Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“No, wait!” Sanji looked flustered. There was a short silence, a flurry of eye contact between the others. “It’s just we thought we should all talk about, the, uh—”

“YOU HAVE TO GO BACK TO TREAMENT!” Chacko boomed. Amina looked over to find her uncle standing tensely at the end of the table, fists clenched.

Thomas’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He blinked at Chacko a few times before saying, “Of course I will. I told you that.”

“Right now.” Chacko rapped his knuckles on the table. “Tonight.” Thomas laughed a little. “That seems unlikely.”

“This isn’t a joke, Thomas.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Then quit this now.”

Thomas cocked his head, like a dog hearing a frequency unavailable to human ears, and Amina tensed.

“I’ve already called Presbyterian,” Chacko continued. “They have a bed ready for you in Admitting. Dr. George says you can restart your treatments first thing in the morning.”

Thomas said nothing for a moment, but Amina could feel him taking in all of them through his periphery. She saw the slight tic behind his eyes as he recalibrated.

“It’s not time,” he told Chacko.

“You don’t have more time!”

“We don’t know that.”

“I most certainly do.”

“No,” Thomas said gently. “You don’t. My reaction to the treatment has been anomalous.”

A high, furious blush rose in Chacko’s cheeks, as if he had been slapped. “You know as well as I do that that doesn’t mean a damn—”

“The thing is,” Sanji intervened smoothly, looking at Raj for backup, “it’s not as if recovery is an indefinitely open window, is it? Your health can weaken to the point where it’s irreversible, and then no treatment will help, isn’t it?”

“It’s a calculated risk.”

Chacko snorted. “And what about your family? What are they supposed to do with this nonsense?”

Kamala looked up from her plate in surprise. “Who, me?”

“You’re willing to risk their future too?”

“I’m not risking their—”

“Of course you are!”

“Me?” Kamala repeated.

“They have no problem with this.”

“ Eda! What are you talking? You think they don’t—”

“Wait just one minute, Mr. Big Horses!” Kamala yelled at Chacko. “Don’t you sit there yak-yakking for me!”

“And Amina?” Chacko pressed on, ignoring her. “After everything, you’re going to put her through this?”

At last then, something to penetrate the glimmering sea of Thomas’s cheeriness. Amina saw the words sink in, the sharp tug of doubt suddenly creasing an otherwise smooth brow. She could feel her father not looking at her.

“She’ll be fine,” he said, but his voice no longer held the conviction it had before.

“No she won’t! How could she be? A father who would rather die than stay with her?”

A chapati, hurled with significant force, slapped Chacko full across the face. No sooner had it dropped than another replaced it, flung from the surprisingly accurate throwing arm of Kamala.

“Kam! Stop it!” Sanji cried.

Amina watched as her mother took another and chucked it at Chacko for good measure. It smacked into his chest.

“KAMALA,” Thomas said loudly, and her mother looked at him, furious, wild-eyed, shaking with adrenaline. He waited for her to lower her arm before saying softly, “Enough.”

Her parents looked at each other, the air between them twitching with something so raw and intimate that the others had to look away. “Go,” Kamala said. “I will come soon.”

Thomas turned from the table without another word and left. They sat back down and waited in silence, staring down at the tablecloth grease stains and stray bits of potato until the porch door clicked shut. Then they waited some more.

“Kam,” Sanji finally said. “Please.”

Kamala leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, scowling at them.

“Ma.”

“What?”

“You’re the only one he’ll listen to.”

“Ha! Your father? Ha ha !”

“It’s true. You know it is. He’ll pretend like he’s ignoring you, but in the end, he’ll do whatever you say.”

Kamala snorted.

“So then what?” Sanji asked, frustration raking her voice. “Just sit back and let him die? Is that what you want?”

Kamala stared at her for so long that the air in the room seemed to harden. “You think that is the worst thing that can happen?”

Sanji looked confused.

“Fools.” Kamala hissed the word across the table like a dart, leaned into the silence that followed it. “ Idiots. Know-nothings . Coming here with your dry potatoes and idiot demands that he get up tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and for what? So you can say you did everything you could?”

“Ma, stop. They came because I wanted them.”

“And what about your father? Did you ask what he wants?”

“He doesn’t know what—”

“He wants to see Akhil.”

“A hallucination!” Chacko countered. “A side effect!”

“A miracle.”

“What does it even matter?” Raj cried, his voice high and wavery. “Kamala, don’t you see? He’s losing weight! He’s stopped sleeping! His bones are poking through his clothes!”

“You think I’m blind? That I don’t see?”

“We need to—”

“You think that I don’t know this man I have spent some thirty-five years with? I know him better than anyone — any of you! And you are wrong, Miss Amina Knows Everything, he does not listen to me! He has never listened to me! You think I don’t know what happens next?”

Silence fell over the table, heavy as a net, and in its descent, Amina’s head filled with the high electric keening of the lights, all of the lights, their background noise suddenly amplified. It felt like an invisible audience taking a step forward. It felt personal.

“You think he wants to stay with us more than he wants to go to Akhil?” her mother asked, voice tiny behind all the buzzing, and the truth felt like something small and sharp lodged into Amina’s heart.

The rest of the family was coming apart, Amina could feel it. At one end of the table, Raj had covered his face with his hands, and at the other, Chacko shook his head from side to side, like a dog trying to shake loose a collar. Bala and Sanji sat between them with wide, pooling eyes, Sanji already whispering, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” like she had caused what was to come.

“Then what …?” Chacko barked, his mouth trembling.

A spasm of compassion flickered across Kamala’s face before it smoothed again.

“Go home,” she said.

“I’m coming down,” Dimple said the next day.

Amina shut her eyes. This seemed to be everyone’s solution, as if it would make a difference. Monica had come just that morning, begging Thomas to change his mind and then weeping bitterly in the driveway when he wouldn’t. Son of a bitch , she’d said, and smoked two cigarettes right then and there.

“You can’t,” Amina said.

“Why not?”

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see Dimple. She just didn’t want to see Dimple seeing what everyone else had. Amina sighed and rolled onto her back, coming face-to-face with the brassy smiles of the Greats.

“The show. It’s in three weeks. You don’t have time.”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s practically done already, and I can do most of the press from there. They want to talk to Jane more than me anyway, at this point.”

“Oh, great.”

“It’s not what you think. She’s saying she likes it.”

“She likes it?”

“No, duh, she fucking hates it. But she’s giving it good press because it’s the smart thing to do. She’s also saying you still work there even though she told me that if either of us set foot in Wiley Studios again, she will shank us.”