Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

You’ve been sick. You thought the coatrack was a person. Amina shrugged. “Not much.”

“The Luceros’ son got married,” Kamala offered.

“Ah, yes, how was it?”

“Awful. Food was terrible. Bride was fat.”

“Ma!”

“What? It’s true.”

“She was pregnant!”

“Well, she was fat, too,” Kamala said, licking the pads of her fingers clean like a cat, and Thomas looked amused.

“What else?” he asked.

“I’m having a show,” Amina said, and watched as the surprise prismed both her parents’ faces. “Or, well, Dimple is. Dimple’s gallery is showing my work.”

“Wow!” Thomas smiled weakly. “Will people see it?”

“That’s the idea.”

“When?” Kamala asked.

“It’s in September. I’ll probably head back for the weekend or something.”

“Good for you. Excellent, excellent.” Thomas squinted at her like he was seeing her in the future, when she’d finally become the person he always knew she’d be. “What photos? Any we’ve seen?”

“Not really, no. Some newer stuff. Mostly weird moments at weddings.”

“Jane must be so proud.”

Amina nodded. Sure. Why not?

Thomas stood up, uncurling his spine slowly, and picked up his plate.

“I’ve got it.” Kamala reached for it. “You go take that shower. I put a stool inside in case you need it.”

“Pshht! I’m not an invalid, woman.”

“I know that. It’s only for just in cases.” She smiled shyly at him, sweetly, Amina thought, filled with an eagerness to reassure him that there was no frailty she couldn’t forget, no action she couldn’t rewrite, and it occurred to Amina that there was never going to be a good time to talk about what was going on.

“I found a bunch of your things in the garden,” she said.

“You want rasmalai for dessert?” Kamala asked, shooting her a look.

“What things?” Thomas asked.

Amina told him, feeling bad about the way his eyes dropped to the brick floor, the way he reached for the counter, looking newly nauseated. He sat back down heavily.

“You don’t remember putting them there?” Amina asked.

“No.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Kamala said. “Nobody cares anyway.”

“None of it?”

He looked at her uneasily. “Not really.”

“I thought you had maybe left the shoes for Itty.”

“Don’t be an idiot!” Kamala huffed. She snatched Amina’s plate away, taking it back to the sink. Thomas looked at her carefully. “That’s who you were seeing the other, day, right?” Amina asked. Her father’s brow knotted, as if he was trying to locate his own memory. After a long moment, he nodded.

“And the trophy was for Ammachy?”

“Amina,” Kamala called over her shoulder. “Leave it.”

“I just, I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about it,” Amina said. “You’re seeing things. You can’t help it. I don’t know why we have to be so weird about it.”

“No one is being weird! Who is being weird?”

“You are, Ma.”

With surprising force, Kamala lifted a plate above her head and threw it. It shattered in the sink, releasing a live, buzzing silence. Amina watched her mother’s small body hunch over, hands clutching the edges of the sink like she would lift the whole thing and slam it down if she could.

“Itty asked, so I gave them,” Thomas said.

Amina nodded calmly, trying to keep her face from registering any hint of worry, but something in her chest bunched up on itself, like a cat being cornered. From her periphery, she saw Kamala bend into the sink and begin picking up the pieces, which scritched against one another like beetle shells.

“Did Ammachy ask for the trophy?”

“No,” Thomas said, looking uncomfortable. “I just thought she would like it.”

“And the album?”

“That was for Sunil when he …” Thomas looked helplessly at the counter.

“He what?”

“He wanted to hear it.”

It wasn’t stupid to think that talking would make things better. Weren’t there entire schools of psychology dedicated to that premise? Wasn’t the television talk show confessional born from it? Still, as Thomas leaned in and told Amina about his last few months (haltingly at first, but then faster and more freely, as if each word were water carving out a bigger channel from brain to mouth), as he spoke about not only a brief encounter with Derrick Hanson, but whole weeks of Itty, Sunil, Ammachy, and even Divya (“My God, was she always such a hand wringer?”), she found herself feeling distinctly worse.

Everyone was exactly as they had been before, her father said, no kinder, no better, no more enlightened. They only came to him one at a time. They mostly wanted to see things, like the house or the tools or the supermarket. They looked like they had on the best day of their life.

“Like the best they’ve ever looked?”

“No. Exactly how they looked on their favorite day. Same age. Same clothes.”

But how could there be one favorite day in a whole lifetime? Amina did not ask, but her father shrugged anyway, as if to say, Who knows how these things work? And for a minute she felt the pull of that logic as keenly as a hand.

“Enough,” Kamala said from the back of the kitchen, her face striped with tears.

“Ma.”

“Don’t you ‘Ma’ me. You stop this talk right now.”

“I just think we should—”

“You’ll bring the devil into this home!”

“We’re just talking about what’s happening. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Yes, yes, of course, Miss Psychology Degree! Miss Freudian Lips! Because you know what’s best, right? Yes, let’s dig it all up, get it out in the opening!”

“Okay,” Thomas said quietly. “It’s fine. Let’s just—”

“Idiots! You don’t meddle with these things! You don’t bring them in the house . You don’t think they wait for tumors and cancers and whatever else? Of course they do! Weak minds are always the target!” Amina glared at her mother. “Like yours?”

“Hey!” Thomas barked, but it was too late. Kamala covered her mouth with her hand and then turned and left the kitchen. A few seconds later the master bedroom door slammed, sending a quiver through the house.

Amina looked back at her father, who had slumped over the counter. “She didn’t mean that, Dad. She’s just—”

“Don’t you ever talk to your mother that way.”

Her face flared hotly. “I was just trying to—”

“This is hard on her.”

“It’s hard on everyone!”

“She’s your mother.”

Amina looked down at the counter, sullen and flustered. She never knew what would trigger Thomas’s loyalty toward Kamala, but whenever it happened, it was unshakeable, as if all his mishandlings could be vindicated in one act of allegiance.

“Fine,” she said.

Her father’s shoulders dropped a little. He looked unhappily at the kitchen counter.

“What about the jacket?” Amina asked.

Thomas did not say anything. The lines in his face deepened into shadows.

“Did Akhil want it?”

“No.”

“Did you just give it to him?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

Amina idled into silence, surprised by the answer and the sudden blow of disappointment that came with it. “But then why did you—”

“I have no idea.”

“But it was in the garden with the rest!”

“I know.”

“Then why—”

“Amina, I don’t know .” He was angry — angry about the way she’d spoken to Kamala, but now also about this, as if Amina had betrayed him by even thinking any of it meant anything. And hadn’t she? Amina watched her father across the white countertop, pained by her own transparency, her need for the fog that was closing in around them to mean something.