The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (34 page)

BOOK: The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel
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In the kitchen, her mother’s smiled vanished. “Can’t cook! Who tells people the worst thing about you first? Why not let him get to know you?”

“You think
that’s
the worst thing about me?”

“I’m just saying, let him get to know you! All night you and your father are acting like clowns so he will laugh.” Kamala threw open a cabinet, whipping out two empty Tupperware containers. “How will he take you seriously?”

“We were having a good time.”

“Well, there are times to have a good time and times to put a good shoe forward.”

“Ma, stop. It was a perfectly nice night, and you’re about to ruin it.”

Kamala spooned heaps of potatoes into one bowl and cabbage into the other, sealing the lids with a tight mouth. Amina took them from her, walking back into the dining room.

“Are you sure there’s not too much?” Anyan smiled when he saw the food.

“Take, take,” Kamala said. “When you are ready, we’ll have you back for more.”

“Thank you so much. I really had a lovely time.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Amina said, reaching for the door.

“Oh.” Thomas, on his way out the door, stopped, looking confused.

“Good, good, excellent!” Kamala snaked her arm through Thomas’s to keep him back, and for once, Amina was relieved by her mother’s enormous will. “Good night! Nice to see you, Anyan! Bon voyages!”

The door closed with a gaudy thump, and Amina, too embarrassed
to look at the doctor’s face, turned and walked down the steps. Their feet were loud across the gravel in the drive. Anyan kept a careful distance between them and seemed relieved when they had reached his navy blue BMW without incident.

“Well, Amina, very nice to see you again.”

“Yeah, you too.” She looked at him expectantly, wishing he could read her mind, and the silence around them grew fatter.

“Listen,” he said at last, softly, apologetically. “I feel I should tell you that I am, in fact, seeing someone.”

“You are?” Amina asked, before remembering that she didn’t care.

“A nurse, actually. She’s very nice, really, and though of course we’ve been a little less than public about it due to our work life, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it.”

“I need to talk to you about my dad,” Amina said.

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, that’s great, about the nurse. I’m happy for you. But I need to talk to you about my father. I’ve been hearing some stuff about him.”

Even in the fading light, she could see Anyan stiffening, his eyes traveling back to the house.

“Don’t worry, they can’t hear you,” she said. “You can’t hear anything from the front yard when you’re inside, just the back, for some reason. And I can talk to you at your office if that’s easier; I just didn’t want to show up in the middle of a workday without you knowing what it was about.”

“And what’s it about, exactly?”

“What happened in the ER,” she said. “Did you hear about it?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And …?” He looked at her blankly.

Was he trying to irritate her? Amina gestured impatiently. “What did you hear?”

“Oh.” Anyan straightened, smoothing his mustache. “You know, that there had been some kind of miscommunication.”

Miscommunication?
Amina almost laughed out loud. “I heard that he tried to save a kid who had died.”

The doctor gave a short nod. He had apparently heard that, too.

“Look, Dr. George—”

“Anyan.”

“Sure.” Amina felt the heat rising to her face. “Can you just level with me? Give me some idea of what’s going on?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“I want you to tell me what’s happening to my dad. People know, right? That’s what Monica said. And if something is really wrong with him, then I should know.”

“I’m sorry,” Anyan said, shaking his head as if to clear it. “I’m just surprised that you’re bringing it up. You seem genuinely worried about him.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s fine.” He paused, waiting for her to accept that, and when she didn’t, he continued: “Look, I know Thomas very well. I’ve seen him under great duress, and I recognize that this was an anomaly, not a pattern of behavior. And even if no one wants to come out and say it, things like this do happen in hospitals. Medicine’s a human practice, with human errors. Thomas made an error, that’s all.”

“You really think that,” Amina said, unable to keep the wonder out of her voice.

“I do.”

“But then why would he try to work on a kid who was already—”

“Who knows? It was a friend’s son, right? It must have touched off something in him momentarily. At any rate, it was one incident in an otherwise sterling career, and no one was harmed by it. We don’t need to make it into something bigger.” He patted her awkwardly, the gesture fumbling between bedside manner and brush-off.

“But it wasn’t just one incident,” Amina said.

“Excuse me?”

“He’s had other incidents. Here. At home. I think he’s been hallucinating regularly.”

Anyan smiled thinly, as though waiting for a punch line. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s why I came home. My mother called and told me that he was on the porch all night talking to his mother, who has been dead for years.”

Anyan’s smile faded. “Talking?”

“Yes.”

“You saw him do this?”

“My mom has. And to be honest, I thought she was overdramatizing until I talked to Monica the other day. Now I’m not so sure.”

“But what …” Anyan shook his head at the car in disbelief. “What does Thomas say about it?”

“He doesn’t. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

It took a few moments for this information to find purchase in the doctor, moving, against the current of mentor and friend, to patient, to illness. Disbelief redirected to concern. Anyan turned from her, pacing a few steps before looking back at her. “Do you know how long these episodes last? Their duration and frequency?”

“No.”

“Is there any sort of manic or depressive behavior immediately before? Do you notice that he’s in a heightened state of activity, or—”

“Honestly, I have no idea. And I know you can’t just make a diagnosis with a bunch of sketchy details, but …” Amina trailed off hopefully, willing him to disprove her. He didn’t. She sighed. “I think I should bring him in to see you. I know it’s not totally kosher, and I’m sorry to put you in that position. But if it’s nothing, or, you know, even if it’s something, I’d just rather figure that out with you first before word gets out.”

“But he won’t come. I already suggested it to him once, right after the ER, when it was just due diligence. He said no.”

“I’ll get him there,” Amina said with an assurance she did not feel. Anyan smoothed his mustache. “And what about Monica? What does she say?”

“She doesn’t know about everything. I wanted to talk to you first. But she’s on board.”

“Okay then, I’ll talk to her tomorrow. See if she can switch his schedule around for the time being so that he’s not doing surgeries.”

“Yeah?” Amina said, relieved. “You can do that?”

“I have to do that,” Anyan said. “If what you’re saying is true—though I think we should give that a wide improbability, considering that you haven’t seen the behavior firsthand—then he shouldn’t be practicing.”

Amina nodded, feeling acutely ill at ease, as though she’d just sold classified information to the enemy, though she was unclear of who that enemy was, really. The disciplinary board at the hospital? Anyan George? The world at large, in which her father saw everything through the lens of his work?

“Your mother is watching us,” Anyan said, sounding a totally different kind of upset now.

Amina turned around just in time to see the curtain falling back across the dining room window. “I should go back in. So is there some way for me to set up an appointment without, you know, alerting the entire medical community?”

“Call me directly. Do you have my number?”

“Mom does.”

He opened the door to his car, putting his leftovers behind the front seat before folding himself inside. He moved slowly, as though the air around him actually weighed more, and Amina fought off the urge to apologize. No, she had wanted this, had sought him out specifically, guessing his admiration for her father would make him want to shelter Thomas a little while they figured things out. She waved as he started the car, and moved out of the way so he could leave.

CHAPTER 4

M
oldy eggplant. Curried potatoes. Something that looked like a pile of slugs but turned out to be decomposing okra. The following Saturday, as Kamala headed out to the garden and Thomas tinkered on the porch, Amina pillaged the refrigerator, rounding up its worst offenders. A few rutty-looking tomatoes sat on the back of a shelf, and she set them carefully on the counter. Then she went to the gardening shed, pulled out the wheelbarrow and loaded everything in, wheeling it back to the porch.

Decked out in a headlamp and overalls, Thomas was hunched over a clamp as she walked in.

“I’m making a chest,” he told her, not looking up.

“I brought you some things.”

“What things?” He looked up, blinding her.

“Ow. Come see.”

She led him outside to where Prince Philip hovered over the wheelbarrow.

“Leftovers!” Thomas said, opening a container. “My God, why didn’t I ever think of it?”

“Because you’re not the genius in the family.”

“Pssht!” Thomas thumped her on the head, pleased. “Meet me out back.”

She walked the wheelbarrow to the backyard while Thomas ran and got the truck, driving it through the tall grass and into a clearing. Kamala, weeding ferociously a hundred yards away, stood up, hands on her hips.

“Raccooner!” Amina shouted, and she went back to weeding.

“Did you see? I made a target.” Thomas pointed to a piece of plywood fifty feet away, emblazoned with the black outline of a raccoon.

“Holy hell.”

She helped him set up the Raccooner this time, and when she was done, she lined up the leftovers, smallest to biggest.

“Potatoes first?” she asked.

“You got it.”

They loaded it in and Thomas pulled the slingshot back. “Ready?”

She nodded.

“Psshooom!”
he yelled as a clump of mustard streaked a wide arc across the yard, missing the target by a generous amount. Prince Phillip dashed after it.

“Oh, man, should we worry about that?” Amina asked.

“He’s eaten worse.”

The okra were the next to go, slimy fingers shot one by one across the yard, two of the dozen actually hitting the target, though not within the raccoon outline. The beets fared worse, which disappointed both of them if only for the promise of a bloody-looking hit. Prince Philip dutifully hunted them down, returning with horrible pink teeth.

“You do a biggie,” Thomas said.

Amina lifted an eggplant from its Tupperware, shuddering at its cold, soft weight in her hand.

“Okay, so you’re going to try to get the sling back as far as possible, but don’t worry about that so much. Put it more in the center, okay? Right. That’s pretty good.”

Amina pulled back another three inches, grunting.

“Strong girl,” Thomas said approvingly. “Good. So once you feel secure, try to angle it toward the—”

“Shit!”

The sling sprang from her grip, hurtling forward with a horrible whipping noise. They both ducked and, when nothing happened, straightened up, looking hopefully at the target. It was clear. Amina looked at Prince Philip, who looked anxiously back at her. The eggplant had disappeared.

“Jesus, kid!”

“Goddamn it. Give me the other one.”

“Are you kidding?” Thomas laughed. “You’re dangerous!”

“Give it!”

“Yeah, yeah, fine.” Thomas bent to retrieve the other half of the eggplant, just as a high, thin, keening cry pierced the afternoon. It left a wake of silence behind it, and Amina looked fearfully at the sky.

“What the hell was that?” she asked.

“No idea.”

And then they heard it again, a cry so wild and raw that they stood up on the truck bed. Prince Philip shot out an alarmed bark, and they turned to each other, eyes widening in recognition. The third cry sent them jumping into the open field and running through the tall grass, Amina’s legs chasing her father’s toward the garden.

And what was there to say about Kamala’s figure huddled in the dirt, her fingers covered in mud, her face streaked with it, the howls that exploded from her throat? Amina and Thomas ran toward her, hurdling compost bins and piles of mulch. Kamala had fallen down. She was on the ground. Prince Philip barked angrily at the closed garden gate.

“Ma!”

The ground had been ripped apart, black clumps of soil strewn everywhere. A garden shovel lay where it had been dropped. Next to it, Kamala clutched herself, rocking, rocking. Amina bent down, touching her mother’s shoulder.

“Ma? Are you okay?”

Kamala jerked upright, the cuff of a jacket spilling out of her arms.

“Oh my God,” Amina said. “Mom what are you doing with—”

“You!” Kamala shrieked. “You get away! Get away, you filthy devil!”

But she was not talking to Amina. She was looking with burning eyes at the garden gate, where Thomas stood.

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