a right to be happy. We all do—including you, Aai. And he would not be happy as an accountant, even though he wanted very much to please you and Baba.”
“For people of our generation, making our parents happy was enough.”
“I think, perhaps, you raised us differently. We would like you to be happy, but we know that sometimes we cannot make that wish come true.”
Her mother was silent. For a moment Janya wondered if the line had gone dead—not that uncommon—or her mother had ended the call. As she waited, she gazed out the window and saw a slender shape disappearing down the road in the deepening twilight.
Finally her mother spoke.
“I am sending something.”
From experience, Janya knew her mother liked to put bad news in writing, so she would not have to face the repercussions. Her mother’s tolerance for the emotions of others was limited. “If it is a letter, I hope the news is good.”
“It is not a letter. It is a gift.”
“Then I will look forward to it.”
There was another silence. Janya waited.
“You are well?” her mother asked at last. “Your husband is well?”
“We are.”
Before Janya could ask about her family in India, her mother added, “And happy? You speak of happiness for your brother. What of your own?”
For a moment Janya was not certain she had heard her correctly. This was not only a question her mother never asked, it was one she never considered.
She searched for the right words. “I am happy. Rishi is a good husband. Kind, funny, thoughtful. I am painting again, murals on the sides of buildings and in homes. People like my work, and Rishi is proud.”
“I have seen the newspaper article about you. Your brother made certain I could not avoid it.”
Janya waited to be chastised. The local newspaper had done a flattering piece on the mural she had painted at the main branch of the Palmetto Grove library. Allowing public attention to be drawn to herself, instead of her husband, was something her mother would not understand.
“If Rishi is proud, this is good,” her mother said. “If he is proud of you, then you are indeed lucky to be married to him.”
“I think I am lucky,” Janya agreed.
“You will remember that, then, when you receive my gift.”
“Of course, I wi—”
But the phone was dead. Her mother had stretched as far as she could across the miles to bridge the gap between them. Clearly she had reached her limit.
Janya put the telephone back in the cradle and smiled. She wondered what Rishi would say that night when she told him about the phone call. Because he would be interested. He was always interested. He was her defender, her admirer, and the man who would father her children.
If she could just get pregnant.
The smile died. She thought about the things she had not shared with her mother, and some of the joy in their odd telephone reunion died.
Wanda Gray had blisters over calluses that were most likely the result of earlier blisters. She sat in the living room of her little cottage and wiggled her toes in a pan of warm water, just to be sure she could still move them.
A person could never be too casual about blisters, what with blood poisoning and all. People lost their feet on account of a lack of cleanliness and inattention to pain. She wasn’t going to be one of them. She’d been standing on these feet more years than she wanted to count, slapping platters of hush puppies and shrimp on tables. She figured if she lined up all the tables she’d slapped something onto in her fifty-six years, they’d stretch to the moon and back.
“You look comfortable.” Her husband, Ken, passed on his way to the kitchen. “Need anything while I’m in there?”
“You’re going to eat that last piece of my strawberry pie, aren’t you?”
“Thinking about it.”
“We could split it.”
Ken didn’t say anything, but in a few minutes he came back and handed her a saucer with precisely half of that final slice of pie. She wasn’t sure which looked better, her husband, with his salt-and-pepper hair and trim build, or the pie, mounded with fresh whipped cream.
“You should have been a surgeon instead of a cop. I bet if we weighed these plates, they’d be exactly the same.”
“We had two children. I know how to split things right down the middle.”
“This is nice, being waited on and all. I get tired of being the one bringing people pie, not that anything at