My father had never wasted time with small talk. “Now that you’ve settled down in college and done so well in your first midterms,” he said, “I can tell you this. I’m planning to get a divorce. You mother and I no longer have anything in common except you—and we’ve launched you successfully into the world.” He paused for a moment, and I wondered (as though he were a stranger) what he was feeling. If he was nervous.
“All my life I’ve done what other people expected from me,” he continued. “Whatever time I have left, I’d like to live it the way I want. Do you have any questions?”
It struck me that he did not see how ridiculous his last sentence was. I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid that once I started I might not be able to stop. Apparently he took this to mean that I had no queries, because he went on.
“I haven’t told your mother anything yet. I suggest you don’t call her until I’ve had the chance to break the news to her. I’ll do it over the coming week.” He became aware of my silence and added, “I’m sure you’re upset, but try to see it from my point of view. Is it fair to ask me to remain in a relationship that’s killing me?” While I pondered his choice of gerund, he said his good-byes, promising to phone me back with an update.
After he hung up, I lay down and tried to understand what had just happened. For some moments, I wondered if I had dreamed my father’s phone call. All these years I had been sure, in the unthinking manner in which we skim over the absolutes of our lives, that my parents had a good marriage. They had approached their joint activities—child-rearing, entertaining, traveling, movie-watching, gardening—enthusiastically. Within the boundaries prescribed by the culture of their birth, they had expressed affection, kissing in the morning when they left for work, putting their arms around each other in photographs, admiring a new outfit, sitting close on the couch as they listened to Rabindra Sangeet CDs. They often read together on that couch, my father laying his head in her lap as he turned the pages of Time, my mother absentmindedly stroking his hair as she read a Bengali novel.
Had that not been love? If it had—and I would have bet my life on it—how had it crumbled overnight? Could all the things of the world crumble so suddenly? What was the point, then, of putting our hearts into any achievement?
Amid these metaphysical questions, a couple of practical ones popped up from time to time: Was there another woman involved? And, what would happen to my mother when my father told her? But that last question was rhetorical. I already knew she would not survive the blow.
I SPENT THE NEXT DAY, AND THE NEXT, IN BED, FIGURING things out. I had a single room; there was no roommate to wonder what was wrong. I did not brush my teeth or bathe or eat, though I did drink three cans of Coke that were in my mini-fridge. I did not attend my classes. This was a first, and deep down, the old me worried about consequences. But the new me merely shrugged and turned on the TV. My cell phone rang. I checked the number, and when I saw it was my father, calling from his office again, I turned it off.
On the third day, I resisted the urge to go and see my professors and, pretending I had been ill, pick up my missed assignments. Instead, I went on a rambling drive around the city and lunched at a fancy Italian restaurant I’d been eyeing for weeks. The food was as excellent as I’d hoped. I ordered too much, along with wine, but instead of asking them to pack the remains, I ate everything. Back in my room, I slept away the afternoon, feeling decadent and full of ennui, like a Roman patrician. I awoke with a headache and recalled that my weekly kickboxing class was that night. I considered skipping that, too, but fortified myself with ice water and a double dose of Tylenol and went to it.
The kickboxing class was held in a part of town my parents would have termed seedy, with tattoo parlors and adult video shops. (But enough of my parents. I would exorcise them from my mind.) I had learned about the class from a flyer I’d been handed at a café I had stopped by one day, out of curiosity. I’m not sure what made me try the class, or what made me keep going back. Perhaps it was that the other students were so different from me.
In class, I usually ended up next to Jeri, a waif-thin woman with hair of a redness I had not encountered before. Her ribs showed through her tight black leotard top, the same one every week. She worked at a used-clothing store named Very Vintage. She wore a lot of eye makeup and yelled viciously every time she punched, but she had a gamine charm. From some angles, she looked about thirty years old; then suddenly she would smile and be transformed into a teenager. I couldn’t resist smiling back or listening after class as she regaled me with the latest treacheries of her boyfriend, whom she was always on the verge of leaving.
This evening, Jeri’s smile held a frenetic cheerfulness, and halfway through class, during water break, she leaned over and whispered, “Guess what, I dumped the SOB!” Later, as we changed out of our drenched clothing in the women’s locker room, she said, “I’m ready to leave this god-awful hellhole. I have a girlfriend in New York—said she’d set me up with a job and let me stay with her until I find a place of my own. If I had a car, I’d be gone like this.” She snapped her fingers loudly.
“I have a car,” I heard myself saying. “And I’m ready to leave, too.”
“No shit!” she said. “Aren’t you going to college or something?”
“Not anymore,” I said.
It took us only a few minutes to decide on the details. She would go to Very Vintage tomorrow afternoon and pick up last week’s pay. I would bring the car at four p.m. to the address she provided. By then, she would be packed and ready. We’d hit the road. She would pay for half the gas.
I tossed and turned most of the night from an illicit excitement akin to fever. Or was it satisfaction at a well-executed revenge? Toward morning I dozed off and didn’t hear the alarm. I had barely enough time to stuff some clothes in a carry-on suitcase and put a shoe box full of CDs in the car. I felt a pang as I looked around the room; I had decorated it only two months ago, with posters of Impressionist paintings, a batik wall hanging, and three potted plants. But I told myself I had been a different girl then. On the way to Jeri’s, I stopped at the bank and took everything out of my checking account—over a thousand dollars—in small bills. I divided the money into stacks and hid them in various places—inside the glove compartment, under the floor mat on the driver’s side, in my cosmetics case. Right now I didn’t feel like trusting anyone.
I need not have rushed. When I reached the ramshackle house where Jeri rented a room, no one was there. I parked in the shade of a large mimosa, dozing again, dreaming in snatches. Images of past birthdays came to me, always with a pink cake that my mother had decorated with strawberries (though my birthday was in winter) proudly displayed on our kitchen table. The tables changed as we moved into different houses. The number of candles on the cake increased. But always there were the strawberries that my mother scoured the markets to find because I loved them. And always there was the ritual of a family photo afterward. My father would set up the stand, put the camera on timer, and run over just in time to be in the picture. Later we crowded over the photos, laughing at the imperfections that made them more fun: someone’s mouth hanging open, a dab of icing on someone’s cheek, the top of someone’s head sliced off by the edge of the photograph. But in my memory-dream, the expression on my father’s face had changed. He waited in stoic impatience for me to go to college, do well in my first midterms, and set him free.
I was startled awake by Jeri rapping on the car window. She was full of righteous indignation. The manager at Very Vintage had refused to pay her—had, in fact, berated her for quitting without giving notice, even though she told him it was an emergency. She had berated him right back. Finally, he gave her half of what he owed her, the miser, and threatened to call the police if she didn’t leave. She had packed just one bag—that’s all she cared to take—and some provisions for our journey, both solid and liquid. But it looked like she might not be able to spring for her part of the gas. She scrunched her nose in apology.
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I told her it was okay. We would manage. Her eyes glinted as she considered the financial implications of my statement. (Was I a rich girl?) She disappeared into the house to fetch her things. By the time she returned, the sun was setting. She threw a suitcase into the trunk and, with great care, placed a brown paper bag on the floor of the passenger seat, between her legs. I saw the necks of two bottles—whiskey, I guessed, or rum. Jeri directed me to the neighborhood grocery where, true to her promise, she ran in to pick up supplies: potato chips with onion dip, sugar cookies, Coke and 7Up, ice in one of those disposable Styrofoam chests, and a stack of cups.
Ten minutes later, we were stopped at a red light on the access road to the freeway when Jeri said, “Oh, look!” A young man with a duffel bag stood by the side of the road, his punk hair streaked with blue. His cardboard sign said, need ride north, will share gas. Before I could stop her, she had rolled down her window.
“Where you going?” she called.
“Where you going?”
“New York.”
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
“Wait a minute,” I said, but not too forcefully. I was fascinated by his hair and his ragged black shirt, declaring to all the world that he was angry, young, and poor. He sported a lip ring and was as emaciated as Jeri. I had never shared a vehicle with a person like him. I imagined the expression that would cross my father’s face if he knew what was going on. Jeri twisted in her seat and threw open the back door. I thought I saw them exchange a brief look of complicity and wondered if she had planned this. Uneasiness flashed through me, along with images of my body dumped under an overpass with a slit throat, but the light had changed. People behind us were honking. My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID. It was my father. The young man jumped in, and we were on our way.
THEY STARTED DRINKING BEFORE WE LEFT THE CITY LIMITS, seven and sevens with more whiskey than 7Up, though they drank them slowly, elegantly, the ice cubes clicking within the Styrofoam cups. Jeri passed a cup to me and I propped it up between my legs and took a sip once in a while. I got a buzz almost immediately. I hadn’t eaten all day.
We followed the freeway east. The strip mall lights grew intermittent, then were gone. We were passing long fields of something tallish, young corn maybe? There was no moon, and around us the land felt ancient and unaltered and secretive. We saw no other cars. Jeri said, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore,” and climbed into the back seat to keep Ripley company. That was the name the young man claimed. (“I’m Ripley—believe it or not.”) They crunched chips as they discussed people and places they hated in the city we had left behind. Jeri passed a bag of Cheetos to me, along with another filled Styrofoam cup, but the Cheetos were oily and made me want to throw up. Or maybe that was the Seagram’s to which I wasn’t accustomed. Later, there were carnal sounds. My eyes strayed to the rearview mirror, but it was too dark to see much except shapes lumped together and moving jerkily. The car wobbled over the median. Once, twice. I wondered how it would be if I let it go all the way to the other side, maybe even into the dark gash of ditch that ran alongside the road, if the shock of the tragedy would weld my parents back together. I stored the idea in my mind under distinct possibility, but for the moment I pulled to the right and declared I needed a break.
We climbed out shakily to use the facilities. I insisted on gender separation: boys in the right-side field, girls to the left. Jeri and Ripley humored me. The crop wasn’t corn—another mistake on my part. It came up to our armpits and had seeds, like wheat or wild grass. Ripley passed his hands over the stalks and announced it to be barley, but he was an unreliable narrator.
Later we sat on the hood of the car and Ripley rolled us joints. I had tried marijuana at parties before, but only a puff or two, and never in combination with alcohol. I took long drags, which made me cough. Jeri showed me how to hold the smoke inside my lungs for maximum effect. After a while, we lay back against the windshield and looked up at the sky. The stars were exceedingly bright. In a few minutes, they began pulsating. I put my hand over my breast. It was pulsating in the same rhythm. Someone else’s hand was on my breast, too. I didn’t push it away. I closed my eyes. Inside my eyelids colors were swirling, my very own living kaleidoscope.
Suddenly Jeri shouted, “Holy shit! Would you look at that!”
My eyes startled open, and the sky was full of the same swirling colors I’d seen within my eyelids. Swatches of red mostly, but also greens and yellows. I forgot to breathe. Curtains of misty light swept across the horizon, punctuated by bursts of brightness. It was like something out of The Lord of the Rings.
Ripley was trying to say something, but his tongue didn’t seem to be cooperating. Finally, his vocabulary muted by reverence, he burst out with, “It’s an effing aurora borealis.” It seemed sublimely plausible. There are more things in heaven and earth than are writ of in our geographies. We watched the aurora. Maybe for minutes, maybe for hours. Eventually, the spectacle turned my companions amorous and they made for the backseat. They invited me to join them. When I declined, Jeri narrowed her eyes at me, trying to gauge whether I was insulting them and whether they should do something about it. But Ripley said, “Whatever,” and slammed the car door shut.
The aurora gave a little shiver, then continued displaying its splendors. I walked into the field. The stalks of bearded barley were hard against my back. The hairy ends tickled my cheek. I rolled around, flattening stalks as I went until I had cleared enough space to see the aurora clearly. All around me was a musty, muddy odor, moles or raccoons or something more secretive. I had never before lain down on the bare ground at night. I pressed my palms against it. How foolish humans were to travel the world in search of history. Under my shoulder blades and over my head were the oldest histories of all: earth and sky. Strands of light—not the reds and greens I had thought earlier, but hues I had no name for—enacted their mystery. Soon, I fell into the deepest sleep.
WHEN I AWOKE, THE AURORA WAS GONE, LEAVING A TRACE OF redness in the sky, like embers in a fireplace after a party. My clothes were wet with dew. My head was clear. I returned to the car and, scooping up chilled water from the ice chest, washed my face. Jeri and Ripley were asleep in the backseat, limbs askew, mouths open. I’d been afraid of them earlier because they knew so many things about living that I didn’t—but I wasn’t scared anymore. Something had happened as I lay in the field, watching the sky, an understanding that I couldn’t control the lives of others—but neither could they control mine.
I swung the car in a wide U-turn and started driving back to the city. My CDs were in the back, so I turned on the radio, low, to keep myself awake. After a while, the news came on. There had been a major explosion in one of the chemical factories to the east of the city. Twenty fire engines had been dispatched to tackle the blaze. The situation was now under control, although residents close to the factory had been advised to keep doors and windows closed and to drink bottled water until informed otherwise.
This explanation of my aurora was disappointing, but no matter what its source, the dance of lights over the night field had given me something facts couldn’t take away.
I was almost at the city limits by the time Jeri and Ripley woke up. There was much loud-voiced remonstrance and banging of fists and questioning of my sanity and spewing forth of profane threats. I bore these with equanimity. I was in the driver’s seat, after all. I took the exit where we had picked up Ripley, stopped at a gas station, and asked them to get out. Something must have changed in my demeanor, because they did so without further ado. In all the turmoil, no one brought up the aurora.
I drove back to the dorm, took a shower, ate some dry cereal, and got to my classes on time. I hadn’t missed much; it wouldn’t be difficult to make up the work. Friends looked at the circles under my eyes and surmised I’d had the flu; I didn’t deny it. I gathered up the money—I hadn’t spent even a dollar—and returned it to the bank.
Later I listened to the m
essages that had piled up on my cell phone. There were twenty-two—eighteen of them from my father, increasingly frantic as he tried to figure out if something had happened to me. I thought of how he had almost ruined my life. Then I thought, no. I was the one who had headed for the brink; I was the one who had pulled back from it.
When he called that night, I picked up the phone. When he asked where the hell I’d been, I responded with a cool silence that lobbed the question back at him. He must have sensed that same difference in me that had made Jeri and Ripley leave quietly.
“What I told you about, a few days ago,” he said. “All I can say is, I don’t know what came over me.”
He wanted me to express thankfulness, but I would not oblige him.
“Maybe I’d caught a bug or something,” he said.
I didn’t reply.
“What I mean is”—he spoke too fast, the words tripping over one another—“I’m no longer planning to ask your mom for a divorce. In fact, I want you to forget all about that conversation we had.” He must have realized the absurdity of this request, because he amended it. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t bring this up with your mother.” There was a pleading tone in his voice.
I agreed. Reassured, he asked his regular questions about my health, coursework, and financial stability, and I offered my usual monosyllabic answers. The status quo thus restored, he hung up with relief.
But things were not the same. The relationship between my parents and me had shifted. I was driving, seeing them in my rearview mirror: smaller, shrunken; my mother trustingly oblivious of the fragility of the relationship on which she had based her life; my father without the courage to follow through on what he had—selfishly, illicitly, but truly—desired. Later I would forgive, but for now, I pulled away from them. Perhaps this distancing would have happened anyway, in time. But I felt rushed into it, as though I had yanked off a scab before the wound was healed, leaving behind a throbbing pink spot, the slow blood oozing again. And when I entered relationships of my own, I was careful to withhold the deep core of my being, the place in my mother that would have shattered if she had learned of my father’s betrayal.