The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

CHAPTER 1

Getting Kamala out of the garden and into bed was no easy feat. The shock of finding Akhil’s jacket buried among the vegetables was one thing. The mud, another. She had been covered in it — streaks drying on her forehead, black lining her fingernails, clumps falling from her sari as she followed Amina back to the house like a zombie. In the end there was nothing to do but strip her to her underskirt and blouse and hose her down while Thomas slunk off to find her some Valium. Dried and dosed, she had fallen into bed without a word, turning her head away on the pillow when Amina asked if she was okay. Amina lowered the blinds and closed the bedroom door.

Outside, Thomas was waiting, his hands clamped in front of him. “Well?”

Amina put a finger to her lips, guiding him into the kitchen. She left him on one side of the counter and crossed to the other, needing the hard slab of white between them.

“How did she seem?” Thomas asked.

“Tired.”

“Good.” Her father paused. “Your mother is very strong, you know.”

“So you put the jacket there?”

Thomas nodded once.

“Why?”

“I apologized to your mother. I apologize to you. It was inappropriate.”

“But I don’t understand why you would do that.” She was starting to shake and trying to stop shaking because it felt stupid to be so undone, so upset over a goddamn piece of clothing. She crossed her arms trying to shore herself up.

“Hey, koche,” Thomas soothed. “It’s not some huge thing. I had a bad night. I’ve been working a little too much. I might need to slow down for a bit.”

Amina looked at him, his glasses tucked into the front pocket of his overalls, and for a moment his explanation felt like it was not only true but right, like a newly paved road or a toothpaste-commercial smile or a horoscope you really wanted to believe in.

“Go get yourself a glass of water,” her father was saying, “and drink it slowly.”

“What happened in the ER with Derrick Hanson?”

She watched his face move quickly from surprise to something else, the skin around his mouth tightening. His eyes grew sharp, and Amina felt a flush spread from her throat to her scalp.

“That’s not your concern,” he said.

“If something is wrong, then I should know. To help.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Or get you to the right doctor.”

“Goddamn it, Amina, there’s nothing medically wrong with me!” Thomas shouted suddenly, and Amina’s heart clattered around her rib cage.

“B-but how do you know that?”

“Because I do!”

“But did you talk to someone afterward? Did you get tests done? Are you taking medication? Dr. George said he tried to get you to come in and—”

“You talked to Anyan about this?”

“I … it … yes. But—”

“You talked to a co-worker of mine?”

“Yes, I just thought if—”

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Thomas’s face drained of blood. “No, of course not! Why think through anything when you and your mother can sit here wringing hands and pointing the blame at me? Haven’t you grown tired of that yet?”

Amina’s eyes filled with tears. It was a distinctly feminine humiliation, the kind daughters close to their fathers go to great pains to avoid, as betraying of their fragility as a stain on the back of a skirt.

“Oh, stop it.” Her father plucked two napkins from the holder on the counter and shoved them at her. Amina breathed into the napkin, aware of the pressure gathering against her skull like beads of condensation. She blew her nose. It did not help.

“I think it’s time for you to go back to Seattle,” her father said.

She squeezed the napkin into a damp ball.

“Your patients,” she said.

There was a moment, a snap between them, and then a long corridor of silence with Thomas’s stricken face at one end of it. Amina put the crumpled napkin on the counter.

“I’m calling Dr. George tomorrow.” She took a quick breath and exhaled. “You are going in to see him, and whomever else you need to see. If you don’t, I will go and tell the board at Presbyterian what is going on myself.”

Then she walked out of the kitchen, through the porch, and out the screen door to the garden, to where Akhil’s jacket still lay in a clump, pill bugs racing through its ruined folds.

CHAPTER 2

At least he was right about Kamala’s resilience. As the next morning dragged itself over the Sandias, sky gray and faded as an old nightgown, as Thomas headed to work and Amina sat groggily in the kitchen, Kamala rose, cracked a coconut in the kitchen sink, and shrugged off any questions with a steaming batch of hoppers and chutney. Afterward, she cleaned the dishes, organized her spice cabinet, and pickled a batch of limes.

“You want tea?” she asked.

“Sure,” Amina said. She was exhausted. Her dreams had been full of shouting. She waited until the chai was brewed and in front of her to say, “He’s going to go see a doctor.”

“What?”

“Dad. We talked this morning.” Talked was putting a fine point on what amounted to a curt nod from her father, but Amina leaned across the counter, trying to project some measure of confidence. “He’s going this week.”

Kamala rummaged around the fridge, pulling out a voodoo-doll-sized piece of ginger. “What for?”

“Did you want to sit down for a second?”

“Ginger chutney!”

“Well, so … there was an incident in the ER.” Amina was getting to hate that word, its false officiousness like something a middle school principal could rectify. She cleared her throat. “Apparently Dad thought Derrick Hanson was alive when they brought him in and tried to save him.”

“So?”

“He wasn’t. Alive.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So he’s being watched now by the hospital board. And now with this … I just think he needs to go to the doctor. To see if there’s something, you know, really wrong.”

“You think there is?”

“I don’t know. I wonder if it’s depression or something.”

“Pish! Thomas doesn’t get depressed.”

“Everyone gets depressed, Ma,” Amina said, her face warming. “And it can definitely affect your perceptions.”

Kamala stopped cutting. When she turned around, her face was anxious and tired, as if all the morning work had just taken its toll. “What if something is wrong with him?”

She was so small, Kamala. In the daily onslaught of opinions and accusations, Amina almost never noticed it, but now, in the kitchen, she saw again how slight her mother could look in certain lights.

“Or maybe he’s being tempted by bad spirits,” Kamala continued, so softly and thoughtfully that it took a few seconds for Amina to understand what she was saying.

“Ma, stop.”

“It happens! Mort Hinley says people like your father are susceptible to all kind of devilry — doctors especially. All this playing-God business makes them think—”

“Please. I’m begging you.”

“But what if he’s the one letting them in? All they need is one crack”—Kamala daggered a finger into the air—“and they will infest an entire soul! Heads go spinning! I’ve seen it myself on the Oprah. Fine, don’t believe me, what do I care? You have your depression-shmession theories, I have mine!”

Amina rubbed her skull. “He’s going to see Dr. George tomorrow. I thought we could go with him.”

“Oh.”

“What?”

Kamala smiled over her shoulder. “Sure. If you’d like.”

“It’s not a date, Ma.”

“Yes, of course.” The phone rang, and Kamala dried her hands on her apron, pulling it from the cradle. “Hello?”

Amina let her forehead drop onto the countertop, liking the way the cool shushed her mind. Devilry? Was that even a word?

“She’s busy right now,” Kamala said. “She’ll call you back.”

“Wait, me? I’m right here. Who is it?”

Kamala held the phone out with a pinched face. “American.”

Amina took the phone from her mother.

“Hello?”

“Amina?”

It was Jamie Anderson. She knew it instantly, and then felt silly for knowing it, like she’d been caught waiting for him. She walked into the pantry, avoiding Kamala’s displeased look. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“Hey. Hi. It’s Jamie. Jamie Anderson. From Mesa—”

“Yeah, I know. Hi.”

“Hi.”

There was a long pause.

“Hello?” Amina asked.

“I’m really bad at the phone,” Jamie said. “Did you want to get dinner?”

“What?”

“I said I’m bad at—”

“No, I got that. Dinner?”

“Yes. Or, I mean, if you’re still around by then.”

“By when?”

“Tonight.”

“Oh,” Amina laughed. “Yeah, I’ll be here tonight.”

“No going out tonight!” Kamala shouted, throwing open the pantry door. “Nina Vigil wants to see your photos before she hires you. I told her we’d come!”

“What?”

“Quinceañera! Her granddaughter’s! I told her we’d bring by the Bukowsky photos this evening.” Kamala squinted at the phone. “Who is that?”

“A friend.” Amina shooed her mother from the pantry, shutting the door behind her. “Hello?”

“So … not tonight.”

“No, it’s fine. Maybe we can just grab a drink somewhere at nine?”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I’ll need a drink by then,” Amina said, and he laughed.

“How about Jack’s Tavern? It’s on—”

“You think I don’t know where Jack’s is?” she teased.

“Oh. Right, of course.”

Amina hung up. Outside the pantry, her mother stood like a tiny sergeant, arms crossed over her chest. “Who was that?”

“Who is Nina Vigil?”

“The Vigil family up on Toad Road! You met them at the Bukowskys’! She saw you taking photos and asked me if you’d do her granddaughter’s—”

“Fine. How much?”

“What?”

“What is she paying me?”

“I told them you would do it for free.”

“You what?”

“And then they will pay you if they want to order any prints, same price as Jane.”

“I don’t work for free, Ma!”

“Oh, pah! What else are you doing? And besides, you can make it up to Jane by giving her the cut. Get her back on your good sides, right?” The worst part, Amina realized, was that Kamala was right, but admitting that was akin to negotiating with a terrorist. What would stop her the next time?

“You know, it would be helpful if you’d actually run these things by me before you did them. It’s a good idea to tell the person doing the actual work.”

“I’m telling you now, silly. Don’t get all bent into shapes.”

“Fine,” Amina muttered. “But listen, I’m just shooting this as a favor because you already promised. No more after this.”

“Just the Campbells’,” Kamala agreed.

“Ma! Jesus!”

“No Jesus! It’s their anniversary. And hold on.” She went to her purse and opened her wallet, pulling out several twenty-dollar bills.

“What’s this?”

“Maybe go to the mall today and buy some clothes.”

“What?”

“So you don’t look like a man all the time.”

Amina shook her head and left the kitchen.

“Bright colors!” her mother called up after her. “Everyone likes bright colors!”

An hour later, Amina stood at a pay phone in a mall hallway, where poop and perfume and the grease from the food court formed the kind of atmosphere you might find in Jupiter’s red spot.

“That kid with the Afro?” Dimple was asking. “Paige’s brother?”

“Jamie, yeah.”

“Is it a date?”

“No.” Amina stared at the red Exit sign at the end of the hall. “He’s bald now. I mean, not bald, but he shaves his head in the summer.”

“That’s weird.”

“It isn’t really.”

“So first of all, stay away from pastels. They make you look chalky.”

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked. Okay, and then what shoes do you have out there?”

“My sneakers.”

“What else?”

“I was only going to be here for a week, remember?”

“So get some nicer shoes. Something a little more feminine.”

“Why does everyone think I dress like a man?”

“Like a sandal. Or a flat.”

“I just don’t like dresses. It’s not like I’m some transvestite.”

“Are you sure this isn’t a date? Because you sound nervous.”

“I haven’t talked to humans besides my parents in a week.” Amina heard a cough in the background, followed by Dimple’s quick shushing. “Who is that?”

“What? Oh, just Sajeev.”

“Just Sajeev?” Amina started to laugh but then stopped. “Wait a minute. Are you dating Sajeev?”

“Hold on a sec,” Dimple said, clackclackclacking across the gallery floor quickly, and then, from the sound of things, into the bathroom, where she whispered, “Yes.”

“What?”

“It’s not like it’s a big deal.”

“Not a big — are you fucking kidding me? Sajeev Roy? Your mother is going to hold an international press conference!”

“Shh! I’ve been trying not to think about that.” Dimple paused. “I really like him.”

“Really?”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Well … yes.”

“I know.” Dimple sighed. “It’s totally fucking weird. Sometimes when he’s asleep I just stare at him and think, What the hell is he doing in my bed? But then when he wakes up and I don’t know … he’s nice to me. I feel like I don’t have to try so hard with him.”

“Huh,” Amina said, feeling a little nick of jealousy. “Wow.”

“Anyway, do me a favor and don’t tell the others. I just want to enjoy this without everyone, you know.”

“Planning an all-Albuquerque ticker-tape parade?”

Dimple laughed. “Exactly.”

Amina hung up a few moments later and headed back down the white corridor, a little disoriented. Dimple and Sajeev? Was that kind of oppositional attraction possible in anything other than a romantic comedy? She made her way through the food court with its faux hot-air-balloon landscape and back into Macy’s, where she skipped the horrible dresses that had sent her to the pay phone in a panic and stopped at the first set of shirts. She pulled one up, frowning at its twinkly curviness. “Can I help you?” a hen-faced saleslady asked, smoothing her plump waist.

“I need to buy a shirt.”

The woman drew up short in surprise. She recovered quickly. “Is it for a formal event? Gala? Black-tie wedding?”

“No, just a regular old dinner.”

“Oh, great.” She smiled nervously in a way that put Amina at ease. “So let’s get out of the formalwear.”

Twenty paces and a few turns later, they were surrounded by decidedly less ball-worthy clothes. “Anything in particular you’re looking for? A tank top? A button-down?”

“I have no idea.”

“A color, maybe?”

“Something bright.”

“Gotcha.” She moved with surprising deftness for her girth, lifting and plucking shirts from the racks like they were ripe fruit. “You open to yellow?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Most people can’t wear it,” she said, lifting up a sunflower-yellow blouse. “But it’s great for your skin. And green?”

“No green.”

The woman motioned for Amina to follow her back to the dressing room, where she hung the blouses in a tidy row. “Anything else right now?”

“No, thanks. This is great.”

There were reasons that Amina didn’t like to shop, her too long, thin-in-odd-places torso among them. The fuchsia shirt hung on it like a sail. The blue button-down made her look like a high school lesbian. She pulled on the yellow tank top, gasped a little as she looked in the mirror. It worked. She looked healthy, glowing.

“You doing okay in there?”

Amina opened the dressing room door. The saleslady smiled.

“That’s really great.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely. It’s the right color and the right fit. Shows off your neck and arms.”

“Yellow isn’t weird?”

“Not a bit.”

Amina closed the door, turning her back to the mirror and trying to see what she’d look like to Jamie. Minutes later she stood at the register, flushed with an unusual amount of pleasure. Was it a purchase high? Minor-task accomplishment? She took the receipt and folded it.

“Thanks so, so much,” she gushed. “You’ve been really helpful. That was so, you know, easy.”

“Oh, sure.” The woman hesitated before handing her the bag with her shirt. “I’m Mindy.”

“Hey, Mindy, I’m Amina.”

“I know.”

Amina looked at her for a moment before the trapdoor in her brain released. “Holy shit.”

Mindy laughed a little, shifting nervously. Her fingers reached up to straighten her necklace, a small silver cross on a thin chain.

“Hi,” she said, and Amina tried to find some vestige of the girl who seduced Akhil with a joint and cleavage. Was it always this way? Did everyone from high school end up looking like weird facsimiles of other people’s parents?

“This keeps happening,” Amina said.

Mindy nodded. “So you’re back visiting?”

“Yeah. Parents.”

“Oh, nice. I live here. Obviously.” A slight blush rose to her cheeks. “Remember Nick Feets from school?”

Amina didn’t. She nodded.

“We got married a few years ago. We live in the valley.” Mindy took a quick breath. “Yep, three kids, dogs, the whole nine. Our oldest is probably going to start at Mesa next year. They’ve opened a middle school, you know.”

“Wow.” Amina had the distinct feeling she was supposed to say something more. Congratulations? Hallelujah?

“What about you? Last I heard, you and Dimple were in New York or something?”

“Seattle,” Amina said, distracted by that funny, bubbling-up feeling of thought rising from her subconscious. “We moved to Seattle.”

“Oh yeah? You like it?”

“Mostly.”

The girl Akhil lost his virginity to has a hen face and three kids. This was the thought, whole and uncharitable, and with it came the subsequent thought that Akhil himself might have looked old by now, which was so obvious that Amina felt stupid for never having thought of it before. And yet she hadn’t. The tiny corner of her imagination reserved for what-ifs had always brought him back more or less as he was, maybe a little taller, or broadened in the chest and waist, the way boys tended to be after college.

“Oh no,” Mindy said. “You look upset. I didn’t want to upset you. I just thought …” She was really blushing now, red patches blooming on her cheeks and chest like an allergic reaction. “I mean, I didn’t know if you recognized me and were just being nice or something.”

“Oh,” Amina said, backing away from the counter. “No, I didn’t.”

“I mean, it’s a job, you know?”

“Yeah, sure. And you’re really good at it.”

Mindy’s eyes narrowed, and for a split second Amina thought she saw the old Mindy, the one who would shred her with a sentence, but then she just shrugged. “Thanks. Well, we’re having a thirty-three-percent-off-all-red-tag-items starting Wednesday — everything except housewares.”

“Okay.” Amina raised the bag awkwardly in salute and backed away. She walked quickly down the aisle in front of her, taking one turn and then another, racing through the golden-hued jewelry/perfume section until she was finally, thankfully, spat out into the dark cavern of the mall. On one side of her, a few bodies pummeled at unseen forces in a video arcade, and on the other, a collection of massage chairs were entirely empty, save for a lone, undulating salesman. At the farther end of the mall, a shoe store specializing in designer names for less promised relief. Amina walked toward it.

CHAPTER 3

Jamie Anderson was with another woman. Why this should feel so bad was not anything Amina wanted to dwell on, though she was sure that the shower and the shirt and optimistic leg shaving had something to do with it. She stood in the doorway of Jack’s Tavern, her breath lodged in her chest as Jamie smiled at a pretty redhead, the kind of girl who turned playing with her hair into performance art.

“You going in?” A pie-faced guy behind her asked, and Amina stumbled into the bar, trying not to feel self-conscious as the girl watched her approach.

“Hey,” Jamie said, catching sight of her and standing. The suit had been replaced by a shirt and shorts and flip-flops, giving him the air of a surfer.

“Hey.” Amina turned to the girl. “Hi, I’m Amina.”

“Hi.” The girl regarded her coolly.

An awkward second passed.

“So I’ll see you soon, Maizy?” Jamie prompted, and the girl looked from Amina to him and back again before slowly standing up. Her hand tugged Jamie’s T-shirt briefly, and she leaned into him. “You didn’t tell me you had a date.”

Jamie backed up. “Have a great night.”

“You got it.” She turned her head in Amina’s direction, not quite looking at her before walking slowly back to the bar, where, Amina now saw, a small group of girls was waiting for her, the corners of their eyes taking in everything. She slid into the vacated spot. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“You didn’t. She was just a student in my Intro to Anthro intensive.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Jamie shifted in the booth seat, his knees knocking the table. “I kind of forgot that this was a student hangout.”

“Is it weird for you?”

“Nah.” He rubbed his head a little, looking around the bar. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

The girls at the bar were making no secret of looking at her now, and Amina tried to relax, or at least to look relaxed. Of course he had a female following. Was there anything college girls found sexier than being told what to think?

“What do they call you?” she asked.

“Professor Anderson.”

“Wow.”

Jamie raised an eyebrow. “Was that sarcasm, Amina Eapen?”

“No, not at all,” Amina laughed, crossing and uncrossing her legs. “I’m impressed.”

“Yeah, you look impressed.” His eyes fell to her collarbone. “Nice shirt.”

Her face blossomed with heat. “Thanks.”

Just then, the group of girls at the bar erupted into laughter, the redhead the loudest among them. She laughed with her head thrown far back, her hand nestled into her cleavage, and even without looking around the room, Amina could sense collective relocation of the male gaze, the beery, smitten hunger behind it.

“Hey.” Jamie leaned in, his foot bumping hers. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“What?”

“Go to another place down the street? Or maybe just on a walk? There’s actually a pretty nice park a few blocks away if you—”

“Yes.”

It was much better outside. Deep-blue evening was settling over Albuquerque, erasing the mountains and bejeweling the traffic lights running up Central. The air smelled sweet and diesely, like the promise of a road trip. Some minutes ago there had been a decision that involved leaving her car where it was, buying beer, and heading to the park, and since that time they had been walking steadily uptown, Jamie filling her in on details about his life that she wanted to know but was too nervous to absorb.

His walk was the same. Not that there was anything so remarkable about the way he leaned back on his heels, hands jammed into his pockets, talking to some midpoint in the sky like it was a floating amphitheater, but it did give Amina a déjà vu of sorts, the newness of him (definitely bigger out of the suit, with an equal amount of stubble lining his scalp and jaw) cut by an unnerving familiarity. He still had that weird, slightly dismissive tone, and that funny way of squinting while she talked, as though he couldn’t quite hear or believe what she was saying.

“So it seemed like the right time,” he was saying now, wrapping up the trajectory of his last twelve years, the highlights of which included graduate work at Berkeley, a few years living in South America, the offer of a tenure-track position at UNM, and a divorce.

“You were married?”

“For about three years.”

“Oh.” Amina felt strangely embarrassed about this, though less for him than herself. What had she been doing with her life? She’d never even tried hard enough at having a relationship to have it fail.

Jamie pointed his chin ahead. “There we go.”

There was a 7-Eleven, replete with red-orange glow and shelves of brightly colored products that looked like they could survive a nuclear winter. Jamie held the door open and followed her in, tagging her hip when she started walking down the wrong aisle.

They stood in front of the glass case, sizing up the beer options.

“So, Rolling Rock?”

“Yeah.”

Two minutes later they were back out the door, corn nuts, beef jerky, and M&M’s thrown into the bag. (“Trash picnic,” Jamie had said approvingly of her last-minute additions.) They turned onto one side street, then another, winding through a residential neighborhood where small stucco houses hovered behind dusty-looking lawns.

“Where are we going?” Amina asked.

“It’s a surprise. Hold up a sec.” He stopped at a station wagon and fished his keys out of his pocket.

“Wait, this is your car?” Amina asked.

“Yep.” He opened the hatchback and pulled out a blanket. He handed it to her, along with a small cooler.

“You just park it here?”

“In front of my house? Yeah.”

Amina turned around. The house that greeted her was not particularly different from the others, though it did look like someone had recently swept the porch.

“Wow. Don’t look so disappointed,” Jamie laughed.

“No! I’m not.” But she was, a little. Somehow, all the talk about tenure and anthropology had given her visions of a thick-walled, libraried adobe, the kind of place that was covered with kilim rugs and fertility sculptures. The white stucco in front of her looked only slightly more substantial than a roadside weigh station. She laughed. “So the surprise is that you’re taking me back to your place?”

Jamie looked confused for a moment, then alarmed. “Oh, no! We’re not! I just, uh, I wasn’t thinking that, actually, I just …” He shut the trunk, walking quickly away from both the house and car, as if to shed them. “C’mon. Follow me.”

Amina followed Jamie’s lumbering back down a tiny, dirty alleyway, growing more curious with every step until they stumbled into a bowl of green. Old, tall trees that were rare anywhere that far from the river rose up to greet them, the tops of their branches inked with night.

“Oh. Holy shit,” Amina said.

Jamie flashed her a sly look of pride. “Hidden Park.”

Amina turned back to the houses that spun a ring around the park, no fancier-looking than their fronts, but now infinitely more charming because of the secret they guarded.

“So this is your backyard?”

“More or less.” He walked a few paces and set their bag of goods down, reaching for the blanket. He unfurled it, and Amina, feeling pleasantly chastened, helped settle the edges, slipping her sandals off before stepping on it. “Not bad, huh?”

“It’s beautiful. I’m a little jealous.”

“Yeah, Corrales sucks as far as outdoors goes.” He handed her a beer. “Here you go.”

“Is that a …?”

“Beer cozy? Sure is.”

“You keep them in your car?”

“I keep a lot of things in my car. What?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you knocking the cozy? Because I’ll take it right back, you know.”

Amina smiled, clinking her bottle to his and taking a sip. Jamie slipped off his own shoes and scooted back until he was even with her, his legs hanging off the blanket into the grass.

“So you never did tell me what you took pictures of,” Jamie said.

“Oh. Right. Well, I used to be a photojournalist.”

“No kidding. Like wars and jungles?”

“Eh … more like street fairs and methadone clinics, but yeah.”

“That sounds like fun.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“Only a little bit. The rest was me being impressed.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t be.” Amina shook her head. “Anyway, I’m kind of on a break. I’m doing events now — weddings, anniversaries, quinceañeras. So do you just teach, or do you …” Jamie looked at her oddly. “I mean, not just teach,” she corrected hurriedly. “I’ve always heard that teaching is really hard. I just meant, do you work in the field too or something?”

He took a sip of beer, and it left a little foam wake on one side of his mouth. “It’s part of the reason I moved back, actually, to study the effects of the Sandia Casino and gaming culture on the authority of tribal elders.”

“Is that as sad as it sounds?”

“Not always. You’d be surprised. Either way, I try not to let it get to me.”

“And does that work?”

He leaned in and whispered, “I’m a trained anthropologist, you know.”

Soap and saltines. That’s what he smelled like, and something else, something she couldn’t quite name, but wanted to, the want itself such a persuasive force that she found herself guzzling half her bottle of beer to keep her face away from his neck.

“So what does it mean, you’re on a break from photojournalism? Was it a planned thing?”

“Uh, no.” Amina shifted.

“You got fired?”

“No.” She cleared her throat. “Actually, I kind of fired myself.”

“What do you mean?”

What did she mean? Amina looked at the grass beyond his shoulder, surprised by the foreign feeling of wanting to tell him the truth. Like many people whose lives had formed around a particularly painful incident, she had grown used to providing ellipses around the event of her brother’s death to keep conversations comfortable. At some point, the subconscious logic of this had spread to the rest of her life so that she rarely talked about things she had been deeply affected by. It wasn’t hard to do. She’d certainly never felt bad about it before. And yet sitting here with Jamie, she had a pressing feeling she would miss out on something important if she didn’t at least try.

“I didn’t mean to,” she said. “Or, at least, I didn’t think it would be such a long time. I just took a picture … some pictures … they were hard for me. I guess I needed a little bit of a break afterward, but then the longer I didn’t do it, the harder it became to start again, so, you know.”

“But you’re still taking pictures.”

“Yeah, but they’re …” Amina stopped herself. He did not need a catalogue of her disappointments. “Yes, I am.”

“You seemed like you really enjoy it. The other night, at the wedding, I mean.”

“Oh, that was just relief. I think by the time you saw me I was pretty much done.”

“I saw you at the church.”

It took a moment for this to sink in. “You didn’t say hi?”

“I didn’t know if it was cool.”

There wasn’t a ton of light in the park, something that was only obvious now that night was settling in. A warm yellow, domestic glow emanated from some of the houses, but other than that, there was just a lone street lamp that buzzed on and off intermittently, casting Jamie, when she looked at him, in a sharp silhouette. He looked nothing like his sister. The thought sneaked up on Amina, and with it, the faintest flicker of Paige’s face, those cheeks that held the curve of stone fruits, Ming vases. She was on a date with the brother of the girl Akhil had loved.

“I can’t believe you’re a professor,” she said.

“My dad was a professor.”

“I know. But you hated teachers in high school.”

“Hated is a strong word.”

“Mr. Tipton?”

“Oh yeah, I fucking hated that guy.”

They laughed. It felt good to laugh. It pushed the pressure from her head out into the cooling night, where it rose up through the branches to the two stars that had just become visible. Amina finished her beer and stared at it a second before deciding to lie back on the blanket.

Jamie bent over the bag. “You hungry yet? Want some corn nuts?”

“I’m good.”

“Okay.” He rustled through what seemed like the entire contents of the bag, while Amina prickled beside him. What was he doing? She should sit back up. She would count to five and then sit back up.

“I guess I don’t really want any either.” Jamie glanced back at her and then lay down, too. A cottony field of heat emanated from his forearm, pulling at her like gravity. She imagined herself rolling over, on top of him. She imagined the heat from him moving under her.

“So is it weird for you that I’m divorced?”

“What? No. Why?”

“You seemed a little freaked out earlier.”

“No! I mean, I haven’t been married before, so I don’t know. I guess it just seems really grown-up or something.”

“More grown-up than getting married?”

“Definitely.”

Jamie laughed. “Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

“Is it weird being divorced?” What was she doing? Amina bit her lip too late.

Jamie paused, thinking. “I guess sometimes it’s weird. I don’t know. A lot less weird than being married to the wrong person.”

“How did you know she was the wrong person?”

“Wow, you’re really just sticking to the easy questions tonight, huh?”

Amina sat up, embarrassed. She was killing the moment. And for what? She needed to get ahold of herself.

“Do you want some M&M’s?” she asked.

“Sure.” Jamie stayed flat and she reached over him, feeling around the damp bottom of the paper sack and staring inadvertently at the zipper of his shorts, which protruded slightly. A pale seam of skin peeked between his waistband and T-shirt. Jamie cleared his throat. “We didn’t fight well.”

“What?”

“Me and Miriam. We were too mean.”

Amina tried not to smile. She did not like the name Miriam. She held up the M&M’s. “Hold out your hand.”

“What about you?” Jamie asked.

She wiggled a few candies through the wrapper into his palm, then her own. “What about me?”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

Amina felt herself blushing in the dark. “Not really.”

Jamie popped the entire handful of candy into his mouth, crunching loudly. “You ready for another beer?”

“Yeah, sure.” She didn’t actually want another beer, but it didn’t matter. She took the cool bottle he offered, setting it in the grass. They lay back at the same time, and this time their shoulders touched. Above them, the stars were soft and plenty.

“Hey.” Jamie’s voice vibrated through her collarbone. “How’s your dad?”

She had forgotten she had told him. “We don’t really know yet.”

“Tests?”

“Yeah.”

“I went through that a few years ago with my mom.”

“Oh yeah? How is she doing now?”

“She had stage-four breast cancer when we found it. She died a few months later.”

“Oh God, Jamie, I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. I mean, I hate that she got it, but I don’t mind that she went fast.”

There was something in his voice — a brittle tidiness — that made her uncomfortable. “My dad’s not really sick that way. I think it’s more of a depression thing with him.”

“So does that mean you’ll need to stay awhile?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Got it.”

Did he? Amina did not know and then it did not matter, because in the next second, Jamie propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her, the park light fanning around him like a halo. He pushed a strand of hair off her cheek, and in a blink she finally recognized him, the boy who used to sit across from her in English class, scowling into a paperback every time she opened her mouth.

CHAPTER 4

The rubber duckies were a surprise. The next afternoon, as the Eapens sat in Anyan George’s office, Amina stared at a row of yellow bodies, carefully arranged bill to tail. Everything else in the office — from the neat row of diplomas to the green plaid armchairs to two frames filled with the face of a sweet-looking boy who had aged at least a year between photos — had been expected. But the ducks across the desk were as distracting as live acrobats. Amina picked one up, sniffing its sweet body before carefully replacing it.

“Adorable, no?” Kamala asked.

Amina frowned to discourage her. All morning, her mother had been too cheerful, tucking herself into her best teal sari to accompany Thomas to the scans, trying to slip gold bangles onto Amina’s arms as they were leaving the house. Now, waiting for Anyan George to come back with the preliminary results, she was practically giddy.

“A real sense of humor!” She indicated the duckies with her chin. “Like you!”

Thomas uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, checking his watch.

“I’m sure he’s on the way,” Amina said soothingly. Poor Thomas — the clichéd bad patient, all walnut wrinkles and testiness, imaginings of the worst. She wished she could just squeeze the worry out of him, or better yet, suffuse him with the heady benevolence that swam through her veins like sweet tea, leaving every part of her that Jamie had touched feeling blessed and anointed. She rubbed her fingertips across her lips.

“It’s so nice for men to be in touch with their, you know, feminine side,” Kamala trilled on. “Good Morning America had one whole show on it! This one bakes cookies, that one sews his daughter’s Halloween costume each and every year.” She smoothed her sari against her lap, fingered the coral earrings she had put on that morning. “Are you sure you don’t want to put your hair down? It looks much nicer when it’s down.”

“It’s fine, Ma.”

“You’re sick?”

“What?”

“Why does your voice sound honk-honky?”

“It doesn’t.”

It did. Too much talking. Amina blushed.

“If Anyan’s not here by one, we’ll simply have to reschedule,” Thomas announced.

“He’s only a few minutes late,” Amina said, ignoring the way her father set his jaw against her. Beyond coordinating the basics of time and place, Thomas had done his best to avoid her over the past few days, walking out of rooms as she entered them, grunting away any attempt at conversation. It was to be expected, of course, but still unsettling, and she found herself looking forward to the end of the appointment, when they could begin to right what had become disjointed between them.

“Here, koche!” A ChapStick appeared in front of Amina’s face, held between Kamala’s fingers like a winning lottery ticket. “Lips are dry.”

Amina swiped it across her lips and handed it back. She looked down at the spiral notebook on her lap, “Dad’s Test Results” written across the top of a clean page, and added the date in the margin for good measure.

He had his sister’s mouth. She had understood this the night before as a child does a textbook optical illusion, eye bending between the revelation of white birds and black birds, the old woman and the young woman. Jamie’s face, Paige’s mouth.

The office door opened and Dr. George stepped in. He was smaller than Amina remembered, or maybe just overwhelmed by his lab coat and pleated pants, by the oversized manila envelope in his hands.

“Hello, hello. Good afternoon, sir. Whole family came, I see.” He smiled a little shyly at them, settling into his seat. “I apologize for the tardiness.”

“Oh, please.” Thomas smiled with no trace of his former irritation. “We should be thanking you for making time on such short notice. I hate to pull you away from your real patients.”

“How is Anjan?” Kamala beamed.

“Well. He’s well, thank you.”

“He’s looking so grown-up, you know. What grade is he in now?”

“Second,” Dr. George said. “He’s just a bit tall for his age.”

“I’ll bet.” Kamala patted Amina’s leg.

“Are those mine?” Thomas asked, pointing to the envelope.

Dr. George nodded. “Yes, and the blood work is being sent over right now.”

“Well, let’s have a look. We don’t want to keep you.”

“I hope you don’t mind, I also had Dr. Curry take a look before I came.”

“Oh, good. How is Luther?” Thomas stood. “Back from Hawaii, then?”

“Yes, sir.” Dr. George walked to the light board, and Thomas stood in front of it, his arms crossed. Amina got up and stood there too, doing her best to look focused as the fluorescent light popped on, bathing them in a cool, white glow.

The scans were beautiful. They always were, whites and grays spreading out between the thin curves of skull like weather patterns from some distant planet. When she was younger, Amina would try to find shapes in them — flowers, dragons, boats.

“I wanted to get a second opinion before I came over, of course,” Dr. George said quietly.

Two seahorses met in a mirror, their snouts just touching. One had wings and the other carried an egg.

“Glioma,” Thomas said.

Dr. George nodded.

Amina looked back at the fanning waves of gray, the dark curls and symmetrical lakes. “What?”

Her father did not answer. She looked at his blank face, which seemed waxen suddenly, as if it had never known motion. A phone was ringing somewhere.

“Curry agreed?” Thomas asked.

“Yes.”

“His approximation?”

“Between two and three.”

“I see.”

“Wait, what?” Amina asked, louder now, panic edging into her voice.

“And the EEG?” Thomas asked, holding a hand up to silence her.

“That’s on the way,” Dr. George said.

“Yes, but was there—”

“A good amount of focal slowing,” Dr. George said. “Yes.”

Thomas nodded. His eyes dropped to the carpet and did not move.

“Who?” Kamala asked, pushing her way between them to look at the scans herself. “Something is the matter?”

No one answered her. Amina felt something cool on her arm. She looked down to find Dr. George’s hand on her elbow.

“Shall we sit?” he asked.

There was something about his tone that made Amina want to be on her best behavior, and she turned at once, almost running into Kamala, who looked just as determined to get back to her own chair. Dr. George sat down across from them. Thomas stayed standing.

“There appears to be a mass in the occipital lobe,” Dr. George said.

“A mass? Is that the same thing as a tumor?” Amina asked.

“Yes.”

“No,” Kamala said.

“Is it bad?” Amina felt stupid asking. Weren’t all tumors bad on some level?

“We need to do a biopsy to know more,” Dr. George said.

Her notebook was on his desk. Amina pulled it off and onto her lap, and slowly wrote “tumor” at the top of the page. She immediately crossed it out. She wrote “biopsy” instead.

“I realize this is a shock,” Dr. George was saying. “For all of us. Though of course this does explain some of the symptoms. Amina, you had mentioned the hallucinations. Audio and visual inconsistencies are common for this type of—”

“Shut up,” Kamala said.

“Ma!”

“It’s okay,” Dr. George said. “It’s understandable.”

Kamala sat very still in her chair, her face tilted upward like a child bent on not receiving punishment. Behind her, Thomas was all back, the light from the board turning the tips of his curls an even whiter white.

“It’s a terrible shock,” Dr. George explained to Amina, as if she needed the explanation. Amina looked out the window at her car. It seemed strange that it should still be out there, waiting, in one piece.

“But …” Amina cleared her throat. “I mean, what’s the treatment? Do you operate? Take it out?”

“We will know more when we get more tests, but the location and the size would indicate—”

“No,” Thomas turned around. His face was pale and he smiled sadly at her. “It’s inoperable.”

“So then, like, what? Radiation? Chemo?”

Thomas shrugged.

“We’ve had some success in preventing growth with radiation,” Dr. George said, but now he was talking to Kamala, Kamala whose head tilted farther back, glaring at the ceiling. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes. Amina watched in surprise as her father stepped toward her and reached down to brush one, then the other away.

“Kam,” he said softly, and her mother pulled his hand forward until it covered her whole face.

There was a knock at the door, and it opened to show a slight Asian woman who held two more folders in her hand. She smiled when she saw Thomas. “Hey, Doc.”

“Thank you, Lynne,” Dr. George said, rising to take the envelopes from her. “We’ll be a minute longer.”

“Oh. Sure.” She closed the door quickly behind her, and Thomas motioned for the envelopes. He slid them out and flipped from one page to the next, reading for what seemed like twenty minutes, though of course it could not have been. Amina looked blankly in front of herself. She counted the yellow bodies until she lost count, and started over. Her father handed the papers back to Dr. George.

“I should go,” he said. “I have a patient waiting.”

“What?” Her head snapped up. “Dad—”

“Sir,” Dr. George said, rising, “I’d like to schedule you for a biopsy as soon as—”

“That’s fine. Please make the necessary arrangements with Monica. My schedule will be cleared.”

“Wait!” Amina half-shouted, and Thomas turned to her, stoneeyed. “Can we — I mean, we need to talk about this, right?”

“I’m late as it is.” Thomas swiveled to find the doorknob, avoiding looking at Kamala, who wasn’t looking at him anyway, but at her own lap, as though she couldn’t imagine who it belonged to. “Please make sure your mother gets home safely.”