The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (25 page)

“Sandy Freeland,” Chacko said. “You remember how she left suddenly for those three weeks?”

“Yes.”

“Turns out she went to find out if her husband, the pilot, was cheating on her.”

“And?” Kamala asked, trying unsuccessfully to drag a too-cooked piece of tofu from the pot with a lone chopstick.

Chacko passed her his fork. “She found him in Dubai with not just another woman, but two sons!”

“No! My God!” The gasps came from every side of the table.

“Americans!” Kamala said.

“Not just Americans!” Bala fanned her hands out. “My God, Madras has become a hotbed.”

“Ahno?” Kamala motioned for the soy sauce. “Who says?”

“My sister only! She was telling me of one Lalitha Varghese—”

“Lalitha from MCC?”

“Yes, yes! That Lalitha!” Bala said. “Anyway, her husband, the ob-gyn, goes and has an affair with a patient … and then moves her into the house!”

Around the table: hisses, nose tuggings, head shakings.

“Poor thing.” Sanji tsked. “What did she do?”

Bala held her hands up. “She started shooting the drugs!”

Amina choked on her rice.

Thomas thumped her back. “Heroin?”

“
Demerol
. She took it from his office only.”

“Pathetic!” Sanji shook her head. “I would have started shooting the both of them dead and gone to Mahabilipuram on beach holiday.”

“Of course you would, darling,” Raj said, holding up a plate. “Now, who wants more tofu?”

“No more ’fu!” Thomas said, standing up rather dramatically. He scanned the table, taking a moment to locate his glass before plucking it up and heading out.

“So, Ami, what’s this big show Dimple is working on then?” Sanji asked.

“It’s Charles White.”

They all looked at her blankly.

“He’s huge. It’s a big deal that she got him.”

“So does that mean that if we go to the gallery, someone besides Dimple might actually be standing in it?” Chacko grumbled.

“Chackoji, please don’t make me bring out the after-dinner muzzle.” Sanji reached for her drink.

“I will never understand what it is she gets paid money to do. Hang pictures on the wall? And this one, with the weddings! What fool can’t grab a camera and take some snaps of his own wedding?”

“Ami, baby, a spot of gin?” Sanji said, waving her glass helpfully.

“Yup.” Amina snatched it on her way out the door.

“I’m just telling the plain truth; if these girls don’t want to hear it—”

“I know, I know, it will be our own undoing.” Amina followed after her father as Sanji asked in her loudest, most determined-to-change-the-subject voice, “Now, Bala, darling, where did this golden getup come from? You look positively radioactive.”

Out in the cool hallway, it felt good to breathe. These dinners with the family could get so stuffy, what with everyone sitting on top of her like she might hatch. A quick peek in the kitchen confirmed that it was the kind of wreck that Raj was prone to making and Sanji was doomed to clean up, being, as she put it, “bad in all other feminine arts.” In the living room, Thomas was pouring another drink with a scowl-darkened face.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Now, that is just not true.”

“What’s not?” Amina walked up behind him.

“Stop it,” he said.

“What?”

Thomas turned around with a start. “Amina!”

“Who were you talking to?”

He blinked a few times before saying, “I wasn’t.”

“I heard you.”

“Really? I must have been talking to myself.”

Amina gauged the fumes coming off him. He said nothing as she made her way around the bar, getting a gin and soda for Sanji. “How many have you had?”

Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know. Two.”

She doubled the number. “I’ll drive your car home.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I do.”

“Whatever,” Thomas said, sulking as he always did when she pointed out his drinking, but later, as dinner was finally declared over and everyone stood out in the driveway under the pocketed haze of street lamps, he bragged to the others that his “chauffeur” would be taking him back to his home in the country.

“So you’re leaving Friday?” Sanji asked, walking them to the car.

“Yes. Afternoon.” Amina unlocked the doors and slid in. She rolled down the window, and Sanji leaned through it.

“How about if I come Friday morning. You’ll be around?”

“Like there’s anywhere else for me to be?”

Sanji gave her a fat kiss on the forehead. “Good girl.” She peered over Amina’s shoulder to where Thomas was already settling in for the long ride home, sweater bunched into a pillowish mass behind his head, seat back reclined, large, sock-covered feet on the dash. “Good night, Thomasji. Try not to drive this one too nuts before Friday, nah?”

“Can’t drive a nuts nuts!” Thomas said cheerfully, not quite opening his eyes.

Amina slid the car into gear, and her aunt backed up, waving. Soon Raj and Chacko and Bala joined her, their hands raised into the light and flickering like moth wings in the rearview mirror as Amina drove away.

CHAPTER 5

I
n the garden the next day, Amina and her mother weeded and watered, while dragonflies buzzed overhead and Prince Philip snored into an anthill.

“I don’t know where to plant these ones,” Kamala grumbled, squinting down at the plastic trays filled with cubed earth. Just a few were beginning to sprout, the thin curls of green reaching out like greedy fingers.

“Can’t you put them next to me?”

“No, that’s for pumpkins.”

“What about back there?” Amina pointed to the fresh mound at the back of the garden. “You’ve already tilled the soil.”

“That dumb dog did it. I gave him a lamb bone the other night, and next thing I know, he’s built the pyramid of Giza for it.” She picked up the hose, moving it to the bean trellis and releasing the wet, sugary green smell of snow peas and hot soil. Amina breathed deep.

“Nothing smells like the desert.” Kamala smiled. “We went to
Texas, remember, for the wedding of that Telegu girl in your high school?”

“Syama?”

“Yes, she married some Houston boy, father arranged the whole thing, but I tell you what about Houston:
too much of smell!
I was so happy to come home. Nice, dry air, everything crisp in the morning.” She bent over the eggplant. “What about Seattle? You have a garden there?”

“You know I don’t.”

“How can you stay in that place? No yard?”

“I don’t want a yard.”

“Everybody wants a yard!” Kamala knelt to pull a few weeds that were springing up next to the peppers. “Oh, by the way, don’t make plans for tomorrow night. I’m making you appam and stew.”

“Oh, Ma, you don’t need to do all that for me.”

“What all that? It’s nothing. And anyway, Anyan is coming for dinner and it’s his favorite.”

“Who?”

“Thomas said you met him at the hospital—the neurologist? He has a son, so he’ll bring him, too.”

“Oh, right. Dr. George. How old is his kid?”

“Eight.”

“Cute. What’s his wife like?”

“Foo! Horrible.” She pushed a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “I met her last year at some hospital fund-raiser something or other, but then she left him! Can you believe? She’s living in Nob Hill with some Afghani now.”

Amina stopped weeding. “Wait, what?”

“I know, poor Anyan! Can you imagine? I’m sure he’ll meet someone though, hot commodity in the hospital and all that. The nurses are probably plotting over him now.”

Amina looked up at the sky, taking pains to breathe evenly. “No. I’m not doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not doing this.” Her voice rose slightly as she stood. “You are not doing this to me.”

“Having dinner?”

Amina took off the gardening gloves and dropped them in the dust. She turned to leave the garden, willing herself to stay calm until she was in her room.

“Where are you going?” Kamala asked. “We’re not done planting!”

“You know, Dimple said this. She warned me you would do this, and I—God!—I didn’t believe her. I thought it was too low. Even for you. You’re trying to set me up with
Dr. George
?”

“It’s dinner,
koche
, not some formal thing where you have to make a decision and—”

“Make a decision?”

“Amina, listen, it’s no big deals. I just thought you might like to—”

“Oh my God,” Amina laughed, shaking her head. “Is Dad even sick?”

Kamala looked at her for a long moment before saying, “I never said he was sick.
You
said he was sick.”

Right. Of course. “So then what was the plan, Ma? You get me back here and Anyan George and I
make a decision
and what? He gets a wife and his son gets a mother and I get a family you can brag about?”

“What’s wrong with a family?”

“I don’t want one!”

“Yes you do. You need someone,
koche
. Everyone sees it.”

It was a soft hit, an unexpected knock that cut Amina’s breath short.

“You never try to meet anyone because you think that something is wrong with you,” her mother said like it was a simple fact, like she might have been saying
It’s a quarter to noon
or
Water the radishes
. “I know, we all know. Sanji and Bala and even
Dimple
says you haven’t acted like yourself since you took the picture of that man on the bridge, and—”

“Dimple says nothing! Dimple doesn’t even talk to you!”

“She talks to Bala.”

“Bullshit! When?”

“When she’s worried about something, dummy.” Kamala tugged nervously at the bottom of her shirt, and Amina knew it was true suddenly, a thought that made her queasy with shame.

“I’m going,” Amina said.

“Oh, Ami.”

“No, I mean, I’m
leaving
. Tomorrow. I’m going back to Seattle and going back to my work and my life, and I’m sorry if it doesn’t seem like it’s enough to you, but it is for me, okay?”

“Hey,
koche
 …”

Amina unhinged the garden gate and opened it, walking quickly toward the house. Her mother was still calling after her as the screen door behind her banged shut.

That night she could not sleep. At three in the morning, she officially gave up, getting out of bed and walking across to Akhil’s room.

It was a different room now—still his, but also all of theirs, claimed bit by bit as the years had passed. His bed and desk and dresser had stayed put, but certain things—the orange beanbag, the chair covered with heavy-metal stickers—had been taken out at some point, coming to what end, Amina did not know. There were also additions to the room—clothes and newspapers and house detritus (an empty water glass, an aluminum-foil-covered flashlight, a December 1991 issue of
American Photo
)—that marked the rest of the family’s comings and goings as steadily as a logbook. Akhil’s leather jacket—ferried from one holding spot to the next like a paralytic cat—was folded up on his desk. Amina picked it up, sniffing the collar before putting it on.

Thomas had been in last, according to the indent in the bed and the surgical booties curled up like pill bugs under it. Amina lowered herself into his impression like it was a snow angel. She looked up.

There they were, still smiling down at her after all these years. Gandhi still looked like a baby with reading glasses, while Martin Luther King, Jr., and Che Guevara seemed to be connected by the hair. All of their painted faces glowed electrically, a dicey mixture of reality and aspiration. Amina shut her eyes, seeing the coral mouths of the Greats tattooed in pale green across her eyelids.

CHAPTER 6

“W
hoa,” Monica said the next morning, stopping abruptly in Thomas’s office and sniffing like a hound. “What are you doing here?”

Amina looked up from a pile of brain parts, twirling the hippocampus in her fingers. The rest of the model was strewn across her father’s desk like a dismembered animal. “Waiting for Dad to give me a ride to the airport.”

“I thought you were leaving Friday?”

“She’s fleeing the state,” Thomas said, not looking up from his computer. “Fight with her mother.”

Monica sat on the arm of the couch, looking more stunned than was really necessary. “Really? I was hoping we’d have that girl time tonight. Didn’t your mother tell you I called? I called three times.”