Balance of Fragile Things

by Olivia Chadha

  Thank you all for coming to the new members meeting. Eleanora had paused to take a Styrofoam cup of coffee from Jennifer Thomas. The PTA depends on your participation. Without you, there wouldn’t be an association at all. Please take a moment to fill out this form with your information. Eleanora passed around copies of the PTA Individual Member Form, which asked for basic contact information. Then we’ll all introduce ourselves.

  Maija hadn’t been sure what to do. If she filled it out, Eleanora would have her information, and she’d be forced to commit to these silly meetings. If she didn’t fill it out, she’d look suspicious. There were far too many attentive eyes evaluating the new members, as though they were joining an elite book club run by Oprah herself.

  Maija had dressed casually: slacks and a sweater. She saw how new money had changed her old neighbor. Instead of the ratty tracksuits she used to wear, Eleanora wore a fitted Ann Taylor suit. It looked uncomfortable. The Heights trend was an anomaly in Cobalt. Maija had heard of the McMansion phenomenon in America as it had infected the suburbs of larger cities, but Cobalt was a modest village with little pretense. Until now, there hadn’t been a gated community within the city borders. Maija couldn’t help but wonder what they were trying to keep in or out of those gates.

  Maija had taken a leisurely drive into the Heights one day out of curiosity. The street leading up to the Heights’ entrance seemed to wind needlessly. Between the young pines and willows she’d caught glimpses of the enormous wrought iron gate. She recalled how the Vatican was designed; as leaders would enter the structure on either side, they would get only a hint of the enormity of St. Peter’s Basilica between the Roman colonnades. Each peek would deliver a sensation akin to that of arriving closer to God himself. Every step the kings and emperors took would remind them of their place below the church. This winding drive on Heights Way was designed to induce a similar sensation, though it did nothing more than increase Maija’s frustration. Small, manmade hills complicated the three-mile drive that would only have been one mile as the crow flies. It was a sad attempt at a labyrinth; Daedalus would have stomped directly through the development. When she arrived at the locked gate and realized that she did not have the code to enter, she pulled her car to the side and got out to take a look around, peering through the bars. The entire community was closer to the old Cobalt village and PMI’s campus than she had thought. The neatly arranged houses appeared to have swallowed steroids. They were massive clones, all born from the same gray and white palette, and had small, unnaturally green, manicured lawns. She thought it strange that there weren’t any sidewalks at all, as though the outdoors were not to be explored. It seemed empty, a ghost town. There weren’t any children riding their bikes or parents mowing their lawns. But the eeriest attribute of the community was the blaring silence. Not a fly flew, nor bee buzzed. The street signs, with grandiose names like Prominence Point and Grand Terrace Drive, were rusting. Maija had left quickly, wondering what the Finch family saw in such a soulless place.

  At the PTA meeting, she’d taken a pen from her purse and pretended to jot down her name, address, and phone number. Instead, while Jennifer, Eleanora, and Harmony were discussing the new fall clothes at Talbot’s, she wrote a note:

  Dear Mrs. Finch,

  You are in danger. Please be careful to take your medicine and watch your footing on slippery surfaces. I only want to help.

  —A Friend

  She’d stashed the form on top of the pile and gone to the restroom, signaling to Adelaide with a wink that it was time to go.

  The mirror into which Maija peered was cracked. She pressed her palms to either side of the glass and said aloud, What were you thinking, Maija dear? You actually believe Eleanora’s going to read that note and not call the police? She’ll know it was you, Maija. It was you who told her she was going to die this weekend.

  She fidgeted with her wild curls, and, just as she was planning her escape to the parking lot, saw that Adelaide had entered the bathroom.

  Addie was shaped like a bubble. Her blonde, curly hair was piled in a bun at the top of her head. Everything about her was round, without an edge in sight. Like Maija, she, too, was dressed in jeans and a sweater. You’re not an idiot. She deserves it, you know. Being so high and mighty all the time.

  They’d walked to the parking lot together. So, she’s going to die, huh? Adelaide continued. Tomorrow, you say?

  I don’t know anything anymore.

  Serves her right. Adelaide chuckled.

  Oh, dear. Maija didn’t think Eleanora deserved to die just because she was nasty. Most nasty people lived longer than nice ones. That was the law of the universe.

  Over coffee and pie at the Thunderbird Diner, they discussed Maija’s seeing life.

  I’ve always wondered about that psychic stuff, Adelaide said. I read Sylvia Browne. Do you know who she is? Of course you do.

  Maija told Adelaide about how sometimes the dearly departed would come to her to make peace with their unsolved problems they left on earth. One memory that still haunted her was that of Vic and Isabella’s babysitter, Alex, who died suddenly in a car crash near their house many years ago. That night, Alex had appeared in Maija’s bedroom wearing that big red bandana in her hair, waving and smiling. Maija thought she was really in the house and waved back at her. She didn’t find out until the next night that Alex was dead, that she’d come to say good-bye.

  Maija’s grandparents, neighbors, friends, random people she’d never met—all came to say their good-byes. Her favorite Sunday section of the newspaper was, of course, the obituaries. It surprised her how many times they chose to print the deceased’s high school yearbook photos, even if they were in their nineties. The shades of people that Maija would see were a blend of their younger and older selves. They were a moving form within time and space, uncontained. She’d never tried to explain this to anyone outside of her family.

  That night at the diner, Maija had even told Adelaide about the recent dreams that didn’t feel like her own. In her nightly imaginings, the ones in which Eleanora Finch was not the main character, she felt as if she had been walking through Latvia. She had dreams of Riga and the countryside, marsh and forest, rivers and sand. The birch trees were somewhat familiar. She could hear soldiers marching. In these dreams, she looked down at her feet and they weren’t hers; perhaps they were Oma’s. Maija, now more than ever, needed a friend, and was grateful to have Adelaide in her waking life.

  Now, still sitting at her dressing table, Maija looked at her watch and realized that if they didn’t get to the airport soon, they might be late. She’d heard Paul call everyone down into the foyer ten minutes ago, but her legs were molasses.

  Paul

  Paul stood alone in the foyer with his back to the front door and fiddled with the scrap of paper in his hands. The well-folded creases on Papaji’s itinerary had been softened to a fabric-like flexibility. The last time he held an itinerary in his hand that read New Delhi to New York was long, long ago. Paul thought of his twenty-year-old self as a pioneer, a frontiersman of sorts, with a turban rather than a coonskin hat, charting his path across oceans and through forests. And he knew that Papaji’s visit would bring all memories, desired or not, into the present.

  Paul’s arrival in America hadn’t been one of singing swallows and trumpeting youths. He’d landed in Cobalt exhausted, with a small bag over his shoulder and a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket. His distant cousin, Baba, was the point man for immigration from their village. Baba had come to America on his own and found work, a Herculean feat that had lifted him to mythic status in the village. Now all who wanted to immigrate to the new world had to go through him. Paul had sent him a letter and asked if he could sponsor his visit for a work visa.

  He’d gotten a reply almost immediately via phone. Oi, bháí! Come out here. We will have a first-class job waiting for you. Take the next flight.

  Though the word Cobalt was on his ticket, he thought he was going to New York City—the onl
y New York he’d ever heard of. He’d never seen it, but he’d heard it was a wild place where people made piles of money from a shouting gallery and where a person could get anything delivered at any hour. He’d heard you could order toilet paper when you ran out, and someone would bring it to your bathroom. When Paul arrived, after piles of paperwork and months of waiting for his visa, he found himself alone. No one met him in the airport as he stepped into the terminal. And the New York that he landed in was not the metropolis he’d hoped for. There was a state called New York, he’d learned, with a small village named Cobalt that had a population smaller than his village in India. He was at least a three-hour drive from the mega-city of his dreams. He was terrified and vulnerable, and his surroundings did nothing to comfort his foreignness. All of his senses told Paul that this place into which he had just entered was not home. It was not a town where he’d be able to find pakoras for a snack or khichuri when he was sick. Here he would not find a good glass of chai or pick up a game of cricket with other young men his age. No, Cobalt would be nothing like his village. Of all the emotions Paul had felt at that moment, the one he did not expect was relief.

  He remembered where he’d slept that night: near Gate Two. What he ate for dinner: a bag of Cheesie Crunchies from the vending machine. He remembered the smell of cleaning supplies in the men’s room where he’d washed his face and rinsed his mouth. Baba came the following night. He nonchalantly told Paul he’d gotten the days mixed up. Paul had sat in the airport for forty-eight hours by then and was still jet-lagged from his flight. He was getting strange looks from the security guard. Paul forgot to be angry with Baba when he arrived to claim him. The delight of seeing someone who knew him trumped all.

  The joy of this new experience began to fade after a few months of sleeping on the floor of Baba’s studio apartment. He ate pasta and soup with small balls of meat from a can, while his taste buds longed for cumin and cardamom. This was a new life for Paul, and he had to remind himself of the various exchanges he would have to make in the new culture. Chef Boyardee was just another thing he’d grow to love.

  A few days after he’d arrived, Baba dressed Paul in one of his polyester suits and took him to meet Mr. Charleston, the head of manufacturing at PMI. Though Paul’s English was rough, he could understand the verbal exchange between Baba and Mr. Charleston through their hand gestures: A flip of the wrist upward from Baba meant something positive; downward meant pleading; a pointer finger waggling left and right was something potentially disastrous; a finger standing tall and proud was something promising. From the sidelines, Paul watched his future unfold, curious as to what he’d be doing here.

  Of course he has machining experience. Worked on a farm his whole life. He can run anything. Fix anything. He’s smarter than he looks! Green card all the way! One hundred percent. A tall and taut finger rose into the air.

  Mr. Charleston acquiesced. A few overly vigorous handshakes later, Paul was given a short tour of the facilities and told to come the next morning to begin. His eight to ten hours were spent pressing the tiny tip of a hot metal wire to a very specific spot on a computer motherboard. Some days he’d actually slip a small chip into place on the big jigsaw puzzle of a motherboard. He saved up as much money as he could and stashed it under his mattress, in old coffee cans and pickle jars. It was almost a year before he and Baba could afford to rent a larger, one-bedroom apartment. More cousins came shortly after they’d moved. The larger apartment wasn’t big enough for Baba’s ten new relatives, even with the breakfast nook. Paul took his pickle jars to the bank and got a cashier’s check for a deposit on his own apartment. Lucky for him, too, because not long after Paul had moved, Baba was picked up for harboring illegals from India. From his apartment down the street, Paul had heard that the authorities took his other “cousins” and dropped them off at the airport with one-way tickets. He watched until he was the only one left. Paul had never considered returning home. He didn’t answer any letters from the village. He wanted to be forward moving, like the machines he was making, so he continued.

  Folds of time concealed sections of Paul’s past, covering events and years of his life. He moved on quickly from difficult situations, and his willingness to sever ties left him alone much of the time, with impossible questions dangling around him. His departure from India had been a final snip to the village umbilical cord. This was the most difficult separation he’d ever made—not because he regretted it but because images and people continued to haunt him long after he left.

  Now, in the foyer, Paul straightened his collar in the oversized mirror on the wall above the key bowl. He recalled the day of his secondary school portrait. The student body, thirty in all, had stood still, dressed in starched slacks and shirts and lined up in rows. Expressions were frozen awkwardly, almost frightened, almost proud. His brother, Kamal, sat in the front row on a chair, his eyes sparkling. Paul was just a dot in the back. Paul hadn’t taken the sepia-toned photo with him when he’d come to America.

  He wondered what his brother would have looked like as an adult. He couldn’t see Kamal as a man because death had cut his life short. The loss of his brother had changed his family forever. Paul’s heart had filled with thick concrete before it had a chance to expand on its own. Kamal’s ghost visited Paul in his dreams. Perhaps it was because he could not recall in complete detail the one thing that truly mattered: how his brother died. And so he fought long and hard to erase all memories of his brother from his mind. If he’d never existed, he couldn’t have died and left Paul the only son to receive his parents’ bitterness.

  Paul dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief, then refolded it and slid it into his back pocket. Maybe the old man wasn’t coming as the letter had said. Maybe he’d wrote the wrong date and time on the loose-leaf paper.

  “Chalo!” Paul called for his family, but no one came. “We are going to be late.” He listened but no one responded. “Piyar? Vic? Izzy? I’ll be in the car.”

  Vic

  Vic looked out the window of the car as they drove to the airport. His mother had forced him to wear a periwinkle embroidered tunic that she believed his grandfather had given him years earlier—the shirt had traveled the world in order to arrive on Vic’s doorstep—and it was too tight. His grandfather had passed it to his neighbor in New Delhi who had a son who was visiting America to interview for a position as an engineer. This neighbor’s son, whom the Singhs had addressed as cousin, arrived in New York City and drove over three hours to their home in Cobalt. Cousin didn’t realize how far the Singhs lived from Manhattan, or even that there was a state connected to the city, but when he arrived he was rewarded with a lengthy conversation with Maija and Paul about their relations, whether it was marriage or blood, and a mention of American girls who they knew would love to meet an Indian Indian. He filled his belly with plenty of tea and fried, sugary things and finally delivered the long-awaited package of gifts. Inside the brown paper was a set of glass bangles for Isabella, a tea cozy for Maija, a small chess set and tie that was made in China for Paul, and this most desirable shirt for Vic. The shirt didn’t fit his shoulders, and the Nehru-style neck was a little tight. But still he wore it, and along with his patka, Vic looked more Indian than American.

  Though it had been difficult at first, he’d finally come to grips with idea that he would be sharing his room with his sister to give Papaji his own space. In addition to the duct tape he’d adhered poorly to the carpet, he tacked a sheet to the ceiling with Isabella’s help so they couldn’t see each other undress. He also didn’t want his sister to see the artifacts he’d found underground. He’d moved most of his findings back into the hole in the ground and put the rest under his bed. He could only look at the bits of metal and rock when she was at rehearsal.

  He’d managed to go back to the hole several times and even figured out how best to descend into the shaft without hurting himself. Armed with a fluorescent lantern hanging from his teeth, a slingshot, and rocks in his p
ockets, Vic climbed carefully down the ladder for what felt like a solid five minutes. He continued downward, with his eyes squeezed shut until he finally felt his feet arrive at a level surface. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust, but when they did, he was glad he’d followed his adventurous side. His feet were on sandy mud, and above him was a low ceiling of curved rock. A tunnel stretched in two directions. He bent down and entered.

  The ground was damp. Vic rubbed his fingers along the cold walls. Veins of different minerals made jagged patterns in the sandstone. He walked in both directions for a few steps until he felt more of the same. To make the cave more inhabitable, he’d brought a rain tarp, a blanket, a box of crackers, a milk crate, a bottle of water, and a few comic books he didn’t mind getting wet. He’d also brought cans of food he didn’t think anyone would miss, like navy beans and baby corn, though he didn’t have a can opener yet. Vic built a shelf out of a pile of rocks and hardened soil. On it he kept his most prized possession: the shadow box with his blue butterflies.

  He would never have killed to peruse a butterfly like other collectors; he felt fortunate to have found them so close to their natural deaths. Some collectors paid tens of thousands of dollars to smugglers for rare and endangered species of butterflies and moths. He thought those villains should all die by the same torture they inflict on the butterflies—impalement. He looked at his shadow box. There they sat, almost glowing blue in the dim light as though their wings were phosphorescent and still living.

  Though he’d agreed to have time with Papa once a week, when his father continued to train him in the finer points of combat, he still didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell his father of his new fort. Vic wondered how their small three-bedroom home would change with Papaji in the house. He hoped he wouldn’t have to have time with Papaji, too. At least he had somewhere else he could be if things got to be too much at home.