She had initiated the lovemaking. Turned to him in the middle of the night and pressed herself upon him. Taken his hand and placed it on her breasts and later, between her thighs. Kissed him on his lips with a mounting desperation that she pretended was lust. And he had responded. Had kissed her back passionately. Their bodies worked their way toward each other as effortlessly as they always did. But Ellie sensed some reserve on Frank’s part, a hesitation, a missed beat. She had intended their lovemaking to be a cleansing, an act of oblivion. She had wanted to cry, to break down, to claw at the veil of an uncaring universe. To dissolve in a mess of sweat and tears. Had wanted to seek and deliver forgiveness, to replace this hard, cold silence between them with something alive and affirmative. Had wanted the friction of skin to warm their frozen blood. Instead, Frank rolled away after she climaxed, back to his corner of the bed. Instead, she lay there for the longest time, feeling more alone than she had ever felt before. Instead, she stared into the darkness, feeling more distant from her husband than she had the last four months.
She woke up the next morning with a new kind of resolution. Instead of worrying about Frank, she was now worried about herself. She recognized how close to the edge she had walked these past few months and knew herself well enough to know that she could not sustain that degree of misery. That she wanted to belong again to the world and wanted to be made large by her grief, not shrunk by it. That she didn’t want to use the tragedy that had befallen her as a crutch, or worse, as a stick to beat up others with. Rather, she wanted to be softened by her grief, made more human. Even if it meant opening herself up to new wounds, new vulnerabilities. She felt capable of this now, felt a new willingness to give up the soft gauze of numbness from which she had peered at the world for the last several months. She would not shrivel, would not become a snail living in her shell, like Frank. And most important, she would not let herself believe that grief was a tribute to her dead son, that she was honoring his memory by not living a full life. How often she had seen her clients fall to the lure of this sweet myth—women who did not date for decades after a divorce, adult children who would never touch ice cream again because their elderly mothers had craved it on their deathbeds, women who had been left by their husbands making a virtue out of celibacy. As if misery was ever the antidote to misery. No, the best way to honor the dead was by living. They had failed Benny these past few months. If their sunny, joyous son was indeed in heaven looking down at them, he would not recognize the people they had become.
She was determined to change that. She didn’t see her first client until one o’clock today, and so there was time to drive to the florist and come home armed with a large bouquet of flowers. She arranged them in a large red vase that she placed on the kitchen table.
On the drive to work, she allowed herself to roll down the window and let in the beauty of the world. For the first time in months, she noticed how delicious the sun felt against the skin of her forearm, how delicate the afternoon breeze felt as it slipped into her car, observed the tinkling loveliness of the tiny yellow and blue wildflowers along the side of the freeway. By the time she got into work, her face was flushed with heat and life.
As luck would have it, her first client was Amy Florentine. Amy was a retired schoolteacher, a tall, gruff woman in her late sixties. She and her longtime husband, Fred, had first come to Ellie four years ago to work through some marital problems. Long after they’d quit couples counseling, Amy had taken to stopping in three or four times a year, for what she referred to as her tune-up sessions.
But this was the first time that Amy had been back since Benny’s death, and Ellie wondered if her client had heard the news. She didn’t have to wonder for long, though, because as soon as Amy walked into Ellie’s office, she extended her hand and said how sorry she was.
“Thank you,” Ellie said. They sat facing each other, and Ellie fought the urge to pull the blinds so that Amy couldn’t see the motorcade of emotions that crossed her face at the mere mention of her son.
“Well, how have you been?” she started but Amy cut her off. “You remember I lost my son Jim almost twenty-five years ago,” she said. “And I tell you honey, there’s days when it’s still real hard. So be real gentle with yourself.”
Ellie did remember. A diving accident where Jim jumped into a lagoon and hit his head on a rock. Fred and Amy had mentioned it to her during their very first session, and Fred had reached over and held his wife’s hand all the while they were talking about it. She had liked them immediately, but had been amazed that a couple who had gone through so much together could still have marital problems in their late sixties. Now she knew better.
She also knew better than to lay her burden at a client’s feet. But Amy’s face was luminous with sympathy and understanding, so different from the faces of those whose lives had been untouched by tragedy, who made all the right sounds and murmured their condolences and then hurried back into the bright lights of their good fortune. And so she found herself asking, “Does it ever get any easier?”
Amy Florentine looked at her for the longest time. Then she shook her head. “You’re asking the wrong question. What you’re trying to do, Ellie—what we all do—is you’re trying to salvage something of your past life. But it doesn’t work that way. What the death of a child does is that it wipes everything out. Clears the decks. The plain truth is, honey, what you once had is gone. So what you have to do is build a new life. From scratch. And the bitch of it is, you’re not left with much. So you gather in every miserable twig and leaf that you can find and you build with that.”
“I still get tricked all the time,” Ellie said. “Every morning I wake up, and my first thought is, Benny’s gonna be late for school, or Damn, I forgot to pack Ben his lunch. And then I remember, and it’s like dying a little bit all over again.”
“That part will go away,” Amy said. “But I’ll tell you something right now, Ellie, that nobody else is gonna tell you—the pain will never go away. It’s always there, even years and years later. And there’s so much pressure to bury it. It’s just the way our culture is—even grief comes with an expiration date, you know? You’re supposed to nod and smile because raw emotion embarrasses other people.”
“I sense it already,” Ellie whispered. “I ran into Benny’s old teacher at the store the other night, and when she asked how I was doing, I told her the truth. Not good, I said. And she immediately changed the subject.”
“I know. My Jim was twenty when he died. All his friends who were with him that night at the lagoon, boys who practically grew up in my house—nothing. They all turn their heads away when I approach.” She fixed her gaze on Ellie. “I’m telling you all this so that you won’t take it personally when it happens to you. It’s just human nature, honey. They don’t mean anything by it.”
Ellie smiled. “I feel like I should be paying you for this session.”
“Nonsense,” Amy said immediately. “Fred and I came to you in the first place because we’d heard you were a real person. Not one of those know-it-all, theory-sprouting robots who call themselves therapists.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, honey, don’t make me name names.”
“I know what you mean,” Ellie said. “I went to school with some of them.”
She didn’t get done until six that evening, but she walked into the house charged with a new feeling of resolution. Frank was already home and was sitting on the couch sipping a glass of wine. She went and sat beside him. “That looks nice.” She sighed, eyeing his wineglass. The old Frank would’ve immediately offered her a sip from his glass. The new Frank jumped off the couch and got up to pour her her own glass. She made herself not notice the difference. “Thanks, hon.” She smiled. “How was your day?”
He shrugged. “Nothing special. Same old, same old.” He didn’t ask her how her day had been. She made herself not notice.
She finished her wine and then got off the couch. “Cyndi Sheehan is speaking on campus tonight. I was thinking of going after
supper. I don’t suppose you would want to go?”
He stared at her. “What’re you talking about?”
“You know who she is, right? She’s the peace activist who lost her son in Iraq?”
“I know who she is, Ellie. Obviously. What I don’t understand is why you would want to subject yourself to more sad stories when we are barely—” He cut himself off. “Forget it.”
“No, finish what you were saying.”
He turned to face her, his eyes shiny with anger. “I’m finished.”
“What are you so mad about? Why are you treating me like this?”
“Don’t start on me, Ellie. You’ve been itching for a fight since the moment you walked in. From before that, even.”
He was giving her a headache. “Frank, what the hell are you talking about? I was actually in a good mood when I came in today.”
“I see that,” he yelled. “I noticed. As if anyone could miss the red vase in the kitchen. And the goddamn flowers.”
Ellie looked at Frank, fearful for his sanity. “That’s what’s set you off? The fact that I bought flowers? I was just trying to cheer myself up.”
“Cheer yourself up by making the house look like a goddamn funeral home? It’s been four months since we buried our boy, and I still see him in his coffin every night. And you, you…”
She flew back to the couch and threw her arms around him. “Oh, honey. That was the last thing on my mind. Oh, God, Frank. I can’t live like this. I can’t live in a home where flowers remind us of death instead of life. Please, babe.”
He leaned into her for a moment, and then he stiffened. “Just leave me alone,” he mumbled. “I—I just have to deal with this in my own way.” He reached for his wineglass, using the movement to get out of her arms.
“Can’t we just talk?” she tried, but his aloof expression when he turned to face her was the answer she needed.
They sat on the couch in silence for a minute, and then Ellie pushed herself off. “Listen,” she said. “I don’t feel like cooking supper tonight. How about if we both manage on our own? There’s leftovers in the fridge.”
“So you’re going to go to this peace rally thing?” he asked.
She wavered for a moment, wondering if this was his way of reaching out to her, asking her to spend the evening with him. But then she remembered the conversation she’d had with herself earlier today, about wanting to be enlarged by tragedy rather than shrunken, about using her loss to connect her to the lives of others. Besides, if Frank needed her to stay, he had to learn to ask.
“Yes,” she said, and turned away first.
BOOK FOUR
Autumn and Winter 2007
Girbaug, India
CHAPTER 19
The drumming was thrilling—loose and wild and yet totally controlled. It brought out something in Ellie that she hadn’t felt in a long time—a nervous excitement as well as a deep happiness, the kind she normally felt only when faced with the vastness of the ocean or in Big Sky country. This is India, she kept saying to herself, I’m in India. As if she had just arrived.
Before her, Asha, carrying a short red stick in her hand, danced with a man from the village. All traces of the demure, shy girl who acted as Ellie’s translator were gone. In her place was a whirling, twirling, gyrating seductress who rhythmically struck her baton or dandiya against the one her dance partner was holding, who moved and swayed to the incessant pounding of the dhols. Along with maybe two dozen other villagers, the couple was dancing in the clearing in front of Nandita’s school and clinic.
All of Girbaug’s residents seemed to have turned out in their finest clothing for the Diwali celebration this November. Ellie snuck a sidelong glance at Frank. He had been reluctant to come, afraid of the reception he would get from the villagers. But Nandita had marched into their home a few nights ago and told him sternly that he had to attend, that the villagers would take his absence from their most important holiday celebration as a slight. “Besides, Frank, you might actually have a good time,” she’d added sarcastically. And Frank had grinned and told Nandita that she sounded exactly like Ellie and that he could fight one of them at a time but once they ganged up against him, he had no goddamn choice but to acquiesce.
Ellie was glad he was here. And, judging from the way his fingers were involuntarily tapping against his thigh as he kept time to the music, so was he. In his open white shirt and dark green pants Frank looked gorgeous, she thought. The sun was setting behind them, and it lit up Frank’s golden hair like a streetlamp.
She wasn’t the only one who had noticed, apparently. A cry went up from the crowd as Mausi, the village’s oldest resident at ninety-two, got to her feet and hobbled her way to the clearing where the dancers were gathered. She was supported on either arm by two boys who were Ellie’s students and whom she assumed were Mausi’s grandsons. But as the three-person procession moved up to the front row, where Frank and Ellie were sitting with Ramesh, Nandita, Shashi, and a few other westerners who were visiting Shashi’s resort, Mausi stopped. Shaking off the boy who was holding her right arm, she reached out one bony hand and ran her gnarled fingers through Frank’s hair. Frank froze, his eyes darting toward Ellie for help. But then Mausi removed her hand, gathered her fingers together, put them to her lips, and flung a kiss at Frank, who had turned three shades of red. All around them, the crowd roared with laughter. Hoots and whoops rose in the air.
But Mausi was not done. Still standing beside Frank, she pantomimed that she wanted him to escort her to the dance floor. Frank looked as if he’d been drilled into his chair. It didn’t help matters that Ramesh, sitting between Frank and Ellie, was bouncing up and down yelling, “She is wanting you to do dandiya with her, Frank.”
“I can’t,” Frank said finally. “Tell her, I can’t—I don’t dance.”
But just then two of the drummers strayed from the clearing and made their way to where they were sitting. “Chalo ji, chalo,” one of them chanted, and the pounding got even more fervent and loud.
Nandita leaned over. “Guess you have no choice, Frank,” she grinned over the noise of the drums. “Mausi always gets to choose her first partner.”
Mouthing a silent fuck that only Ellie could hear, Frank let one of the drummers pull him to his feet. The crowd roared. Mausi grinned, showing all of her three teeth. The dancers opened up a space for the newcomers. One of the men handed Frank a baton and showed him a few steps.
He looks like a clumsy-footed white man, Ellie thought with bemusement as she watched her husband struggle to clink the baton in time with Mausi’s. It didn’t help that Mausi, bent with osteoporosis, came up to his waist. What Ellie had always loved about Frank was his lithe, catlike surefootedness, which made him a wonderful dance partner. But here, dancing in the open air under a darkening sky, surrounded by brown-skinned men and women dressed in a dazzling array of reds and greens and yellows, he reminded her of an elderly man in those checked green pants at a golf outing.
Nandita must have read her mind. “You have to go help him,” she said. “He looks miserable out there.” And before Ellie could answer, Nandita was pulling up both Shashi and Ellie. “Come on. I’m dying to dance.”
Ellie didn’t need to be asked a second time. From the time they’d arrived here for the feast and celebration, from the second she had heard first the Bollywood music over the loudspeakers and later the beating of the dhols, from the instant she had taken in the dazzling beauty of the village women and seen the laughing excitement of the children as they set off their fireworks—the rockets that raced in a zigzag line toward the sky, the fountains that erupted in a shower of red and blue sparks, the spirals that spun in an orbit of light and color before dying out—she had felt something relax within her, felt an expansive, giddy joy. Also, a sense of belonging that she didn’t quite understand. Yesterday, while visiting the homes of some of the village women who couldn’t come to the clinic, she had noticed that each mud-baked hut had a clay diva at its entrance. The simp
licity of the tiny earthenware oil lamp had brought a lump to her throat. She thought of them as emblematic of the quiet, simple dignity of the people who lived in those homes.
She had tried describing Diwali, or the Festival of Lights, to her parents last year. Imagine July Fourth lasting for a week, she’d said, but she knew that didn’t quite capture the sheer lavishness, beauty, and generosity of the festivities. Just the universality of the offering of food—there was no way to explain that to her middle-class parents. Every home in Girbaug bought or made sweetmeats for Diwali and distributed them among neighbors, friends, and visitors. All the women who had come to see her at the clinic yesterday brought her a few pieces of sweets. All of them, no matter how poor. The mothers of the children who came to school also sent an offering of some kind. In one case, a child had simply given her a single piece of rock sugar. It was like Christmas, except you exchanged gifts with the whole town.
Now she was trying to control the sway of her hips, trying hard to resist the tug of the pounding drums that were making her lose her inhibitions, making her want to dance manically, the way she used to in nightclubs when she was in her teens. But that was the beauty of the dandiya dance—it celebrated the paradoxical joy of movement and restraint, of delirium within a structure. This was not about individual expression but about community.
Frank turned to her with something akin to relief. She saw the beads of sweat on his face. “Hey,” she yelled, above the music, tapping his baton lightly with hers. “Having fun?”
“I’ve had better dance partners before,” he said wryly, but then he grinned, as if he was having a good time despite himself.
Nandita and Shashi made their way up to them, Shashi shaking his hips in such an uncharacteristically uninhibited way, it made Ellie giggle. There was something nerdy and a little absurd about Shashi, and she loved that about him.
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