“I have my breakfast at dawn here at the hotel, and then coffee midmorning at the Namgyal Café, a half-hour walk from where I’m staying, and the young waitress at the café, Lakshmi, asks me to explain how Boston differs from Dallas, Maine from Missouri, Los Angeles from Detroit, if cowboy boots are still in style, ripped jeans, the Japanese way of doing makeup. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the Japanese way of doing makeup. She wants to know if she’ll be seen as American if she dyes her hair pink or green. I can’t figure out how she comes up with these various comparisons, or what she needs the information for, but I try my best, and the way she puts these ideas together is funny.
“And I’ve gathered my courage and eat dinners at the food stalls along Temple and Bhagsu Roads. The chefs nod and smile and hand me my order of momo. Scrumptious, as Lakshmi says. I’ve been to Bhagsu Falls twice, and to the Norbulingka Institute, and to Dalhousie. I’ve explored several temples, and the meditation rooms at the Dalai Lama’s complex, watching the monks turning prayer wheels in that unhurried way they have. An exercise of faith I find impossible to grasp, even though I’ve done a few koras myself.”
Vita does not know Joan’s reason for being here in Dharamshala, and so Joan does not say that in these seven days, despite all that she has seen, it is a very slow process, this regaining of internal stability. Still, she finds herself breathing a little easier each morning in the buoyant air, and when Kartar says, “Good morning, Ashby,” “Good afternoon, Ashby,” “Good evening, Ashby,” her name is beginning again to reflect something worthwhile.
“Sounds marvelous, darling. Please do not be insulted by what I say now. You sound like you believe you must prove what you’ve seen. That you’re experiencing everything. But what you’re experiencing is outside of yourself. Do you remember what I said to you—that you are meant to reclaim the young girl you were? I think you need a break from the sightseeing, or at least something more than sightseeing. You need to commune, not with nature at large, or the history of where you are, but with your own nature and your own history.”
Before Joan can respond, Vita Brodkey says, “I do not need to know what ails you, but I know you came here to rediscover yourself and it is critical you do so. It would be a shame were you to return home without accomplishing that.… Oh darling, I must go. Biju has arrived for my third session. I do want to know what my next love will look like. Whitson was not very tall, and it would be nice if this one was. Call anytime!”
*
Vita is right. Joan has been alone, keeping to herself, walking everywhere, engaging only with Lakshmi at the café, with Kartar at the desk, nodding at those visiting the places she visits, but it is not the same as communing with herself. Indeed, her dreams are substantive evidence that she is avoiding that kind of communion.
She made one decision several days ago. She will not seek Eric out until she is ready.
Two decisions. Starting today, she will take a break from Iger’s and Martin’s phone calls. Her contract with AIB is now signed, so really, what is there to talk about with Iger, especially since Joan has taken off the table any discussion about Daniel’s actions. And when she speaks with Martin, she finds herself gritting her teeth in response to his deliberately light and loving words. Last night, the words were not as deliberately light or loving. “When are you coming home?” She reminded him she planned to stay three weeks, but that her return ticket was open-ended, and she might not rush back. When he said, “Joan, nothing will get resolved with Daniel while you’re so far away,” she had needed to take a deep breath before saying, “Martin. I’m not interested right now in resolving anything with Daniel.” For a long time, he was silent, transmitting over all the thousands of miles between them the cool current he meant for her to hear, the knowledge, too, that he was deliberately refraining from the fight he was yearning to start. He finally said, “Right. You’re right. Stay as long as you need.” From now on, she will no longer listen to their voicemails, she will send them travelogue emails of what she sees when she feels like it, but she will excise their voices, the way they insist on ushering in the faraway world.
Three decisions. Tomorrow she will go to that afternoon meditation class in the Dalai Lama’s courtyard, and perhaps Camille Nagy will be there. How difficult it all is. She has what she has long wanted: an unfastened life. And she is starting to recapture the solitude and independence she forfeited with marriage and motherhood. She is free as a bird, beholden to neither person nor clock, coming and going as she wants, eating and drinking only when the urge strikes, not worrying about anyone’s needs or desires or threats to their existence, but now that time is all hers, her mind no longer belongs to her alone, her heart pumps steadily, but when it thumps out of alignment, beats irregularly, she knows which hard beats belong to Daniel, which to Martin. Perhaps meditation will help.
Four decisions. She will give up expecting any apology from Daniel. His silence should tell her that he is aware the English language lacks sufficient words to explain his actions, that however she might have failed him, she did not deserve such devastation.
Five decisions. She will stop beating herself up for not yet contemplating the idea of writing. She is still a heartsick writer with stolen work, riven and given titles she hates. The fury has not cooled much. Perhaps the meditation can help with that too.
Six decisions. She will print out the letter she wrote to the Dalai Lama at Dulles waiting for her plane to Delhi. She will ask Kartar if there is a special mailbox for letters written to him. She will ask if sending her letter to the Dalai Lama, with the hope that she might meet him, is like believing she can win the lottery.
Well, she has won a kind of lottery, hasn’t she? But money doesn’t solve everything: all the new dollars in her separate account won’t alter the fact that Daniel has expunged so many years of her life, wiped out the motherhood she had never wanted but fully embraced, crushed the illusions she had about herself as a mother, and those dollars won’t help her determine what her next steps ought to be, or return to her the grace she found writing all those words he stole.
The lottery she’s thinking of, it’s the spiritual one. How does she win that one?
37
In the courtyard of Tsug Lakhang, the Dalai Lama’s complex, the red silk pillows are already set out, twelve of them in a circle, like numbers on a clock.
Three young men sporting weedy beards stand together, at pillows one, two, and three, hands deep in the pockets of their jeans, talking in whispers.
A young woman with cropped peroxided hair is trying to settle herself on the nine pillow. She is round as a ball, dressed in a white sort of muumuu, and the silk pillow disappears beneath her bulk.