Before We Visit the Goddess (31 page)

“What will I even say to her?” I had wailed to Gary as he dropped me off at the airport. “I'm afraid she'll bring up sad, sad things from the past, and we'll end up having a fight.”

“You'll do great,” said my sweet accountant husband, who believes that with assiduous goodwill, the books eventually balance out. He handed me my carry-on bag and kissed me goodbye. “Just remember that it takes two to tangle.”

“Tango,” I said grumpily. “It takes two to
tango
.” I wanted to add something about his misplaced optimism, but right then one of those airport cops blew shrilly on her whistle and yelled at him to move the car.

Struck by last-minute panic, I called Dr. Berger, my therapist, from the airport gate, but she wasn't of much help, either. “Keep in mind that this is harder for your mother than it is for you,” she said. And then, “Maybe being alone with her will give you an opportunity to work out some of your issues.”

I told her I greatly doubted that. Besides, I didn't want to work out any issues. Not with my mother, at least.

All week I've been ferrying my mother to retirement homes around the city. It's been hard, with her leg being in a cast. Each time she's given the place a cursory glance and said, “I hate it.” A couple of times, she refused to even get out of the car. Inside my head, I chanted Gary's parting advice like a frantic mantra and kept my mouth shut, but I wasn't sure how long I'd be able to manage that.

Sunny Hills was clearly the nicest among the facilities we could afford. The private room we looked at opened out on a pleasant courtyard lined with flowers. It was more expensive than we had budgeted for, but when I saw that it had its own kitchenette, I said yes.

“I hate it,” my mother said.

I was ready to scream. Then I had a better idea. “You'll just have to come back to California with me, then,” I said in my sweetest voice. “Remind me to book your ticket as soon as we get home.”

She seemed to deflate. She allowed me to push her wheelchair into the office without making a fuss. Once in there, she signed the forms silently. When the manager asked if she had any questions, she shook her head. In the car she closed her eyes. I hadn't realized how much weight she'd lost. Her eyelids were creased and delicate, tissue-thin.

I expected to feel victory, or at least relief. I was entitled to it. But I only felt like there wasn't enough air in the car.

I've managed to hack the squash into jagged halves. But scooping out its stringy, seed-filled entrails is proving to be a challenge. After that I must peel and steam it until it's soft but not mushy. I must sauté it until golden, thicken it with a flour-based sauce (no lumps, my mother has warned), and garnish it with coriander leaves chopped fine enough to suit her standards.

I really don't have the time for this, but having won the war of Sunny Hills, I feel I should concede this battle. I confess: I am a disgrace to my family. My mother has several successful cookbooks and a popular food blog,
Bela's Kitchen
, now well into its second decade. My grandmother Sabitri's desserts were legendary in Kolkata—so I've been told. No wedding in my great-grandmother Durga's village was considered complete without her special malpua, golden-fried and dipped in rose syrup, sprinkled with crushed fennel seed. Me, I just want to fix a meal, chopping block to dining table, thirty minutes max.

“Don't put yourself down,” Gary tells me. “You're a fine cook.”

“I forgive you for lying,” I say.

My mother once announced, “Tara, you have no ambition.” We were rolling rutis in the kitchen. I was twelve years old, and my rutis refused to come out as round as she wanted them to. I pointed out that they still puffed up when she roasted them on the skillet. Wasn't that good enough?

“No.” My mother was easygoing about many things, but not the preparation of food. She took my rolled-out rutis, the ones that were waiting to be cooked, and mashed them back into dough. “Do them again.”

“Hitler!” my father said, swooping into the kitchen like a savior angel. He led me away to play a board game. I loved him because he always took my side.

My mother was wrong. I do have ambitions; they're just not the same as hers. I want to be able to hold on to my job, bland as it is, in the human resources department of my company. I want to be the kind of mother Neel will call from college. The kind of wife Gary will never want to leave. I have one ambition, in particular, that only Dr. Berger knows about: I want to cure myself of the disease hiding inside me like a canker curled up in the heart of a rose.

“Tara,” my mother calls from the bedroom, “I'm hungry. Is the pumpkin curry ready? Did you use the recipe I told you to look up?”

I scowl at the shiny hardcover I'd pulled down from the shelf,
Everyday Delicacies of the Bengal Countryside
, by Bela Dewan. I had, indeed, looked up the recipe. It spanned three entire pages and asked for twenty-seven separate ingredients. It would require severe modification. “Curry's not done yet, Mom,” I say, trying to keep the exasperation from my voice. “If you're really hungry, I can give you some cereal.”

“It's noon.” My mother's voice is affronted. “Normal people don't eat cereal at noon. You haven't even started the curry, have you? I would have smelled the frying spices. . . .”

I consider reminding her that I'd been occupied all morning in sorting through the many closets in this house. But I exert saintlike control over my vocal cords and say, instead, “How about a cup of tea, then, with a couple of those cranberry-and-white-chocolate cookies that I picked up for you from San Francisco?”

There's a pause. But finally my mother, Bengali in her food habits if nothing else, can't resist the offer of cha and mishti. “Be sure to use the Darjeeling,” she calls out. “Brew it on the stove, not in the microwave. And take out the good gold-rimmed cups. No point saving them, now that I'm going to jail.”

Our delayed lunch is a startlingly pleasant meal. Rice, Bengal gram lentils with coconut, and curried squash. The squash has turned out well, which I didn't expect, and my mother compliments me on it. That, too, I didn't expect. Is she delirious with hunger? But no. She wants this weekend to be free of conflict—as do I. A visit we can remember without regret. God knows we don't have many of those.

We make cautious conversation, sticking to nonflammable topics. I ask her about the book I'd taken the recipe from, published roughly ten years ago. It was her second cookbook, her most successful one. The publisher had arranged a tour for her in seven cities.

“Seven cities!” I try to imagine her rushing from airport to auditorium, holding forth in front of gaggles of strangers. “Were you nervous?”

“Terrified,” she says. But a smile flits across her face.

And suddenly I'm sad because there are chunks of her life that I know nothing about. There was an entire decade after her divorce when we didn't communicate. My doing, mostly. I can admit this now; Dr. Berger and I have been working on accepting responsibility.

Maybe it was good we weren't in touch. In those days I wasn't a nice person to be around. I hurt people who got close to me. And I hurt myself.

Once my mother asked, “Why were you so angry with me after the divorce? I wasn't the one who wanted it, you know that.”

I didn't reply. I didn't want to talk about it. Plus, I wasn't sure of the answer. Perhaps it was a displaced rage. Perhaps the person I was really angry with was myself.

Also this: The one time since the divorce when I'd reached out to her, the time I'd needed my mother most, she hadn't been there for me. She'd already moved on with her life. Was it any wonder that, for years afterward, I'd done my best to avoid thinking about her?

Neel's birth changed things some. A couple of weeks after he was born, I was nursing him. He wasn't too good at latching on to my nipple yet. Every couple of minutes he'd lose it and make urgent snuffing sounds as he nuzzled around for it. It was funny, really, so I don't know why I found myself weeping. Maybe it was postpartum hormones. I held him to me and cried like I'd never cried before. It didn't make up for the things that were snatched from me, or the ones that I'd thrown away, or the people who had shrugged me off like a threadbare sweater. It certainly didn't make up for the baby I'd scraped out of myself. Nothing would do that. But when I stopped, something was different. When Gary, who had been wanting me to make up with my mother, found her address through the Internet, I allowed him to send her a photo of Neel. And when she called a few days after that, I didn't refuse to speak to her. We talked about safe things: Neel and Gary, her books, my job, her arthritic knee, my sore nipples. Then and later, we stayed away from the things we really needed to say.

My mother's napping. I hear snores from the bedroom, though should I mention this later, she'd totally deny it. I'm glad she's getting a bit of rest. The cast tires her out but makes it hard for her to sleep at night. I've made her leave the door open and instructed her to call me when she has to use the toilet, but if I don't watch out, she'll try to maneuver her walker in there by herself.

I'm sleepy, too. I'm not used to eating such a heavy meal in the middle of the day. I long to stretch out on the sofa, wrapping myself in the red quilt that's lying there. Then, with a stab, I recognize the quilt. My father had brought it back from a business trip he took to New England long ago. Ironic, how objects remain in your life long after people have exited.

I start to empty out the family room cabinets. My mother the arch-squirrel has quite a stash: old receipts, packets of Floralife flower food, barf bags courtesy of American Airlines, music tapes that are useless now that technology has moved on, dusty crime thrillers that I can't picture her reading.

As soon as I get home, I'm going to clean out my junk so Neel will never have to go through this dismalness.

In one of the cabinets I find a stack of photo albums, fat hardcover tomes of maroon and green, embossed in gold. I remember them from my childhood. My mother loved photographs and took them at every opportunity, a strange obsession in someone who rarely alluded to her own past. My father would scour the stores before Mother's Day to bring her special albums, their metal cases engraved with her name, their covers inlaid with glass so a favorite photo might be displayed. My mother has instructed me clearly: The albums are to go with her to Sunny Hills. All I have to do is put them into a packing box and label it accordingly.

I know I shouldn't open them. There are a hundred other things to take care of. I must have everything ready by Monday morning, when the movers will come, along with the Salvation Army folks, the cleaners, and the realtor. I must settle my mother in Sunny Hills by midafternoon so that I can catch my evening flight back home.

Even as I think this, I'm sitting cross-legged on the floor flipping the stiff cardboard pages.