Mat was familiar with her tenderness and had thought nothing of it. But now he recognized it in her face and in her hands as they went out to the hurt man's wounds. To him, then, it was as though she leaned in the black of her mourning over the whole hurt world itself, touching its wounds with her tenderness, in her sorrow.
Loss came into his mind then, and he knew what he was years away from telling, even from thinking: that his mothers grief was real; that her children in their graves once had been alive; that everybody lying under the grass up in the graveyard once had been alive and had walked in daylight in Port William. And this was a part, and belonged to the deliverance, of the town's hard history of love.
The hurt man, Mat thought, was not going to die, but he knew from his mother's face that the man
It was the knowledge of that encouragement, of what it had cost her, of what it would cost her and would cost him, that then finally came to Mat, and he fled away and wept.
What did he learn from his mother that day? He learned it all his life. There are few words for it, perhaps none. After that, her losses would be his. The losses would come. They would come to him and his mother. They would come to him and Margaret, his wife, who as a child had worn his cast-off dresses. They would come, even as Mat watched, growing old, to his grandson, Andy, who would remember his stories and write them down.
But from that day, whatever happened, there was a knowledge in Mat that was unsurprised and at last comforted, until he was old, until he was gone.
Nell Freudenberger
The Tutor
from Granta
SHE WAS an American girl, but one who apparently kept Bombay time, because it was three thirty when she arrived for their one-o’clock appointment. It was a luxury to be able to blame someone else for his wasted afternoon, and Zubin was prepared to take full advantage of it. Then the girl knocked on his bedroom door.
He had been in the preparation business for four years, but Julia was his first foreign student. She was dressed more like a Spanish or an Italian girl than an American, in a sheer white blouse and tight jeans that sat very low on her hips, perhaps to show off the tiny diamond in her belly button. Her hair was shiny, reddish brown-chestnut you would call it-and she’d ruined her hazel eyes with a heavy application of thick, black eyeliner.
“I have to get into Berkeley,” she told him.
It was typical for kids to fixate on one school. “Why Berkeley?”
“Because it's in San Francisco.”
“Technically Berkeley's a separate city.”
“I know that,” Julia said. “I was born in San Francisco.”
She glanced at the bookshelves that covered three walls of his room. He liked the kids he tutored to see them, although he knew his pride was irrelevant: most didn’t know the difference between Spender and Spenser, or care.
“Have you
“Actually that's the best way to improve your verbal. It's much better to see the words in context.” He hated the idea of learning words from a list; it was like taking vitamin supplements in place of eating. But Julia looked discouraged, and so he added: “Your dad says you’re a math whiz, so we don’t need to do that.”
“He said what?”
“You aren’t?”
Julia shrugged. “I just can’t believe he said ‘whiz.’”
“I’m paraphrasing,” Zubin said. “What were your scores?”
“Five hundred and sixty verbal, seven-sixty math.”
Zubin whistled. “You scored higher than I did on the math.”
Julia smiled, as if she hadn’t meant to, and looked down. “My college counselor says I need a really good essay. Then my verbal won’t matter so much.” She dumped out the contents of an expensive-looking black leather knapsack, and handed him the application, which was loose and folded into squares. Her nails were bitten, and decorated with half-moons of pale pink polish.
“I’m such a bad writer though.” She was standing expectantly in front of him. Each time she took a breath, the diamond in her stomach flashed.
“I usually do lessons in the dining room,” Zubin said.
The only furniture in his parents’ dining room was a polished mahogany table, covered with newspapers and magazines, and a matching sideboard- storage space for jars of pickle, bottles of Wild Turkey from his father's American friends, his mother's bridge trophies, and an enormous, very valuable Chinese porcelain vase, which the servants had filled with artificial flowers: red, yellow and salmon-colored cloth roses beaded with artificial dew. On nights when he didn’t go out, he preferred having his dinner served to him in his room; his parents did the same.
He sat down at the table, but Julia didn’t join him. He read aloud from the form. “Which book that you’ve read in the last two years has influenced you most, and why?”
Julia wandered over to the window.
“That sounds okay,” he encouraged her.
“I hate reading.”
“Talk about the place where you live, and what it means to you.” Zubin looked up from the application. “There you go. That one's made for you.”
She’d been listening with her back to him, staring down Ridge Road toward the Hanging Garden. Now she turned around-did a little spin on the smooth tiles.
“Can we get coffee?”
“Do you want milk and sugar?”
Julia looked up, as if shyly. “I want to go to Barista.”
“It's loud there.”
“I’ll pay,” Julia said.
“Thanks. I can pay for my own coffee.”
Julia shrugged. “Whatever-as long as I get my fix.”
Zubin couldn’t help smiling.
“I need it five times a day. And if I don’t get espresso and a cigarette first thing in the morning, I have to go back to bed.”
“Your parents know you smoke?”
“God, no. Our driver knows-he uses it as blackmail.” She smiled. “No smoking is my dad's big rule.”
“What about your mom?”
“She went back to the States to find herself. I decided to stay with my dad,” Julia added, although he hadn’t asked. “He lets me go out.”
Zubin couldn’t believe that any American father would let his teenage daughter go out at night in Bombay. “Go out where?”
“My friends have parties. Or sometimes clubs-there's that new place, Fire and Ice.”
“You should be careful,” Zubin told her.
Julia smiled. “That's so Indian.”
“Anyone would tell you to be careful-it's not like the States.”
“No,” Julia said.
He was surprised by the bitterness in her voice. “You miss it.”
