Inheritance (12 page)

Richard always spoke of his mother with irony, sometimes with genuine humor. His parents divorced
when he was ten, and he’d lived with her in the “upper Eighties” in New York City, in an apartment that was primarily decorated in pink and white, with lots of plush couches and lots of plastic. She had already looked at an apartment for him in SoHo when he was attending high school, speculating incessantly about paint chips and fabric swatches. But Richard wanted to make documentaries and skipped college for Amsterdam. In a way, Richard’s mother had groomed him for departure and travel to India all his life. I was five years old when he landed in Bombay in 1975.

She made commercial life seem awful but unwittingly made the life of an artist appear even worse. “I think she wanted me to paint so I could give her something to hang on her wall,” he said, promising me he was joking.

I liked listening to Richard talk about his mother. It made him even more real in my life, giving him history, and for me, providing comedy. His upbringing sounded romantic to me, living in New York City, and then leaving. I made him recite the subway stops he’d use, and I’d chant with him—Lincoln Center, Columbus Circle, Times Square, Penn Station, Sheridan Square—because to me they sounded so magical. Tell me about the time you were in Washington Square and thought the “No Littering” sign was a long-lost friend, I’d say, or tell me about the time you skipped school and roamed about in Chelsea because that was the one place your mother’s friends wouldn’t be.

I also instinctively liked his mother. Here was someone who cared deeply for her child and went to great lengths to provide for him. Interference, said Richard, but it seemed to me love. My mother wouldn’t care what career I embarked upon after college, or where I lived. All she seemed to do was mock me, watch me like a curiosity, if she could be bothered to see me at all. She was like the bird which abandoned her young in other birds’ nests.

I knew something was up when I arrived at Richard’s flat. A servant woman was doing his dishes, mopping up the floor, and he was picking up his discarded shirts from around the room. I liked the messiness of his life and was surprised at the busy cleaning.

“I don’t believe it, but she’s actually visiting,” he said, staring at an unidentifiable stain on one of his T-shirts. “What do you think this is?” he asked.

“Who’s coming?”

“Harriet.”

“Your mother?”

“On holiday. With the Ladies Who Travel.” Richard’s mother belonged to a group of women who met monthly to travel to nearby places together. They liked to visit. Now the group was taking a “tour of the Orient,” and his mother was to stay in India for a week, in Madras and Pondicherry. She then planned to spend an afternoon on Pi with Richard.

Richard hadn’t seen his mother in five years. The last time they’d met was in London, when she’d sent him
a ticket. “I was tripping, but not on purpose,” he said. “It was pretty scary. I kept on thinking the salad was infinite.”

He was nervous about my meeting her, but I looked forward to it.

She was arriving on Wednesday. I was impatient with my morning, trying on different outfits and trying to wear my hair up. Finally, I changed to what I had first put on and went over to Richard’s flat. So it was with a sense of excitement that I met Richard’s mother when she arrived on Pi.

Harriet was dressed in a purple and pink caftan, with earrings that looked like grape clusters and lots of bangles. Her hair was blond and worn up under a broadbrimmed hat. She was large and seemed a giant next to skinny Richard. I thought she was beautiful.

“This is my friend Sonil,” he said.

She pressed her cheek to mine and kissed the air. I thought this only happened in the movies.

Then she announced that she might stay.

“Mom?”

“Baby, I understand why you want to live here. Life in America is worrisome. All that endless running and chatter. I’m ready for a change of pace. I want to be on a different level, mingle with real people, get in touch with myself.”

“Mom, you’re about ten years out of date.”

“Is it too late to want spiritual fulfillment? Is it
wrong to add another dimension to my life? Are you telling me I’m too old, Richard?”

“You’re not old. But living here—god, Mother, I don’t think it’s for you. And anyway, who would take care of the cats?”

“I can have them shipped here. They can become vegetarians. Stop worrying, Richard.” She told us that she had already found a guru.

“I need to take a walk,” said Richard, propelling me out of the door.

“What am I going to do? She can’t possibly live here.”

“She’s your mother,” I said.

“Exactly. Being on different continents suited me just fine. A guru! She’ll probably organize Indo-Understanding weeks and Karma for Kleptomaniacs classes. You don’t know my mother—she needs to control everything.”

Richard’s mother moved to the guru’s camp. We decided to check the guru out. Her name was Helen Koenig. “My God, a goyishe guru,” said Richard.

She was conducting a class on Dynamic Meditation.

“That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it?”

“You’re getting hysterical.”

“My mother is going to learn to meditate from a Nazi housewife from Duluth, and you think I’m getting hysterical?”

The Dynamic Meditation camp was located on six
acres that belonged to a former pilot. There were an assortment of buildings named “Earhart,” “Lindy,” and so on. We found a class being conducted at Wright House.

Helen Koenig was a compact woman in her forties, with cropped red hair, dressed in a chartreuse sweatsuit with an om symbol painted on the front. She was leading the class through a series of calisthenics to Muzak based on Leonard Cohen songs (who, it was rumored, had a summer home on the island).

“Empty your mind and let the energy flow in,” she said as the group began to sway. Then the group began to hum.

“C’mon, people, don’t hum, om,” said Helen Koenig. “Droning doesn’t get you anywhere. Break through your restraints.”

The group consisted of about twenty people, mostly foreigners, with a stray Indian or two. Soon, they lay down in a circle and began to meditate. “No sleeping!” Helen would cry at intervals, “Meditate!” Finally, everyone got up and sang “With a Little Help from My Friends.” Then they applauded and hugged one another.

“Isn’t this wonderful?” gushed Richard’s mom. “I feel so vitalized. I’m getting in touch with my energy centers.” Richard just rolled his eyes.

We walked over to Markham House and entered the gift shop—cafe. Displays of quartzes, crystals on strings, rainbow stickers, ashram beads, tarot cards, T-shirts, and perfumed oils were neatly laid out on tabletops. A vaporizer
streamed negative ions into the air, while soft sitar music drifted from high-tech speakers. Everything was expensive.

“The whole structure is wrong,” said Richard, to me, or just to the air. Richard’s mother told me about the different healing powers of crystals. She bought me a packet of stones to harmonize my inner child. We then joined Helen Koenig at the cafe. She had an oversized glass of wheat-grass juice in front of her. I ordered a tofu burger, and Richard selected a protein salad.

“Are you interested in Yoga?” she asked us. Richard told her he had studied it for years.

“An Indian instructor,” he told her. I saw that he’d hurt Helen Koenig’s feelings.

“We try to accommodate all forms of Eastern exercise, along with supervised diet. I’ve opened a series of Dynamic Meditation centers in California and Rhode Island and one in Washington, and they all use local produce and adopt their own regimen. Rhode Islanders like to swim, so they swim daily at their center.”

I wondered what Rhode Island was as I tucked into the food. The tofu burger was quite good, warm and tasty, with much coriander chutney. They seemed to eat well. In fact, I enjoyed the atmosphere of this exercise and spirituality camp. And I was fascinated with Richard’s mom, especially her clothes. The days passed. She wore a series of different-colored sweatsuits, with matching cloth caps and sneakers. Richard, however,
seemed disconcerted by her appearance. “She used to wear business suits and clunky jewelry,” he told me when Harriet went off to change into an aqua outfit. I couldn’t tell which version of his mother he preferred.

I guess Richard believed that Pi was his territory, that his mother was trespassing. Somehow, her interest in spirituality was also a trespass, as if all sorts of lines were being crossed. I couldn’t imagine my mother tracking me down if I went to the States. I couldn’t understand Richard’s embarrassment. Richard’s mother was determined to stay on the island. “This is driving me crazy,” he said to me.

“I think she’s nice,” I said.

“She is so … so …” As he struggled to find the word, I found my attention wandering. I had seen less of him before his mother’s arrival, and I was beginning to think that I didn’t know him well at all.

In fact, Richard had seemed very different to me for the past week or so. Still, I was unprepared when he spoke again.

“Sonil, I have to tell you something.”

I’d already noticed that when people say they have to tell you something instead of just telling you, it’s bound to be bad news.

“What?”

“I’m leaving for Ethiopia.”

“What?”

“I can’t stay here. The vibrations are all wrong. I think I can do better work there. I can’t take this.”

“What do you mean? What about your students? What about me?”

“I’ve got to get away.”

“I think you’re overreacting.”

“I’ll be back in August.”

“But that’s two months away!”

“Yeah, so it won’t be long.”

“Two months!” I cried. Didn’t he realize how long that was? I might be gone before he returned.

“I might be gone before you return!”

“We can still be friends.”

Fifteen

What was I to do with my Richardless days? I began to take walks, passionate nature hikes to untie myself from him. I pretended I was in a Jane Austen novel, but no Darcy appeared to quell my emotions. I wrote furious poetry. I took to sighting birds and noting them in a book. Saw: one parrot, rose-ringed, yellow-beaked. Saw: three ravens, nearly big as sheep. Saw: a bunch of seagulls, an air full of sparrows.

“I got his note, yes,” said Richard’s mother, munching on a carrot. She ushered me into her dormitory.

“We are both of us restless spirits. When Richard moved to India, I decided to move to California. I said goodbye to all my New York friends, who thought I was
crazy, and sold most of my things. I tied a trailer to the back of an old car and rode westward like a pioneer. In California, I was introduced to the suburbs. Bicycles scattered over the lawns. The paper delivered daily by a boy saving up for a deluxe skateboard, maybe college. Garbage collected twice a week, not to mention curbside recycling. I bought a house, got cable, settled in. But before that, I stopped in Kansas City for a week.

“In Kansas City I had met a man, a farmer. He sold flowering shrubs at a very fair price and lived off his soybean produce. His father had been a farmer and his father before him. He had a history that my husband didn’t have, that I barely had. He was uglier than my husband, but I liked him more for it. But he was married, and I was divorced and on my way to California. My last night there he took me to a dance hall in a town called River and slow-danced with me. That was the most intimate we ever got. Seven years later his wife died, and he wrote to me. But I had moved on.”

Richard’s mother paused, not looking at me anymore.

“But you could go back,” I said. Richard’s mother just smiled and looked wistful.

“Young love is difficult,” she said.

This family spoke in puzzles and was destined for sadness, I thought.

I was going to Radcliffe, by God. I was going to become a zoologist. And if the admissions personnel were
to inquire if I ever had any other loves besides animals, I would resolutely say “No.” There would be no Richard in my life. But I was afraid they would somehow know I had had a lover. They would deny me entrance. I would be stuck in Madras. No one would ever marry me, not because of my mother’s reputation, but because somehow my love for Richard would be found out.

I told Maria that Richard had left. She hugged me fiercely, and I had a feeling she already knew. I began to sob on her shoulder, great sobs for myself. Why did he have to go away? Why did he leave me? What had I done? Maria soothed me but she could not help me. When I had worn myself of tears, she made us some tea and spoke of Richard.

“He had a roommate in college who was Indian, did he ever tell you that? This Indian boy would make paranthas and dahl and fed the two of them all winter. He told Richard stories about Cochin, his sister who was the beauty in the family, his two older brothers who were indifferent and glum. That was how India wove its spell over him.”

“India doesn’t weave spells,” I said, indignantly. “It’s the West that’s the spell-weaver, the enchanter, enticing us with Coca-Cola and television.”

“Well, maybe all nations are magicians. Maybe the media are magicians. But whatever it was, Richard began
to dream of India. He thought it would cure him of his terrible disappointment with life, I think he found in you an extension of his dreams, India as a young girl, India as innocence, intelligence, and wit. And I think when his mother came here, he saw that he didn’t have solitary possession of India, that his mother sought claim on his fantasy. So he left. I think his leaving is irresponsible. Remember he is leaving his mother as well as you. He has not yet grown up.”