"One Amazing Thing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Divakaruni Chitra Banerjee)

16

It was as though the giant in the earth had heard Cameron speak his name. Before he could complete his sentence, before his listeners could compare his story to theirs, before they could feel admiration or sorrow or thankfulness, the building shuddered and groaned. Something crashed upstairs, and above their heads a ripple went through the ceiling as though it were made of paper.

“Aftershock!” a voice yelled. Someone started to scream. Someone else was crying. One man began a cryptic prayer, “God, let it end, let it just end fast!” As she plunged through water, making for a doorway, Uma wondered, What did the praying man want finished-the earthquake, this imprisonment, or their lives? Wait a minute, she wanted to protest. I haven’t told my story yet.

In her doorway, there was only one other person: Mr. Pritchett, who had abandoned the shawl Tariq had loaned him and was shivering in his underwear. Stripped, he was a lot smaller than Uma had taken him to be. He held on to both doorjambs with outstretched arms, his limbs thin and ropy like those of aged Christian martyrs in medieval paintings. Uma had to duck under his armpit to find shelter. The water came halfway up their thighs, and as soon as that the building stopped shaking, Uma became aware that her legs were growing numb from the cold water, though her arm still throbbed. She considered submerging it in the water. Then it struck her that there should have been another person in her doorway. Peering through the gloom, she knew who it was and called his name. Cameron! Cameron!

Cameron lay curled on the table, fetal position. Uma thought he looked like the unborn child he had dreamed of. When he heard her calling his name, he opened his eyes and gave her the same, reproachless, infant look. He had been holding on to the flashlight, which contained their last batteries, and he raised his fist slightly, as if to say he would keep it safe until he could hand it to her. Though chunks of plaster covered the table and dotted his face and arms, he appeared unhurt.

Uma waded back to the table through the black water, their own Mnemosyne, pool of memory, drawing their dearest secrets out of them. The ceiling looked as if it was holding, but even if it wasn’t, she couldn’t bear to leave Cameron by himself. They were all going to die anyway, unless a miracle happened soon. When she put an arm around him, Cameron’s body felt colder than normal-but what was normal anymore? His heart fluttered like a snared bird. She could hear wheezing with each breath he drew. He gave her a small, blanched smile. Against his silence, the comments about hope and forgiveness that she had planned to offer seemed platitudinous. Who was she to speak, anyway? Hadn’t she wronged the people closest to her: Ramon because she had not cherished him as he cherished her; her mother because she wouldn’t listen to the cautionary lessons she tried to teach Uma; her father because when he needed someone to talk to, she had turned away. Forgive me, she said to them in her head. But it did not provide her with the same satisfaction as hugging a plump maternal body, or rubbing her palm along a jaw sexily stubbled with a night’s growth of beard, or leaning against a no longer-muscular chest and breathing in the distinctive smell, familiar from childhood, of Old Spice cologne.

THE AFTERSHOCK SEEMED OVER. OTHERS VENTURED OUT OF their doorways and checked for damage, looking up worriedly at the ceiling. Jiang, whose face was flushed and feverish, told Uma they should make Cameron sit upright; it might improve his breathing. Lily helped them prop him up. The smell of gas was distinctly stronger, but no one commented on that. They climbed back onto their tables, drawing their knees up and trying to dry their legs with the rags that had once been a sari colored by hope. Mangalam examined the water level and said that at this rate, the water would reach the level of the tables in an hour; they would then have to collect chairs from the other side of the room, place them on top of the tables, and sit on those. These tables could accommodate only two chairs each. Three people would have to take their chairs into Mangalam’s office, where the table was larger. But there was time for the last story before the group split up.

“I DID NOT MISS MY PARENTS AT ALL,” UMA BEGAN. “WHEN I went away to college, I guess you could say I was heartless and self-centered, like many young people. My mother took it hard, but my father-”

Before she could continue the chronicle of her filial perfidies, there were noises above. Everyone cringed, but these were not the rumbles of an earthquake. There was a tapping and banging, a crash like furniture toppling over. They thought they heard engines revving, a door slammed shut.

“It’s people!” Tariq said. “Rescuers!” Everyone looked up, elation battling disbelief on their faces. They gripped one another’s arms. Mrs. Pritchett and Lily cupped their hands and yelled for help, and the others joined in. But there was no answer from above. The clangings grew quieter, as though receding. When a large chunk of plaster fell into the water, it scared them and they stopped shouting.

Tariq stood on the table, craning his neck. He wanted to see through the hole in the ceiling. But the angle wasn’t right. “I’m going to go to the other side of the partition,” he said, “climb on a chair or something, and figure out what’s going on.” He jumped down, splashing water in every direction.

“I’ll come with you,” Mangalam said, taking the flashlight. “We can tie a strip of cloth on a post and wave it through the hole.”

Mr. Pritchett, who had struggled into his pants, hurried after them. Uma, too, longed to follow, but Cameron was propped up against her good arm, and she didn’t want to move him.

“Warn them,” Cameron whispered. “There’s a dead body in the water-fell from upstairs when the ceiling collapsed.” She peered at him in shock. Until this moment, in accepting that she might perish, she had thought she understood what death meant, but it had only been an abstraction. This body, within fifty inescapable feet of where she was now, bloated and rubbery and beginning to decay, made death a touchable horror.

Cameron nudged her. “Don’t shout-people might panic. Go after them. I’ll be okay.”

“Go, I’ll watch him,” Malathi said from Cameron’s other side. Uma felt Malathi’s firm, bangled arm come around Cameron’s torso. She was humbled by Malathi’s calmness in the face of what they had just heard.

The thought of stepping into the water where the dead man lay filled Uma with revulsion, but Cameron was waiting. She climbed down gingerly but couldn’t stop herself from shuddering. She walked around the partition and stopped at the edge of the room. Mr. Pritchett was bent over, clearing debris from an area that lay directly under the gash of the collapsed ceiling. That, she guessed, would be where the dead man fell. She imagined the heavy drop. She hoped he had died before falling, that he didn’t have to drown in liquid blackness. Tariq and Mangalam were dragging a sofa through the water. They meant to stand it on its side. One of them would climb on it while the others steadied him.

“After I make some space here, we’ll need to find a rod to tie a cloth to,” Mr. Pritchett said. “Can you give me a hand?” He reached into the water.

“Stop!” Uma snapped. “Move away!” But it was too late. In the beam of the flashlight Mangalam aimed at her, she saw the shock on Mr. Pritchett’s face. The dark water splashed up as he let something heavy fall and backed away. She heard him retch and stumble in the dark. There was another splash. She gritted her teeth and hurried past the corpse toward him.

“I touched it,” Mr. Pritchett said to Uma, between heaves, as she tried to pull him up.

“Hush. It’s all right,” Uma said. She rubbed his back.

“What’s wrong?” Tariq called from the other end of the room. When she told him, he dropped his end of the sofa and cursed.

Among them, Mangalam seemed the least affected. He seemed calmer, if anything. Cameron’s decline had forced him to take up the responsibility that should have been his in the first place. “We can avoid that area,” he said. “Let’s set up the sofa here. It won’t give us as good a visibility, but it’ll do. We have to hurry. If someone’s up there, they’ll move away unless we let them know we’re trapped here. Mr. Pritchett, we need you to hold one side of the sofa. Uma, fetch that rod from near the wall.”

Thus rallied, they did what Mangalam said. Uma found that she was able to function if she kept her mind on the task at hand and didn’t think of the water flowing from the corpse toward her, contaminating her with deadness. In a few minutes, they upended the sofa. Tariq climbed on, lifted the rod as high as he could through the hole, and waved the makeshift flag vigorously. Uma trained the flashlight on the blue rag. When they shouted for help, the group in the other room joined them, like a Stygian chorus. Plaster fell again, but they continued. What did they have left to lose? There was a loud noise upstairs like an explosion. Then silence. When their throats grew raw and they were sure there were no further noises above, they gave up, one at a time. Some of them sobbed for a bit. Some sat wordlessly, devastated. To have been extended those minutes of hope only to have them snatched away was the cruelest cosmic joke, the final insult.

The batteries were dying. In the dimming glow of the flashlight, Uma saw her companions crumpled into themselves, avoiding one another’s eyes, hands balled by their sides or covering their faces. Mangalam brought forth a bottle with bourbon still in it and passed it around. A couple of people took desultory sips, but even such a conjuration didn’t perk them up much. It was getting harder to breathe. Uma remembered an old science lesson from middle school. Gas killed people by displacing oxygen, which was lighter. When enough gas settled in the basement, they would suffocate.

Too many problems, all beyond her solving. There was nothing to do but go on with her story.

WHEN IT WAS TIME FOR ME TO GO TO COLLEGE, I CHOSE A PLACE far from home, although I knew my parents would have preferred it otherwise. It wasn’t that I had a bad relationship with them, or that they were tyrannical, in the way Indian immigrant parents some times are. I was just eager to strike out on my own, without their protective presence. It never struck me that my presence might have been protective for them, too. The college I picked was in Texas: expensive and private, with a reputation that a parent could brag about. Still, the key lure for me was its distance from home.

My mother took my absence hard. Though she was a successful manager, fairly high up in her company, she defined herself mostly as a mother and homemaker and took more pride in a made-from-scratch Indian dinner than in acquiring a new customer. My first month of college, whenever my mother and I spoke on the phone, she would dissolve into tears while insisting I describe every detail of my day. My father admonished her to pull herself together. He kept his questions brief and basic-how was my health, was I able to keep up with the workload, did I need money-and he was satisfied with monosyllabic answers. He always ended his conversation with a joke about prospective boyfriends-mostly the same joke-while my mother remonstrated on the other line. I was thankful that my father was handling my departure so well. I admired his suavity. Up until this time I had been closer to my mother, but now I felt a subtle shift in allegiance.

The student population at the college was different from my high school but not drastically so. I loved the lush campus with its tropical foliage and old Southern elegance; the single dorm room that I could decorate as I wanted; the small literature symposiums where famous professors treated me as an adult, which, deep down, I wasn’t certain I was; the coffeehouses that remained open until two a.m. and where students held heated intellectual discussions; and the partying, which was available in hot, medium, or mild. My mother’s cautions must have rubbed off on me; the pleasures I chose were innocuous ones.

One evening, a couple of months into the semester, my father phoned me. This was unusual on several counts, though I didn’t think about that until afterward. Our family calls usually occurred over the weekend, when cell phone minutes were free. Generally my mother initiated them. And it was barely five p.m. in California, which meant that my father, who worked late, was calling from his office.

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.

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 messages 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.

I didn’t realize-until this earthquake, until today-that my withholding was a worse kind of betrayal, a betrayal of the self. It was time for me to change.

THERE WERE SOUNDS AGAIN UPSTAIRS, A CLANKING, ADVANCING noise, as though a different giant-this one in iron shoes-had decided to take a walk. It could be rescuers; it could be parts of the building getting ready to collapse. No one jumped up. It hurt too much to hope indiscriminately. But their eyes were alert. They were aware of the possibilities and ready to accept them. While Uma had been busy telling her story, people had moved around some. Tariq sat between Jiang and Lily, and both of them had laid their heads on his shoulders. Mangalam had come over to Uma’s table and placed his arm around Malathi. Mrs. Pritchett had wrapped Mr. Pritchett in the black shawl, and he hadn’t objected. Cameron, who had been pressed closer against Uma by these rearrangements, patted her knee as if to say, Good job.

But what they didn’t know was that the story wasn’t over yet.

A RAIN OF PLASTER BEGAN TO FALL, COVERING THE LITTLE BAND in grayish white until they looked like statues carved from the same material. Uma knew she had only a few minutes to find the right words to describe how, long after she had graduated and moved back to California for further study, the past had resurrected itself in the form of a phone call. It was Jeri on the line, her voice like old sandpaper. Uma hadn’t recognized her until she identified herself.

Jeri said she was dying. She didn’t give details. Nor did she ask for money, as Uma at first supposed she might.

“Hey,” she said, “remember that aurora we saw that night we almost went to New York? That was something, wasn’t it?”

Uma agreed.

“Remember,” Jeri said, “I was the one who pointed it out? You guys wouldn’t even have noticed it without me, you were that stoned.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Uma said.

“People never believe me when I tell them about it. They say I must have been smashed and imagined it. Or it must have been something else, something ordinary. But it was an aurora for real, wasn’t it? Because if it wasn’t, I want to know.”

There was no time to hesitate. Uma said, “It was an aurora.”

“You telling the truth? People lie to me all the time. I’m sick of it. I want the truth about this one thing before I die.”

“I’m telling you,” Uma said. “It was an aurora.”

Jeri laughed, then coughed a horrible, hacking cough that went on and on. When she could speak, she said. “I knew it! All those SOBs, trying to mess with my head. Feels good to hear you talk about it. I screwed up my life big-time, a lot of ways. Did a lot of stupid stuff. But at least I saw one amazing thing.”

Then she hung up. Uma never heard from her again. But her thoughts kept returning to their surreal night together, an experience she would never have had but for her father’s fateful phone call. She wondered if she had done the right thing in lying to a woman who had seemed to want only one thing from her: the truth before she died. Or had it not been a lie? Weren’t the lights an aurora, their magic transforming Uma, giving her the courage to turn her life around, because she had believed them to be so? Uma suddenly felt it was crucial that she ask the company what they thought of this.

The clankings grew louder. The giant was on his way down. As they waited to see what would happen next, Uma began the end of her story.