Home Leave: A Novel (7 page)

“Let me ask you something,” Frau Müller had said, as the men had begun talking business. “Why are Americans always smiling, when there’s nothing to smile about? Like right now. Why are you smiling? I’ve never seen you any other way. Are you honestly so happy, all the time?”

Elise had grinned more widely and laughed her most nonchalant laugh, shrugged, and changed the subject, a reaction that only confirmed Frau Müller’s assumptions, she realized afterwards, with consternation. As dessert came, Elise considered the accusation. Did she really smile all the time? Of course she wasn’t always happy. What an insulting suggestion. But how did you go about mounting a rebuttal? She glanced at Chris. He was beaming at his boss, nodding his head at an unfolding anecdote, and his expression suddenly struck Elise as idiotic.

Feigning a headache, Elise had left the dinner early and gone home. Lying in bed, a hand on her stomach—she was three months along with Leah at that point—Elise had sworn to herself that she wouldn’t force her child to be cheerful. What had Ada always said? “I want to see that frown turned upside down. Before I count to five. One. Two. That’s better.” After that dinner with the Müllers, Elise had tried to be cognizant of when she was smiling, and why. Ultimately, it was an exhausting, punishing exercise, and she was glad to drop it when they returned to the States, where she could smile as much and as stupidly as everyone else.

Not that those smiles, including her own, don’t drive her crazy some days, since moving back. And that isn’t the only allergy Elise has developed to her home country. After their first move overseas, to London, Elise had become increasingly critical of the US. The outlandish food portions at restaurants. The death penalty. Oprah. But in Hamburg, when she would discuss such matters with Germans, even when she was on their side, Elise had often intuited a tiny, perverse relish in their critique, which had never failed to incense her and had inevitably resulted in her vehement defense of America by the end of the conversation, on a topic as silly as whether the first Thanksgiving was as mythical as the Creation in Genesis. Elise had decided the German dislike of America had something to do with the Marshall Plan and the postwar Allied occupation—resenting the person you owe something to, the one who is calling the shots. Elise had felt that way with Chris after she stopped working, before she received her father’s inheritance four months ago.

It is still a man’s money, but it wasn’t bestowed conditionally, as a reward for toeing the line, the way Charles Ebert had always given his daughter money before. This time, Elise had earned it through her daddy’s helpless death. She can spend it any way she wants and he can’t do a damn thing. Elise is puzzled by the savage nature of her reaction. While he was alive, her fights with her father had been largely silent, characterized by symbolically aggressive acts (Elise not coming home for Christmas her freshman year; Charles withdrawing tuition the following semester), like pushing chess pieces across a board, each player tensed for the other’s next move. Elise misses having an opponent. She spends Charles’s inheritance with a kind of focused revenge, studiously frivolous (Charles had despised nothing more than frivolity), vaguely craving a stern reprimand, which never comes. Although the minute the notion of revenge comes to her mind, Elise dismisses it. She is just having a good time, after a long period of not having a good time. That is the least she deserves, the least they owe her after all those childhood years hiding in hot, humid shadows.

What is Ivy doing with her money? Elise wonders. The irony being that, of all the siblings, Ivy now needs cash the least. Her band, Choked by Kudzu, which Elise dismissed for so many years, deciding it was an excuse for Ivy to stick around Vidalia with her high school buddies, get high, and “write music,” has had considerable regional success. Elise watched Ivy perform the last time she was in Vidalia, and Ivy is rapturous in front of a crowd, her red hair long now, her voice alternately crooning and harsh, belting out the band’s mix of bluegrass, roots, and rock. Offstage, Elise isn’t sure how Ivy is doing. It’s hard to catch her sister sober; that’s for sure. Then again, Elise thinks, maybe she’s just looking for ways to deny Ivy’s success now, the way she dismissed the band’s potential before. After all, Ivy is still young, in her early twenties, having a blast. You’re just jealous, Elise scolds herself.

While this theory is hardly flattering, painting Elise as the uptight, petty older sister, Elise settles on it because it reassures her that she doesn’t have to go back down South to check on Ivy, doesn’t have to go into guardian-angel mode. A role that’s never worked anyways, Elise thinks, a tight, bitter smile flickering across her face, remembering Paps’s visits, how Elise would make sure to skip choir and rush home from school to check on her sister, only to find the two of them innocently perched on the sofa, Paps reading
A Hundred and One Dalmations
, Ivy gnawing on a Snickers bar. In response to Elise’s hesitant inquiries over the years, Ivy has always insisted that Paps never laid a hand on her. But Elise has her doubts.

Such thoughts make it difficult to concentrate on the paper. Elise puts it down and turns her attention to the French toast and the breakfast room. Thankfully, the antiques here are tasteful and restrained, the dining room shelves lined with crystal wineglasses, not crowded with potpourri sacks and mildewing teddy bears, like the old plantation homes-turned-inns in Mississippi. That’s another thing that Elise likes about the North: the interiors don’t suffocate.

The crotchety couple across from Elise is rising now, arguing about their morning schedule. The man wants a walk; the woman is pushing for the private zoo in town. Elise shudders: she saw a billboard for the zoo on the drive through town yesterday. The sign featured a photograph of cougars that looked like alcoholics and tired, gray flamingos. Elise revels in the only debate about her day being an inner one: Hike in the state park or read in the sun?

There are always men who approach her on these “field trips,” as she calls her excursions. That is another forbidden pleasure to them. Older men, younger men, usually unsure of themselves, clearing their throats as they walk over, their hands anxiously balling and unballing a napkin. She consistently sends them away after a beguiling chat, relishing their starved glances from across the room. It is unclear why her recklessness always stops here, why she never kisses anyone or accepts a drink. Perhaps Chris, after all, is accepting such invitations across the world, even as she is turning them down. The thought rather thrills her. But following through with it seems boring somehow to Elise; she is after something slightly wilder, a fling being too predictable. Sex does not seem dangerous. Being alone does, so that’s what she chooses.

She will go on a hike with a book in her backpack, she decides, scraping her chair from the table. She grabs an apple from the fruit bowl and returns to her room feeling giddy, the way she imagines the bad kids at Vidalia High—her mother called them the “dead-end crowd,” until Ivy was one of them—must have felt playing hooky.

Chris’s presentation the following day does not go well. Not my fault, he insists to himself, but he still feels guilty. He often rates himself—after presentations, board meetings, sex—and this time he got a four out of ten. The Indian clients wouldn’t let him finish. They began barging in with questions halfway through and then argued among themselves. He stood at the front of the room feeling like a helpless substitute teacher, trying to bring them back to the subject at hand: how his company’s product could dramatically reduce pollutants during crude-oil extraction. Nobody was listening. When the hour and a half was up, they were still arguing, and he slipped out with his briefcase and the slides.

Now he is trying to psych himself up for dinner with his Indian joint-venture partner, although he has a strong urge to order room service and watch ESPN. You’ve got this, no problem, he tells the mirror as he shaves. But does he? The doorbell rings. A lovely hotel worker—gleaming black hair, turquoise and gold sari—stands there with a bouquet of orchids. From Eastern Energy Incorporated, she says, inclining her head. Chris smiles and accepts the flowers, enjoying her appreciative gaze at his physique, his American friendliness. He’d hoped the bouquet was from Elise. But she isn’t really the flower-sending type. He glances at the clock. He is late.

Dinner actually helps. The wine, and then the gin and tonics, and the smooth, even tones of the tan-hued bar soothe Chris the way luxury is meant to soothe. He lets himself be flattered by the CEO, he flatters back, the game as familiar, by now, as flirting. He is reminded of how much better he is one-on-one than with groups. Eight out of ten, he tells himself, brushing his teeth. Maybe even an 8.5.

The next day, Chris wakes up early, thanks to jet lag. The clock blinks five a.m. He flips through the channels to kill time before the breakfast buffet in the hotel restaurant opens at seven. After breakfast, with five hours to go until his meeting, he decides to walk around Bombay a bit. He is soon sweating, so he meanders to the dusty shade of a park and watches the morning slide by. One of the best things about his travel schedule is the constant momentum. Like his first basketball season as a freshman, Chris finds, work demands leave him exhausted. But such a ruthless schedule keeps him on his toes, and he relishes the challenge. Right now, for instance, as he sits here, watching India, his mind is also on the factory tour he will take at three, and which questions he should ask. Sure, you could call him distracted, but that’s how he works best: multitasking. Chris spends the next ten minutes brainstorming questions he might be asked on Logan’s profit margins. But it’s impossible to concentrate in the heat. He gives up, feeling suddenly jet-lagged, listless, and a little lonely.

His mind wanders to the States: to Elise, Leah, his parents. What is his father doing now? This is one of Chris’s favorite mental games to play, and it always cheers him up. Eight a.m. in India: six p.m. in Chariton. Mom and Dad must be sitting down to dinner, Chris thinks, the same kind of thing they always eat this time of year, sloppy joes on white buns, corn on the cob, and Jell-O salad. His sister might drive over and join them. Then prime-time news and bed. While I, Chris thinks, am securing the future of business in India for my firm. Exploring Bombay, one of the world’s largest cities. Representing my country overseas. Chris loves playing this game of comparative realities because he always wins.

Chris’s pride at the miles he’s put between himself and his hometown is an ease Elise does not share; something he has often tried to impress upon her, with no luck: there’s no need to feel guilty for getting out when they did. They both escaped their small towns, both dodged the pointed finger of their respective fates: Chris, as the eldest, the only son, narrowly eluded farming; and Elise, just as mercifully, skirted becoming a preacher’s wife, handing out lemonade at prayer meetings, or God knows what she would have done down there. But whereas Elise frets about having “abandoned” her family, Chris sees their absences in the family pews of First Baptist and Pilgrim Lutheran, respectively, as cause for celebration. We’re American, Chris tells Elise, we do whatever the hell we want, and we do it better than the last generation.

What Chris does not tell Elise, what he himself could not put into words, is that every day he shows up to work at Logan he is nonetheless obeying his father’s commands, a stern inner voice with a slightly nasal midwestern accent: Work your tail off. Don’t take a thing for granted. Forget the easy way out. Don’t blame others for your mistakes. Even though his current white-collar tasks are a far cry from his teenage chores (hoisting hay bales into trailers, cleaning cow stalls), Chris is following in his father’s footsteps, and he knows that he has made Frank Kriegstein proud. (It is only thirty years later, when the farm is finally sold, and his father’s voice, over the phone, is heavy with grief, that Chris will come to understand Elise’s dull guilt, and the once stern, authoritative voice in his head will grow petulant, accusing, cracked with sorrow.)

“Do you mind?” A middle-aged Indian gentleman with glasses and a newspaper indicates the space next to Chris. Chris does, but there’s no way to politely refuse, so he simply nods. He considers standing up and continuing his walk, but his new sense of satisfaction feels somehow tied to the bench, and he is loath to leave it.

The man unfolds the paper. He reads as though he is listening to a friend relate a story of deep misfortune, shaking his head ruefully, clicking his tongue, sighing deeply. This man, Chris thinks, is probably a member of India’s rising middle class. His clothes suggest he has a good job; the English paper he’s reading is proof of his cosmopolitanism. If I can speak with him, Chris thinks, growing excited, I can get some man-on-the-street insights into the joint venture, see it from a different angle, come up with a good question for the factory tour. But how to initiate such an exchange? Chris is skilled when the script is predetermined, the roles clear, less so with improvised conversations with strangers. That’s Elise’s terrain: after church, at the playground, on the airplane.

Chris clears his throat. “So,” he begins after a pause. The man is still reading. “I’m new here. Any suggestions on what I should see in town?”

“Wouldn’t know.” The man folds his paper crisply and turns to Chris. “I’m not from here either. I’m on a business trip from Singapore. Bloody Bombay,” he grumbles, looking around the park. “It gets filthier every time I visit.”

“What’s your line of work?”

“Biotechnology,” the man says. “We just discovered how to extract an enzyme from papaya.”

Chris stifles a yawn. Ever the diplomat, however, he masks his boredom with flattery: “That sounds important.”

The man shrugs. “It pays well. But I’m counting down the days until my plane lands in Changi. Have you spent time in Singapore?”

Chris nods, about to reply, but the man is no longer interested. “Singapore’s the only country in Asia that’s really got it together. China’s booming, but it will explode in everyone’s faces. Japan is like an old retiree who still shows up to work in a tie. And India…” He shakes his head as a beggar approaches them. “Too bloody populated.”