The Abundance: A Novel (2 page)

Sachin returns with the sippy cups. He takes off his gloves and boots but stands with the winter coat still on, shoulders dusted in fine snow. His hands look small at the ends of his puffy sleeves, the plastic Mickey Mouse cups even smaller. Mala takes them without saying thank you. As Sachin removes the rest of his gear, the talk turns to weather, how many inches of snowfall in St. Louis versus here, how bad it was last year—and I think how merciful it is that all people have the weather in common, the one subject everybody can talk about. We three speak in Gujarati, Sachin at ease again, his pleasantness undiminished by his humbling. Steam rises from the sink as Mala turns the fixture all the way left and holds the cups under the water, her face set, as though proving to herself she can withstand the heat.

*   *   *

Upstairs, in the dark, Abhi sits on the bed. I tug at his pajama sleeve.

“Do you really think we can do this?” he says. “Pretend this way? Let them know.”

“It’s late. The little ones will be up early.”

“Tomorrow morning. Take Mala aside.”

“This is their last visit before things change, Abhi. I told you.”

“You will have her as she is, then.”

“That’s what I want. You saw, she was sweet to me when she came in.”

“Tonight she snapped at Sachin, tomorrow morning she may snap at you.”

“I don’t mind.”

He shakes his head. “How can we walk about as if there’s nothing crushing us?”

“This is their last visit before they find out and things change.”

He covers his face a moment, palms side by side, then slides the heels of his hands up to his eyes and presses in frustration. “Things have already changed. You are in pain. I know it. I see it every time I look in your eyes.”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“You should sleep, Abhi. Mala says the kids have been getting up lately at six thirty.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“Come here. Come here and sleep.”

Abhi shakes his head again and joins me under the covers. He lies apart from me for a few moments, then he turns and sets his thigh over mine, brings his arm under my breasts, nuzzles my neck. Once, this used to be a signal that he wished to make love; now it is the burrowing of a scared creature. The thigh and arm that rest on me make sure that I do not vanish without warning. I cannot remember when we last made love. I do not want to remember, either. If we let it happen now, I will keep thinking,
This may be the last time
. Maybe I will think it just once, then concentrate harder, focus, shake the thought from my head—but the pleasure, if there can be any pleasure, would rise between my legs like a lump in the throat. I would be conscious of every moment. And later I would remember this one night, our last, more intensely than all the others we have spent together, back when we were time’s millionaires, rolling in nights.

I lie on my back for a while, unable to sleep. I trace Abhi’s arm across my chest, the soft hairs of his hand, his rough knuckles, his fingers limp now that he has fallen asleep. I find the white gold of his wedding band and turn it around and around, as though winding a clock.

I made everything in advance the morning we went for the second opinion. I poured the dahl still steaming into a casserole dish. Condensation jeweled the glass lid. The fan over the stove kept me safe. I thought of its roar as a leaf blower’s, scattering my apprehensions. Anything not to concentrate on the appointment.

Two events were crowded into that day after weeks of waiting: my appointment at the Cleveland Clinic with Dr. D’Onofrio, and the arrival, from Buffalo, of Abhi’s nephew and his wife. Life is like that, a long lull, then all the phones ring at once. We had to leave at 10
AM
to make it to our 12:45 meeting, then, after two hours, come back here to pick up the guests from the airport.

Of course we hadn’t planned things this way. Abhi called Dr. D’Onofrio’s office and got me the first available opening. His nephew Shailesh’s itinerary arrived by e-mail three days afterward. We hadn’t been able to attend his wedding in Ahmedabad, so showing this hospitality, during the couple’s visit to America, was crucial.

Abhi asked me whether he should request that they fly into Cleveland. We could pick them up on the drive back. I didn’t want that. His nephew would never tell us whether the airline had penalized them for changing flights, or if it cost more to go through Cleveland. I didn’t want to lie, either—though we did end up lying that evening, not with our words but with our bodies and faces. Eyebrows high, lips stretched, we hugged our young guests outside baggage claim after they bent to touch our slush-caked shoes.

Did they sense that something was off? Did Abhi’s eyes look sunken? He had been sleeping even less than usual. My weight loss, at least, was hidden by the winter coat. We quizzed them about their parents and their honeymoon during the car ride home. Abhi did well. How was Niagara? Where else were they going? I made sure not to leave all the work to him. How was Kaka’s health? And Kaki’s health? Always the inquiry about health. In Gujarati, you say it without thinking. You are asking about general well-being, not the heart medications or last year’s stroke.

Shailesh noticed a change when we got home. I was putting their heavy coats on hangers. They were well-worn coats, brought out for them, I suspected, from the basement of his aunt in Buffalo.

“Kaki,” he said with surprise, “you have reduced!”

Reduced
was the English word he used, though the sentence itself was Gujarati.
Healthy
, in Gujarati, means chubby, ruddy, a second chin;
reduced
, having noticeably lost weight, is not the compliment it is in English. It is asked with concern. If it’s the husband who looks thinner, the next joke is usually, “Isn’t she feeding you anymore?”

Abhi played off the joke and patted his stomach. “You’re right, she
has
reduced. She cooks so beautifully, I leave nothing for her!” Polite laughter gave me cover to get into the kitchen.

Henna, Shailesh’s wife, followed me, offering to set the table. I wanted to be alone, like a wounded deer, I wanted my kitchen’s familiar niche. But with Henna there, I wouldn’t have the chance. Maybe this was for the best. No opportunity for despair. Having guests would keep me heating and ladling and stirring for a few days. I would have some continuity between my life before and my life from now on.

Henna filled the pitcher tentatively, with skinny, delicate fingers, her wedding mehndi’s paisleys a faded red-orange, only the pads of the fingers still dark. The jostle of ice cubes put an absurd lump in my throat. The sound, for me, meant time to call everyone to dinner. I always brought the water out last. I liked to set it cold and dripping under the chandelier. I always told the children to drink water with their meals. Enough so they could taste the food, but not so much that it would fool their hunger.

Most of the meal I had set out on the counter to cool. I had made masoor dahl—the amenable lentil, a cop-out. But in the deepest casserole dish I had something to impress them: stuffed breaded baby eggplants with yams, potatoes, onions, and even segments of banana cooked in the sleeve, the peels blackened and edibly soft. This was a dish our mothers used to cook in open-field fire pits when I was girl. That and the bhartha spiced with its own burning. You could hold an eggplant to a ring of natural gas, and the shiny skin would crinkle. But nothing flavors eggplant quite like red fire and wood.

I observed myself emerging from my mood as I set everything to heat.
You are getting everything ready, you are still functioning.
Then I saw the stray pot on the dormant back burner, and I remembered immediately the dahi. I curdle mine the old way, seeding it from the last pot. I had left it out overnight to take on body and the right hint of sour. It had been perfect this morning. I had tasted it and made sure. Why, why hadn’t I moved it to the refrigerator? Distraction. I had skipped forward, in my mind, to the appointment. And now, hours later, there it was.

I checked on Henna at the dining table, then hurriedly tested a spoonful. Too sour: first the pucker inside the cheeks, then the smart of it down the throat. Ruined. I slammed the lid on it as if it had a stench and hid it in the refrigerator.

The meal needed something else for coolness.
What else, what else?
I remembered the mango pulp. I’d gotten three dented orange cans from Bharat Grocers last week. I hurried out to the garage where we kept them to chill. The door swung shut behind me but the garage light was still on. The can felt icy under my hand, its flat top coarsely dusty. I lifted it, and the garage light timed out. I was in utter darkness and silence but for the dripping minivan.
Will it happen to me like that?
I brought the cold can of summer sweetness against my stomach: sweet and orange and preserved forever. I shuddered.
You will come to wish it happened like that.

In the kitchen, I slid a drawer open and found the can opener. My hand shook as I clipped and pushed two triangles into the top. I realized I had forgotten to rinse the can. I went to the faucet and paused; Henna would see I had made the punctures before running water over the lid.

“Which bowls should we use? These small glass ones?” she asked. I reached past her and picked up four bowls myself. I must have seemed annoyed. Henna backed away, eyes on the ground, pulled into herself like a touch-me-not. I handed her the bowls and wiped the punctured lid with my sleeve. The dust came off visibly on my cuff. The can had been out a long time. It had come from the grocer’s shelf dusty, too—who knew how long it had sat there, across from wet coriander in the glass cooler?

Henna took the bowls with a small nod and hurried out of the kitchen. I had offended her. I had made her feel uncomfortable. I was in my kitchen, nowhere so powerful as here. Yet I did not feel in control.

I told myself I had done this thousands of times by now.
This is my empire.
I turned the gas up a little, took out two large spoons, and stirred the pot on the front burner and the one on the back. A familiar crackle. These scents comforted me. Only grandchildren in my lap could have calmed me more. I eased back into my mastery. I opened the drawer where I kept my hot plates and my salt-and-pepper-shaker mitt. The hand I slid into it did not tremble.

I press the lump on my forehead, exploring the pain. A hard knot of blood, nothing sinister. The sinister lumps are the ones you cannot feel, the ones that hide.

We had sat on the bed until two in the morning the night of Henna and Shailesh’s visit, roughly the time it is now. My face hidden in Abhi’s neck, I had cried, wringing out the heart’s old rag. I was careful not to be too loud. The guest room shared a wall with ours.

Abhi asked when and how we should tell Ronak and Mala. I shook my head. I didn’t want to tell them. They had their rhythms: morning alarm clocks, blue toothpaste for the children, granola in this bowl, Lucky Charms in the others, changing the children out of their pajamas, the commutes, the jobs, the microwave beeps at dinnertime, bedtime routines, that last hour padding around a quiet house, picking up toys, checking e-mail, paying bills, thumbing appointment reminders into the corkboard beside the fridge.

And then, suddenly, this? It would throw off the finely balanced movement of their lives. Over every meal:
I talked to Mom today. How’s Mom holding up? What did the oncologist say? How is she feeling? Is she in pain?
… I did not want the spotlight of their concern. I imagined the phone calls between Mala and Ronak, the news dominating every conversation. The idea embarrassed me. I wanted them to talk about their week or the upcoming ski trip or Shivani’s new word or Nikhil’s report card. Not me. Not this.

“But we have to tell them,” Abhi whispered. “This isn’t something we can keep a secret. We should tell India, too. Your brother may want to visit. We will cover his ticket.”

I wiped my cheeks. I could breathe and speak again. “I want everyone to stay as they are.”

Abhi shook his head.

“Things will change for me. But things shouldn’t have to change for them. I want them to stay as they are.”

“Things are going to change for all of us.”

“I want them to stay happy.”

“Of course you do.”

“As long as they can.”

“Yes. We both want that.” He gazed at the carpet, imagining, maybe, the act I was asking us to stage: three weeks’ pleasantries over the phone, and finally Mala’s Christmas visit, five days face to cheerful face. “You can’t not tell them. You can’t.”

“I will. But later. Not while I am still strong. You saw. I cooked today. A full meal. Dahl, rice, rotli, shaak.”

“Things change. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I am still strong, aren’t I?”

“You are. But it’s okay to feel tired. It’s okay to rest.”

“I don’t need to rest. You’ll see tomorrow. It will be like always, for now.”

Abhi put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. He looked up. “We have to tell the kids. I can’t hide this from them. Not even on the phone. It’s hard enough with guests.”

“No. Please. Not yet. Mala is coming during Christmas week.”

“You’ll tell her then? Face-to-face?”

I thought ahead to her arrival. It felt good to do that. Only three weeks from now, attainable happiness. “I want to have one last time together, Abhi. Without this coloring everything.”

“You want to hide it from her the whole stay?”

“And I want Ronak here, too.”

“You know he’s spending Christmas with Amber’s family.”

“In Pittsburgh. It’s not far. They can spend Christmas there, but the next day they can come here. He has until the second off. He told me so.”

“They celebrate Christmas in a way we don’t. It’s—it’s religious for them.”

“They go to church on Christmas day. The day after, there aren’t any services. They can drive here.”

Abhi shook his head. “The only way to convince Ronak,” he said, “is to tell him why.”

“We’ll both call him.”