The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (41 page)

“Yeah, but they’re …” Amina stopped herself. He did not need a catalogue of her disappointments. “Yes, I am.”

“You seemed like you really enjoy it. The other night, at the wedding, I mean.”

“Oh, that was just relief. I think by the time you saw me I was pretty much done.”

“I saw you at the church.”

It took a moment for this to sink in. “You didn’t say hi?”

“I didn’t know if it was cool.”

There wasn’t a ton of light in the park, something that was only obvious now that night was settling in. A warm yellow, domestic glow emanated from some of the houses, but other than that, there was just a lone street lamp that buzzed on and off intermittently, casting Jamie, when she looked at him, in a sharp silhouette. He looked nothing like his sister. The thought sneaked up on Amina, and with it, the faintest flicker of Paige’s face, those cheeks that held the curve of stone fruits, Ming vases. She was on a date with the brother of the girl Akhil had loved.

“I can’t believe you’re a professor,” she said.

“My dad was a professor.”

“I know. But you hated teachers in high school.”

“
Hated
is a strong word.”

“Mr. Tipton?”

“Oh yeah, I fucking hated that guy.”

They laughed. It felt good to laugh. It pushed the pressure from her head out into the cooling night, where it rose up through the branches to the two stars that had just become visible. Amina finished her beer and stared at it a second before deciding to lie back on the blanket.

Jamie bent over the bag. “You hungry yet? Want some corn nuts?”

“I’m good.”

“Okay.” He rustled through what seemed like the entire contents of the bag, while Amina prickled beside him. What was he doing? She should sit back up. She would count to five and then sit back up.

“I guess I don’t really want any either.” Jamie glanced back at her and then lay down, too. A cottony field of heat emanated from his forearm, pulling at her like gravity. She imagined herself rolling over, on top of him. She imagined the heat from him moving under her.

“So is it weird for you that I’m divorced?”

“What? No. Why?”

“You seemed a little freaked out earlier.”

“No! I mean, I haven’t been married before, so I don’t know. I guess it just seems really grown-up or something.”

“More grown-up than getting married?”

“Definitely.”

Jamie laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Is it weird being divorced?” What was she doing? Amina bit her lip too late.

Jamie paused, thinking. “I guess sometimes it’s weird. I don’t know. A lot less weird than being married to the wrong person.”

“How did you know she was the wrong person?”

“Wow, you’re really just sticking to the easy questions tonight, huh?”

Amina sat up, embarrassed. She was killing the moment. And for what? She needed to get ahold of herself.

“Do you want some M&M’s?” she asked.

“Sure.” Jamie stayed flat and she reached over him, feeling around the damp bottom of the paper sack and staring inadvertently at the zipper of his shorts, which protruded slightly. A pale seam of skin peeked between his waistband and T-shirt. Jamie cleared his throat. “We didn’t fight well.”

“What?”

“Me and Miriam. We were too mean.”

Amina tried not to smile. She did not like the name Miriam. She held up the M&M’s. “Hold out your hand.”

“What about you?” Jamie asked.

She wiggled a few candies through the wrapper into his palm, then her own. “What about me?”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

Amina felt herself blushing in the dark. “Not really.”

Jamie popped the entire handful of candy into his mouth, crunching loudly. “You ready for another beer?”

“Yeah, sure.” She didn’t actually want another beer, but it didn’t matter. She took the cool bottle he offered, setting it in the grass. They
lay back at the same time, and this time their shoulders touched. Above them, the stars were soft and plenty.

“Hey.” Jamie’s voice vibrated through her collarbone. “How’s your dad?”

She had forgotten she had told him. “We don’t really know yet.”

“Tests?”

“Yeah.”

“I went through that a few years ago with my mom.”

“Oh yeah? How is she doing now?”

“She had stage-four breast cancer when we found it. She died a few months later.”

“Oh God, Jamie, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I mean, I hate that she got it, but I don’t mind that she went fast.”

There was something in his voice—a brittle tidiness—that made her uncomfortable. “My dad’s not really sick that way. I think it’s more of a depression thing with him.”

“So does that mean you’ll need to stay awhile?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Got it.”

Did he? Amina did not know and then it did not matter, because in the next second, Jamie propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her, the park light fanning around him like a halo. He pushed a strand of hair off her cheek, and in a blink she finally recognized him, the boy who used to sit across from her in English class, scowling into a paperback every time she opened her mouth.

CHAPTER 4

T
he rubber duckies were a surprise. The next afternoon, as the Eapens sat in Anyan George’s office, Amina stared at a row of yellow bodies, carefully arranged bill to tail. Everything else in the office—from the neat row of diplomas to the green plaid armchairs to two frames filled with the face of a sweet-looking boy who had aged at least a year between photos—had been expected. But the ducks across the desk were as distracting as live acrobats. Amina picked one up, sniffing its sweet body before carefully replacing it.

“Adorable, no?” Kamala asked.

Amina frowned to discourage her. All morning, her mother had been too cheerful, tucking herself into her best teal sari to accompany Thomas to the scans, trying to slip gold bangles onto Amina’s arms as they were leaving the house. Now, waiting for Anyan George to come back with the preliminary results, she was practically giddy.

“A real sense of humor!” She indicated the duckies with her chin. “Like you!”

Thomas uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, checking his watch.

“I’m sure he’s on the way,” Amina said soothingly. Poor Thomas—the clichéd bad patient, all walnut wrinkles and testiness, imaginings of the worst. She wished she could just squeeze the worry out of him, or better yet, suffuse him with the heady benevolence that swam through her veins like sweet tea, leaving every part of her that Jamie had touched feeling blessed and anointed. She rubbed her fingertips across her lips.

“It’s so nice for men to be in touch with their, you know, feminine side,” Kamala trilled on. “
Good Morning America
had one whole show on it! This one bakes cookies, that one sews his daughter’s Halloween costume each and every year.” She smoothed her sari against her lap, fingered the coral earrings she had put on that morning. “Are you sure you don’t want to put your hair down? It looks much nicer when it’s down.”

“It’s fine, Ma.”

“You’re sick?”

“What?”

“Why does your voice sound honk-honky?”

“It doesn’t.”

It did. Too much talking. Amina blushed.

“If Anyan’s not here by one, we’ll simply have to reschedule,” Thomas announced.

“He’s only a few minutes late,” Amina said, ignoring the way her father set his jaw against her. Beyond coordinating the basics of time and place, Thomas had done his best to avoid her over the past few days, walking out of rooms as she entered them, grunting away any attempt at conversation. It was to be expected, of course, but still unsettling, and she found herself looking forward to the end of the appointment, when they could begin to right what had become disjointed between them.

“Here,
koche
!” A ChapStick appeared in front of Amina’s face, held between Kamala’s fingers like a winning lottery ticket. “Lips are dry.”

Amina swiped it across her lips and handed it back. She looked
down at the spiral notebook on her lap, “Dad’s Test Results” written across the top of a clean page, and added the date in the margin for good measure.

He had his sister’s mouth. She had understood this the night before as a child does a textbook optical illusion, eye bending between the revelation of white birds and black birds, the old woman and the young woman. Jamie’s face, Paige’s mouth.

The office door opened and Dr. George stepped in. He was smaller than Amina remembered, or maybe just overwhelmed by his lab coat and pleated pants, by the oversized manila envelope in his hands.

“Hello, hello. Good afternoon, sir. Whole family came, I see.” He smiled a little shyly at them, settling into his seat. “I apologize for the tardiness.”

“Oh, please.” Thomas smiled with no trace of his former irritation. “We should be thanking you for making time on such short notice. I hate to pull you away from your real patients.”

“How is Anjan?” Kamala beamed.

“Well. He’s well, thank you.”

“He’s looking so grown-up, you know. What grade is he in now?”

“Second,” Dr. George said. “He’s just a bit tall for his age.”

“I’ll bet.” Kamala patted Amina’s leg.

“Are those mine?” Thomas asked, pointing to the envelope.

Dr. George nodded. “Yes, and the blood work is being sent over right now.”

“Well, let’s have a look. We don’t want to keep you.”

“I hope you don’t mind, I also had Dr. Curry take a look before I came.”

“Oh, good. How is Luther?” Thomas stood. “Back from Hawaii, then?”

“Yes, sir.” Dr. George walked to the light board, and Thomas stood in front of it, his arms crossed. Amina got up and stood there too, doing her best to look focused as the fluorescent light popped on, bathing them in a cool, white glow.

The scans were beautiful. They always were, whites and grays spreading out between the thin curves of skull like weather patterns
from some distant planet. When she was younger, Amina would try to find shapes in them—flowers, dragons, boats.

“I wanted to get a second opinion before I came over, of course,” Dr. George said quietly.

Two seahorses met in a mirror, their snouts just touching. One had wings and the other carried an egg.

“Glioma,” Thomas said.

Dr. George nodded.

Amina looked back at the fanning waves of gray, the dark curls and symmetrical lakes. “What?”

Her father did not answer. She looked at his blank face, which seemed waxen suddenly, as if it had never known motion. A phone was ringing somewhere.

“Curry agreed?” Thomas asked.

“Yes.”

“His approximation?”

“Between two and three.”

“I see.”

“Wait, what?” Amina asked, louder now, panic edging into her voice.

“And the EEG?” Thomas asked, holding a hand up to silence her.

“That’s on the way,” Dr. George said.

“Yes, but was there—”

“A good amount of focal slowing,” Dr. George said. “Yes.”

Thomas nodded. His eyes dropped to the carpet and did not move.

“Who?” Kamala asked, pushing her way between them to look at the scans herself. “Something is the matter?”

No one answered her. Amina felt something cool on her arm. She looked down to find Dr. George’s hand on her elbow.

“Shall we sit?” he asked.

There was something about his tone that made Amina want to be on her best behavior, and she turned at once, almost running into Kamala, who looked just as determined to get back to her own chair. Dr. George sat down across from them. Thomas stayed standing.

“There appears to be a mass in the occipital lobe,” Dr. George said.

“A mass? Is that the same thing as a tumor?” Amina asked.

“Yes.”

“No,” Kamala said.

“Is it bad?” Amina felt stupid asking. Weren’t all tumors bad on some level?

“We need to do a biopsy to know more,” Dr. George said.

Her notebook was on his desk. Amina pulled it off and onto her lap, and slowly wrote “tumor” at the top of the page. She immediately crossed it out. She wrote “biopsy” instead.

“I realize this is a shock,” Dr. George was saying. “For all of us. Though of course this does explain some of the symptoms. Amina, you had mentioned the hallucinations. Audio and visual inconsistencies are common for this type of—”

“Shut up,” Kamala said.

“Ma!”

“It’s okay,” Dr. George said. “It’s understandable.”

Kamala sat very still in her chair, her face tilted upward like a child bent on not receiving punishment. Behind her, Thomas was all back, the light from the board turning the tips of his curls an even whiter white.

“It’s a terrible shock,” Dr. George explained to Amina, as if she needed the explanation. Amina looked out the window at her car. It seemed strange that it should still be out there, waiting, in one piece.

“But …” Amina cleared her throat. “I mean, what’s the treatment? Do you operate? Take it out?”

“We will know more when we get more tests, but the location and the size would indicate—”

“No,” Thomas turned around. His face was pale and he smiled sadly at her. “It’s inoperable.”

“So then, like, what? Radiation? Chemo?”