Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“What picture?” Jamie asked.

“Nothing.” Amina shook her head dismissively. “Another time.”

“The Indian man jumping from a bridge!” Kamala said excitedly. “Not Indian our Indian, Indian feathers on the head. It’s famous! She didn’t tell you?”

“Wait, not the one from a couple of years ago. In Seattle? The chief?”

“Community leader,” Amina corrected with a wince.

“You took that picture?”

“You know it?” Kamala nudged Thomas, who was back to looking at the garden, jittery. “He knows it.”

“You took that?” Jamie looked impressed.

“Yes! And after, she became a wedding photographer,” Kamala said, nodding. “And now she might be starting her own highly successful events-photography business out here.”

“Ma.”

“What? You might! Did she at least tell you there will be one show of her work in a Seattle gallery in a few weeks?”

“Yes, that I know.”

“Be right back,” Thomas said, rising from his chair and making a beeline for the garden.

“Mrs. Eapen, would you mind if I had one more poori?”

“Have, have!” Kamala handed Jamie two more, and they fell into a discussion on pooris and why (in Kamala’s opinion) they were superior to fry bread and why hers (just ask anyone) were better than most. Amina turned around and watched as her father walked rigidly out to the garden, stopping at the gate. He leaned over it. Said something. Waited. Said it again. Then he turned around to come back, his face drum tight.

“Oh, hey, Dimple’s coming tomorrow,” Amina said, suddenly remembering. “Well, today, actually, but she’ll come over here tomorrow morning.”

Kamala frowned. “Why?”

“She wants to see Dad.”

“Pish. She should be so concerned about her own parents. Bala worries for her all the time only.”

Thomas returned to the table, sitting heavily.

Amina leaned forward, trying to catch his eye. “So, I was just telling Mom that Dimple is coming to see you tomorrow. Sometime in the morning.”

“Dimple is Amina’s old friend from school,” Kamala explained to Jamie. “Not much in common anymore, but what can you do?”

“Yeah, I remember her from school.”

“Oh!” Kamala’s face lit up. “You went to Mesa Preparatory? I didn’t realize! No one said!”

“It’s not some huge deal, Ma.”

“But then he will know everyone you know! All the kids and everyone who is out here. You’re in touch? Lots of socializing?”

“Uh, kind of.”

Amina looked away, distracted by Thomas. His eyes pinged from side to side, like he was trying to remember where he’d put something important. Amina nudged him with her foot again.

Kamala chewed her food a little, swallowing before asking, “So you knew Akhil, too?”

“Yes. Actually, he dated my sister, Paige.”

Kamala blinked rapidly, mouth moving slightly, as if she was finishing the rest of the sentence without sound, and Thomas’s gaze snapped from the garden to Jamie. “You’re Paige’s brother?”

“Yes.”

He leaned forward. “From high school? That girl he dated?”

“Paige Anderson.”

“Paige Anderson ,” Kamala repeated softly, like a lyric to a song she’d been trying to remember.

“The girl.” Thomas looked at Amina for confirmation. “The one.”

“She came here once, I think,” Kamala said, and Jamie nodded. “Unbelievable!” Thomas howled, and slapped the table.

“Yeah,” Jamie started. “Kind of a strange coincidence, I guess.” Thomas laughed loudly, and Jamie smiled despite the strangeness of the situation, because who could resist Thomas’s sudden burst of joy, his smile growing by the second like he’d won some sort of cosmic lottery?

“Did you hear that?” Thomas called out to the garden. “Paige Anderson’s brother is here!”

Amina shot Kamala an alarmed look.

“Here!” her father shouted, a little louder. He pointed at Jamie. “Right here!”

“Pa,” Kamala said, touching his arm softly, but he shooed her away, fumbling for his binoculars.

“Hold on, I want to see his face.”

Kamala bent her head to his ear, slipping into a heated whisper of Malayalam that Thomas did not even pretend to listen to.

“He’s ignoring me. Pretending he can’t hear me again.”

Amina tugged Jamie’s arm, but he was riveted, his mouth slightly open, like he was watching a movie.

“YOU HEAR ME?” Thomas yelled, a thread of frustration in his voice making them jump. He was growing agitated, one hand holding the binoculars while the other clenched and unclenched. His arm shook as he motioned to the garden. “See how he does that? Acts like he’s not listening but he’s listening? I used to do the same thing. Drove my mother nuts.” Amina looked helplessly at the garden, the blue evening spreading out around it like water.

“Me too,” Jamie said.

Thomas turned to him.

“My mother hated it,” Jamie continued, a flush rising to his cheeks. “Told me I’d regret it someday.”

Thomas looked at him for several long seconds before sitting back down slowly. “And did you?”

“Yeah. I did, actually.”

“And are you close now?”

“She died a few years ago. Breast cancer.”

“And were you with her when she died?”

“Yes.”

“In the room? Right there?”

“Dad!” Amina said, but Jamie was already nodding, a sad, surprised smile on his face, like he’d just caught an unexpected glimpse of a place he missed, and this seemed to mean something to Thomas, who leaned back in his chair, shutting his eyes.

“You have nothing to regret,” he said.

After dinner, she led Jamie up to her room and went down the hall to take a shower. When she came back, he was lying awkwardly across her bed, entirely too large for it, staring at the canopy.

“So this is what girls like?” He motioned upward, the lines in his face carved deep with thought. “Looking up at tiny flowers all day and night?”

“When they’re, like, seven.” She sat down.

“Can we talk about Air Supply?”

“Nope.”

“Damn.” He wiped a drop of water from her shoulder. “I knew you’d say that.”

He looked exhausted, bags the color of bruises under his eyes. Amina bent over and kissed his cheek, then his forehead. “We wore you out.”

“I sleep better with you in the bed.”

Amina smiled, her eyes moving from his mouth to his neck to the button she most wanted to undo on his shirt. She leaned over him, letting the towel unfold.

“Whoa. Wait, no.” Jamie sat up, pushing it closed with both hands. “Not happening. Not in here.”

“Seriously? They won’t even know.”

“Yes they will. Your father will know. And then he will come up here and he will kill me with his freakishly large thumbs.”

“Jamie.”

“And there’s no way I’m getting turned on in this bed. And frankly, you should question the moral fiber of any guy who does.”

Amina looked at the bedroom door, perplexed. “My dad has large thumbs?”

“How do you not know that?”

She lay back on the bed. “So you survived dinner.”

He grunted.

“I’m sorry about that whole thing. Your mom.”

“It’s fine,” he said, and when she looked at him, he looked fine, the plates in his face shifted to seal off whatever had pierced through when he was talking to Thomas. “Anyway, they’re way nicer than you said.”

“Last month my mother wouldn’t have even talked to you.”

“Yes she would have.”

“You don’t know my mother!”

“Okay, fine. She would have thrown chutneys at my head. So what, now she’s too worried about your dad to bother?”