Invisible Lives

by Anjali Banerjee

  “How did you know she would be up there?” I ask.

  “I had a cat who hid in cabinets all the time,” he says. “Name was Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

  My heart warms. “Um, we should go, or we’ll be late, won’t we?”

  The strange bubbles are bouncing around me again. But what the heck? Ma is out with Mr. Basu. What do I have to lose?

  Nick comes to life behind the wheel as he drives to his parents’ home in Port Westwood where the party is taking place, his eyes bright, his voice animated, as if his favorite place is the journey between two points. I could sit in the car beside him all day and night. He vibrates hot in my nerve endings.

  Like a fever.

  Yet riding next to him I feel safe, as if I could close my eyes and jump off the top of the Taj Mahal and land unharmed.

  I lean back against the headrest and watch the hills and valleys speed by.

  He turns off the highway abruptly onto a narrow road, past a green sign reading Port Westwood. “We’re in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains here,” he says. “During harvest, you can smell the lavender everywhere.”

  “Sounds lovely,” I say dreamily.

  “We don’t get as much rain as other parts of the state. Lots of evergreens.”

  He slows in a small strip of quaint businesses—a library, brick town hall, community center, drugstore, ice cream shop, bakery. He turns down a dirt road lined with large oaks, cedars, and firs until we reach a clearing, and there, like a mirage against a backdrop of sky and sea, stands a blue Victorian with several cars in the driveway. Coiffed hedges and dormant flowerbeds stretch away into a forest of thick fir and pine and Western red cedar, and beyond the forest, the ocean twinkles. A misty peacefulness rises from the dewdrops gleaming in the grass.

  “I went to Juan de Fuca High School down the street,” Nick says, “played football, drove to the local drive-in more than once.”

  I try not to imagine Nick making out in a car with the prom queen. I glance at the garage, painted blue with white trim, set away from the house. Even the garage is surrounded by vines and lush vegetation.

  On the porch, there’s a swinging rattan bench with sagging pillows, and I imagine him sitting out here, gazing at passing freighters and ferries. I close my eyes and take in the silence—how wonderful it is not to have invisible lives crowding my head.

  Inside, the scents of lavender and apple rise gently in the air. The ceilings dome in spacious arcs, and the house is furnished in dark, polished woods with sleek lines and soft touches—blankets draped over the backs of chairs and pillows on the couches. Laughter drifts from the kitchen, and two men are watching a football game in another room.

  “Yo, bro!” Nick yells, leading me into the living room. One man stands, grabs Nick’s hand, and they exchange a high-five greeting.

  “Yo, Nick!” the man replies. Except for his stocky build and prominent nose, the man resembles Nick. He’s holding a Heineken bottle in one hand, and he’s dressed in a checkered flannel shirt and baggy jeans.

  “When did you get here?” Nick asks.

  “Couple of hours ago. This is my friend Hardy. He’s staying here too. Partner at the firm.”

  Hardy is a dark-haired, thin man with a mustache, also in jeans and a T-shirt. He and Nick exchange greetings, and Hardy gives me a nod.

  “Laurel stayed home tonight,” Nick’s brother says. “Holly picked up a cold in preschool.”

  Laurel and Holly?

  “This is my brother Mike,” Nick says. “He’s an attorney. Mike, this is Lakshmi. She’s got the sari shop—”

  “Oh, you’re Lakshmi!” Mike’s eyes widen, and he shakes my hand in a firm grip. “Nick’s told me all about you.”

  I smile. “What could he have told you?”

  “How beautiful you are, for one thing,” Mike says. “You weren’t kidding, bro. Welcome to our crazy family, Lakshmi. We’re only a little crazy. We’re actually normal in real life.”

  I glance at Nick. He looks a bit embarrassed. “Yeah, we can be crazy,” he says. “We like to play games. But it’s a good kind of crazy.”

  “So what’s up with the business?” Mike says. “Jerry’s in the kitchen, wants to talk—”

  “I’m about to go in there,” Nick says. “This way, Lakshmi.” He’s holding my hand again, leading me down a hall. “Laurel’s his wife and Holly’s his two-year-old daughter.”

  I nod, my hands clammy. In the kitchen, everyone turns to us and smiles. The counters are covered with baskets of fruit and garlic and plates of cookies. My house—my mother’s house—isn’t as generous. Ma keeps the counters spotless, and even with all the spice and the scents of India, there’s a kind of closed-in sterility. Ma likes to keep everything clean, keep her secrets hidden.

  “Hey, Nick!” a tall man shouts. He’s wearing a World’s Worst Cook apron and embraces Nick in a bear hug, pats his back. I think of the way my relatives embrace, in a fluid, soft style. They’re always dressed up for these occasions. But in Nick’s house, family members crash into each other, and they’re all wearing whatever they want, as if they closed their eyes, reached into their closets, and threw on whatever they touched.

  This man with the apron is clearly Nick’s brother. He’s Nick but slimmer and narrower, as if he stood between two walls that squished him.

  “Lakshmi!” he shouts and gives me the same bear hug. I’m squashed and momentarily unable to breathe.

  “This is Jerry,” Nick says.

  “I know who you are. Nick described you—long hair, exotic.” Jerry grins. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

  “So am I.” Nick described me?

  His mother embraces me as well, and I’m enveloped in the scents of perfume and bread and her own mother-smell. She’s a slim, regal woman with flushed cheeks, grayish-blond hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. Her eyes are shockingly light gray, as if the sun is constantly passing in front of them.

  She lets go of me and hugs Nick as if she hasn’t seen him in years.

  “Mom, this is Lakshmi.” Nick presses a proprietary hand to the small of my back, moves me close to him.

  “Nick didn’t tell us just how beautiful you really are,” she says. “We can’t wait to see how you put on a sari!”

  “Thanks. I own a sari shop.” I blush. “Co-own, actually. With my mother.” My mother’s moment with Mr. Basu floods back to me.

  “How amazing! You must be very busy.” Mrs. Dunbar is slicing tomatoes and throwing them into a giant salad bowl. “Owning a business is a twenty-four-hour job. Nick knows.”

  “It is a lot of work—”

  “Hell yeah,” Jerry pipes in. He starts peeling a cucumber. A man, in the kitchen, cooking with his mother! “Nick’s thinking of getting out of the business, aren’t you?”

  “That’s what we should talk about,” Nick says.

  Nick’s thinking of selling his business? My heart flips. What if he no longer drives Asha to the shop? I didn’t think the possibility would fill me with such panic.

  “Would you like some wine, Lakshmi? We have Merlot,” Nick’s mother says.

  “Wine would be great, thank you!”

  She hands me a glass, and the slight bite of the wine spreads through my insides.

  A young, red-haired woman comes running in and flings her arms around Nick’s neck. She’s wearing slippers, sweats, and a sweatshirt. “You made it, Nicky!”

  Nicky?

  “This is my sister, Fiona,” Nick says. “Fiona, Lakshmi.”

  “You’re the famous Lakshmi!” She throws her arms around my neck too, as if we are long-lost cousins, and I take a step backward. Freckles cover her face, some piling together to form one big freckle, and her eyes are the same startling blue as Nick’s eyes.

  “I’m not famous,” I say.

  “You are to us.” Fiona takes my hand. “I was hoping you’d come. Mom’s making lasagna.”

  “It’ll be ready soon,” Mrs. Dunbar says. “
Get your father in here, will you?”

  “He’s outside with my husband, Bill,” Fiona says. “Showing him the garden, mostly the fruit trees. Dad’s always planting new trees. Mom’s the flower woman.”

  “Nick says you’re a teacher,” I say, trying to make polite conversation.

  “Yeah, second grade over at Juan de Fuca. Same school Nick went to. He was a wild kid. He’s still wild!”

  Nick’s off in the corner talking to Jerry.

  “Come outside and meet my dad.” Still in her clog slippers, she leads me out the back door and across the patio. The backyard is filled with plants and raised gardens, and in the distance, the waning sunlight glints off the ocean. Two tall silhouettes stand near the fruit trees.

  “Dad, Bill, come and meet Lakshmi!”

  The two men traipse over. Nick’s father is taller than Nick, more broad-shouldered, with deep lines in his face and a shock of white hair. He takes my hand in a warm, firm grip. “Pleased to meet you, Lakshmi. You’re gonna get cold out here.”

  Bill is so dark that he could be the coming night. His hand grasping mine makes my skin look pale. “Good to meet you,” he says with a slight foreign accent.

  “This is Bill, my husband,” Fiona says. “I met him while I was in the Peace Corps. He’s from Nigeria originally, but he’s been here a long time.”

  I nod, feeling even more comfortable here. It’s a relief not to be around relatives who would all be smiling while secretly judging: They would never allow me to date a man such as Bill. They would not approve of Nick, either. Here, I feel strangely liberated.

  And Sean, the man who took me to dinner in out-of-the-way restaurants, where his close friends and family wouldn’t see that he was dating an Indian.

  Here, I don’t have to worry.

  Even supper is informal. The men yell across the table as if they’re at a football game. They reach over to grab a bowl of green beans, the lasagna, the salt and pepper.

  “Nick’s the greatest guy you could know,” Fiona says, sitting next to me. “He was the kid who helped old ladies cross the street.”

  “I believe it.”

  “No, seriously! And the best football player at Juan de Fuca. We all thought he’d make it to the—”

  “Fiona,” Nick says quickly, then pats his left thigh. He turns to me. “Injured this knee in my senior year. Healed okay, but kept me from playing professionally.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “He was a bit of a speedster too,” Fiona whispers. “And a hit with the ladies, what with that convertible—”

  “What are you saying?” Nick tries to divide his attention between his brother and us.

  “Nothing, don’t you worry.” Fiona waves a dismissive hand at him, then whispers to me. “He’s settled down a lot since high school. Mainly saw this one girl, Liz. But she’s kind of stuck-up, so don’t worry about her.”

  “I’m not actually seeing Nick,” I say. “He’s just a friend.”

  “Right.” Fiona’s eyes indicate that she doesn’t believe me. “They almost married, but he got cold feet.”

  I swallow, suddenly going numb. Sita’s words haunt me. Love is marriage. A man who won’t marry can’t fall in love.

  “So Nick was in love?” I ask. What do I care? I glance at Nick, who’s deep in conversation with Jerry.

  “I don’t know if he ever really loved her. Couldn’t give her a ring, but he still sees her once in a while.”

  Still sees her? “Oh,” I say politely and focus on my food. Couldn’t give her a ring. Nick’s love life is none of my business. I’m having a fun evening here while Mr. Basu has kidnapped my mother.

  Everyone laughs through supper while Nick’s father cracks jokes, and after we finish eating, Nick makes a fire in the living room fireplace. He looks so competent, kneeling in front of the hearth, arranging the logs and kindling, setting them aflame. A warm glow emanates through the room.

  I break out the saris, and Fiona and Mrs. Dunbar lead me upstairs to a frilly guest bedroom with lace curtains, where I show Fiona how to wrap an indigo cotton sari.

  “Oh, Fiona, you’re an exotic princess!” Mrs. Dunbar claps.

  “It’s all puffy in the front.” Fiona frowns in front of the mirror.

  “Cotton is like that,” I say. “Flatten the pleats like this.” I fix the sari, drape the pallu over her shoulder, and tuck it in at her waist.

  “Now I love it!” she exclaims, “but how do women wrap these things every day? Saris are so complicated!”

  “You get used to it,” I say.

  “C’mon, Ma, your turn!” Fiona and I dress Mrs. Dunbar in a translucent peach chiffon sari, which promptly slips off and falls in a heap around her ankles. She poses in the petticoat and choli, pretending to be an underwear model. We all burst into laughter.

  Finally, I get the sari to stay on.

  “You look like a queen, Ma,” Fiona says. “But something is missing. Wait! I have just the ticket.” She presses a red lipstick bindi into the center of her mother’s forehead. “Now you’re perfect!”

  We traipse downstairs to show off. I carry a couple of extra saris in my arms. The men whistle, and everyone claps.

  “Now you, Nick!” Jerry shouts. “Let’s see what you look like in a sari.”

  “No way, not me!” Nick holds up his hands, but Fiona and I are already wrapping a sari around him, tucking it into his jeans and throwing the pallu over his shoulder. He looks comical, a tall, muscular man draped in delicate chiffon. Next, we subject Jerry to the same humiliation, and we’re all laughing so hard, we can’t breathe.

  Later, we all play games—Taboo, Pictionary, Cranium—and laugh again until our bellies hurt. Finally, the family drifts into the dining room for dessert.

  “I can’t eat another bite,” I tell Nick while we’re sitting by the fire. “I’m full of your mother’s wonderful lasagna.”

  “Food is always a huge event for us,” Nick says. “Meals go all night—”

  “In India too!” I say. “Family events revolve around food. It’s the same everywhere.”

  Nick gives me a funny look. “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for bringing me here. But I should go soon.”

  “Don’t go.” He stokes the flames, rearranging the logs.

  “We’re leaving for India in a few days. I still have to catch up on work.”

  “Why do you have to go?”

  “Because it’s in the stars. Because my father wanted me to meet Ravi. Because I like Ravi. I have to go. I have to know if we get along.”

  “You and I get along.”

  “Nick, I like you. We could be friends. You have a wonderful family, but I don’t know you very well and—”

  “You don’t know the Ravi guy at all.”

  “But our families have known each other for a long time. In India, families are intertwined like branches of a banyan tree.”

  “What about love? Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  My throat goes dry. “Maybe only in the movies. Not in real life.”

  “Why not in real life?”

  “Is that how you felt about Liz?”

  “My sister’s been talking to you.”

  “She told me a little.”

  “I’m talking about you. It’s how I feel about you.” He looks at me directly, piercing me with those stone-blue eyes.

  I’m frozen, my vocal cords disappear. I think back to the moment he walked into the shop, the way the knowing dissolved.

  Love? What does love feel like? Is it the bowling ball of longing from Mrs. Dasgupta? Ma’s golden bubbles when she’s around Mr. Basu? Is it this feeling of disorientation? Is it the bubbles that burst from me when Nick’s around?

  I look away. “You can’t possibly love me already.”

  “Why not? Love is simple, Lakshmi.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I knew the moment I saw you.” He grabs my chin and forces me to look at him. Then he gently kisses me, and the sari sl
ips from my shoulder. I’m swept away. Everyone else disappears, and I am lost inside him, wrapped in need, in a world where anything is possible.

  “Lakshmi,” he whispers against my lips. “You’re perfect.”

  Only the goddess is perfect, divine, entwined with her lover in paradise. Her voice drifts back to me—Love will be a long and difficult journey.

  I draw back. “Nick, I have to go.”

  “Wait—give me a chance, Lakshmi.”

  “Nick, my family, my mother—it’s complicated. Love takes time. It has to blossom, to grow.”

  “So give us some time.”

  I put on my sweater, and we go outside onto the porch in the cold. “Your sister told me about Liz, and I have to go to India. That was always the plan.”

  Nick moves closer, until his breath warms my head. “What do you want, Lakshmi? I’m not talking about your family, your mother, what you’re supposed to do.”

  “I want to keep helping people at the store, and I want the business to expand. I love the feel of saris, the fabrics, discovering new designs. I love watching the trends change over time. I love seeing the relieved or ecstatic faces of women when I give them exactly the right sari. And I want to be happy and settle down and have a family one day.”

  “Don’t you think I want the same thing?”

  “I don’t know what you want, Nick.”

  “What, I’m not good enough for you?”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  “Oh, yes it does. I’m a driver. You’re too high class for me, is that it? You have to marry someone from your caste. Am I like one of those untouchables?”

  “Nick, no!”

  “Think about it. Why won’t you give me the time of day?”

  “I do, Nick—”

  “You hire me to drive, but would you go out with me? Just the two of us?”

  “I can’t change our plans, Nick. Ma has been looking for the right husband for me for a long time. Arranged marriages do work. I have to give this a try.”

  “Why? Don’t go. Stay with me.”

  I take off down the steps, my heart racing. Part of me wants to stay with Nick, to throw propriety and promises to the wind, but I can’t. The pull of my mother, my father’s words in that old, parched letter, and the call of India are far too strong.