One Amazing Thing

7

In the silence that shimmered in the wake of Jiang’s story, each member of the company- for listening had made them into that-was busy with his or her thoughts. They went about their tasks, which had been assigned by Cameron or dictated by their bodies, but inside them the story still traveled, glowing and tumbling end over end, like a meteor in a slow-motion movie clip.

Malathi stirred a pan of Kool-Aid in the weakening light that Cameron had switched on-for only a few minutes, he warned-and thought of Jiang’s parting from her father. It pulled up uncomfortable memories of the last time she had seen her own family, outside the security gate at the airport in Chennai. They had forgiven her and traveled by train all the way from Coimbatore to say good-bye, although she had indicated that it was quite unnecessary. How embarrassed she had been by their garish clothing, their loud, provincial accents. Her mother’s teary hugs, her father’s admonitions to be a decent girl and keep out of trouble, her sisters’ lists of items they wanted from America -all of it had made her glad she was leaving. Now she would probably never see them again. With that realization, every item on the lists her sisters had compiled in their innocent greed (items she had pushed out of her mind even before she boarded the airplane) came back to haunt her: Hershey’s Kisses, bars of Dove soap, Revlon lipsticks, copies of Good Housekeeping and Glamour, and diaries with a little lock and key.

Then she thought of Mohit’s fickleness, typical of men. This made her so angry that she almost upset the pan of Kool-Aid.

Tariq had not moved from his seat, not even to raise his feet onto the rungs of the chair as Cameron had advised, although he could feel water seeping into his shoes. He, too, was thinking, his forehead scrunched from contemplation. He should have been checking his cell phone, but instead he considered the nature of governments. How they couldn’t be trusted. How they turned on you when you least expected it, when you had been a law- abiding, good-hearted citizen, and locked you up as though you were a criminal. Why would anyone want to live in a country that did that to their father?

Mangalam tried the office lines, but only half his mind registered that they were still dead. With the other half of his mind he was thinking about the passion with which the young Jiang had loved Mohit, a passion frozen into foreverness by the destiny that separated them. A passion that he suspected, by the tremor in the old woman’s voice, still existed. Jiang had cursed fate for separating them, but wasn’t she lucky, in a way? Had they married, at best their love would have been like the comfort of slipping one’s feet into a pair of old shoes. At worst, it would have been like his life. (Mangalam, too, had loved his wife in the beginning. He remembered the fact of that love, though not how it had felt. That memory was gone completely, like a computer file wiped out by a virus.) Love, when alive, is a garland, he thought. When dead, it’s a garotte. He felt rather pleased with himself for having come up with the metaphor. Lily and Uma were helping Cameron check the condition of the ceiling.

“Gramma really fooled us all these years, pretending she didn’t know what we were saying, forcing us to speak Mandarin!” Lily said as they slopped through the water to the storage area in the back. “And all those things that happened to her.” She whistled softly, eyes sparkling in the dim light. “Now I want to go with her to India and see that house.”

“I want to see that house, too,” Cameron said.

If people could be compared to houses, Uma thought, then Cameron was as secretive as Jiang’s former home. Who lived within his shuttered inner rooms? In the bleakness that Uma’s life had shrunk to, the mystery of Cameron gave her something to anticipate. Ramon, now-he would be a traditional Japanese home, walls built of rice paper so that light could shine through and reveal every silhouette. Perhaps that was what she had loved about him, his transparency. He never tried to hide anything, not even how much he cared for her.

But why was she thinking of him in the past tense?

Mrs. Pritchett had locked herself in the bathroom, though she didn’t need to use it. Jiang’s matter-of-fact voice, speaking of love crumpled up and thrown away like a letter with too many mistakes in it, of families blown like spores across the desert of the world, had calmed her and made her remember something that she needed to check on. She searched through the inner compartment of her purse and came up with a small Ziploc bag that she had secreted there weeks back, just in case. It held a few pills. Mrs. Pritchett congratulated herself on the superior intelligence with which she had foiled Mr. Pritchett. She considered taking a pill but decided she would save it for later. Right now, she had to think about the story.

For Mrs. Pritchett, one item in Jiang’s story had shone out like a lighthouse in a storm. It was the bakery- restaurant, the site of a slim, pencil-skirted girl’s first forbidden date with a boy whose shirt-sleeves were rolled up with holiday abandon. Flurys, she whispered to herself in the mirror, a delicious name that melted in one’s mouth like the lightest of pastries. Was it large and cool and old-fashioned, set inside a high- ceilinged colonial building with pillars and chandeliers, protected from the harsh sun by a striped awning? Or had it been modernized into gleaming metallic sleekness? She hoped not. If she got to India, she would somehow make it to Flurys and offer them her services. If they demurred, she would give a demonstration on the spot, baking for them-she’d carry the ingredients in her suitcase-her irresistible white chocolate-macadamia nut cookies.

CAMERON GAVE THEM A TERSE UPDATE ON THE SITUATION. HE didn’t sugarcoat the facts-he wasn’t that kind of man: the phones were still nonoperational; the water was rising, though very slowly; the air quality seemed safe; there was food for one more meal. People looked glum at his assessment, but Uma noted they didn’t press around him as they had earlier, bumping into one another like befuddled moths, demanding to know what would happen. When she asked if they wanted to continue with the storytelling, they returned to their chairs at once.

“Who would like to be next?” Uma asked.

“First I must tell you one more thing,” Jiang said, surprising them again. I left this out because I was embarrassed. But without it the story is not true.

“The first night on the ship, Mr. Chan and I lay on the floor. I could not stand to think of him as husband. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Mohit’s face. That made me angry with myself. Mohit was not thinking of me, I was sure.

“The Lu family was on the bed, on the other side of curtain. We could hear them. Mr. Chan put his hand on me. I pushed him away. I felt like I would vomit. If he forces me, I thought, I will jump from the deck tomorrow.

“But he did not force. He put his hand on my head and stroked my hair. I realized he knew I had a boyfriend! Most Chinese men would not have married a girl who had a boyfriend. I started to cry. He did not say anything, not even tell me to stop. He just stroked my hair. For seven-eight nights it was like that.

“One night I kissed him. I thought, He is so kind to me, I must give him something. What else did I have to give? So even though I did not love him, we made love. I thought, It could be worse. It is possible to live without love with a gentle man.

“Finally we came to Chinatown. He could not be a dentist, even though he longed for it. Instead, we were working day and night in the grocery. Also, I was sick with the pregnancy. Some days we were so tired, we had no strength to say even one word to each other. There was no time to think of silly things, moon and roses and romance.

“Four years went like that. One night he was very sick. The flu had killed many people that winter, so I was worried. I gave him medicine. Put a wet cloth on his forehead. He was burning up, babbling nonsense. Suddenly he went stiff. His eyes rolled back. I thought, He’s dying. My insides turned cold. Don’t die, don’t die, I houted. I love you.

“Maybe he heard me. His eyes cleared for a moment. He lifted a hand. I clutched it. But he was trying to pull it away. Then I understood. He wanted to stroke my hair. I bent over so he could do it. Who knows why, next day his fever was less. In a week he was better.

“Later I thought I had said those words out of fear. Or because that is what they say in movies to dying men. But I had not been afraid. I knew I could take care of the store and the children, with or without a husband. And movies are foolish fancies. Then I knew I really loved him.

“When had it happened? Looking back, I could not point to one special time and say, There!