Balance of Fragile Things

by Olivia Chadha

  “Sorry,” Dr. Gott said. “Now, does it hurt worse once my hands lifted or when they first pushed down?”

  “I don’t know; it just hurts.” Now she really wanted to leave.

  “Have you been feeling sick to your stomach?”

  “Yes. For weeks.”

  “Since the play,” her mother said. “It’s stage fright, I think.”

  “Okay, now relax. I am going to take a look inside, okay?”

  Isabella had never felt such a deep pain before, nor had she felt more uncomfortable with another human being. She’d had her period, sure; she’d heard about these kinds of gynecological tests, but she wasn’t prepared.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked and peeked over her blue paper apron down at the doctor, holding on to the table with both hands. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to have let her mother into the room with her. Her mother was looking away, sitting in the furthest corner of her chair as though she, too, wanted out of the small room.

  “I’m just taking a sample to be sure that everything is as it should be. It’ll only take a second. We women have more than just stomachs in there, you know.”

  When she was done, Dr. Gott slid off her extremely large gloves from her extremely large hands and told Isabella she could sit up. It was wet between her legs. Now she was truly cold.

  Dr. Gott smiled. “Everything looks fine. We’ll call if the test shows anything abnormal. I doubt you have a cyst. I’d say you might want to eat more fiber and drink more water. Perhaps your system is out of balance. Try this.” She handed Isabella some samples of fiber supplements. “Let me know how you feel in a month. If the pain becomes acute or you get a fever, call me.”

  After her mother stepped out into the hall, Isabella got dressed in under a minute and dumped her gown in the trash. They were quiet on the ride home. Isabella was relieved. Dr. Gott must have assured her mother that she was not having sex. She was pleased with this small victory.

  “I don’t think anything is wrong with me. Just a stomachache.”

  “Yes, that’s great. Take the fiber supplements and drink more water.”

  When they arrived home, Isabella looked at her mother and wished, for once, that she’d open up or close completely. She felt her mother teetered somewhere between the two stages, which made her nervous. She envied the fictional relationships characters on sitcoms had with their mothers as friends or buddies.

  Isabella changed into her pajamas when they got home, even though it was only late afternoon. Her mother took a nap that lasted for hours. When her father came home from the station, she felt his curiosity as to why she was wearing flannel pajamas during the day. Isabella was thankful for once that her father pretended not to notice her at this particular moment because, she knew, he ignored things that could potentially be uniquely female, as that was outside his department.

  Paul

  As Paul stood on the concrete step leading into his dingy garage, he imagined how it would feel to stand on a porch gazing into the expansive Western wilderness. Where those boxes lined the walls three deep, tumbleweed would be rolling. The unfinished ceiling of exposed wood and wires would be a tangle of manzanita branches through which he would watch a hawk against a blue sky dive skillfully toward the sandy earth after a rabbit or rodent. He squinted, though the space was already dimly lit.

  Paul went back inside to his bedroom closet and traded his slippers for his cowboy boots. He returned to his garage with a cowboy’s swagger. His strut was smooth because he’d practiced before; it was just like Eastwood’s in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Paul had studied the movie as a child when he visited the city with his family. He’d seen every western he could get his hands on. Hang ’Em High, A Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More were his favorites. He’d always wanted to be a real American cowboy. He imagined he was a loner wandering into a skeleton of a town. Wind had blown dust into the air and turned the midday light to the shades of sunset, and the silence was ear piercing. Paul smiled and sat down on the concrete step leading to his garage, took his knife from his back pocket, and used the edge of the blade to trim his fingernails. Maybe he’d pick up whittling.

  He looked around the room, and his imagined surroundings vanished; the mess confronted his eyes as a vulgar contrast to the Wild West. There hadn’t been room to park their car in the garage for years. He had no idea what they kept in these boxes. The one thing in the garage that he always kept a watchful eye on was the small gray lockbox with his pistol inside. It was set high on the shelf above the door leading back to the house and was always locked for safety. But besides this, the whole family could go almost an entire year without retrieving anything from the garage.

  Paul stood, sizing up a box at the bottom of the pile, then kicking it with the metal tipped toe of his boot. A large crack opened on the cardboard seam. He bent to see what was inside: a few hunter-green files filled with old receipts, a stack of photos he’d never seen, and a beer stein with Ikpaul Singh #1 engraved on a sliver of nickel in an old-English font. He’d won it through the regional Service Station of the Year contest. He shoved his hand into the hole to free the stein from the jungle of papers, but its size denied him the return journey. He used his knife to widen the split cardboard seam by slicing a circle around the gash, but still it wouldn’t come out. Something must be wrapped around the handle.

  Though there were several more practical methods for retrieving the stein, such as disassembling the piles of boxes or moving the ones that impeded his box’s freedom, when he saw his ax he remembered how Indians used the tomahawk in battle in The Last of the Mohicans and couldn’t resist the smooth handle. He hadn’t used it since that old sycamore fell in their backyard and he’d decided to chop it up, bit by bit. He lifted the ax from the hook on the wall, planted his feet firmly into the concrete floor, and took a conservative swipe at the box. He missed the crease by an inch or two and instead decapitated pale pink buds from a silk flower arrangement. He tried once more and this time delivered a messy wound. Sweat poured from his brow as he focused. Again he struck the box, and again. Injuries were inflicted on the surrounding tchotchkes, and two smaller boxes collapsed completely and expelled their scraps and books and knickknacks: a water testing kit, two identical pairs of gardening gloves, and a few feet of non-specific plastic tubing. He hit the two-by-four in the wall three times. He even slammed the blade into the concrete, but the only evidence of that mistake was a twang of pain inside his rotator cuff.

  “Hey, Papa. I found them.” Isabella stood in the doorway between the garage and the house. In her hand was a small, shiny object: nail clippers. “What happened in here?”

  Paul placed the ax back on the wall hook, wiped his forehead, and said, “Just cleaning.”

  “Now I know why Mama doesn’t let you clean the kitchen.”

  “Did she say something about that?”

  “No, I was just kidding, Papa.”

  “How was your doctor’s appointment?”

  “Fine.”

  Paul waited for more information, but nothing came.

  “Well, I’ll be inside then, Papa.”

  Paul looked at the mess, made out the location of the stein, and dug in with both hands. He pulled it free as the precarious tower of boxes crumbled. He spit-shined his prize and sat down again on his concrete step. He doubted that Papaji had ever seen a stein before—or won an award.

  The activity had been a good stress reliever—his father’s pending arrival had put Paul on edge. After he’d read the letters, in which the same information was written in variations, Paul had kept the last one in his pocket at all times. Papaji’s letters, formally signed Mr. Harbans Singh, were written in Punjabi and usually began with a fragment of gossip. “Massey Sukminder thinks the servant stole her shoes; the woman is losing her mind.” Or “Uncle Chand is going in for stomach surgery. Thanks be to God. The man smells of old age. We can only hope for the best.”

  Papaji had moved from the village into h
is cousin’s home in New Delhi because of a bad foot. The four-story flat had become a convalescent space for all the related aging elders. Admitting he needed help walking had not been easy for Papaji—Paul understood this from the letters. He was a man who liked the outdoors, his shotgun, and his haveli. Living in New Delhi was akin to living in an unpaved New York City. The pain in his foot must have truly become unbearable, Paul thought, for him to trade his wheat fields for the oppressive congestion of the city streets.

  And when he arrived, what would they talk about? Would Papaji judge his family as he’d judged Paul his whole life? Papaji had barely acknowledged Paul since the accident, and now his presence would force Paul to remember things that he wished had passed with the dead. Paul could do nothing but prepare himself for the stoic presence of his father by reminding himself that this was his home, not Papaji’s, and he belonged here.

  He’d studied the intricate characters that he missed and was thankful he could still read Punjabi. The most recent one read:

  To Mr. Ikpaul Singh:

  You would be interested to learn that Gurumukh Uncle did well after his visit to the apothecary. They managed to heal his blinding headaches with a homeopathic tincture. I know it has been long since we’ve spoken. I believe you have now received at least one of the letters I’ve sent in duplicate because I was not confident of the address. My son, I now see, nearing the end of my life, that I wasted the time I was given with you. I hope that you receive me now, at this late hour, as my flight to America is fast approaching. I’ve enclosed my flight information below. My injury has almost crippled me, son, and I am coming in hopes that a good American doctor will be able to help my ailing limb. I’ve saved money to pay for the medical care.

  Signed,

  Sardar Harbans Singh

  American Airlines, New Delhi to NYC La Guardia, 3:00 p.m.

  US Airways, NYC La Guardia to Cobalt, 5:00 p.m.

  Papaji had not mentioned his mother, Bebbeji, in the letters. No one had mentioned her since Paul had left for America. She’d passed away right after he’d left—and he hadn’t had the money saved then to return home for the funeral. Papaji and Bebbeji had been estranged and hadn’t lived together since before Paul was a teenager; divorce hadn’t been an option. They had been too young when they married. She had been barely fifteen; he’d turned seventeen the day before their wedding ceremony. The pressures of adulthood and the damaging events that transpired during the Partition had taken a toll on their relationship. Paul had been relieved when they separated—the silence he felt between his mother and father had been so unbearable that he had to move all the way to America to escape the void.

  Paul made his way into the house with a prize in his hands. “Maija, look what I found! Who packed my German stein away?”

  Isabella came out of her room and whispered that Maija was napping. And finally, Paul realized that Maija was indeed tired. He’d wondered why she had taken a nap—this was out of character. Before they’d decided to have children, Paul and Maija had a talk about children and how it would change their lives forever. She was worried that he wouldn’t find her attractive after she put on baby weight, but he assured her he would, and his affections had never waned. He was worried that he wouldn’t be a good father because, well, his father was such a phantasm of a figure in his life. Maija made it clear to him that they would do as others had done for centuries and figure it out as they went along. They made love that night with such passion that they saw the sun rise. A few weeks later, Maija had come to him and whispered that they were going to have a baby.

  Now, Paul walked into the bedroom to watch Maija sleep. Her arm was draped over her eyes as though she wanted to keep the light out. He went to the bed beside her, carefully, so as not to wake her, and kissed her cheek. Maija smiled without lifting her arm from her eyes.

  “Piyar, you okay?” he asked.

  “Headache.”

  “Okay. Rest well.” He left the room quietly.

  In the kitchen, Paul sat down and turned on the old PC. He placed the stein gently next to the screen, where he suspected it would remain until Maija managed to pack it away secretly once more. Paul appraised his nail cutting job and tapped his two pointer fingers against the keys. In the search engine, he typed: road construction Cobalt. The first link led him to the local paper, the Daily Mirror. He began to sort through the various articles in hopes of finding a report about the mess in front of his station, but because it was a side road, nothing came up. What had apparently begun as a village improvement had ended up an enormous hole in the ground with a gigantic pile of debris beside it. He wanted to know how repaving the road or repairing the sinkhole could lead to such destruction, and whether there was any way he could be compensated for his lost business.

  The journalists at the Daily Mirror, however, were not so concerned with side roads in the city. Paul skipped over the next story, about a ten-year-old girl not far from their neighborhood who recently won a national spelling bee.

  “Papa, um, what are you looking for?” Isabella stood behind him, her eyes squinting at the screen through her glasses.

  “Dhí, what are these ums? All the time um. Be sure of yourself, or don’t say anything.” Then, after making note of her red-and-green plaid pajamas, he said in a different tone, “Just reading the paper.”

  Isabella shrugged her shoulders, got a glass of water, and went back to her room. As soon as he heard her door close, Paul typed construction into the newspaper’s search box. There were several links to the Chautauqua Bridge reconstruction and the recent upgrades at the water treatment plant, but nothing much about the road construction on Sycamore Road. As he clicked through the archives, his mind wandered.

  He imagined sitting behind a podium, shuffling several sheets of loose-leaf paper. There were important men, like the mayor and Dante Espirito of Dante’s Hops and Pies, wearing black and navy wool suits, sitting behind microphoned tables waiting for his speech to begin. The wood-paneled walls in the hall rivaled the courtroom in a Law & Order episode. He cleared his throat and began to speak knowledgeably about the thickness of asphalt and the benefits of creating a working construction plan before beginning a demolition process. Behind him on a screen, a projector illuminated charts and graphs and maps that Paul pointed to at the perfect time to highlight his plan. The suited men nodded and applauded Paul as he bowed and shook hands. He would be the hero of the town. Paul would find a way to fix the road. He would become a politician.

  Finally, his search brought him to an archived article that contained a city map, so he clicked on the magnification icon. The crossroads were clear enough—but what was that large rectangle surrounding the entire block? It was shaded in a light green and unlabeled. The rectangle extended across the railroad tracks, behind the gas station, across the street into the residential area, and down Main Street right where the construction was taking place. His station was in the center of the rectangle. At the very bottom of the map he found a copyright that read Cobalt Historical Society, 2000. He found the Historical Society’s website, located the hours of operation, and decided he had time to go there before Maija woke from her nap.

  He remembered how his father was the one honest man in the village and, because of his knack for truth, became a sort of counselor for all. He sat in on first meetings when a wedding would be arranged: He sat in the background and listened to the way the groom’s family spoke (or the bride’s) and could decipher whether the family was hiding behind a dowry or behind greasy smiles, and sometimes he’d inquire about filial illness or ask to see the teeth of the girl or boy to be engaged to ensure they were healthy. People trusted him, Harbans Singh, as his beard was the longest, and he was the tallest and the most vocally reserved—these qualities together made him honorable to all. Paul straightened his back, smoothed his moustache like wings on his upper lip, and left the house.

  ~

  The Cobalt Historical Society was located on a street that once was residential but had
been consumed by industry, then spat out. Skeleton structures and buildings that no longer functioned as either home or business lined Monroe Avenue. Paul parked and looked out across an empty parking lot the size of a city block, perpendicular to where he stood. It looked like a hurried graveyard, as the asphalt was lumpy and uneven. The stretch of black was empty, and the Kmart for which it had been constructed was going out of business. The Historical Society, housed within a whitewashed Victorian house, was the only structure around that looked as though it contained life. Paul thought if he could pretend it was the nineteenth century and look away from the industrial ugliness, perhaps he could find beauty in his surroundings. He wondered if this town had been a Pleasantville when it was first settled. Or if it had always been just a scab on the earth’s surface, a blacktop Band-Aid suffocating the grass.

  He entered the building, and an older woman behind the desk introduced herself as Nancy and guided him on a photo tour of the town. As they went from room to room, she pointed to the life-sized images on the walls of the first bank in town, the first carousel, and ghostly figures in turn-of-the-century attire, and she told him how Cobalt was the first stop for any Italian or Irish immigrant who landed in New York City.

  “There was a train that brought them all right here,” she said. “There was a factory that employed more than twenty thousand men, women and children. They made shoes.”

  Paul thought about how any association with feet as a profession was characteristic of the lowest caste in India. Though Gandhi had metaphorically ousted the caste system, remnants of it still remained. Paul questioned what the harm was in making shoes—everyone needed them—but he couldn’t get past the caste crisis. That was an entirely different problem.