by Jenny Feldon
“Can you teach ME to drive it?”
A flicker of horror crossed his face, but he recovered quickly. “Is more safety I driving. More skills. In India is better.”
Jay laughed. I looked at him, suspicious. “Are you laughing at him, or at me?” I asked.
“You can’t drive here, Jen,” he said. “You can barely drive at home. It’s the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car, and you saw how insane traffic was. That’s why we have a driver. So you don’t have to worry about it.”
“Are you going to drive?”
“Sure, once in a while. On Venkat’s day off.”
“So why can’t I? I can learn. Venkat can teach me.”
Venkat made a muffled sound, like a sob.
“We’ll see.”
Jay turned back to the salesman. Venkat retreated to a corner, his feet practically clicking in the air at the prospect of being behind the wheel of the massive, diesel-sucking, environment-hating thing Jay seemed to be about to purchase with or without my approval. I sat down on a bench and took Lonely Planet out of my bag. Sulking, I pretended to read.
An hour later (why did everything take so long?), we got back into the Hyundai: Jay clutching a fistful of papers, Venkat beaming, me still in a sulk. Our new black Scorpio with Mafia black windows and a tankful of diesel would be delivered to our apartment in a week. Jay, the salesman, and Venkat were in agreement: I was forbidden to drive it.
After a stop at Airtel for new Indian cell phones (called “mobiles” in India, we were informed, with numbers so long and confusing I was sure I’d never memorize them), Jay told Venkat to bring us back to Matwala Shayar so he could change and go to work. I watched him put on his suit with a feeling of dread.
“What am I supposed to do if you have the car at work and I’m stuck at the house?” I asked.
“I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” He gave me an absentminded kiss on the top of my head.
“Don’t leave me yet,” I begged, throwing my arms around him. “I’m not ready to be alone here.”
“You’ll do fine,” Jay said, hugging me back before he gently untangled himself from my embrace. “Just don’t leave the apartment. Take a shower, get settled. Call Alexis, if you get lonely. I’ll be home in a couple of hours and we’ll go somewhere for dinner.”
The door slammed behind him. Tucker circled my ankles, sniffing uncertainly. I scooped him up and stood at the window, watching them drive away. Jay waved from the backseat.
“Looks like it’s just you and me,” I told the dog. “You want some peanut butter?”
Chapter 3
After another sandwich and a half-hearted attempt at fixing the broken air conditioner, I gave up and climbed back into the wooden bed, clutching Lonely Planet but too lonely to read. I stared at the ceiling with its one lilting fan, wondering how many hours were in two years, how many casseroles and roasted chickens and loads of laundry could possibly fill all those hours. Then the electricity shut off with an ominous click. The apartment went dark. The fan went still. And I—jet-lagged, uncertain, fighting off a wave of crushing homesickness—went to sleep.
I woke to the sound of a key in the lock. Tucker, curled around my elbow, jumped to attention and barked like crazy. I was sweaty and tangled in the stiff sheet. I’d meant to shower and make myself look decent, maybe open the suitcases and organize some things in the closets. But somehow Jay was already home again. It was dark outside, hours had passed, and I had nothing to show for it.
Oh well. It was only the first day. Jet lag was still making my head feel like it was stuffed full of Styrofoam peanuts. I’d be more efficient tomorrow. I hurried to the door to meet him, eager to be the encouraging wife after his first day on the job. Then I took one look at him—pale-faced, horror-stricken, tie loosened and hanging askew—and panicked.
“Oh my god. What happened? Was there an accident? Was it a buffalo?” Jay wavered in the doorway, his six-foot frame listing to one side like a capsizing ship. I grabbed his briefcase and steered him by the elbow to the living room sofa, an ancient looking red-and-gold brocade piece with those things that went over the arms. Antimacassars, my grandmother called them. He resisted.
“Germs,” Jay wheezed. “Not sitting on the couch. Get a towel.”
I raced to the bathroom and grabbed a towel, then hurried back to Jay, smoothing the worn scrap of cloth over the sofa. He collapsed, his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees.
“Jay!” I said urgently. “You’re freaking me out. Please tell me what’s wrong!”
“Sick,” he muttered into his hands. “Everything hurts.”
“How can you be sick? We just got here. You were fine this morning.”
“Bed,” Jay murmured weakly. I helped him up and we stumbled awkwardly toward the bedroom. He lay down and moved his arms and legs obligingly, a floppy puppet in a pinstriped suit, while I took off his shoes and socks and unbuttoned his shirt.
“Don’t take my shirt off, I’m freezing to death. Can you get me a sweatshirt or something? And socks?”
I felt Jay’s forehead. He was burning up. This was bad.
“Jay, you have a fever. You need medicine.” The only pills I had in my bag were Malarone, a bottle ominously marked with a million warnings (possible side effects: dizziness, back pain, diarrhea, nightmares, insomnia, hives), intended to prevent malaria. I dug through every suitcase to be sure, but my worst fear was confirmed: we didn’t have so much as a single Tylenol.
Jay was the strong one in our relationship. I needed an instruction manual for absolutely everything; he tackled every task like he’d been born knowing exactly what to do. I got colds; he brought me Kleenex and takeout chicken noodle soup and teased me about my weak immune system. I got food poisoning; he could eat from the shadiest hot dog vendor in Central Park without even a whisper of heartburn. When life got stressful, I got panicky. Jay got blasé. In our fledgling marriage, he was the one who took care of everything: set up auto-pays for the rent and the utility bills, monitored our credit scores, booked vacations on tropical islands. His lifelong super-independence made mine unnecessary.
Except it was the second night on our Great Adventure and he wasn’t the strong one. He was sick, and I was scared, and he needed me. Jay was huddled under the covers, shivering in sweatpants, a giant Red Sox sweatshirt, and the fuzzy pink socks I’d brought on the airplane. I reached down and adjusted the socks. On his left ankle was a red, sore-looking welt. “Did you get a bug bite or something?”
“Don’t know.” Jay rolled to one side and whimpered.
“Where’s Venkat?” I whispered, patting at his forehead with a damp towel.
“Sent him home,” Jay said through chattering teeth. “He’d been working for twenty-four hours straight.”
Shit.
I dug through the pile of paperwork Jay had left on the coffee table, looking for Subu’s number. He was the apartment manager; he must deal with expats and their unusual requests all the time. He would know what to do.
Subu arrived in moments, bowing and carrying a box of tissues and several bottles of water.
“I am bringing cloths, Ma’am,” he said, craning his neck around, looking for a glimpse of the patient.
“Thanks, Subu. I need a doctor. Or medicine. And a thermometer, something to take his temperature with. Is there a drugstore? A pharmacy?”
Subu looked confused. “If I may be asking, what are Sir’s ailments, Ma’am?”
“His ailments? Well, he says he’s freezing but he feels really hot. I think he’s got a fever. And his body hurts.”
Subu nodded sagely. “Is sounding like chikungunya fever, Ma’am. Very many peoples are having chikungunya right now. Almost two lakh in Hyderabad only. Is Jay Sir having any marks on himself from insects?”
“He does have a bite on his ankle, I think. Why? Is that what�
�s making him sick?”
“Chikungunya is coming from mosquitoes, Ma’am. It is serious healthful epidemic.”
A mosquito bite? Was chicken-whatever fever like malaria? I’d started taking the Malarone pills before we left; Jay had refused. Last night, there had been swarms of mosquitoes clustered around the airport terminal. I’d swatted them away religiously out of habit; I’d always been allergic. My bites would grow hard and scary-red, swelling to the size of a baseball within minutes. You can’t move to India; you’re allergic to bugs! Kate said, scandalized, when I first broke the news, as if that mere fact would be enough to sway the company’s decision. If only. When our move became official, she gave me an industrial-sized spray canister of DEET as a going-away present.
Jay liked to joke that the bugs just didn’t like his blood. There could be just one single mosquito in a room with a thousand people and I’d be the only one to get bitten. Jay, however, could sleep with a mosquito in his bed and wake up without a bite. Now, it seemed his lucky streak was over. Maybe Indian mosquitoes had a more sophisticated palate.
“Is chicken fever…deadly?” I asked Subu. My voice came out in a squeak.
“No, no. No death. Just fever, chills, pains. Sir will be feeling all right in a few short days.” He inched toward the door. The medical consult was over.
“Where can I find medicine?” I called after him. The door slammed. Damn it.
“Subu says you have something called chicken fever,” I informed Jay. He moaned. “I think we should call a doctor.”
“No doctor,” he said, pulling the covers over his head. “I just need aspirin or something. Where’s my sleeping hat?”
He fell asleep a couple of minutes later. I stayed there and watched him breathe for a few minutes, reassuring myself with every rise and fall of his chest. His eyelashes, long and dark and utterly wasted on a male, flickered against his cheekbones. I crept out of the room and called Alexis from my new Indian mobile.
“Hey, it’s Jenny. Are you busy? I need some help.”
***
Younus’s tiny hatchback hurtled over the dirt road at warp speed. Seeing his deft maneuvers in and out of traffic, his horn honks and mad swerves across lanes, I was beginning to understand the number-one rule of the road in Hyderabad: survive. Herds of buffalo weaved through traffic, belligerent and massive. Instead of yielding to oncoming traffic, cars just blared their horns and plowed forward, forcing less-confident drivers to dart out of the way. There were no lanes, no traffic lights, no turns indicated or slowing for pedestrians. People, animals, cars—it was a total, death-defying free-for-all.
It was almost 8:00 p.m. Alexis and Younus had pulled up outside the flat with true action-movie hero flair—engine running, doors flung open, techno music blaring from the car stereo, Alexis in the back shouting orders to Younus. I stared at the back of his head—smooth black hair beneath a woven cap. It was like the yarmulkes my brothers had been forced to wear to temple on High Holy days when we were young, only square-shaped and edged in black. Both the cap and Younus’s uniform, which fit his lean body like a second skin, were worn but bleached to a pristine white.
“Muslim prayer cap,” Alexis whispered as I climbed in beside her. “Most of the drivers around here are Muslim. Hyderabad wanted to separate and become part of Pakistan, did you know? Not so easy to do when you’re smack in the middle of the country. Don’t try to get anywhere on a Friday; the drivers are all at prayer and the streets are completely jammed.”
“Excuse me, Ma’ams?” Younus turned to look at us. “Again what is it you finding?”
“Jay is sick,” I said. “Fever.” I put my hand against my forehead and lifted it off fast to indicate hot. “I need a thermometer to take his temperature. And medicine. Pills to make the fever go away.”
We’d explained this to Younus several times already, but his English wasn’t as accomplished as Venkat’s; a fog of confusion passed across his handsome face each time Alexis tried to convey the exact nature of our mission. This time, though, I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes.
“Tablets, Ma’ams?”
“YES. Tablets. Do you know where?” I cried.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Younus stepped on the gas. The car jolted forward. I gripped the sides of the vinyl seat, patched together with electrical tape, and closed my eyes. This was not a good time to get carsick.
Around us, the city began to disappear. There were no buildings, no construction site, no stores. People were huddled over cooking fires. Wooden shanties and cement block stalls with sheet metal awnings lined either side of the road. Chickens darted everywhere. As we approached, people began to mull around, startled by the sudden appearance of headlights on the darkened street.
Younus slowed to a stop.
“Is village, Ma’ams. No more pass,” he said. “Need walk.”
We got out and looked around. Every person on the street stopped to stare. Younus was speaking sharply in Telugu, pushing back some of the more curious observers. He whistled at us and pointed to a stand with a red-painted sign. Then he leaned against the car with his arms folded.
“I guess he’s not coming with us,” I muttered. “We could use an interpreter.”
“I think he’s afraid to leave the car,” Alexis replied.
We headed for the stand Younus had pointed to. Its red wooden sign had a cross in the center, drawn there in white chalk.
“Do you have medicine? Pills?” I asked a man behind the metal grate, trying to remember the word that had finally hit a note of recognition with Younus. “Tablets? And a thermometer?” Again, I put a hand on my own forehead and pantomimed hot. “My husband is sick. Fever. Chicken…chikungunya.” The man behind the makeshift counter nodded vigorously. He dug around in the plastic bins on the counter and produced two slender, dusty cardboard boxes and a foil bubble pack of white pills.
“Edi?” He displayed the contents of the boxes. One was a regular mercury thermometer, like the one my mom used when I was a kid. The other was a digital version that was an exact duplicate of the one from our bathroom cabinet in New York. I looked in confusion at the tiny village around us: bins of grains and lentils, women in saris with giant baskets of laundry on their heads, naked children and chickens and a dirt road too narrow for a car to pass through. It looked like we’d stepped into a time warp, yet this man was offering me a twenty-first century thermometer and what definitely looked like aspirin.
I chose the digital version, fairly certain mercury was outlawed back in the seventies, and asked him, repeatedly, if the “tablets” really were aspirin. The last thing I needed was some crazy drug mix-up. Jay hated taking medicine in the first place. If I accidentally slipped him Xanax or antacids or cyanide, he’d never forgive me. Alexis slid some rupees across the counter. The man counted them and bowed in thanks. I squeezed her elbow, grateful. We’d come all this way and I didn’t even have money with me. The useless AmEx was still in my pocket.
We got back in the car, giddy with victory.
“I hope these work. Jay never sees doctors,” I said. “Not unless it’s really bad.” I paused. “I hope it doesn’t get really bad.” We were back on the main road. Everything was dark. The half-finished buildings loomed like shipwrecks, greenish and hazy in the dusty gloom.
“Peter said a bunch of the guys at work got chikungunya last week,” Alexis said. “It’s supposedly over in a couple of days, but sucks while it lasts. Did you eat dinner?”
“No, and I’m starving. I should probably bring something for Jay too. I don’t think he’s eaten all day.”
“Younus, can you stop at Little Italy?”
Younus nodded and floored the engine, cutting across three lanes so he could pick up more speed. A man on a purple motorcycle shook his fist. Behind him, a woman and two children clung fiercely to each other’s waists, struggling to stay upright as the bike rocked off balance in Younus
’s wake.
Back at Matwala Shayar, I brought Jay his aspirin and forced him to swallow them. I felt his forehead; he seemed less clammy but he was still shivering. The digital thermometer read 38.3. Celsius. Damn it. I had no idea what that meant. Feeling useless, I sat with him until he fell back into a restless sleep.
Alexis and I camped on the floor of the living room, leaning against the antique sofa as we ate soggy pasta straight from Styrofoam containers. “What’s with the towels?” Alexis asked as one slid to the floor in front of her.
“Jay’s got a germ thing. He doesn’t like strange stuff touching him.”
“He’d better get a hazmat suit if he’s going to live in Hyderabad. Germs aren’t even the half of it.” She slurped a noodle into her mouth. “It’s sad to admit because this stuff tastes like Chef Boyardee, but Little Italy is my favorite restaurant here. We eat it like three times a week.”
I was so hungry I hadn’t been paying much attention to the taste, but now that Alexis pointed it out…yes, my ravioli did taste distinctly familiar. It reminded me of electric can openers and nights when my parents went out and the babysitter let us eat carrots dipped in ketchup and watch TV hours past bedtime. The flavor was strangely comforting.
“Leave it to India to make us wax nostalgic about spaghetti that comes in a can,” Alexis said with an exaggerated sigh.
“Do you like it? Living here, I mean.”
A look crossed her face I couldn’t quite read.
“It’s the experience of a lifetime,” Alexis said quietly, like she’d recited the line a thousand times before.
“But do you like it? Are you glad you came?”
“It may take me another lifetime to figure that out.” She dipped a piece of bread in her sauce. “You could ask me every single morning and get a different answer by the afternoon.” She glanced down at her phone, checking for a message from Peter. “It’s your first night; let’s get to the boring stuff later. Tell me about New York. I’ve always wanted to live there.”
