The Story Hour (10 page)

Maggie nodded. “Glad to hear. So, what would you like to talk about today? What's on your mind?”

Lakshmi cocked her head. Then she said, “You liking Hindi films, madam?”

What did Lakshmi think this was? Happy hour? That they were going to spend the time chitchatting? Maggie knew that the very concept of therapy was alien to Lakshmi. Even among Sudhir's educated family members in India, her profession was the butt of many jokes and much eye-rolling, their impressions of therapy formed by 1970s Woody Allen movies and a general belief that Americans were self-indulgent, self-absorbed, and “soft.” She was pretty sure that someone from Lakshmi's peasant rural background couldn't fathom the concept of paying a doctor to listen to her problems. A doctor was someone who handed you tablets, gave you an injection, and, in extreme cases, operated on you. She saw the scene from Lakshmi's eyes: two women sitting on a back porch on a gorgeous summer afternoon. Of course the woman wanted to discuss movies. What in Lakshmi's life experience would tell her that this was a medical visit?

Out of the blue, Maggie remembered the bemused look in Wallace's eyes when she told him that she'd switched majors at Wellesley because she intended to become a psychologist. A look that had mocked her, that had wondered how he, a working-class man, had given birth to a daughter who would in all likelihood spend her career listening to middle-class white people talk about their sorrows and phobias. Not that Wallace had said any of this, Maggie remembered. He didn't need to. His face said it all, and she had flinched as if he'd actually insulted her, as if he'd told her that he knew what she was doing—instead of training for a real job, like nurse or school principal or doctor, instead of doing work that would help her people, Maggie was looking to bust out of their rundown Caribbean neighborhood in Brooklyn, to get as far as she could from the winos on the corners, and the young men with their transistor radios and Afros who hung out on the front stoops, and the little storefront church where she'd spent every Saturday of her childhood. Not too many folks from the old neighborhood can afford to see a therapist, baby girl, Wallace may as well have said. That's for the rich folk on the Upper East Side.

Giving her head the slightest shake, Maggie forced herself to focus on the woman sitting before her. “Lakshmi,” she said. “Let me ask you something. Do you understand why you're coming here? What we're trying to—”

To Maggie's surprise, Lakshmi bit her lip and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yes,” she murmured. “Rekha explain me. She say you doctor for crazy people. I crazy, so I must come here.”

“Oh, but that's absurd. That's just not true.” Maggie snapped her fingers. “Lakshmi. Look at me. Look at me. You're not crazy. Okay? Whoever this Rekha is, she's wrong.”

“Rekha work in store—”

“Yeah, well. She's wrong. You are here because we're trying to understand why you're unhappy enough to think your own life is worthless. And to figure out how we can make some changes to help you feel better about yourself. But in order to do so, I need you to talk to me. To trust me. Anything you tell me stays here. That means I don't tell your husband or Rekha or anyone else. That's a promise. Do you understand?”

Lakshmi looked at her for the longest time, her eyes wide and wet. Then she nodded. “Understand.”

“Good. One more thing. You don't have to call me madam. You can call me Maggie. Think you can do that?”

Lakshmi nodded. “Maggie.” She said the name carefully, as if it were a wooden crate filled with breakable things.

“Great. So, I want to know something. You told me once that you have no contact with your family in India. Is that right?”

“Yes, madam.”

Maggie let it pass. “Why?”

“Husband not liking my family. He angry at them. Maggie.”

“Why? What happened?”

Lakshmi stared at the floor again. After a second, her nose turned red and Maggie saw that she was crying. She waited to see if Lakshmi would speak but, after a minute, knew that she wouldn't. Besides, she could speculate as to the cause—probably a lack of dowry or something like that. It was amazing how many marriages in India got off to a bad start because of greed on the part of the groom.

She took a different track. “Do you miss your sister? Your father?”

Lakshmi seemed puzzled. “I not miss them, madam. Sorry. Maggie. Where they go?” She struck her chest twice. “They living inside here. How I miss them? They always close by.”

Maggie smiled. “That's sweet.”

But the younger woman looked angry. “Not sweet. Truth. I talks to my Shilpa all the time.”

“And what do you say to her?”

“Everything. I tells her everything.”

“Did you tell her about Bobby?”

Lakshmi shot Maggie a sharp look and then fell silent. “No,” she said eventually. “That I not tell. Nothing to tell,” she added fiercely.

“So what do you tell her?”

“Mostly I asks questions. How are you, Shilpa? Did you marries your Dilip? How is his auto repairs business? How you likes living in Rawalpindi? Are you happy? Did you make me an aunt? How is our dada? Like that only I talks to her.”

“You don't know if Shilpa is married?”

“No. I leaf for Am'rica before her shadi. But I make my dada give his blessing to her and Dilip. Their love match. Shilpa mad for him. Dilip a good boy but he from Rawalpindi. He not from our village. And he poor. So Dada not happy at first. But I talks to him and then he agree. And I gives Shilpa all my ma's gold jewelry for her wedding. Everything I could do for her before I come, I do. Everything.”

Maggie glanced at the clock on the wall behind Shilpa. Ten minutes to the hour. “What is Shilpa like?” she asked, and watched as Lakshmi's face lit up.

“Oh, madam, she was most beautiful baby. I five year age when Shilpa born. Everybody say, ‘Lakshmi, you too small, you don't reminder your sister.' But they wrong. I reminder good. Ma make me sit on floor and put baby in my arms. When Shilpa little girl, I get sugarcane from field and give her. She having so little-little tooths but she chew on it. She liking sweet things from the start. And she follow me everywhere. Ma said she give birth to my shadow.”

Lakshmi gazed out into the backyard, her eyes cloudy. “She love eating bhindi. You know bhindi? What you call it—okra? And madam, you know Vicks VapoRub? Shilpa like to eat it when she sick. She funny like that. She good student, like me, but she hate doing farmwork. Even when Ma get the 'rthritis bad, Shilpa say no to help our dada. Say her clothes getting dirty. Shilpa love fashion clothes. Dada always to saying to her, ‘Beti, you a farmer daughter, not film star.' But Shilpa not loving that life. She like to—”

Lakshmi looked like she could go on for another half hour, and Maggie decided this was a good time to stop. “I'm afraid our time's up,” she interrupted gently. “We can pick up again next week.” She glanced at the tiffin carrier that sat between them. “If you give me a minute, I'll take the food out and return the boxes to you.”

She swung open the door that led from the back porch into the main house and then quickly drew the curtain so that Lakshmi couldn't see in. In the kitchen, she gasped as she saw the amount of food Lakshmi had brought. How did the woman manage to carry this load on two buses? And how many people did she think lived in this house? This food would last Sudhir and Maggie for days.

She heard a sound and nearly jumped out of her skin. Lakshmi was standing behind her, looking around the house. Maggie shuddered, a feeling of violation running through her. In the five years she'd had her home office, no client had ever let himself or herself into the main house. On rare occasions, someone would need to use the bathroom, but that was as far as a client went. And here was Lakshmi standing in her kitchen, unaware that she'd just invaded Maggie's private space.

“What are you doing here? I said I'd be right back,” she snapped, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of her voice. But when she saw the look of incomprehension on Lakshmi's face, the anger died down as abruptly as it had flared up.

“I—I not allow here?”

“Well, not usually,” Maggie stammered. She pointed toward the porch. “That's my office, you see, and this, this is my home.” And in a rush of inspiration, she lied, “My husband doesn't like clients in the house.”

Lakshmi's face lit up with understanding. “Like our apartment,” she cried. “It above the store. We no allow customer there.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

There was an embarrassed silence, and then a voice inside Maggie said, Oh, what the hell. What the hell difference did it make that this poor woman was standing inside her kitchen? Her treatment of Lakshmi was going to be unorthodox, she already knew that, so why make a fuss over this innocent violation of her privacy? The walk that she'd taken around the hospital grounds with Lakshmi, the offer to treat her for free at her private practice rather than hook her up with a therapist in her hometown, the manner in which she'd bluffed Lakshmi's husband into letting her come here, none of it conformed to anything she'd been taught in school. Since the very concept of therapy was unfamiliar to Lakshmi, how could she know what its unspoken rules were?

Maggie emptied the last of the food into her bowls, rinsed out the tiffin carrier, and handed it to Lakshmi. “Many thanks,” she said, smiling. “It all looks delicious.”

To her surprise, Lakshmi took Maggie's right hand and held it up to her eyes. “Thank you, madam,” she said. “For helping me. I know you busy woman. God bless you.”

Maggie squeezed Lakshmi's hand. “You're most welcome. Can you come back at the same time next week? And the name's Maggie, not madam.”

Lakshmi laughed. “Yes. Sorry. Maggie. Yes, next week. Bye.” She headed back to the porch.

She was almost out the door when Maggie caught up with her.

“Wait,” Maggie said, jiggling her car keys. “I think I'll run you down to the bus stop. It'll save you a bit of a walk.”

As Lakshmi got in the Subaru, Maggie remembered what Lakshmi had said to her in the hospital when she'd tried to explain the concept of therapy. Oh, Lakshmi had said, I thought we were trying to build a friendship. Or words to that effect.

Maggie glanced at the woman riding next to her. Maybe friendship was the best therapy she could offer Lakshmi, she thought.

M
AGGIE SHOOK WITH
laughter as she watched Sudhir take yet another helping of the food Lakshmi had brought. Poor man, she thought, look how deprived he is, stuck with an American wife whose culinary talents don't stretch beyond an occasional pot roast.

“Wow,” Sudhir said again. “This is superb. Just superb.” He licked the back of his fork before setting it down. “If that girl ever needs a job as a chef, we're hiring her.”

This was the second time that Sudhir had referred to Lakshmi as “girl.” Maggie knew it was some vestige of the Indian class system, that automatic, unconscious calculation made by middle-class Indians: A peasant woman like Lakshmi, who spoke poor English and worked in an ethnic grocery store, was automatically an inferior, just slightly higher in status than the maids who worked in their homes in India. Even Sudhir, who was so easygoing and indifferent to these matters—at NYU, he had cheerfully interacted with classmates of different races, nationalities, class backgrounds, even majors—was apparently not above referring to the woman whose food he had just enjoyed as “girl.”

“What?” said Sudhir, ever attuned to the slightest shift in her mood.

“Nothing. It's just that Lakshmi is in her thirties. She's hardly a girl.”

Sudhir eyed her quizzically. “Yah, so?” He began picking up their dirty dishes. “The more important issue is, did this girl-woman pack us some dessert?”

She pretended to throw a fork at him. “You're hopeless. A pig.” She leaned back and patted his belly as he brushed past her on his way to the sink. “You better keep an eye on that little potbelly of yours, honey.”

“Rubbish.” Sudhir grinned. He set the dishes on the counter and walked up behind Maggie and rubbed her shoulders. “Besides, the great thing about being an old married man is that I no longer have to worry about these things, right?”

Maggie laughed. “You? Not worry about your weight? You're worse than any woman I know.” She turned around and pulled him down to give him a quick peck. “Luckily for you, you're married to the world's worst cook. If you'd married someone like Lakshmi, you'd be in deep trouble.”

“I married the woman I was meant to marry,” Sudhir said, and Maggie felt his words tear at her heart. How could she have risked this to be with Peter? Already, she felt as if she were emerging from some drunken stupor, had come to her senses from an hour of bewitchment. It was the most reckless thing she had ever done, sleeping with Peter Weiss, and thankfully, it was over. She would have the rest of her life to figure out what had made her do it.

“Ae. You still haven't answered me. Did this dream-patient of yours bring us any dessert?”

“Incorrigible, that's what you are,” Maggie scolded as she opened the fridge and pulled out a small glass bowl. “Here. I don't know what these are. Looks like the usual Indian enough-milk-and-sugar-to-put-you-in-a-diabetic-coma concoction.”

“Sounds yummy. Especially when you word it like that. You want some?”

“I'll pass. I'm gonna finish my wine in the living room.”

“Okay. Be right there.”

Sudhir followed her into the living room a few minutes later, sat down next to her on the couch, and immediately took possession of the remote. Ignoring Maggie's halfhearted “Hey,” he flipped through the channels, finally settling on a rerun of
Rush Hour 2
.

He put his arm around her shoulder and drew her close. “So how was your day?”