America for Beginners

“What?”

“Indians love San Francisco. She should go. Your dad had these Indian clients—they lived here, obviously, but both from India—and that was their favorite place to go.”

“But they got a divorce, obviously, right?”

“Yes. But they still loved it. She should go.”

Rebecca held the phone away from her face for a moment and hissed. She would have screamed but her apartment was too small and the phone too good at picking up her voice. She had few ways to express her frustration with her mother, and she had found that hissing was satisfying, in the absence of a good scream.

“What was that? Did you get a cat?”

“No, Mom, maybe something outside. Listen. What do you think I should do?”

“Don’t get a cat, that apartment is too small, you will never stop smelling litter.”

“About. The. Trip.” Rebecca wished her mother didn’t drive her to such rage but she always did. It was why Rebecca didn’t call.

“Ah. There’s no need to shout. We were talking about cats.” Rebecca had started thinking about how to end the phone call when her mother surprised her by asking:

“What do you want to do? Really want, not just what you think you should do. Because, Becky, you’ve never been across the country. She sounds a little bit amazing, this widow, traveling like this alone after her husband’s death, wanting to see the world. It might be worth it to go, get out of New York, clear your head, think about things, but only if it’s what you want to do. So what do you want?”

This thoughtful response from her mother startled Rebecca, and tears sprang to her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had acknowledged that what she wanted mattered. She knew her mother loved her, and wanted what she considered to be best for her, she did, it was only that what her mother considered best and what she considered best often lived in two separate worlds, and Rebecca could never seem to connect the two.

“I did something like this once,” said her mother, interrupting Rebecca’s thoughts. “There wasn’t the whole widow thing, but I took a trip across the country alone to visit your father when he was at Stanford for law school. I had the summer off at Princeton, I had a car and some money saved from whatever job I was working to pay my rent, and I thought, Screw it. I got lost so many times and ended up in so many places that by the time I got to Palo Alto I had to turn right back around and go home. But it was great. I hated every minute of it, and it was great.”

Rebecca smiled, imagining her organized and compulsive mother as a young hippie on the road alone.

“If you want to do this, do it. It’s a few weeks of your life. Why not?” Rebecca couldn’t think of a single reason.

And so, the next day in Ronnie Munshi’s office, his sweat dripping off the end of his nose, his staff craning their necks to see her, she agreed to accompany Mrs. Sengupta across the country. The happiness in his eyes briefly obliterated her doubts. She knew that the doubts would return, furiously pinching at her mind through the night, but for now, she would bask in the sense of relief this would give her bank account and the knowledge that Mr. Ghazi would be pleased.

Rebecca watched Mr. Munshi leave Mrs. Sengupta a message in a strange mix of English and what she assumed had to be Bengali, informing her that everything was all prepared and the trip would begin with its three New York City days as soon as she arrived. That gave Rebecca three days to prepare and one perfect excuse to politely end things with Max. Part of her was terrified, her doubts already rising like mosquitoes out of a swamp, but the time for dithering was over. She had wanted something in her life to change, and now, albeit briefly, it would. Besides, at least it was another role to play.

12 (#ulink_fb964f97-47c9-5bd1-914a-6e6d76d980e0)

After escorting Rebecca out of the building, Ronnie had decided to take a trip to the Ganesh Temple in Flushing to make an offering thanking the gods for her agreement and the end of his worries over this whole mess. In order to reach the temple, Ronnie had to take the 7 train out to its final stop and then walk for thirty minutes, which was thirty minutes more than Ronnie was accustomed to walking on any given day. The idea of this much exercise made his heart hurt in anticipation, but he was determined to do it, because the gods had answered his prayers.

Smelling soy sauce and rotting garbage in the air, he girded himself for the journey as the train pulled into the final stop on Flushing’s Main Street. As he walked up the stairs of the subway his knees creaked in protest, but he refused to listen to them, keeping his divine mission on his mind. Emerging into the sun, however, Ronnie was distracted by the lusciously spicy smells coming from a noodle house on Roosevelt Avenue. His stomach growling, he realized that in the anticipation of his interview with Rebecca he had forgotten to eat. This was an indication of the toll this issue had taken on Ronnie’s life, as the concept of forgetting to eat was an utterly foreign one to him.

The smells around him made his mouth drip with saliva. He looked at the many food shops and restaurants. All the writing was in Chinese and he could not tell what would be the best lunch possible. He decided to go where the people seemed the happiest, and soon sat down in front of a small cup of weakly brewed tea at the Happy Frog Noodle Café. Ronnie settled in for a large lunch as compensation for his stress. To order, he simply started pointing at other people’s meals, which the waiter correctly interpreted as desire, and he was delivered plate after plate of pork. He ate them with mingled glee and wonder, for the meat still felt like a novelty to Ronnie after his childhood in a country of halal butchers.