Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Hey,” Thomas said softly, and this time Chacko looked at him. “You will see your daughter married. You will know her children. Isn’t that enough?”

His question hung in the air, a gentle missive. And then what was it that Chacko said, what did he do to bring the soft collapse of relief to the room? Amina did not know because she was no longer looking at her uncle but at the empty spot of floor where the couch used to be, the full weight of the future she was losing with Thomas falling through her like a rock. The air current shifted, the family swishing and dipping and spooling toward one another, Dimple heading to the phone while the rest started making the kinds of plans they loved to make, where everyone had something to deliver. Amina held her breath, rigid, waiting for the worst to pass. She, Kamala, and Raj would handle the food. Bala would take care of decorations. Sanji would keep a running list of everything that needed to get done and make all the trips to the store. Thomas’s hand clasped the back of Amina’s neck, warm and dry. She looked over, surprised to find him standing, to have him so close. How much strength had it cost him to shuffle over? He pulled her to him, and she pressed her hot face into his shoulder, relieved to have a place to hide it.

“Tell me again,” Jamie puffed, hoisting an enormous chandelier made of at least twenty round white paper lanterns into the sturdy branches of a cottonwood, “why this is a good idea?”

“Because if we put these up, we can get rid of most of the other lights and the house will stop looking like a Broadway show mental ward.”

“So there’s a light quota?”

“Apparently, yes.”

He grunted and dug his heels into the foldout linoleum dance floor Thomas had dug up from some corner of the porch. Poor Jamie. They had really put him to work once they realized the advantage of his size, making him Thomas’s proxy. So far he had repositioned the couch in the field, added another length to the dining table, handed Kamala every single dish from the top shelves of her cabinets, and emptied the truck of bags of sod (not a wedding duty per se, but something Kamala and Thomas had been so excited about, he couldn’t really say no). Amina zoomed in on his hands on the rope, then lowered the camera, looking at the instant replica of him in the viewfinder.

“Is that high enough?” he asked, panting.

She looked up. “Maybe like a foot more?”

“You’re insane.”

“I mean, can you believe this?” She turned the camera toward him, showing him the tiny picture of his own hands.

The digital camera was a present from Sajeev, who had arrived the day before to a flurry of cheek pinchings from the women and handshakes from the men (with the exception of Chacko, who nodded stiffly at him and then left to walk the perimeter of the yard, as though checking for intruders). Amina had promised to familiarize herself with the new camera before the wedding though Dimple was adamant that she not use it.

“Oh my God!” her cousin said now, coming around the side of the house with two potted plants. “Is that the light thing? That one we’re standing under?”

“You like it?” Jamie asked, his arms shaking. They hadn’t exactly been fast friends, Jamie and Dimple, sniffing around each other with a fair amount of suspicion, but they were making an effort, more enthusiastic with each other than they’d ever been alone with Amina.

“It’s amazing! How did you get it to do that? All those clusters?”

“Don’t ask,” he grunted, tying the end of the rope to the stake. “Or not unless you want to hear Amina’s dad talk about it for a really, really long time.”

“Speaking of,” Dimple said, looking over her shoulder. “Someone should really get him out of the kitchen before Raj and your mother kill him. And then someone should get Raj out, too.”

“That bad?” Amina pulled the lens tight on her cousin’s face, liking how the marigolds threw ochre at her cheeks and chin. She showed Dimple the result.

“Ugh! Stop with that. It’s so annoying.”

“It’s instant gratification!”

“Gratification should be delayed.”

“Whatever, single mom.”

“Shht!” Dimple glanced over her shoulder for the Roys, who had flown in that morning, befuddled but well mannered as ever, and who, the family had decided, did not actually need to know about Dimple’s pregnancy until the wedding was over and everyone was safely back in their separate states. (“And even then,” Bala had said over dinner the night before, “babies come early all the time, no? Who’s to say this one didn’t?”)

“I thought your mom had the Roys working on the flower garlands,” Amina said.

“She did. And like most normal people, Sajeev’s dad decided he’d rather shoot himself. Last I saw him, he was looking at some weird sign in the back with a cat on it.”

“Raccoon,” Amina said. “It’s the Raccooner.”

“Okay,” Jamie said, wiping his hands across his shirt and checking the raw marks on them. “Should we try it out?”

Amina began backing into the field, camera pressed to her face. “Go.” He bent over, head down, and suddenly the lanterns blazed above him, circles upon circles of light bouncing off one another. Jamie and Dimple stood under it, heads turned up. They looked like a fairy tale, a giant, an imp, and a bubbling moon hovering over them.

“Come here. You’ve got to see this.”

“Who?” Dimple asked.

“Both of you,” Amina said, and they came, picking their way across the grass, turning around to look back.

It was not the most beautiful wedding she had ever photographed. For one, the potted marigolds didn’t hold quite the same amount of romance as other, traditional bouquets, say, calla lilies or white roses. For another, the mismatched tablecloths, folding dining chairs, and rainbow of napkins made the dinner setup look like a deranged child’s tea party. But that evening, as Dimple and Sajeev said their vows under Thomas’s constellation, as Sanji fanned her face hard enough to keep her dry-eyed, and all the other adults (save Kamala) gave in to a quiet weep, Amina understood that these pictures would be the ones she would never tire of looking at.

Dimple, standing in Amina’s bedroom in a towel, bony-shouldered and frazzled with excitement. Bala running down the driveway with flowers so that the Roys would not enter the property without something of beauty to welcome them. Thomas and Chacko, heads bent over the fuse box, trying to figure out what had tripped the outage in the back half of the house. Kamala sprinkling more chili powder into Raj’s sambar while he looked in the fridge. Sanji, sneaking a cigarette out on the Stoop because “What are you girls, if not my very own heart growing up once and for all?”

Later, there would be the arrival of the Roys, Sajeev shaking hands with Chacko at last, the fumbling of rings, the dinner. Prince Philip would make off with a leg of tandoori, Chacko and Dimple would have the pined-for father-daughter dance, and Amina and Thomas would join in at the end, at the beckoning of the others.

At nine o’clock, just when it looked like the Roys were getting ready to announce their departure for their hotel, Amina put on “At Last” and waited for it to work its magic. It did not disappoint. Couple by couple went to the dance floor until all five were dancing. Sanji and Raj clung to each other, exhausted, while the Roys floated by. Dimple and Sajeev swayed, her head tucked firmly under his chin. Bala kept talking to everyone, no matter which way Chacko turned her. Kamala and Thomas barely moved, foreheads pressed together, hands clasped around each other’s waist. Amina stepped onto a dining chair to get a shot of everyone, while Jamie steadied her hips.