Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“No more ’fu!” Thomas said, standing up rather dramatically. He scanned the table, taking a moment to locate his glass before plucking it up and heading out.

“So, Ami, what’s this big show Dimple is working on then?” Sanji asked.

“It’s Charles White.”

They all looked at her blankly.

“He’s huge. It’s a big deal that she got him.”

“So does that mean that if we go to the gallery, someone besides Dimple might actually be standing in it?” Chacko grumbled.

“Chackoji, please don’t make me bring out the after-dinner muzzle.” Sanji reached for her drink.

“I will never understand what it is she gets paid money to do. Hang pictures on the wall? And this one, with the weddings! What fool can’t grab a camera and take some snaps of his own wedding?”

“Ami, baby, a spot of gin?” Sanji said, waving her glass helpfully.

“Yup.” Amina snatched it on her way out the door.

“I’m just telling the plain truth; if these girls don’t want to hear it—”

“I know, I know, it will be our own undoing.” Amina followed after her father as Sanji asked in her loudest, most determined-to-change-the-subject voice, “Now, Bala, darling, where did this golden getup come from? You look positively radioactive.”

Out in the cool hallway, it felt good to breathe. These dinners with the family could get so stuffy, what with everyone sitting on top of her like she might hatch. A quick peek in the kitchen confirmed that it was the kind of wreck that Raj was prone to making and Sanji was doomed to clean up, being, as she put it, “bad in all other feminine arts.” In the living room, Thomas was pouring another drink with a scowl-darkened face.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Now, that is just not true.”

“What’s not?” Amina walked up behind him.

“Stop it,” he said.

“What?”

Thomas turned around with a start. “Amina!”

“Who were you talking to?”

He blinked a few times before saying, “I wasn’t.”

“I heard you.”

“Really? I must have been talking to myself.”

Amina gauged the fumes coming off him. He said nothing as she made her way around the bar, getting a gin and soda for Sanji. “How many have you had?”

Thomas shrugged. “I don’t know. Two.”

She doubled the number. “I’ll drive your car home.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“I do.”

“Whatever,” Thomas said, sulking as he always did when she pointed out his drinking, but later, as dinner was finally declared over and everyone stood out in the driveway under the pocketed haze of street lamps, he bragged to the others that his “chauffeur” would be taking him back to his home in the country.

“So you’re leaving Friday?” Sanji asked, walking them to the car.

“Yes. Afternoon.” Amina unlocked the doors and slid in. She rolled down the window, and Sanji leaned through it.

“How about if I come Friday morning. You’ll be around?”

“Like there’s anywhere else for me to be?”

Sanji gave her a fat kiss on the forehead. “Good girl.” She peered over Amina’s shoulder to where Thomas was already settling in for the long ride home, sweater bunched into a pillowish mass behind his head, seat back reclined, large, sock-covered feet on the dash. “Good night, Thomasji. Try not to drive this one too nuts before Friday, nah?”

“Can’t drive a nuts nuts!” Thomas said cheerfully, not quite opening his eyes.

Amina slid the car into gear, and her aunt backed up, waving. Soon Raj and Chacko and Bala joined her, their hands raised into the light and flickering like moth wings in the rearview mirror as Amina drove away.

In the garden the next day, Amina and her mother weeded and watered, while dragonflies buzzed overhead and Prince Philip snored into an anthill.

“I don’t know where to plant these ones,” Kamala grumbled, squinting down at the plastic trays filled with cubed earth. Just a few were beginning to sprout, the thin curls of green reaching out like greedy fingers.

“Can’t you put them next to me?”

“No, that’s for pumpkins.”

“What about back there?” Amina pointed to the fresh mound at the back of the garden. “You’ve already tilled the soil.”

“That dumb dog did it. I gave him a lamb bone the other night, and next thing I know, he’s built the pyramid of Giza for it.” She picked up the hose, moving it to the bean trellis and releasing the wet, sugary green smell of snow peas and hot soil. Amina breathed deep.

“Nothing smells like the desert.” Kamala smiled. “We went to Texas, remember, for the wedding of that Telegu girl in your high school?”

“Syama?”

“Yes, she married some Houston boy, father arranged the whole thing, but I tell you what about Houston: too much of smell! I was so happy to come home. Nice, dry air, everything crisp in the morning.” She bent over the eggplant. “What about Seattle? You have a garden there?”

“You know I don’t.”

“How can you stay in that place? No yard?”

“I don’t want a yard.”

“Everybody wants a yard!” Kamala knelt to pull a few weeds that were springing up next to the peppers. “Oh, by the way, don’t make plans for tomorrow night. I’m making you appam and stew.”

“Oh, Ma, you don’t need to do all that for me.”

“What all that? It’s nothing. And anyway, Anyan is coming for dinner and it’s his favorite.”

“Who?”

“Thomas said you met him at the hospital — the neurologist? He has a son, so he’ll bring him, too.”

“Oh, right. Dr. George. How old is his kid?”

“Eight.”

“Cute. What’s his wife like?”

“Foo! Horrible.” She pushed a strand of loose hair behind her ear. “I met her last year at some hospital fund-raiser something or other, but then she left him! Can you believe? She’s living in Nob Hill with some Afghani now.”

Amina stopped weeding. “Wait, what?”

“I know, poor Anyan! Can you imagine? I’m sure he’ll meet someone though, hot commodity in the hospital and all that. The nurses are probably plotting over him now.”

Amina looked up at the sky, taking pains to breathe evenly. “No. I’m not doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“I’m not doing this.” Her voice rose slightly as she stood. “You are not doing this to me.”

“Having dinner?”

Amina took off the gardening gloves and dropped them in the dust. She turned to leave the garden, willing herself to stay calm until she was in her room.

“Where are you going?” Kamala asked. “We’re not done planting!”

“You know, Dimple said this. She warned me you would do this, and I — God! — I didn’t believe her. I thought it was too low. Even for you. You’re trying to set me up with Dr. George ?”

“It’s dinner, koche , not some formal thing where you have to make a decision and—”

“Make a decision?”

“Amina, listen, it’s no big deals. I just thought you might like to—”

“Oh my God,” Amina laughed, shaking her head. “Is Dad even sick?”

Kamala looked at her for a long moment before saying, “I never said he was sick. You said he was sick.”

Right. Of course. “So then what was the plan, Ma? You get me back here and Anyan George and I make a decision and what? He gets a wife and his son gets a mother and I get a family you can brag about?”

“What’s wrong with a family?”

“I don’t want one!”

“Yes you do. You need someone, koche . Everyone sees it.”

It was a soft hit, an unexpected knock that cut Amina’s breath short.