It was their wedding anniversary. Benny was three years old. Right now, he was playing by himself, digging up the wet sand with his yellow shovel and filling up his little green pail. He squatted a few feet away from them, jabbering away to himself. The setting sun had turned his skin a rich shade of bronze.
Ellie was sitting across from Frank on the blanket, the summer breeze running through her hair. He took in the delicate curve of her neck, the sharp nose that was sniffing the salty air, the dark vein running down the slender arm. He felt a lump grow in his throat, felt something in him ache with longing. It didn’t seem possible to love her even more than he had the day he’d married her. But he did.
“Whatcha thinking?” he whispered.
She smiled and turned her head away from the ocean and toward him. The sun trembled in her eyes. “Of a quote by Shaw that I came across recently. It says, ‘A happy family is but an earlier heaven.’”
Involuntarily, they turned toward their son. He was now picking up the wet sand with his hands, flattening it into a patty, and then flinging it away. “You’ll have to give him his bath tonight,” Ellie said wryly. “I’m not touching him.”
He lay back on the blanket and stared at the sky. The sun was coughing up colors that any self-respecting painter would have been embarrassed to use on a canvas. He watched the moving, flowing crayon streaks and then said, “Here’s a saying for you: ‘The sky is an upside down ocean.’”
“Who said that?”
“I did. Frank Benton Shaw.”
They giggled. Benny looked over, and Frank sat up immediately. “Hey, sweetie,” he said. “You wanna come sit with us for a few minutes?”
They moved closer to each other, their knees touching, as Benny tottered over to them. The boy sat in front of them, and they both threw one arm around his chest. “Are you cold, honey?” Ellie asked, and Ben shook his head no.
They sat that way, drinking in the last, sweet drops of the day. The sun hovered at the edge of the horizon, declining to go down, like Benny refusing to go to bed.
All around them, the earth was sighing. They joined in its miraculous breathing.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The following (in alphabetical order) helped this novel happen:
Dr. Blaise Congeni, director of pediatric infectious diseases at Akron Children’s Hospital, for sharing his medical expertise with me
The Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, for a much-needed fellowship
Kim Emmons, for long talks on long walks
Sarah Gridley, conspirator in mischief and creativity
Mary Grimm, who suggested turning a short story into this novel
Eustathea Kavouras, who never stops believing in me
Kulfi and Baklava, superhero cats
Annerieke Owen, wife of the U.S. Consul General in Bombay, for a prompt resolution to a specific question
Marly Rusoff, the most hardworking agent on the planet
Noshir and Homai Umrigar, my forever people
Claire Wachtel, my irrepressible editor
Sarah Willis, thoughtful critic, generous friend
Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends.
—VIRGINIA WOOLF
Me, too.
—T.U.
About the Author
THRITY UMRIGAR is the author of three other novels—The Space Between Us, If Today Be Sweeti, and Bombay Time—and the memoir First Darling of the Morning. A journalist for seventeen years, she is the winner of the Nieman Fellowship to Harvard and a 2006 finalist for the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. An associate professor of English at Case Western Reserve University, Umrigar lives in Cleveland.
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BOOKS BY THRITY UMRIGAR
Fiction
THE STORY HOUR
THE WORLD WE FOUND
THE WEIGHT OF HEAVEN
IF TODAY BE SWEET
THE SPACE BETWEEN US
Nonfiction
FIRST DARLING OF THE MORNING
Credits
Jacket photograph © Aroon Thaewchatturat/Jupiterimages
Jacket design by Christine Van Bree
Copyright
THE WEIGHT OF HEAVEN. Copyright © 2009 by Thrity Umrigar. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, 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.
Adobe Digital Edition March 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-185357-9
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