The Good Sister (13 page)

He smiles that damn Jesus smile again. “Can I get you a tea or something?”

“Whatever you're having,” I say, curious to see what he orders.

He asks the bartender for two seltzer waters with lemon, and my brief hope that he's a Buddhist who knows how to party is dashed.

I sit down at the bar, and he takes a seat next to me. He is still wearing a loose white cotton shirt, but his sarong is gone, replaced by a pair of baggy, orange cotton pants. What is it with this guy and the color orange?

I would roll my eyes except he somehow makes the look work for him.

“It's good to see you,” he says, and I get the distinct feeling he actually means it.

“You too.”

“I've been thinking about you, wondering if you'd come back to the center again.”

I shrug. “Maybe someday.”

He says nothing, just lets a little silence sit between us that would normally be awkward, but with him it kind of feels okay. Also, the music is loud enough that we have to lean in to talk to each other, and I guess that makes small talk not worth the effort.

I watch the girl onstage, doing some kind of whirling-dervish dance that makes her silver skirt and her long red hair fan out around her. It's actually not that stupid looking. A minute later, the band ends their show, and the sweaty people start sitting down at tables or coming to the bar for drinks. Another band immediately starts setting up, but for now, it's quiet enough that we can talk.

“There's going to be another community meditation and dinner tomorrow night, if you feel like coming,” Krishna says.

“I can't. I have a family thing.” This is half-true because I'm planning to work an extra shift instead of cooperating with Lena's efforts to get us all standing on the mountaintop to sing “Kumbaya” together.

He nods, which makes me feel like explaining further. I don't want him to think I'm brushing him off, and, okay, maybe I'm hoping to score a little sympathy.

“It's for my sister. We're scattering the ashes tomorrow night.”

“Are you ready for that?”

I don't know what to say. Am I?

“Letting go of the remains can be the most difficult part.”

“Is anyone ever ready for scattering ashes? You just do it, right? And then it's done. Whether you're ready or not.”

“Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.”

“John Lennon,” I say with a sigh. “My mother is a huge fan.”

“So then you must know that every day, in every way, it's getting better.”

How this guy manages to recite song lyrics without sounding like a tool is a testament to how gorgeous he is. Or maybe how sincere he is. Or both.

“What's getting better?” I ask.

“You are.”

He says it without any sign of flirting, but I want to lean in and kiss him. I wonder what he would do.

And then I do.

But when I'm like six inches from his mouth, his hand comes up between us and rests on my cheek, right next to my mouth, and he smiles a sad, little smile. Like he's sending me a big fat rejection without even saying a word.

This is not something that has ever happened in the history of my life. It is unprecedented.

“That won't make the pain go away,” he says.

“Then you haven't been doing it right.”

At this, he laughs, and I am tempted to try again, but he gives my shoulder a squeeze and says, “Come on, let's walk.”

Do I dare to hope?

I follow Krishna outside, where the night is cool, a relief from the stuffy bar full of sweating patrons. We walk away from the noise of downtown, toward a residential area that is mostly dark since most everyone is in bed.

“Do you ever think about how this road goes all the way from here to the ocean?”

I shrug. “Not really.”

“And across that ocean is a whole world of people we'll never know, living their lives, with their own problems and worries and pleasures.”

He has led us out into the middle of the street, where we are standing now, looking toward the Pacific. But a mountain lies between here and there, which the road goes up and over.

What I don't say is that I am more likely to think about the whole world of people right here who don't give a flying fuck about me or my problems, while I in turn don't care about theirs. I see them come and go from the coffee shop, I pass them on the street, and I am frequently struck by how little we all matter in each other's lives.

We are all just stand-ins in each other's movies. Nameless, almost faceless, our details completely irrelevant.

That's about as philosophical as I get.

“When you scatter your sister's ashes tomorrow night, remember you are returning her to the world to be reborn.”

“Right. As a flower or a bird or a flea on some dog's nutsack.”

He studies me but says nothing, and I turn away. I start walking up the road, fully intending to leave Lena's car downtown and just walk my ass straight home.

I don't need this shit.

Suddenly, I don't want to be anywhere near Krishna and his load of spiritual crap.

But he follows me. “I understand you, you know. You have a right to be angry.”

“What do you know about that? You think I'm going to just meditate it away if I'd only become a Buddhist?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

He stares at me calmly. “When I was using heroin, I did it to stop feeling sad, bored, angry … I wanted to be numb.”

When I try to imagine Krishna as anything but the enlightened being he is now, I can't see it. Part of me wishes I'd known him back then. I could probably have gotten laid with old-Krishna. We would have made a good self-destruction team.

“Are you even tempted by me?” I ask, feeling my burst of anger deflated by his calm.

“What if I was? Then what? Would your life be any better?”

“Definitely.”

He grins and shakes his head. “You're lovely.”

“I'm not trying to be funny.”

“You know, sexual interest in a person is perhaps the basest, lowliest sort of interest. It's like being interested in a toilet because you need to take a piss.”

“I didn't know Buddhists used words like
piss
.”

He says nothing to this. I guess he is waiting for me to see how profound he's being.

“What if sexual interest in people is the only kind I have?”

“Then you're using it like I used heroin—to numb yourself—because it's easier that way.”

“Do you have anything to say that isn't completely full of shit? Because I want to go home and go to bed.”

He grasps my shoulders and turns me to face him full on. He is staring into my eyes all intense when he says, “What if I tell you I love you?”

“I'd say I've heard that line before.”

“Have you ever loved someone just because they are there to be loved?”

“You know, I was born in a commune, so I've heard this kind of crap my whole life, and just because you say it with a meaningful gaze while standing in the middle of the road at midnight doesn't make it any less stupid.”

He lets his hands drop to his sides, closes his eyes for a moment, and nods. Then he puts his hands together in the prayer position and bows his head. “Namaste, Rachel.”

I watch him turn and walk away, back toward town.

“That's Hindu! Can you at least stick to one fucking religion?” I yell after him, but I don't follow.

I can't, and I won't.

But I want to.

Twenty-One

Asha

The next day, I do little more than breathe. After the whole Tristan-and-Sin fight—and having to call Rachel to beg her to borrow the car and come get me from the party—I can't bring myself to get out of bed. So I stay in my room, studying the patterns of leaves and shadows in the canopy of trees outside my window as the afternoon light fades to darkness. A thick, knotty branch of a live oak reaches out toward my bedroom window, and it becomes the closest thing I have to a friend.

Beyond it, a group of bay trees looms with the threat of sudden oak death. They are vectors for the disease that is slowly wiping out the majestic oak trees around here. We had a field trip last year where we learned about it, so what happens to me when my best friend is a tree and it dies too?

Lena has left me alone today. Maybe she senses I am not to be fucked with, or maybe Rachel said something about my abandonment at the party in Mill Valley, but whatever. She seems to have given up on making me do anything for now.

Sadly, I was half expecting her to force me to go help scatter Rachel's ashes tonight, so I have finally gotten up, showered, brushed my teeth, made sort of an effort to get dressed. I am wearing jeans and a sweater now, back in bed but ready to go, and I seem to have been forgotten.

The scattering-of-ashes trip is getting started late, thanks to Ravi's arriving an hour late and Lena's yelling at him in the driveway for a while, and then his yelling at her for inviting her boyfriend and refusing to ride with her and her boyfriend to the top of Mount Tam.

Ridiculous that they thought of taking one car in the first place, but such is the state of my sad excuse for a family.

I watch the drama unfold from my bedroom window.

Then I hear Ravi say, “Where are Asha and Rachel?” and I know I'm doomed.

Ravi is nothing if not determined. He may be a half-assed dad to us and a world-class idiot when it comes to choosing women, but when he decides something is going to happen, he is relentless.

I hear Lena say something about Rachel having to work at the last minute and me refusing to go, and then my stomach twists itself into a knot as I hear footsteps making their way closer and closer to my bedroom door.

A soft knock, and then the door pops open. “Asha, it's time to go up the mountain.”

I haven't seen Ravi since our lunch, which makes exactly two times since Christmas, but seeing him here in my room brings on a pang of loss for the past we used to share. He was the kind of father who'd swing us endlessly on the swing, who'd help us build intricate, gigantic sand castles that, at then end of the day, we'd all crash into and destroy. He hasn't always been such a dumb fuck.

When I say nothing and make no move to get out from under the covers, he steps inside and comes to the side of my bed, where he sits and places a hand on my shoulder.

He looks into my eyes, and I recall how I've always been told I look like my dad. When I was younger, I wanted to look more like my elegant, blond mother, but only Sarah got that honor. These days, I don't care. Dad's genes are a combination of black Irish on his dad's side and Italian on his mom's, giving him green eyes and dark brown hair, with a complexion that never burns but turns a golden color in the summer.

“I'm sorry about that crap with your mother just now. I always think she can't get under my skin anymore, but I guess she still can.”

He smiles a tired smile. I shrug but say nothing. I remember that he hadn't wanted the divorce, that he'd argued with Lena that it wouldn't be good for us girls, that we needed a solid family and a father figure and all that, and I realize for the first time that I never gave him much credit for having tried to save things.

“This is hard for all of us,” he says. “We've got to come together right now, not fall apart.”

They keep saying that. But aren't they the ones who split us all up in the first place?

I still don't speak because all of a sudden I miss Ravi like crazy. I want the old days back, when he was my dad, the guy who tickled me until I cried uncle and taught me to hammer a nail and danced with me to old-school R&B on the radio and picked me up to hold me close after the first time I fell off a bike.

“Asha?” I know these past few years since the divorce have been rough, and I'm sorry I haven't been around more. I want to change that.”

I nod, afraid now that I might cry. I blink and blink again, forcing the tears away.

“I need you to come with me up the mountain and help us scatter Sarah's ashes.” He takes my hand, and I think I will refuse again to go, but instead, I allow him to help me up off the bed. I grab a coat, slip my feet into a pair of sneakers, and I go.

I don't ride with Lena though. Instead, I climb into the passenger side of Ravi's BMW and am grateful to see no ridiculously young girlfriend of his lurking inside.

“We'll go get Rachel and meet you up there in a half hour,” Ravi says to Lena through the car window as we drive past her.

“Rachel won't come,” I say, but he ignores me.

The coffee shop where she works is only a two-minute drive from our house, and I am amazed when, after sitting in the car waiting for what must have been only a few minutes, Ravi emerges from the shop with Rachel following. She takes off her apron, puts on her jacket, and gets into the backseat.

The car is cool and smells like leather, and when I turn to Rachel in the back, I can barely see her thanks to the dark and the tinted windows blocking out any light from the street. Her face, cast in shadow, doesn't look nearly as angry as I would have expected given the circumstances.

“Will you get in trouble for leaving in the middle of your shift?” I ask, not sure what else to say.

She shrugs. “Ravi knows the owner. He said it's cool.”

We ride in an uncomfortable silence for a while, until Ravi glances into the rearview mirror and says, “So how are things?”

He glances over at me and waits for one of us to say something. I hear Rachel sigh loudly. She's not much for small talk.

“Kind of awful?” I say, not sure how else to describe the train wreck that is my life.

“Yeah, for me too.”

Since Ravi lived for most of his childhood traveling the world, and then much of his teen years in a commune in Holland with his hippie parents, his voice has a strange accent that is from no country at all but always reminiscent of faraway lands. People ask him where he's from sometimes, trying to place the accent, but he smiles and says he is from everywhere, an answer that doesn't satisfy. Yet he rarely explains further unless they ask the right questions.