rise of voices in hello. There is disease in this house, and disease has its decorum.

Milind’s wife, Kamala-Kim, comes in first. She bends low over the couch to put her hands on my shoulders, a symbolic substitute for an embrace. The purse on her shoulder falls forward and rests on my chest. It is small and lightweight. I am surprised. My purse grew full during motherhood, a kind of separate pregnancy, and never wholly lost the weight. Milind joins his hands, as if the occasion is religious, and keeps his distance. His face is serious—in its classical-geet mode. The murmurs begin. Kamala kneels beside my couch, her penned eyebrows high. They both have a
Hello My Name Is
sticker on their chests.

“Were you attending a conference?” I ask.

Husband and wife look down at the evidence. “There is a community health fair going on,” says Milind, “over at the recreation center.”

Kamala nods. “We like to help out. Blood pressure checks, advice about diet and exercise, that sort of thing. Mel gave a talk.”

“Really? What about?”

Milind clears his throat. “Basic stuff. It had a clever title, though. ‘These Boots Were Made for Walking: Making Regular Exercise a Part of Your Life.’”

“Is that a saying?”

“I think it’s a song, right?” Kamala looks to Milind.

“Frank Sinatra,” he says. “Tell me. Has music been a comfort to you, in this trying time?”

“Yes. And reading.”

“Reading is good. But there is nothing, no
thing
, like music.”

I nod.

“We brought you some CDs.” Milind lifts a small bag with two plastic CD cases in it. “I went through my MP3 collection and burned you all the bhajans. The one I labeled
Volume 2
has some gems of Rafi at the end.”

“Rafi had some beautiful religious songs,” says Kamala. “Like ‘Man Tarapat Hari Darshan ko Aaj.’ Even though he was a Muslim.”

Milind raises his hand and turns his wrist and closes his eyes, head softly rolling, a face of mystical ecstasy. “Music transcends these divisions. Caste and creed. It trans
cends
them.”

“It does, it does,” I say, glancing at Abhi, who is sitting on the armrest at the far end of my couch.

“Can I get you something to drink?” asks Abhi. “Water? Juice?”

“We had lunch at the health fair,” says Milind. “What have you been listening to? Bhajans?”

“Yes, among a few other things.”

“You know, we talk about this and that and science and whatnot, but music heals us at a deeper level. I tell my patients that. It is medicine administered per os—by ear.”

“Kamala?” Abhi asks. “Water, juice, anything?”

“Oh no, I’m fine as well.”

Milind stares at me as if seeing my sunken face for the first time. He purses his lips and nods to himself. “I should come over some time and sing some bhajans for you. Would you like that?”

“Of course, Milind bhai. But you are so busy…”

“I am not busy now. And even if I was, this takes priority.” He is kneeling by me. He glances a few degrees to his left and says, to no one in particular, “Is there a chair?”

Abhi brings over a chair from the dining table. Milind pushes away the coffee table so he has enough room for the chair and his own presence. Kamala sits on the love seat at a right angle to my couch. Her husband has his eyes closed and is readying himself. She looks at her watch.

Milind begins a low hum. “I have not rehearsed,” he says, “so you must forgive my mistakes.”

Abhi takes the seat next to Kamala, his body leaning away from her, his head on his fist, his gaze fixed on the far end of the house. Milind begins singing, full-voiced, no adjustment in volume made for the close quarters. He does have talent. Not even Abhi could deny that. The eyes stay shut, meditative. He begins a filmi song from several decades ago, again by Rafi. The lyrics talk about Radha dancing—tirikita toom, tirikita toom, ta, ta—and Krishna playing his flute. The tune is as chipper as classical gets, but the song has Radha and Krishna in it, so maybe it is appropriate. Extempore alaaps add gravity. After Milind finishes, I say, “Thank you so much,” but he is concentrating, as if he has a word on the tip of his tongue.

Finally he lifts a finger. “And there’s also this, in the same raga…”

“Mel,” Kamala says. “She must be tired.”

“This is music,” he answers, irritated. “It is relaxing. It is the opposite of tiring.” He looks at me. “Are you tired?”

“I am not the one singing, Milind bhai. As long as your throat is—”

Milind starts a prefatory alaap. This segues into a bhajan. When he is done, he says, “You see how they are identical? You see?” But it sounds nothing like the first song, at least to me.

I nod. Abhi stands up and says, “Mustn’t overwork your voice, Mel.”

Milind touches his throat. “I am speaking at a dinner tonight on a new diabetes drug.”

“Best of luck.”

“It’s at the Savoy Park Steakhouse.”

“Mel, Kim, thanks for stopping by. We won’t keep you.”

“No, no. It has been my pleasure to share what I can.” He points at the CDs in the bag and nods at me. “You will find great comfort in these CDs. Books are helpful, but music is music. Let that be the one thing I leave you with. Music is music.”

Kamala rises, then kneels at my hand.

“It must be so hard,” she says, shaking her head at me, “so lonely. What with your children so far away.” Her eyes fall to the carpet. “I tell Ankur all the time, What if something happens to us? L.A. So far away. It’s just a flight, he says. But still.”

“The children come very often—Mala, every weekend she has off.”

“How are Mala and Rahul holding up?”

I am about to say
Ronak
, but I stop myself. She is trying. No need to reveal how little we really know each other. “They are both coming over this weekend, actually.”

“You must be so excited!”

I smile. Kamala leans forward and makes a kissing sound in the air beside my cheek. “Keep smiling, okay?” she whispers. She stands and tugs her purse back up, onto her shoulder.

Milind keeps a hand on Abhi’s arm. I can hear the confidential wisdom he imparts.

“In the beginning,” he is saying, “you take part in life, you laugh and cry. But toward the end, if you are wise, you become a witness. You become detached. You witness your own grief from the sky, you know? Like God.”

It feels good to say my children are coming to see me. This is what I tell the loneliness when—five hours since Abhi left, five until he gets home—the loneliness asks why the house is so quiet. I answer
afterglow
or
anticipation.
Mala comes often enough that I can say that, with or without the grandchildren. After Kamala’s visit the weekend comes quickly. Mala’s minivan is suddenly in our garage, both doors slid back and the rear door high. Abhi pulls in behind her, having fetched Ronak’s family from the airport.

When everyone is here, it’s the same as if no one is here. I cannot focus. Vivek and Ronak’s three boys play tag, thumping upstairs, thumping downstairs. They dissolve into squeals and laughter at the moment of tag, then go quiet suddenly as the running and chasing starts anew. The hair at their temples slicks down with sweat. During their rare pauses, they throb like space heaters. I feel I could warm my hands at their flushed cheeks. Shivani, still a little shy in big gatherings, stays with her father. Ronak gets her to sit in his lap by showing her a Pixar movie on his phone. The central conversation is him talking to Mala; Sachin listens closely, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, left foot bobbing, eager to charge into the pauses.

Amber sits quietly, in a silence without anxiety. She monitors the children and simply says a name if she wishes to stop a behavior. Dev, when he hears “Dev,” stops jumping off the chaise for the rest of the afternoon. I am on that chaise under my blue microfiber throw; he climbs on it and jumps off without seeing me. Amber is the one Abhi talks to when, periodically, he emerges. There are enough people in the house that he can retreat unnoticed. Everyone is distracted. They don’t notice his absence the way they don’t notice my presence.

Not that I am reproaching them. I like basking in the family noise. I like how the hours go by, how baths get delayed and everyone’s in their pajamas well past eleven in the morning, how lunch is late, how even Amber’s children get their nap times thrown off in the general excitement, how the words
ice cream
get said instead of spelled aloud and suddenly all the grandchildren are demanding it. I don’t even mind the random tantrum, Mala kneeling and shouting and making it worse, Sachin scooping up Vivek and going upstairs for a time-out. I don’t mind Raj screaming for the small stuffed elephant that’s been in Shivani’s hands all morning. It’s best I am too weak to pick him up and promise to find him an identical one at the toy store; Amber never liked it when I did things like that. She watches him cry for what feels like a long time but probably isn’t.

This is how she trains them. I remember being in their house when she was teaching Dev to sleep by himself in the crib. She used to watch the clock and go in at intervals, some technique she had read in a book. All three of her children slept wherever she laid them, even with daylight through the blinds. Her husband drank from my breast until he was three years old and slept in my warmth until he was five. He had his own bed, but he never stayed in it past midnight. I remember his skin smelling of Johnson & Johnson’s from the night bath I gave him. I would hover my lips over his hair and savor the tickle. I always slept badly. He would toss and kick. Abhi used to flee for the recliner downstairs. I did not mind.

Both families, Ronak’s and Mala’s, begin solemnly at my side when they arrive, asking for updates, getting me water, having the kids each give me a hug. I tell the children to play, play, and I turn the conversation to other things than me. After a few minutes, my encouragement works. The conversation shrugs off the sick mood and becomes animated, freer. The grandchildren ask to put their shoes back on and play outside. Mala, always wary of sun exposure (more so than Amber, who burns), tells them to wait until the backyard falls under the shade of the house. So they play tag indoors. On my chaise longue, I settle into the noise like a bath.

Now, a few hours into the weekend, they speak of things that have nothing to do with my health.

“… This is the time,” Ronak is saying. “If you refinance the house, do it now. But there’s no hurry. The rates aren’t going anywhere.”

Sachin nods. He likes hearing Ronak open up about money matters. Finance to him is esoteric wisdom, and Ronak is among the initiated, if not the elect. “They say I can get less than four.”

“Easily. This is a historic time.” Ronak waves his hands expansively. “Historic.”

“Thanks to some historic blunders on the part of the banking community,” says Mala. She is always needling him about the financial crisis; it is in jest, but only partly.

“I wouldn’t call them
blunders
.”

“No?”

“
Blunder
is too generous. It sounds like they didn’t know what they were doing.”

“What, then?
Crimes?
”

“Maybe that’s shooting to the other extreme. They were making money, which is what they were supposed to be doing. The right word is kind of in between.”

“It’s okay, Ronak. You’re not in front of a congressional committee.”

“And I never will be. I had nothing to do with that whole part of it.”

“Nothing?”

“What I do is in a completely different department. It’s like, let’s say the cardiologists get caught doing something shady, like cathing people who don’t need it just to make money. You don’t blame all the doctors in the hospital. You don’t blame the ENTs and family practitioners. You blame the cardiologists and leave it at that.”

“Well, those cardiologists are gonna have to ramp up how many caths they do, because there’s no money in seeing patients anymore.”

“You mean the Medicare cuts?”

“That’s only the beginning. That’s just the first few nips from the piranhas. We’re waiting for the feeding frenzy.”

“They’ve got to save money,” says Sachin, “so they do it by paying us less.”

“Doctors usually don’t have to deal with this kind of uncertainty. It used to be the one good thing about medicine.”