“That’s probably my fault,” he offered, his head down.
“No, no,” I said, running my fingers through his thick hair. “It’s just some stuff at work.”
Neel returned to his math, unconvinced. I hated that the kids were being affected by this mess now too.
I made the omelets and gave them to the boys. “Start with these.” Once they were eating, I turned my attention to other things.
I didn’t have an exact plan for the gun. I went out to the car, making sure the kids didn’t see me bringing it into my bedroom, still in an enormous shopping bag, and locked the door. The salesman had helped me load it. I felt safe with it in my hands, but I didn’t feel safe with it lying around. Where could I put it so the boys wouldn’t find it—where Eva wouldn’t find it—until I had a chance to explain things? I carefully shoved it deep under the bed.
“Hey guys,” I said, walking out to the living room. “I need you not to go into our bedroom tonight.”
“Why?” Neel asked, inquisitive as usual.
“I’d like one room where your Legos aren’t spread out,” I said, then immediately felt bad for turning blame on them. I softened my voice. “It’s just for tonight. Promise?”
Both boys agreed.
They went back to their eggs and their work, and I spent the better part of the next hour making them more food, helping them finish their homework, and cleaning up the kitchen. After dinner they went out to the backyard to shoot baskets. I monitored for trespassers as casually as possible.
As soon as it was dark and the kids were back inside, I closed all of the curtains in the house, careful to get all of the corners too, so that no one could peek in. I stood at the front door, watching the cars drive past, checking to see if any of them slowed down in front of the house. I didn’t see any Mini Coopers.
By the time Eva got home, at 9:30, both kids were fast asleep. When she’s out late, I often stay up watching basketball on my laptop or maybe a Swedish murder show. But I wasn’t in the mood for either. I’d been sitting in our bedroom in the dark. When Eva walked in, I could sense her fatigue.
“Long day?” I asked.
“Brutal. Why are you in the dark?”
“I was reading and just turned off the light,” I said, lying. I needed a few minutes to gather myself.
“Can you take the kids tomorrow? I have to be back at work by seven.”
“Of course,” I said. “Leave whenever. I’ve got nothing else.” That last line lingered in the air. The truth had a way of smelling up the place.
Eva sat down on the edge of the bed, her shoulders slumped.
“They want me to fly down next week.”
“You should. The kids and I will be fine.”
“There are four hundred dead so far,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. She peeled off her clothes and left them on the floor, as if she’d shed dead skin. “Neighborhoods reduced to rubble.”
She got up and went to take a shower. When she came out several minutes later, the light from the bathroom shone into the room. I was still just sitting, but I’d moved the rifle next to my chair so that it was in plain view. I could see on her face that this was one step too far in an already long week.
“What the hell is that, Raj? Please tell me it’s a toy you confiscated from the kids.”
“I bought it today,” I said, already sensing that no reason was going to be convincing enough for her. “It’s for shooting small animals. The gophers have been bad this year. And of course, the snakes.”
Eva looked at me as if I had revealed myself for exactly who I was: someone who cracked easily under pressure. She quickly got dressed. “What’s the matter with you? Are you OK?”
“No,” I said, “I’m not. I’m the pariah of the TC, my career is and has been in shambles, I’m the target of bigots across the nation, and now some of them are calling our house and threatening us. Oh, and also, my doctor won’t call me back to tell me whether or not I have cancer. So, no. I’m absolutely not OK. Nothing is OK, Eva.”
I could feel tears gathering in my throat. I swallowed and tried to push them down.
“The doctor will call you back,” Eva said, her voice softening. “But what do you mean, people are calling our house? What are you talking about?”
I caught her up on the meeting, the conversation with Robert, the phone calls, the car I was sure was following me. “They know where we live.”
“Then let’s call the police.”
“And tell them what? I’ve gotten two calls about my alleged anti-Christian bias? They’re not going to do anything.”
“But at least they can take down a report.”
“Sure. We can do that. But what about Robert? There’s something about this guy, Eva. Something about the way he keeps staring at me. It’s so easy to find out where people live on the internet. I just don’t feel safe.” I showed her the emails I’d gotten that afternoon. “This is not an empty threat. We need to protect ourselves. I want to be able to protect you and the boys if anyone comes here after me.”
“But you’re the one with the gun,” Eva said.
“If someone were to come to our door right now, threatening us, wouldn’t you prefer me to have this? It could take the cops ten minutes to get here. And it would be too late by then. This will help me keep us all safe.” I picked up the loaded gun and held it out to her, as if it were a ceremonial sword. “Just hold it for a second.”
“Don’t point that thing at me,” she said, sounding genuinely terrified. She took a step back.
“Relax, I’m not. I just want you to hold it. To see what it feels like.” How, in a matter of hours, had I come to sound like a guy who sends a yearly check to the NRA?
“I don’t want to. You know there’s nowhere in this house we can keep that. The kids will find it, I just know it. Neel is a bloodhound. I don’t even want to think about them finding it. If something were to happen to them because of that, there wouldn’t be any going back for us.” Her voice cracked as she said this.
“I’ll keep it from them, I promise. I’ll get a safe. But I need this right now. I’ll get rid of it as soon as everything calms down again.”
“Get rid of it now,” Eva said. “I’m not going to be able to sleep if it’s in the house, and I’m exhausted, and I need to get up early. Can you go put it in the car or something? And then come to bed. We both need some sleep.”
I took the gun out to the hallway. I wasn’t ready to give it up. I leaned it against a shelf filled with books, many of which Eva and I had inherited from our parents and grandparents. Old copies of Ulysses and The Discovery of India, Marx and Kipling, my father’s well-worn editions of the Upanishads and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, both with check marks and underlinings throughout. I removed the Upanishads and walked into Neel’s room, kissed him on the cheek, and checked again that his window was locked. I went across the hall and did the same with Arun.
And then, book and gun in hand, I went down the hall and opened the back sliding door into the yard. It wasn’t a full moon, but it was close, and it cast silver light across the lawn. I left the book on top of our picnic table and walked the perimeter of the property. Where my hands had trembled with the shovel and the snake, they were calm and steady now. There were all sorts of noises—a passing car, a rustling in the bushes, wind in the trees, coyotes howling in the distance. Of course, I knew rationally that Robert, or whoever was calling me, wasn’t going to show up right at that moment. But then the week had made a mockery of reason.
After a full lap, I went inside, poured myself a hefty bit of scotch, and took it out back. I sat on top of the picnic table under the porch light. I flipped through the pages of the Upanishads, lingering on the passages my father had marked. Maybe I’d find some advice on how best to move forward when you argue with your wife about a gun and the world seems to be closing in on you. His typical counsel—be neither happy in victory nor daunted in defeat—wasn’t cutting it, no matter the crazy returns it
had somehow gotten him on his investments. There had to be something more practical in this book, though nothing was leaping out at me. Maybe it was the scotch moving too quickly to my head, or the fact that the language was so abstract and arcane, but none of the passages made much sense. I closed the book and finished my drink.
When I went back inside, Eva was asleep. I carefully placed the gun in the farthest part of my closet; I wasn’t going to leave it in the car. It seemed easier for someone to break into that. I got under the duvet. The sheets were warm and the pillows were cool. I looked over at Eva, whose face was tense, even in sleep. I knew that I would lie to her in the morning and say that I’d left the gun in the car.
Wanting to put the thought from my mind, I checked my phone. There were more emails from strangers and none from Cliff. There were also three emails from Robert, all sent within minutes of one another. The first one had the subject line “On Durkheim.” It was a video of me giving a lecture on religion a few weeks back. He had written a note: “This was a great lecture.” The next email was simply titled “The Walk.” It was a video of me walking around campus. I didn’t know when it was taken. And the last one: “The Poet.” It was taken earlier in the day, right after Emily had noticed me in the parking lot. We had hugged, not just once but twice. The hugs were quite intimate. Then she’d locked her arms in mine and we’d walked away, both of us animated, clearly happy in each other’s company. I looked over at Eva.
I couldn’t figure out which of the last two videos unnerved me more.
Friday
WHEN I WOKE UP, with the bright morning light streaming through the bedroom window, Eva was still fast asleep. No one had knocked on the door in the middle of the night, no one had broken in through the windows. I got up and looked in on the kids, both of whom were still deep under the covers. I opened the curtains in the living room. Everything outside was green, clean, and unthreatening.
As I was making my coffee, I heard a steady, rhythmic beat coming from the back. It was 6:30, but next door one of the farmhands was already out doing his rounds. His job was to walk around the edges of the field, banging on a white plastic bucket. Apparently, it kept the crows from picking off the blueberries. He often started this early and spent the better part of the day traversing the property, beating. “How does he do it?” Eva asked. She had come into the kitchen.
“I don’t know.”
She went to the pantry to pack the kids’ lunches.
“You should take a shower and go,” I said. “I’ll take care of everything here.” I thought about showing her the video of Emily Baker and me in case Robert posted it. I had nothing to hide, but taken out of context, I knew it would give her pause.
“And you’re going to return the gun today?” Eva asked, giving me an intent stare.
“Yeah, I will. I never should’ve bought it. But you know it’s just a basic rifle. It would have been useful with that snake.”
“We didn’t need a gun,” Eva said with a grin. “I took care of it.”
She left the kitchen and returned twenty minutes later, dressed and ready to go.
“I have an idea,” she said, standing close to me, taking a sip of my coffee. “What if I go down to Mexico next week for work, and afterward you fly down and we go somewhere far from the earthquake? Just a couple of days at the beach in the warm water. My parents could watch the kids. We both could use a little downtime.”
“I’d love a break,” I said. “That sounds great.”
“Perfect. I’ll search for hotels. It’ll give me a distraction at work. Maybe I can look into Tulum if it’s not too far. Someplace kid-free.” She poured her own tumbler of coffee. “I’ll probably be able to pick up the kids after school. We’ve done most of what we can do from here. But I’ll let you know if I can’t.”
I had a regular drop-in tennis game I liked to play on Friday afternoons, but I wasn’t about to ask her to leave work early for that.
“OK. If you can’t, I’ll figure something out. I have the membership meeting at five. I’m sure the kids can hang out while I’m in it, if work gets too busy.”
“I should definitely be there by four forty-five. You don’t need to worry about the kids running around while you’re in the meeting. I’ll keep them down at the pool. You’ll have plenty on your plate. Nervous?”
I shook my head, feigning confidence. But I didn’t need to pretend with her. “A little.”
“I know you think it’s cheesy, but just speak from your heart. You’re pretty effective when you do.”
Eva left, and I finished making lunches for the kids.
“Mom still saving the world?” Neel mumbled when he walked into the kitchen, rubbing sleep from his face.
“The earthquake is bad,” I said. “But she’s probably going to pick you both up this afternoon.”
“Tell her I need a little extra time after school today.”
“For what?” I asked.
“An art project,” he said cryptically.
Arun was still asleep, so I went to his bed and got under the covers.
“Hi, Mom,” Arun whispered.
“It’s Dad.”
“Do we have school?”
“It’s Friday. One more day.”
“And then we can play video games?”
“Then you can play video games.”
Arun would have been perfectly happy to stay in bed, with the covers over him, for the rest of the day. I could see why. I had slept so poorly myself, I could use a full day to calm my mind.
Later, as I waited in line to drop the kids off at school, I saw Leslie, whom I had no interest in seeing. She waited for Neel and Arun to get out before walking up to the driver’s side of the car.
“I’ll see you tonight?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said.
“Mark has been emailing us. A lot.”
“So I hear,” I said. “It’s going to be fine. I’m actually excited to talk to him. He’s been so busy talking to everyone about me, I’d love to hear what he has to say in person.”
I had a plan for the meeting. I was going to force myself not to interrupt Mark as he lectured me. I was going to keep calm. And then I was going to unleash everything I wanted to say to him—and to the committee—without ever losing my cool. Anger would only hurt me.
But that was all for later. There were more pressing tasks at hand.
It took me well over an hour to write the email. At first I addressed it to Cliff, Cynthia, and Josh, in that order. Cliff was my immediate boss, even if Cynthia had a higher position in the hierarchy of the university. And obviously Josh came third. But at the last minute I had a change of heart and put Cynthia first. She was the one who was going to make whatever decision needed to be made.
Once the salutations were settled, I turned to the note. I decided to be as straightforward as possible:
Yesterday evening, I received a series of emails from Robert, the student who took the video of me in class, and whom I spoke with yesterday. They included more videos, which I am forwarding here. I will let you draw your own conclusions, but it is clear that he’s developed an inappropriate interest in me. The woman in the third video is the poet Emily Baker, who gave the Campus Reads talk yesterday. She’s an old friend of mine from graduate school.
I sent the email and then checked in on my ever-growing online presence. The first video and article had tracked well over ten thousand comments. I couldn’t believe that many strangers were taking time out of their days to spit on me.
I usually devoted Fridays to writing. Most weeks I spent hours struggling over an essay, a small project that at some point I was confident in, but this week I couldn’t look at any of it. I did a cursory check on the pages and pages I had written on Ahmedabad; for the first time in a long while, I felt that I might be ready to return to them, make some real sense of what had happened to that city. I wondered whether the deadly splintering among neighbors that I had seen there was starting to mirror the slow-movi
ng splintering I now saw in my life here, both places enamored with their own sense of harmony and openness.
I worked for an hour or so, then checked my email. Nothing. I couldn’t believe it was taking them so long to respond.
I went out to the yard. I needed some distance from my phone. I watered and overwatered everything. I’d hated gardening when I was a kid and my dad had made me help him, but as an adult, it gave me a sense of accomplishment, as if I had finally come into my own, tending steward to my own land.
I handled with particular care our large pot of bougainvillea. At some point, a seed had migrated from the fig tree on the other side of the yard, and now there was a large fig branch growing inside the bougainvillea pot alongside the magenta flowers. I loved that a seed could travel across our lawn, with the aid of a bird or the wind or some other force, and root itself deeply enough in this new place to start producing fruit. I was watering it when the drummer walked by again, just on the other side of our fence. Despite being home so much, I had never seen him up close. He was probably in his fifties, but he looked older from years spent in the sun, his forehead the texture of an old leather football. When he saw me, he raised his index finger to signal he’d be right back. About one hundred yards away, a group of men and women were picking fruit. He walked toward them and I continued my watering. He returned with a small bucket that he held over the fence. I grabbed a hold of it. It was full of fat, freshly picked blueberries.
“Niños,” he said with a smile on his face.
“Thank you. They’ll love them.”
He continued on with his drumming, and I finished watering.
When I got back inside, proud of the time I had let pass without checking my email, I took a quick peek. Still nothing.
Over the next few hours, I was tethered to my desk, sure that an email would arrive imminently, while I had the space and clarity to respond. I made lunch. I checked my email. I cleaned the house and folded some laundry. I checked my email again. Nothing. Still.
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