Mohan Lal held out his hand to her. “You should write this all down and publish it.”
She grazed his hand but then started fixing her hair again. “You’ll love this, Mo. One time, my father actually got to drive Eisenhower.”
“Really?” Mohan turned right onto Ms. Farber’s street. “Ike’s driver — his main driver — was a woman. Kay. They were lovers.” He took a left into her driveway and parked underneath the hoop.
The engine idled, and nobody said anything. Siddharth felt cozy and warm and wished they could just stay right there in the driveway, but Marc shattered the cozy silence: “Listen, story time was great, but I’ve got to excuse myself — unless you want me to take a dump in the backseat.” He stepped out of the van and let himself into the house through the garage.
Ms. Farber took a long, deep breath. “Mohan, this has been. . Really good. I was thinking. .” She let out a breathy laugh. “No, forget it.”
“What? What is it?” Mohan Lal shut off the motor.
“No, it’s all a little too raw still.”
“Please, Rachel.” He held out his hand.
She didn’t touch it. “Not now. It’s not the right time.”
Siddharth shrunk in his seat, worried that she was referring to him, then Mohan Lal restarted the engine.
Ms. Farber reached for his wrist and took another deep breath. “Okay, I’m done holding things back.” She paused before continuing. “Mohan, I want you to come inside. You can have some coffee and go home, and that’ll be okay. But you could also stay till tomorrow. That would be fine too. . What am I talking about? It would be more than fine. I would love it if you both spent the night.”
Mohan Lal started rubbing his neck. He stared into the rearview mirror with raised eyebrows, and Siddharth met his eyes. These people are fucking crazy, he thought. It was almost as if they were waiting for him to decide. Well, he was done. He didn’t care anymore. He had seen what happened when he got in the way. They could do all the screwing they wanted.
He hopped out of the car and jogged toward the house. Marc was in the family room watching Saturday Night Live. Siddharth sat down beside him, sinking into the plush leather sofa. He laughed hard, forgetting all about the adults and their love life for a little while.
PART III
1. A World of Sheep
The doorbell chimed. Siddharth sighed as he extricated himself from the leather sofa. At the front door, he encountered the whirring of weed-whackers and the bearded postman, who was wearing his summer outfit — gray shorts and a light-blue short-sleeve shirt.
The postman said, “Summer break, kid?”
“Yup.”
“I’m gonna need a signature.” The postman held up a clipboard, then said, “You’re eighteen.” He winked. “Right?”
Siddharth forced himself to smile as he signed a pink form. “Thanks,” he said, accepting a small envelope from Walton Publishers. He returned to the family room, where a rap video was blaring, then picked up the remote control to mute it. The best thing about Ms. Farber was the fact that she had forced his father to get a real cable box, one with thirty new channels and an actual remote control. He turned on the Indian brass lamp that stood between the two leather sofas and held the envelope to the light. Mohan Lal had sent in his completed manuscript three weeks earlier, and Siddharth was curious about Walton’s reaction. A few words were clear—June 1992, Dear Dr. Arora—but before he could discern anything else, he felt her hand clutching his shoulder.
“What’s that you got there?” asked Ms. Farber. She was wearing an apron with red-and-white checks. It had once belonged to his mother.
“It’s for my dad.”
She snatched the envelope from his hands. “Sid, how do you like it when Dad goes into your room without asking?”
“Trust me, he likes me to sort the mail.”
“Honey, we’re all eager, but you need to learn to respect other people’s privacy.” She strode back to the kitchen, the letter sandwiched between her torso and the skin of her jiggly forearm.
He returned his attention to the television. A Nirvana video was on, so he unmuted it. Arjun had recently sent him a package from Michigan containing a Wolverines keychain and a Nirvana album. In the accompanying card, he wrote that today’s pop music was materialistic and superficial, but this group was reinventing old traditions. Marc disagreed — he said that Nirvana was a bunch of pussy-ass posers. As the video played, Ms. Farber’s words kept echoing in his head. How do you like it when Dad goes into your room without asking? At some point over the past few weeks, she’d stopped using the word your before dad.
Since Richard III, Siddharth had counted that Mohan Lal and Ms. Farber had spent twenty-two nights in the same bed, usually at the Aroras’ home. Back in June, when school was winding down, Siddharth had forced himself to forget the fact that his father was now sleeping with Ms. Farber and enjoy the agreeable aspects of this new arrangement. He and Marc were able to stay up late talking in bed or flicking through a Playboy together, and in the mornings they brushed their teeth in unison. During the first days of summer, the boys had biked to the playground behind town hall, where they would meet up with other kids, including Luca Peroti. They’d ride down a bumpy, wooded path to a nearby convenience store, where they got candy, lottery tickets, and chewing tobacco. One afternoon, Siddharth and Marc met up with Dinetta Luciani and Liza Kim at a Post Road pool hall. While they played eight-ball, Liza kept touching Siddharth’s arm. He told himself that she was begging for a kiss, that next time he would make his move.
But now Marc was in Florida visiting his grandparents with his father and his father’s new girlfriend. When he got back, he would have football camp. A full year would have passed since he had gotten arrested, and his grounding would finally be over. Siddharth wasn’t sure whether Marc would hang out with him once he could do anything he wanted.
In the kitchen, Ms. Farber started the noisy blender, the television shimmering in the background. She was at it again, making another dish from her brand-new vegetarian cookbook. He hated to admit it, but she was getting better at cooking. Her meals were rarely delicious, but at least they were a break from Indian food. And he appreciated her concern for Mohan Lal’s diet. She made them use sea salt in their food — not table salt — because it would be better for his blood pressure.
“Siddharth!” she called. “Honey, I need you to taste something.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
“It’ll only take a second. I promise.”
He lumbered to the kitchen and found her staring out the window with a goofy smile.
“Look over there,” she said, pointing at the backyard.
He saw two turkeys pecking at the ground underneath the maple. “So?”
“Aren’t they just beautiful?” She dipped a teaspoon in the blender and handed it to him.
He swallowed her green concoction, then coughed.
“What do you think?”
“It’s okay.”
“Just okay?”
He tasted another bite. “No, it’s good. Add a little salt maybe.”
She clapped to herself, then kissed him on the forehead.
He smiled and looked down, slightly embarrassed on her behalf.
As he repositioned himself in front of the television, he thought about the evening that lay ahead of him. The three of them would have dinner together and then maybe watch a movie. It didn’t actually sound all that bad. If Ms. Farber weren’t there, he and Mohan Lal might not exchange a single word over dinner. Or Mohan Lal would read all night, or babble to Barry Uncle about the BJP on the telephone. The truth was, even though there were many negative things about her — the most obvious one being that she was fucking his father — she brought many good things into their lives, at least when she wasn’t in a mood. Thanks to her, they went to the mall, the movies. One time, they had even gone to an art museum in downtown New Haven. At dinner, Ms. Farber asked him about his day, about the books he was reading. At dinner, they had conversations about the cruelty of the death penalty, or why it was important that abortion was legal. When the four of them had dinner together, he sometimes felt as if he had a real family again.