Balance of Fragile Things (3 page)

“Hi, Paul. How's life treating ya?”

“Living the dream, Mrs. Carmichael, as always.” He gave her his million-dollar smile.

Mrs. Carmichael, an octogenarian, walked around the convenience store, checking the expiration dates on each bottle of milk before pouring a small cup of coffee and topping it off with the freshest milk, which she then returned to the refrigerated section.

“That racket outside is going to raise the dead!”

“You're telling me.” Paul stretched his arm out and looked at the foreman through the inch of space between his pointer finger and thumb. Then he squished the man in the distance.

“One day they're going to dig too deep and find what they're looking for.”

“Eh, what do you mean?”

“Oh, you know.” She slurped her hot coffee. “Every town keeps their secrets in the ground. You've heard the rumors about PMI, right?”

Paul's blank look said it all.

“Never mind. Hey, am I going to win that trip to Mexico this week?”

“Guaranteed—I see it in your future.”

“Did your wife tell you that? Then it'd mean something. Otherwise, I'd think you just want a cut of my winnings!”

Mrs. Carmichael placed the correct change on the counter, took a sip of her coffee, and tucked the scratchers in her purse. “Keep the change.”

“Have a nice day.”

“All righty. See you next week, Mr. Singh.”

Paul Singh knew two things: One, he would train his son to defend himself; and, two, he would find out if his psychic wife could see what was written on lottery tickets.

E
mpress of Multitasking, Goddess of Kitchen and Garden, Countess of Costco—in her mind, Maija Mazur Singh listed all the appropriate titles that she could stitch on her zip-up cardigan's lapel. On this, her day off, she'd cooked, cleaned, and learned a few
things—and it was only the afternoon, which meant she still had time to appraise her children's secret lives before they returned from school.

Maija had managed to concoct a beautiful sauerbraten and had even remembered to add a few extra peppercorns to quench Paul's incessant need for spice. To Maija, it seemed he had long burned all the taste buds from his tongue, that the little buds had all waved their white flags after decades of interpreting the scorch of raw chili peppers. Paul claimed capsicum was good for his gums, and Maija wondered what good gums were when the tongue was collateral damage.

She'd also baked an Alexander cake and glazed it to perfection. She'd vacuumed the house and even spent an hour watching Montel Williams's self-help parenting program. Maija felt as if she could do it all, at least when she was the only one at home. The other inhabitants, her family, made getting things done difficult. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, she could not control everything; she was far from all-knowing, and she had not been blessed with strong parental communication skills. She had the sight, that was certain, but she rarely saw futures for her family, which was even more frustrating and led to her snooping. Instead of inquiring about Isabella's female changes and Vic's experiences at school, Maija held it in. Birds and bees remained bottled up, and they stung and ate each other. Since she couldn't discuss these difficult topics, she was forced to infiltrate their personal things and read them like runes.

Maija inspected the shoebox that she'd found tucked deep beneath Isabella's bed. It was, of course, more than a box—it was a portal into Isabella's brain, and Maija, mother of no words, parented as she mushroomed: once in a while and when no one was looking. She told herself it was out of love, but deep down she knew that entering dresser drawers and lifting dust ruffles with the intention of unearthing clusters of fleshy chanterelle fragrant with teen angst was necessary. Maija's mother, whom she called Ma while almost everyone else referred to her as Oma, wouldn't have even paused before looking, Maija reassured herself. If she'd bothered at all.

Oma's interest had always been, in Maija's eyes, in the lives of others. After Papa had passed away, it was as though Oma's identity as a mother had vanished along with her identity as a wife, leaving Maija alone. When they had first immigrated to Cleveland through the sponsorship of a Latvian Baptist church, Maija would go through Oma's things in hopes of feeling closer to her. Sneaking Oma's cameo around her neck had comforted her as she'd fought through the Ohio school system's remedial classes with disabled students, students branded as “slow” and other immigrants who struggled with the English language.

Oma would open this box and say that everything in her house was hers anyway, Maija thought as she sat at the foot of Isabella's bed. But still she hesitated.

She could still hear Montel Williams telling mothers that snooping was not right. His eyes had glimmered, his teeth had glistened, and his hairless head had glowed. Though she knew Montel meant to defend teen privacy to an audience of mothers, his piece only motivated her to scour Vic's and Isabella's bedrooms for secrets.

She imagined all the possible terrors stashed within Isabella's box: marijuana (the devil's weed), weapons (perhaps a gun), or, worse, the Pill. Like Pandora, whose all-gifted hands released the evils of the world and left poor Elpis, hope, in the jar, Maija opened the lid. She puzzled at the contents. If they were emblematic of her daughter's inner self, they weren't going to expose their secrets easily. She perused the items that belonged in the garbage: bottle caps, bits of string, paper clips linked together in a circle, a leaf, a ball of used rubber bands, Band-Aids, and gauze pads. Maija caressed the ordinary office supplies, searching for signs of rebellion. What did these items say about Isabella? It could mean she had a strange desire to collect dirty things; there was a term for that affliction—yes, hoarding. Or perhaps these were simply here to throw someone like Maija off a trail; she was a clever girl.

Maija dug further, and under the odd collection of stickers she found the treasure of all parenting treasures: a diary. She opened the first page and shut it immediately. Then she slowly opened it again and flipped quickly through the whole book. She saw some sort of code: BFF, 2GTBT, 459, 4EAE, BTWIAILWU. None of these codes made sense to Maija. Was Isabella in trouble? The only codes that Maija knew were pharmacological: OTC (over the counter), QOD (every other day), PO (for the mouth), and BID (twice a day). She closed the book and tried to forget everything that had taken place over the previous few minutes. She wished she'd never opened it in the first place.

The phone rang, and Maija jumped. In a rush, she rearranged the box the way she had found it and put it back under Isabella's bed in the same place. Guilt and regret began to build in her heart. She wished she could forget what just happened and pretend that there wasn't a code to decipher. It was her deepest flaw, that she could see the futures of others but not of her loved ones. What good was being a psychic at all? She shuffled her slipper-clad feet to the piss-yellow kitchen to the phone. The walls looked dreadful during the afternoon, when the fluorescent lights had to be turned on above the sink. “Summer Apricot, my
dūre
.” Maija rolled her Rs. “Curse you, Lowe's employee who sold me this paint.”

The phone rang a third time, and Maija picked it up.

“Hallo? Yes, Paul, my dear, what did you say?” Her heart pounded in her chest. “No, I've never played the lottery. Well—” Maija squinted, hoping the adjustment would increase the acuteness of her large ears, which hid beneath piles of thick brown curls.

“You want me to look at some lottery tickets? Why, darling? You know
it
doesn't work that way.” She scrunched her nose into a button-sized embellishment between her two high cheekbones. Maija's blue eyes were murky like the sea, and her hair, particularly on humid fall days like this one, would mat together like seaweed tossed in a ruthless current. But an ocean goddess she was not. She was no mermaid or undine. She was stout, like her favorite beer, which she drank warm.

“Fine, yes, sweetie, I will look at them. Oh, bring home a gallon of milk, will you, dear?”

She cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder as she stacked the mail in a neat pile next to the computer in the kitchen nook. There was a notice from Cobalt High inviting parents to join the PTA, a few coupons from Dante's Hops and Pies, and another letter from India. “What? My
putns!
Poor Vicki. Okay, I will wait for him.” News that her son was coming home with an injury was upsetting. At that moment her heart raced, and the letter from India began emanating light. It flickered opal like a small galaxy. It was irresistible to Maija.

“
Uz redzēšanos
,” she said, then hung up.

This letter was different than the others from Paul's father. She lifted it to the fluorescent light and looked at the thin piece of parchment folded into a square inside. Maija had never met Paul's family because, he'd told her, they were poor and couldn't afford the plane tickets from India. Paul and Maija had met in a pharmacy in Cobalt years and years ago. He'd crushed his hand while fixing his car, and he'd been getting antibiotics to ward off infection. She'd fallen in love with him after their first picnic date in the park, when he told her she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen and then kissed her. He told her she tasted like strawberries. They were married in the Cobalt courthouse by a justice, and only a couple friends were in attendance along with Oma. Her day was far from the wedding she'd imagined, but they were in love. Yet every time Maija asked him about his family, Paul turned to ice. Once, he'd mentioned something vague about his father's anger, and she took it to mean that his abusive nature had caused Paul to immigrate to America. Not knowing the details allowed Maija's imagination to run without reins.

Don't you think it would be good to make amends now?
she'd asked years earlier.
Whatever happened, happened so long ago.

Piyar
, you should be thankful I am not speaking to them,
he replied.
Otherwise they might decide to move in with us like other Indian in-laws.

She'd kept her mouth shut after that.

The letters had begun to arrive a couple months ago, and their frequency was increasing. Why didn't Paul's father just call like a normal person? Maija shrugged and took a deep sniff from the letter's edge. The glue on the envelope's lip smelled like a journey across a sea by steamship.

At that moment, everything within Maija's vision froze, and her lips became icy, as though a cool breeze had blown across her face. The saliva in her mouth vanished. Her perspective was slipping, and she was being pulled gently backward into herself. It was an uncanny feeling. She thought it must be similar to the sensation Alice felt as she grew taller in the bottom of the rabbit hole.

Inside her mind, Maija came upon a scene. She felt rain pelt her face as she approached a dense forest. The trees bent and swayed under the wind, then parted to expose a dirt path. Maija moved forward, frightened. Her feet were bare. It felt as if the trees were watching her as she intruded into their home. A lion appeared up ahead, and she knew to follow. The dirt beneath her feet turned to water that began to rise. The lion vanished under the water, and in its place was something shiny in the soil. Maija was pushed into the water, which turned into an ocean. She swam under the water toward the shiny object, and when she reached for it, the edge cut her finger. Suddenly the water rushed away, and she was left, cheek down, in the mud. A small aluminum butterfly lay in her hand. She heard a tearing sound. A tall man wearing a
kurta pajama
was dragging a long
kirpan
along the forest ground in the distance. The blade was slicing open the land as he walked. Reddish brown soil bubbled up from the gash.

The vibrations of his steps shook Maija back into her kitchen. She sat up on the floor in front of the open refrigerator. A pitcher on the top shelf lay on its side; iced tea pooled around her bare feet. The slippers were across the room.

“
Vīratēvs
.”

From her vision, she knew that her father-in-law was coming to her home, and there was nothing she could do about it. She shook her head. Maija hoped he wouldn't pollute her home with his violence. Now she knew what was written in the letter: The man whom Paul called Papaji was coming. There was more, much more to decipher, but one thing was clear: His presence would change her home.

Maija wiped up the iced tea and threw the dishtowel in the sink. Dammit, she could work and plan and cook, and still she felt she had no control over life. She could see silly things in the future—the way she saw Mrs. Carmichael win fifty dollars on her scratcher, and now the strange vision about her father-in-law—but rarely anything to do with her immediate family.

Maija took off her reading glasses and looked at the letter. She focused her eyes, those penetrating steel orbs set perfectly apart with almond-shaped lids that suggested her relation to Mongolia. She was a woman of few words; she spoke through grin or sneer. Slow to warm, her stare, chilly as though it trickled from some mountain up on high, would grip others' smiles and greetings. And no, her eyebrows wouldn't curl, her eyelashes wouldn't flutter, and the uncanny, unabashed line one could draw from her eyes to those of her acquaintances could have been traveled by icicle. Maija's corneas, irises, lenses, retinas, and optic nerves rested precariously atop centuries of Latvian political oppression—they were the peaks of glaciers of her forced suspicion for all who were free to flash their teeth, for they might be the ones reporting to the KGB.

Okay, she said to herself, deep breath in, and deep breath out. Focus on the positive. Be present. She chanted a slogan: Where is my happy place? She dodged images in her head of Vic being beaten at school and of Papaji hitting Paul as a child.

Maija curled her toes and relaxed them, donned her slippers, and shuffled along to the pots with the makings of
sivēna
galerts
, her favorite aspic loaf, on the stove. She relished the few days a week she could spend at home from her part-time job as a pharmacy technician—and nothing would ruin her day. Her feet would swell to a half size larger when she worked; during one shift, she would stand for at least ten hours. So, over the four days a week she spent at home, she kept her prettily painted toes nestled deep within her fuzzy, size-eight sheepskin slippers. Her feet were a size six. As she shuffled in the too-big slippers, she made a rhythm with her feet: one-two-three, one-two-three. She loved dancing. And though Paul did, too, they literally moved to beats from very different drummers: his was a
tabla
and sitar, hers a
kokle
and woodwind. As she shuffled across the kitchen floor, she wondered whether she should tell Paul what she'd seen. Better not, she thought; he needed to read the letters himself. Maybe she'd ask him about them. And in her kitchen, with the aroma of her sauerbraten wafting in the nostrils of her button-sized nose, she waltzed across the linoleum floor and directly, accidentally, into Vic.

“Oh,
mans zvirbulis
, you are home.”

When Vic was born, he'd weighed only a few pounds, and as Maija held him in her arms she decided he resembled a little bird. Now, she gasped at her son's battered face and had to steady herself against the counter. “Vicki, who did this?”