The Weight of Heaven (2 page)

and accepted his offer.

And so, banished from their once Edenic life in Ann Arbor,

Michigan, Frank and Ellie Benton traveled east until they arrived

at the Shivaji International Airport in Bombay on a cool January

morning in 2006.

Book One

Spring 2007

Girbaug, India

Chapter 1

They had finished dinner a half hour ago, and now they sat on the

porch waiting for the rains to come. The nighttime air was heavy

with moisture, but it held its burden in check, like a widow blinking

back her tears. While they waited, the storm entertained them with

its flash and dazzle—the drumbeat of the thunder, the silver slashes

of lightning against the black skin of the sky. With each explosion of

lightning they saw the scene before them—the tall shadows on their

front lawn cast by the coconut trees, the still sand beyond the lawn,

and even beyond that, the restless, furious sea, straining against the

shore.

He had always loved thunderstorms, even as a young boy in

Grand Rapids. While his older brother, Scott, cowered and flinched

and pulled the bedcovers over his ears, Frank would stand before

the window of their shared bedroom, feeling brave and powerful.

Talking back to the storm. He would deliberately turn his back on

Scott, embarrassed and bewildered to see his older brother, usually as placid as the waters of Lake Michigan in the summer, turn

into this fearful, unrecognizable creature. If they were lucky, their

mother would come into their room to rock and calm her oldest boy

down, and then Frank was free to escape to the second-floor porch

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that was adjacent to the guest bedroom. Being on this porch was the

next best thing to being outdoors. From here, he felt closer to the

tumultuous Michigan sky and violently, perilously free. Thunderstorms made him feel lonely, but it was a powerful lonely, something

that connected him to the solitude of the world around him. If he

stood on his toes and leaned his upper body out on the porch railing just so, the rain would hit his upturned face, the tiny pinpricks

painful but exhilarating. The wind roared and Frank roared back;

his hands tingled with each burst of lightning, as if it was nothing

but a projection of the jagged, electric energy that coursed through

his pale, thin body.

Years later, it would become one of Frank’s greatest disappointments that his son had not inherited his love of thunderstorms.

When little Benny would crawl into bed with them, when he would

whimper and bottle up his ears with his index fingers, Frank fought

conflicting urges—the protective, fatherly part of him would pray

for the thunderstorm to pass, would want to cradle his son’s trembling body in the nest of his own, even as a small disappointment

gathered like a lump in the back of his throat.

Unlike in Michigan, thunderstorms in western India did not

pass quickly. They had been in Girbaug for seventeen months now

and knew how it could rain nonstop for days during the monsoon

season. Now, although it was only May, the forecast called for rain

tonight. Frank felt grateful to be home to watch it. He sat impatiently, waiting for the heavy, laden sky to deliver its promise. The

wind whipped around them, high enough that they didn’t have to

rock the swing they were sitting on. Behind them, the house was

dark—Ellie had turned off the lights after they’d picked up their

after-dinner coffees and padded out to the porch. Every few minutes

the lightning lit up the whole panoramic scene before them, like a

camera flash. Frank knew that when the rains came crashing down

they would come swiftly, brutally, and his body ached with anticipation. So far it had all been foreplay—the whispers of the tall coconut

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9

trees as they leaned into each other; the cloying sweetness of the jasmine bushes; the painful groaning of the thunder. Now, he longed

for the satisfying release that the rains would deliver.

He turned toward Ellie and waited for the next flash of lightning

to illuminate her face. They had exchanged a few aimless words

since moving to the porch, but for the most part they had sat in an

easy silence for which Frank was grateful. It was a contrast to most

of their interactions these days, which were laced with bitterness

and unspoken accusations. He knew he was losing Ellie, that she

was slipping out of his hands like the sand that lay just beyond the

front yard, but he seemed unable to prevent the slow erosion. What

she wanted from him—forgiveness—he could not grant her. What

he wanted from her—his son back—she couldn’t give.

The lightning flashed, and he saw her white, slender body for

an instant before the darkness carried her away again. She was sitting erect and still, her back pressed against the wooden boards of

the swing. But what made Frank’s heart lurch was the look on her

face. She sat with her eyes closed, a beatific expression on her face,

looking for all the world like one of the Buddha statues they had

seen on a recent trip to the Ajanta caves. She seemed to feel none

of the agitation, the exciting turmoil, that was coursing through his

body. Ellie seemed far away, as distant as the moon he could not see.

Slipping away from his hands. Completely unaware of the memories tumbling through his mind—Ellie and he running through

the streets of Ann Arbor at night during a thunderstorm, laughing

wildly and singing at the top of their lungs before arriving at the

house she was renting, stripping off their wet clothes at the door

and falling naked onto the couch she had inherited from the previous grad student who lived there; him coming home from work one

evening and finding Ellie lying on her stomach on the floor, trying

to pull their four-year-old son from under their bed where he was

hiding during a rainstorm.

A savage malice gripped Frank. As was common these days,

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something about Ellie’s calm irritated him. Deliberately, he said,

“Do you remember how he used to—”

“Yes. Of course I remember.” She was wide awake now, having

heard something in his voice that perhaps even he was not aware of.

The satisfaction that Frank felt from having destroyed Ellie’s calm

was tempered by something approaching regret. Her serenity, which

he used to value so much, was now a scab he had to pick away at.

“I think a year more, and he would have been fine,” he continued, unable to help himself. “I’d been thinking about taking him on

a couple of camping trips, y’know, just the two of us, thinking that

would help with—”

“He was already getting over it,” she interrupted, and his stomach dropped. Was he imagining the triumph in her voice, the knowledge that she had scored the knockout blow and that he now had no

choice but to bite the bait she had set up?

Hating himself, he asked, “Getting over his fear of thunderstorms? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was going to be a surprise. I—I trained him. Behavior modification—same thing I do with my clients.”

He felt a hot surge of jealousy at the thought of Ellie and Benny

alone at home, while he was flying off to Thailand, the other place

where HerbalSolutions had a factory. How many meetings had he sat

through, how many treks to villages in the hinterlands, how many

miles logged on planes, nights spent in strange hotel rooms, all the

time thinking he was doing this for them? He remembered his desperation when the cell phone signals were weak and he couldn’t call

in time to wish Benny good night; how he had tried to send Ellie

an e-mail as soon as he got into a hotel room in whatever city he

was in. How he had fought to stay connected with them even when

he was across oceans and time zones. Only to learn that the two of

them had their own secrets, their own rituals from which he was

excluded. He tried to remember if he had always known this and if

it had ever bothered him before. But he couldn’t remember. Whole

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chunks of his memory of life when Benny was alive were gone. Or

rather, the memories were there but the feeling was gone. So that he

knew that he had been happy with Ellie, that they had had a good

marriage, and he remembered a million acts of love and sacrifice on

her part. But how it had made him feel—the sweetness, the delicacy,

the intricacy—he could no longer conjure up.

“How long had he not been afraid? And how many more years

were you planning to wait before telling me?”

There was a slight pause, but when she spoke, Ellie’s voice was

flat. “It had just happened, Frank. It stormed a few times when you

were away—the, the last time. I talked him through it.”

Despite the dark, Frank closed his eyes. It should’ve been me, he

thought. I should’ve been the one to have calmed my son’s fears. Resentment filled his mouth. “Maybe that’s why he got sick,” he said,

spitting the words like pits from a bitter fruit. “You know, maybe the

stress of suppressing his fear in front of you was what—”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard you say. Even for you,

that’s a new low.” Ellie shifted away from him so that their shoulders

were no longer touching. There was a loud roar of thunder, as if the

heavens themselves were emphasizing her words and she waited for

it to subside. “You know, I’d like to have just one fucking evening of

peace. But if you can’t just sit with me and be decent, Frank, I’ll go

indoors, okay? Because I’m not going to sit here and wait for you to

come up with one more theory of how I killed our son. If you think

I don’t hurt as—”

“Ellie—” His hand shot out and covered hers. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I . . . I’m sorry. It’s just that watching thunderstorms is really

hard, you know? It’s like everything is wrapped up—” He cut himself off, wanting to say more, to reveal to his wife the altered shape

of his heart, but being unable to.

In the dark, he sensed rather than saw Ellie blinking back her

tears. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just forget it.” But her voice wobbled,

and his throat tightened with remorse. You’re a fucking bastard, he

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chided himself. You think she hasn’t suffered enough that you’re

doing this to her? Not for the first time, he wondered if he should

talk to someone, to Scott maybe, to confess his miserable treatment

of Ellie. He wouldn’t seek understanding or sympathy—what he

wanted was someone to give him a much-needed kick in the pants,

to knock sense into his head, to ask him whether he wanted to lose

his wife also, because he couldn’t accept the loss of his son. Scott

adored Ellie, Frank knew, and would defend her against his own

brother. Maybe he would call Scott in New York from the office

tomorrow, maybe Scott could say something profound, the one true

thing, that would help him make his way back to Ellie.

He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her back into

the cradle of his arm. For a few seconds she rested stiffly against

him, but then her body relaxed and she rested her head on his shoulder. They stayed that way for a few moments, and then it began to

rain.

“Remember how we used to run all the way back from campus

in the rain?” Frank said.

“Yup.” She pulled away from him a bit, and he felt her eyes on his

face. “Wanna go for a walk along the beach?”

“You mean right now?”

“No time like the present.”

“I can’t. We’ll get soaked.”

“Well, that is the point of walking in the rain—getting

soaked.”

“Funny. No, that is, normally I would, you know? But Ramesh is

going to come over in a bit. He has a math test tomorrow, and I want

to go over some problems with him.”

He felt Ellie shift ever so slightly. “I see. Okay.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh, say it. You’re obviously unhappy about something.”

She turned to face him. “You know exactly what I’m unhappy

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about, Frank. I’m unhappy that we can’t go for a walk because

there’s a little boy who’s forever coming over needing something or

the other from my husband. And I’m—”

He half rose from the swing. “Jesus Christ. I don’t believe this.

You’re jealous of a nine-year-old kid. Just because I don’t jump when

you—”

“It has nothing to do with jealousy, Frank. It’s just that you don’t

know what’s appropriate and what’s—”

“Appropriate? What the hell are you talking about? I see tremendous potential in Ramesh and so I tutor him a few evenings a

week. You’re the one who acts like some goddamn saint, talking

about our responsibility to those less fortunate, but when I try to

help the son of our housekeepers, you—”

“That’s the question, Frank. Who are you trying to help? Who

are you helping here?”

The phone rang inside the house, but they both ignored it. Frank

sat on his right hand so that it wouldn’t involuntarily curl its way

around Ellie’s long, graceful neck and choke it. “What the hell does

that mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean. Do you know what it’s doing to