My father shook his head and told me I was still angry over his criticism of my Emperor’s Saffron Chicken.
I remember a baby crying in the distance. At some point, my father hobbled away, and the paramedics found me in the smoke. And, of course, they found Madya’s body soon after, in another part of the field. Six months ago, a newspaper reporter came by the restaurant. He ordered tandoori-style shrimp. He asked me how my life had changed since the time of the crash, seven years ago. Had I come to terms with my loss? I thought about this. I watched him eat. I remembered Madya running her fingernails through my hair that time, our joined grief. “I am always coming to terms,” I said, finally. “It does not end.”
Michael’s head hummed. He put the essay down, and for a minute he saw Videsh in the smoky field with his dad. What they were talking about was important. But he couldn’t hear what they were saying because that baby was crying so loud. Then he wondered if Videsh and Madya had a kid somewhere. He thought how babies, before they’re born, can hear their parents’ voices outside. But words don’t go with anything in that dark.
He got up, put the essay back. He turned off the lamp and lay down.
Outside, the sprinkler system turned on. Chit, Chit, Chit, it said.
24
LAST YEAR KATE had made a New Year’s resolution to get out more. To meet new people, reconnect with her old friends. But it didn’t happen. So on the heels of the fifth anniversary, she’d RSVP’d to an early-December Christmas party some of her old neighbors were having. She felt a little raw so soon after, a little disloyal somehow. Her dreams still gave her pause—the girls’ quarrelsome visits, the odd new rooms added to the existing ones, the disquieting presence of men. She’d been preoccupied with the approach of the anniversary but now needed to get back to running her three miles along the river, eating better. She wasn’t thirty-five anymore but she still had her looks, hadn’t let herself go. She’d even called up Margo Farbrother, who was pregnant for a second time. Margo who’d intimidated her early on with her good skin, high cheekbones, and shapely ass. Margo had convinced her to rejoin the book group. They were reading Moby-Dick now, Margo said, but skipping all the whale stuff. “Where are all the women?” Margo had said. “How about throwing us a bone?” There were more troubles with Margo’s stepson. Calls from his probation officer. Why had she and Darnell thought having a kid would change Michael? Margo wondered. He’s adrift, she said, a lot like his brother Andrew, according to Darnell. Margo worried about Michael’s daughter, Alice, too. What might be in store for her if things broke a certain way? Michael seemed oblivious. “It’s like that old joke,” Margo said. “Why should I care about posterity? What’s posterity ever done for me?” She laughed nervously.
“You’ll have your own kiddo to worry about soon enough,” Kate said. “You’ll be such a great mom.” Kate was a good listener. It felt liberating to be out of her own head. To worry about someone else.
“Wow. It just never ends, this worry stuff,” Margo said, and then there was a silence on the phone.
“It’s fine,” Kate said. “It’s fine. And you’re right.”
It was late when Kate showed up at the Christmas party. She’d even brought a date: Edward. She’d met him online. He worked contracts in the legal department at Dell. Edward had large hands and he bit his nails. But they were clean nails, she reminded herself. She ignored his bitterness about his divorce, concentrated on his attentiveness to her, their mutual interest in hiking and bird-watching—something, along with the book group, that she’d picked back up. Edward sometimes made birdlike sounds in his sleep, odd little clicks and coos. The sex wasn’t bad. Edward joked that he’d gotten such a late start because his strict Southern Baptist family viewed sex as an awful, filthy act that should only be saved for someone you marry.