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The Weight of Heaven: A Novel
Ratings:
400 pages7 hours
Summary
“Powerful. . . . Twisty, brimming with dark humor and keen moral insight, The Weight of Heaven packs a wallop on both a literary and emotional level. . . . Umrigar . . . is a descriptive master.” — Christian Science Monitor
From Thrity Umrigar, bestselling author of The Space Between Us, comes The Weight of Heaven. In the rich tradition of the acclaimed works of Indian writers such as Rohinton Mistry, Akhil Sharma, Indra Sinha, and Jhumpa Lahiri, The Weight of Heaven is an emotionally charged story about unexpected death, unhealed wounds, and the price one father will pay to protect himself from pain and loss. Additionally, it offers unique perspectives, both Indian and American, on the fragmented nature of globalized India.
Publisher: HarperCollinsReleased: Apr 14, 2009ISBN: 9780061853579Format: book
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The Weight of Heaven - Thrity Umrigar
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PROLOGUE
A few days after Benny’s death, Ellie and Frank Benton broke into separate people. Although they didn’t know it then. At that time, all they could do was concentrate on getting through each bewildering day, fighting to suppress the ugly memories that burst to the surface like fish above water. On the day of the funeral, Frank urged himself to go up to Ellie and say something brave and consoling to her, something that would reassure her that he understood, that he did not blame her for what had happened. But he was felled by a clear, sharp thought: He didn’t know how. Without Benny, he had forgotten how to make his way home, how to make his marriage whole again. Benny had been dead for less than a week, and already his marriage felt like a book he had read in high school and Ellie a character in it whose name he had forgotten. Something inexplicable happened in the days following Benny’s death—it was as if a beautiful blue bowl, no, it was as if the world itself had fallen and broken into two halves. Try as he might, Frank couldn’t help but feel toward Ellie how he imagined Adam had felt toward Eve after the Fall—hostile and compassionate. Sad and doomed and resentful. Above all, lonely. Above all, unable to regain that lost, broken thing.
It was not as though Benny had always been part of their marriage. He and Ellie had been married for eleven years, and Ben had been seven when he died. And that was not counting the year of courtship, when he and Ellie were inseparable. A lot of history there, as Ellie might have said to one of her clients. A lot of great times even before they had conceived of Benny, let alone conceived him. But a strange thing happened once Benny was born. It was as if they all ceased to be individual people. Three people merged into one and became a unit, a family. The unit traveled together or stayed home together and breathed the same domestic air. Even when they were apart—when Frank was flying to Thailand, say, to supervise a new project, or Ellie was counseling her clients, or Benny was at school, they were linked to each other, their awake thoughts full of each other. Hope Ellie remembered to fax Benny’s math homework to the hotel, Frank would think while sitting in a meeting in Bangkok. Fuck. Did I remember to buy peanut butter yesterday? Ellie would wonder while listening to a client tell her about how her sister had embarrassed her in front of the whole family at Thanksgiving dinner. Little Benny would memorize a joke someone had told at school and repeat it as soon as he got home, giggling so hard that he often messed up the punch line.
And now, they were two. Benny was gone. What was left behind was mockery—objects and memories that mocked their earlier, smug happiness. Benny was gone, an airplane lost behind the clouds, but he left behind a trail of smoke a mile long: the tiny baseball glove, the Harry Potter books, the Mr. Bean videos, the Bart Simpson T-shirt, the fishing rod, the last Halloween costume. A tiny rosewood box with a few strands of his hair. A mug that read, #1 MOM. His school photo. Photographs of the three of them at Disney World. The Arts and Crafts bungalow in Ann Arbor was positively shimmering with mockery.
Even so, Frank didn’t leap at the chance when his boss, Pete Timberlake, asked if he was interested in heading the new factory that the company had bought two years ago in Girbaug, India. Four months after Benny’s death he was still concentrating on the Herculean business of putting one foot in front of the other. Of making up reasons to get out of bed in the morning. He mumbled something to Pete about how much he appreciated the vote of confidence, but that it wasn’t the right time in his life to relocate. But Ellie heard about the offer from the wife of another executive. And saw in it what Frank couldn’t—a chance to save her marriage. To start clean in a new place. To put the baseball glove and the size-four Nike sneakers in storage, to not be slapped daily by the patter of feet not heard, by the sound of a high-pitched voice not squealing its exuberance over breakfast. And so Ellie broke the cardinal rule that she had always preached to her own clients: the one about not making any major decisions for a year after a life-altering event. Accept Pete’s offer, she urged her husband. And Frank, too tired to argue, to think, let himself be guided by the faint light of hope he saw in his wife’s eyes. India, he thought. He knew about the new, deregulated, globalized India that everyone was raving about, of course. The booming stock market. The billion-dollar acquisitions. The call centers, the manicured IT campuses. But he let himself dream of the old India, which he believed was the real country. India, he thought. Elephants. Cows on the streets. Snake charmers.
Above all, he comforted himself with the thought of being in a country with a new moon, a new coastline, a new sky. Of living in a house whose walls did not carry the telltale pencil marks of measuring a child’s height. Whose rooms did not echo with the sounds of a boy’s whoops of laughter. A country where there was no possibility of running into one of his son’s teachers. Whose parks, rivers, lakes, stadiums, video parlors, movie theaters did not constantly taunt him, remind him to look at his own broken, empty hands. He went into Pete Timberlake’s office on Monday morning and accepted his offer.
And so, banished from their once Edenic life in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Frank and Ellie Benton traveled east until they arrived at the Shivaji International Airport in Bombay on a cool January morning in 2006.
BOOK ONE
Spring 2007
Girbaug, India
CHAPTER 1
They had finished dinner a half hour ago, and now they sat on the porch waiting for the rains to come. The nighttime air was heavy with moisture, but it held its burden in check, like a widow blinking back her tears. While they waited, the storm entertained them with its flash and dazzle—the drumbeat of the thunder, the silver slashes of lightning against the black skin of the sky. With each explosion of lightning they saw the scene before them—the tall shadows on their front lawn cast by the coconut trees, the still sand beyond the lawn, and even beyond that, the restless, furious sea, straining against the shore.
He had always loved thunderstorms, even as a young boy in Grand Rapids. While his older brother, Scott, cowered and flinched and pulled the bedcovers over his ears, Frank would stand before the window of their shared bedroom, feeling brave and powerful. Talking back to the storm. He would deliberately turn his back on Scott, embarrassed and bewildered to see his older brother, usually as placid as the waters of Lake Michigan in the summer, turn into this fearful, unrecognizable creature. If they were lucky, their mother would come into their room to rock and calm her oldest boy down, and then Frank was free to escape to the second-floor porch that was adjacent to the guest bedroom. Being on this porch was the next best thing to being outdoors. From here, he felt closer to the tumultuous Michigan sky and violently, perilously free. Thunderstorms made him feel lonely, but it was a powerful lonely, something that connected him to the solitude of the world around him. If he stood on his toes and leaned his upper body out on the porch railing just so, the rain would hit his upturned face, the tiny pinpricks painful but exhilarating. The wind roared and Frank roared back; his hands tingled with each burst of lightning, as if it was nothing but a projection of the jagged, electric energy that coursed through his pale, thin body.
Years later, it would become one of Frank’s greatest disappointments that his son had not inherited his love of thunderstorms. When little Benny would crawl into bed with them, when he would whimper and bottle up his ears with his index fingers, Frank fought conflicting urges—the protective, fatherly part of him would pray for the thunderstorm to pass, would want to cradle his son’s trembling body in the nest of his own, even as a small disappointment gathered like a lump in the back of his throat.
Unlike in Michigan, thunderstorms in western India did not pass quickly. They had been in Girbaug for seventeen months now and knew how it could rain nonstop for days during the monsoon season. Now, although it was only May, the forecast called for rain tonight. Frank felt grateful to be home to watch it. He sat impatiently, waiting for the heavy, laden sky to deliver its promise. The wind whipped around them, high enough that they didn’t have to rock the swing they were sitting on. Behind them, the house was dark—Ellie had turned off the lights after they’d picked up their after-dinner coffees and padded out to the porch. Every few minutes the lightning lit up the whole panoramic scene before them, like a camera flash. Frank knew that when the rains came crashing down they would come swiftly, brutally, and his body ached with anticipation. So far it had all been foreplay—the whispers of the tall coconut trees as they leaned into each other; the cloying sweetness of the jasmine bushes; the painful groaning of the thunder. Now, he longed for the satisfying release that the rains would deliver.
He turned toward Ellie and waited for the next flash of lightning to illuminate her face. They had exchanged a few aimless words since moving to the porch, but for the most part they had sat in an easy silence for which Frank was grateful. It was a contrast to most of their interactions these days, which were laced with bitterness and unspoken accusations. He knew he was losing Ellie, that she was slipping out of his hands like the sand that lay just beyond the front yard, but he seemed unable to prevent the slow erosion. What she wanted from him—forgiveness—he could not grant her. What he wanted from her—his son back—she couldn’t give.
The lightning flashed, and he saw her white, slender body for an instant before the darkness carried her away again. She was sitting erect and still, her back pressed against the wooden boards of the swing. But what made Frank’s heart lurch was the look on her face. She sat with her eyes closed, a beatific expression on her face, looking for all the world like one of the Buddha statues they had seen on a recent trip to the Ajanta caves. She seemed to feel none of the agitation, the exciting turmoil, that was coursing through his body. Ellie seemed far away, as distant as the moon he could not see. Slipping away from his hands. Completely unaware of the memories tumbling through his mind—Ellie and he running through the streets of Ann Arbor at night during a thunderstorm, laughing wildly and singing at the top of their lungs before arriving at the house she was renting, stripping off their wet clothes at the door and falling naked onto the couch she had inherited from the previous grad student who lived there; him coming home from work one evening and finding Ellie lying on her stomach on the floor, trying to pull their four-year-old son from under their bed where he was hiding during a rainstorm.
A savage malice gripped Frank. As was common these days, something about Ellie’s calm irritated him. Deliberately, he said, Do you remember how he used to—
Yes. Of course I remember.
She was wide awake now, having heard something in his voice that perhaps even he was not aware of. The satisfaction that Frank felt from having destroyed Ellie’s calm was tempered by something approaching regret. Her serenity, which he used to value so much, was now a scab he had to pick away at.
I think a year more, and he would have been fine,
he continued, unable to help himself. I’d been thinking about taking him on a couple of camping trips, y’know, just the two of us, thinking that would help with—
He was already getting over it,
she interrupted, and his stomach dropped. Was he imagining the triumph in her voice, the knowledge that she had scored the knockout blow and that he now had no choice but to bite the bait she had set up?
Hating himself, he asked, Getting over his fear of thunderstorms? Why didn’t you tell me?
It was going to be a surprise. I—I trained him. Behavior modification—same thing I do with my clients.
He felt a hot surge of jealousy at the thought of Ellie and Benny alone at home, while he was flying off to Thailand, the other place where HerbalSolutions had a factory. How many meetings had he sat through, how many treks to villages in the hinterlands, how many miles logged on planes, nights spent in strange hotel rooms, all the time thinking he was doing this for them? He remembered his desperation when the cell phone signals were weak and he couldn’t call in time to wish Benny good night; how he had tried to send Ellie an e-mail as soon as he got into a hotel room in whatever city he was in. How he had fought to stay connected with them even when he was across oceans and time zones. Only to learn that the two of them had their own secrets, their own rituals from which he was excluded. He tried to remember if he had always known this and if it had ever bothered him before. But he couldn’t remember. Whole chunks of his memory of life when Benny was alive were gone. Or rather, the memories were there but the feeling was gone. So that he knew that he had been happy with Ellie, that they had had a good marriage, and he remembered a million acts of love and sacrifice on her part. But how it had made him feel—the sweetness, the delicacy, the intricacy—he could no longer conjure up.
How long had he not been afraid? And how many more years were you planning to wait before telling me?
There was a slight pause, but when she spoke, Ellie’s voice was flat. It had just happened, Frank. It stormed a few times when you were away—the, the last time. I talked him through it.
Despite the dark, Frank closed his eyes. It should’ve been me, he thought. I should’ve been the one to have calmed my son’s fears. Resentment filled his mouth. Maybe that’s why he got sick,
he said, spitting the words like pits from a bitter fruit. You know, maybe the stress of suppressing his fear in front of you was what—
That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. Even for you, that’s a new low.
Ellie shifted away from him so that their shoulders were no longer touching. There was a loud roar of thunder, as if the heavens themselves were emphasizing her words and she waited for it to subside. You know, I’d like to have just one fucking evening of peace. But if you can’t just sit with me and be decent, Frank, I’ll go indoors, okay? Because I’m not going to sit here and wait for you to come up with one more theory of how I killed our son. If you think I don’t hurt as—
Ellie—
His hand shot out and covered hers. I’m sorry. Sometimes I…I’m sorry. It’s just that watching thunderstorms is really hard, you know? It’s like everything is wrapped up—
He cut himself off, wanting to say more, to reveal to his wife the altered shape of his heart, but being unable to.
In the dark, he sensed rather than saw Ellie blinking back her tears. It’s okay,
she said. Just forget it.
But her voice wobbled, and his throat tightened with remorse. You’re a fucking bastard, he chided himself. You think she hasn’t suffered enough that you’re doing this to her? Not for the first time, he wondered if he should talk to someone, to Scott maybe, to confess his miserable treatment of Ellie. He wouldn’t seek understanding or sympathy—what he wanted was someone to give him a much-needed kick in the pants, to knock sense into his head, to ask him whether he wanted to lose his wife also, because he couldn’t accept the loss of his son. Scott adored Ellie, Frank knew, and would defend her against his own brother. Maybe he would call Scott in New York from the office tomorrow, maybe Scott could say something profound, the one true thing, that would help him make his way back to Ellie.
He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her back into the cradle of his arm. For a few seconds she rested stiffly against him, but then her body relaxed and she rested her head on his shoulder. They stayed that way for a few moments, and then it began to rain.
Remember how we used to run all the way back from campus in the rain?
Frank said.
Yup.
She pulled away from him a bit, and he felt her eyes on his face. Wanna go for a walk along the beach?
You mean right now?
No time like the present.
I can’t. We’ll get soaked.
Well, that is the point of walking in the rain—getting soaked.
Funny. No, that is, normally I would, you know? But Ramesh is going to come over in a bit. He has a math test tomorrow, and I want to go over some problems with him.
He felt Ellie shift ever so slightly. I see. Okay.
What?
Nothing.
Oh, say it. You’re obviously unhappy about something.
She turned to face him. You know exactly what I’m unhappy about, Frank. I’m unhappy that we can’t go for a walk because there’s a little boy who’s forever coming over needing something or the other from my husband. And I’m—
He half rose from the swing. Jesus Christ. I don’t believe this. You’re jealous of a nine-year-old kid. Just because I don’t jump when you—
It has nothing to do with jealousy, Frank. It’s just that you don’t know what’s appropriate and what’s—
Appropriate? What the hell are you talking about? I see tremendous potential in Ramesh and so I tutor him a few evenings a week. You’re the one who acts like some goddamn saint, talking about our responsibility to those less fortunate, but when I try to help the son of our housekeepers, you—
That’s the question, Frank. Who are you trying to help? Who are you helping here?
The phone rang inside the house, but they both ignored it. Frank sat on his right hand so that it wouldn’t involuntarily curl its way around Ellie’s long, graceful neck and choke it. What the hell does that mean?
You know exactly what I mean. Do you know what it’s doing to Edna and Prakash to have you take over their son’s life?
Edna and Prakash? I don’t believe this. You think either one of them has a clue about anything? Hell, if I could work with that boy for two years, he’d be MIT-bound, someday. Why doesn’t Prakash drink less if he cares so much for his son? And why doesn’t Edna stand up to him? All I’m trying to do is improve the kid’s life.
That’s not all you’re trying to do.
The phone was ringing again, but this time they scarcely heard it. They were staring at each other, breathing heavily like boxers in a ring.
What—?
Frank, Ramesh is not Ben—
Shut up,
Frank interrupted. Don’t say it. If you know what’s good for you, don’t say it.
Ellie stared at him for a long second. Then, as if she’d lost some battle, her shoulders sagged. Okay.
She shrugged.
But it was too late. She had stripped him naked, Frank thought. With four indiscreet words she had torn off his clothes, removed the layers of resisting muscle and skin, and gotten to his heart. His heart that had been so dead until a dark-haired, sharp-eyed Indian boy had restored a few of its beats. A boy he had grown close to precisely because he was the opposite of his dead son—dark-skinned in contrast to the light-skinned Benny, noisy and shiny where Ben had been serene and thoughtful. Ramesh was sunshine to Benny’s moonlight. Benny had been good at art and history and English and lousy at math and science; Ramesh declared that history was boring, that most books were too long to read, but was a natural at science and math. The first time Frank had helped Ramesh with his math homework, he was blown away by the boy’s smarts. Within months he had insisted that the boy be transferred to the missionary school and that he would pay the monthly fees. Edna had been grateful at the time.
Frank, I’m sorry.
Ellie’s voice was soft, muffled by the harsh patter of the rain. I don’t want to hurt you. Dear God, we have to stop hurting each other like this. Please, hon. I don’t know how to do this alone.
He fought the urge to respond to the pleading in her voice. This time, Ellie had gotten too close, had left too deep a gash with her words. There was a time when he had thought of Ellie as his second self, someone who knew his deepest yearnings and thoughts. But everything that Ellie had given him—love, companionship, a home, and above all, Benny, holy God, above everything she had given him Benny—she had also taken away. Taken away by her carelessness, her thoughtlessness. He couldn’t forget that. And now she was doing it again, with Ramesh. With the only thing in his life that gave him any solace, any sense of normalcy in this chaotic country that Ellie had come to love and that he was constantly confused and repelled by.
Well, he knew how to turn his heart into a rock. For most of his years with Ellie he had not needed to use that trick. She had softened him, made him believe that it was okay to lean on another person, to trust, to not carry himself in a constant state of war and wariness. In the years that they were a family all the old, ancient feelings—of being on guard, of believing that everything valuable had to be earned, that nothing was freely given, nothing was grace—all those feelings had vanished. But now he knew they had just gone below the surface. That he could access them, as easily as a file on an old computer.
His father had walked out on them when he was twelve. But Gerald had lived with them long enough to teach his younger son some invaluable lessons. Of how to turn his eyes blank so that no hurt would show in them. Of how to swim deep within himself, and not bob to the surface until the storm of Gerald’s violence had ebbed. Of how to turn his heart into a rock so that Gerald’s flinty, ugly words would bounce lightly off its surface.
Frank called on that knowledge now. Ignored his wife’s upturned hand, not-seeing the sadness in her eyes or the heartbreaking curve of her mouth, not-hearing her plea for reconciliation, for going back to the way they used to be. Deliberately, he got up from the swing. I’m going in,
he said.
You don’t have to.
Ramesh will be here soon, anyway.
He collected their coffee mugs, aware of Ellie’s eyes on him, knowing without looking the sadness and hurt and confusion that they held. It tore at him, this knowledge that he was responsible for the light going out of his wife’s eyes, but his grief was paradoxical—it seemed to abate only if he duplicated it in Ellie, only if he caused more of it. Any moment that he spent berating himself for what he was doing to Ellie was a moment he didn’t remember that he had to face the rest of his life without Benny.
The phone rang again the instant he walked into the living room, and he glanced at the clock. Eight o’clock. Could be Ellie’s friend Nandita. Or Scott, for that matter. He remembered his earlier resolve to phone Scott tomorrow. Let it be Scott, he thought. He could take the call in the guest bedroom. Maybe Scott would say something that would allow him to approach Ellie again tonight, to salvage the evening.
Hello?
he said, and knew immediately from the texture of the connection that it wasn’t an overseas call.
Sir?
the voice at the other end said. This is Gulab Singh. Sorry to disturb at home, sir, but there’s trouble at the factory.
Frank’s stomach muscles clenched involuntarily. What kind of trouble?
He hoped it was nothing serious enough to require him to go in tonight even as he knew that Gulab, who was the head of security at the factory, would not have called him at home over a trivial matter.
There was a pause, long enough for Frank to wonder if he’d lost the connection. Then Gulab said, It’s about that union chap—Anand. You remember him, sir? Anyway, sir. Problem is—Anand is dead. Unfortunately.
CHAPTER 2
Trouble’s coming.
Frank had been gone for at least ten minutes, but still Ellie sat cross-legged on the swing. A dull fear was creeping up her limbs, but she was doing her best not to fan its flames, willing her mind to ignore what her body was trying to tell her. That trouble was on its way.
A particularly rude clap of thunder shattered the cocoon of mindlessness that she had built for herself and jolted her back into the world. The road leading to the factory will be dark and muddy at this time, she thought. Even though Satish was an expert driver, she was worried. She thought of calling Frank to ask him to let her know when he arrived at the factory, but the memory of the ugliness of their fight stopped her. Also, something terribly serious must have happened for them to have disturbed Frank at this hour. He did not need an anxious wife to add to his troubles.
She had had no time to ask him what was making him rush back to work so late in the evening. After he’d gone in to answer the phone, she’d heard him dial a second number—calling Satish to come pick him up, Ellie now surmised—and then she’d heard him fumble around in the bedroom before coming back to poke his head in the door and announce that he’d be gone for a few hours. She had merely nodded dully. A few minutes later, she heard the kitchen door slam and later, the sound of a car pulling out of the driveway at the side of the house.
Now, she cocked her head to hear better her body’s fearful mutterings. What kind of trouble? she wondered. And was this a premonition or simply the sour aftertaste of the argument she’d had with Frank? What was frightening her so? Fear that Satish would make a wrong turn in the dark and that the car would spiral out of control? Fear that she and Frank were treading on dangerous ground, drifting apart, so that this grand experiment, this hope that India would heal them, would all be for naught? Ellie listened deeply to her body, the way she’d always advised her patients to. The body is wise, she’d often said to them. It often knows more—and sooner—than our brains do. But you have to learn how to listen to it, learn its language, the way you learn to understand an infant’s gobbledygook.
But the rain and thunder were distracting her, throwing her off. The scent of the earth, the coolness of the rain-soaked air, the flashes of the lightning, were too overpowering, pulling her in too many different directions, like Benny used to when they went to the Michigan State Fair.
Still, those two words, steady as a knock in the dark. Trouble’s coming.
I wish Frank would settle the labor dispute already, she thought, and then she was backing into the source of her fear. Almost immediately, her body relaxed as if, having relayed its message to her brain, it could now take the evening off. But what the fuck could be so wrong that they had to call him at home tonight? She realized she’d said the words out loud, but the rain coming down so hard erased the distinction between thoughts and words. Besides, she was annoyed now at how abruptly Frank had left, withholding information from her, leaving her to rock restlessly on the swing, her earlier serenity replaced by agitation and fear. Screw you, Frank,
she said loudly, making sure that the rain could not drown out her words.
Fear had made her sit still; now, a simmering anger at Frank replaced it and it made her restless. She pushed the button on the large, cheap Timex men’s watch she had bought at Agni Bazaar last month, and its dial lit up in green. Eight twenty, it read. She thought quickly. If there was something going on at the factory, surely Shashi would’ve heard about it. As the owner of a large four-star hotel in the next town of Kanbar, Shashi employed the relatives of many of the men who worked for HerbalSolutions. And his wife, Nandita, Ellie’s best friend, also kept a close watch on the situation at HerbalSolutions. Shashi went to bed early, but Nandita would definitely be up. For the first time, Ellie was grateful that all the relaxation techniques she had taught Nandita to help with her insomnia had not taken.
She had just gotten her feet into her slippers and was heading for the phone in the living room when she heard the timid knock on the door. She stopped. What the hell? And then she remembered. Of course. It was Ramesh, coming over to do his homework with Frank. In the unusual excitement of the phone call and Frank’s abrupt leaving, she had forgotten all about Ramesh.
Before she could reach the kitchen, the door opened and Ramesh walked in. Ellie felt a mixture of bemusement and irritation. A few months ago, she had taught the boy that it was bad manners to walk into someone’s home without knocking. So now he knocked in a perfunctory manner and then let himself in. She was debating whether it was time for Lesson 2, but Ramesh had spotted her in the living room and, dropping his books on the blue-painted kitchen table, he skipped toward her. Hi, Ellie.
He grinned. And before she could reply, "Where’s Frank? I’m having two tests tomorrow and so much homework."
No self-respecting American boy would look so gleeful at the thought of homework, Ellie thought. But then, she knew that the enthusiasm was not so much for the homework as for the bliss of spending another evening with his beloved Frank. She smiled ruefully to herself at the realization. Watching Frank and Ramesh together made her feel like the odd man out, like the third wheel, like—what was that Hindi expression Nandita used?—something to the effect of the bone in the meat kebab. So different from the close, joint-circuit feeling she used to have when she watched Frank and Benny indulge in their usual horseplay or when all three of them walked around their neighborhood together and Benny had eyes only for his father, playing tag with him, racing up Fair Hill with him, or playing that silly game where they counted the numbers on the license plates of passing cars to see if they added up to 21. They would cajole Ellie to join in, and she, wanting only to take a relaxed, leisurely evening walk, would refuse. And father and son would mock her for not being into competitive walking and climbing and counting. But somehow even their teasing, their mocking, included her, made her feel part of a triangle, valued, a straight man to their clowning around.
Where’s Frank?
Ramesh said again, and she forced herself to pay attention to the boy.
He’s out, sweetie. I’m afraid he won’t be home until late tonight.
Ramesh looked outraged. Where he go?
So direct, so blunt. It was a trait she had noticed in many of the Indians she’d come in contact with. Was there an Indian Miss Manners, she wondered, someone who could teach them the virtues of evasion, of subtlety, of telling the truth slant? But most of the time Ellie felt happy to be among people who did not play games, to whom the very expression playing games
meant a vigorous game of hockey or cricket. A practical, literal people. Frank, she knew, was appalled by how bluntly his employees spoke, saw it as rudeness, crassness. And in the beginning she, too, was unnerved by it, by the lack of artifice, by the absence of the sheen of politeness that covered all interactions in America like Saran Wrap. Except for the clerks working in the fancy shops of Bombay, no one in India said inane things like Have a nice day.
Once, soon after they’d moved to Girbaug, Ellie had told Edna to have a nice day and Edna had replied, Only if God’s willing, madam, if God’s willing.
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