The Shape of Family Page 9

  On weekends with her dad, they followed a routine: dinner at a restaurant, room service for breakfast, and afternoons at his golf club, where he tried to teach her how to play. She didn’t look forward to it, but the whole arrangement served her purposes, giving her the freedom to do what she wanted. Dev Uncle, on a recent Skype call from London, encouraged Mom to give her more independence. “Sachin and Smita are riding the tube to school by themselves, and they’re only ten and twelve,” he boasted about her cousins. “You can’t constrain her, Jaya. You have to let her grow up.” Karina didn’t tell Mom that Dad went through a few bottles of wine every weekend, and she didn’t mention to Dad that Mom stayed so late in Prem’s shrine that Karina often made herself cheese toast for dinner. Everyone in her family had their secrets, and Karina became practiced at keeping them.

  When the pressure inside her grew to be too much, Karina retrieved her supplies from the back of the vanity drawer, her anticipation building. She laid her materials out in the same way each time, this ritual itself becoming part of the process. There was a small towel, an unwrapped bandage, safety pins, tissues and a bottle of disinfectant left over from when she’d had her ears pierced. She always started with the small safety pin, unlatching it and lodging the clip under her thumbnail for the dull pain. Then she wiped the sharp tip with disinfectant and drew a thin line across her inner thigh, increasing the pressure until blood appeared. For a while, this one cut was enough to reach the feeling she was seeking—a flood of relief, even contentment. For a few moments after making the cut, her body felt right and her mind was at peace. She tried to make that feeling last as long as she could. Sometimes, one cut wasn’t enough and she had to do it again. Eventually, she began to use the bigger safety pin with its thicker tip. It turned out it didn’t matter that she had rid herself of Prem’s Swiss Army knife, and now she regretted losing that last piece of him.

  * * *

  The last year of high school blurred with intensity and activity, and Karina relished the feeling of exhaustion that accompanied her schedule. As captain of the Science Olympiad team her senior year, Karina led them to the regional finals, where they brought home small trophies for third place and a great feeling of accomplishment.

  Her father wanted her to go to a top college. He insisted on taking her to tour the Ivy League, and regularly bought her shirts from the Stanford bookstore. Sometimes, she felt like one of his employees to be managed, or an investment to be returned. Karina had a different goal: instead of a university with the best ranking, she wanted one that would give her the largest scholarship—something that could give her true independence from her parents.

  As the end of high school drew closer, the sights of Karina and her friends narrowed. Izzy was determined to go to college on the East Coast. Karina knew there was little chance of them being near each other, since Izzy wanted to live someplace where she could experience winter and escape their comfortable suburban neighborhood. Karina admired her courage and, in Izzy’s shadow, realized how little of it she had herself. She thought leaving Northern California was a big step toward independence. She applied to all the best colleges on the West Coast, while Izzy applied to only one token University of California campus for her parents. Karina knew throughout their senior year that graduation would be the end of them, but that understanding didn’t make it any less painful when it happened.

  17 | prem

  Usually I’m the one in our family who can see something special, but sometimes it’s Kiki.

  She was the first to see something special in Gilly when she was just a little puppy. Gilly ended up being adopted by a family from the waiting list, with ten-year-old twin boys. When they went to pick her up, she had grown so much you couldn’t even tell she’d been the runt, and they called her Maxi. Kiki could see from the beginning that Gilly would grow up to be strong, a little fighter who constantly nipped at everyone’s ankles. I don’t think I would have liked that biting part, but I would have put up with it for Kiki. Gilly would have made her really happy.

  But I’m the one who could always spot the candy in its hiding place after Halloween every year. Mom kept the bucket on the top shelf of the pantry, and when she wasn’t home, I would climb onto one of the kitchen chairs and stand on my tiptoes to try to reach it. When I was six and seven years old, no matter how much I stretched out my arm, I couldn’t reach that shelf, and I had to ask Kiki to get it for me (which she did, but not the whole bucket, only a few pieces). Seeing my family now feels like that: each person is reaching, stretching their arms and wiggling their fingers as much as possible, but there are still giant gaps between them. And they don’t have anyone to ask for help like Kiki helped me.

  Sometimes I felt left out, when Kiki, Mom and Dad would talk about what color our new car should be, or which movie we could go see. They were all used to talking about things together for five years before I was born, and sometimes it was hard for me to push my way into their conversations. Most of the time, I could do it with a joke. Sometimes they laughed, and sometimes they didn’t (even though I was always funny), but at least they heard me.

  I always thought of myself as the clown in the family, but now that I’m gone, and I see what they’re like without me, I know I wasn’t just the clown, but the glue. I was the one who held them all together, whether they were laughing at something I did or annoyed with me getting in the way. They always had to worry about where I was, who would stay with me and who would drive me to T-ball practice. Without me to fuss over, everything fell apart.

  Dad is back to spending all his time At Work, like Before. I never knew it, but now I can see he gets really excited when he’s there. He feels the way I did when I played T-ball with my team on the weekends.

  Mom is always in my room, which doesn’t really feel like my room anymore. I like that she spends all day in there with me, even if all the fun things are gone, boxed up and moved into the garage. Mom said she couldn’t look at them anymore, but she touched and kissed every single book and toy (even every T-shirt!) before she packed them up. No one was there to see her but me, so I know she really meant it.

  And Kiki, poor Kiki, she’s all alone now. It used to be the two of us, together always, and even though Kiki got annoyed with me, I know she loved our super-awesome power duo too. Now she has no one—no one who’s like her, no one who understands her. She spends time with her friends, but she doesn’t tell them anything important. They don’t know the little secrets I know, like how she wishes she had straight hair like Izzy, and how she actually likes those dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets dipped in ketchup, just like me.

  Kiki spends too much time in the bathroom, but not just trying on makeup like before. Now she does things she thinks no one else will see. And she’s kind of right, because Mom and Dad don’t see her anymore, not really. They don’t see inside her to all the pain and hurt she feels, the swarm of snakes coiling around in her belly when she’s awake, and in her mind when she sleeps. She hurts herself just to drown it out, but it never works for very long. I want to bang on our bathroom door, like I used to when I really had to pee in the morning and she was still doing her hair. I want to bang and say, Stop, Kiki, stop!

  I want to pull her from our bathroom and pull my mother out of Not My Room Anymore, and pull Dad away from his office, and pull them all together, close the giant gaps between them and join their hands and say, There! Now don’t let go of each other. Don’t you dare let go!

  But I can’t pull them together. They can’t hear me. And they can’t hear each other.

  So, I knew what was coming when they all went out to dinner at Alfredo’s just before what should have been my eleventh birthday. It was two years since I died, and still no one could reach one another. They were floating away in different directions, each in their own orbit. Kiki didn’t seem surprised either, when Mom and Dad explained they were getting a divorce. She didn’t even cry, not then in the restaurant. Only later, alone in bed that night.

  When we used to
get bored on long car rides, Kiki and I would play the Worst game, trying to imagine the worst thing we could eat (worms), the worst thing we could wear (skunk skins), the worst job in the world (portable-toilet cleaner for me, slaughterhouse worker for her). Divorce was the worst thing that could ever happen to our family, we always agreed.

  I should have been more careful. I should have tried to stay longer. I didn’t know I was the glue.

  Away

  18 | the olanders

  SEPTEMBER 2013

  Keith emerged from the shower to see Courtney still asleep in his bed, tangled in the steel-gray sheets with her long hair spread out across the pillow. He glanced at the time and realized he was going to have to get her up and out. He pressed a button on the remote control to raise the window shades and another to tune the bathroom TV to Bloomberg, though markets were closed today. Courtney didn’t stir. Ah, to be in your twenties and sleep like that. He raised the TV volume and ran the bathroom faucet to shave. By the time he finished and was patting his face with a towel, Courtney had rolled over to face the bathroom door.

  “Hey there,” she murmured. “You’re up early.”

  “I have to get going at eight, remember?” He slammed the bathroom drawer, his anxiety mounting about the day ahead.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Too bad. I thought we could get room service and stay in bed all morning.” She gave him a sly smile, which did not have its intended effect.

  “You should get up. It’s seven forty-five.” Keith left the bedroom with a towel wrapped around his waist, hoping his departure would propel her out of bed. In the kitchen, he poured himself a cup of coffee that had been brewed to perfection by the espresso machine, which had also ground the beans while he’d been in the shower. The elaborate machine had been a splurge, one of the few items he’d chosen for himself in this condo; the rest was standard issue with the furnished unit he’d purchased a year earlier.

  Shannon, a young woman he’d dated briefly last year, had tried to make the place homier by adding personalized touches, like photos of the two of them in places they’d traveled. Keith asked her to remove them, the first argument in their ostensible relationship, which led to a discussion about their future and their inevitable dissolution. Keith had already had a picture-perfect family and lost it; he didn’t expect a second chance, at least not with someone new.

  For reasons he didn’t want to explain to Shannon or Courtney or anyone else, Keith liked feeling as if he was living in a hotel (which in fact he was, on the residence floor of a luxury hotel that had newly opened in the heart of Silicon Valley to accommodate the influx of global visitors). It felt more like he was traveling for work, as he did often, and less like a sad single guy’s apartment. The whole condo had been a splurge after the divorce, when he was contemplating the expense of two households and Karina’s college tuition ahead.

  He’d finally made the move to Duncan Weiss, after avoiding it for so long because of Jaya’s voice in his mind. The move had taken some adjustment; policies and procedures were not as established there as they’d been at Morgan Stanley, but he was acclimated now. Culturally, the smaller bank felt more comfortable than his previous blue-chip firm ever had. He may have had an Ivy League diploma, but at heart, Keith was a scrappy entrepreneur’s kid from Philly. Most importantly, as a bigger fish in the smaller pond of Duncan Weiss, he took home a larger share of the bonus pool. With his first-year bonus, he’d paid off the modest mortgage on their family house so Jaya and Karina could live there without worry. A year later, he bought himself this condo, justifying it because of how hard he worked. When his parents came out to visit, they were awestruck by the heights to which their son had climbed in the pecking order, as he knew they would be.

  Courtney walked up behind him in the kitchen and wrapped her arms around his waist, sliding one hand down beneath his towel. She nibbled at his ear. “Sure you don’t want to come back to bed for just a few minutes?”

  Keith put his coffee cup on the counter and refastened the towel around his waist before turning around to meet her expectant face. He summoned patience: he was desperate to get her out of here now, but she would be nice to come home to in a couple of days. He cupped his hands around her face. “Next weekend, we’ll order room service and stay in bed all day. Promise.” He kissed her deeply, in a way he hoped would satisfy her. “But right now, we’ve gotta go.”

  He patted her ass before returning to the bedroom, where he spent an unreasonable amount of time deliberating over which shirt to wear. As he tucked a pale blue linen shirt into his jeans, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. How could he be old enough to be taking his daughter to college? There were still times when, putting on a suit, he felt twenty-five years younger, dressing for his first job at Morgan Stanley in New York. The time had passed in an instant. And yet, when he thought about it, the weight of those years and all that had happened had left their mark.

  Courtney kissed him goodbye at the entrance to the parking garage, and by the time he reached his car, she’d already sent him a sexy text message. He deleted it without replying, irritated at her frivolity, her obliviousness to the import of the day. It had been over four years since Prem died, and Keith still keenly felt his absence. What would his son be doing today? How would he be feeling? Would he be sad to see his sister go, or happy to come out from her shadow? Keith was always accompanied by the ghost of an eight-year-old boy frozen in time, a son he would never teach how to shave, tie a necktie or drive.

  Keith had learned to live with the things he couldn’t control, starting with Prem’s death and ending with the dissolution of his marriage. Jaya had been determined to pursue a path without him. Her resolve, always formidable, became unnerving once it was turned against him. When they emerged from that rawest period of grief, Jaya had built a wall around herself, blocking out everyone, including him. In the end—once he understood that she no longer wanted to live the same life with him—what lingered was this: she didn’t seem to value what they’d created together. He wanted her to acknowledge that they’d had it all, and she’d chosen to squander it.

  Keith put the car into top gear for the one short stretch of highway on the route to the house and lay his head back against the headrest, trying to settle his nerves. Without knowing why exactly, he’d gotten a haircut yesterday, feeling more like he used to in the early days of his and Jaya’s courtship than in the later years of their marriage. At Karina’s graduation party at a Mexican restaurant a few months earlier, he and Jaya had stood off to the side together with their margaritas and watched Karina and her friends dance in sombreros. He and Jaya basked in the lovely young woman their daughter had become, and Jaya smiled and laughed most of the night. He always hoped for that version of his ex-wife, but she didn’t materialize often.

  Keith had learned to focus on the things he could control. He’d maintained a good relationship with Karina and given her the opportunity to pursue anything she wanted in high school, to go anywhere she wished for college, regardless of expense. He’d hoped she would dream a little bigger than UC Santa Barbara. His own education had undoubtedly opened doors for him. But those doors were now open for his daughter as well, who had reaped the benefits of a good neighborhood and schooling, and he did take some comfort in her staying in state, just a few hours’ drive away.

  Mostly, what Keith could control was his work. Duncan Weiss truly valued Keith and gave him more freedom. He’d risen to become the top producer on the West Coast, bringing in more fees than any other partner. With no family life to come home to, Keith preferred to work hard and travel frequently, which helped foster his success. He’d learned that winning wasn’t always so much about survival of the fittest as it was about just survival—simply outlasting everyone else. He had a strong network of clients with whom he dined and played golf, people he genuinely enjoyed. His network became his competitive edge: he was so closely intertwined with his clients’ businesses that when a transaction came up, he was right there; th
ey never considered calling another banker. And the rush he got from doing this work hadn’t diminished at all through the years.

  As he neared the house, he found himself slowing down as he always did, remembering the times he’d pushed Prem’s bicycle down this open street, noticing the big oak tree in Mrs. Gustafson’s corner yard that Karina used to climb. Jaya casually talked about selling the house after Karina left for college, but Keith had insisted she keep it. It was the one thing connecting them all to the life they’d once had.

  * * *

  From her bedroom, Karina heard the low growl of Dad’s car pulling into the driveway and called out to her mother as she ran down the stairs to meet him. She was determined to make this a good day, the first full day the three of them had spent together in years—probably the last full day they’d have together for who knew how long. The thought launched shivers of excitement and fear down her arms.

  When Dad leaned down to embrace her, Karina lingered in his strong arms for a moment. He kissed her on the forehead and stepped back. “Hi, darling. Ready?”

  “Yup! It was quite a puzzle getting everything to fit in the car.” She gestured across the driveway to the new VW Jetta he’d bought for her, its rear seat filled to the roof. “Can’t open the trunk till we get there, because it might all come bursting out.”

  “Oh, I could have helped you with that. Why didn’t you tell me?” Dad removed his sunglasses and perched them on his head. “I can put some stuff in my car.”

  Karina detected the familiar note of regret in his voice. He always wanted to be told when he was needed, not understanding that it didn’t work that way. To assuage him, she cocked her head and laughed. “Dad. Really? In that thing?” She looked pointedly at his two-seater Porsche 911, which housed its engine in the rear and had a small storage compartment under the front hood.