The Light of Hidden Flowers (24 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

JOE

I should have gone to see Missy, I should have gone to see Missy, I should have . . .
Over and over, the monotonous drone of my regret. It had been four days since she messaged me:
I have a crazy thought . . . I have a layover in Newark . . .
I should have gone.

I pulled into the National Military Medical Center and took the elevator to the third floor. My group of guys was waiting for me in the lounge. Tony was drawing hard on his cigarette; Andy was chatting with Carlos.

“Hey, guys,” I said, pulling the door closed behind me, tugging down the shade for privacy. “How’s everyone doing?”

“How are
you
doing?” Tony asked.

“Good!” I said. “Good.”

“Your mug says otherwise,” Tony pressed. “I know a sad sack when I see one.”

“Not every day is great,” I said with a shrug. “I grant you that.”

“Sorry to hear, dude.” Tony seemed to perk up, as if my being down in the dumps somehow excused him from being the guy with all the problems. I didn’t mind a bit. It was gratifying to see him care to this degree. Maybe if I let him help me, his own self-confidence would be boosted. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to get my problems out in the open, let the guys psychoanalyze me for a change.

“What’s the trouble?” Carlos asked.

“Had some bad days,” I said. “My divorce became final, and . . .”

“And?”

“And I’ve talked to you guys before about connecting with the past. How it could be helpful to touch the life that was yours before this military life. I had been talking with an old high school friend of mine, and I have to admit, getting in touch with that part of my life—me, when I was young and ready to conquer the world—made me feel like I could do it again.”

“What happened, Chief?”

I leaned onto my thighs, my forearm resting on the hardness of my titanium knee, the connectors that held in place the prosthetic. I looked up at the guys. “She wanted to meet. She was passing through—a layover in Newark.”

“Well, that’s cool.”

“Except I chickened out.”

Andy squawked like a chicken, but without arms to flap, the effect was less than convincing.

“What’d you tell her?” Carlos asked.

“I didn’t tell her anything,” I admitted. “I didn’t even respond.”

“Oh, dude,” Carlos said. “And here you’ve been feeding us all this crap about how we don’t have to be perfect, we just have to show up each day.”

“I know,” I admitted, hanging my head.

“So you made a boneheaded move,” Tony said. “So make it right. Fix it. So how are you going to fix it?”

“Yeah, Chief,” Andy said. “How are you going to fix it?”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

I spent most of the day watching my position in Genertech. That night, a message appeared from Joe.

Missy, how are you? I’m so sorry I never responded to your last message. I would have loved to see you at the airport. Remember the Joe Santelli you used to know? I’m not that guy anymore. Kind of struggling at the moment. Wasn’t sure if you needed that in your life. The thought of spreading bad cheer—in any small measure—made me feel like it wasn’t a good idea. Write me back, please.

I didn’t. The humiliation was too painful. Joe had turned me down—maybe not tacitly, but it seemed implied—and it hurt like hell. If he’d wanted to see me, he would have, no matter what was going on in his life. No one was that selfless, were they?

Over the next week, the market traded sideways, but Genertech rose just slightly. I bought at $4.50, and now it was at $4.65—up, but barely moving. Each day, I scanned my reports, looked for signs that might help me divine if CEO Evan Monroe was selling just because he could—a smart move to diversify what one would assume to be a portfolio top-heavy with Genertech stock—or if he knew something, that the stock price would decrease. I charted the technicals, watched the averages, squinted to read between the lines. To the best of my ability, I speculated as to the unknown information.

Each night I e-mailed Reina. She liked to FaceTime, but I didn’t feel the need to stare at each other. I thought better behind my screens, was braver, bolder, willing to disclose more of myself through my fingers tapping on the keyboard. I had assured Reina that I could commit $500,000, and she continued to be baffled by this, as if she questioned whether I really knew where the comma went on such a big number.

In a week, she would use more of her UNICEF vacation days and head back to India. There were permits to file, officials to persuade. Together, Reina and I had assembled a presentation that tried to give practical shape to our desire to start a school for girls. It detailed the number of children we would accommodate at any given time. We had decided on forty girls for our first year. We described how the existing space in the orphanage would be used, outlining which rooms would continue to act as “board” for the live-in girls, and which would become classrooms for both the live-in and “day” girls. We designated a room to act as the library for reading and homework time. We outlined our needs for the kitchen, the amounts of food that would be required to feed the girls.

Following this descriptive narrative in our package were the financial reports I’d prepared, all of them airtight, certain to pass muster with any CPA or IRS agent. These reports detailed the investment needed to cover the start-up requirements, including new equipment and operational expenses, such as qualified teachers, books, and supplies. We then projected the school’s needs into the future, spoke of a nascent board of directors, and our eagerness and confidence in our ability to raise funds from loans and donations, our willingness to apply to NGOs.

Reina had a classmate from Harvard, an Indian-born genius who now worked arbitrage at Goldman. She proposed to him a deal: if he went with her to Rohtak to help us get started, we would credit him for his work and name him as the chairman of the board of our up-and-coming charity. Amrit was happy to help, liked the idea of the pro bono title for his credentials, and was due for a trip home, anyway. And even though our school-to-be was located on the outskirts of New Delhi, and his family was in an upper-class neighborhood in Mumbai, he was willing to go. Reina told me how Amrit had a major crush on her in school.

And my connection, Mrs. Longworth. She and I had talked. “When your proposal is ready,” she said, “get it to me and I’ll make sure it’s put in front of the right person. No promises,” she said, “but I can at least make sure it’s not buried.”

On the twenty-first day of owning a nonsensically large position in Genertech, I turned on my computer and was flooded with over fifty Google alerts, messages I’d signed up for every time Genertech was mentioned in the news. It was happening. Lockheed Martin had made a bid to buy the company. The futures were going wild. In premarket trading, Genertech was selling for $16.00. When the market opened, I put in my orders. When my orders filled within the first half hour, I knew there was still plenty of room to go with this stock. But I was a disciplined money manager, and I wasn’t looking to ride it to the top, just to make the fortune I needed to get the school started. I got what I wanted out of this bid, and I was happy with this. As Sir John Templeton once said, “Bull markets are born on pessimism, grow on skepticism, mature on optimism, and die on euphoria.” I always got out before the euphoria.

When I’d once told Dad this maxim, and how I never waited for euphoria, he had of course translated the aphorism to my love life: “Lovey,” he said. “You’re one hell of a money manager, but every now and then—in life, in love—you need to ride it to the top. All the way to euphoria.”

I allowed the days that followed to suck me into their vortex. Working fourteen hours straight, I did the work that needed to be done to get our school off the ground. Each day I drafted and edited and revised what would become our grant application, to obtain money to fund our project. After hours of grinding away on our submission for funds, I pulled up a new document, the template for a letter to be sent to certain philanthropic organizations that funded causes such as ours. Where the grant applications were written straight, these letters were written with heart—leaning on pure pathos to appeal to the emotions of the readers.

“These Indian girls are marginalized from the start, their worth and value stripped from them at birth. They are born and raised to work, to submit to their father’s rule, then their husband’s. These girls crave education as plants crave sunlight. Our objective is to change the lives of however many girls as we can. This is a global initiative springing from a local application. Together, we can alter the course of India—one girl at a time.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Thirty days after I had returned home, I prepared to board another plane back to India. This time, Lucas drove me.

In the last month, Lucas and I had settled into a comfortable routine. Plans had been made for our wedding: a small ceremony at a nondenominational church. Lucas’s parents, Jenny, Paul, and a few distant relatives would stand up for us. An intimate dinner at the country club would follow. Soon enough, we would be Mr. and Mrs. Lucas Anderson. A joint tax return would bear both of our names.

When I arrived in India this time, what I saw outside the airport terminal—the terrain, the people, the dwellings—struck me not as shockingly depressing, abhorrently sad or dismal. Instead I saw optimism, because Reina and I were going to change the world. The idea that forty girls might be saved to go on and save others was mind-altering. It lifted me as surely as my father’s zest for seeing the good in everything.
Think globally, act locally
. I knew I was thinking in terms of clichés, bumper stickers, and my Dad’s well-known quips, but the adrenaline rushing through me was unstoppable. We were going to do this, one child at a time. We were going to educate a handful of girls, and these girls would take their new knowledge home, spread it to their younger siblings, and uplift their parents. My father—with good reason—had accused me of spending my life on the safe middle ground, of never reaching heights where I might occasionally taste euphoria, but he could no longer say that Missy Fletcher was insulated in her comfort zone.

And in a short hour from now, I’d meet Reina and we’d travel to the orphanage again. I had never felt so exhilarated in my life.

I turned on my phone and waited to hear from Reina. She was due to arrive from London any minute. When an hour had passed, I began to look around for my shiny friend. I checked the board. The flight had landed. But Reina was nowhere to be found.

When two hours had passed, I started to panic. I checked my phone again. I called her again and again. I texted. I waited. When three hours had passed, I acknowledged the truth: I was alone in India without a translator, without the cool confidence of world-traveler Reina, without a hotel reservation or a driver or a plan.

Just me. Just doe-eyed, naïve, ready-to-be-scammed me.

With the sun setting, the sky growing dark, and the crowds of people morphing from friendly to suspicious in my worried eyes.

I had read about scams in India. Restaurants that laced their food with bacteria, forcing the patrons to enter dodgy health clinics with whom they were in cahoots. I read about food infused with marijuana so that patrons would leave groggy and uncertain, making them effortless targets to pickpockets and worse. Left to my own devices, I would be an easy victim.

Up until this moment, I hadn’t realized how much of my bravery was wrapped up in my role as Reina’s sidekick. Now, alone, what would happen to me?

My chest tightened, my lungs fought for air. The onset of a panic attack. I reached into my bag, snapped a Xanax in half, considered swallowing it before I couldn’t breathe.

But I wasn’t in the United States. I wasn’t on an airplane. I was on a bench outside Arrivals at Indira Gandhi airport in New Delhi. And Reina was nowhere to be found. And people were watching me, I felt. I would be robbed, or attacked, or tricked, I was sure. And I needed a clear head, at the minimum. No Xanax. I dropped it to the bottom of my bag.

Just then, a text message from Reina. It had been sent a good six hours ago but only arrived now, seemingly trapped in the lost dimensions of wireless transmissions.

Missy, Got delayed in London on UNICEF business. I’ll be to Rohtak by tomorrow. Hire a car to take you to the orphanage without me. I’ll meet you there! Can’t wait!

I didn’t need to go to Rohtak. I could take a taxi to the Sheraton that I could see from this bench. I could check into the American-based hotel and stay in my room and order room service and watch movies and hold out for Reina.

I could wait to be saved. I could rely on others. I could depend on everyone but myself.

Or I could get in a car and go to Rohtak.

Was it really that simple? Could I really just hop in a car and direct it to take me to Rohtak, a good hour’s drive away?

I studied my options. There were taxis. There were town cars for hire. There was a train. As I was considering my options, the transportation steward asked if I needed a vehicle. Yes, I said, and glanced at the black town car. Before I knew it, he was holding the door open for me.

Inside the car, I plastered on a mask of false confidence. “Hello!” I said to the driver. “I need to get to Rohtak, please.”

“Rohtak, so far,” he said. “Have you been?”

I laughed heartily. “Oh yes, of course, many times.” To my scaredy-cat ears, I sounded like a cartoon.

I glanced at his meter, and though I hadn’t a clue what all the numbers meant, I could tell that he hadn’t reset any buttons. Reina had warned me to always make sure the meters were started fresh. My chest squeezed. I peeled my top lip from my front teeth. “Is that your meter?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am, this is the meter,” he said, and did nothing to zero it out. My heart seared with anger. He planned to scam me.
Kindly reset it,
I needed to say. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

We bumped across town in his slightly off-odored town car. Was it traces of alcohol, vomit? The driver watched me from the rearview mirror. He was oily, shifty, and he was heading out of town in a different direction than we had gone the first time I had come. I knew Rohtak was an hour away, but time passed and he was still weaving through the city, just skating the outskirts. Anxiety, panic, fury grew in me as I considered what he might be up to. Was he running up the cab fare, or was he planning a scam? We entered and exited three different roundabouts. My sense of direction was now jumbled. I reached into my backpack for my travel compass.

“Why’s it taking so long to get out of the city?” I asked.

“Traffic,” he said. “Many detours.”

I could demand that he let me out, and try to find a different cab. But being let out in a part of the city I didn’t know made about as much sense as a preppy schoolgirl demanding to be let off on a ghetto corner, clutching her Kate Spade handbag against her chest. I closed my eyes and swallowed an imaginary dose of courage.

Then he turned left, off the city street and onto what might be considered a highway, except that there were no delineated lanes, just a massive tangle of six impromptu tracks trying to feed into one. Horns blared, fists threw out the window, bumpers threatened to nudge the cars in front of them.

“What’s going on here?” I asked.

“Construction,” he said.

Fifteen minutes passed and we’d hardly moved, then a half hour, then an hour. The bottleneck was ludicrous. We inched forward, jockeyed for position, made very little progress. Finally, the swollen jam thinned, and the six lanes that funneled into one spread again, back into six. Panic, anger, anxiety. I held the Xanax between my thumb and forefinger. My breathing was shallow. An hour had passed, and we were still in the city limits of New Delhi. The taxi meter ran.

My heart seared with anger; I reached back into my Chronicles of Cowardice, my internal record of the times in my life when I had been taken, used, mistreated because I wasn’t brave enough to stand up for myself. In the third grade, when kids cheated off my spelling test. In middle school, when Cheryl Foxworth made fun of my jeans. In college, when a frat boy pushed his inebriated body against mine, admonishing me for being such a prudish bitch. In grad school, when my professor held my grade hostage every semester until I ate dinner with him.

My heart threatened to combust for every time I kept quiet. The rage poured from my pores. I wondered if he could smell my fury. “Why are you headed south?” I asked. “It doesn’t appear you’re going the right way.”

He looked at me through his rearview mirror. Our eyes locked in a game of chicken. I didn’t blink.

“You want to be the driver?” he said.

And that’s all it took. Something inside of me cracked, snapped. Thirty-six years of people pleasing, of being agreeable, of taking the backseat to the bigmouths, was enough. This creep had just dumped gasoline on a flame, because all of a sudden I was burning and I wasn’t the least bit worried about him hurting me. The only thing I was worried about was having to live with the humiliation of being duped, of having to fall asleep tonight knowing that this scammer took me for a ride just to see me squirm and then charged me ten times the price. I couldn’t bear telling Reina that I’d let some jerk drive me around and terrorize me and that I’d paid for it. I couldn’t live with that. More gasoline. My fire roared.

“Listen, mister, I’ve been to Rohtak before, I know how much I paid, and I know which route I took. I need you to zero out your meter and drive in the right direction.”

I shot lasers into the rearview mirror, and this time he blinked. And reset his meter. He puffed himself up a bit and spit out the window, but we both knew what had just happened.

He turned west.

Soon he left the city streets and started down the road I had remembered. My nerves were shot. Sweat trickled down my rib cage. With the fire still burning, I revisited the perpetrators of my past. I walked up to the third graders and told the kids to keep their eyes on their own test, then I strolled into Brookhaven Middle School and broke the news to Cheryl Foxworth: “Hey, Cheryl, I may not wear the right jeans, but in a few years you’re going to find yourself pregnant your sophomore year, and wearing the right jeans then will hardly matter.” And then I found Scotty the frat guy pushing up against some other unsuspecting girl, and did her a favor, by spraying his eyes with mace and kicking him in the nuts. And then I located my skeevy professor in his book-lined office and told him he was the worst offender, because he used his position of authority against the people who valued him the most.

The driver drove. I texted on my phone. Every five minutes. To Reina. Just so she knew, just so someone knew my whereabouts. Just in case.

7:50 p.m.—Driving to Rohtak in town car #34867.

By the time we arrived at the Home for the Orphaned and Malnourished Girls, I wanted to cry. I was so happy to get out of this creep’s car. Maybe he was harmless; maybe he wasn’t. I was happy to never know.

I paid him and watched him drive away up the dirt road, then I turned toward the sagging building. The long day of travel and the questionable car ride had dampened my enthusiasm from that of an evangelist to that of a telemarketer. I could read the script, but my heart wasn’t in it. I wished for Reina. I was angry with her. She should have known better than to leave me alone. But maybe she didn’t know better. Maybe I had fooled her into thinking I was brave enough to get here on my own. That was an interesting thought.

I walked toward the orphanage and pushed through the ornate back door, the same entrance we had used the first time. As I drew closer to the kitchen and the dining room, chatter escalated, as if I were slowly turning the knob on a stereo—first a low mumble, and then a graduated chatter, until finally the combined voices of a gaggle of little girls sitting with their backs against the wall sharing a meal crescendoed into a roar. I watched as they used their hands as utensils to swipe the food in the compartments of their tin plates. When the children saw me, they rose like flowers and waved their hands and granted me a roomful of the most beautiful smiles. The girls—little ones of two or three up to the bigger ones of eight or nine—ran to me and circled me until all I saw was a rainbow of saris and a carpet of braided hair. I was instantly rejuvenated, happier than I had ever been in my entire life.

“Miss Missy!” they cried. “Miss Missy, Miss Lady, it’s you!”

“Hi, girls!” I cried. Seeing these beauties was better than a shot of adrenaline, and having them in my arms brought back every ounce of enthusiasm I had had hours ago when I landed in this country, plus some. I was an evangelist and a coach and Frank Fletcher’s daughter, all in one. This orphanage—come hell or high water—was going to become a school for girls.

The next afternoon, Reina arrived. Brimming with energy, beaming her magnetic smile, eyes as bright as the desert sun, decked out in jeans and a T-shirt and a scarf looped casually around her neck, her Ray-Ban Aviators resting on her head, a shiny ponytail bobbing to her step. We hugged as if we’d known each other our entire lives. In a way, I
had
known her: she was just like my father with her optimistic energy, and being with her was almost like being with him.