Flying Lessons & Other Stories(31)
Some afternoons, Lisabeth and Casey meet me at the pharmacy on Main Street and the three of us sit at the window where we can watch people moving through town. Before she moved back, Celeste and I made a promise that we’d meet in New York City and celebrate our eighteenth birthdays together. In a week, I’ll be twelve. It’ll be here before you know it, Celeste said.
—
Why are you squinting? Lisabeth asks me. You act like you’re not even here.
—
And she’s right. I am already leaving. I am halfway gone.
Flying Lessons
SOMAN CHAINANI
Nani wears a fur coat to the beach.
It’s my second clue she doesn’t plan to go swimming.
The first came earlier this morning when she rang up the Chanel boutique on Passeig de Gràcia and asked them to send a selection of swim trunks for a young boy of twelve “with practically no hips and a small bottom” to room 213 at the Palacio Barcelona.
Half-asleep, I slid up in bed, swaddled in a voluminous white robe monogrammed with the hotel’s initials, and peered up at my grandmother. Posed imperiously at the window, she was already done up in a matador-red chiffon dress, her dyed caramel hair teased into a beehive, her brown eyes drenched in blue mascara and her lips coated the color of blood.
I could hear the Chanel clerk through the handset, trying to get a word in, but Nani was prattling away: “Something stylish and sophisticated, of course. Whatever los chicos are wearing in Ibiza,” she breezed, unaware of how ludicrous Spanglish sounded in an Indian accent. “Though nothing in black. Only Italians wear black to swim—”
“Aren’t you getting a bathing suit too?” I started, but Nani waved me off, gypsy bangles jangling on her wrist.
On the bed table, there was a gilded tray of two cafés con leche, ham and cheese croissants, and tostadas slathered in tomatoes and olive oil. Nani’s coffee cup was already drained.
“And please be rápido about it,” she was saying. “It’s my grandson’s first trip out of Florida, and I can’t have him spending the entire day in the hotel—”
Through the phone, I heard the clerk huffing that Chanel doesn’t carry men’s clothes, let alone swim trunks, let alone deliver them to tourists at hotels, but Nani simply smiled like a cat. “Tell Armando that Kamla Sani says hello,” she replied, and hung up the phone.
Three hours later, I’m chasing Nani across the sun-drenched shores of La Mar Bella, wearing a striped Chanel red-and-white swimsuit so tiny and tight I keep peeking down to make sure it’s still there, while Nani sweeps across the golden sand in her couture dress, red stiletto heels, and a white fur coat that make her look like the Indian version of Cruella de Vil.
“You promised to take me to the beach!” I yell.
“And I am. You didn’t say anything about staying with you,” Nani calls, shielded by enormous Paloma Picasso sunglasses.
“But I don’t know anyone here, and my Spanish is terrible! You can’t leave me in the middle of nowhere all alone—”
“It’s a beach, not an alleyway in Las Ramblas. I’m just getting a wash-and-blow at Rossano Ferretti and meeting an old acquaintance at Café Gijón. I won’t be more than a few hours.”
“A few hours! What do you expect me to do with a few hours?”
“What any boy your age should do on a beach in Spain. Make friends,” she impels as we approach a crowded inlet. “Here we are. Yamila at the hotel told me this is where the most exclusive people go.”
I can feel the bodies around me, but I can’t bear to look at them. “Please. Don’t leave me alone. I’ll come with you….”
But she’s already sashaying away. “Making friends is easy. I do it all the time.”
Heart hammering, I glance up at the packed beach, finally seeing the people around me. My stomach implodes.
“Grandma!” I cry.
She turns on her heel, alarmed.
“They’re naked!” I scream. “You brought me to a naked beach!”
Nani gapes at me, then raises her eyes and pulls down her sunglasses. As she takes in the sea of bodies, her almond skin blanches, tight wrinkles creasing her forehead. She’s a hawk caught in a trap.
But then her eyes float down to me, quivering in my Speedo like a spooked starlet, and she pulls up her sunglasses with a stern smile.
“Oh, my little darling. You have such an imagination,” she coos, and glides away without looking back.
—
Nani never asked if I wanted to go on this trip. She just flounced into our kitchen at eight a.m. on a scorching June morning, wearing a Dior sweat suit, drinking a Power Greens juice, and extolling the virtues of Pilates, before informing my mother she was taking me on a three-week trip across Europe and that I’d need a passport, haircut, and a new wardrobe that wasn’t from Old Navy. She never addressed my two brothers, who were eating breakfast with me, nor explained to me why I was the one chosen for this foreign tour, nor allowed my mother a say in the matter. She just drained her juice, gave our plates of soggy French toast a pitying glare, and jaunted out of the house.
Less than a month later, I am alone on a naked beach.
When we started this trip, I thought it would be a packed itinerary of cultural landmarks: guided ferries down the Thames, tours of the Prado and Eiffel Tower, afternoon tea at Dutch brasseries while I got ahead on my summer reading for school. Instead, I haven’t seen a single museum or palace or anything else we learned about in Ms. Fisher’s class, and I’m pretty sure Nani secretly threw out my summer reading books during a customs search in Copenhagen.