Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“I’m so glad you think so!” Dr. Abraham smiled. “Of course it’s not a neurosurgical wing, as I’m sure you’re aware, but we are putting together a first-rate facility for trauma and recovery.”

“Yes.” Thomas looked vaguely panicked. “What a nice project for you all.”

“You remember M. K. Subramanian from your class? He is in the process of interviewing the physical and cognitive therapists, while I am recruiting doctors from round the country. And what a stroke of luck that you are here at the right time! When your mother called, I could hardly believe it. Perhaps you’d like to meet with him tomorrow?”

Thomas smiled, clearly pained. “Well, now, you see—”

“Perfect! Tomorrow is perfect.” Ammachy placed a pakoda on the doctor’s plate. “We were planning on going to the hospital anyway in the late afternoon; we could stop and meet you both then itself.”

“Fantastic. I would love to show you the facilities, and have you meet a few of the staff.” Dr. Abraham tucked his napkin into his shirt collar. “Doesn’t this look delicious!”

He busied himself with spooning a generous amount of chutney onto the pakodas, so he did not notice how Thomas dropped his head between his hands, how he rubbed his knuckles against the side of his head as if ironing out knots.

“Are these from Sanjay’s?” The doctor raised a ladoo to his lips. “I do love their sweets, you know.”

“I remember.” Ammachy smiled. “I bought them especially.”

“You needn’t have gone through the trouble—”

“No trouble, no trouble at all.”

A mewl escaped from somewhere deep in Thomas’s throat, stopping the others as it turned into a full-throated groan. The doctor’s eyebrows went up and Ammachy’s back went rigid as Thomas pushed his chair back from the table.

“Dr. Abraham, sir, would you mind very much if we went for a walk in the yard?”

“Now?”

“Eat first, then talk!” Ammachy pushed a tin of mixture at the doctor.

“I’m terribly sorry.” Thomas looked slightly ill. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

“Oh. No.” Dr. Abraham looked ruefully at his plate. “Of course not.”

Thomas rose, revealing a damp U where the sweat had soaked through the back of his shirt, and walked straight out of the room. Dr. Abraham took the napkin from his collar and carefully folded it, nodding to Ammachy. Her mouth fell in a hard line as he followed Thomas into the garden.

And what were the men saying, under the shadow of the leaves? Amina watched them through the heavily slatted window, heads ducked to the onslaught of the white sun, arms tucked neatly over chests. They stared at the plants in front of them with such concentration that they might have been discussing fertilization or watering schedules. Dr. Abraham nodded once, curtly, and then again, a little more heavily. Arms were uncrossed, hands clasped. The men walked toward the front of the house with slow steps, where the whinny of the gate latch and the roar of traffic soon gave way to silence. Amina waited for her father to come back and finish his tea. Minutes passed.

“Where did Dad go?” she finally asked.

Ammachy, who appeared to be studying the tablecloth very hard, did not answer. Amina was about to ask again when a tear ran down her grandmother’s cheek, as fast and unexpected as a live lizard. Amina panicked. Should she say something? Hug her? Both seemed equally impossible. Still, when another tear followed the first, Amina found herself holding her grandmother’s hand. It was thin and pale and cool as marble, the skin almost moist with softness. Ammachy took it back as Kamala entered the room.

“Oof.” Kamala yawned, sitting heavily in a chair and pouring herself a cup of tea. She stirred in sugar drowsily, finally glancing up at the full plates and empty seats. “Where did everyone go?”

Ammachy pursed her lips, as if to spit.

“Uncle and Itty went to the bank,” Amina explained.

Kamala blew on her tea. “And your father?”

“Dad went out with Dr. Abraham.”

“Really?” Kamala’s eyes flew to Ammachy. “When?”

Even not looking directly at her, Amina sensed how her grandmother seemed to ignite suddenly, a palpable flame ready to damage anything it could. She was silent for so long that Amina thought maybe she hadn’t heard Kamala’s question. Then she leaned across the table.

“Fat like one angel,” she spat. “Thomas was born so strong and fat, I knew he would become something. Engineer, head of the Indian National Army, best brain surgeon in all of America. He could have married anyone! Such dowries we were offered!”

Kamala looked at her stonily. “You should have taken them.”

“It was not my decision.” Ammachy stood up and cleared the men’s plates so that they clanged and jostled and threatened to break between her hands. She turned her back on the table, marching toward the kitchen with stiff shoulders. “It was not my decision at all.”

But where had her father gone? Now missing for more than six hours, Thomas had sent the house into tumult in his absence. Ammachy wandered from room to room, fighting with anyone who crossed her path. Sunil, having crossed her path twice already, found a bottle of toddy and was devouring it in the rarely visited parlor. Divya had tucked herself in a corner of the verandah. Itty ran circles on the roof. Kamala, Akhil, and Amina sat on the upstairs bed, playing their fourth game of Chinese checkers.

“Your move, Mom,” Akhil said.

“Yes.” Kamala glanced down at her watch and inched a blue marble toward a yellow triangle.

“What time is it?” Amina asked.

“Nine-thirty.”

Akhil did an elaborate series of jumps, sliding one more marble into configuration.

Amina sighed. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

“That’s just because I’m winning,” Akhil countered.

“You win every game!”

“So don’t play.” Kamala rubbed her own forehead, smoothing out the lines that had settled into it.

“But there’s nothing else to do!”

“Enough of whining! Go see what Itty is up to!”

But Amina didn’t want to see Itty any more than she wanted to see the Chinese checkerboard, or the inside of her parents’ sweltering bedroom, or Akhil gloating for the millionth time in a row. She pushed off the bed, heading instead to the stifling, fanless stairway, and lay down at the top of steps, letting the marble’s momentary coolness slide into her. A whole muffled world rumbled under her ear, clicks and groans of the house, the shup-shupp ing of someone’s slippers, slow, whale-like moans that she imagined coming from the depths of a huge, cool ocean. Her hip bones dug into the floor, and she heard something else. Singing. Was someone singing? Amina lifted her head off the floor.

“… fingers in my hair, that sly come-hither stare …”

Music! It was coming from below. Amina peeked over the stairwell. She crept down a few steps, and then a few more, until she was able to see into the parlor.

“Witchcraft …,” the record sang, and Sunil along with it, his eyes shut, his face shining. A record spun in neat circles on the turntable, and next to it, her uncle followed, arms cupping the air in front of him, knees bouncing.

Amina stared in dismay as Sunil pivoted from one foot to the other, his hips cutting the air in deft strokes. It was like watching a muskrat slip into the Rio Grande, all of its clumsiness turned to instinctual grace. His meaty upper half arced, dipping near to the floor, then back up.

“I know it’s strictly taboo …”

The lightness in his face was something Amina had never seen before. He was, she realized for the first time, a handsome man. Not movie-star handsome like Buck Rogers, not even tall and sharp-jawed like Thomas, but appealing all the same. He took one quick step back and twirled to the right, his hand guiding an invisible partner.