And Laughter Fell From The Sky Part 12

They drove in silence. When Rasika dropped Abhay off at his house, she said, "Thanks for your help, Abhay. I hope someday you'll find what you're looking for."

He glared at her lovely, unattainable face. Then he clambered out of the car and slammed the door. As he entered the house, he heard her car zoom away.

As Abhay walked away from her, Rasika opened her window halfway. She felt the urge to call out to him. She knew she shouldn't. She had to forget about him. She zipped the window up, threw the s.h.i.+fter into reverse, and raced backward out of the driveway. Then she bolted down the road.

Once she turned the corner, she stopped and turned the car off. An elderly man walked a tiny dachshund past the car. Several lawn mowers were droning and whirring. Down the block, she saw a teenaged girl bouncing a basketball. The thump of the ball reached Rasika's ears after the ball was already on its way back to the girl's hands.

Rasika took off her sungla.s.ses and tilted the rearview mirror down to look at herself. She wanted to make sure she was ready to face her parents at home. Her lipstick was a bit lopsided, so she dug around in her purse, found a tissue, and inched it along her lip. Then, in a fit of frustration and rage, she scrubbed all the lipstick off and threw the tissue onto the floor. Abhay didn't rely on artifices the way she did. And then a thought occurred to her: Abhay didn't approve of her. This realization made her feel incredibly sad. She tried to tell herself that she didn't care, but her throat felt tight, and then she was sobbing again. She let her forehead rest on the steering wheel. Her wails bounced off the closed walls of the car.

Finally she was able to catch her breath and stop herself. She almost never allowed herself to fall apart like this. As she lifted her head, she caught sight of her face again in the mirror: red, wild eyes and mussed hair. She used every tool in her purse to put herself together again.

As she combed and painted, she began to feel calm and washed clean. It would be okay. She would live through this. She had to go on as planned. She had no other choice.

Chapter 8.

On a cool, sunny Sunday in mid-September, Abhay sat on one of the concrete steps encircling the Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Oregon, enjoying the sound of the waterfalls in the middle of a downtown city block. Not many people were at the fountain. A young man in dress slacks and a sweater was reading on a step below his.

Abhay had learned to say "Oregun," accent on the first syllable, instead of "Oregawn," and now, a few weeks after his arrival, he was beginning to feel at home. He was glad to be away from Ohio, away from his father's judgments, from Chris's job offers and barbecues, and from Rasika's craziness.

Even though he'd told Rasika he wasn't leaving until the spring, he'd made a decision to go right after their conversation at Ledges. He had no real job in Ohio, after all, and the only reason he was staying was for her. She was becoming the most important person for him there, and he felt himself falling into his usual unrequited-love despair. The best thing to do, in his experience, was to move on. Otherwise, he'd be in danger of brooding and depression.

A week before coming to Oregon, he'd called Rasika and left a message on her phone, asking if she'd like to meet him before he left. In reply, she had sent him a short note-in an envelope with no return address-telling him that she had decided to take his advice: that she wanted to stop pretending and start living the honorable life she always intended. Therefore, they couldn't see each other again.

He had read this note several times. He had run his fingers over her pretty handwriting. Then he had ripped it up and stuffed it into the bag of to-be-recycled paper under his desk. She was right, of course. What they each wanted out of life was too different, and it was good that he was leaving.

While he was seen as bohemian in Ohio, in Portland he was quite straightlaced and entirely normal. He was perhaps on the conservative side, since he'd cut his tail of hair off for the temping jobs, and had gotten rid of the macrame necklace and leather bracelets he used to wear. Here, it seemed that everyone-mothers, office workers, grandfathers-was tattooed or pierced in odd places or wearing purple nail polish and bright green sneakers, along with their backpacks and jeans. Not that anyone was ostentatious. Everything was subtle in Portland.

The fountain he sat by was supposedly designed to imitate the movement of water in nature, although Abhay found amusing the prevalence of concrete, and the square and rectangular shapes that predominated. That part of it certainly wasn't natural. If he lifted his head he could see the green pine and maple trees surrounding the fountain and a tall, three-cornered building rising from behind the fountain. Abhay unzipped his backpack and pulled out the cla.s.sifieds section of the Sunday newspaper. He tried to keep himself busy constantly, so he wouldn't think about Rasika. In order to stop thinking about Rasika, he ought to get involved with another woman, but he wasn't quite ready for another emotional roller coaster.

He shook open his newspaper, folded it to the employment ads, and dug around in his backpack for a pen. Over the past week he'd found work at Powell's bookstore, "the largest independent used and new bookstore in the world," according to their ads. As much as he liked Powell's, and the feeling of being surrounded by books, he didn't intend to spend his life as a store clerk.

Two young women descended the staircase to the left of the fountain and stepped over the concrete slabs to throw something-flowers, he thought-into the water. The woman with long red hair wore a bright dress, red swirls on a black background. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small and high underneath the fabric. The brown-haired woman had on jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt.

They turned and walked toward him up the wide steps, and the red-haired one stopped on his step, her sandaled feet planted neatly together. She had traces of mud along the edges of her toenails, and a tattoo encircling one ankle, some sort of tribal design featuring spirals. She bent forward gracefully to throw a dandelion at his chest. The yellow bloom fell onto the step, and he immediately picked it up. He wasn't sure what to do with it. Her gesture made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of a priest in a Hindu temple throwing flowers at the idols.

"Hi." She smiled down at him.

Her friend had wandered away, maybe to throw blossoms at some other young man. He got to his feet and noticed with satisfaction that he was almost as tall as she was. Not that it mattered.

"Are you from India?" She had a rosy face and straight, even teeth. A thin ring glinted in one light-brown eyebrow.

"No." He didn't bother to enlighten her any further. It irritated him that this was often one of the first questions other people asked him.

"Oh." She looked down at her feet and brought her dandelions up to her nose to smell them. He noticed her fingertips were stained with mud, too, just like her toes. Her face seemed to flush even rosier. He thought she'd walk away, but she kept standing next to him.

"What's your name?" he asked.

She lowered the flowers. "Kianga."

He raised one eyebrow. "You make that up?" He was being flippant to hide the fact that he felt unsure and awkward.

She shook her head. "It's Swahili."

"Ah." He tried to put on a knowing smile. He wondered how a white girl had ended up with a Swahili name.

"I'm hungry," she announced. "Want to come over and have lunch?" She spoke slowly.

"I'm busy looking for a job." He held up his newspaper. "Thanks anyway."

"You have to eat, don't you?"

Kianga's friend rejoined them. She had a small stud in the side of her nose. "He's coming to have lunch with us," Kianga said.

"Okay." The friend smiled at him.

He figured he might as well go along with their plan. After all, he was hungry. He stuffed his newspaper into his backpack. "My bike's up there." He pointed to the sidewalk at the top of the steps. "How do we get to your place?"

"This way." Kianga led the way up the steps.

"I mean, do we have to take a bus, or something?"

"No." Kianga provided no more information, and Abhay wondered if he ought to press her for details on where, exactly, she lived and how they would get there.

Abhay walked behind the two of them, pus.h.i.+ng his bike past a repair crew laying a new brick sidewalk, with orange cones and metal barriers around their work area; past parking lots and parking garages and a three-story, block-long brick building with no sign on it. They turned left into a strip of greenery: the campus of Portland State University. At the end of campus they crossed a bridge over a freeway, and right there-right next to the roar of the freeway-was Kianga's house. It was one of a row of houses built next to each other, with strips of gra.s.s in between. Kianga's was the ugliest of them all, a long narrow building with a garage underneath and a front door reached by a flight of stairs. Abhay locked his bike to a street sign.

In the living room there was almost no furniture-only a few hammock chairs hanging from hooks in the ceiling, and several large potted plants. The old, stained carpeting had been covered in places with what looked like printed tablecloths or bedspreads with colorful designs, florals and paisleys. The place smelled like incense.

Abhay slipped off his sandals inside the front door and followed Kianga and her friend into the kitchen, where they were taking things out of the fridge and cabinets.

"I'm going to make peanut b.u.t.ter and jelly sandwiches." Kianga's friend set a brown hunk of what looked like homemade bread on the cutting board on the island countertop, and started sawing off thick slices.

"What's your name?" Abhay asked the brown-haired woman.

"Ellen." She smiled at him as she scooped grainy peanut b.u.t.ter from a large tub printed with the faded words: NANCY'S LOWFAT YOGURT. "You want yours open-faced or closed?" She had a bit of a lisp. Her r's didn't come out right.

"Open-faced is fine."

Kianga went out the back door and came in with two large red tomatoes. "Feel them." She placed a tomato in each of Abhay's hands. They were heavy and warm from the sun and had a pungent tomato-leaf smell. Kianga took them from him, rinsed them in the sink, and sliced them onto a plate.

Ellen carefully wiped the crumbs off the counter before walking with the plate of sandwiches to the table in the small dining room, which was filled with light from the curtainless windows. Kianga placed her plate of tomatoes in the center of the table. Abhay made himself useful by filling up some water gla.s.ses, and they all sat down. They both smiled at him as they lifted their bread. He smiled back. He found it odd that neither of them seemed interested in his name. He wasn't sure he liked the anonymity of the whole thing. Did they do this every weekend-find a strange guy to invite home for peanut b.u.t.ter sandwiches?

"So. Uh. What do you do here in Portland?" He looked from one to the other.

"I sing," Kianga said.

"You're a music student?"

"I'm with a band."

"And you plan to make a living that way?" He felt like his father, grilling her about her moneymaking capacity.

"Singing keeps me alive."

"Ah." He wondered if she knew what he was asking and preferred not to answer, or whether she actually didn't have a clue. He looked over at Ellen.

She gave him a shy smile. "I'm studying health education," she said. "We both are."

"So you're going to be school nurses?"

"Something like that," Ellen said.

"Are you in the band, too?" he asked Ellen.

She blushed and shook her head so her curls covered part of her face.

They ate silently. It wasn't the same kind of silence as the dinners with his parents. It was more peaceful. Kianga looked out the window as she chewed, and Ellen seemed to be looking inside herself. Still, the silence made Abhay a little uncomfortable. He wondered who would be the first to speak. After slowly finis.h.i.+ng the last bite of his bread, slowly eating several tomato slices, and drinking all his water, he asked, "Don't you want to know what my name is?"

Kianga looked at him and laughed. "Tell us, if you want us to know."

"Abhay," he said. "It's a Sanskrit name. It means 'fearless.' "

"uh-BYE." Kianga copied his p.r.o.nunciation. "Fearless. That's wonderful."

"Why did you invite me over?"

"I thought you seemed lonely," Kianga said. "You were by yourself, so I thought you might like some company."

"Do you do this all the time? Invite strangers over for meals?"

"She does." Ellen tipped her head toward Kianga.

"Sometimes," Kianga said. "If I see someone I connect with." She gathered the dishes together in a stack. "Want to go out and look at our garden?"

They set the dishes in the sink and walked out the back screen door into the patch of fenced yard, most of which was taken over by a vegetable garden. This would explain the mud on her fingers and toes. She probably spent a lot of time digging in the soil. The ground was punctuated in several places by large greenish orange globes. "Pumpkins?" he asked. "You make a lot of pies?"

"I carve them for Halloween." Kianga sunk into a squat and grubbed out a few weeds. The hem of her dress trailed in the soil.

"That's a lot of jack-o'-lanterns," he commented.

Kianga stood up. "I line them up around the front yard. It looks amazing."

"Halloween's a really big holiday for Kianga." Ellen had her arms folded over her flat belly, holding her elbows with her opposite hands. "It's just about the only holiday her family celebrated."

"We did birthdays. And we did the solstices and equinoxes."

"No normal holidays, like Christmas or Easter," Ellen protested.

"My mom was raised Christian, and my dad was raised Jewish. They didn't like either religion. So they made up their own, I guess."

Back in the house, Abhay helped wash and dry the dishes, and then said he had to go. He didn't want to give them the impression that he was interested in either one of them romantically.

"Want to come and watch our rehearsal tomorrow?" Kianga asked. "It'll be here at the house." She leaned against the kitchen counter. Ellen seemed to have disappeared into some other part of the house.

"I don't know, I'll probably be busy."

She laughed at this. "You're funny. I have someone I want you to meet tomorrow. He's looking to hire someone to help him out, and I think you'd be a good fit."

His first thought was that Kianga couldn't possibly know what kind of job was right for him. But he reminded himself that he was keeping his options open. "Okay. Sure. I'll try to be here. What time?"

"About seven o'clock," she said.

She walked him to the front door and watched him put on his sandals. Then, before he could open the door, she placed her hands on his waist and kissed him on the cheek. He wasn't sure how to react to this gesture. What did such a kiss mean in Kianga's world? Did she kiss all the men she invited home for lunch?

She stood back with a smile, and he tried to say good-bye in a polite way as he opened the door. Walking his bike to the bridge across the highway, he wondered if Kianga was watching him go.

It was Sunday evening, and Rasika's parents had gone up to Cleveland for dinner and card playing with Deepti Auntie and Balu Uncle. Rasika had managed to stay home by pleading tiredness. Pramod was at his apartment. She was alone in her room. Since Abhay had left, she'd been staying home as much as possible, to avoid getting tempted into any risky behavior.

The sky was growing dim outside her curtains. She'd been lying on her bed all afternoon, half-dozing. She didn't feel like doing anything. Her head throbbed. She'd been trying to ignore it, but finally the pain grew strong enough that she crawled off the bed, found some pain pills in the hall bathroom, and swallowed them.

Entering her room again, she decided to turn on the light and do something to distract herself until the pain subsided. She sat on the carpet in front of the low white bookshelf beside her bed. There were no books on these shelves. Instead, they displayed items from the various collections she had kept since she was a child. When she lived in India, she had begun collecting photos of female Bollywood stars. Although her mother would not let her see any of the movies, considering them too mature for a seven- or eight-year-old, Rasika had been intimately familiar with the actresses' names and pictures.

Once they moved to the United States, she had used scissors and far too much glue to make a collage of these photos, which was propped on a lower shelf of the bookshelf. She picked it up. The cardboard backing had yellowed over the years. The photos, so familiar, were stiff with glue. She shook dust off the collage and gazed again on the perky nose and oval face of Sridevi; the snub-nosed, round-cheeked face of Smita Patil; the large, toothy smile of Madhuri Dixit; the green eyes and shapely mouth of Mandakini. She was never interested in collecting photos of the male actors, although she remembered her mother and aunts swooning over the handsome features of Amitabh Bachchan. Who cared about men? It was the women she'd wanted to imitate. Her favorite actress, the one she considered most beautiful and elegant, was Rekha, whose photo was in the very center of the collage, larger than the others. Rekha had fair skin, full lips, and high cheekbones. Her thick black hair flowed loose on either side of her heart-shaped face, and she wore a peach-colored sari.

Although Rasika grew to realize, as she got older, that these actresses' lives were often sordid or tragic, she preferred to still think about the fantasy lives implied by these beautiful photos. She wanted the glamorous, perfect, happily-ever-after life that should have accompanied such beautiful women.

She used to have a large framed photo of Princess Diana, with a small tiara on her fluffy hair, but that story grew so sad that Rasika could no longer pretend that there was a happy life a.s.sociated with the picture. So she had thrown the picture away and given the empty frame to her mother.

As she looked at the photos in her hand, she wondered suddenly how Abhay would react if he saw this collage, which she had saved so carefully over the years. He'd probably think it was silly. He'd say she was chasing after a fantasy. And maybe she was. If she walked around an American street dressed like these Bollywood stars, with her midriff exposed and a k.u.mk.u.m on her forehead, she wouldn't look elegant and sophisticated. She'd just look weird. Yet if she walked around Kent dressed in a cla.s.sic style like Jackie Ona.s.sis, she'd still look slightly out of place because of her dusky skin. Sometimes she felt it was impossible for her to be the sophisticated person she aspired to, because she just didn't fit anywhere, as Abhay had pointed out.

Fortunately, she didn't have to worry about his thoughts anymore, because he was out of her life. She crawled over to her dresser, pulled out an old T-s.h.i.+rt, and used it to wipe the dust off the bottom bookcase shelf, lifting and replacing other trinkets as she did so: little plastic statues of Krishna and Lakshmi, and Indian folk dolls dressed up to dance. She set the collage back in its place.

The upper shelves were filled with her collection of Beanie Babies. Even in high school and college, she had been interested in collecting Beanie Babies. She remembered spending hours as a teen arranging and rearranging these toys. She had so many that the majority of them were in a box in a corner of her closet. Only her favorites lived on the shelf. Most of them were pink, since pink was always her favorite color.

Her headache was gone now. The sky was dark outside her window. She felt suddenly energized. She decided to go downstairs and make a batch of cookies. When she was in sixth grade, she used to love making a mint and chocolate cookie that involved two layers of dough, a light color and a chocolate color, rolled up together and sliced. She'd learned to make the cookies at a Girl Scout meeting. She hadn't baked those in a long time. Her father used to love those spiral cookies.

She found the recipe-a b.u.t.ter-stained, photocopied page tucked into her mother's almost untouched copy of Joy of Cooking. Amma rarely fixed Western food, and used the cookbook only for an occasional cake or pan of brownies. Rasika drove to the store for ingredients. In the kitchen again, she set out flour, b.u.t.ter, sugar, eggs, cocoa powder, and mint flavoring. She felt happy to be mixing and rolling. She wondered if she ought to learn to sew, or make lace, or get involved with stenciling, or something. Her problem, perhaps, was simply that she lacked a hobby, now that she had stopped collecting Beanie Babies.

After work the next day Abhay returned to his apartment, which he shared with another guy who seemed to spend most of his time at his girlfriend's place, heated up some minestrone soup from a can, ate handfuls of cheese crackers out of the box, drank a gla.s.s of milk, and biked over to Kianga's place. He was a bit early. The sun was descending behind Kianga's house, but the sky was still light.

Kianga sat in a lawn chair in the tiny front yard, with a heavy book open on her lap and a highlighter in her hand. She was concentrating so hard, she didn't notice him as he locked his bike and walked up to her.