The Story Hour

by Thrity Umrigar

  This time his smile warm like gulab jamun, not cold like kulfi. “Lakshmi. Always wanting to feed people.”

  “I go make you plate.”

  He put his hand on the counter. “No. Really. I . . . I don’t have much of an appetite these days. Which reminds me of why I came by.” He stop because the door open and a customer walk in. It is Mrs. Purohit, regular customer. I knows she will not disturb us until she finish shopping and ready to pay.

  “Yes?” I say, to courage him to go on.

  “Well, I have a new place now. A two-bedroom apartment. And I need someone to clean for me. I tried one of those maid services, and they were awful. And so I wondered, you know, if you’re not too busy, if you’d fit me in.”

  “Yes,” I say before he finish. “Of course. When you wanting me to start?” Everything I have, every dollar in my purse, is because of this man and his wife.

  He look surprise and happy both. “Really? Wow. That’s great.” He rub his chin with his thumb. “One other thing. I was wondering if, maybe every two weeks or so, I could purchase some cooked food from you? You know, stuff I could freeze and reheat.”

  Sudhir babu not knowing how his words knife my heart. What has happen to this man that he so delicate and weak? But I don’t show him the sad I feel. Instead I say, “Sure. I brings you fresh food every time I come to clean. How often you want cleaning?”

  He look embarrass. “You know, I don’t even know how much you charge,” he say. “Magg—my ex-wife used to handle all that.”

  He cannot even say her name but her fingerprint all over Sudhir babu. “Don’t worry about charge-farge,” I tell him. “We discuss this later. First let me come clean.”

  “Okay,” he say. He look at me and his eyes big and empty, like eyes of ten-year-old orphan boy. “I’ll write my new address for you.” He take out one of his card and write behind it. “Can you come on Monday afternoon?”

  Monday I cleans for regular customer but I not saying no to Sudhir babu. “Sure,” I say. “I will be there.”

  “Thanks, Lakshmi,” he say. “It will be nice to see you again.”

  After Sudhir babu leaf, I ask myself why for he not hire cleaning lady close to his house? But I know the answer: Like myself, he also value the time Maggie, he, and I work in the kitchen together. Like myself, he miss her. He and I remind each other of her.

  He let me into his apartment on Monday and the smell almost let me out again. It is so strong, it like a person pushing me out. Anyone else, I would leaf straightaway, but this Sudhir babu, so I stay. When he show me around, he so embarrass. “Sorry it’s such a mess,” he say. “I’ve been so busy with work.”

  “Your class finish soon?”

  “Ah, um, actually, I’m on sabbatical this semester.”

  “Excuse? What is the sabb . . . ?”

  “Ah, sorry. It’s a leave. You know? A leave of absence.”

  “You not going to the job?”

  “Correct.”

  “But your boss not angry with you?”

  “No, no. Absolutely not. It’s just like—ah, like a vacation, you know?”

  But I not know. There not be one day of my life that I not working. How Sudhir babu not go mad with so much extra time?

  Now he notice the tiffin carrier I carry. “Goodness. This looks like way too much food.” But I see how quickly-quickly he take it from my hand.

  “You can freeze it,” I say. “Until next time.”

  “Thanks.” He walk into the small kitchen and set the food on the counter. Then he give me a showing of the apartment. It so small and tight, more like my apartment than like his old house. How he fit his things here? Before I find out, he say, “So, I have to run out for a while. Can you manage?”

  “Yes.”

  I starts with the kitchen. First I empty the tiffin into plastic bowls and put away in the fridge. Then I washes all the dirty plate in sink and put in dishwasher. Clean the counter, stove, microwave. Takes out the three bags of trash sitting near trash can. Sudhir babu use to be so neat and clean. How he can live like this?

  Next I cleans the bathroom. Shower not be clean in weeks. Sink have soap mark stuck to it. Wastepaper basket full. By time I gets to living room, I tired. Still, I pick up newspaper pile. Arrange magazine on table. Dust and polish furniture there.

  Three hours I is cleaning but Sudhir babu not back. I open door to his office but it so full of books and paper, I ascare to go in. Books on floor, books on desk. How I know what to move? I shuts the door.

  Only bedroom left to clean. If he not home by time I finish, I will just leaf. I go in and what is first thing I see? The bedstand from old house. Before I think, I opens the drawer. What do you think? He has his copy of Gitanjali. And on top of it is the neck chain. I sees it and I wants to vomit. Why he keep it here? He and Maggie divorce, he living on his own, but still he chain himself like this. Because of this he not shave or eat and live in apartment smelling like something dead living in it. And something dead is living in it—him. The neck chain is rope around his neck. Why he not cut the rope?

  I close the drawer and begins to vacuum. Now I wants to be out of this apartment before Sudhir babu come home. I work quickly, something moving in my blood. After few minute, I know what it is—the anger. I’s so angry at Sudhir babu. No, I’s angry at all the mens. These mens. Why they so weak? Six years my husband waste being in the love with a ghost. Six years waste over what he saw for ten minute at the fair. And now Sudhir babu. Choking himself with another man’s neck chain. What is point of divorce from Maggie if he still living with her every day?

  I stop the vacuum. If Sudhir babu come home now, I will say something not good to him. Better if I leaf now. Next week I do good-proper cleaning of full apartment.

  When I go to front door to leaf, I see he put envelope on it with my name. It carry hundred-dollar bill—more than my usual charge. I wants to leave the change for him but then I remembers the tiffin carrier of food I bring him. Husband not happy I working for Sudhir babu in first place. Giving free food make him more mad.

  I takes the lift downstairs and walk quickly to my car. I not wanting to see Sudhir babu again today because I feel confuse about him. Seeing that neck chain in his bedstand turn my sad into angry. I think of Dada after Ma die. My husband missing Shilpa for so many years. Now Sudhir babu keeping reminder of what he lost. All these mens crying over women. All wanting what they cannot have. What I am suppose to do to help them?

  Lakshmi, you going mad or what? I tells myself. What Sudhir babu got to do with Dada? Or husband? Why khali-pili you taking out your gussa on him? But I know the answer—I’s the cause of his sad. I the one who break up his marriage. For this paap I has to answer God one day. Maggie and Sudhir babu take the snake into their home. They good to snake, they give it friendship, they find it job, they teach it to drive car. And one day Maggie look away for one minute and the snake bite and release the poison into their life. That snake, me.

  But here is the thing: Until I release my poison, I not knowing I carrying it in my heart. What make the poison? If I can talk to Maggie, she make me understand my own heart. But Maggie one person I can never talk to again. I not even knowing where in Cedarville she live. I too ascare to find out.

  My own life good now. I have my own phone, job, and car. Every day husband and I getting more close. Even night relations between us like normal husband-wife. Few days back, I joke with him to shave his mustache and next morning he do. It make him look like young boy.

  Everything in my life good. But like a radio song, a voice play in my head. And it say to me: You build your temple of happy on someone else’s grave.

  37

  HARD TO IMAGINE that almost a year had gone by since she’d moved into the cottage. Maggie sat on her front porch, cradling the cup of herbal tea, gazing out at the ocean. The days were shorter now, and the evenings carried a nip in the air. Still, what a welcome change the weather was from the frigid temperatures back home.

  Back
home. She had never thought of Cedarville as home. Until now. California was wonderful. Each day the sun felt like a hand conferring its personal blessing on her. She couldn’t believe that she lived in a house on the beach. Going into the grocery store and hearing the multitude of languages still gave her a thrill. She was renting office space in a building owned by a friend of Gloria’s and was steadily building a new practice. Everything in her life was good. Everything in her life would be wonderful if not for the fact that her heart was a thousand miles east of where her body was.

  She seldom thought of Peter these days. If she did, it was with befuddlement. What on earth had made him shine the way he had? Why had she found his tinsel so attractive? What had possessed her during those few final hours of weakness? If she had said goodbye to him at the door, if she had spent a few minutes of idle chitchat and then walked him to his car, he would’ve been on his way and Sudhir would still be by her side. She had been so resolute when she’d finally broken up with Peter. So sure it was the right thing to do, so relieved after it was done. Yes, she had grieved at the thought of never seeing Peter again. But that would’ve passed. It did pass. She’d refused to engage with him at commencement, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she? She’d been tempted, she’d been put to the test, and she had passed. So why did he have to show up on her doorstep, looking more desperate and forlorn than she’d ever seen him? Why had she said, “You want a Coke or something for the road?” and then let him enter her house? Why, when she had she turned from the fridge, Coke in hand, and realized that he was standing inches away from her, hadn’t she moved away?

  He had never even touched the bloody can. She had put it back in the fridge later, after Lakshmi had left, after he was gone. And then she’d walked back to the kitchen, fished it out of the fridge, and thrown it in the trash can.

  Yes, California was as beautiful as the storybooks said. If Sudhir had moved here with her, it would be paradise. Their life in Cedarville had been pretty much paradise, but not because of the granite countertops or the second-floor balcony from which they could see the lights of the valley. It had been paradise because she’d lived there with her love. Her true love. Who had been given to her in a moment when the universe was feeling benevolent. What were the odds? What were the odds that a rootless girl from Brooklyn, homeless for all practical purposes by eighteen, would find a boy from Calcutta, whose family had raised him to be so secure in their love for him that he in turn bequeathed that same stability and security to her? No wonder Sudhir was as devastated as he was. Nothing in his life could’ve prepared him for her betrayal.

  Had Lakshmi also been unable to fathom her behavior, unable to cope with what she’d witnessed? Is that why she did the dastardly thing that she did? Then Maggie remembered Lakshmi’s story of how she’d wed her husband, and she shook her head. Anyone who could’ve trapped a man into marriage the way Lakshmi had, knew a thing or two about betrayal. If anyone should’ve cut Maggie a little slack, it was her.

  She wasn’t letting herself off the hook. She knew that, ultimately, it wasn’t Lakshmi who had broken apart her marriage. She knew that. But Lord, to think that it was her last tryst with Peter that had caused all this trouble. That it had changed the trajectory of her life with Sudhir forever. So that she was sitting on a porch facing the Pacific, feeling as lonely as the setting sun.

  She drained the last of her lemon tea and got up. There was something she’d wanted to do for several weeks, something she’d been putting off—writing a letter to her in-laws. To her ex-in-laws. As hard as parting from Sudhir had been, it was harder to accept that she’d never hear Sudhir’s parents’ lilting voices on the phone again. She had spoken to his sister once, but Reshma had sounded so devastated and confused by the divorce that Maggie had known they would not stay in touch.

  Now she went indoors to her tiny study and pulled out a sheet of writing paper. She wrote:

  Dear Papaji and Mummy—

  Both of you have been on my mind for so many months. I miss you and am hoping that this note finds you in good health.

  She stopped. How much had Sudhir told them? She had called him last week, to get his permission to contact his parents, and although he’d said yes, he’d sounded so vague, so distant. “I can’t tell you what to do,” he’d said in that new feeble voice of his, as if he’d been smoking pot. “It’s a free country.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want me to?”

  “No, it means you do what you want to.”

  “Do they k-know? About why, I mean?” she’d asked, hating the stutter in her voice.

  “About how you cheated on me, you mean?”

  “Look, Sudhir. I don’t want to fight with you. I . . . We’ll talk some other time.” She had hung up as soon as she could. And regretted it as soon as she had.

  Maggie set her pen down. She would finish the letter tomorrow, maybe. There was so much she wanted to say to the elderly Bengali couple who had welcomed her into their home as a daughter. It didn’t feel fair to lose Sudhir’s entire family along with Sudhir himself. Such a loss was too great, out of proportion to her crime.

  Exile. The word popped into her head as Maggie turned on the light to her bedroom. She was in exile in California. Banished from her known life, from all the people she loved most in this world.

  How easy it was to hate Lakshmi for the havoc she’d wreaked. If only that were where it ended, if only Lakshmi could remain the sole object of her hatred. But it was the teary face staring back at her in the bathroom mirror that was the true object of her scorn and recriminations. Maggie stared at that face for an extra moment and then switched off the light. The welcoming darkness threw its arms around her.

  38

  TODAY IS DECEMBER 21 and my catering business so busy for Christmastime parties, I hire Rekha’s older sister, Smita, to help me in the kitchen. Sometimes, when restaurant close after lunch, husband help me for a few hours also. But today I have to drive to Cedarville to clean Sudhir babu apartment because he coming back from India tomorrow. He being gone for three weeks and apartment not been clean since before he leaf. He gives me key with request that it be fresh before he come back. So I tells Smita what I need done in kitchen and go.

  First time I entering Sudhir babu apartment without him there. As I turn the key, I reminding of the day I enters Maggie house and find her in the bed with the whiteman, whose name is Peter, Sudhir babu tell me. But this apartment is empty, I knows, so no problem. I come in, shut the front door, and then I scream when I hear a voice say from other room, “Hey. Who’s there?” And before I can make sound, door to Sudhir babu’s office open and he come out. He look like a madman. His hair not comb for days, his eyes red like devil. He not shave or shower. And in his hand, there is cigarette. Sudhir babu not a smoker.

  In the dark passageway, we look at each other. “Ah, Lakshmi,” he finally say. “You scared me. What’re you doing here?”

  I points to my bucket. “I come to clean. You say to clean before you return from India tomorrow.”

  He look confuse as he comb his hair with his fingers. “Oh. I see. Well, I didn’t go. As you can see. Last-minute change of plans.”

  Sudhir babu have chance to go seeing family in India and not go? “What wrong? You sick?”

  “No, no. Not sick. Just . . . couldn’t deal with it all, y’know? Too many questions, too much drama. Maybe I’ll go in the summer.” He take smoke off his cigarette and then say, “Please. Come in,” as if I am guest at his party. Then he turn around and go into his office.

  I goes into the kitchen and begins my work but my heart feeling sick. I finds empty beer bottles in the trash can and I feels even worse. Who is these people? God giving them everything to be happy and still Maggie go cheat on Sudhir babu. And him? He have health, good job, money, everything, but still he sick for Maggie. If he love her so much, why he giving her divorce? If he hate her so much, why he giving her attention? I thinks of what Shilpa say on the phone last night: “Dilip work very hard, Didi, but
business only so-so. But we not complain. We satisfy together.” If my sister can be happy in India, how Sudhir babu, who live and work in this rich country, not happy? Even cows in Am’rica fat, like they have money. That’s why only they call them cash cow. But Sudhir baba, he looking worse than the beggar in India.

  It take me long time to clean kitchen. Next I goes into his office. He sitting at the computer, holding his head. He look up when I standing at the doorway. “Sorry. I clean other room and then clean here last.”

  “No, it’s okay. Come in.”

  I not feel like disturb him with vacuum so I begins to do the dusting. After a minute he say, as if talking to himself, “Do you know how long I’ve been alive? Over twenty thousand days. There’s a website that calculates it for you. You just put in your birth date. Can you imagine? The pounds and pounds of rice and sugar and meat I’ve consumed, the amount of water I’ve ingested, the gallons of gas I’ve burned? All that consumption just to stay alive. And the worst part is, nothing to show for it. Not even a child of my own.”

  I stop the dusting. “Why you not have children?” I ask.

  “Because Magg—she couldn’t. She had three miscarriages, you know.”

  I surprise to hear Maggie not be able to have children, because she so like mother to me. And I also angry that he still won’t speak her name.

  “What? Why’re you staring at me like that?”

  I looks at Sudhir babu for long time. Then I does something I never do before. I sits down on the chair in front of him. “I make a big mistake,” I says. “I leave the neck chain for you to find because I angry with Maggie. I once tell her a secret. Of something wrong I do. And she not fully understand me. She—she judge me. And so when I get chance, I do this bad thing. To hurt her. But I not think of what it do to you.”

  “Forget it. I told you before, I’m grateful that . . .”