The Story Hour (19 page)

Bhutan look at me with such hateful. He spit on the ground. “Idiot chokri,” he say. Then he goes.

I continues to touch Mithai leg. I press, massage, press. He not in pain there. Then I gets near his feet and he raise his head and start making moan sound. He look me straightum-straight in the eye. For first time, I's a little scare of Mithai. And I knows I near the problem. I moves toward his feet. And even though there is no light except from the opening of the tent, I sees it right away. And I begins to cry right there and then.

“Lakshmi? What is it, beta? You come out if you scare,” Menon sahib say.

But I not hear or see him. I only see the hate. The meanness. In my life, I hear so many evil story from Dada. About how, two village from us, the Brahmin landlord kill whole family of Dalits to death because they ask for more pay for their crop. About how mother-in-law burn new bride for not bringing enough dowry. About how, during British raj, the goras use to make villagers trap poor tiger in cage and then the white mens go shoot the jailed tiger. But until now, age fourteen, I never having my own evil story.

Three nails. Someone put three nails into Mithai's foot. Mithai big animal but his foot pad soft, like sponge. One nail maybe accident, but three? Not possible. Someone—who?—do this to hurt Mithai. Who? But even as I try to let Mithai know I will help him, I know who did this evil.

“Menon seth,” I yell. “Please to go catch that badmash Bhutan.”

“What? What is it, girl?”

“He allow someone put three nails in Mithai's foot,” I yell.

Menon sahib's face go dark. He hurry out of tent.

“Mithai,” I say. “You safe now. We will help you. Nobody hurt you again. This my promise to you.”

He just look at me out of those tiny eyes. Even though he still in great pain, he look relax. He trusting me.

“So what happened?” Bettina ask. “Did you find that scoundrel? Was it the caretaker who did this? Why?”

I smile. Bettina no longer alonely. My story take her out of Cedarville and puts her in the tent with me and Mithai. For first time, I fully understanding what is Maggie's job, what she say about why telling story is important.

“It was Bhutan. See, Menon sahib is good man but he making one mistake. He asking all villagers to give one percent of their crop every month to Mithai's upkeep. People in my home village is poor people, Bettina. They watching elephant eat more than their own children. So they jealous. Then they angry. They offers Bhutan three hundred rupees if he fixes Mithai good and proper. So Bhutan do his wicked thing. Then he tell Menon sahib Mithai mad. Best to shoot him.”

Bettina give big shiver. “Horrible man. I hope he lost his job.”

“Oh, Menon sahib give him good-proper thrashing. And when he find out why Bhutan acting so mean, he ask me what he is to do. Can you imagine, Bettina? I fourteen-year-old girl and richest man in village asking me decision. So I tell him truth—people hungry. They cannot give cut to feed Mithai.”

I don't say anything more. After few minutes Bettina say, “So he stopped taxing them, I hope?”

I quiet but Bettina looking at me for the answer. “Well?”

“He not listen to me,” I say softly. “He still charging them.”

“Terrible, greedy man.”

But I remindering how Menon sahib beg Mithai's forgiveness. How he pay for doctor to come to take out nails from Mithai's foot. And I never forget how he take me to his house and ask his missus to put extra plate at the table. She looking like heart attack. I sit in hall with Munna while they fighting in kitchen. She say feeding low-caste girl like me will pollution the whole house. That God will give Menon sahib leprosy or TB and bring hundred years of drought if he allow me to eat at their table. He say he tired of all God talk. He say Munna living because of me, Munna smart in school because of me, and now Mithai pain-free because of me. She is a deserving child, he tell his missus. Feeding guest in our home, that is also Hindu religion, he saying. From outside, I feeling all embarrass but from inside I grinning. I imagine Dada's face when I tell him the story. He will not belief me.

“I don't know that what he did was so great,” Bettina say. Then she smile and put her thin hand on mine. Her skin look wrinkle, like used aluminum foil. “I'm so glad you're living here, Lakshmi. Away from such ridiculousness.”

Is Bettina correct? I not know. Same-same problem everywhere, I think. When I see Maggie next, I discuss with her.

T
HIS IS WHAT
I don't get,” Sylvia said. “Why are you doing this? What are you getting out of it?”

Maggie shook her head. “That's just it. I know it's madness, but I just don't seem to be able to cut it off.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Oh, God, no.” Maggie was surprised at how emphatically the words slipped out of her mouth. “I love Sudhir.”

“Well, he's obviously fulfilling something that's missing in your marriage. So the question is . . .”

Maggie shook her head again, impatiently this time. For the first time in the years she'd been seeing Sylvia, she was a little irritated with the older therapist. This line of questioning was too predictable, too easy. She fought the urge to jump to her feet and pace the small room. She knew Sylvia would look askance if she asked for them to go for a walk, as she had done so often with Lakshmi and some of her other patients. For a second, she was proud of her own skills as a therapist, was glad that she didn't feel constrained by the techniques she'd learned in school.

“Come on, Maggie. Try. You're so close to something, I can feel it. What is it that Peter gives you that—”

“Sylvia. It's not like that. This has nothing to do with my marriage. Sudhir and I are happy. It's just that with Peter . . . I have this connection with him. Can't explain it. It's been there from the first time we set our eyes on each other three years ago. I fought against it successfully back then, but now I—”

“So it's strong enough to risk the breakup of your marriage?” Sylvia asked sharply, and Maggie's head jerked back involuntarily, as if she'd been slapped. Her eyes filled with tears.

“No. Of course not. That's the whole reason why I keep talking about this sordid story. I guess I'm just looking for the strength to break it off—and then have it stay broken off.”

“What would it feel like, not seeing him again?”

Sylvia asked the question gently enough, but Maggie felt such a heavy emptiness in her chest that it took her breath away. A feeling of incredible loneliness, of being adrift in the world, overcame her. She closed her eyes briefly and saw herself on a raft on an ocean that grew wider and wider as the raft grew smaller and more distant. The figure on the raft was not moving. Rather, she was lying in a position that was instantly familiar: the pose of the model in Andrew Wyeth's
Christina's World
. She opened her eyes quickly to escape the desolation of that image, but she had her answer. Because she had recognized the blue dress she was wearing in the image: It was a dress she'd had when she was eleven years old. And the desolation of being alone in the world—she had worn that feeling as often as she had worn the dress. It had been her second skin in the years after Odell had confronted their father about his peculiar nighttime overtures and Wallace had responded by ignoring her completely. Mama was alive then, but if she'd noticed that Wallace was no longer playful with his adored baby girl, she had never mentioned it. She was probably in too much pain to care. She had died two days after Maggie's birthday, spending her last two months in a morphine-induced stupor. Until Maggie had her first boyfriend at sixteen, nobody touched her in love or kindness except some of the old ladies in their neighborhood, who would pat her head and exclaim how much she looked like her dear departed mother. Wallace's dismissal of her was total. He would come home from his first job at four, fall asleep on the couch for an hour, wake up, make dinner, and be out of the house to his second job by seven. The half hour when they ate supper was their only time together. At first, after Mama's death, they continued eating at the kitchen table, as they'd always done. But after a few months, Wallace began to carry his plate to the TV, and pretty soon she joined him there. He would return from the convenience store at one a.m., and often Maggie would force herself to lie awake until she heard the key turn. Those hours alone in the apartment were some of the loneliest in her life. It left a permanent mark on her, this loneliness, abating only after she and Sudhir became a couple.

“Maggie,” Sylvia was saying. “What is it, my dear?”

Hearing the concern in Sylvia's voice made Maggie realize she was crying. She looked at her, unable to speak. “I . . . can't . . .” She felt cold; felt her body shaking. She reached for the Kleenex on the table beside the couch. “Sorry.” She sniffed. “Something you said . . .”

“What?”

“. . . about not seeing Peter again . . .” She roughly brushed away the tears on her cheek. “It just brought back this memory.”

“What's the memory?”

“The way my dad neglected me after my brother confronted him. About, y'know, that stuff.”

“Does Peter remind you of—”

“No. Nothing like that. Just that I think I'll feel empty if I stop seeing Peter. That same kind of horrible emptiness.”

“You're no longer that helpless little girl, Maggie.”

“I know.”

“And you have Sudhir.”

“And I have Sudhir. Who loves me more than I deserve.” The tears fell again, but for a different reason. The second round of tears was being shed by a woman who felt a profound sense of gratitude for having found a man whose love for her was steady as a flame. For her stupidity at doing anything to risk that love. She had won. With Sudhir, she had won. Wallace's cruel neglect had not crushed her, had not left her damaged. Rather, she had recognized Sudhir's purity, his decency, immediately.

Maggie exhaled loudly. “I think you've helped me realize something, Sylvia,” she said. “I just need to process it a bit more on my own.”

Sylvia smiled. “Glad to be of help.”

They talked for another ten minutes, and then her time was up. “See you in two weeks?” Sylvia asked. “Same time?”

“Yes. Sure.” She handed Sylvia a check and rose to leave, but the older woman stopped her by leaning over and touching her arm. “Maggie. I just want to say—I know this is hard. Calling it off with Peter, I mean. And that . . . I recognize your struggle.” Sylvia paused. “That's all.”

Maggie nodded. “Thanks. See you next time.”

It was an uncharacteristically warm winter's day, and Maggie lingered on the street for a second before entering her car. In the distance, the snow on the mountains glittered in the afternoon sun. Maggie looked up to a perfectly blue sky and then frowned when she heard the chirping of a bird. It's a false alarm, birdie, she thought. It's not close to being spring, even though it feels like it. Don't get your hopes up.

She got into the car, turned on the engine, and realized she couldn't drive. Couldn't move. The loneliness that she'd felt a few minutes ago lingered. Even though she felt ridiculous, even though there was a chance that Sylvia might look out her front window and catch her sitting in the car in front of her house, Maggie leaned her head on the steering wheel. The warm plastic dug into her forehead. What was the matter with her? What about Sylvia's innocent question had triggered in her the bleakness, the utter solitariness of those dark days of childhood, when she'd felt she was losing not one but both parents? Even at Wellesley, she had felt that deep existential solitariness, walking alone around the lake at dusk, her hands thrust deep into her jeans pockets, barely glancing at the posse of girls she passed on the path, because their ruddy complexions, their well-scrubbed faces, only accentuated the difference she felt. It wasn't about being black, although that was part of it. It was the feeling of being a castaway, someone who had been thrown away by her own father.

But hadn't she successfully dispelled that desolation over the years? She had never been lonely, not like that, since she'd met Sudhir. Her years with Sudhir had been—were—rich beyond any fantasy she could've had, filled with warmth and kindness and travel and friends and parties and a large extended family in India who had taken her to its bosom once they saw that she loved their Sudhir as much as they did. Sudhir's sister, Reshma, was like the sister she'd never had; just last week Reshma's youngest daughter, Deepa, had called Maggie, called her, not Sudhir, to discuss some boy problem that she was having.

Homecoming. She'd had a sense of homecoming from the first time she'd met Sudhir. From their first meeting on that rooftop terrace, he got her. Understood her jokes, her moods, her silences. Included her in all his gatherings, invited her to all his parties, opened up his home to her. There was the inconvenient fact that he did this with everyone he met. At times, when she'd catch him looking at her in an unguarded moment, she'd suspect there was something special, an understanding, that flowed between the two of them. But in the next second, Sudhir would smile at someone else, welcome another visitor into his home, slap someone else on the back, insist that everybody try the new dish he'd just cooked.

It had gone on like this for over a year. In that year, Maggie tried dating other men, but to them she had to explain her jokes, make excuses for her silences, translate her words. After a while, she stopped trying. Sudhir didn't seem to notice one way or the other. Occasionally, he'd inquire about a past boyfriend, and when she'd shrug, he'd nod and say, “He was a nice guy. I liked him.”

“Do you ever not like someone?” she teased.

He thought for a moment. “My third-grade teacher. She was a bitch.”