Cambridge (12 page)

“It smells horrible there,” I said. I was happy to have something to contribute. “The smelly refineries. When we drive past them, I get sick.”

My mother shook her head at me. Not at dinner.

“Like eggs,” Vishwa agreed. “Bad ones.”

“What are they refining?” Frederika asked.

“Eggs!” Vishwa started laughing.

“Petroleum,” my father said.

“And they shoot fire and they look scary,” I went on.

“ ‘Dark Satanic mills,’ ” my father said to me. He turned back to Vishwa. “So you weren’t educated in England at all?”

“I went to Oxford for a little while,” Vishwa admitted. “Have you seen those calling cards—usually it’s Indians who have them—
M.A. OXON., FAILED
.”

“You didn’t finish your degree?”

“I was accepted at the Conservatory, and that was the important thing. I went there.”

My mother caught my eye. “Salad,” she said.

I got up and began to clear the plates. Vishwa hopped out of his seat too. “Let me help,” he said.

My father’s large hand descended on Vishwa’s arm as it connected to a plate. “No,” my father instructed. Vishwa dropped back into his chair.

Clear from the left, serve from the right. Do not stack dishes at the table. There were a lot of table rules, the most important being No bottles on the table. If there was mustard, the mustard had to be put in a small bowl with a spoon of its own. No bottle of milk, no jar of sour cream, no impregnable red tower of ketchup. Turn the blade of the knife in when you set the places. Do not scrape food from one plate to another (this was a subheading of Do not stack dishes at the table). Napkin rings are déclassé. A cooking vessel must not appear on the table; this rule ensured that every night my mother had to hand-wash either the serving platters or the pots, since she couldn’t fit them all into the dishwasher. Where did he get all these rules? Had he made them up, the way he’d made up the vegetable rules? My father’s one-man dinner cult. Lunch didn’t have rules. It was a weekend free-for-all of salami and mayonnaise and old, buckled waxed-paper packages of lox that my mother wanted to throw away and that my father ate while she said, “You’ll get sick.” But for all his fussing about food, he never got sick from eating. Last week’s rubbery pot roast from the back of the fridge, cheese that smelled diseased, Chinese menu entries that turned out to be turtle or ferret—he had an iron stomach. Later, when he worked at the White House and traveled to strange places on fact-finding missions, he ate monkey, he ate boa constrictor. Anything but a carrot.

I was setting out the salad plates—from the right—when the doorbell rang.

My father scrambled up from the table and down the hall.

“What is it?” Vishwa asked my mother.

“It’s Jagdeesh,” she said.

“Oh, dear.” Vishwa looked at me. “The tie! Where is the tie?”

“In the closet, in the pocket of the jacket.”

“Don’t worry about the tie,” my mother said.

“I don’t care,” said Frederika. “I like you without a tie.”

Vishwa looked at his plate. He seemed to be blushing, but because of his toasty color, I couldn’t be sure.

“Look who I’ve found,” my father said, ushering Jagdeesh into the room.

Jagdeesh was tall and willowy. He had large tipped-up eyes that appeared to be lined with mascara because his lashes were so dark and profuse. His nose was a sculpted beak, big but delicate. The most striking difference between him and Vishwa was his hair. Jagdeesh had movie-star hair, thick, black, swept back to show off his high, shiny forehead. About the only thing he and Vishwa had in common was their creamy caramel skin. He was wearing a blue blazer tailored snugly to his long torso, a blinding white shirt (with cuff links, I noticed during dessert when he reached for seconds), black loafers like the ones my mother had bought my father in Italy, and a dark-purple, glistening, embossed silk scarf wrapped casually (perhaps) around his elegant neck. There were two rings of very yellow gold, one with a red stone, one with a green enameled disc, on his left hand.

I disliked him immediately.

My father, however, was in love with him.

“Sit down, sit down,” he said, pulling the extra chair from the living room to the table. “We’re so happy you could come and join us. We’re eating salad. Would you like some salad?” He gestured to me: Bring a plate. Bring forks and knives and napkins for Jagdeesh!

To demonstrate to Vishwa that I loved him best, I served Jagdeesh from the left.

My mother had seated Vishwa beside me and across from Frederika, “So they can look at each other,” she said in the kitchen before dinner. That left only one spot for Jagdeesh: between my father and Frederika. I wondered if she would be captivated by his Errol Flynn–ish aura. Vishwa seemed to be wondering something along those lines as well. He jiggled in his chair and cleared his throat several times. But Jagdeesh was focused on my mother.

“Your house is beautiful—of course,” he said. “It’s exactly as I imagined it would be. Perfect. I am not surprised. When I met you first—last year, wasn’t it? At the department party? Yes, that’s correct. You wore an Indian shawl, do you remember? It was green silk, very fine, embroidered in gold. Most striking on you. And I said to myself, I would expect no less from Carl’s wife.”

My mother did not seem to know what to say to all this.

Jagdeesh looked, briefly, at Frederika. “We must credit you for providing the occasion,” he said.

Frederika nodded.

Swiveling his head back to my mother, Jagdeesh said, “It’s the unusual combination of austerity with comfort. A certain Japanese influence?”

“Not really,” my mother said. She did not sound pleased.

“Ah, you don’t like the Japanese way? In truth, neither do I. It seems to me—how to say it—so minimal as to be almost not there at all. In Calcutta, for instance, there is so much vivacity on display, the colors and shapes and the ferment of the street, which carry on inside as well. My point is that the Far Eastern approach to space and form feels, to this Indian, at any rate, inert. Yes, that’s the word, inert.”

My mother lit a cigarette.

“Salad?” My father offered the bowl to Jagdeesh.

“Perfect,” said Jagdeesh. “But may I?” He turned to Frederika. “You will have some?”

“Go ahead,” she said. She did not seem captivated at all.

“After you,” insisted Jagdeesh.

“Just
take
some,” my mother said.

Frederika obeyed.

Salad precluded conversation. Heaps of tart watercress required everyone’s full attention for several minutes. Jagdeesh, with his beautiful big white teeth, finished chewing first.

“Am I correct in thinking that you have an ancestor who was a great architect?”

My mother, delayed by her cigarette, was still deep in the watercress. She swallowed. “Ancestor isn’t quite right, since he’s alive. But yes.”

“Talent will out,” said Jagdeesh.

“Not always.” My mother didn’t look at me but I knew she was talking about me.

“For instance,” he continued, “one of our grandfathers was a notable artist of the sitar, and this explains Vishwa, I have always said.”

“But the other grandfather wasn’t a notable economist,” my father said, smiling at his own joke.

Vishwa laughed. Jagdeesh did not.

“We have some princes back there,” Vishwa said. “Medieval robber-baron sorts. Maybe they were good at finance.”

“Economics encompasses far more than finance,” Jagdeesh told Vishwa.

“Oh, don’t bother,” my father said. “Nobody wants to know anything about economics. I suggest you stop trying.”

“I have,” said Jagdeesh.

“You haven’t,” said Vishwa.

“You don’t have a grandfather who was a notable economist either,” my mother said, addressing my father for the first time since her huff had started. “Do you?” She wasn’t being friendly, but she was speaking to him.

“Hardly,” said my father.

“I know nothing of your antecedents,” said Jagdeesh.

“Standard,” said my father. “The story of every Russian Jew.”

“But what is this story?” Jagdeesh persisted. “This is not a story I know.”

My father put his fork down. “One grandfather was a poor farmer in a village hundreds of miles from anywhere, the other was a peddler in a city.”

“With a cart?” I asked. I hadn’t known about that. “Grandma’s or grandpa’s?”

“My father’s,” said my father. “In Odessa, like everyone else.”

“What did he sell on his cart?” I asked.

My father looked at me. “I don’t know,” he said. “My father never talked about it.”

“Let’s ask him!” I was excited.

“Piano, piano,”
my father said, dampening my enthusiasm with a downturned hand. He often “conducted” my behavior in this way. Maybe he was trying to participate more fully in the musical aspect of our family. The only direction he ever gave me, though, was
piano, piano
, with a rare
lento, lento
thrown in.

“The peddler is the economist in embryo,” said Jagdeesh.

“Dessert,” my mother said. “After all, we invited Jagdeesh for dessert, not watercress.” She stood up.

I cleared the table and got the dessert plates from my mother. Before I’d gone two steps, she hissed: “Dessert forks.” So I took those too. As I was setting them out, my mother returned to the table with the beautiful disc of the cardamom cake centered on the Ginori plate spattered with birds and grasshoppers
that Annemarie had given her when we left Italy: super special-occasion. It had to date appeared only for birthdays.

“Here’s a Swedish specialty Frederika has made us,” my mother said.

“Oooh,” said Jagdeesh. “I am such a softy for sweets.”

Vishwa was definitely blushing now. “This is a very handsome cake,” he said to Frederika.

Frederika pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Ah,” she said.

“It’s supposed to have whipped cream,” my mother said, glaring at my father, “but we ran out.” She attacked the cake with a kitchen knife and in four swift chops cut it into eighths. “There,” she said, handing the plate off to Frederika.

“It needs no whipped cream,” Jagdeesh said. “It is superb.” He took another bite. “Perfect,” he declared.

Vishwa put his chin on his hand and looked at Frederika. “It tastes like home,” he told her.

“That is odd,” she said. “Because to me it also tastes like home.”

“Maybe we come from the same place?” Vishwa smiled.

Frederika had no answer for that.

My father and Frederika sat at the table cutting slices of cake so thin they fell apart, as if pieces that small didn’t count and therefore they weren’t really eating more cake. My mother was having her nightly struggle with the dishwasher, determined to stuff everything into it and failing. At least once a week she—or the dishwasher, depending on your vantage point—broke something. She felt it was malevolent: “Damned dishwasher,” she’d say. “You might have overfilled it,” Frederika would observe. “No.” My mother was adamant. “It’s a dishwasher. It’s supposed to wash the dishes, not break them.”

It was past eleven. I should have gone to bed, but nobody had told me to, so I was snuggled into a dining room chair, uncomfortable and happy. What my mother called the “debriefing” was a process I usually missed or, hidden halfway up the stairs, overheard only in snatches.

“Aren’t they different,” said my mother.

“Amazingly,” said Frederika.

“You still like him, though, don’t you?” My mother sounded a bit worried.

“He’s a little …” My father searched for the adjective that would sum up without insulting. “Vague, maybe? Unfocused?”

“He certainly doesn’t have Jagdeesh’s self-confidence.” My mother made that quality sound suspicious.

“He does not have the same basis for being self-confident,” my father said.

“It’s just another personality sort is my guess,” said Frederika.

“Artistic,” said my mother, clanging a pot on top of a lot of glasses.

“That’s right.” Frederika sounded relieved. “Also, maybe because the brother is so looking-good?”

“Good-looking,” my father said. “It’s a bit much, I agree. Scarf and all that. Rings. It doesn’t matter, though. If he wants to wear rings, let him.”

“You wouldn’t say that if Vishwa were wearing those rings,” my mother pointed out. “Then it would be, Too many rings!”

“Look,” my father said. “Jagdeesh is really exceptional.”

“So is Vishwa,” said my mother.

“I predict Jagdeesh will get a Nobel. I’m sure of it,” my father said.

“He’s only thirty-five,” my mother said. “Kind of young for that.”

“Twenty years from now.” My father considered for a moment. “Or maybe thirty. By 1985, he’ll have one.”

He was off by a bit—it was in the nineties—but his prediction was right.

“I really like him,” Frederika said, looking out onto the backyard, addressing the night sky.

“Thank god, Freddy,” said my mother. “I think he’s the one for you.”

“I’ll have to learn more about music,” Frederika said.

“Don’t think about that.” My mother closed the dishwasher with a bang. “All that having-things-in-common stuff is just rot. Anyhow, you like music.”

“How do you know if someone is the one for you?” I asked.

“Haven’t you gone to bed?” My mother came around the table to pry me out of the chair. “Go to bed.” She rubbed my head, roughly but in a friendly way. “Bed, bed, bed.”

“But how do you know?”

“You don’t need to worry about that yet,” she said. “My little chicklet.”

My mother called me her little chicklet only when she was feeling very affectionate. She refused to explain what it meant. Was it a baby chicken, or was it the tiny sugar-coated squares of gum that rattled in their green-and-white box? “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she would say when I asked. “How am I going to find out,” I’d say, “if you don’t tell me?”

“You’ll be singing a different song in a few years,” she’d answer. “You won’t think I know everything then.”

Another correct prediction.

For the moment, though, the little chicklet was content to go to bed, along with everyone else, all yawning, each privately pleased. Dinner had been a success; my father’s banishment to
the doghouse had been brief; Frederika could see a sketch, a hint of her future—shimmering, unclear, but wonderful, perhaps even more wonderful for its lack of detail.