The Weight of Heaven (22 page)

her feet slowly, keeping her eyes locked onto Frank’s.

“It was nice chatting with you’all,” she said. “Happy Fourth.”

“Hopefully, next year we’ll all be celebrating in the good old U.S.

of A.,” Georgie said. “I can’t wait to get out of this godforsaken—”

she noticed Ramesh and amended, “lovely country.”

Twenty minutes later, they had said all their good-byes, shaken

hands with Tom and Elisa as well as the ambassador, and were in the

Camry with Satish at the wheel.

“Did you eat anything, Satish?” Ellie asked as soon as they were

out of the gates.

Satish looked bashful. “Actually, I did, madam. All of us drivers

were out in the parking lot, but somebody came and gave us lots and

lots of food. The chicken was tops.”

“I’m so glad someone thought of serving you dinner,” Ellie responded. Frank noticed that she had not said a word to him since

they’d said good-bye to Bob and Georgie.

“Americans are good like that, madam.” Satish seemed unusually talkative, and Frank wondered if dinner had come with a glass

of wine. “Always thinking of us. If this party had been at the Indian

consulate, food only for the guests.”

Frank smiled grimly. At last someone who appreciated Americans. He told himself to slip Satish a hundred-rupee note for his unexpected help in his silent argument with his wife.

Chapter 13

Ellie leaned her head against the car door and stared at the rain outside. Behind the dappled glass wall of rain, the trees were a blur of

green. She had already told Satish to slow down a few times, chided

him for driving so fast in these weather conditions, but to no avail.

So she had given up, much as she’d earlier given up on making small

talk with Frank. In any case, Frank and Ramesh were both fast

asleep, Frank with his mouth open, Ramesh snoring softly, a trickle

of drool running down his chin.

Disappointment had a taste. She had never known that before. It

tasted like ashes, feathery and dry. She had left Girbaug for Bombay

three days ago with hope and was returning with regret, as if a fresh

bouquet of flowers had withered in her hands. A simple gesture, a

look that she was not even aware of at the picnic, followed by some

intemperate comments, had unleashed a cold fury in Frank. And she

couldn’t help thinking that it was merely the echo of an older, more

repressed fury. The weather had not helped either. The outing that

she had so looked forward to, visiting the Elephanta Caves just outside Bombay, had been canceled yesterday due to the rain. No boat

operator was intrepid enough to carry a boatload of tourists from

the Gateway of India to the nearby island that housed the caves that

1 5 2 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

held the ancient sculptures. Instead, they had spent Sunday mostly

hanging out at the Taj, Ellie reading a book in the room while Frank

and Ramesh visited the hotel’s many boutique shops and then had

lunch at the Golden Dragon. Despite Frank’s unhappiness with

her at the picnic on Saturday, Ellie had been surprised to find that

his anger had extended into the next day. She had tried to focus on

the novel she was reading, but her heart leapt each time she heard

a sound in the hallway, hoping it was Frank coming to get her, anticipating that any minute he would walk into their room to tell her

how much he was missing her company, ask her to shut her book

and come join him and Ramesh in whatever they were doing. At

about four in the afternoon she was tempted to go for another bath,

but she lingered, afraid of missing him if he poked his head inside

their room. Finally, at five, she called him on the cell. “Hey. It’s me.

What’re you guys doing?”

“Nothing much,” he answered. “Just sitting in the lobby talking

to another guest.”

“Is she beautiful?” she asked, half jokingly but the long, pained

silence told her that her words had hit their mark. She took a sharp

breath, the pain of being unexpectedly right stronger than she’d

imagined. She heard Frank say, “Excuse me,” imagined that he’d

stepped away from the woman, and then, “What do you want,

El?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to see what you guys were up to. And

whether we had plans for dinner. Unless you—you have other

plans,” she stammered, suddenly unsure of herself.

She heard the exasperation in his voice. “I’m on holiday with

my wife and a nine-year-old boy. What other plans could I possibly

have?”

Despite his sarcasm, despite the fact that he sounded cold, she

had felt a rush of joy. Obviously, Frank was not so mad at her that he

was planning on staying away for the rest of the evening. She realized that this is what she had been dreading all day long.

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 5 3

“Good,” she had said. “Well, I’d be happy to go wherever you

want to go.”

He must’ve heard the submission in her voice because his voice

was gentler when he spoke. “No. Today was meant to be your day

until these stupid rains ruined everything. You decide where you

want to go to dinner.”

“I don’t care.” She felt teary, wanting to end this horrible frostiness between them. “I just want to be with you.”

“Let me go find Ramesh,” he said promptly. “We’ll be up in five

minutes.”

She had hung up, relieved that there was still enough of the old

spark—or at least, enough goodwill—left between them that he

could detect and respond to her need for him. And sure enough,

the door opened a few minutes later and Ramesh came bounding

in, followed by Frank. The boy was carrying three new shirts for

himself and a silk scarf for his mother that Frank had let him believe

he had purchased from his twenty rupees. Ellie’s stomach clenched

as she pictured Prakash’s reaction to these extravagant gifts. She

doubted that the cook had ever been able to afford to buy his son

three shirts at one time. And if they’d bought a gift for Edna, why

not buy a small token for Prakash? She wondered if Frank was even

aware of the slight. Prakash would surely be, would read all kinds

of things into it. Any other time she would’ve pointed this out to

her husband, her voice gently chiding. But not today. Instead, she

determined to slip some money into Prakash’s hands, telling him

they had not known what to get him. The money would evaporate

like the vapors of the alcohol he’d surely purchase from it, but that

couldn’t be helped.

Frank was polite and attentive to her during dinner, and Ellie was

miserable. His politeness stung more than his anger had—he was

treating her like a stranger with whom he was compelled to break

bread. She was thankful for Ramesh’s lively presence and nonstop

chatter throughout dinner. A few times she wanted to chide him

1 5 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

for talking with his mouth full, but each time she stopped herself,

suddenly nervous, unsure of her role in this relationship. Watching

Frank interact with the boy over dinner, she sensed a shift, realized

that something had happened before her very eyes. If this had been

another woman competing for Frank’s affections, she would’ve

known what to do, how to compete. But as it was, it was a disarming

nine-year-old who had stolen her husband’s heart. And it had happened on her watch, was happening even now, and she had no way

of preventing the slow erosion of her status in this strange new dynamic that had sprung up between the three of them. With Benny,

the effect had been the opposite—he had completed Frank and her,

bound them to each other, welded them together. Then, she had felt

important, vital, aware that it was her maternal, womanly body that

linked her husband to her son. But sitting through this dinner, Ellie

was miserably aware of how heavy and
useless
her body felt, how she

could not use it to forge a bond between herself and Ramesh because

she was not his mom. In fact, she was nobody’s mother and probably

would never be again. Her one pregnancy after Benny’s birth had

resulted in a miscarriage, and although no doctor had ruled out the

possibility, she had never gotten pregnant again.

After Benny’s death, Frank had insisted that she get back on her

birth control pills. She had not fought him on this because the truth

was, she was scared. And tired. The process of taking a wailing,

prune-faced infant and raising him into an intelligent, vivacious

seven-year-old had been joyous but also difficult. Everything in those

seven years had revolved around Benny—breast-feeding, teething problems, potty training, measles, birthday parties, sleepovers,

homework, day camp. Watching
Shrek 2
instead of
Before Sunset
,

The Three Stooges
videos instead of the art movies at the Ann Arbor

Film Festival. Seven years of not making a plan or a decision without putting Benny’s needs first, and it turned out that none of it was

enough. Being a good, diligent parent was not enough of a talisman

against the cruelty of a snarling universe. She had looked away for

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 1 5 5

a split second, and in that blink of time, he was gone. The earth had

swallowed him up, turned him into dust, and then Ellie had laid in

bed at night, wrestling with the thoughts of worms eating at Benny’s fine, precious body until she felt like the worms were inside her

brain, feeding on her. Months after they’d buried her son, she had

struggled with this image of the worms, waking up in the middle of

the night with her scalp itching, dreading the slow descent back into

sleep. Every day she would wake up with dark circles under her eyes

and drag herself through another day of listening to the sad stories

of her clients. Once, only once, did she unburden herself to a client,

a retired schoolteacher who had lost a child twenty-five years ago,

and the woman had assured her she didn’t mind, but Ellie was appalled. She had insisted on not charging the client for the visit, and

when Lois Shaffer, the psychologist who owned the practice where

Ellie worked, asked her why they were not billing for her time, she’d

told her. Lois had looked at her for a long time and then said quietly,

“I thought you returned to work too soon, my dear. But even now,

if you want to take some time off, it’d be fine. We’ll find a way to

cover for you.”

Remembering Lois’s words, Ellie shifted in her seat. She had not

taken Lois up on her offer then, but when, a few weeks later, she’d

gotten wind of Pete Timberlake’s proposal to Frank, she had insisted that Frank not dismiss it without thinking it through. And the

more she spoke to Frank about it, the more convinced she’d become

that it was the right thing to do, that starting life afresh in India, a

country where they knew no one and where nobody knew them as

Benny’s dad and mom, was what they needed to do. And much to

her surprise, everyone on both sides of the family—with the exception of her mom—had agreed with her. The resistance that she’d

expected from her dad and from Frank’s mother never came. Perhaps the dark circles under her eyes, the fact that she battled with

images of her son’s skull at night, were more obvious than she’d

known. Only Delores had balked. During one of their late-night

1 5 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

phone conversations she told Ellie, “Moving to India won’t change

the fact of what’s happened, honey. It’s like that saying—you gotta

go home with them that brung you to the dance.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mom,” Ellie had said frostily.

Her mind was made up; it was late. She didn’t want to deal with her

mother’s enigmatic statements tonight.

“I’m just saying, darling, that whatever you and Frank need to

work out, you should do it here at home. Where there’s family and

friends to hold you up. Who’s going to take care of you in India, my

darling?”

Now Ellie bit down on her lip as she remembered her dismissive answer to her mother. “I don’t need anyone to take care of me,

Mom,” she’d answered. It had been a reflexive answer, a throwback

to her years as an independent-minded, rebellious teenager chafing

under the watchful eye of an overprotective mother, but riding in a

car speeding through the Indian countryside, Ellie regretted her arrogant words. Today, she felt far removed from that traumatized but

hopeful woman who had believed that India—
India
, land of yogis

and yoga and the Ganges and the holy city of Benares—would be

the answer to the spiritual and emotional crisis that Benny’s death

had inflicted upon Frank and her. Now, she was simply a woman in

need of comfort—and she couldn’t turn to her husband, who right

now was sleeping in the back seat with his mouth open, his shoulder

cradling the head of a boy he had recently referred to as his son.

Everybody had somebody to call their own, it seemed to Ellie—

somebody that they had loved or married or adopted or birthed or

simply borrowed. Everybody except her. She suddenly longed to

hear her mother’s voice, hungered for the nuggets of hard-earned

wisdom that Delores dropped without seemingly meaning to. She