I would apply myself academically and excel. I’d had my year off in which I’d had a few adventures and some gained perspective, but as soon as I’d returned home, I’d gotten sucked right back into the same old patterns. Not again. This time, I would figure out what and who I wanted to be and start that grand life in earnest. I ached to find out what was in store for me. No more people-pleasing. No more running loops on my mother’s track, waiting for her to thwack the baton into my hand. In college, the past would be the past, and I would get a fresh start.
* * *
Malabar helped me move into my room on the eleventh floor of John Jay Hall on a hot August morning. We unpacked my bags and organized the tiny rectangular area with its narrow bed, standard desk, dime-size sink, and single window facing 114th Street from where I could hear a steady stream of ambulances screaming toward St. Luke’s Hospital. The neighbor in the room to my right was a long-haired Trinidadian boy whose main décor was a poster of three girls in thong bikinis photographed from behind, their buttock cheeks sand-dusted to perfection, lined up as if in prayer before an aquamarine ocean. Across the hall, a raucous Texan girl with bangs that were sprayed straight up had a matching comforter and sheet set and towels in complementary colors. And a few doors down, a grim young man sporting army fatigues kept his room completely bare.
My room defied category. From home, my mother had brought a small oriental rug, a standing lamp with a bell-curved shade and a brass knob finial, and an oil painting of a Cape Cod scene: a fishing boat grounded at low tide. We made up the bed with worn floral sheets and covered them with a hand-stitched antique quilt that sported blocky orange tulips with green stems, an estate-sale find. The room looked like an extension of my grandmother’s home, some forgotten maid’s quarters or an unfinished office.
“Shall we grab an early bite?” my mother asked, smoothing the quilt over the mattress. Although exhausted, she was not prepared for this day to end or to return to her empty nest and elderly husband. She’d already made plans to spend the night with Brenda, who lived close by on the Upper West Side, and then travel back to Massachusetts in the morning to check on Charles. Malabar sensed my hesitation to go with her. The rest of the kids on my floor were planning to order pizza and eat in the common room.
“Really, Rennie? Would a last dinner with me kill you?” My mother ticked off all she’d done for me that day: schlepping me to New York City; buying hangers, an extension cord, a plastic bucket for me to tote my shampoo down the hall to the bathroom; helping me set everything up. “You have the rest of the year to spend with these strangers,” she said. Then she softened. “I’m sorry. I’m just missing you already.”
We found an Indian restaurant on Broadway. It looked questionable, with a cartoon Ganesh on the side of a threadbare awning, but we decided it had potential. When the waiter appeared to take our order, my mother told him she’d been raised in Bombay and Delhi and could handle real heat. “We want an authentic experience. As hot as the chef can make the vindaloo is how we’d like it,” she said.
Not me, I thought, imagining the stomachache that would follow. I studied the bread options: naan, roti, puri.
Then Malabar ordered a power pack in her usual rapid-fire staccato: “A dry Manhattan. Straight up. With a twist. No ice. No fruit.” When the waiter tilted his head quizzically, Malabar exhaled her annoyance and repeated the order at exactly the same speed. I asked for a Taj Mahal beer.
My eyes started to water at the first bite of lamb. To my satisfaction, perspiration beaded on my mother’s upper lip as well.
She gulped down water and we both started to laugh. It was rare for someone to get the better of Malabar in the kitchen. Either the waiter had taken her at her word—that she could handle the heat—or we were being taught a lesson and the entire kitchen staff was having a good laugh. We suspected the latter.
“You seem happy, Mom,” I said.
“Well, certainly not at the prospect of losing you again,” she said, frowning. “But at least now I’ll