“Rama,” he said, “had heard from the people of his kingdom rumors about what had happened to Sita while she had been kidnapped by Ravana. The demon insisted that she become his bride, and though Sita refused him, the people questioned Sita’s chastity during her long captivity. ‘She must have given in to him.’ Even Rama questioned her honor. So Sita asked Rama’s brother to build a huge pyre and set it ablaze, and she told Rama that to prove her purity, she would walk through the fire. If she had been true to him, then she could walk through unscathed. If not, she would perish in the flames. Now, you may think that just proposing the test would be enough, but Sita insisted, and of course, she passed through the fire whole and pure as she had always been.”
That was all for the first night’s story. Over the next weeks, as summer gave way to autumn, my father would come into my room every so often and tell me more of the Ramayana, all the parts he had left out when I was a small girl. They had a trying marriage, Rama and Sita, predicated on doubt while trying to do the right thing, living the dharma. Rama took her back that first time, after the trial by fire, but he later sent her into exile again because of the persistent rumors in the kingdom. In exile, she bore him twin sons—Lava and Kusha. Sita, the original single mother, raising those children on her own. Years later, Rama chanced upon those boys and they sang to him the song of Rama that their mother had taught them, such was her loyalty, and only then did Rama realize his error and wish to welcome his sons back to his throne. And yet, still, Rama had his doubts about her, so in the end, Sita asked Mother Earth if she could return to her one true home, and Sita went down into an opening in the Earth, back to her Mother’s embrace.
“That seems an odd story for a father to tell his daughter under the circumstances,” Sam said.
Sita laughed softly. “For sure, if you read it as an allegory for my situation. But my father wasn’t recommending trial by fire or a return to Mother Earth for me. I was not the goddess, and Matthew was certainly no god, no incarnation of Rama or anything of the sort. My father had the opposite intent in mind, if any moral is to be drawn, though I am not sure if the purpose of poetry and stories is to provide morals. His point may be: no man is worth such a sacrifice, eh?”
From downstairs came a sudden thud and crash, as if someone had bumped into a sideboard laden with glasses and knocked one to the floor. Judging by the ebb and flow of the conversation below, the guests were busy tidying up the mess. My brother swung his legs and put his feet on the floor. Sita sat beside him.
I got better in time. My father’s stories may have helped, more for the teller than the tale. Certainly the chance to be home again and under their care. Do you know Bachelard’s concept of the Desire Path? You find them all the time in landscapes, the paths or lines carved into the earth by animals or humans, the path worn by traffic across a park or open space, the most expeditious way from point to point. I loved the sound of it. I followed the desire path home. What I needed. There I found myself again, and by the following term, I went back to school, finished my degree. Took much longer to trust men after that. Lots of first dates, but nobody special. Four years wandering in the desert, and then my desire path led to Jack.
In the book and gift shop at the American Institute of Architects, a lovely unknown place, right around Christmastime. I was looking for a tie for my father, and this guy is the only other person in the shop. Must have been midafternoon on a cloudy December day in the middle of the week. I can’t help but notice this man just wandering amid the merchandise. It’s not a big shop really, but he passed by me a couple of times, and I can’t really tell if he’s looking for something in particular or if he’s working up the courage to speak to me, so finally I just ask him outright, “Can I help you?” The look of surprise in his eyes is priceless, and then he thinks that I work there. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he says. “Something inspirational, thought-provoking, something to help me dream.”
“Are you an architect?” I asked him.
“In a manner of speaking.”
He looked just like a small boy caught in a daydream, so I took him by the hand and led him to the bookshelves and pulled out Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. “You’ve heard of this?” He shook his head, so I handed him the book, and you’d have thought he was never going to move from the spot, never going to speak again. Just stunned. I suppose I was too forward.
She’s right about the book. I never would have found it without her. But I’m not so sure just how shy I was when we met. I mean, I was instantly attracted to her, she’s strikingly beautiful. I seem to recall a certain savoir faire on my part—
“Who are you kiddin’?” Harpo asked.
“Ah, what do you know?” Had I a shoe, I would have thrown it at the cat.