Dinetta was bawling and babbling, saying, “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Kaufman, I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not my goddamn name, Dinetta.” Ms. Farber’s teeth were clenched, and her nostrils were flaring. “I expected this from you, Marc — but not you, Andy. What am I gonna tell your mother?”
Marc stood up, his face red and sweaty. “Chill, Rachel. What? You and Mo are the only ones who get to have any fun?”
“Shut up, Marc,” said Ms. Farber. “For once, can you just shut up?”
Siddharth felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to find his father standing there with a drink in his hand.
“Jesus,” said Mohan Lal.
“Just go, Mo,” said Ms. Farber. “Girls, put on your freaking clothes.”
Mohan Lal whistled. “What’s going on?” He stepped forward, his eyes wide and furious.
“Mo, you need to leave right now,” said Ms. Farber. “You need to let me handle this.”
Siddharth stared at Marc, who was gesturing at him and jerking his head toward the floor. He followed his friend’s movements and noticed Mohan Lal’s bottle of Old Monk rum on its side.
“Kick it,” whispered Marc.
He moved closer to the bottle. He knew that if he gave it a light tap, it would roll under the bed and might go undiscovered — but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
* * *
That night, Siddharth’s AC wasn’t working, so he went to bed with the window open. It was hot, and the cicadas were loud and relentless. He found it difficult to sleep. He stared up at an old hook that was screwed into the ceiling. His mother had put it there to hang a pole, from which his stuffed animals used to dangle. Had she done that for his birthday? Or was it just for the sake of it? He couldn’t remember, which made his chest feel even heavier. It was hard to think coherent thoughts with all that had happened. Ms. Farber and Marc had left with Marc’s friends. Mohan Lal had raised his hand behind his ear, the way he did when he was really pissed.
“Mo, take it easy,” she’d said.
“You want that I feel easy?” replied Mohan Lal. “This go easy mentality is the bloody problem.”
“The problem?” said Ms. Farber. “And what problem is that?”
“The problem, Rachel, is you. The problem is that you cannot control your son.”
“Right, you’re an angel,” Ms. Farber had said angrily, dabbing her eyes. “You’re parent of the fucking year.”
As Siddharth lay in his room, he wondered if this was the beginning of the end. If it were, would that be good or bad? His clock flashed 11:42. He wished his brother would come and check on him. He wished his brother wouldn’t give their father such a hard time. Mohan Lal had done so much for them both despite all that he had been through. But it wasn’t like things had been easy for Arjun either. He would be leaving tomorrow, and Siddharth felt horrible that his trip had gone so badly.
He got up out of bed and made his way down the hallway, scraping his fingernails against the wallpaper. His shoulder bumped one of his mother’s paintings, but he didn’t pause to straighten it. Mohan Lal was slouching on the sofa, a whiskey glass resting on his bulging belly. Siddharth rushed past him to the guest room.
Arjun was on the bed, shirtless, reading his India book — the one by Romila, or Brunehilda, or whatever her name was. His eyes were a little red, and Siddharth knew he’d been crying. Nothing made him feel more hollow inside than seeing his brother cry. He seated himself beside Arjun, resting his head on his thigh. He listened to the soft crackle of his brother turning his pages, to the cries of the ceaseless cicadas.
Arjun closed his book. “So I take it your friend has a girlfriend.”
“Kind of.”
“What about you?”
Siddharth shrugged. “That Korean girl — Liza — I hooked up with her once.”
“What do you mean, hooked up?”
“I mean I kissed her.”
“You’re lying,” said Arjun.
“I swear to God.”
“I don’t believe in God,” said Arjun. “Swear on my life.”
“Look, we French-kissed. At least she’s not a Pakistani.”
Arjun returned to his book, underlining a passage in pencil.
Siddharth cocked his head to one side and examined his brother’s beard. It looked neater now. Arjun had shaved his neck. A few bristles on his hairy chin were red, which Siddharth thought was a good thing. Perhaps some English blood cells flowed through their veins after all.
Arjun cleared his throat. “I just want you to remember that it’s not your fault.”
“What’s not my fault?”
“This whole thing with girls.”
“What whole thing with girls?”
“Listen, when the time comes, you might find it hard to get a girlfriend.”
“But I already told you — I hooked up with Liza.”
“It was hard for me too, you know.” Arjun smiled. “The white girls, they wouldn’t give me a second look. But that’s the way they’ve been conditioned. They’re attracted to guys who remind them of their fathers.”
“You don’t know everything, you know,” Siddharth muttered.
Arjun returned to his book once again. Siddharth lay down beside him and stared up at the white swirls on the ceiling. He remembered a day many years ago when Barry Uncle and Mohan Lal had painted the entire guest room. His mother had made them fresh puris, and everyone had seemed happy. He fought to keep his eyes open but was soon asleep.
He woke up to Arjun’s gentle snores and the singing of a bird. The lights were off, but morning was softly glowing outside the window. His elbow grazed the flesh of his brother’s back. Arjun’s skin felt nice, so he touched it with the tips of his fingers. He was dreading the day ahead of him. He was dreading the entire school year.
PART IV
1. Pussy Man
Eli Whitney Junior High was a drab single-story building, a part of which seemed much taller due to the vaulted ceilings of the gymnasium. A concrete slab in the school’s foundation announced that it had been built in 1958. Arjun had gone here six years earlier, and the trophy case in the lobby still contained two of his photos.
In one photo, Arjun was standing with his cross-country track team, which had come in second place at the regional finals that year. The other photo was of him, Iris Chang, and William Evans, all three of them with braces and glasses. They had just won a statewide science olympiad for ninth graders. During Siddharth’s first days of school, he occasionally paused to stare at these photos on his way to the bathroom. But he never mentioned them to any of his friends.
The school combined kids from three different elementary schools — Deer Run, Lower Housatonic, and Rolling Ridge. Siddharth had attended two of these schools in his short academic career, so there was no dearth of familiar faces in his seventh grade class. But during the first days of junior high, he dreaded reconnecting with the students from Rolling Ridge, where he had spent first through fourth grades. Those kids would always talk to him in that irritating formal tone, which said it alclass="underline" We feel bad for you, you single-parent loser. To those kids, his friendship with Luca Peroti or Marc Kaufman would never matter. He would always be the boy with the dead mom.
He dreaded seeing his neighbor, Timmy Connor, who was now an eighth grader at Eli Whitney. Siddharth had successfully avoided the Connor boys over the past couple of years, ducking down in Mohan Lal’s minivan when they passed them on the road, or staying out of the backyard when Timmy and Eric were cutting the grass. But now he was on the same bus as Timmy, so it would be almost impossible to escape him.