The Weight of Heaven (41 page)

choice. “I’ll take it in the guest room,” he said. He walked in there

and waited until he heard Ellie hang up before saying, “Hey, Pete.”

“Jesus, Frank,” Pete’s voice was close and hot in his ear. “What

the hell is going on? I’ve been trying to reach you for days, and

Deepak just kept putting me off. What are you doing at home, man?

We have a huge order, and you guys are already running late.”

Shit. The consignment had been due to leave Girbaug two days

ago. He had put Deepak in charge of it, told him to handle things

for a while. Obviously, his subordinate had dropped the ball. Why

hadn’t he called Frank to inform him? But then he remembered: he

had told Deepak that he didn’t want to be disturbed for a few days.

“I—I didn’t know it hadn’t left,” he began.

“You didn’t know? What the fuck, Frank? I have all these distributors breathing down my neck, and you didn’t know?”

“I’d assigned the project to Deepak.”

3 0 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

“Why? What’s wrong with you? Deepak said you hadn’t been in

for four days. Why are you home, anyway?”

He decided to come clean with Pete. “There’s a situation here.

Ramesh—you remember him? He was gonna come to the States

with us over Christmas? Well, it seems like his father has run away

with him. They’ve disappeared. I’m—I’m trying to help the police

find him. I need to be home to coordinate things.”

There was a long, painful silence. “Hello?” Frank said.

“I don’t believe it,” Pete muttered. “You’re sitting at home because a boy has gone somewhere with his own father? And in the

meantime, my orders are—”

“Don’t patronize me, Pete.” He had spoken more sharply than

he realized.

“Patronize you? Man, I’m ready to choke you. You’re costing me

thousands of dollars a day because—”

“This kid is important to me, Pete.”

“Gimme a break, Frank. Hell, you showed up at work a week

after Benny died. And here you are—”

Frank felt something snap. He remembered Pete’s casual mention of attending his son’s Little League game a few months ago.

“Don’t say my son’s name,” he heard himself say. “I don’t want you

to say Benny’s name.”

He heard Pete’s intake of breath. “What the hell has gotten into

you? I loved Benny like my own son. And now I’m not allowed to

say his name?”

“You know what, Peter?” he said, his voice low, shimmering with

anger. “You don’t know shit about anything. We’ve been friends for

how many years, and you can’t cut me some slack for missing a few

days of work? You’re more worried about your bank balance than

about a boy whose life may be in danger. You just go about your

safe, happy, white-picket-fence life, man.”

“I take great offense at that.” Pete’s voice was hard, angry. “You

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 0 7

have no right to blame me for the fact that you are obsessed with

some poor kid in India. I’m a businessman, Frank. And so were you,

until you went off the deep end. If you want to play detective instead, well, don’t blame me for that.”

He was dying to get off the phone so that he could unfold a map

and see where Aderbad was. And here was this dumb asshole who

he’d thought was his friend, delaying him, droning on and on about

business ethics and responsibilities. Frank felt a sharp pain shoot up

his jaw and realized that he’d been clenching it. “Listen,” he said

finally. “I’ll—I’ll go in, okay? I’ll make sure the orders go out by

the end of this week. All right?”

“That’s not good enough, Frank.”

“I’ll do the best I can.” His cell phone was buzzing across the

room, and Frank’s eyes lit up. Surely it was Gulab, with some good

news. “Listen, I have another call. I gotta go. We’ll talk soon.”

“No, wait. I want to—” Pete was saying as Frank hung up on

him. He raced across the room and was disappointed to see that the

caller was Deepak. Screw him, he thought. I’ll call him in a few

hours.

Chapter 29

They stood silently in front of the modest stucco house, the boy

and the man. Prakash stared at the pink outer walls, the blue front

door, the jasmine bushes to the right. Beside him, Ramesh shifted

from foot to foot.

They had gotten into Goa this morning. Two nights ago, they

had slept on a bench at the railway platform in Aderbad. Ramesh had

balked at this, said he’d wanted to go back to Girbaug, but Prakash

had told him that there was something he wanted him to see in Aderbad the next morning. After that, they would take another train

and go to Goa.

When they woke up the next day, Prakash told Ramesh the story

of how when he had ridden a motorcycle from Girbaug to Goa years

ago, he had stumbled upon a temple along the way. “I’d never even

heard of this Aderbad,” he said. “
Bas
, stopped there for lunch, only.

But then I saw this temple. And only Bhagwan knows why, Ramu,

but I needed to walk in there. So quiet and peaceful it was. There

was a big statue of Krishna, smiling and all. So I ask Him please to

give me a beautiful wife. Two-three days later I met your ma.”

“So why are we going there again?” Ramesh asked huffily. Even

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 0 9

though his father was carrying the small suitcase, he was grumpy.

His back was stiff from having slept on the bench, and the walk

from the train station to the temple was long.

Prakash looked disappointed. “Don’t you see, Ramu? To give

thanks. I wants to thank God for giving me my family.”

A shrewd look came on Ramesh’s face. “Can I ask God to give

me what I want?”

“Of course,
beta
. What you want to ask for?”

“I want my team to win the soccer match.”

Prakash laughed. “
Bas
, that’s all? Bhagwan will definitely grant

you this wish.” He caressed the boy’s back. “I will pray bigger-bigger

wish for my son.”

Ramesh insisted that they catch an auto rickshaw back to the train

station when they were done. “Dada, my back is hurting,” he said.

Prakash fingered the bundle of notes he had in his pocket. He

wondered if Edna had yet noticed that he had taken most of the

money they had been saving inside a tin she kept in the kitchen.

“
Theek hai
,” he said. “Let’s take a rickshaw.”

Back at the station, he bought two tickets for an overnight train

to Goa. Once aboard, Ramesh talked nonstop, thrilled to be visiting

the place that his mother had talked so much about. But suddenly,

he looked thoughtful. “Dada,” he said, munching on the
batatawa-

das
Prakash had purchased at the last stop, “why Ma not coming

with us?”

Prakash looked out of the train window. “It is a surprise,” he

said finally. He turned to face his son. “Do you know who live in

Goa?”

Ramesh shook his head.

“Your grandma and grandpa. Your ma’s mummy-daddy. We are

going to see them.”

Ramesh’s face fell. “But Ma said they not wanting to see us.”

“They will. Once they see you.” Prakash reached over and ran

3 1 0 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

his fingers delicately over Ramesh’s face. “Once they see this
khub-

surat
face.”

And now they were standing on the bottom step, looking up at

the house where Edna’s parents lived. Prakash felt a nervous quivering at the base of his throat. He longed for a drink to steady his

nerves, but he had vowed not to touch the bottle while he was on this

trip with Ramesh. So far, he had kept his promise.

He took Ramesh’s hand and climbed the two steps and knocked

on the door. There was no response. He knocked again, a little

louder. This time, they heard the shuffle of feet, and then the door

opened and an old lady in a yellow dress peered at them. “Yes?”

Prakash cleared his throat. “Are you Agnes D’Silva?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“I is Prakash.” Even to his own ears, his English sounded awful.

To recover, he said, “And this your grandson, Ramesh.”

Nothing happened. The old lady squinted a bit as she looked at

Ramesh, but her face was impassive. The moment stretched on forever. “Wait,” Agnes finally said and disappeared.

Father and son stood in the afternoon sun, not daring to look at

each other. For the first time it occurred to Prakash that the situation

he had been imagining—the teary reconciliation, the remorseful

grandparents, the triumphant return to Girbaug—would perhaps

not happen. But then he heard a second set of footsteps, and his optimism returned.

An old man stood at the door. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and

square-jawed. He also had the coldest eyes Prakash had ever seen.

Those eyes were looking at him now and then looking away, as if

they’d been displeased by what they beheld. “So you’re the bumpkin she married,” the man said. The eyes flickered toward Ramesh.

“And this is the bastard.”

Prakash let out a cry of protest. “This is your grandson,” he said,

as if the old man didn’t understand. “We came to—”

“You must be mistaken.” The old man spoke carefully, deliber-Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 1 1

ately. “I don’t have a grandson. Because I don’t have a daughter.” He

stepped back and shut the door.

They stood in shock, staring at the closed blue door. Prakash

wanted to pound on it, tear it down, burst in and squeeze that old,

grizzled throat until the man took his words back. But he suspected

that in a fight with Edna’s father, he would lose. He had no resources

with which to combat such deliberate meanness. Beside, Ramesh

had heard enough damaging words. He needed to be protected from

any further cruelty. “Come, Ramu,” he said, taking his hand. “Let’s

go. This
boodha
is mad.”

They ate lunch at a beachside shack—prawn curry for the boy,

chicken vindaloo for him. But the food tasted bitter to Prakash. To

erase its taste, he ordered a glass of
feny
, the Goanese wine made

from cashews. Then, another glass.

“Dada,” Ramesh said, flashing him a worried look. “Don’t drink

so much,
na
?”

He looked at his son as if seeing him for the first time. He felt as

if he understood his son completely—the pinched circumference of

his present, the narrow limitations of his future. He felt an unbearable pity as he watched that young, eager face wolf down the curry

rice. To obliterate that feeling of pity, he downed a third glass of

feny.

He staggered out of the shack, Ramesh following at his heels.

“You wanting to return to the hotel?” he asked the boy and was

relieved when Ramesh shook his head no. The thought of returning

to the run-down room with the peeling paint and the paan stains on

the bathroom wall was too depressing. “Let’s lie here, only,” he said,

flopping down on the sand. He was asleep within moments.

But not for long. He woke up twenty minutes later, the bitter taste

still in this mouth. The idea for this trip had come to him as he had

sat on his cot nursing the bruise where the American had hit him.

He believed that Edna’s parents would thaw once they saw their

beautiful grandson. That they would regret the years of absence and

3 1 2 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

would insist that the three of them move to Goa. He would’ve been

happy to do so. The American’s interest in his son was beginning

to scare him. He wanted other people to claim Ramesh as their kin,

wanted Ramesh to belong to a larger family—people with whom he

shared the ties of blood.

Above Prakash, the sky was spinning and he cursed himself for

having drunk so much
feny
so fast. He glanced to his left to where

Ramesh was lying on the sand.

“Ramu,” he said. “Are you sleeping?”

“No, Dada.”

Prakash thought for a moment. “Ramu, don’t you ever be poor

like your dada. This world doesn’t like poor people. You promise?”

“Promise, Dada.”

“Good. And Ramu, another thing. Don’t ever drink so much like

your dada. Promise?”

“I promise, Dada.”

He was silent for a long time, gazing up at the swirling, spinning sky. “And Ramu. Don’t ever be an orphan like your father.

Promise?”

“I promise, Dada.” Followed by a little giggle.

Prakash turned his head to face his son. “You is making fun of

your dada?”

Ramesh was screwing up his nose from the effort of trying not to

laugh. “Sorry, Dada. But how can I promise not to be an orphan?

That, up to you.”

And suddenly, they were laughing, laughing so hard that Prakash

felt a hot squirt of urine leak onto his pants. He immediately tightened his muscles.
“Saala,”
Prakash said, rolling toward his son and

wrestling playfully with him. “Teasing your old father.”

“I wasn’t, Dada,” Ramesh squealed. “But what you said was so

funny.”

The laughter and roughhousing did them both good, broke the

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 1 3

spell cast by Edna’s father’s mean words. Prakash felt something

free up in his heart. Curse the old man to hell, he thought. If he

cannot spot a Kohinoor diamond in the dust, his misfortune. I know