Home Leave: A Novel (8 page)

“I’m from America,” Chris offers, though the man hasn’t asked.

“America is a continent, my friend,” the man observes snippily. “Do you mean the United States?”

“Exactly,” Chris says, and falls silent.

“I admire Reagan very much,” the man says. “It was the media’s fault that the business with Nicaragua got out of control. In Singapore this would never happen. What Lee Kuan Yew sees fit to do, we trust as the right outcome. None of this obsession with hush-hush security.”

Chris doubts everyone in Singapore feels this way but is cowed by the man’s aggressive confidence.

“It’s your Christian guilt. That’s the problem. We Indians have Hinduism. Much more forgiving. Much more modern.”

“I thought you said you weren’t Indian.”

The man glares at Chris. “Well, do I look Malay to you? Of course I’m Indian. Just not Indian Indian.”

The man opens his paper again. Chris rises, irritated that he has gained no more insight about the Indian middle class than when he began. “Well, have a good day,” he tells the man.

“Are you on business here?” the man asks him, oddly invested now that Chris is departing.

“Yes.”

“One piece of advice. Don’t be the American nice guy. It always fails. I’ve seen it a million times. They’ll eat you alive.”

Chris has an urge to respond with something equally cutting and condescending, but all he can think of is “Shut up,” so he simply nods and says, “I’ll keep that in mind,” in a tone that he hopes is sarcastic.

“Very good, very good,” the man says absently, and returns to the paper, dismissing Chris before Chris has a chance to leave first.

But at the factory, Chris takes the man’s advice. He is cruelly scrutinizing of sloppy mistakes he observes, complains about the behavior of the Indian colleagues yesterday, and leaves halfway through dinner, simply saying he is tired. His new sharp, uncompromising self is thrilling. Emboldened, Chris dials home, only to get the answering machine. Again. “Hey there. Give me a call,” Chris says, and hangs up, not even saying, “I love you,” as he always does on overseas trips. The man on the bench was an asshole, Chris thinks, but he might have been on to something. Chris has been too nice, too lenient, too accepting. That was always his problem in basketball, too: passing too much. “Get a little more selfish, Chris,” his high school coach would say. “Why the hell did you give up the ball?” his college coach would yell, and bench him. Raised on a strict diet of Lutheran modesty, Chris had always piously assumed this behavior would reward him in the end. But that was bullshit. That night he dreams of robbing banks and kicking things until they crumple.

Annoyingly, Big Pocono State Park, which Elise has driven an hour to reach, is crowded and noisy. It is Saturday, after all. Kids everywhere. Elise feels a tug of missing for Leah, which surprises and pleases her, and she impulsively calls home from a pay phone near the parking lot. Becky puts Leah on, but the second Elise hears “Mama?” she has an urge to hang up. She tries to keep her voice kind and interested when Becky gets back on the phone and describes their day at the playground. “I’m out of coins, Becky—better run,” Elise lies, and hangs up after one minute.

Elise had only planned to do the loop trail, but the phone call has rattled her, and so she follows a sign to a higher summit, a farther two miles up. There are fewer people here. Elise moves quickly, trying to leave thoughts behind. She is glad she has brought along a large bottle of water by the time she reaches the top. She is alone, and she stretches out over the rocks. With the sun’s warmth and all the exercise, she begins drowsing, flitting in and out of dreams. In the first one, she is back in Hamburg, trying to return a dress in a department store, trying to remember the German word for “receipt,” then in Vidalia, in Charles Ebert’s study, the lights off, struggling to concentrate on the patterns of light from the shutters, her nails digging into her palms, breath close to her face, sniffing near her right thigh. She scrambles, terrified, into a sitting position, stifling a scream. But it is just a dog.

Elise laughs shakily. “Hey there,” she says. It looks like a mutt but has a Lab’s friendly-dumb disposition. He pants at her, smiling. He has a collar that Elise examines. “Robo Cop.” That is unquestionably the worst name she’s ever heard for a dog. As though he agrees, the dog lies down mournfully next to her and closes his eyes.

“Robo?” Elise hears through the woods. “Robo!”

The dog doesn’t stir. They are on an enclave jutting out from the mountain.
He’s here!
Elise knows she should call out, but she doesn’t. Robo Cop’s owners don’t try very hard to find him. There came a few more halfhearted “Robos” and then there is just the sound of sparrows chattering, Robo’s panting, and the faint whine of cars from the road far below. This is not good thinking on her part, Elise knows. Lately, she’s been shedding responsibilities, connections, as though they are clothes and she is bent on skinny-dipping. She couldn’t even talk to her own child on the phone an hour ago. So why not reunite Ro (she can’t bring herself to call him Robo) with his owners? Why end up disappointing and abandoning another creature?

He is beautiful. Marmalade tiger stripes over dark brown fur that glints gold when the sun hits it. He looks to be around three or four. Back in Vidalia, Elise loved the two Dalmatians her neighbors owned. She’s always wanted a dog with Chris, but they’ve moved around too much. Honestly, Elise wanted a dog more than a baby. She kept this to herself. Maybe she shouldn’t have. One of Elise’s favorite lines from the Bible is at the beginning of the Christmas story: “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” It doesn’t read, “Mary called Joseph and asked what he thought of Immaculate Conception.” Elise loves the hallowed privacy of that verse, but it does have its pitfalls.

“You thirsty?” Ro looks up at her expectantly. She pours what is left of the bottle near his mouth, and he laps and catches about one-third of it.

“Okay, buddy,” Elise says. “Let’s head back down.” Ro rises enthusiastically, turning in circles a few times joyfully before continuing on the trail ahead of her. On the way down, he darts in and out of the woods but always comes trotting back. At the foot of the trail, near the parking lot, his owners are waiting.

“Robo,” an overweight woman in her fifties cries. The dog trots over to her, tail wagging. So much for thinking he needs a new family, thinks Elise, feeling strangely betrayed by the dog’s goodwill.

“We thought we lost him for sure,” the man says. “Robo. What were you thinking?” He takes out a leash and snaps it on the dog, who turns to Elise, as if in apology.

“Beautiful dog,” says Elise, and then, struggling to keep her voice kind, “I’m so glad I found you guys. I didn’t know what to do with him.”

“Thank you,” the woman says, but with a tone of suspicion.

The man is less perceptive. “Yeah, we owe you. Ever since our daughter left for college, Robo here is pretty much our baby.”

“What kind of dog is he?”

“Mutt,” the man says. “He just showed up at our house one day, two years ago, starving.”

So I could have kept him, Elise thinks. Shit. She feels like a sucker. Ro whines. I’ve got to get out of here, Elise thinks, or I’ll kidnap that dog.

“You guys have a good day,” she says, heading to the car. On the drive back to the bed-and-breakfast, Elise considers her needs, what they might be. Is it a dog? Would a canine companion rein her in? Sometimes she fears that if someone, or something, doesn’t curb her new inclinations soon, she’ll head off the rails: wind up as a bartender in Vegas or one of those permanent backpackers she and Chris always made fun of in European airports: dreadlocks, wrinkled, sun-drenched skin, empty eyes.

Eight thousand miles apart from each other, en route to the Bombay airport, and walking through a small mountain town after lunch, Chris and Elise are deeply shaken by similar sights, though neither will ever think to mention it to the other: they each encounter a corpse. Chris sees a Hindu funeral: mourners, marigolds, the dead body being carried through the street. He glimpses the scene through his car window, shudders, and goes back to his yellow legal pad, where he is scrawling notes for an upcoming meeting with his boss, apprising him of the Bombay trip. On Main Street, after a chicken salad sandwich at a local café, walking down the street, Elise sees a woman lying on the sidewalk whose torso and lower body are covered in a sheet. There is a trickle of blood somewhere on her face. Later, Elise will not be able to recall where the blood was—at the corner of the mouth? On the forehead? Medics surround the woman, and beyond them, a scattered crowd of gawkers, half tourist, half local.

For some reason, Elise is certain that it is a suicide. The choice to kill herself radiates from the woman like the choice to marry coming from a bride. Elise does not cross the street to avoid the woman, but she does not look at the body as she passes the scene, either. No one in the horrified crowd is crying, only whispering. Elise walks back to her car in a trance. After seeing the dead woman, she thinks, I should want to go home, hold Leah tight, call Chris. But I don’t.

She pulls off the road at a sign for a lake, and wanders to the shore. Clouds have gathered and it is chilly, too late for swimming. Again, she curses herself for giving Ro back. She settles into the sand. Her own mother’s duties were clear. Across the lake, a dog barks. Elise does not know how to be a mother without putting on a straitjacket. A door slams. The darkness deepens. How to be so giving, every goddamn day. Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. Who am I to cut myself loose? What have I done to deserve that? Across the lake, light flickers on inside a house. Dinnertime.

Chris, sitting in 2A of a Northwest flight, removes a James Patterson novel from his briefcase and sips his gin and tonic. His tough-guy act has already faded; he felt it seeping away this morning, and by the time he got to the airport he was spent and nice again; he tipped the driver too much and didn’t cut anyone in line at the ticket counter, didn’t even protest when others cut him. He is lucky, he knows. There is no reason to demand anything from the world beyond that. It could scare the grace away. He pictures Elise and Leah, at the dinner table, Elise spooning mashed peas into Leah’s mouth.

Elise lies on the beach until the stars come out and she is shivering.

Leah wails in her crib. Even after Becky comes in to sing her to sleep, Leah is inconsolable: her bear has fallen below the bed.

He gets home before she does. The house is silent. He calls out both their names as the taxi drives away, knowing by the empty garage that they’re not there. But where are they? Why can’t she ever leave a note? He feels insecure; he wanted to hug both of them, to swirl Leah around, to hear her giggle. He wanted Elise to milk out all the stories about India from him, so that he could understand his trip better, feel her quiet sympathy. But instead it will be Chinese takeout and college basketball games. It’s the Sweet Sixteen, so it could be worse.

Elise eases in around ten. She looks caught. “You’re here!” she says to Chris. “I thought you were getting in tomorrow.”

“Where’s Leah?” Chris asks.

“Babysitter’s,” Elise says offhandedly.

“But if you’re here—”

“Shhh,” Elise says. “You’ve had a long trip.” And she brings him up to bed.

Her hunger makes him shy and despondent. She’s met someone. He’s sure. But his body reacts, almost against his will, and he finds himself drawn to this new, unfaithful Elise, even as he is gasping, she is gasping, and after he comes he doesn’t feel angry, just small and in need of protection.

She, too. They curl together like the stuffed animals that Leah arranges in her bed each night.

“Did you have a good trip?” Elise finally asks.

“Yes.” It’s hard for Chris to keep his voice from sounding bitter.

“I did too,” Elise says.

A pause, as Chris’s mind races. “What do you mean, you did too?”

Elise’s laugh is high, nervous, the way she used to laugh when she was speaking German. “I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’ve been going on trips as well, when you go away. I don’t know why. Just for the hell of it.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes. Not with Leah.” She hesitates and then adds: “But not with anyone else, either.”

Silence again, and then her voice, horribly kind: “Is that what you were worried about?”

He doesn’t reply. He wishes the light were on. Isn’t it easier for her to lie in the dark?

“I need it right now. I don’t know why.” She sounds almost angry.

“Why?” he asks, stupidly.

But she responds. “It has to do with being back here, in the States—”

“I thought you wanted to come back!”

“I do! These trips, short travels—it’s a good thing. I think it’s a good thing.”

“What about Leah?”

“She stays with Becky.”

“Great,” Chris says, his voice flat, furious.

They lie in the dark, each pricked by the stony silence of the other, throats tight with resentment and a creeping fear. Chris has the feeling he used to get in games his sophomore year at UGA, their worst season. Inevitably, a moment would arrive in the third or fourth quarter when it was clear their team was going to lose, that they would never make up the ten-point difference. Watching the clock wind down, the shots fall short.

“I don’t know, lately I just feel like traveling. Exploring. Like you,” Elise says, “with your business trips.”

“Like me? What do you think I do when I travel? Hang out? Go to the beach? I’m working my ass off, Elise. For us. I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, but it’s definitely not for us, and it’s certainly not for Leah.”

Too far. Elise turns her back to him, draws the covers over her like chain mail.

“Elise—”

“Look, you obviously don’t understand. So there’s no point staying up talking about it. I’m tired. Good night.”

She’s right. He doesn’t get it. He feels very, very tired and helpless, like when his calf died right before the county fair. His mother told him about it in the morning. Lucky was gone before Chris could see him one last time. That was the worst thing about it.