by Leah Franqui
She spent her days reading all the poetry she had wanted to explore, the Tagore book she had brought with her on her trip that she hadn’t opened once, and books about sea snails. She saw movies on her own, and ate new foods, and bought bottles of wine just to have in her home. She responded to requests from Ram’s family, all asking her to come live with them, stay with them, visit them, with clear but firm negative responses, and they soon stopped asking, which was just fine with her. She visited cemeteries and took long walks around the city, first through walking tours, then on her own. She was finally getting to know her own city, after seeing so many foreign ones. She began to teach her maid and her cook English, starting slow, letting them absorb it, watching the fear in their eyes become happiness a little more each day. It was an almost perfect life, and she couldn’t believe she had been ready not to have one anymore.
Except that she still wasn’t sleeping well. So she kept waiting for something to happen. And then, one day, the doorbell rang, and there was Jake, standing in the doorway, her son’s ashes in his hands, his face open, tense, worried, hopeful. She opened up the door and let him in.
Jake sat on her couch in her living room and drank the milky tea served by the new maid. Pival had introduced him as a friend of her son’s, and then thought again. She turned to the maid.
“Actually, he was my son’s lover,” she said, watching the woman carefully. The maid simply nodded and left. This was the first person she had ever said that to, the first person she had admitted the truth to, and it felt beautiful, the way the truth is supposed to be.
“Will you be staying long?” she said to Jake.
“I think that’s up to you,” he responded.
They took the ashes to the Ganges the next day. They held the box together and let the ashes and the little shell fall into the sacred waters, watching Rahi slip away. He held her hand afterward as the tears from her eyes slipped into the Ganges as well, and she didn’t mind at all, even if they were in public and people were watching them. What must they think, watching this old Indian woman with this strange white man, holding each other’s hands and crying? Ram would have hated it. A flare of happiness spread through her whole body, a warmth that emanated out from the hand that held hers. As she watched the water take him away, as it had taken so many people away and would take her, too, someday, she wondered, where would she go next? What would Rahi have wanted to see? She rinsed her hands in the water and stood up. And that night, with Jake in the next room, she slept deeply and fully, and she didn’t dream of anything at all. The ghosts were gone now, and when she woke, the first thought she had was, What happens next?
And she got up, to go and find out.
Acknowledgments
There are many people who helped support me, encourage me, push me, and laugh with me as I wrote this novel. I would like to thank:
My agent, Julia Kardon, who is probably the best agent I could ever have asked for and saw potential in my early messy, rambling drafts of this story. My editor, Rachel Kahan, who saw this novel far more clearly than I could have and let me add back in all the things I wanted to. My UK editor, Martha Ashby, who shares my love of tapas and sewing and was the first to toast me with champagne for finishing this novel.
Rachel Meyers, my fantastic production editor; Tavia Kowalchuk, super fan and marketing genius; Maureen Cole, publicity guru; Mumtaz Mustafa, cover designer extraordinaire; and all the men and women of the HarperCollins sales team, whose great enthusiasm and tireless evangelism got this book into all the right hands.
My early readers, who gave me so much generous feedback and even said there were good things: Rebecca Gridley, Victoria Frings, Anastasia Olowin, and Emily Holleman, who collectively gave me all the advice I ever could have asked for and all the wine I needed. Natasha Joshi, for setting me straight about Bengali Brahmin last names, among so many other things.
My teachers and mentors at NYU, especially Joe Vinciguerra, who gave me the courage and confidence and just enough criticism to help me learn how to keep myself writing.
My family in the United States: Deborah Solo, Angel Franqui, and Alejandro Franqui, for putting up with me and loving me always; and my family in India, especially Raj Kummar Narula, Mridula Narula, and Shuchita Jhaveri, whose trip inspired all this.
And of course, Rohan, who, more than anything else, said just go ahead and do it.
About the Author
Leah Franqui is a graduate of Yale University and received her MFA at NYU Tisch. She is also a dramatic writer and the recipient of the 2013 Goldberg Playwriting Award and the 2013 Alfred Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Award. A Puerto Rican−Jewish Philadelphia native, Franqui lives with her Kolkata-born husband in Mumbai. America for Beginners is her first novel.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
america for beginners. Copyright © 2018 by Leah Franqui. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Lettering by Joel Holland
Cover photographs © Oleh_Slobodeniuk/Getty Images (main image); © Transia Design/Shutterstock (ornament)
Digital Edition July 2018 ISBN: 978-0-06-266877-6
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-266875-2
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
Bay Adelaide Centre, East Tower
22 Adelaide Street West, 41st Floor
Toronto, Ontario, M5H 4E3
www.harpercollins.ca
India
HarperCollins India
A 75, Sector 57
Noida
Uttar Pradesh 201 301
www.harpercollins.co.in
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand
Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive
Rosedale 0632
Auckland, New Zealand
www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF, UK
www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
www.harpercollins.com
