The Story Hour

by Thrity Umrigar

  “Anything, beta. I wants to go see my friend soonly.”

  “Sure thing. I’ll go get the car.”

  One thing about this California—all the peoples here smiling. Everything smiling. Even the trees. When Kishore come with his car, a young hotel boy run up to open the door for me. What this magic that I go from cleaning lady to rich memsahib?

  Kishore take me to Thai restaurant. The red curry I eats so good, I wants to go for short walk and then eat it second time. But just then Kishore say, “So, auntie. You’re meeting a friend? What time is she expecting you?”

  Suddenly, all the happy go away. Now the pain come back in my heart. Maggie not even know that I coming. What if she get angry to see me? What if she not opening the door? What if she call the police?

  “It a surprise,” I say. “She not know that I here.”

  “Oh.” He frowns. “Let’s hope she’s home, then.” But he looking at me like I’s crazy woman.

  Now I thinks of new problem. I not wanting Kishore to be there when I meet Maggie. But he such a sweet boy. What if he feel insult?

  “Kishore,” I says. “I’s meeting Maggie after long time. We—we have many thing to talk. What if I . . .”

  “Don’t worry, auntie,” he say. “I wasn’t planning on hanging out.” He take out a small piece of paper and write. “Here’s my phone number. You just call me when you’re ready to be picked up.”

  Now I feels really bad. “But where you go, beta?”

  “Oh, I’m not too far from where I’m dropping you off. I’ll just go home and take a nap.” He shake his head. “It’s no big deal. Honest. You take as long as you want.” He look at his watch. “But we should get going.”

  It is close to sunset when we get near Maggie neighborhood. I say goodbye to Kishore, who wait until I take the wood staircase that lead to the beach. Then he blow his horn and drive away.

  I not knowing Maggie house right on the beach. I not knowing that when sun set over ocean, it look as if the whole world ending and being born at same time. In my whole life, I never see anything this much beauty. The sky so pink and orange, some of the color fall on my skin, making it look pretty. Even the sand change color. And the sound the water make. Even the bells the priest ring in the temple not sound so holy. It sound like the ocean giving birth to the whole world. It sound like the whole world breathing, in and out, in and out.

  Sometime, when I use to walk alone in my father’s field evening time, I feels such peace. Then I use to feel that I belong to more than Ma and Dada and Shilpa—that the trees, the earth, the sky, all my family. I not feeling such connection for many years. But today, in this California, I feels it. I’s no longer the waterfall—it too small. I is the ocean. Its fishes, its stones, its waves, they all inside me.

  I takes off my slippers and walks near the water on the cold sand. A small wave run up like a mouse and chews my feets. I feels like I could walk this beach for days, but I look left and I facing Maggie house. And then the tears comes to my eyes. Because I knows Maggie not coming back with me. How she can leaf this beach, this ocean, this sun to return to Cedarville? Although her house is far from the water and it sit up from the beach, I can see how sweet it is. All other house here are big. Hers look like little baby house, but it have flower and bushes around it. I stands near the water and look up. All the light is on. Maggie is home. I only little ways away from her. But now I cannot move. Now I see what husband see—I have no business to come here. I make big mistake.

  Maggie is about to lower the bedroom blinds when she spots the lone figure staring at the house. The sky is darkening behind the figure; the beach is almost deserted. She is used to tourists gawking at the beach houses as they walk by, but something about the stillness with which the person is looking up arrests her attention. The person is too far away for Maggie to be sure if he or she is looking at her house or someone else’s. She shrugs and continues with her task, but just when the blind is lowered all the way, she pulls it up a few inches. She sits on the window seat and looks out again. And is mildly irritated to see that the figure has not moved, is continuing to stand motionless and look upward.

  As she watches, the woman—Maggie can see it’s a woman; she’s released her long hair—bends, as if she’s touching her feet. And then she is walking into the dark waters of the Pacific. In January.

  Stupid or not, I has to finish what I comes here for. I must to take Sudhir babu’s letter to Maggie. If she not willing to see me, that God’s will. But I must try.

  Then I feels need to do the soo-soo. Urgent. All this water make me want to make my own water. I feel frighten. Kishore gone. If I wait till he come to pick me up, I will have accident. I cannot go to Maggie house all smelly. Then the idea come. When we children, we do soo-soo in my village river. Why I cannot go toilet in the ocean? Water will clean me up. Wind will make me dry.

  The wind so strong, it untie my hair. I goes to where the sand is dry and put hotel key, cell phone, money, and Sudhir babu’s letter under my slippers. Then I walks back to the ocean.

  Arre, Ram. This not water. This is ice. How I can go inside this icebox? I stands still for a second, trying to fight with my body. Either way, I goes to Maggie wet. How this can happen to me at such important time? Ae, bhagwan, I pray. Please to help me.

  Before God can speak, my body do. The soo-soo roll down my leg and into the sea. It feel so warm and good down my legs that I happy to lose this fight.

  Now I having new problem: How I can show at Maggie home smelling like soo-soo woman? Nothing to do but walk into this icebox at least until the hip level, so water can take away smell. I bite my lip and walk in. If I can bear this cold, Maggie come home, I makes bargain with myself. If I can go two more step, Maggie not be angry with me. Slowly-slowly, I goes deeper.

  Maggie hesitates, waits for the woman to turn back, not to risk hypothermia by wading farther into the water. Her eyes scan the beach for another passerby to notice what’s going on, but there’s nobody around. Watching the billowing clothes, she knows that the woman is not wearing a wet suit. The sun has set, and it is hard to see precisely what’s going on.

  She opens the blinds a bit more and waits, unsure of what’s happening.

  My both leg have no feeling. The waves hit my body like cricket bat. Thap, thap, thap. I know what I do is stupid and now I turn and begin to leaf ocean behind. It is hard to get to the sand but I keeps moving. Sometime the wave hit so hard I feels it push me forward. The whole time I keeps my eyes on Maggie house. How I going to show up, all wet like a dog, I don’t know. The cold make my teeth shake, make it hard to think.

  With one push, the ocean throw me out, like mother giving birth to a baby. But my legs too weak to stand. I falls on the sand. It no longer gold like jewelry but dark like stone. I feel hard to breathe. I not too far from my slippers but I cannot move. If I not call Kishore, will he come to look for me? Or will I sleep on this beach because my legs cannot make support for me? That way I be dry before I knock on Maggie door.

  Sudhir babu’s letter. I wants to make sure it safe. I talks to myself. “Move, Lakshmi,” I say. “Nobody here to help you but yourself. And you here to do a job.” I begins to crawl. I feels the sand cutting my hand but my legs and feets still no feeling.

  I almost near the letter when I hears a faraway voice say, “Hello? Is everything all right?”

  If I near dead—maybe I am?—I will knows this voice. It is Maggie. She coming down the wood steps from left direction. I stops crawling, happy that she find me but ashame that she see me like this.

  “Hello?” she say again.

  “Hello,” I say. “I’s here.”

  She fall silent. When she speak, her voice sound shock. “Wha—? Lakshmi? What the hell? I don’t believe this.”

  I lift my head. The wind blow the shawl Maggie have around her. Her feets are naked. “I don’t believe this,” she say again, as she come closer to me.

  Then I knows what I must do: I must make her belief it. M
ake her belief that Sudhir babu want her back. Make her belief he forgive her. Make her belief that although the California is where the God live, her place belong in Cedarville. Most of all, make her belief that for the sin that I make, I will always be sorry. That I willing to crawl for a thousand mile to get her forgiveness. Like those pilgrim who climbs on their knees all the way up Mount Kailash, our lord Shiva’s birthplace, I willing to do the same.

  I lifts my head. Maggie walking fast down the beach toward me. I am here to give her the letter from Sudhir babu. This is my duty. I knows that if I crawls quickly, I get to the letter before she reach me.

  I moves quick on the sand, like the crab, but when I reaches the letter, she is there. I looks up and I sees the face that I knows as good as my own. Above Maggie head, the sky dark. Around us, the wind and the sea make their mischief music together, loudly, like naughty children banging on the drum. Maggie saying something and I tries to listen over their noise. “Lakshmi,” Maggie saying again. “What on earth? What are you . . . ?” She look around. “Are you here alone? How’d you get here, anyway?”

  “In aeroplane,” I say. “I flies. All by myself.”

  The wind blow some of my word away and Maggie bend down to hear me. “What? But why?”

  The letter from Sudhir babu under my hand. But I don’t give to her. Instead I says, “I comes to beg your forgiveness, Maggie. For what darkness I puts in your life.”

  Maggie straighten up and look as far away as the moon. For long minute she not saying anything, and something cold make a shiver in my heart. “I can’t . . . I don’t know what to say,” she whisper. And the cold become freeze in my heart.

  She take a few step away from me. She look at her house, then at the sea, then back at me. I knows Maggie wanting to leave me on this beach like a dirty paper bag and go back inside her cozy house. I about to say, Please, sorry to disturb, you go inside your house, but something stop me.

  It is how Maggie look at me. Even in dark, I see. No, I feels it. She take two step back and stand over me, and the look on her face, different. It is not the look of pity. It is not the look of wanting to help. It is look of—how you say?—curious. Maggie look at me curious. Like how Dilip use to look when he fix the motor of the car and he wait to see if it will start. She waiting to see the result of what she make.

  The wind blow again and I shivers. Maggie notice. She shake her head one time, two times, like she having fight with herself, and then she say, “Good grief. You need to come inside and get dry before you freeze out here.”

  And then she putting her hand out for me to take. It reminder me of how many times this woman has give me her hand to get up. Even now, when she not knowing why I show up like the devil in the California, she pulling me up.

  I don’t take it.

  I knows that if Maggie help me, I can stand up, but I not wish to. It is correct that I stay, animal-like, on this wet sand. It is better that I stays close to Maggie’s feet, so that it easier to beg forgiveness. I knows that, for the sin I have done against the woman who has given me my life, my voice, my happiness, even this evening when I sees the face of God across the sky, only crawling will do.

  “Please,” I say. “You lead the way home. I follows.” And I moves on the beach like the worm, like the snake, even though the sand cut my body.

  “Lakshmi,” Maggie say, and I hears a irritate in her voice. “What are you doing? Are you not able to walk?”

  I starts to explain about Mount Kailash but then I sees me as Maggie do—a crazy who show up in the California, who walk into ice water for no reason, and who now moving toward her house like a half-dead fish.

  “Sorry,” I says. “I’s okay.” I puts one hand on the ground and slowly lifts myself up.

  When we gets to her place, Maggie make me take off my wet pant to place in dryer and gives me a big towel to wrap. When I returns to living room, I hands her the letter.

  “What’s this?”

  “A note. From Sudhir babu. For you, Maggie.”

  She look puzzle, then angry. “I don’t get it. If he has something to say, how come he didn’t just mail it?”

  Before I answers, she get up and goes to the kitchen with the letter.

  Maggie living room small and cozy, so different from the big house she live in with Sudhir babu. I sits here alonely while Maggie in the kitchen, reading Sudhir babu’s letter.

  When she finally come back, she holding two cups of tea. One she is putting down on the little table next to my chair. Then she sit down across from me but not saying anything. Her eyes are red. What Sudhir babu say in his letter to make her cry?

  The silence between us louder than the noise the ocean make outside Maggie house. All this year, my head full of things I wanting to tell to Maggie, but now no words come.

  “I’s a masi,” I say suddenly.

  “A what?”

  “An auntie. My Shilpa has a son. His name Jeevan.”

  Maggie look like she about to ask more question but then she remember how I destroy her life and she blow the questions out like the candle. She sit back in her chair and say, “What are you doing here, Lakshmi? What do you want from me?”

  Nothing, I wants to say. I am wanting nothing more from you, Maggie. Except your forgiveness. But what I wants is to give you. Everything that I stole from you, I wants to return. I am not knowing if this is even possible. I am not smart like you, Maggie. I cannot tell if you is happy in your new life. The things I do not know bigger than this ocean outside your door. I am just an ignorant village woman who destroy the one good thing in my life. And the one good thing in Sudhir babu’s life.

  Maggie watching me, waiting for me to speak.

  “One time I looks at your appointment book,” I say. “In Cedarville, when you leaf the room for one minute. On Monday, for full month, at one-thirty, you write, ‘Lakshmi’s Hour.’”

  She look annoy. “So?”

  “That how you build me, Maggie. Hour by hour. Story by story. Day by day. That how you give me my whole lifes.”

  “And we all know how that turned out.”

  Maggie look as shock to have say those words as I look to hears them. “I’m sorry,” she say. “That was—”

  “No, no, Maggie. You’s correct to be angry. That’s why only I come.”

  Maggie give big sigh. She rise up and look down at me. “Lakshmi,” she say slowly. “It’s getting late. I have an early-morning appointment tomorrow. And I’m still not sure why you’ve shown up at my door.”

  I opens my mouth. I am not sure what will come out—words or crying, rats or flowers, light or darkness. I just knows that the next few minutes will decide whether Maggie’s story will continue next to Sudhir babu’s or not, whether this will be the last time I see my best friend or the first of many more.

  “How much more minutes in the dryer?” I say.

  “What?”

  “For my pant to dry. How much time?”

  Maggie give the shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe another ten minutes?”

  “Please, Maggie. Please to sit. I have one more story to tell. Just one more. And after that, if you say, I will leaf.”

  She look at me again, as if she trying to decide who this new, crazy Lakshmi is, and then she drop back in her chair. Her face is tired, her eyes blank. “Shoot,” she say.

  Maggie waiting for me to speak. I thinks of all the stories I have told her—about Ma and Dada and Shilpa and Munna and Mithai and Dilip. Now I must tell her the story of Sudhir babu and me. How we both knows that Maggie is worth more than her one sin. As we hope we are also.

  I close my eyes. In the dark, I hears the ocean banging its head against the sand. I have come as far as I can. What happen now is the job of the same God who made the small Lakshmi and the big ocean.

  I begins.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you, Dad

  For being that rare, beautiful thing—a genuinely good human being.

  You were incandescent—a sight to behold
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  A gift to cherish

  Always

  Always

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Photo by Eustathea Kavouras

  THRITY UMRIGAR is the author of five novels—The World We Found, The Weight of Heaven, The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweet, and Bombay Time—and the memoir First Darling of the Morning. An award-winning journalist, she has been a contributor to the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the Huffington Post, among other publications. She is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard, the 2009 Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Seth Rosenberg prize. A professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  ALSO BY THRITY UMRIGAR

  FICTION

  The World We Found

  The Weight of Heaven

  If Today Be Sweet

  The Space Between Us

  Bombay Time

  NONFICTION

  First Darling of the Morning

  CREDITS

  Cover design by Chin-Yee Lai

  Cover photograph © kentarcajuan / iStockphoto

  COPYRIGHT

  THE STORY HOUR. Copyright © 2014 by Thrity Umrigar. 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 hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN 978-0-06-225930-1 (Hardcover)

  EPub Edition AUGUST 2014 ISBN 9780062259325