The Shape of Family Read online

  “Okay. I’m not worried.” Jaya smiled and sat back in her seat, releasing his hands.

  “Okay?” Keith asked. “That’s it?”

  “Well, if you learned from your mistake, and you’re going to be okay, the rest is just money and things.” Her face glowed as the smile spread to her eyes. “We can handle that, whatever it is.”

  A small cry escaped Keith’s throat as relief flooded his body. We.

  “I can sell the house. I don’t need it, or the new account you established,” Jaya continued. “So, you can count on that for your settlement too.”

  “No,” Keith said, shaking his head. “The house is in your name—”

  “Keith,” Jaya said. “I don’t need any of that. I can live with very little. I already am, just inside a big empty house with a big bank account I barely touch.”

  Keith blinked rapidly, trying to keep her in focus as tears welled in his eyes.

  “I appreciate what you’ve done all these years,” Jaya continued, “keeping the house while Karina was here and securing her education—”

  “Well, you know our daughter, she’s done most of that herself,” Keith quipped, prompting a smile from Jaya. For the first time, he saw her pronounced lack of material need as an intrinsic quality, not an indictment of his value in their relationship. He’d never understood it this way before and he felt a surge of gratitude along with profound regret over the loss of their marriage. The waiter returned with their entrées. Jaya never had an appetizer, claiming she didn’t need all the courses restaurants pressured you to order, and tonight, Keith had unconsciously done the same to parallel her. How many dozens of ways had he changed shape to accommodate her when they were together? He missed the counterbalance of her in his life.

  “And I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” Jaya continued. “Without the means, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I’ve done these last years. It’s important to me, so I’m grateful.”

  Keith hadn’t expected this reaction. They were no longer married; she didn’t owe him any kindness, and yet she had offered it, unsought. Jaya had shown him more understanding and support than even his own father had. Perhaps she’d never been as one-dimensional in her judgment of his ambition and materialism as he’d always thought. Perhaps her view was more a reflection of her personal values and less about him. Her reaction tonight was grounded and calming, and he felt its effect spreading to him. The rest is just money and things, he repeated silently to himself as he drove home from dinner, more settled than he had felt in a long time.

  43 | serotina

  MAY 16, 2015

  Rufus shook his head at the computer screen. “Can’t get these damn invoices to print,” he said, punching at the keyboard. They were all on edge, trying to fulfill their current Greenfields orders. The new seedlings had arrived to replace the molded plants they’d disposed of, but they were behind on their output. “I guess I can send them to the printer in Micah’s office upstairs.”

  “I’ll run up and get them,” Serotina said, eager for the chance to catch a moment with Micah. He’d been so distracted lately and disappeared for long periods of time behind his closed door, where she could hear him on the phone. Questions accumulated in Sero’s mind. Small things, like the cell phone in Micah’s room and the junk food when he was supposed to be fasting, she could excuse. She’d even tried to overlook the mass-manufactured food in their kitchen. Micah might not even know about the groceries, since he rarely helped with meal preparation. Chef Guy was the right person to ask about that. But other things were harder to ignore, and Justin’s accusations hung in her mind with a truth she recognized. Micah was a good person—the kind of person who took care of an infirm woman’s garden and fed the homeless after Thanksgiving. But his compassion didn’t seem to extend to a suffering creature like Buddy or to the neighbor’s potentially blameless dog. If she was wrong about Micah, what would that mean for her now? Her world had come tumbling down with the realization she had been wrong about James.

  “Thanks, Sero,” Jasmine called out as she left.

  Outside, she spotted Ericka and Zoe working in the fields in the distance. Zoe was always recognizable with her mass of dreadlocks, but Ericka looked increasingly diminished, her shirt hanging off her bony frame like adult’s clothing on a child. Sero swallowed back her concern and entered the house. Upstairs, she found Micah’s bedroom door open and wandered into the closet office, which was empty. Trying not to feel upset by this small disappointment, she picked up the paper sitting in the printer’s output tray.

  It wasn’t an invoice; it was a letter addressed to someone named Joe Petrosyan. The letter was short, and Micah’s name was at the bottom, awaiting his signature.

  Pursuant to California Civil Code 1941.1, landlord has breached warranty of habitability in the residential lease. The house is uninhabitable due to ongoing plumbing issues since March 2015 that impede the regular supply of water to fixtures, which materially affects tenant’s health and safety. After landlord failed to address multiple requests for repair, tenant properly issued notice that rent payments would be withheld until such time as conditions are made habitable. As such, California Civil Code 1942.5 prevents landlord from evicting tenant for 180 days after repair request was made. Tenant kindly requests that landlord cease and desist from sending eviction notices and furthermore provide immediate reimbursement for the $20,000 tenant has incurred in his efforts to have the plumbing problem repaired.

  Sero stared at the page, trying to make sense of the words. Eviction notice? Running low on hot water occasionally hardly qualified as uninhabitable. If Micah was withholding rent payments, where was the money from the household fund to which they all contributed? If there was truly a problem with the pipes, why had he turned away the plumber that day? And how did they still have water flowing in the house and the fields? She would have known immediately if there had been any interruption in the Greenfields farm, since those plants needed a steady supply of water to grow on their aggressive timeline. She recalled Micah swinging the pickaxe maniacally at some invisible ghost under the ground.

  Serotina stood in the center of the closet office and looked around at the piles of papers and envelopes. She walked over to the picture window in Micah’s room, the largest in the house and the only one occupied by a single person. Out in the fields, everyone was scattered throughout the rows of crops. She spotted Micah standing with Cerise, his arm around her shoulder. Then his hand drifted down her back and rested on her jeans’ back pocket. Sero returned to the closet and began looking through the piles of folders. She found one titled “Solar” and opened it up to find assorted color brochures from solar companies. There were no contracts, no deposit receipts, nothing. In another folder, untitled, she found several unopened letters from the IRS, addressed to a name she didn’t recognize.

  Feeling increasingly frantic, Sero found a folder labeled “Greenfields,” and opened it, desperately hoping to see the license she’d attested to. It wasn’t what she expected, what she saw inside that folder, but it was strangely familiar. Receipts from the purchases she’d made for Greenfields: lights, feed, irrigation. The detailed manifest for the first shipment, with her signature. And a photocopy of the front and back of the credit card her father had given her, which resided in her wallet in the front hall closet.

  She stood in place, closed her eyes and tried to think. The printer stopped and the invoices she’d come upstairs to retrieve sat in the output tray. Sero looked at the mess of papers around her. She carefully replaced the folders and papers she’d taken out, took the Greenfields invoices and walked back downstairs, a sinking feeling in her chest.

  44 | jaya

  MAY 16, 2015

  Dev and his family were visiting from London, and Jaya found the additional energy in the house unexpectedly refreshing.

  “Come on, Jaya Auntie, look up at me and smile.” Sachin, her fifteen-year-old nephew, held his phone up above his head, angled down toward her as she chopped
vegetables at the kitchen island. Jaya brushed her nose with the back of her hand and shook her head with a smile.

  “Not like that!” His sister, Smita, shrieked as she lunged toward him, reaching for the phone. “Cooking in the kitchen? You trying to attract the hopeless traditional men?” She clucked her tongue, sounding older than her thirteen years. “We need a picture of Auntie out on the patio, in a pretty dress with the sunlight glinting off her hair.”

  “Eh, you’ve been reading too many romance novels.” Sachin held the phone out of her reach. “Time is of the essence. Twenty thousand people join Match every day. Her perfect partner could be out there right now, just waiting for her to pop up on his feed.”

  “I’ll write your profile, Auntie.” Smita turned toward Jaya, an excited smile on her face. “Trust me, I’m really good at this. Can I pick out a dress from your closet?”

  “What’s going on here?” Dev entered the kitchen, chuckling. “Are my children hounding you again?”

  Jaya smiled at him. “Not at all, they’re being perfect angels.”

  Dev threw his head back and laughed in that boisterous way Jaya had always loved. “Well, now I know you’re lying,” he said, as each of his teenagers pummeled his shoulders from opposite sides. “Yes, it seems the tables have turned in 2015, and now children pressure the adults to get married instead of the other way around.”

  “Who pressured you to get married?” Dev’s wife, Chandra, joined them in the kitchen, one eyebrow arched and a yoga mat tucked under her arm.

  “No one, darling.” Dev put his arm around Chandra’s shoulders and kissed her. “And it was the best decision of my life.”

  “Damn right.” Chandra slapped him on the ass. “Are you coming to Bikram or not?”

  “I’d love to, but I already promised Jaya I’d stay here and help her with the cooking.”

  Chandra shot Jaya a knowing glance. “Okay, just don’t complain when your back feels stiff tomorrow.” She waved her fingers over her shoulder as she turned to leave.

  “Really?” Jaya said. “That’s your excuse? Now she’ll expect you to make dinner when you get back home.”

  “Ah, no risk of that. Chandra has tasted my cooking.” Dev grinned. “We have a deep mutual understanding of my limitations.”

  “You’re very lucky, you know?” Jaya said, tossing green beans in a colander. “That she puts up with you.” Seeing Dev, his family and their life in London had been a revelation for Jaya. How many different ways there were to live in the world. The choices Jaya had made only represented a single path, one that made sense at the time and place she’d made them.

  “Hey,” Dev said, feigning offense. “I’m a catch. Speaking of which, how’s Keith?” He winked at her. Dev had always liked Keith for being whip-smart and winning his way into their parents’ hearts. “We’re not an easy crowd to keep up with, especially for a Yankee,” he’d always said of his brother-in-law.

  “He’s fine, some stress at work, the usual,” Jaya said. She hadn’t told anyone what was happening with Keith, trying to safeguard his privacy and reputation until they knew more.

  Having Dev here made her feel safe and comfortable. She loved the warmth and lightness she felt in the presence of her niece and nephew. How she would have liked to have them around all the time, not just on the phone or for sporadic visits, but integrated into her life. In the beginning of her marriage to Keith, Jaya had thought it was easier to be far from both their families, free to establish their own rituals and norms, but perhaps the fabric of their life was weaker for it, leaving them untethered when adversity struck.

  Sachin’s phone rang and he left the room to answer what was, no doubt, the daily call from the girlfriend he was trying to downplay. Smita had already gone to rummage through Jaya’s wardrobe. Dev took a cutting board and knife from the drainboard and motioned for Jaya to pass him some of the green beans she was dicing into small pieces. “I’m not completely useless, you know. I can do menial labor.” He smiled at her. “So, are you really going to do it?”

  “Do what?” Jaya dropped a handful of bean trimmings into the compost bin.

  “Start dating again.” Dev eyed her. “Smita will have you up and running by tonight if you agree. Actually,” he said, wobbling his head, “she’s not really one to ask permission, so maybe even if you don’t.”

  Jaya didn’t take her eyes from her cutting board, watching the wide cleaver cut precisely through a dozen beans at once. “I don’t know, Dev . . .”

  “Well, I think you should, for what it’s worth,” he said. “It’s been years since Keith, and you’re all alone now that Karina’s gone.” He raised a palm in proactive defense. “I know, I know, you’re not alone; you have a very full life and spend time with lots of people.”

  But Jaya hadn’t been about to say those things this time. She enjoyed how full and happy her home had been this week, and she found she could carry on her daily prayers, her service work, her life, without feeling conflicted as she used to. Perhaps it was that she’d become more practiced at her spiritual work, more centered and less prone to distraction than she had in the beginning. Whatever the reason, she enjoyed cooking meals for them, and looked forward to spending evenings and mornings together.

  “Don’t you miss the companionship?” Dev said, looking over his shoulder for the kids before lowering his voice. “Or at least the sex?”

  Jaya smiled and lobbed a green bean at him in jest. He caught it and popped it into his mouth. She did miss the companionship. And the sex. For years, she hadn’t. She had been so shrouded in her own grief that she felt disconnected from her physical body. Then, when she had discovered the Guru, she convinced herself that the feminine, sexual part of her had served its purpose—mating, reproduction—and now she’d moved on to another phase of life, intended for higher order concerns.

  “. . . just want you to be happy,” Dev was saying now.

  “I’m fifty, Dev,” Jaya said.

  “Exactly. You can find a nice, mature gentleman who already has an established career, who’s comfortable with himself. You don’t have to go through any of that tedious child-raising, career-building stuff. You two can just have fun together, travel, enjoy life.”

  “I told you guys, leave the profile description to me. You old farts are hopeless at romance,” Smita interjected as she returned to the room, carrying two dresses with plunging necklines. Jaya recognized the black one from her last romantic getaway to San Francisco with Keith, Before. She hadn’t even realized it was still in the back of her closet; the woman who’d worn it seemed so far away, but perhaps not entirely forgotten.

  Smita grinned, proudly holding the two hangers in front of her. “Okay, Jaya Auntie. It’s showtime.”

  45 | serotina

  MAY 17, 2015

  Serotina, Jasmine and Rufus were in the basement, working on a large Greenfields order for Alaska. Sero was snipping dying leaves off the cannabis plants with miniature clippers. The memory of working on bonsai in Mrs. Galbraith’s science lab came to her, so long ago and far away, when Micah descended the stairs toward them. “How we doing, team?”

  “Dude, this is the biggest order we’ve ever had,” Rufus said, gleefully. “Four pounds. Seven grand in a single transaction. Hopefully, this guy is a repeat customer.”

  Micah slapped him on the back and peered at the tray Jasmine was working on. “Great work, guys. I’m really proud of what you’ve created here.” He turned back to the group. “I think it’s time to share this with everyone.”

  “Oh, thank god,” Jasmine said. “I’m getting tired of not being able to talk about it outside this room.” She shared a glance with Rufus, then looked over at Sero. “I mean, no offense, but it’ll be nice to be more open about it, you know?”

  “Yeah, we should share the love.” Rufus grinned. “Everyone should be able to partake in the premium Greenfields weed.”

  “I’m planning something very special for tomorrow,” Micah said. “I’m going to shar
e it with the group tonight, but you guys should start getting ready. Finish up your big order and get this space cleaned up.” He gestured to the side wall, where bags of supplies and unused equipment were stacked. “Good?”

  “Yup, I’ll do it right now,” Rufus said, rising from his seat behind the computer.

  Micah wandered over to Sero’s table. She anticipated his hand on her shoulder, some touch from him that she still craved, but he just leaned up against the wall next to her. “You’re very quiet.”

  Sero shrugged. What could she say? There was so much bottled up inside of her, but she was afraid to let it out, lest she rouse Micah’s temper. She longed for things to go back to the way they had been a few weeks ago, before Cerise and Daphne moved in, before Justin left, before she discovered those papers in Micah’s office, which she could no longer explain away or ignore.

  “Hey,” Rufus called from across the cavernous space. He’d ducked into the area under the staircase and pulled out a large plastic jug with red lettering. “What should I do with this?”

  Micah took a few steps toward him and read the words printed on the jug. “Rodenticide?”

  “Rat poison,” Sero explained.

  “Yeah, do we need it, or what?” Rufus said.

  “Not unless we want to kill off plants,” Sero said.

  Micah took a few steps closer and took the jug from Rufus, turning it around to read the back.

  “What are you thinking, man?” Rufus said.

  “Micah?” Sero asked.

  Rufus grinned. “Maybe those prize rosebushes next door?”

  “Micah?” Sero stopped snipping leaves. “You can’t really—”

  Micah wheeled around to face her so quickly, she instinctively drew back. “Don’t you get it, Sero? That asshole is making life very difficult for us. He’s submitted all kinds of complaints to the community board, which get forwarded to the landlord and then to us.” He was speaking rapidly, gesturing wildly with the jug in hand. “He’s just going to start up again when our dairy cows get here next week.”