And Laughter Fell From the Sky (2 page)

She shrugged. “It’s important to my parents.”

“You seem ambivalent. Is that why you wanted to get away this evening? To think about things?”

“No. I’m not ambivalent.”

Abhay twisted his thin leather bracelet, a souvenir from the commune, around his wrist. He wondered what she really wanted. He wondered if she even knew. “What’s the guy like?”

“He has a bachelor’s degree in computer software engineering and an MBA. He’s from New Jersey, but he’s willing to relocate here.”

“Sounds like you’re ready to hire him.”

“Ha, ha. You know those are the kinds of things Indian parents care about.”

“What about you? Have you actually spoken to him? Do you know anything about him?”

“Of course I’ve spoken to him. My parents have spoken to him and his parents. We’ve had the horoscopes matched. You know, the works.” She ran a finger over the edge of her glass. “He’s quite handsome.” She smiled faintly. “He’s tall, and he has a relaxed look. At least, that’s what I got from his picture. I don’t want to marry the usual Indian-American guy—short and scrawny, intellectually brilliant, and with no social skills. Someone who makes a lot of money but doesn’t know how to spend it.”

“You don’t want to marry a nerd, in other words.” Abhay wondered if Rasika put him in the category of the “usual Indian-American guy.” Was he still a nerd? He was short but not scrawny. He prided himself on his intellectual brilliance, but he wasn’t someone who would ever make a lot of money. “Listen. You don’t have to go through with this. You can make your own decisions.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I don’t know why I told you in the first place.” She lifted her glass.

In the middle of the room, a waiter pushed three tables together. A dozen overweight, middle-aged people dragged out chairs, seated themselves, and started shouting out drink orders.

Rasika turned her shoulder against the noisy group and put her glass down. “Tell me about your—where you were.” She brightened her face with a smile and held up both hands, as though ready to catch whatever he would tell her. “What was it like?”

What could he say about the last year of his life? That he’d learned to cook a meal for thirty people, make a straw-bale house, and endure hours of meetings in order to reach a consensus for any little thing? That he’d had what he assumed was his first long-term, serious relationship with a woman, and his assumption had proven false? That his illusions of the life he thought he was going to live had been shattered, and he had no idea what to do now?

“You lived on a kind of farm, right?” she asked. “Where was it again?”

“West Virginia. It was a commune.”

“How could it be a commune? We’re not a Communist country.”

Usually, once he brought up this word, Indians turned away and asked him no more. His parents had only come to visit him once at Rising Star, during one of the “outreach days,” when all community members were properly clothed. Abhay remembered this about Rasika: she’d ask questions where other people were not curious. Sometimes her questions made her seem slow, but at least she was interested.

“A commune’s a group of unrelated people living together who share labor and resources,” he said. “You can have a commune anywhere.”

“Don’t you like having your own space and your own things?”

“We each had our own private room, where we slept and kept our personal stuff. But we shared everything else: cars, food, a stereo system, tools. Even clothes. There was a room where you could go and get something to wear.”

“You went there to do research, right?” Rasika asked. “For your senior thesis?”

“I can’t believe you remember that I did a senior thesis.” Even his parents hadn’t read his paper.

“I was impressed. I wasn’t about to write a huge paper if I didn’t have to. But we all know about your high grades and test scores.”

Abhay knew that his intelligence was a topic of general conversation among his parents’ circle of Indian friends. That was one of the things that bothered his dad—that everyone knew Abhay’s grades were fantastic, and no one could understand how his parents had messed up by not making sure he studied sciences and went to medical school. “My thesis was on utopian communities. But I finished that before I graduated. I’m not writing anything now.”

“Then why’d you go?”

“To live. I thought I’d like to live in a community like that.”

“And you didn’t?”

“It wasn’t that simple,” he said.

“What happened?”

“I liked the people.” He tugged his ponytail. How to explain this in a way that made sense? “I thought I was going to love tilling the earth, building barns, and all that. At first I was exhausted. I figured I’d get used to that, and physically I did. But then I got bored. It was all physical labor and no intellectual stimulation. I kept trying to like it. But the harder I tried, the worse it became. Then I got angry. I started fighting with people.” Abhay had never, until now, revealed to another person this humiliating end of his sojourn at the community. Somehow he felt OK talking to Rasika. He’d never realized before that she was a good listener. Anyway, he’d probably never see her again after this, so it didn’t really matter what he told her.

“What were you angry about?” She was resting her chin in her hand. Her face was unclouded and clear. She didn’t seem disturbed by his behavior.

“It was just—the place was so lacking. We had all these meetings at the commune, these interminable meetings about nothing, it seemed to me: whether we should eat honey or buy a new radio. I couldn’t stand it. And the incompetence of some people, how shoddy their work was. The kitchen was never completely clean. Once we all got a stomach bug, and I’m pretty sure it was because the dishes weren’t properly sanitized. After that I tried to institute a protocol for cleaning the kitchen, and we had a bunch of long meetings about it, but finally people felt like they didn’t want to be regimented and policed in that way.” He shook his head.

“You got angry because the place wasn’t as good as you thought it would be.”

“Exactly. I know that sounds immature, but I realize that, all my life, I’ve gotten angry when people or situations aren’t like I think they should be. So even after I got angry, I wanted to make the commune work. I felt like I was learning a lot about myself. I wanted to stay. I got assigned a coach to help me overcome my anger problem.” He stopped talking. Rasika’s eyes were still on him, and he could feel himself warming and opening up under her interested gaze. Should he tell her about his dream? He grasped his pen and began doodling a lightning bolt on his napkin.

“Why did you finally decide to leave?” she prompted. Two waiters approached the noisy table with drinks-laden trays.

“I had a dream where we were having one of our interminable meetings, and during this meeting we decided to kill ourselves.” He raised his voice over the clatter of the waiters. “Group suicide for the sake of some ideal. I was confused about the purpose, I couldn’t figure it out, but I didn’t object. We were supposed to walk through a dark tunnel, and that was how it was done. I watched people walk through before me—men, women, even children. Then it was my turn. I hesitated. I wasn’t sure if I should. I started asking questions. And the guy behind me said, ‘You have to do it. We agreed.’ ”

Rasika nodded. “Sometimes I have weird dreams too. I just try to forget about them.”

“For a long time, since I was a kid, I’ve used visions or dreams to make decisions. That’s why I moved to Rising Star, because when I visited, I saw a kind of glow around almost every person at that place.” He pushed away his lightning-bolt-covered napkin.

“So you left just because of that dream?”

“Sort of. I was also in a relationship. I thought we were pretty serious. Then I found out she was also sleeping with someone else—one of the men who, I thought, was married to a woman with a couple of kids.” A waiter walked past with sizzling fajita trays, and the rich smell of grilled beef and onions wafted by. “I actually walked in on them one day in her room, and I confronted her, and she said it was my problem, that I needed to get over my jealousy. She threatened to bring it up at a meeting. I asked her to let me think about it first, and that night is when I had the dream. I left the next day.”

She reached for his hand on the table and grasped it in hers. “That sounds really painful.”

He squeezed her smooth fingers.

“You still think about her?” she asked.

“Sometimes. Mostly I feel angry, instead of sad.”

The waiter set the bill in its tray on the table. While Rasika rummaged in her purse for her card, Abhay added several dollars to the tray. “For my beer,” he said.

“Let me get the whole thing.” She put her card on the tray.

“At least let me pay for the tip.”

“Fine.”

He folded his dollars and slipped them under his beer mug.

Once the waiter took away the bill, Rasika held the stem of her empty glass and slid it back and forth on the table. “What should we do tonight?”

“You want to hang out with me?”

“Sure. Let’s do something different.”

He wondered what she thought of as “different.” He was still hungry and wished he could suggest they have dinner. “Let’s go to the memorial,” he said.

“What memorial?”

“You know. The one for the students who were killed in 1970.”

“Oh. God. I hate it when people keep bringing up that old thing all the time.”

“I hate it when people have that attitude. People think it’s all ancient history, that the government could never again turn its guns on innocent young people. But it wasn’t that long ago.”

Rasika picked up her purse, scooted herself off the seat, and stood up. “OK, fine. Let’s go.” She gathered her jacket into her arms. “You can follow me in your car.”

“I walked here.”

“You
walked
? All the way from your mom and dad’s house?”

“It’s only a few miles. I donated my bike to the communal bike pool at Rising Star.”

“Won’t your parents let you use a car?”

“I’m trying to stay off fossil-fuel-based energy as much as possible.”

She flung up her hands. “All right. I’ll give you a ride.”

“Why don’t we walk? It’s not that far, just up the hill behind the Auditorium Building.” Then he looked down at her feet, encased in tan pumps with squarish high heels at least a few inches tall. “Can you walk in those things?”

“I can manage.”

“Why do women wear shoes they can’t walk in? It’s like Chinese foot-binding or something, except you’re doing it to yourself.”

“They’re cute shoes. It’s not like I planned to climb a mountain today or anything.”

Abhay stood up next to Rasika and realized her heels made him several inches shorter than she was. Now he’d be walking with a beautiful woman towering over him.

They stepped out into the sticky evening air. After the dim interior, the glare of the evening sun made Abhay blink for a moment. An overweight couple in shorts and flip-flops lumbered by, each holding thirty-two-ounce plastic cups filled with bubbly brown soda.

On the road in front of them, a shiny blue Hyundai was slowing, although it had a green light. The Hyundai pulled up to the curb and stopped. The passenger window descended. Rasika halted in her tracks, a stunned look on her face. Abhay saw the driver lean over to the passenger-side window. He recognized that face from somewhere: solemn, brown, somewhat large.

“Rasika! You need a ride?” the man shouted.

Rasika composed herself, smiled, and waved. “Oh, hi, Subhash!” She stepped briskly to the window and leaned over. Abhay couldn’t hear what she said, but he saw her shake her head and point to the Starbucks parking lot, where her car was parked. Then the man got out of the car—right there at the intersection—and stepped onto the sidewalk. He was tall and verging on plump. He wore a sport coat that seemed a bit too large for him. He looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. As they talked, the man seemed nervous: he patted his pants pocket several times, as though making sure his wallet was there. At one point he glanced at Abhay and gestured toward him. Rasika shook her head and laughed. She made no move to call Abhay over to introduce him. Finally, the man got back in the car and drove on. Rasika waited until the car was out of sight before rejoining Abhay.

“My cousin.” She pulled a tissue from her purse and patted her upper lip. “I wish he hadn’t seen you. I’m sure he’ll tell my parents.”

“I think I’ve met him before. Maybe at one of those Diwali events or something?”

“Probably.” They waited on the curb for the light to turn green. “He and his parents moved here from India when I was in high school. Subhash’s father is my dad’s cousin. I guess they were close growing up, and when Subhash’s dad lost his job in India, Appa wanted to help out, so he set Balu Uncle up with an insurance business in Cleveland. I forgot that Subhash is starting an office in Kent.”

“Why does it matter if Subhash tells your parents that he saw you with me?”

A line of cars turned left in front of them. “He knows Viraj, because Viraj is related to his mother.”

“And Viraj is . . .”