The Story Hour (11 page)

She shrugged. “Pretty good. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was so happy not having to go in to the hospital today. You?”

Sudhir ran his fingers through his hair. “Derek came to see me today. He's upset that we took away his graduate assistantship. I told him if he'd focused on his grades last year, we wouldn't be having this conversation now. He didn't like that. Far easier to blame the world than to look at your own self.”

Maggie sighed. “Don't I know it. That's what I deal with in half my patients. I just—”

“This country's gone too soft, Mags. Nobody wants to take responsibility for their own behavior anymore. I mean, it's endemic. Everyone's looking for a scapegoat. Just see what's happening in Washington—they blame illegal immigrants, the Chinese, the Afghanis, for everything that's wrong with the country. Same thing with my students—they are ready to blame their grandparents, parents, the neighbor's cat. Anybody but themselves.” He tilted his head toward her, a slight smile on his lips. “It's the fault of your profession, of course. Mollycoddling people like that.”

“Of course,” she said. “Too bad the world isn't run by math professors and physicists. It would be heaven on earth then.”

“Oh God. That's a scary thought.” Sudhir was quiet for a moment. “Brent stopped by my office today. He wants me to take over as chair of the department next fall. He thinks most of the faculty will go along with that.”

“And you waited until now to give me this great news?”

“I'm not sure I want to do it.”

“Sudhir. Why not? You're the perfect person for the position. You'd make a wonderful chair.”

“I don't know. I'm getting too old and grumpy to put up with people's egos. You know how impatient I get with all the ‘I deserve this and I'm worth that'? That touchy-feely stuff is your area of expertise, not mine.”

Maggie smiled. She had met Sudhir at a party held at the terrace apartment of a common friend, Jean, during her second week at NYU. Sudhir had already been at NYU for a year by the time of the party. At about ten p.m., another student, Brian, who had been drinking and smoking weed all evening, got teary and melodramatic in that old drunken way. “It's all a goddamn joke, man,” he kept saying. “Just a goddamn joke.”

“What is?” someone said.

“Life. Just a big, cosmic joke. I'm ready to cash it in, man. Ready to cash it in.”

“No. Don't say that,” cried Jean, who was pretty loaded herself. And with that, a group of students, many of them psychology majors, like Maggie, began to cajole, beg, and console the drunken man, who kept repeating, “Ready to cash it in.”

“Life is too precious,” Jean reasoned.

“You can't let them win, man,” someone else said.

“You have your whole life ahead of you,” urged a young woman with straight blond hair.

Jean flung Maggie a beseeching look, silently asking her to join the intervention, but Maggie felt a slight shudder of apprehension and revulsion. She had grown up in a neighborhood where most of the middle-aged women worked as domestics in the homes of the rich, had watched her father soak his swollen, bunioned feet in Epsom salts after coming home from the night shift of his second job. No way was she going to console some rich, pampered white boy who had smoked too much weed at a party. She edged away from the circle that had formed around Brian.

She went out to the terrace, and after a few minutes, she heard someone clear his throat. She turned around to see a tall, brown-skinned man in a white shirt and jeans smiling at her. “So you're not part of Brian's harem?” he said, and she understood immediately what he meant. The look on his face made her laugh.

“No, I guess not.”

The smile got deeper. “If he says he's going to cash it in one more time, I may feel compelled to push him over the ledge myself.”

It was a chilly evening, and Maggie pulled her cardigan closer around her. “Can I buy a ticket to watch?”

She caught his start of surprise and then, as he came closer, saw the white of his teeth. “Good one.” He offered her his hand. “I'm Sudhir, by the way.”

“Soo-dir? Hi. I'm Maggie.”

“Not Soo-dir. Sudhir. There's an ‘h' after the ‘d.' So it's a ‘dh' sound.”

“Right,” she said, mildly annoyed at his persistence.

“Normally, I don't correct people,” he said, as if he'd read her mind. “But I don't know—somehow it's important to me that you learn to say my name right.”

She turned to look at him, really look, and noticed for the first time how attractive he was. The air between them felt charged, and in order to lighten the intensity, she said, “Hey, are you making a pass at me?”

He smirked. Then the smirk turned into a warm, easy smile, as if they were old friends, as if they'd known each other most of their lives. “Maybe.”

They heard Jean yell something, and the next second Brian staggered onto the terrace. “It's a joke, man,” he said to no one in particular. “It's all such a friggin' joke.”

Sudhir took a few steps toward Brian and put a hand on his shoulder, as if to steady him. “Okay, listen,” he said. “You're just drunk, that's all. You're upsetting these women, okay, boss? So how about I either put you in a cab and send you home to sleep off your hangover, or you go into the bedroom and take a nap?”

Brian opened his mouth to protest, but Sudhir squeezed his shoulder. Hard. “Ow, man. Whatcha doing?” Brian squealed.

“Those are the two choices, boss. Which one would you like?”

As the other guests watched, Brian mumbled something only Sudhir could hear. “Great. I'll walk you to Jean's bedroom. And later, I'll drop you off home.”

Now Maggie looked at her husband. Apart from the graying of the temples, a few lines on his face, and a slight thickening around the middle, Sudhir looked remarkably unchanged from the practical, no-nonsense guy that night on the terrace. And his tolerance for fools had not increased over the years. She took his hand in hers. “I think you'll make a great chair. You're fair, you don't get rattled easily, people respect you. But it has to be your decision, baby.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Thanks. I need to think about it for a few weeks.”

Her phone beeped, and she glanced at her watch. Nine-thirty. She hoped it wasn't the hospital. She looked for her phone, remembered she'd left it on the kitchen counter, and got up from the couch with a groan. “Be right back,” she said.

It was Peter. “Sorry,” the text read. “Need to see you again. Have lunch with me this week?”

Her hands shook as she held the phone. She felt as if Peter were here with them, as if he'd knocked down the front door and entered her and Sudhir's inviolate space. She felt nauseated. She'd made it pretty clear to Peter on the day after Sudhir had returned home that she couldn't see him again. He had seemed to understand. What had happened to make him text her?

“Honey?” Sudhir called. “You coming back?”

“Coming,” she answered, shoving the phone in her pocket.

“Who was it?” Sudhir asked as she reentered the room. “It's kinda late.”

Her mind froze for a second. “Gloria,” she said, mentioning the first name she could think of, their common friend from grad school days who now lived in La Jolla.

“Gloria,” Sudhir said affectionately. “How is she? What's she saying?” He patted the couch, asking her to sit back down.

But Maggie continued to stand. “She's fine. Just saying hi.” She feigned a yawn. “You know what? You mind if I go upstairs? I have a few emails to send, and then I want to start getting ready for bed. You care?”

He shrugged. “No, go ahead. I'll soon be up myself.”

She climbed the carpeted stairs, a sick feeling in her stomach. She couldn't remember the last time she'd lied to Sudhir. What a mistake it had been, getting involved with Peter.

In her study, she studied the text message again. Would it be better to not respond at all? Or to write back and tell him she was busy? What could Peter want with her, anyway? “Need to see you again.” What did he mean by that? That he missed her? Or had something happened that he needed to let her know? Had someone seen her entering his house?

She found herself flipping through her phone calendar. She could slip out from the hospital between one and three on Thursday. Surely a quick lunch wouldn't hurt anything. She could even tell Sudhir about it. That might not be a bad thing, actually.

Even as she thought about it, she gave up that idea. Sudhir hadn't been too impressed by Peter during his first stint at the university. What had he said when they'd visited an exhibit of Peter's war photographs at the university museum? That he found the pictures self-aggrandizing. And Maggie, who had been immediately and intensely attracted to Peter, was in no position to argue, for fear of making Sudhir suspicious, especially since she had a hunch that he was aware of her attraction for Peter. No, she dare not mention Peter's name or the fact that she'd seen him while Sudhir was away at a conference.

She sent Peter a quick text about lunch on Thursday, turned off the ringer, and waited. Sure enough, he texted her back a minute later. “Can't wait to see you,” he wrote.

Despite herself, despite the fact that she could hear Sudhir making his way up the stairs, Maggie was aware of the inexplicable, embarrassing fact that the thought of seeing Peter again made her heart race.

T
HIS IS THE
six week I catch the buses that bringing me to Maggie's house. Both drivers knowing me now but today, I catch earlier bus to downtown. Husband ask why I leaf the house early but I not give proper answer and he not care because restaurant closed today. If I tells him the reason, he only call me stupid. Because before catching second bus, I make a small walk to the downtown park, to go sit at the riverside. My God, this river is so strong and quickly moving, compare to the little river that flow in my home village. Also, water so clean here and you can see little-little stones at the bottom. I wanting to take off my shoes and walk in the water as I do with Shilpa at home, but this is Am'rican river, and I not know if public allowed to walk in it. In this country, there is big signs saying to not walk on grass. In my home village, everyone walk on grass—cows, buffalo, old people, childrens, chicken, dogs. I think they not allow walking in this water.

But it so peaceful to sit here. First time since I come to Am'rica, I not with husband or Rehka or in restaurant or store or car or apartment. I's all alone and I loves it. First time I feel everything not borrow. What I mean by that? When I with the husband, I seeing everything through his eyes—moon, sun, sky, tree, parking lot, store, everything. If he feeling sun too hot, I feeling upset. If he cursing the cold, I angry with snow. My brains not thinking my own thoughts. But just now I feeling cool breeze on my skin. The sun feel so nice on my body. The trees singing soft song that I am hearing. And my eyes, always burning from the hot oil and spice and onion chop in the kitchen, is sipping the green of the grass like I's sipping a cold orange Fanta.

Two bench on the right, young man and woman playing music, singing Am'rican song on the guitar. It sound so beautiful, like church bell near our store. Other people in park claps when they finishing their song, and although I feels very shy, I claps, too. “Come on, Lakshmi,” I courage myself. “No one knowing you here. You in Am'rica now. You can claps, too.”

What I wants to know, what is this hot dog? Everyone in Am'rica eating it. At first I think it dog meat but now I know it make of beef. One time I ask the husband how it taste, and he make dirty face and say, “Chee-chee. In India, we not feed even stray animal such bad food.” But Rekha say it is number one foods in Am'rica, so I thinking husband not know.

In our religion, we not allow to eat beef, so I gets the shock when Maggie say her husband eat all meats. Maybe he convert to beef when he marry her? Sometime Maggie say something so fast, I confuse, but I ashame to ask her because then she think I stupid.

Because I give Bobby the statue of Lakshmi, he send me a present also. Bobby send me Maggie, I knows for sure. If I not tries the suicide, how I meet Maggie? Her husband not even shopping at our store, going to that cheater in Cedarville who always charging extra. So how else we could meet? Even though I not always understand Maggie, she so kind and patient with me. Always she courage me—Lakshmi, you not stupid, Lakshmi you not ugly, Lakshmi you great cook, Lakshmi you can go to night school to learn the proper English, Lakshmi in Am'rica you can do anything. And she show favor in my life. She ask many-many question about Shilpa and Dada and Ma and the husband. She even know about my Mithai, who I loves next to best after my sister and father. Nobody in my life ever want to hear my stories but her. Maggie is the important doctor but she never give tablet or injection. I ask her last time and she laugh and say she is story doctor. I laugh also but not understand the joke.

I knows it is time to walk to bus stop but I feeling so happy sitting at riverside. Dada always say the river is flowing in my body, I so loving water.

I open the schedule, check time of next bus. I can sit here for maybe five-ten more minutes. Stop is close by, only. A bee goes goos-goos-goos around my head and it sound like it praying. I feels sad thinking I must say good-bye to river soon, but then I have brand-new thought: I can make repeat here next week. Take early bus again and walk to this park. I am so excite by this thought, I feel a-choke, like I cannot breathing properly. Then I relax. I have learned to take two buses. I have not got lost once, even. My husband not knowing his wife enjoying scene-scenery in downtown, like a real Am'rican. I can do this again. I can come here every week.

Anytime I am prideful, God find way to punish me good-proper. So what you think? I miss second bus to Maggie's house by two minute. So I has to wait for next one, and now I's fifteen minute late. My heart sound thum-thum-thum like a tabla as I climbing hill of Maggie street. Other time I love to look at the big houses, the pretty flowerpots, the tall trees on Maggie street. But today I look not left or right, just straight and half-walking, half-running on pavement. I get to the driveway, turn left in it, my face cover with sweat, breathing sounding like bad brake on old truck, and—dhoom!—I runs straight into a tree or wall or building. It happen so soon I not able to look what I run in, because next thing, I is sleeping on my back, looking up at the sky. But then sky view is blocked, because man's face looking at me, speaking something, his forehead pinch with worry. The man face brown like mine, and brown look so pretty over blue-sky background that I smiling.