Balance of Fragile Things Read online

  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?”

  She lifted his face under the light. His nose had been broken. Black eyes were forming. His cheek was bruised and swollen. Maija began to cry without a sound. This was the work of a villain. “Oh, my baby!”

  “Mama, can we talk about this later? Ouch!” Vic’s voice was nasally, and Maija pushed him to sit at a kitchen stool and turned his face this way and that. She looked into his nostrils, cut pieces off a new sponge, and carefully shoved the sponge inside. Then she piled a bag of frozen lima beans on his face and told him to sit still.

  “Oh dear, does it hurt much?”

  He did not respond.

  “Where is your sissy Queen Isabella?” Maija asked while nervously dumping a pile of ibuprofen into her hand; a few fell to the floor, and she didn’t pick them up.

  “Rehearsal. The play.”

  “Ah, yes, will Michelle give her a ride home, then?” She tried her hardest not to say anything about the fight because that was Paul’s department, though it was difficult. “You know, you are lucky to have such a nice little sissy, Vicki; you should take care of her. Ninth grade can be very difficult for kids these days.”

  Maija’s fountain of parenting knowledge reached the end. She considered the archetypes she’d learned from television, including the troubled teens, pregnant teens, druggy teens, and even prostituting teens. Just earlier that day, she’d watched a special on the Internet and teens, and she was thankful neither of her children spent much time on their one family computer in the kitchen, except when papers were due. Oh yes, Vic had an obsession with a video game that had something to do with building a city, an entire simulated world. That and his blog he told her about. This sounded nice to Maija—so creative, not destructive—but Vic would never show his mother his creations.

  “Please don’t call me Vicki, Mama. Call me Vic.”

  “Oh yes. Sorry, mazs dēls.” Maija put her hands on Vic’s cheeks and concentrated in an attempt to see something, anything—but the other world gave her nothing, as usual.

  “Mama, quit it!”

  “Who did this to you?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Your father will fix it.”

  “It’s like I’m asking for it, wearing this stupid thing on my head and all.”

  “Vicki!”

  “There isn’t even a gurdwárá in this town—why should I have to wear this?”

  “You want I should start one? You’re lucky I don’t send you to Latvian camp. There’s one in Pennsylvania, you know. Or maybe you’d rather.” Maija’s cold eyes found Vic’s pupils.

  He looked unfazed. “You don’t get it. Do kids in Latvia wear this?”

  “I know how difficult the teen years a
re.”

  Vic went to his room without looking back at his mother. She knew he wouldn’t emerge until his father requested his presence in the backyard later. She knew he thought it was unfair that his sister didn’t have to display an element of their father’s orthodox religion. But wasn’t that part of being a teenager, thinking the world’s against you and wondering why it’s so unfair?

  Maija wondered how having a grandparent in the house would change her children. She went to his bedroom; the door wasn’t closed all the way, so she peeked inside. His hair was flowing down his back in curls, rebelling against the turban. He looked small under all that hair. He was sitting on the edge of his bed reading a comic. She wanted to go in, wanted to talk, but she wouldn’t. What was he reading? A story about a rabbit samurai? She couldn’t read the rest of the cover. Ach, she wanted to enter, but she remembered hearing somewhere that it was best to give space to teens. She just hoped he wasn’t imagining what it would feel like to hold a sword in his own hands. But then she remembered his aversion to sharp objects and felt better.

  Isabella

  The stage was a collection of loosely assembled wood, nails, and glue, its floor covered in thick black paint, dulled and scratched by a thousand feet that crossed it in productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Crucible. Behind the curtained walls: four metal chairs, six bowler hats, broken track lights, a working stepladder, and a podium. Stage left: a wooden cutout of a leafless willow tree painted black and gray. Stage right: petite Isabella Singh, with long black hair and caramel eyes hidden behind glasses, and sixteen-year-old Erik Fritjof, who looked like a scrawny descendant of Vikings.

  Isabella’s surroundings were standard as far as high school theaters went, but she had never been inside a real theater. The Royal Cineplex 5 didn’t count; that was where she’d sneak in the back door with a bag of sour gummy worms tucked in her pocket and stay all day long, bouncing from one movie to the next as if it was her job. This theater was different. Its smell, for one thing, was a combination of dense mothballs and Elmer’s glue. Isabella imagined that the stage was pasted together and wondered if it might collapse under the six drama club members and one rotund teacher. She estimated the distance to the exit was thirty seconds away at a sprint, and she wondered, if she ran fast enough, whether she could defy the space-time continuum and go back in time to three weeks earlier and not join the drama club.

  “Are we square? One more time.” Mr. Tewkesbury rubbed his belly over his red flannel shirt. Mr. Tewkesbury’s Worcester accent caused him to avoid Rs as though they were arsenic, so his square sounded like sk-way.

  Isabella adjusted the bowler hat tipped on her head. The black circle drawn over her left eye with face paint was running down her cheek. Rumor had it that the face paint was left over from when Tewks had done a stint in the circus as a clown. That was after his off-Broadway days, which he reminded his students of often. They’d been practicing the scene from Waiting for Godot because it would, as Tewks put it, help them intellectually understand his own play, 1,001 Cries, which they would be performing in three weeks. Each week, he’d cast a different actor as Vladimir or Estragon. Now it was Isabella’s turn as Estragon.

  Isabella read her line. “Where are the leaves?”

  Erik said, “It must be dead.”

  Isabella said, “No more weeping.”

  Tewks screamed, “No, no, no! You both sound like robots. Put some feeling into it. Remember what I told you earlier.”

  Isabella pushed her glasses higher on her nose. The rest of the club held its breath, too afraid to express their lack of comprehension. “Um, no, Mr. Tewkesbury. What do you mean by ‘defiling plot,’ and what does, er, something about ‘rupturing representations of reality’ mean?”

  He growled and clumsily cleaned his round spectacles on the edge of his shirt. “I knew my gift to you all would go unappreciated.” He twisted his copy of Waiting for Godot into an object appropriate for hitting students, then spread his hands and pushed outward at the students, as if through this action he could blast them all off the stage and out the rear door. “The author is a postmodernist. He is destroying the grand narrative.”

  “I get it, Mr. Tewkesbury. They don’t, but I do.” Tracy Finch’s voice was cotton candy.

  “No, I understand that part,” Isabella said. “It’s minimalist. But what’s the point? Is it a play about nothing?” Isabella moved closer to Erik for support. Michelle, her best friend, moved toward her as well.

  “Well—in a way.” Tewks squinted.

  “Like Seinfeld?” Erik ventured.

  “Nothing like Seinfeld. Take five.” Tewks clapped his hands, then pointed to Tracy, and they both went toward his office.

  “Fun, fun,” Michelle said to Isabella.

  “What’s he thinking, anyway? High school theater is about the big five.” Erik shrugged.

  “Big five?”

  “The Crucible, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Christmas Carol, Beauty and the Beast, and of course, if you’re daring, Arsenic and Old Lace. I didn’t sign up for postmodern drama. I hate the way that Tewks is forcing it down our throats. And, like, we should be spending time rehearsing 1,001 Cries.”

  “Yeah, and what’s up with Tracy? She’s so obviously his lap dog.” Michelle tousled her blonde pixie haircut and stuck her finger down her throat in a faux gag.

  Isabella nodded in agreement. She thought about Tracy. Isabella found herself hesitant around Tracy, always afraid she would see signs of the girl who had lived next door when they were children. What if Isabella got the urge to remind Tracy of the day they’d played hide-and-seek and Isabella had lost her pink My Little Pony in Tracy’s backyard? What might happen if she mentioned the time they’d dressed in Mrs. Finch’s clothes and pretended to be mommies to their baby dolls?

  Reminiscing was only meaningful between two friends. Isabella would be a fool to ask Tracy how she liked living in the Heights, across the river. She would be even more foolish to ask how her life had changed since PMI closed and her father, who was a PMI director, was laid off and given enough severance to begin building the Heights development. The Finch flock had sold their house next to the Singhs on Peregrine Court, moved to their gated community across the river, and ascended the social ladder into the upper echelon of Cobalt. Isabella’s father used to obsess about what Mr. Finch did to receive such a massive severance. It gave him little comfort to know the Finches had inherited the land on which they’d built the development from Mr. Finch’s great-grandfather.

  As Tewks and Tracy returned, Isabella looked at Tracy—in spite of the downpour of doubt, not because of it. Tracy’s golden hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her slender back. Aside from the hair and eyes, Isabella couldn’t find a trace of the girl she had known five years earlier. It was strange to realize that so much time had passed, yet this was the first moment Isabella had studied her ex-friend unabashedly. The sightings in the school halls were fleeting. Getting a good look at Tracy was like trying to spot a gazelle in a field of reeds. The divide between the microcosms of student society didn’t allow them to interact.

  Tewks had returned with a stack of paper, sweaty with determination. The students gathered around him eagerly.

  “This should be good.” Erik nudged Isabella’s arm. She felt sparks all over her body.

  Michelle gripped Isabella’s arm. “Isabella, I have to tell you something.”

  “What, Michelle?”

  Her friend looked nervous.

  “Now,” Tewks said, “I have to reassign the lead role, since the lead will no longer be with us. No complaining, no trading, and no crying.”

  Tracy scowled at Isabella.

  “Isabella,” Tewks continued, “since you’ve shown some promise, and I assume you’ve spent time with Michelle as she worked on this role, you will play Samantha from now on.”

  Gasps rose from the group.

  “What? Me? Why?” Isabella turned to her friend. “Michelle?” Samantha was the Pr
esident’s daughter, who during the play was trapped in the bomb shelter with the Vice President, trying to talk him out of pressing the doomsday button.

  “You will be perfect.” Tewks grinned and clapped his hands together, making it so.

  “I’m sorry,” Michelle whispered. “I just found out and wanted to tell you before this, but all my teachers got a letter from my dad. I’m moving.”

  Isabella felt as if she’d been hit twice by a truck: Her best friend was moving, and she had to take her role. She’d signed up for drama club for three reasons: Michelle, Mrs. Stein, and Erik. First Michelle had wanted her to join. Then Mrs. Stein had ultimately convinced her to join after Isabella had neglected to turn in a paper about Charlotte Brontë. Isabella had tried to use “religious holiday” and “my grandmother’s sick” as excuses, but Mrs. Stein had seen through it and suggested that she join the drama club for extra credit, adding that this extra credit would, in fact, be required in order to receive a decent grade in the class. And then Isabella had met Erik and decided she wanted to stay.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Isabella said to Tewks. She was fine with a bit part like Girl #3 or the Explosion, which stood to the rear of the stage and didn’t have to do much but scream Bam and shake a tambourine at a particular moment.