One Amazing Thing (17 page)

I grabbed my briefcase and started for the stairs. I intended to rush to the police station and do what I could to help Latika. I was certain she was innocent; this mistake could be cleared up soon. But on the way, my boss’s secretary, an older woman who had been with the company for many years and was privy to high-level secrets, stopped me. My boss wanted to see me. Immediately.

I told her I needed to leave right away on a personal emergency, and that I would see him as soon as I got back.

She shook her head. “If you don’t see him now, you may not have a job when you get back.”

Her tone stopped me. I followed her into my boss’s office. He didn’t waste time with niceties. “I got a letter from high-up this morning,” he told me, “stating that your transfer has been revoked.” He did not explain. Instead, he suggested that I return to my room and focus my energies on the Ghanaian minister.

When I stepped out, I had to hold on to the secretary’s desk. My head was whirling. In less than an hour, my world had fallen to pieces. What was going on?

The secretary looked at me with wry sympathy. “Looks like you’ve made someone powerful very angry. If I were you, I’d make amends fast. And I’d stay away from Latika.”

Understanding flashed through me. Naina hadn’t called a friend last night. She had called her father, and he had struck with the immediate intelligence of a hawk that knows how best to mortally wound its prey.

I left my briefcase on the floor of the secretary’s office and drove
like a maniac to Latika’s hostel. I bribed the gardener and learned that an hour before, the superintendent had received a phone call. When she hung up, she was very agitated and had Miss Latika’s belongings packed and brought to the gate. She instructed the gatekeeper to give them to Miss Latika but not let her into the hostel. Soon afterward, Miss Latika had shown up in a police van. She had picked up her things and told him she was leaving the city. One of the policemen had stopped her from saying more. She had given the gardener a ten-rupee note as baksheesh when she left. Folded into the note was a letter for a gentleman named Mangalam.

More money changed hands. I got the letter. It consisted of only one sentence:
For both our sakes, don’t look for me.
When I crushed it into a ball, it seemed as though I were crushing my dreams. And not only dreams but also the part of me that was tender and moral. Latika had called it up. Without her, it could not survive.

Standing outside the dilapidated building, I was forced to admit that I had brought upon Latika trouble so deep that she might never recover from it. And this: though Naina didn’t want me for herself, the thought of my being happy with another woman stung her like poison ivy. She would fight to keep me tied to her for life, and in that battle her father would be her ally.

That evening Naina and I dined together as though nothing amiss had occurred. As I watched her compliment the cook on the Chicken Makhani, rage flowed through my veins like exhilaration. Liberated from the scruples that Latika had lovingly woven around me, I felt a plan taking shape. I would begin by flirting with Naina’s closest friends, women too well connected for her to ignore or harm. I would use my charms to embroil these women in affairs, and flaunt these affairs so all of Delhi’s rich and famous gossiped about them. If in the process I broke a few hearts, it didn’t matter, as long as Naina became the laughingstock of high society. I would
shame her and her father until in desperation they would do one of two things, and at this point I didn’t care which. They would either hire a thug to kill me, or they would make sure I went somewhere far away. In this way, I would gain my freedom.

CAMERON HEARD THE END OF MANGALAM’S STORY, BUT IT WAS
also a kind of not-hearing. In his head he had drifted into another place, in another dimension. Tall yellow flowers grow wild around the crumbly brick of the walls, all the way up to the locked iron gates. Cameron has no trouble recognizing the gates. Hasn’t he been looking at their photo for years? The road leading to the gates—no more than a gravel path—is mud-red. Cameron’s feet slip-slide on it as he walks. He wishes there were something to hold on to, a rail, a bush, another person’s arm. The wish surprises him. It is so un-Cameron-like. For years now he’s prided himself on doing without support, on being the one others come to for help. But his backpack is so heavy. He wants to drop it, but he can’t. The backpack is filled with gifts. Without the backpack, Seva might not like him. He hoists it higher onto his shoulders, though that makes it harder to draw breath. Around his heart, there’s a sharp, hot squeezing, like scorpion pincers. He’s encountered scorpions before, on desert missions. He hopes there aren’t any here in the foothills, because beyond the gates the children in their patched blue uniforms are playing barefoot.

The boys chase a soccer ball around the yard. From the articles he’s been reading to prepare for this journey, Cameron knows they call soccer something different here. But holes have opened up in his memory, and he can’t remember what. The girls play crocodile, jumping onto the porch of the old building with shrieks of delight and terror so that the girl who is crocodile can’t get them. Their legs
are thin and scabbed, but when they run they’re transformed into forest flashes of golden brown. Seva runs the fastest; the crocodile will never catch her. When she reaches the gate, she swings up on it.
Seva,
Cameron calls.
Seva!
She looks out through the bars, an inquiring frown on her face, as though she can hear but can’t see him. Behind her the mountain range is wrinkled and friendly, like the head of an elephant. The air smells of cow-dung fires. A goat bleats to be milked.

He drops the backpack and runs to the gate. He wants to touch her determined fingers, the nails black with dirt. But the orphanage bell is ringing. It summons the children to study hour. They make a ragged, reluctant line at the pump so they can wash their hands and feet. A teacher in a faded sari appears on the porch and yells at Seva to get off the gate, but she hangs there for an additional moment, listening, a perplexed expression in her eyes.

Seva,
he shouts,
it’s Cameron
. He’s only a foot away from her now. He can see the gap between her top teeth, which are a little crooked. One of her braids has come undone. Flecks of rust from the gate coat her forearms. She has a muddy smudge on her cheekbone. He reaches through the bars to wipe it off.

Seva!
the teacher thunders.

Coming, Mam,
she says. She jumps down from the gate, agile as a monkey, leaving Cameron’s finger to caress the air.

“THAT SUCKS, MR. M,” LILY SAID. “TO FINALLY FIND SOMEONE
you love so much and then lose her like that. No wonder you were pissed off. I’m glad you got away.”

Now that he had finished his story, Mangalam’s teeth began to chatter again. He hugged himself. “I got away geographically,” he said. “But not legally. Or psychologically. Naina’s still my wife, and
I can’t forget that. Maybe today, in a while, I really will become free.” He glanced up where the collapsed ceiling had been, and Uma, following his eyes, caught a movement there. A shattered light fixture, still attached by its chain to something, had begun a small, swinging movement. Why would it do that?

“It wasn’t all Naina’s fault,” Mangalam continued. “I started the cycle of wrongdoing. I used her to get what I wanted. It’s only fair that she became the cause for losing what I wanted even more. Karma’s wheel is intricate.”

“What do you mean, karma’s wheel?” said Mrs. Pritchett. She leaned across her husband toward Mr. Mangalam.

“Remember how I flirted and enticed purposely, intending to snare Naina’s friends? Well, after I achieved my purpose and was sent away to America, I found I couldn’t stop behaving like that toward women—even those I respected and felt a genuine liking for.” Here he glanced at Malathi. “It was like those stories we tell children to frighten them into goodness: if they grimace long enough, their muscles will freeze, and when they want to smile, they will not be able to.”

Mangalam turned toward Malathi and spoke as though they were alone. “I think we might die here—perhaps in the next few hours, if more of the building comes down or the air deteriorates further…. I don’t want to die without telling you that I’m sorry for my behavior.”

Malathi said, “I accept. And thank you for translating my story, which I chose partly to jab at you, the kind of man I thought you were.”

Cameron had been coughing intermittently, but now he had a prolonged fit that left him gasping. Uma tried to hold him upright and Lily hurried over to help. He had to push their arms away to get at his pocket and extract the inhaler, which he used. When he held
his breath, Uma found that she, too, was holding hers. He handed the inhaler to her—so frighteningly light—and she put it back in his pocket. Another puff and he might as well throw it away. “Tell your story,” she said to Cameron.

“I can’t,” he whispered, rubbing his chest. “It isn’t ready.”

She knew what he meant. Hers wasn’t ready either.

Then Mrs. Pritchett cleared her throat.

I
apologize in advance for my story. I know it will cause my husband pain. The way I see these events is not how he views them; it cannot be. I only hope that he—and all of you—will see by the end why I had to tell this story.

You’ve been speaking of events that shatter lives in a day’s time: wars, betrayal, seduction, death. In my case, my life was turned around by a man I didn’t know helping his wife take off her coat.

THAT FATEFUL DAY BEGINS WITH MRS. PRITCHETT ENJOYING A
cup of lemon tea in her morning kitchen, closing her eyes and breathing in the tangy steam. She believes in life’s small pleasures. Around her, the kitchen gleams: immaculate granite counters, a purring Sub-Zero refrigerator, a blue ceramic bowl she made in pottery class. The bowl is filled with apples and pears, her husband’s favorite fruits.

Mrs. Pritchett has sent her husband off to his office on a wholesome breakfast of oatmeal with almonds and brown sugar and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Until he returns in the evening, the day lies ahead of her, luxurious as a stretching cat waiting for her to stroke it. She makes a mental list: go into her dewy gar
den and pick an armful of irises; tidy the house in preparation for dinner guests, Mr. Pritchett’s old clients, grown into friends over the years; visit the local market to pick up strawberries for an English trifle she’s planning to create. After shopping, she may stop for lunch at the little deli nearby. Their sandwiches are excellent, made with bread they bake each morning in the back. At teatime she’ll meet her monthly book club, intelligent, pleasant women, several of them in their late sixties like her; she is ready for the meeting, with a page of notes on
The House of the Spirits.
When she gets home, she’ll put on a Satie CD and lie down on the couch. (This need for rest would have irked her when she was younger; she accepts it with equanimity now.) Then it’ll be time to prepare dinner—an easy task. The lamb has already been marinated, the greens washed and patted dry.

It does not strike Mrs. Pritchett that her life is small and contained, filled with bourgeois pleasures. If it did, she would not consider that a bad thing.

SHE IS RUNNING LATE, AND THE LITTLE CAFÉ IS EMPTY WHEN
she gets to it, the lunchtime crowd gone. This disappoints her for a moment; she loves to people watch. But no matter. She orders ham and melted cheese on rye and bites into the crusty bread with vigorous pleasure. Then she sees the couple walking in. They’re old; the husband has age spots on his face and trembly hands with which he guides his wife. She has aged worse than he. She wears thick, Cokebottle glasses and shuffles with painful slowness, leaning on a cane, one of those ugly aluminum quadruped things. Mrs. Pritchett watches them with a mix of pity and fear. One day soon, she and her husband will come to this.

The couple has reached a table. The old man lets go of his wife’s
arm and pulls a chair out for her. He helps her off with her coat, an action that takes some maneuvering as she shifts her cane from one hand to the other. But he is patient, and when it’s off, he hangs it carefully on the back of her chair. He flicks a speck off the sleeve before he turns back to his wife and helps her sit down. The couple discusses the menu, the woman pointing with sudden animation to items while the man inclines his head toward her to hear better. Then he nods gravely and summons the waitress. Mrs. Pritchett dawdles over her sandwich; she is curious about their order, which turns out to be a sugar-dusted lemon square and a decadent, oversize éclair. The man cuts each in half so they can share them. It’s the flicking of the speck off the sleeve that gets Mrs. Pritchett—the caring behind the gesture, even though his wife with her poor vision would never have noticed whatever was on the coat sleeve.

THROUGHOUT BOOK CLUB, MRS. PRITCHETT CAN’T STOP THINKING
about the couple in the café. In her distracted state, she forgets to bring up her best points during discussion. At home, the Satie makes her want to weep. She stares blankly at the oven while the lamb roasts, trying to figure out why she is so obsessed with the old man and his wife, and when she finally understands, she cannot move. By the time Mr. Pritchett returns from the office, she has made a decision. After dinner, when the men swoon over her trifle and the women clamor for the recipe, which she writes down for them on monogrammed notecards, she tells Mr. Pritchett that she has a terrible headache. Would it be okay if she slept in the guest room? He agrees easily, as she knew he would.

In the room that has rarely harbored guests, she thinks about the children Mr. Pritchett and she could never have. This not-having has been a dull ache at the back of her mind all her life, but today she’s
happy about it in a bitter way. If there had been children, she could not have done this. She takes from the pocket of her robe a bottle of sleeping pills—they belong to Mr. Pritchett, who occasionally suffers from insomnia—and takes the entire bottle, along with two glasses of wine.

At first all goes well. On the bed she lies on her back, her fingers linked over her chest like an image on a sarcophagus. The pressed sheets smell of lavender. She feels herself suspended like a jellyfish in the darkening waters of her mind. A little more, a little more. But then her body, wiser perhaps than she is, rebels, forcing her to double over with cramps. She starts to vomit and can’t stop. Mr. Pritchett, who has been catching up on some work—there’s always work to catch up on, even though he’s seventy and could have retired years ago—hears her and comes running, and she ends up in the hospital, getting her stomach pumped.

WHAT TERRIBLE DISCOVERY DID I MAKE THAT PUSHED ME INTO
this desperate action? It was this: my husband did not love me the way I needed him to.

Don’t misunderstand me. Mr. Pritchett was a good husband. He provided me with everything I needed and many things I did not need. At dinner he listened (though often with only half his attention) when I told him about my day. How can I complain? When he spoke of his achievements—new companies he’d acquired as clients, or old clients whose financial disasters he’d adroitly avoided—I struggled to hide my own boredom.

There were many things we enjoyed together. Mr. Pritchett was proud of the beautiful and expensive house we lived in, and now that I’ve heard his story, I understand his pride better. He loved to show it off to people he knew, and I loved to show off my cooking
skills. And in return we got invited to beautiful, expensive homes with pleasant people in them. (But when I was about to kill myself, I couldn’t think of one person among them whom I would miss, or who would miss me.) We went to the theater and had dinner afterward in a little Italian restaurant on Columbus where the food was superb and the maître d’ knew us by name. We went to the movies, mostly action films and sci-fi, which he liked and I didn’t mind if there wasn’t too much gore. Early in our marriage we used to travel. Europe, Canada, even New Zealand. One year we went on an Alaskan cruise. But it was hard for Mr. Pritchett to be away from the office. He would carry his computer with him everywhere. And when I saw how he struggled upon returning to catch up with his clients, I didn’t feel like suggesting further trips. My favorite activity was lying in bed after dinner, reading, he with his business journals, me with a novel, snuggled under a quilt that I had made.

But after I saw the couple in the café, a great dissatisfaction washed over me. I remembered the old man tilting his head attentively, listening to his wife making her menu choice. Her eyes had shone through her thick glasses as she watched him cut up their desserts for sharing. There was nothing like that tenderness in my life. And without it, what use were the things I’d built my days around? My garden, my home, my activities and friendships, even the time Mr. Pritchett and I spent together—they were all so many zeroes. With the “one” of love in front of them, they could have been worth millions, but as of now, I was bankrupt, and it was too late to start over.

THE FIRST DAY IN THE HOSPITAL, I MOVED IN AND OUT OF A
haze that was alternately pain and numbness. On the second day, I began to feel a great shame. I refused to talk to the people waiting
to see me: my doctor, the hospital psychiatrist, a social worker, and my husband. I spent the day with my face buried in my pillow, my arms aching with IV needles, plotting how I could do this more efficiently once I was released.

I wasn’t sure when the night nurse came into my room. I awoke and found her standing at the foot of my bed. The lights were off and she left them that way. In the glow of machines I could only see a silhouette, short and thin. Her hair was tied back neatly in a bun. The darkness had turned her uniform gray. When she greeted me, from her accent I guessed—because Mr. Pritchett had many clients from that country—that she was Indian. I pretended to be asleep. Being a nurse, she could probably tell I was awake, but my pretense didn’t annoy her. She hummed softly to herself, a foreign-sounding tune, as she stood there. I waited for her to do nurselike things—check the machines, feel my pulse, give me a shot—but she just stood there. Then, in a whispery voice, she told me that this was her last night at the hospital, and I was her last patient.

I hadn’t expected that. Surprise made me blurt out, “Are you retiring?”

“You could say that,” she said.

“What will you do now?”

“Some people think I should go back to my birthplace,” she said. “But I’ve decided to go where no one knows me. I want a new life.”

Moving to live where no one knew you, shucking off your worn-out life like old snakeskin! The idea ran through me like a shiver. And though I’d been determined not to give anything of myself away in this place filled with concrete and chemicals and cheerlessness, I found myself saying, “That’s what I want also. A new life. This one’s too painful.”

“Why?”

Maybe it was her casual tone. Or the fact that we would never
see each other again. I said, “It’s like
The Matrix.
” (I wasn’t sure she would be familiar with the movie. I’d gone to see it only because Mr. Pritchett insisted—though then I had been captivated by it. She nodded, however.) “All this time I thought everything around me was beautiful. But in reality I had been squeezed into a cramped, loveless cell. I chose death. I couldn’t see any other way of breaking out.”

“Death is a breaking out of sorts,” she said. “But you won’t necessarily end up in a better place. Especially if you kill yourself. Terrible karma, that. You’ll just have to go through everything you tried to escape, in a different form. In any case, this husband whom you consider to be the bane of your existence, he came to you because of your own desire. Don’t you see it?”

Her words shot through me like voltage, charging the dead battery of my brain, bringing to life a lost memory. I was astounded because what she said was true.

IT IS THE DAY AFTER HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION. VIVIENNE SITS
in her mother’s Formica kitchen (lemon yellow, baby-chick yellow, color-of-hope yellow), eating the world’s best peach pie with Debbie. Debbie has just told Vivienne she has persuaded her father to let them run his bakery for six months.

“We’ll be in charge of everything!” Debbie ends, smiling all over her good-natured, freckled face. But instead of the squeal of joy Debbie is waiting for, Vivienne can only say, in a hollow tone, “That’s wonderful, Debbie. But I have some news, too.”

“Don’t tell me—” Debbie starts. “You’re getting—” Then something in Vivienne’s expression silences her. Vivienne holds out her left hand, which she has been hiding in her lap until now. On her finger is a ring.

“Lance proposed, and I said yes. He’s got a job offer in Tulsa.
He wants us to get married next month, before he moves.” She talks fast to keep Debbie from saying the things she doesn’t want to hear. Debbie doesn’t think Lance is right for her—too intense, too serious, his black eyes boring into whomever he looks at. “He wants too much,” she told Vivienne once.

Debbie also thinks Vivienne hasn’t known Lance long enough. (He started working for Pete Albright, who owns a secondhand car dealership, two months ago. A week after he moved to town, he came into the bakery where Vivienne and Debbie work after school to buy pumpernickel bread. He ended up asking Vivienne out.) But that’s exactly what Vivienne finds exciting about Lance: he doesn’t talk about the usual boring things—his family or where he grew up. That’s all behind him and of no importance, he tells her. Only the future matters, and about that he has a lot to say. The high-powered jobs he’s determined to get, for instance, or the mansion he plans to buy for his wife.

And that’s just fine with Vivienne, thank you, because she has lived in the same house since she was born: three bedrooms, two baths, aluminum siding, dripping kitchen faucet, dark, practical carpets that stubbornly hoard odors. She has gone to school with the same kids since kindergarten. Her parents’ friends, whom they meet for church picnics or bridge, have known her since she was a tantrum-throwing toddler. She’s ready to take a little risk, to follow the yellow brick road into romance and a house on a hill with all-white carpeting. (Tulsa, they’ve both decided, is only a stepping-stone.) She’s ready to want too much, along with Lance.

So now she speaks to Debbie about decorating their beautiful new home, baking her best desserts for Lance, holidaying in exotic destinations, eating at restaurants where the menu is in French and the wineglasses are crystal. And having babies, lots of babies. Al
ready she’s imagining the birthday cakes she’ll create, confections extravagant as Disneyland that will be the talk of the neighborhood.

“You’ll do fine without me,” she ends, trying not to look at Debbie’s fallen face.

(Debbie will, indeed, do fine. She’ll get one of her other friends to join her, and Debbie’s Delights will become a hit in their hometown. But Vivienne? How will Vivienne do? In forty years, when she looks into the ledger of her life, at the profit and loss columns, what will she see?)