The Shape of Family Page 20

  Alone in his room, Keith stretched out on the bed and closed his eyes, trying to put his finger on what had left him feeling so unsettled. He wanted desperately to talk with someone about what was going on. Perhaps if he just shared the bad news, voiced his darkest fears, he would feel better. He couldn’t tell anyone associated with his work, of course. Keith picked up his phone and began scrolling, realizing how few people on his VIP list weren’t work related. He scrolled past his lawyer’s name, Karina’s (obviously not), and hesitated when he reached Jaya’s. She was in India right now, but he wished he could speak to her as he used to. It had been four years since their divorce, but the aching loss of her in his life still felt nearly as strong. He shook his head. That person he was remembering was gone now. He didn’t know how this Jaya would react, with her newfound sense of piety and righteousness. She may not have room in her mind anymore for the gray zone of Keith’s life and work. She certainly didn’t have room in her heart.

  Approaching the end of his list, Keith’s eyes alighted on his father’s name, next to the same phone number he’d had as a child. There were so many numbers he used regularly now that he didn’t know by heart, but this one was carved into his memory. He dialed and, predictably, his father picked up on the third ring.

  “Hi, Dad,” Keith said. “Did I call too late?”

  “Nah,” his father answered. “Just watching the Phillies in extra innings. How are you, son? Everything good?”

  “Well, actually, not all good, Dad.” Keith proceeded to explain, in layman’s terms, what was happening with the SEC case. He admitted that he’d probably behaved rashly and made a mistake in conducting the trade, but he hadn’t meant harm, hadn’t been trying to commit large-scale fraud. Keith wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his father, but it wasn’t the uncomfortably long silence that followed his explanation.

  When his father finally spoke, the first thing he said was, “You have a good lawyer, son?”

  “I . . . yeah, I do. Carl’s got a lot of experience in these cases.” Keith fumbled through a response. “And I’ve already put aside a trust account for Karina, so she won’t have to worry about paying for college or grad school.” As soon as he said it, he felt himself petty for making this point with his father, as if to prove some superiority. “Listen, Dad. It’ll be fine.” Keith found himself trying to placate his father. “Anway, I know it’s late there. I’ll let you go.”

  After they said good night, Keith laid his head back against the pillows, feeling more unsettled than before. He tried to console himself that his father wasn’t sophisticated in these matters. Keith shouldn’t have expected him to understand. But another thought occurred to him, which he ventured to examine instead of instinctively pushing it away. His father certainly had his faults, as a man and a father, but he’d always been honest, if not always successful. In that aspect, perhaps, Keith had not matched his father’s achievements at all.

  * * *

  In the five days since arriving in Pune, India, Jaya hadn’t had one decent night’s sleep, though she wasn’t sure if this was due to the ten-hour time difference, the spartan cot on which she slept at a fellow devotee’s home, or the fourteen hours a day she spent at the Guru’s ashram. She woke each day at dawn when the pigeons began their guttural clucking outside and was so consumed with anticipation for the day ahead, she couldn’t return to sleep. She had planned to come down here for a week after visiting her parents in Delhi, but had now extended her stay by a few more nights, thanks to the generosity of her host, Aparna.

  Aparna was a widow only a decade senior to Jaya, though she looked much older. She had a slender frame, wore all-white saris and had long stopped coloring her hair, which she wore in a braid or bun. She had moved to Pune several years ago from Mumbai, after her husband had passed away, to be closer to the ashram. Her modest bungalow was a half-mile away and she spent most of her days at the ashram, sometimes traveling with the Guru’s entourage to lectures in other regions of India. She was a cheerful and composed woman who seemed more inwardly fulfilled than many.

  “Everything changed once I came here,” Aparna told her. “Everything fell into line. My days, how I spend my time, the people who come into my life, like you.”

  “How . . . how do you support yourself?” Jaya felt awkward asking, but she was curious, and Aparna didn’t seem to mind.

  “I have a small stipend from my husband’s pension,” she said. “Everything else, God takes care. Guru takes care.” She bobbed her head side to side. “Everything is taken care.” Jaya was fortunate, she realized, to be able to come here without any financial sacrifices, thanks to Keith’s support.

  The ashram served simple vegetarian meals twice a day, not only to devotees but to visitors who stopped in. Some days, the Guru gave a lecture, but every day people streamed in to pay their respects and make offerings. There were large donation boxes bolted securely to the ground at each entrance, which were cleared out each night. The Guru’s books and recordings of his lectures were sold from a small shop inside the ashram, as well as framed photographs like the one that hung in Jaya’s temple room back home. It was all very pragmatic, the need to fund Guru’s considerable operations.

  For Jaya, being here in the wellspring of his energy was a powerful experience. Everyone at the ashram, from the floor sweeper to the Guru’s inner circle, seemed to reflect and compound his radiant presence. Here, sitting for hours in prayer and meditation, not alone but surrounded by others of the same mind-set, Jaya felt she was reaching new heights of spirituality that went far beyond the rote religious rituals she had practiced as a child. It was remarkable to her how, after a few days living amongst these new people in Pune, she could feel bolstered in a way she hadn’t when she’d lived with Keith for twenty years.

  She no longer had to look for Prem reincarnated in other individuals; his spirit simply inhabited her. Jaya felt his presence so strongly at times, it was as if he was right next to her, telling her something funny to make her laugh out loud, guiding her gently away from the dark abyss of sadness. She marveled with his childlike wonder at the tendrils of the jasmine blossoms that flowered outside the ashram. Her days were unhurried, full of the small pleasures he used to enjoy while the rest of them bustled around him—an unexpected sun-shower, a comfortable pillow, a midday nap. In the wake of Prem’s death, her abiding love for her son had had no home. Now she had found one, and he was with her everywhere. She felt blessed to have Prem in her life for eight years, and even after his death, she was still learning from him.

  When Jaya returned to her parents’ home in Delhi, she was eager to share with her mother everything she’d experienced. “Next year, I want to go back for a whole month. Maybe you can come?” Jaya expected her mother, who’d always been spiritual, would love the idea.

  “Ah, I don’t know, Jaya.” Her mother sighed. “After so much shifting around my whole life, I just want to stay in one place these days. Besides, I have my bridge club, my embassy docent tours, my dance lessons for the little girl downstairs. My life is so full, how can I leave everyone for that long? How can you do that?” Her mother looked at her with an expression of concern, lines furrowed deep between her brows. “I worry this is getting to be too much, Jaya. It’s one thing to have daily prayer in your life, as we’ve always done. It’s another to dedicate your whole life to it like this. It’s not . . . balanced.”

  “It brings me peace, Ma,” Jaya said. “And it’s not my whole life. I have other things.”

  “What else do you have?” her mother asked. “No work, no husband, and you’ve barely talked about Karina this whole trip.”

  Jaya felt the words like a slap across the face. Is that what her mother truly thought of her? After all, it was her mother who had reintroduced her to spirituality. “Karina’s fine,” Jaya said. “She’s . . . busy with her own life; she’s basically an adult now. She doesn’t need me anymore.”

  Her mother smiled and reached out a hand. “Don’t fool yourself,
darling. She will always need you.” She squeezed Jaya’s forearm. “I’m not saying you have to stop your spiritual journey. I know it has brought you some peace. Just don’t make it everything. You deserve to have more in your life. Look at Dev: he has a family, a career, a whole life.” Jaya felt herself shrink from the comparison to her brother, who had made different choices, marrying an Indian woman, living in a cosmopolitan city. How would her life have been different if she’d made such choices? Would her marriage have survived? Would they have had more family support? It was never far from mind that Dev had more than she did, with his two children and solid marriage, but now it struck her with force.

  On her way home from India, Jaya stopped over in London to spend a few days with Dev and his family. Her niece and nephew were teenagers now, straddling the age Prem would have been. It was a painful reminder, but Jaya pressed herself to face the feeling, and gradually, she felt its grip on her loosen. They were a delight, these sprightly young people who navigated their way around the city by tube. Dev and Chandra returned in the evening with take-away from one of the restaurants a few blocks away: Chinese, kebabs, and the best curries Jaya had tasted outside India. Their lives weren’t perfect: their jobs were stressful, and Chandra’s elderly parents, with their traditional Indian expectations, lived nearby. But there was an abundance, an overflowing richness to their lives that made stark the contrast her mother had pointed out.

  It wasn’t until the plane ride back to California, as she reflected on her mother’s words that Karina would always need her, that it struck Jaya her mother might also have been referring to their own relationship, that Jaya would always need her mother, and this seemed to ring true.

  34 | karina

  FEBRUARY 2015

  After a few weeks, Karina grew accustomed to the pattern of her days at the Sanctuary. Every morning started at 6:00, with meditation guided by Micah, followed by yoga with Zoe. Despite her initial resistance to the practice of yoga, Karina grew to enjoy Zoe’s classes. The ritual of saluting the sun each morning as it rose over the serene terrain; the conscious work with her body, becoming aware of both its strengths and limitations; the floral aroma of incense, reminiscent of the temple where her mother took her and Prem for special occasions—all these components resounded in some deep, untapped part of her that had been hibernating in her core since childhood, since birth. The culture of her mother’s country was, for once, relevant to her: the sense of unity in body, soul and nature aligned. Karina realized what she had been missing before, the utter rightness that came from a whole that fit together as it should. At the Sanctuary, she could be herself for the first time, not hide parts of herself or try to make up for what she lacked.

  The daily meditation sessions, however, continued to be difficult for her. The more time she spent sitting quietly and thinking, the more her mind was troubled by disturbing memories she had long ago buried. She saw the swimming pool with the inflatable gray raft floating in it, and Prem’s thin brown arm extending from underneath. She heard the screaming of her own voice, the ringing in her ears. She felt the cold, clammy skin of Prem’s arms, his fingertips wrinkled and white. She felt the crack of his thin ribs as she pumped his chest, his damp cheek against hers as she tried to convey life from her body to his. She felt the raw, burning sensation in her throat from screaming. And she could not forget the sight of her mother draped over Prem’s lifeless body, nor the disappointment in her eyes when she looked up and saw her. The meditation sessions left Karina feeling vulnerable in a way that didn’t seem to lessen over time. She found herself pondering how long it had taken her mother to learn to sit silently like this. What did she reflect upon, all those hours in Prem’s shrine room?

  Fortunately, the rest of the day was always so busy, she could push those thoughts aside. When she wasn’t scheduled at NatMark, she worked with the others at the Sanctuary, rotating through the outdoor tasks of tending to the chickens, the beehives, the vegetable crops and the fruit trees, and churning the compost pile. Twice a day, she went down to the stables to care for the horse: brushing him, feeding him, cleaning his stall and turning him out in the field. And, with thirteen residents and assorted visitors, the house chores of cooking meals, cleaning and laundry seemed never to cease. In comparison, working at NatMark felt leisurely, even though she had taken on busier daytime shifts now that she didn’t have a class schedule to work around. The six or eight hours passed quickly, and she was proud to bring home groceries with her employee discount. August whooped when she walked in one day with a ten-pound bag of navel oranges that were marked down, and Chef Guy loved the knobby Jerusalem artichokes and seasonal persimmons she managed to find.

  Throughout each day, Karina moved from one task to the next until she was physically and mentally exhausted. She was used to feeling tired all the time and fortified herself with coffee many times a day. Accustomed now to skipping midday meals while she was working outside, she loaded up with a big breakfast as the others did. The only time of day she was alone was in her theater bedroom, during those short windows between falling asleep and waking up. She knew she would soon share her room with others—as everyone else in the house did except Micah—when new residents were invited to join. Still, she loved being part of this community, of feeling as if she belonged. There was always someone to share meals with, to work alongside, to speak openly with. She had nearly forgotten what that sense of closeness was like, with her family Before.

  Karina called her parents every weekend while she took a long walk around the grounds. She always had some “facts” about the past week to share: test scores in chemistry, the paper she was writing on Hamlet, the new jicama slaw in the cafeteria. She didn’t feel she was being untruthful, just reflecting the life they wanted for her, as she had always done. In high school, she hadn’t told them she found relief in the tiny slices and punctures on her inner thighs. To keep the peace between her parents, Karina had also learned to keep their secrets from each other. Her real life, her real heart and experience, bore little resemblance to the persona she created for them. This dissonance, Karina told herself, was the price of living the life she chose.

  * * *

  “Karina,” Micah called from outside one evening. “Come out here, you’ve got to see this.” She went to join him on the back patio. It was late evening, but the glow outside was brighter than usual. Up in the dark sky, the moon was whole and seemed to be right upon them, its striations visible. Half the night seemed lit from its incandescence.

  “Wow,” she breathed. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Full moon,” Micah said. “We should do something to commemorate it.” He looked around, his eyes panning the horizon and the grounds. “Come on, let’s swim,” he said, taking her by the elbow to lead her toward the pool.

  August and Zoe had come out of the house to join them and were chiming in about the beauty of the moon. “Yeah, man. Let’s swim under the stars. Under the full moon.”

  A cold fear flushed through Karina’s veins. She shook her head at Micah. “I don’t like swimming. You go ahead. I’ll sit here.” She wondered if she would even be able to watch. Nearly every morning in meditation, she found her mind returning to Prem’s accident, exploring her role and the shadow of guilt that came with it. The memory of Prem had almost become closer to her now than in years past, when she had deliberately blocked it out.

  Micah leaned against one of the stone pillars that marked the edge of the patio and pushed off his sandals. “Come on, I saw you surfing in the Pacific! You have to banish that kind of negative talk, Karina. It doesn’t serve you.”

  She felt herself trembling and tried to calm her mind. He hadn’t led her astray so far. And he had helped her get into the ocean. Perhaps it was time to do this, finally. “Okay,” she said, turning back toward the house. “I’ll get changed.”

  “What?” Micah laughed, pulling her by the hand toward him. “Seriously? Don’t do that. It’s so beautiful to swim naturally.” He smiled, dropped her
hand and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

  It didn’t have to be a big deal. Skinny-dipping wasn’t a capital offense. The marks on her inner thigh had faded to the point they wouldn’t be visible from a distance. Karina followed Micah down the steps toward the swimming pool. She stood next to a lounge chair in the far corner of the patio and undressed as slowly as she could. Zoe bundled her dreadlocks on top of her head, standing buck-naked by the side of the pool. August ran past her from behind and cannon-balled in, generating a splash that nailed everyone. Justin threw a beach ball to August, then jumped in himself. Karina rolled her clothes into a ball to hide her undergarments and turned to face the pool.

  “Come on in!” Micah said. “It’s not cold once you get used to it.”

  Karina sat on the edge of the pool, arms wrapped around her knees. A whiff of chlorine reached her nose and she held her breath against it. Her brain and nerve endings felt like they were on fire. She was shivering and fighting the desire to flee when she spotted Justin floating face down in the center of the pool. Her heart began to beat faster as she watched for what felt like several long moments. She tried to scream Micah’s name, but no sound came out of her mouth. Terror began flooding her chest cavity. She stood up and stepped down to the first stair of the pool, then the second. The water level was up to her mid-calves when Justin spontaneously stood upright and shook his head rapidly, spraying water like a lawn sprinkler. “Dead man’s float,” he said to August, standing next to him. “Totally meditative.”

  Karina froze in place, her brain flooded with a potent mix of relief, fear, anger. Her breath came hard; tears were ready to burst forth. She turned quickly and climbed back up out of the pool. A distant part of her mind heard Micah call, “Karina, what?” but she didn’t look back as she grabbed a towel, wrapped it around herself and ran toward the house, leaving her carefully wrapped clothes behind.