Tara hugged Ranjan, remembering the boy of long ago. All their American dreams seemed to have materialized on his body. Guilt reminded her of how much nicer he had always been to her than her sister.
‘Good of you to come,’ she said. ‘I was expecting Kamala. I’m sorry I’ve turned up on a weekday morning but tickets were tough. All of India seems to be visiting the US all the time.’
‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Glad you’re here. Maybe you can bring some sense to the proceedings. Kam is going nuts about this whole Rahul thing. She was in his school all morning.’
She looked at him but said nothing, not wanting to be drawn into something before she could discern its contours for herself. Kamala had not mentioned any new complication when she spoke to her just before leaving. What had come up in the interim? Better to wait for the details from Kamala than risk setting off Ranjan.
In the car, Ranjan got busy with calls. Tara was happy to be left to herself. It was a long drive to Littlewood, the suburb they lived in. Louisville was putting on its spring coat. Nature’s first green is gold. They went past miles of bland suburbia split up into subdivisions that had names like Cedar Falls and Ridge Lake, with a long arm of water, an inlet of the Ohio, on which blue, orange and yellow boats were tied. Kamala and Ranjan lived in a newer subdivision, Willoughby Estates. She had seen pictures of their house.
The photos did not prepare her for its size. The house sat, magisterial, on a mild slope, its formal entrance somewhere on the east, going by the cheerful spring beds lining a path down to the road. In the usual American manner, they went into the house through the garage. It was lined with shelves of tools on one side and footwear on the other, and odds and ends arranged in the outline of two cars. There was a jumble of footwear at the bottom of the steps that led into the house, to which she added her own sandals, glad to kick them off at last. Ranjan walked in with socked feet. She followed, barefoot. They were greeted by a bark from somewhere deep in the house. She had seen pictures of the Lab whose name she couldn’t remember.
‘Hey, boy, hey, Sluggy, didn’t expect me back so soon, did you?’ Ranjan called out. ‘Come in, Tara,’ he said to her as she hesitated at the door. ‘He’s in his crate. He won’t bother you anyway, he’s a jolly fellow.’ He went into the kitchen. The barks increased in intensity.
She walked through an arch into the formal living room with its high ceiling. A huge glass wall let in a flood of sunshine, disorienting in its intensity. Different parts of the room glowed brilliantly. She saw that it was a vast collection of cut glass and crystal, trapping the light and throwing off liquid reflections all round. Cavernous couches and outsize pieces of furniture in some dark wood were scattered all over. A glass cupboard contained ceramic dolls of frolicking shepherds and shepherdesses, crooks in hand, and characters from fairy tales that owed more to Disney than to Grimm, clashing civilizations with small bronze figurines of dancing Natarajas and Ganeshas. Whose taste was it, Kamala’s or Ranjan’s? In a corner slept a baby grand on which stood an ornate lamp with a blue-green shade whose base combined an arrogant Mephistopheles with a cowed-looking Margaretta, standing back to back. She remembered something about Lavi and piano lessons. There was a faint layer of dust on the piano, and sheets of music dumped on the floor. The fussy centre table contained a small glass vase stuffed with a bunch of wilting flowers. Several dry leaves lay all around it.
‘Ah, there you are. Come, I’ll show you to your room.’ He hefted her suitcase and carry-on up the stairs, and went into a room that overlooked the swimming pool and the back garden. It was clearly done up in Kamala’s taste, white, lacey drapes with a pattern of embossed cartoon cherubim floating up to heaven, clashing with the woodlands-patterned coverlet and cushions.
‘Okay, I’ll be off now,’ said Ranjan, out of breath. ‘What do you have in there, gold bars? I’ve left Slugger in the crate. There’s food in the fridge. Can you manage? Ariel, our housekeeper, will be in shortly. She’s made up the bed for you, I think. She’s nice, ask her if you need anything. Kamala said she would also be back early. See you later.’
He gave her a quick wave. The wooden stairs made a groaning sound as he went down. The dog set up a bark. She heard the long rumble of the garage shutters as they opened and closed. The air in the room felt still and old. She coaxed one window up, its cold pane preparing her for the spring air that rushed in. It washed over her face, keen, clean, green. They had done one thing right in this country, not filled it up with more people than it could hold. Four times the size of India and one-quarter its population. A breeze made waves in the leaves of the white pine that was growing just outside. It reminded her of Curly, the Husky she and Kamala had had growing up, and his long silky coat. One year, they had taken him to the beach, and his hair had just parted, without explanation, falling on either side of him in a shaggy fringe.
She had an odd feeling in her stomach. It was hunger. It had been over twenty-seven hours since her last meal. What a ghastly piece of travel it was. She closed the window and went down. The dog’s barking led her easily enough to the kitchen. It started barking so hard when it saw her that she feared its crate would lift off, like in the comics. She looked around the kitchen. It was one of those elaborate American affairs, all polished countertops, enormous cupboards and gleaming appliances. From above the central island counter hung a bunch of suspiciously brown bananas and a bouquet of garlic bulbs. Her kitchen at home was small and sweaty. Cooking could actually be somewhat of a pleasure in such surroundings.
She opened the massive fridge. It was a grocery store writ small, full of cartons and tubs and boxes and bottles, each with a label that spoke directly to her. ‘Eat me, eat me!’ Spreads, dips, jams – jellies – pickles of the local kind in brine, sauces, salad dressings, food-savers with foil on top, a vegetable holder with a few sorry-looking carrots and a transparent bag of overripe purple grapes, a tub of plain yoghurt. She remembered the brand from graduate-school days. She had lived on the stuff. One transparent plastic container had the remains of a chicken salad from which someone had not even bothered to pull the fork out. She opened another one to find bits of Thai-style noodles, from the smell of it. Ranjan? Lavi? Right at the back, she found an untouched container of cooked rice, and another of dal. Vintage? She found a mango pickle (export variety) in one of the cupboards. This could be lunch. Kamala and her cooking! She herself had adopted a more pragmatic approach, after days of corn chips and starvation when she was down with flu one brutal northeastern winter. Eat, and don’t fall ill, because you could be dead for a while before anyone even found out.
She was just about to rinse the lunch dishes when the garage doors rumbled open. The dog – Slugger – who had subsided when he realized that mere barking would not chase the new human away, almost lifted off his crate again.
‘Hello, boy, hello, Sluggy,’ a woman’s voice called out, the accent not quite middle-American. There was the sound of something large and floppy like a bag being placed on the table by the door, and the clink of keys. A woman with an electric mane of dark gold threaded with a bit of silver walked into the kitchen.
‘Hello,’ she said, not fazed in the least to see someone at the sink. ‘I’m Ariel, the housekeeper. You must be Ta-ra. Did I say that right? Are you afraid of dogs? I have to let this fella out into the back garden for a bit of air and to do his stuff.’ She winked.
‘Go ahead, I like dogs. I just wasn’t sure whether it was okay to let him out,’ she said, smiling a little at the other woman’s expression. ‘Yes, it’s Tara.’
Ariel came forward to shake her hand. ‘In America, you have to be very careful how you say names. People sue you for anything!’ She smiled. ‘Me, everyone calls me “Aerial” at first. As though I’m flying! Here, don’t bother with the dishes. I’m just going to turn the dishwasher on.’
She let the dog out of his euphemistically named crate. ‘Come, boy,’ she said, opening the door that led onto the deck and down the steps to the back garden. The dog rushed at Tara, his tail rotating like a windmill. She could feel his sharp nails through the thick trousers she was wearing. ‘Ow,’ she said, patting his eager head, ‘hi, boy, hi, Slugger, enough now, pleased to meet you too, now off you go!’ Slugger rushed out onto the deck and tumbled down the steps.
Ariel loaded the dishwasher, waved at her, and went off to make the beds. ‘Call me if you need anything,’ she said. ‘I’m here for a while.’
Tara looked out of the large windows at the back garden. The dog was rooting around in the bushes, taking in intriguing smells. From time to time, he challenged imaginary enemies or answered a faraway bark. There was a vast expanse of neatly mown lawn beyond the tarpaulin-covered swimming pool bordered by white palings. Somewhere in the middle of the gently sloping valley, the lawn stripes were met by green bands going another way, indicating where this property ended and the neighbour’s began. A line of young trees, each enclosed in a binding wire fence (to guard against deer, rabbits?) marked the boundary subtly. She could hear the distant hum of a lawnmower, one of those huge ones like mini tractors. There were rules here. People had to clear their yards, keep the pavements around their house snow-free, and have their lawns mowed at regular intervals. Otherwise, they attracted the attention of the city council or whatever it was called, not to mention irate neighbourhood associations. It ensured the minimum standard of decent civic behaviour if not good neighbourliness. Her own neighbour, Mrs Rajendran, was up each morning before everyone else so she could push the overflowing dumpster down the road, away from her own house.
Waves of sleep washed over her. She was determined not to give in, to wait for Kamala. She took a walk around the house. Ariel was tidying up things, shaking up and straightening cushions, putting away books and newspapers, and throwing away what seemed to be mail-order catalogues. This was a huge house to keep clean. As if reading her mind, Ariel said, ‘Oh, I only do the superficial cleaning. The real cleaning gets done by some ladies who come in once a week. You’ll see them when they come next Tuesday.’ She went away and when she came back, it was to throw out the flowers from the living-room vase.
Tara couldn’t remember whether her sister had ever done anything at home. Now here she was, with this complex life, housekeeper, weekly cleaning ladies and all.
‘Shall I turn on the TV for you?’ Ariel asked, passing her by with a basket of dirty clothes.
‘No, I’m not much of a TV person, thanks,’ she said. ‘My head feels kind of spacey, too, it’s the travel, I hate it. If I go and lie down, I won’t wake up at all, so I don’t want to do that.’
‘You know, there’s a homoeopathic remedy for jetlag, works for me. But I shouldn’t even mention it in a doctor’s house,’ Ariel said, smiling. ‘Your sister will kill me.’ The housekeeper began to fold up kitchen cloths to put away. ‘She thinks I’m wasting my time.’
Tara must have looked bewildered.
Ariel said: ‘Your sister, I mean. I trained as a nurse in Israel, that’s where I’m from.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ Tara said. It accounted for the accent.
‘Yaah,’ the housekeeper continued, ‘worked all over, even ran a ten-bed nursing home my ex-husband owned.’
‘Really? So how long have you been here?’
‘I came here four years ago, and a few days later, I met my present husband – he’s American. We got married, just like that, and I decided to give up nursing. Kamala keeps trying to persuade me to go back to it. Try being a nurse in Israel, I tell her. It’s not fun. I’ve had enough of that life, I can tell you. The air raids, the terror attacks, the threat of terror attacks in a market or on a bus, not knowing when something will explode – and people – children – maimed and dying, and the blood and mutilation and twisted limbs.’
‘Can’t say I blame you,’ Tara said.
‘I came away but my children are still there, they will not leave for anything. They don’t like it here. My daughter came to California but she couldn’t take the change. She missed Israel, our way of life. Gone back now, going to have a baby, in fact. I’m going to be a grandmother!’
‘Really? Congratulations,’ Tara said.
‘Yes, I’ll be going back, be away for three months. I’ve told Kamala already. She’s not very happy but my daughter needs me.’
‘Will you come back here?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ariel said. ‘Maybe. Kamala may not be able to wait that long. My husband is not very happy about my going either. He worries about my safety. But Tel Aviv, where my family lives, is mostly okay.’
The garage door rumbled open again. A few minutes later, her sister walked in. She was shocked to see how bloated Kamala looked, the frown line between her brows that seemed to have become semi-permanent, alternately fading and standing out. Beautiful Kamala, that’s what people had called her. What had happened to her? She went forward, not sure whether to hug her sister or not.
After a second, Kamala hugged her, her mind elsewhere. She waved at Ariel. ‘Hi, Tara, did you have an okay flight, did you eat? Sorry I couldn’t be there,’ she said. ‘I had to go to Rahul’s school unexpectedly this morning.’ Her sister went off into her bedroom.
Tara paused, not sure whether to follow her in or not. Kamala re-emerged a few minutes later. ‘You tired? I’ll be off in a little while to pick up the kids. Come with me. Unless you want to nap or something?’ she said.
‘No, I want to stay up for as long as I can. I’ll come with you,’ Tara said.
‘You want me to fix you a cup of coffee?’ Ariel asked Kamala.
‘Thanks.’ Kamala sat down at the dining table.
Ariel offered Tara a cup but she passed. She watched as the housekeeper used the coffee machine. She had better ask her how things in the house worked. Safer than asking Kamala. She remembered the first time she had been in the US, she had stayed with some distant relations whose refrain to her had been: ‘What! You don’t know how to work that?’ You had to be careful around NRIs. Any slip-up, and you were a bumpkin, fresh off the boat.