Invisible Lives (5 page)

A
sha Rao is back in the store, and I’m trapped in an invisible bubble that keeps the
knowing
outside. Someone—maybe the goddess—blew that bubble and is now secretly laughing at me.
Ha-ha. Now see how well you survive with only your five senses. Ha!
But Helen Keller survived without sight or sound. If she could do it, I can make it without the
knowing.

I push the glasses up on my nose and stride forward to take Ms. Rao’s cool, delicate hand. The driver is in a navy blue suit that brings out the startling blue of his eyes; his long blond hair is slicked back.

I focus on Asha’s delicate expressions, her movements, the shift of her eyes, her words, for I have no
knowing
to guide me.

The driver curls his fingers around the wheelchair handles and pushes Asha around the room in that effortless way, as if he could push a house.

Mr. Basu comes running from the back and stops in the middle of the room.

“Oh, gods!” he exclaims and presses his hands to his cheeks. “The leak has come again!” As if the leaky pipe under the bathroom sink is an unwelcome cousin. The two hairs on his head are drooping, portending foul weather.

Across the room, Ma’s face freezes in a proprietary smile.

“Oh, no,” I breathe and hurry back to stifle Mr. Basu. “What’s going on?” I whisper. “If it’s just the drip—”

“Puddles on the floor,” Mr. Basu says with great sadness, as if a monsoon has swept away his family.

I step closer, grab Mr. Basu’s arm. “Get the handyman.”

“His wife says he’s working in Bellingham.”

“Then call the plumber. Have him come in the back way.”

“Plumber’s busy, Lakshmi.”

“Damn it.” I rarely use such words. I glance back toward Ma and Pooja, dancing like consorts around the Bollywood goddess. Our position is precarious. Nick stands near the counter, scanning the shop, hands behind his back. I turn to Mr. Basu. “Do whatever you can to fix it.”

Then Nick is beside me. “Problem?”

I step away, putting a protective distance between this enormous man and me.

“No problem, no problem.” Mr. Basu scratches his head. “We’ve got a leak.”

I cringe. “We can take care of it,” I say. “Small drip.”

“Huge ocean,” Mr. Basu says. “All over, all over, it will be flooding into the office next.”

“It’s nothing.” I push Mr. Basu back toward the office, trying to stuff him in there the way I stuff saris into boxes, but he stands his ground.

“Making gushing sound,” he says. “Something new.” He’s always offering unnecessary information.

“Oh, Mr. Basu!” My face heats.

“Let me take a look,” Nick says.

“No need,” I say.

“Yes, look, look!” Mr. Basu turns, and Nick follows him into the back office. I’m right behind them, my heart fluttering in funny, fast beats. “It’s really not necessary—”

But he’s already moving through the office, his bulk incongruous in the small space. Mr. Basu is leading him past the piles of paper on my desk, the pictures of family, the half-eaten sandwiches, the dirty coffee machine, and into the bathroom, which also needs to be cleaned, my lotion sitting on the sink, a box of tampons on the toilet tank. It’s like having a stranger in your house when you haven’t had time to tidy up.

“Got tools?” Nick asks. How can he be so calm when there’s a steady but thin stream of water pouring from the cabinet below the sink?

“Tools?” Mr. Basu and I say in unison.

“Yeah, tools. You know, wrenches and screwdrivers.”

“Tools in janitor’s closet,” Mr. Basu says.

“We’ll call our handyman,” I say. “No need to—”

“I can handle it,” Nick says.

Mr. Basu disappears and returns with a red metal box, the tools clanking around inside, weighing down his arm. Nick takes the box and holds it with ease, as if it’s a loaf of bread. Ma rushes in, and her eyes widen. “Oh, no! What’s happened in here, Bibu?” She looks at me, then at Nick, and her brows furrow with disapproval. “What’s he doing here?”

“He’s offered to help, Ma.”

“What have you done, Bibu?” Her voice has a serrated edge.

“I didn’t do it!” I shout.

Ma’s eyes narrow at me. “Call the plumber.”

Mr. Basu gives her the spiel, while Nick gives me a half smile, those blue eyes amused. I’m wearing glasses and a ponytail, like a schoolgirl, and my mother is calling me Bibu, and we’re standing in a lake in our messy bathroom. Well, Mr. Nick, see how much time you have for house-cleaning when you have to balance the books, stock saris, measure customers for custom-made outfits, and grin at the Mrs. Dasguptas of the world all day. Never mind trying to find a perfect Bengali husband and catapult the shop into the Fortune 500 in the next three months.

“I can fix it, ma’am,” Nick says, shifting his gaze to my mother.

“Thank you,” Ma breathes, and then her gaze dismisses him. “We’ll pay you appropriately.”

I’m thrown back to India, where Ma renders rickshaw drivers invisible with a wave of her hand.

Nick puts the toolbox on the toilet seat, whips off his jacket, and rolls up his sleeves to reveal muscular arms with a hint of blue tattoos beginning above both elbows. Tattoos? What kind of man is this?

Mr. Basu brings a pile of towels and we mop the floor.

Nick gets down on his back on a towel, easing himself into the cabinet.

The phone rings shrilly, drilling through my ears.

“I’ll get it.” Ma waves an arm at Mr. Basu, and they both disappear into the shop.

“Do you always fix plumbing wherever you go?” I ask Nick.

“If the pipes break,” he says in a muffled voice. “Hand me that screwdriver.”

I kneel and peer into the cabinet. As he messes with the pipes, his sleeves ride up his arms, revealing muscles and more of the tattoos—one barbed wire, the other a dream catcher.

Did the tattoos hurt? Did he show off to his girlfriend? He must lift weights with those muscular arms.

Translucent suds of emotion fizz in the air, but they’re not coming from Nick.

They’re coming from me!

What’s going on? What does this mean? I’ve never seen bubbles like this. For a crazy moment, I’m sure he can see the pink foam surrounding me.

“Pass me that wrench,” he says. “Ms. Sen?”

“Oh, sorry!” I fumble in the toolbox.

“That one on the left.”

I hand him the wrench.

He finishes screwing something on and the water stops flowing from the pipe, just like that. He slides out of the cabinet and stands, looking bigger than he did when he walked in.

“You’re really good at fixing things,” I say.

“I fix whatever breaks at my parents’ place all the time,” Nick says. “My dad’s not the greatest with tools.”

“Even our handyman takes hours, and he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing. Not that you’re a handyman. That’s not what I meant.”

“No problem. I found this in the pipe.” He hands me a golden ring, untarnished and glinting in the light. For an awkward moment, it feels as if he’s proposing to me.

I bring the ring close to my face. A few stray bubbles float by. “Wow—looks like pure gold. I wonder who lost this.”

“Could be a wedding ring.” He peers closer, the scent of his metallic aftershave in my nose.

“Initials
J.T.
in English. I can’t read this part, see? Words engraved into the inside. Looks like Sanskrit! Maybe it’s my mother’s, or she knows whose it is.”

“I love a good mystery.” Nick grins as he presses a business card into my hand. “Let me know what you find out.”

“Why? Do you want to keep the ring?”

“Finders keepers?” Now he’s smiling.

“I suppose you’re right. You found the ring.”

But I can’t help thinking he gave me the card for another reason.
Nick Dunbar, Dunbar Limousine Service.
With a telephone number. I glance into his eyes, catching a glimpse of promise. He sees past the glasses, past the baggy shirt and my severe hairstyle.

“Thanks for fixing the…pipe,” I call after him as he leaves.

A
fter Asha and Nick leave, the bubbles pop, but I’m not back to normal. I’ve entered an unmapped territory with unknown suds lurking in the shadows. I’m spent, shaky, disoriented.

The
knowing
returns gradually, but why did it leave again? Is the goddess testing me?

“Oh, what shall we do?” Mr. Basu presses his hands to his cheeks. “So much more work! Fittings and stitchings—”

“Hush, Sanjay. This is all good!” Ma rushes around straightening saris, smoothing kameezes. “We’ll take it one step at a time. We must order more jewelry.”

I remember the ring. “Ma, I want to show you something.”

In the office, I show her the ring.

“Where did you find this?” Her face goes hard.

“Nick found it in the pipe under the sink.”

“Ah, the driver,” Ma says dismissively.

“Is it yours? The initials are
J.T.
”

Her lips form a tight line. A hint of anger touches her eyes and is gone. “I know nothing about this. You can throw it away.”

“Throw it away! But Ma, it’s gold, and it has this etching too—”

“I don’t know about any etching.”

But I’m sure she does. She’s distracted the rest of the morning, putting saris on the wrong shelves, walking away from customers halfway through conversations.

At lunchtime, Mitra shows up in her VW Bug to take me to the Cosmos Café for lunch. A long-haired, dark-skinned Kathak dancer, she exudes compact efficiency, but her wild streak hovers close to the surface, in the silver stud through her nose, in her carefree driving style. I’ve known her for nine years, and she has always been reckless. And she has always loved Kathak, her one thread of connection to her Indian culture.
Katha
means “story,” and traditional Kathak dance always weaves a tale in elaborate, precise movements as old as time, as delicate as butterfly wings. Her feet move so quickly, tap-tapping the stage, enormous silver bells called
ghunghrus
clanging on her ankles.

“You’ll get us both killed,” I scream as she cuts across two lanes of traffic.

She ignores me as usual. “You look flushed. Are you sick? I hope you’re not catching the cold that’s going around—”

“Look at the road, not at me!”

“Or maybe that sixth sense of yours went into hyper-drive?”

I tell her about Ravi Ganguli, Asha Rao, the ring in the drainpipe. “And the weird thing was, the
knowing
disappeared.”

“Are you reading me now?”

“I’m not a two-bit fortune-teller, Mitra. I can’t read you at will.”

The car swerves to the left, then back into her lane. Mitra parks in the lot behind the café, the car sprawled at an angle across two spaces. “Your ma must know about the ring,” she says. “Can’t you read her mind and find out—”

“There are limits to what I see,” I say. “I’ve never seen all the way into her. She thinks I have heightened intuition, and that’s all.”

“There’s some sordid family secret in that ring, I’m telling you.”

“We don’t have any family secrets.”

“Everyone does.” Mitra frowns, and her mind wanders away to a backyard patio near the beach, where a small girl dances in a tiny yellow silk Kathak costume, her black hair flying. The skirt flares out at the bottom, and she looks like miniature sunshine when she spins. Her heart is so full that her happiness spills onto the beach and makes the seashells smile.

A tall man watches from a lawn chair. He smiles and claps, proud of his young daughter. Soft water laps the shore, and a seagull cries, following in the wake of a ferry steaming ashore in West Seattle. Every time the girl bangs her feet on the patio, the bells on her ankles clanging in metallic song, the man encourages her, so she dances faster and faster.

Then a phantom hand reaches from the sea and sucks the man into the surf, and I’m plummeting back to reality, Mitra tugging my sleeve. “Earth to Lakshmi! You were off in la-la land.”

“Did you ever own a yellow Kathak costume with paisley on it when you were a little girl?”

An invisible veil covers her eyes. “I don’t remember. Did you have some kind of vision?”

“I just caught a glimpse of someone. I thought she might’ve been you.”

“What else did you see?”

“You were on the beach.” Instinct tells me not to mention the man, probably her father. I know she hasn’t spoken to him in four years, since she refused to study medicine or marry the man he chose for her.

“We lived near Alki beach.” She drums her fingers on the steering wheel. “I’ve always loved it there. I could watch the ferries come in. That’s all you saw?”

“That’s all.”

“But why now? Did you reach into my head and pull out my memories or something?”

“You know I can’t control what I see. You seemed very happy there. You were dancing.”

“What else are you seeing now? What am I thinking?”

“You’re craving a hot fudge sundae with bananas and whipped cream.”

She laughs. “But my waistline will have to make do with a Greek salad, dressing on the side.”

We go inside to meet Nisha. The café caters to an eclectic Northwest crowd, some in suits, others in sandals and flannel shirts. A group of wiry bicyclists gathers at a corner table, their tight spandex outfits outlining every body part. The acidic scent of coffee clings to the air, and the walls are covered with Native Northwest art—carved wooden orcas, a Haida ceremonial mask, a hazy watercolor image of Mount Rainier rising above the Puget Sound.

We find Nisha at a table by the window, her sculpted chin turned toward the expansive view of the lake. Even as the clouds promise more rain, parents are out pushing jogging strollers, Rollerblading, or simply walking. Nisha looks as if she does all three. Everything about her is slim and healthy, studied and planned, even the way she smoothes her blue power suit and sips her wine.

Two years ago, she returned to India for a perfect arranged marriage, and now she and her husband live in a mansion in North Seattle. They’re blissfully happy, and beneath her manicured demeanor, she has a heart the size of the universe. She’s a successful banker who donates to nearly every nonprofit in the city. She convinced me to give several saris for charity fund-raisers.

We bring her up to speed and order our salads. I produce the ring, much admired around the table.

“Must be a sign,” Nisha says. “Your marriage will come soon.”

“I wish I could read the inscription,” I say.

“It’s something cryptic, a big secret.” Mitra waves down the waiter, and we place our orders. “Terribly exciting,” she goes on.

“You’re such a drama queen,” Nisha says. “Always seeing something big and dramatic in everyday happenings. The ring slipped off someone’s finger and fell down the sink, that’s all.” She turns her water glass between her hands in a distracted way.

Mitra snorts. “Who got up grouchy today? You and that husband of yours need a vacation. Drive down to Portland for a romantic weekend. You’re always working!”

“I guess I’m cranky,” Nisha says. “I’ve been working long hours, and Rakesh made partner at the firm. He doesn’t have much time for vacations, but…we’re planning a trip to Baja soon, if he can get away. He’s got a big case that might go to trial.”

The waiter brings our salads and soups, and we dig into our lunches. I am grateful for the distraction, but the
knowing
is hyperactive, and I catch a glimpse of Nisha running along a narrow alley in darkness, a green sari flapping around her, tears in her eyes. Then the image disappears. What could it mean?

I try to focus on the restaurant, on strangers absorbed in intimate conversations. A gaunt woman sits across from a man who gesticulates in animated movements. She’s wearing a woolen cap decorated with a golden broach, and her eyelashes and eyebrows are missing. Her skin has a pale, brittle appearance, but her eyes shine with life as her companion talks, and then Mitra returns to my thoughts unbidden. She’s the little girl again, dancing, only her father is much older and thinner, bent forward, and then Mitra grows older and suddenly I know what’s happening now, so many years later.

Mitra’s father is dying.