The Sandalwood Tree (16 page)

T
he next morning, Martin bent over the sofa and squeezed my shoulder. “Evie?” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

I lay facing the sofa back and woke instantly at his touch.

He said, “I was drunk, but there’s no excuse for the way I behaved.”

The evening rushed back and I mumbled, “We were both awful.” I twisted to look at him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me you liberated a concentration camp?”

He withdrew his hand. “I don’t want to talk about that. But I’m sorry for last night.” He backed away and went out of the front door, shutting it quietly behind himself.

I closed my eyes and remembered fragments of a dream about struggling to clip on my opal earrings. I had pressed them hard on to my dream earlobes only to have them slide off, over and over, and I had woken in the middle of the night, grinding my teeth.

After breakfast, I started cleaning—the dishes, the table, the floors. I was polishing the jade Ganesh on the mantel when Billy tugged my sleeve. “Mom?”

“Hmm?”

“You and Dad mad again?”

“No, BoBo. Everything is fine.”

“You look mad.”

“No, Peach. Nothing to worry about.”

Billy slunk out to the verandah with Spike. He climbed into a wicker rocker and I heard him say, “She’s lying.” He sat there staring at the mountains, rocking like a little old man, and I wanted to run out there and crush him to me. I wanted to apologize for bringing him to such a lonely place, for my crippled marriage, for his damaged father, for my inadequacy as a mother. But he was
five
. I went out to the verandah and pulled him on to my lap. We sat together quietly, staring at the sandalwood tree.

Rashmi came through the back door with her winking nose pin and her hidden coconut, calling, “Come, beta.” I kissed Billy goodbye, got on my bike, and cycled down to the village. I went through the motions of drawing pink cartoons on the blackboard, but I pressed so hard the chalk broke. The children’s mispronunciations—which I usually found charming—irritated me and I rushed through the lesson, willing myself to be patient. I hadn’t taken my camera that day, and had no interest in dallying in the village.

Masoorla seemed leached of color that day, and the smell of burning rubbish filled the air. The cows looked neglected, and the ubiquitous monkeys annoyed me. I cycled back at top speed, pushing myself on the incline, huffing and puffing. When I swerved around pedestrians or rickshaws I rang the ear-piercing handlebar bell like a woman with her hair on fire.

Shortly after Rashmi left with the garbage that afternoon, a post bearer came to the door—a barefoot, bare-chested, turbaned little fellow with red teeth. He placed his palms together and bowed, then handed me a cylinder of paper. It was one of those long narrow sheets of grainy paper, which Indians write on horizontally and then roll up like a scroll. I gave him a few coins and
returned his bow, then I unrolled the paper while he trotted down the steps. The sheet opened to about six inches wide and bore a brief message in English. The handwriting was formal and graceful.

Dear Evie
,

I have found a reference to your English ladies in our records. You can find me in the temple today at three o’clock
.

Your friend
,

Harry

Curiosity reared up, fresh and clamoring, and I rolled up the paper feeling eager to see Harry. India was so damn lonely. But, of course, I would no longer take Billy into Simla. It was almost two thirty and Habib would arrive to start dinner around four, but the note said
“today at three o’clock.”
Was he going away? Was his retreat over? I imagined Harry waiting for me, glancing at the door, maybe going out into the street to look for me. I needed a babysitter.

Most of the memsahibs in Masoorla made careers out of killing time, and of all of them, Verna Drake of the horsey smile and misbegotten scones lived the closest to me, at Morningside. Verna didn’t have children, but she had always been friendly. Whenever I ran into her at the import store, she gave me a blinding smile and repeated her invitation to the Club.

I put Felicity’s letter in my purse, sat Billy in his wagon, and set out for Morningside. As we walked up her verandah steps, Billy asked, “Isn’t this where the lady with the big teeth lives?”

“Yes.” I pinched off a smile. “But don’t say that in front of her. It would hurt her feelings.”

Billy looked at Spike as if they had both been insulted. “We know that, Mom.”

“I want you and Spike to behave for Mrs. Drake while I run an errand.”

“Why can’t we come with you?”

“It’s a grown-up errand.”

“Aw, nuts.”

When Verna opened the door, surprise danced across her face, but she recovered quickly and smiled. “Why, Evie Mitchell! Come in!” Her speech was clipped and imperious, developed over many years as a burra memsahib surrounded by servants and underlings. She bit out each word and came down hard on the Ts. The woman smiled continuously, and I have never seen such large teeth on another human being. Verna said, “We never see you and Martin at the Club. Where have you been hiding?”

“Oh, just busy. You know.” I nodded toward Billy, as though his existence made any life apart from him impossible. I counted on childless Verna not to know any better.

Billy crawled into a chintz chair with Spike, and I sat on the edge of a period sofa upholstered in pink brocade. I thought about Felicity’s missing furniture and suppressed an urge to open a drawer in the side table. I said, “You have lovely furniture, Verna. Is it Victorian?”

“I believe some of it is. Would you care for tea? My bearer is outside.”

“No thanks. I’ve come to ask a favor.” I realized I was clutching my purse with both hands. Lying to Verna was more difficult than lying to Martin, and that seemed wrong for so many reasons. “I have to take something to Martin.” I patted my purse. “He forgot it. This morning. And he needs it.”

Verna shifted in her chair. “Can’t you send it with a servant?”

“It’s important. I really should give it to him myself.” I patted my purse again.

“Well, do be careful.”

“Of course. But could I possibly leave Billy with you?”

“Billy?” Verna smoothed the skirt of her floral dress. She gaped at Billy as though he were a bug-eyed Martian, disembarking from a spacecraft in her living room. “Well … I suppose …”

“Thank you, Verna. I won’t be long. There and back in a shot. I promise.”

Verna stared at Billy, and her smile floundered. “Well, if you must …”

“I appreciate this. I really do.”

When I folded Billy in a bear hug, I noticed a black Bakelite telephone on a low marble-topped table next to his chair. I said, “Verna, you have a phone.”

Verna was already standing at the front door, fidgeting with her pearls; I imagined her thinking the sooner I left, the sooner I’d be back. “Yes,” she said. “Some of the bungalows have phones.”

“Does it work?”

Verna shrugged. “Like everything else here—when it wants to, and then not very well. One can’t really count on anything here, can one?”

I joined her at the door. “That’s why I don’t want to take Billy with me. The troubles, you know.”

“Quite right, my dear.”

I had inadvertently struck the right note—civilized Westerners sticking together against the unruly Asiatic hordes. Verna nodded sharply as though she had, that moment, decided to die for a cause. “Bully for you, not trusting your child to an Indian servant just now. Some do, you know.” She raised a disapproving eyebrow, as if the natives were headhunters who picked their teeth with human bones.

I considered Billy, dwarfed in the oversized chair, his baby legs, soft as taffy, barely reaching the end of the seat cushion. Subjecting him to Verna Drake—her curt manner, that attitude, those
teeth
—it seemed almost cruel. But Billy saw me looking at him and misinterpreted. He said, “You can go, Mom. We’ll be-have.” He said “have” with a long A, splitting the word “behave,” and something caught in my throat. I flipped on my sunglasses, thanked Verna, and hurried out before I could change my mind.

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B
illy howled like a demon being ripped limb from limb while I painted his elbows with Mercurochrome.
“I want Spike!”
He knocked the bottle off the sink and rusty red liquid bled all over the white tiled floor. I mopped it up with a towel, but it had permanently stained the grout, another battle scar on the old house. I knew we’d have to pay the landlord for the damage and that reminded me of the money I’d spent on perfume and also that the rent was soon due. Too much, too much.

I warmed up some chicken soup, Martin had driven us home, and while I’d been struggling to paint Billy’s elbows with Mercurochrome, he had stuck his head through the bathroom door to say he was going to the Club for dinner. That was fine with me, but Billy refused to eat. I made him a sweet lassi with pistachios, his favorite, but when I held it to his lips, he squeezed them shut, slipped off the chair, and crawled under the table. He sat there, legs crossed, crying, with pudgy fists pressed into his eyes. I got down on my hands and knees, dragged him out, screaming, and carried him to his room. I took pajamas out of a drawer and he said, “I don’t want pajamas.”

“You can’t sleep in your clothes.”

“I don’t want pajamas!”

“Your clothes are dirty.”

“I don’t want pajamas.”

“You can’t sleep in dirty clothes.”

“I don’t want pajamas.”

I wrestled him into the pajamas and wondered why I was forcing him. Would it kill him to sleep in dirty clothes? Would it kill me to let him? But I’d gone too far down the road of parental insistence; it had become a power struggle and I had to get the damn pajamas on him or he’d think that tantrums worked. He fought and screamed and tried to pull the pajama top off, and I had a shocking urge to smack his bottom. I had never spanked him, never even considered it. I held his shoulders and shouted, “Billy, for the love of God stop crying.
Stop it!
”

His eyes opened wide. I had never before shouted at him in anger. He held his breath, and I put my arms around him.

“OK,” he said in a small voice. “I won’t cry anymore.”

“I’m sorry, baby. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

He sagged on the bed and wrapped his arms around my hips. I felt stifled sobs shake his small body, and I eased his head onto the pillow. He pulled the sheet up over his head and balled up underneath. I watched the bulge under the sheet heave rhythmically, but he didn’t make a sound. I said, “I love you, Billy.” But it sounded feeble, even to me.

His muffled voice came from under the sheet, “I’m not crying.” I sat on the edge of the bed and stroked the bump that was his head. Eventually his silent convulsions subsided, and after he lay still, I peeled the sheet back to see his swollen red eyes closed in an uneasy sleep. One more silent sob convulsed his chest and ripped my heart out.

I put Habib’s curry into the icebox and fixed a cup of tea. It went cold while I sat at the table, staring at my cheery yellow curtains. I dumped the cold tea in the sink and went to check on Billy.
He had pulled the sheet over his head again, but at least he was still asleep.

In the bathroom, I took off my dusty, sweat-soaked clothes. I didn’t feel like waiting for the big claw-foot tub to fill, so I took a sponge bath at the sink, working up a good lather and washing off the terrible day. I rinsed my dusty feet in the tub, dried off with a fresh towel, and put on my blue chenille robe.

I poured myself a glass of wine, pulled a book off the shelf, and then sat in the wingback chair facing the front door. I hadn’t looked at the book when I grabbed it; I only wanted something to do until Martin came home. It was the poetry of Rumi, and I opened it at random and read two lines:

You can’t quit drinking the earth’s dark drink?
But how can you not drink from this other fountain?

Why did everything in India have to be so abstruse? I read it again, and then again, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept reading the same two lines, over and over, and soon even the individual words had no meaning. Still I kept reading them.