Centuries of June (40 page)

I floundered around for a couple years like a lot of kids, but by senior year, I had decided to study urban design and was going on to graduate school. Ended up at Rhode Island School of Design, and that’s where my Americanization project became complete. Nobody blinked when I introduced myself as Sita. I was just one more competitor. We were so focused on doing well and landing a job after graduation, and everyone was so earnest and smart and superior. Lots of pressure to perform, and I felt completely out of my depth for the first time in my life. And just about the worst possible moment, when I’m struggling with school and worrying about the future, along comes Matthew.

•   •   •

S
he had told me all about Matthew before. The inevitable dating conversation about our sordid pasts, the litany of exes. We were in the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery of Art, waiting for a free summer jazz concert to begin, the big fountain spritzing in the middle of the plaza, the tourists staking out their spots along the circle of stone benches. A pair of mallards paddled about, and children of all ages dangled their bare feet in the water. A mob of sparrows hopped on the ground, begging for handouts. Among the dozens of idlers was a scruffy fellow in a black T-shirt and jeans, big hairy feet strapped into sandals, and sunglasses perched atop his head. He strolled along, yakking on his cell, and Sita gasped when he passed by.

“Someone you know?” I asked.

She bent her head and hid her face behind her long dark hair. “Not really. He just reminded me of someone I know. Knew. An old boyfriend.”

“Oh.”

The tale played out to the syncopated rhythms of the jazz ensemble, in between songs, and later on the Metro home. Not that I wanted the details, but my questions enabled her to sketch out an outline, and the matter over, he was never mentioned again. They had met in grad school at RISD, and apparently this Matthew was touched by the gods, some kind of creative genius, the most brilliant architect ever, and the first love of her life. They moved in together, made plans, but they were just a couple of kids. Months go by, and she told me that he wigs out for some reason and just leaves, and a long time goes by before Sita gets over him. I was surprised that she was bringing up this old flame to Sam at my funeral.

The cat rose to his feet and hissed indignantly. “You’ve no room to talk, mate. Considering your own checkered past these many centuries.”

“True, but still. Some decorum after all. The flowers haven’t yet begun to wilt, and the guests are still attacking the canapés downstairs.”

“You fink you’re the only one wif a broken heart?” Harpo turned his back to me and lay down in the striped sunshine.

M
atthew was an architect, like Jack, but there the similarity ends. Where Jack was a dreamer, Matthew was a doer. He had a harder edge, more competitive, downright vicious at times, but he was head of the class, bound for glory at one of the big design firms in New York. We hooked up that first semester and moved in together that first year of school. I loved his manic energy and single-mindedness, and everything started out exciting and dangerous. And Matthew was a creative genius, but some demons often live side by side in such people. His was jealousy. The last few months he grew paranoid about everything I did. One of my partners in a collaborative project was just a nice, friendly boy, and we spent a lot of time together working on a design for a new model for public housing, but Matthew accused me of actually sleeping with this harmless boy, which was ridiculous, and despite my protests, he never truly believed my innocence. I would never do such a thing. And then one night, over the same old argument, Matthew hit me. “Tell me the truth,” he said, and I said, “But it’s only you,” and he hit me with the back of his hand. Have you ever been struck by someone you loved? There was the pain—yes, he drew blood from my lip—but the shock reverberated down to my soul. And the absurdity of the moment, all this because he chose not to trust me. He struck me just once, but that was the end. Somehow I finished up the semester, but that May I packed up all my things and went back to my parents in Chicago.

At first I thought of just going home for the summer. Take some time off and mend. Get over the heartbreak of losing my first love. And what could be safer, more natural than home, for my parents to
take care of me while I do nothing, like when I was a child? Do you know your brother’s favorite, Bachelard? Somewhere he writes, “All the summers of our childhood bear witness to ‘the eternal summer.’ ” That’s what I longed for, what I needed. Another June, another eternal summer stretching out before me and a chance to recover. Centuries of June, life by life, bring the promise of another beginning.

But it did not turn out the way I had planned. Oh, my parents were extraordinary, just angels, really. They understood my anguish and allowed me this retreat, and for the first few weeks, everything was more or less fine. I would take a book and lie in the sun all afternoon, often as not falling asleep rather than reading. And that after lying in all morning long, waking late, and wandering around the old house like a zombie in pajamas. And then after doing nothing more strenuous than sunbathing, I would go to bed early, say nine o’clock, and sleep again for twelve or fourteen hours. My little sibs left me alone, went to their summer jobs, out to movies and so on, and they tried, too, to get some life into me, but I turned down all their offers for a night out. I was just so tired all of the time.

It wasn’t just Matthew I was grieving, but something deeper, some fatigue of the soul. We had an old dog at the time, a kind of hybrid shepherd that may have been part wolf. For sure, he looked lupine, is that the right word? Sometimes he would sleep near me, at the foot of the bed or on the floor next to the sofa. Bhedi was an ancient creature, lived a thousand lives, and he knew something was amiss. He’d uncurl his body and poke his muzzle into my hand or just plead with me with those big brown eyes to get up, Sita, get moving, and I would walk him round the block, slowly in respect to his arthritic hips, but I could barely make it back home. So, sorry, Bhedi, and he would whimper when I lay back down on the couch, completely worn-out. Twenty-four and going to pieces.

A month’s indulgence, that’s what my parents granted me, and
come the middle of summer, they were encouraging me to get on my feet, to do something. How would you like to take up swimming? Or we could buy you a horse. Would you like to go out to Lake Michigan for a sail? But everything for me was still at half speed, quarter speed. I could not go when they proposed a vacation to Canada. I did not know the answer when they asked whether I would be going back to grad school in the fall. I hadn’t the energy to think about looking for even a part-time job. My mother eventually broached the idea of some professional help. “Not that we think there’s something wrong,” my mother said. “But just someone to talk to—”

“I’m not crazy.”

“No, not crazy. Hurt by that evil boy.”

Of course, it wasn’t the boy himself, but what he represented, some greater imbalance in the cosmos. The very idea that I, of all people, could not be trusted. What kind of world is this? The notion that someone would strike me because he believed his suspicions over my truth. What sort of life have I stumbled upon? I was not depressed, but in a state of despair. And I needed something other than a therapist, so I refused to go, despite the anguish in my mother’s eyes.

T
hey were not looking at each other, Sam and Sita. Perhaps the moment was too raw and personal, and they were strangers to a degree that made her confession uncomfortable. During the time Sita and I were together, she and Sam probably met no more than a dozen times, so they knew each other primarily through me, and I am a poor vessel for understanding. I didn’t know half of Sita’s story, never knew the depths of her pain. She was framed by the window, the afternoon backlighting her features into obscurity, the sunshine through the silver leaves bestowing a kind of radiance. Sam sat quietly on the bed, studying his shoelaces. In the awkwardness of the conversation, I wished he could
play the fool as he had before. Draw some tattoo upon her eyelids or entertain her with some trick hidden in the pocket of his bathrobe. But Sam had no magic to lighten the mood. And I could provide little comfort for her past. Her life before our life. The cat opened one eye and regarded me with some disdain. “A bit of curiosity wouldn’t have killed you,” he said. “For cripes’ sake, mate, you should have known before now.”

A
s August ceased, and it became clear that I was in no shape to go back to school, my parents grew more worried about me. My mother kept insisting upon a therapist, and I could hear their arguments filtered through my haze. My brothers and sister were worried, too, not just about me, but about our mother as well, who was drifting away, lost in confusion about what to do with me. One late summer night, with a hint of autumn in the night air, my father knocked on my door and asked if he might come in.

A cool breeze blew off the lake, and I was already under my covers, though the sun had not set. He motioned for me to give him some space to sit on the edge of the bed. He has a kind of old-world formality, a starchy politeness that endeared him to patients and colleagues, but as a fully Americanized daughter, I found his manners puzzling. Relax, Daddy. He was not like the American dads and their easy ways with their children, and as he sat there beside me, I would have given anything just to have him hug me and say everything would be all right. But that’s just not in his makeup, though still, I was grateful for the gesture, and it had been years since we had been alone together like this since I was a little girl and he a young man. I bunched my pillows into a cushion and sat up to ask, “Do you remember when you used to come tell me the old stories?” Searching for words, he looked lost in the thicket, unsure of the means to rescue his child just beyond.

“Rama,” he said, “had heard from the people of his kingdom rumors
about what had happened to Sita while she had been kidnapped by Ravana. The demon insisted that she become his bride, and though Sita refused him, the people questioned Sita’s chastity during her long captivity. ‘She must have given in to him.’ Even Rama questioned her honor. So Sita asked Rama’s brother to build a huge pyre and set it ablaze, and she told Rama that to prove her purity, she would walk through the fire. If she had been true to him, then she could walk through unscathed. If not, she would perish in the flames. Now, you may think that just proposing the test would be enough, but Sita insisted, and of course, she passed through the fire whole and pure as she had always been.”

That was all for the first night’s story. Over the next weeks, as summer gave way to autumn, my father would come into my room every so often and tell me more of the Ramayana, all the parts he had left out when I was a small girl. They had a trying marriage, Rama and Sita, predicated on doubt while trying to do the right thing, living the dharma. Rama took her back that first time, after the trial by fire, but he later sent her into exile again because of the persistent rumors in the kingdom. In exile, she bore him twin sons—Lava and Kusha. Sita, the original single mother, raising those children on her own. Years later, Rama chanced upon those boys and they sang to him the song of Rama that their mother had taught them, such was her loyalty, and only then did Rama realize his error and wish to welcome his sons back to his throne. And yet, still, Rama had his doubts about her, so in the end, Sita asked Mother Earth if she could return to her one true home, and Sita went down into an opening in the Earth, back to her Mother’s embrace.

“That seems an odd story for a father to tell his daughter under the circumstances,” Sam said.

Sita laughed softly. “For sure, if you read it as an allegory for my situation. But my father wasn’t recommending trial by fire or a return to Mother Earth for me. I was not the goddess, and Matthew was certainly no god, no incarnation of Rama or anything of the sort. My father had
the opposite intent in mind, if any moral is to be drawn, though I am not sure if the purpose of poetry and stories is to provide morals. His point may be: no man is worth such a sacrifice, eh?”

F
rom downstairs came a sudden thud and crash, as if someone had bumped into a sideboard laden with glasses and knocked one to the floor. Judging by the ebb and flow of the conversation below, the guests were busy tidying up the mess. My brother swung his legs and put his feet on the floor. Sita sat beside him.

I
got better in time. My father’s stories may have helped, more for the teller than the tale. Certainly the chance to be home again and under their care. Do you know Bachelard’s concept of the Desire Path? You find them all the time in landscapes, the paths or lines carved into the earth by animals or humans, the path worn by traffic across a park or open space, the most expeditious way from point to point. I loved the sound of it. I followed the desire path home. What I needed. There I found myself again, and by the following term, I went back to school, finished my degree. Took much longer to trust men after that. Lots of first dates, but nobody special. Four years wandering in the desert, and then my desire path led to Jack.

In the book and gift shop at the American Institute of Architects, a lovely unknown place, right around Christmastime. I was looking for a tie for my father, and this guy is the only other person in the shop. Must have been midafternoon on a cloudy December day in the middle of the week. I can’t help but notice this man just wandering amid the merchandise. It’s not a big shop really, but he passed by me a couple of times, and I can’t really tell if he’s looking for something in particular or if he’s working up the courage to speak to me, so finally I just ask him
outright, “Can I help you?” The look of surprise in his eyes is priceless, and then he thinks that I work there. “I don’t know what I’m looking for,” he says. “Something inspirational, thought-provoking, something to help me dream.”

“Are you an architect?” I asked him.