The Story Hour (20 page)

She'd decided that they were to be only friends. That Sudhir was gay or asexual or that she was simply not his type. That she would remain in his life but on the periphery, and that it was time to start dating again. So when he told her, in his casual way, that a bunch of his friends were going to hear Bruce Springsteen and they had an extra ticket and would she like to come, she almost said no. When she saw the beer-guzzling crowd, the massive amplifiers, the line of policemen, the general mayhem, she was sorry to be there. But it turned out to be a magical concert, on a cold, crisp fall evening. The trees around them were bare, but as the sun went down, a full moon ascended in the sky. Springsteen reminded her of a white James Brown, playing like the devil, on fire with youth and passion. But the true revelation was Sudhir himself. She had never seen him like this: tousled hair, eyes closed, head tilted skyward, mouthing the words to most of the songs, glancing at her now and then and smiling a deep, warm smile. He had never looked so beautiful, so young, so . . . free. So completely, purely himself. And as the night went on, it became impossible to remain in their seats. Here it was, a crowd on its feet, unable, unwilling, to sit down, the music entering their bodies, moving their feet, shaking their heads, singing, singing, singing along with the sprite on the stage who inflamed them, seduced them, aroused them with his incessant beat.

And then it happened. Halfway through the show, a count-in, a jaunty piano intro, and then: “Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack.” Maggie remembered it as if it were yesterday: The crowd screams in recognition, hands rising in the air, the thrilling sound of thousands of voices singing together. And Sudhir turns toward her, slowly, eyes still closed, and then he opens them and looks at her, looks at her, and she is about to say something funny or ironic, but then stops because all of a sudden she can't breathe, she has just read something in those brown eyes, and she knows how long and how desperately she's needed to see that message in Sudhir's eyes, how unsure she has been this last year and how certain she is now, and she opens her mouth to confess something but suddenly her chin is resting on his shoulder because they are slow-dancing, just shuffling their feet in time together, really, in that tiny space, but dancing all the same, Sudhir's arm tight and strong around her waist, his other hand holding hers in place over his heart.
Everybody has a hungry heart
. She sure did, didn't she? She sure did and didn't even know it, didn't know it until this moment, but already that hunger is receding, replaced by something she has no name for. Happiness? Contentment? No. Belonging. That's it. Coming home.

She decides to sneak a peek at Sudhir's face, turns her head slightly, and he moves, too. They stare at each other for a second and their lips meet unplanned. The kiss is the most natural thing Maggie has ever experienced. “Hi,” he whispers to her, and she replies, “Hello.”

That was it, Maggie now thinks. They held each other for the first time at that concert and had never let go. If she'd once been unsure whether Sudhir loved her, she had never been unsure since. All these years he had been by her side, steady, consistent, reliable. They'd had their challenges—the commuter marriage, when she stayed at NYU to finish her Ph.D. while Sudhir graduated and took his first teaching job in the Midwest; the three miscarriages and the cold, growing realization that they would remain childless while most of their college friends had babies; the inevitable culture clashes as they learned to become a couple. But by the time they moved to Cedarville seventeen years ago, they had built a life together. Sudhir knew about Wallace's abandonment of her, even if he didn't know the reason for it, and he was determined to compensate for every wound, every slight, his wife had suffered. Everything that Wallace had not been, Sudhir was. Everything that Wallace was, Sudhir wasn't. Everything that Wallace had stolen from her, Sudhir had replaced.

Maggie lifted her head slowly from where it rested on the steering wheel, blinking as a shaft of afternoon sunlight assailed her eyes. What was she doing? How could she risk hurting a man who had spent the last thirty years shielding her from the world, who had loved her with a steadfastness that still astounded her? She knew how Sudhir flinched if she so much as raised her voice at him, how sensitive he was. How long did she think her fling with Peter would remain a secret? How long before someone in this goddamn village—Cedarville called itself a city, but Lord, coming from New York, she knew better—saw her driving to Peter's house and let something slip? Or Sudhir picked up her phone by accident and saw a text from Peter? She tried to carry it with her at all times when she was home, but what if she slipped just once? Even if she didn't get caught, surely it was unfair to Sudhir regardless, this clandestine sneaking around, this hypervigilance, the secrecy and lies?

Maggie frowned. Oh God. Oh dear God. She was behaving just like her father. This was what Wallace had done, sneaked around behind his dying wife's back, crept into her room in the dark, lied and made her lie. Maggie shook with anger, although she was unsure of the target of her anger—herself, her father, or something larger and more amorphous than that: genetics, destiny, the curse of childhood abuse. Damn. She had tried so very hard not to be like Wallace. She had been so responsible in her adult relationships. Even her choice of profession was predicated on a desire to help people, to heal, rooted in a belief that people could choose happiness, could choose health, could choose to live an honorable life with integrity.

Integrity. Maybe she should give up that word for at least a few years. Until she had made things right with her unsuspecting husband, who came home from a day of teaching or a week at a conference, not knowing that his wife had spent the afternoon or evening walking around naked in a cottage on the outskirts of town, or had reached home an hour before he had and had gone directly into the shower, scrubbing her skin until she was rid of the smell and the touch of Peter Weiss. Until she could look at herself in the mirror again without flinching. Until the self-loathing, which sat like a small island in her stomach, floated away.

Maggie looked in the direction of Sylvia's house, fighting a strong urge to crawl back inside, to process with her the revelation she'd had about mimicking Wallace's shabby behavior.

And then she thought: You don't need Sylvia. You know exactly what you need to do. Even if it hurts like hell. Even if it means experiencing the old childhood feeling of abandonment. Because you're an adult now. A grown woman, in a good marriage.

She took her cell phone out of her purse and sat holding it, staring out the windshield. It was two p.m. on a Tuesday. Peter would be at school. She could leave a long message on his home machine. That way, she would avoid the complicated fusion of shame and exhilaration she felt each time she tried to break up with him and he talked her out of it. Not this time. Not this time.

She dialed Peter's number and waited for the answering machine. Listened to his whimsical greeting and smiled involuntarily. Took a deep breath. And then spoke into the machine. She went on for so long that it cut her off and she had to call a second time. Her voice was firmer now; she could hear it herself. She ended by saying she'd loved every moment she'd spent with him, but she knew it was time to end things, now, before anyone got hurt. And that she would not respond if he tried calling her again, which she hoped he respected her enough not to do.

She hung up and threw the phone on the seat. She knew Peter well enough to know how prickly he could be, how easily his ego could be bruised. Peter, she suspected, didn't pursue women past a certain point. Also, he would know that she had deliberately chosen to call when he'd be away from home, and that, perhaps more than her words, would keep him away.

So. It was done. She had done it, proved to herself that she was different from her father, that Wallace had not corrupted her down to the core. Peter would be leaving the university at the end of the semester anyway. She had simply expedited their inevitable parting. Now she could focus on the rest of her life with Sudhir. And if she occasionally felt that something was missing, that Peter had brought out a side of her—a sexually alive, unpredictable, exuberant side—that she'd never know again, if she ever found herself comparing her husband unfavorably against Peter's ambition and worldliness, she would tell herself that it was the less flamboyant qualities of trust, reliability, dependability that made for a good marriage.

Maggie gathered up her hungry heart and drove home.

I
'S TIRED TONIGHT
. When I finish cleaning MaryJo's house today, her friend Gina stop by with request: She having the party tomorrow and her maid is calling sick. Could I please to clean her house next? She pay extra.

I wanting to say no but I not knowing how. I also remindering what MaryJo tell me recently—Gina find out she has special type of the 'rthritis called rummytoy 'rthritis. Gina's hands not twisting like Ma's, but still, how to say no to someone who sick? So I say yes. I calls husband to say please to eat something for dinner, as I coming home late. He do his usual fuss on the phone but I just listen and then say bye.

Later, husband look up when I walks into the apartment. My feets hurting so hard, I walking like—how you say in English? I don't know the wording—like langdi.

In the husband's face, there is no kindness. “This is result of your greed,” he say, pointing to my feets. “Bas, one-two jobs you get and you've become money-greedy. Now you thank your Maggie for this.”

My temper chili-hot these days. “Why for khali-pili you drag Maggie into this? What Maggie ever steal from you? Has she eaten even one grain of salt that belong to you? If anything, you is in her debt.”

“I in her debt?” Husband voice loud as mine. “I? What that darkie do for me? She filling my wife's head with big-fancy thought. She trying to break my—”

The pain from my feets now enter my head. This man give me headache. “Don't call her darkie. That—that insult. Your own skin more dark than Maggie. Her name—call her proper. ‘African-American' is proper way.”

Husband look at me with his mouth open. “Wah, wah, Lakshmi,” he say. “You think because you have some few housecleaning job, because you driving car and listening to those stupid tapes to learn the proper English, you now Am'rican membsahib? Who can now teach her husband how to talk?”

I so tired, I only wants to sit on sofa and listen to my Manna Dey CD. Why this man chose this time to start fight with me? I remember what Sudhir babu say to me other day. He say since I am U.S. citizen, I have exact same rights as everyone, even the president. I am same as everyone, even white people, Sudhir babu say. I wants to tell the husband this, but I not a fighter-cock like him. So I keeps shut.

Thanks God, he shut up also. He go back to watching his Bollywood TV channel, and after few minute, I go and sit next to him on sofa. It is old Raj Kapoor movie and we watch quiet for few minute. I put one feets on the sofa and massage it. One time when I cleaning Maggie's house, I go into her living room and she lying down on couch and Sudhir babu massage her feets. I feels so many things then—embarrass, as if I watching them naked, but also the sweet pain in my heart, like when Raj Kapoor never get to marry the heroine. I think, Why my husband never show kindness for me?

“You see this movie when you young boy?” I ask, and husband nod yes.

“Of course. It was top hit. Play in the cinema in my village for more than one year, solid.”

I smile. Talking about Hindi films, husband's favorite subject. He know all songs, who star in what picture. Because I thirteen years younger than husband, I not knowing all same movie he knowing.

“So what happen in the end?” I ask.

Husband laugh and tap my hand two times. “Woman,” he say. “You so impatient you cannot wait until end?”

“I have to get up to warm up food for me. I's starving. So I will miss ending.”

Something happen then. Husband give big sigh and get up from couch. “You sit,” he say. “I go heat your dinner. I seen this movie hazaar times.” My mouth become so open, the husband laughing. “Close your mouth,” he say, “before the fly get in.”

I hear the ting-tong of stainless steel pots as husband takes out food on a plate to heat. I look around this room for the angel who is hiding here. What other reason why husband preparing my plate? Maybe he wanting the sex tonight? But for that, he not needing to heat my food.

And then I listen: The voice of Mukesh is singing one of Raj Kapoor's most top-hit song. So sad, so beautiful, the song sound, like the first drop of rain after the earth is old from waiting. I remembers one night when Shilpa still a baby and she cry and cry because she hungry. Shilpa born during year of worst drought, and we having so little to eat that Ma get weak and not able to make enough milk for baby. So she always hungry and Dada go mad because crying baby and starving wife make him feel so bad. The night that Shilpa cry till one o'clock, he get up and turn radio loud, so he not hear baby crying, and this same Mukesh song play on radio. And what you think? Little Shilpa get all chup. And two minute later, she falling to sleep.

Angel name Mukesh is in my house right now. Music is how angel talk. Everybody know that. It is Mukesh that turn my husband's heart soft. Music make people want to be good. It make him bring hot-hot plate of food to me, while I sits on the couch like a maharani.

Husband put the food on coffee table. “Eat,” he say, but I wait, embarrass to eat while he standing in front of me. His face frown when he see my feets. They is swolled from standing all day. He say something under his breath and then says again, “Eat. Food getting cold.”

When he leaf the room, I begin to eat but I also feels alonely. Why he leaf? Does my feets look so ugly it make him sick? I hears water running in the kitchen. Is he washing the dishes? If so, Mukesh not only angel, he saint. I knows I should helping him but it first time all day I's eating and the food is hot and tasty. Why I say no when MaryJo offer me the sandwich earlier today?