Lost and Wanted(38)

20.


Something kept me from calling my sister to tell her the news about Neel. I waited until Amy called me with a worry of her own. My sister is always happy to listen to me talk about my work, but in practice we use our weekly phone sessions mostly to compare notes about our parents or our children. Sometimes she talks about Ben, and their arguments about money. If I go on a date, she always wants to hear about it. This is true of my married friends in general: they revel in the details of any romantic interaction, in the way people who once visited the place you’re traveling enjoy comparing their memories with your contemporary snapshots.

When Amy called me I was in my office, but my postdoc Vasily had just left.

“I’m worried about Dad,” Amy said. My sister was in the car with the children, as she always seemed to be—I could hear “Let It Go” in the background. “He seems anxious.”

“Anxious?”

“He gets into a panic these days, especially about time. He’s always worried about being late.”

“What does Mom think?”

“That’s the thing—I don’t know if she even notices. It’s almost like they don’t hear each other anymore. Like Dad will say to Mom, ‘The check engine light is on,’ and she’ll say, ‘I’m taking Bess to buy sneakers.’?”

Bess was my nine-year-old niece; her sister, Avery, was six.

“He says, ‘Don’t forget we’re going to see The Man Who Knew Infinity at seven-forty. We should be out the door by seven-ten,’ and Mom is like, ‘Did you see, I got your new kind of yogurt?’ It’s like there’s goodwill on both sides, but a complete lack of attention.”

“Did you see it, too?”

“I’m the only one who sees it!”

“I mean the movie.”

“Oh.” My sister paused and told one of the children that they couldn’t repeat the song again. “Yeah, on Netflix—I like Jeremy Irons, but the math was very vague.”

    “You wouldn’t really expect them to go into detail.”

“Maybe that’s just the way it is after you’ve been married forty-five years.”

I’d been waiting for an opportunity: “Neel is getting married,” I said.

“Your Neel?”

“Yep. She’s a heart surgeon.”

“You just found out?”

“Arty told me—Neel told him first, which I still can’t quite…anyway, I had to email him and ask. She’s Indian, but her name is Roxy.”

“Roxy?”

“She’s from some kind of fancy family in Mumbai. She works for Doctors Without Borders.”

“That’s such an amazing organization,” Amy said.

“Yes, I’m aware.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird he would’ve told Arty and not me?”

“Well, I mean…”

“I was pretty hurt, actually.”

“How do you feel now?”

I was thinking about how I felt, trying to get it right, but Amy must have mistaken this analysis for emotion.

“Like someone’s cutting your heart out with a scalpel?”

“No.”

“That was a joke.”

“They’re going to live here. He’s coming back to MIT.”

“Oh god,” Amy said. “In your department?”

“Not teaching—but yeah.”

Amy hesitated. “What’s she going to do?”

“She’ll be at the Brigham. And also traveling the world to aid people in need, I guess.”

I could hear the specific sound of L.A. traffic in the background, both louder and more resigned than the Boston variety.

“You didn’t say how you felt,” Amy said.

“Excited.”

“Excited?”

    “Like something’s about to happen.” There was a pause, some static in our connection.

“You worry me,” Amy said.





21.


At 9:30 on Saturday morning, the bell rang. It was about an hour before we had to leave for soccer, but Jack was already wearing his shiny yellow uniform, his black knee socks, and shin guards. I was upstairs and I called to him that he could answer the door.

“Hey, little man. You got a game?”

I recognized Terrence’s voice, but I was still getting dressed. Who showed up unannounced on a Saturday morning? I hadn’t done the laundry yet, and I ended up in a pair of not-totally-clean jeans and a plaid shirt. I was hoping that this might looked relaxed in a Hollywood kind of way, rather than just sloppy.

“Hey,” I said, coming down the stairs. “Welcome.”

“Sorry,” Terrence said. “We were right in the neighborhood, and Simmi wanted to see if you were home.” Terrence didn’t look much better prepared for company than I was. He hadn’t shaved, and the beard coming in had a lot of gray in it. The hair on his head was growing back dark and even, though; it made me think that cutting off the dreads had been a gesture of mourning rather than a defense against balding. There was a purple shadow at the corner of each eye, and he looked as if he’d lost weight, even since the last time we’d seen him.