What You Call Winter Read online

  The procedure, Colleen phoned Biddy in Bangalore to report, had not gone smoothly. The cataract had been left too long and hardened to such a degree that it could not be removed without an incision. Then, at the critical moment, just as he told her to be completely still, Grace coughed.

  “I guess it happened just as he was cutting.”

  The pressure inside the eye went very high for a moment. “Even I was alarmed,” the doctor told them when he came to speak with Grace. “Wanted to give me a shock, didn’t you? You were out to break my perfect record! Well, it worked— you gave me quite a fright. But not to worry.”

  “Apparently if any of the blood vessels had burst, she could have lost sight in that eye,” Colleen told Biddy. “But the doctor was able to control it.”

  “Thank God!”

  “It meant the operation lasted forty minutes instead of ten. So they had to keep giving her shots of anesthesia—that will make her feel ill. Also now she’ll have to take something stronger for pain, and the doctor’s given her medication to very gradually relieve the pressure in the eye. But only very slowly—he had to put a large air bubble inside the eye to keep it pressurized enough for healing.”

  “Okay, okay …”

  “So her sight will have a haze or black cloud for the next two weeks. But after that she’ll be fine.”

  “And now?”

  “Very groggy still. I’ve given her the stuff for pain so she can sleep through the night.”

  “Christ,” she said, “I can’t believe it.”

  “Don’t worry, you haven’t missed a thing. She’s made me wrap up the cataract in a tissue and bring it home for you to see.”

  “No, not really!” Biddy began to laugh. “How disgusting! You really have it?”

  “It’s rock hard.”

  “Oh, God, Colls!”

  “I thought I was going to be ill, right there in the doctor’s office. Honestly, I almost was. I nearly brought shame on the whole family. But Mum was so earnest, what else could I do?”

  Biddy was home the following day in time for tea. She came clicking up the stairs in her heels, too impatient to wait for the lift, and dropped her bag at the door.

  Grace was leaning forward in her chair, watching the last of her program. Colleen had not permitted her to chop anything until her vision had cleared, and sat at the table, cubing potatoes and receiving instruction on the characters of The Bold and the Beautiful.

  “See this fellow, with his wicked look. He has hatched a plot to marry that girl against her family’s wishes. Sweet looking thing. She should marry this other person. Wait. He’ll come soon. He has a gentlemanly quality.”

  “Hi,” she greeted Biddy with some relief.

  “Hey, Colls. Mum! How are you feeling?”

  Grace smiled up at her daughter, a brief concession to Biddy’s concern and the pleasure of having her home.

  “Mum!”

  “Hang on, darling, one minute, this is almost finished. You see” — she threw the remark in Colleen’s direction — “what a villain he is! You see how he is convincing her?”

  Biddy clicked her tongue. “Mum! Turn off that nonsense!”

  But Grace was too engrossed to pay attention. The suitor she favored had appeared on the screen, and she smiled in satisfaction, pointing so Colleen would see him. “There, you see, he’s come. That’s where it will end.” She turned from the screen. “Hi, babe.”

  Biddy clicked her tongue. “What are you doing, watching television when you’ve just gone in for your eyes?”

  “I missed yesterday, babe.”

  “She insisted.”

  “Stubborn, stubborn,” Biddy said absently, inspecting her mother’s bandaged eye. “You’ve changed the dressing?”

  “I am not stubborn. I know my own mind. That is quite another thing.”

  “Before bed tonight, the doctor says. We have to wait at least a full day.”

  With no immediate tasks to claim her, Biddy relaxed. She sat near her sister. “This suits you,” she said, adjusting the shoulder of Colleen’s dark shirt. “But you need a bit of color. Maybe a scarf.”

  “She looks nice as she is. Simple and neat. What color does she need to chop potatoes?” Grace asked.

  “Oh, the queen of nightdresses speaks!” Biddy teased.

  “You see this one, always harassing me,” Grace said to no one in particular, as though explaining yet another character in her soap opera. “I’ve put on these today.” She wore a flowered blouse, untucked, and a sturdy cotton skirt with an elastic waistband.

  “Good, because Father Addie is coming to check on you. I’ll just run and wash up.”

  “What have you finished, babe? Potatoes aren’t done? We can put out something for Father Addie. He likes bhel puri. I can get up and do it if the potatoes aren’t ready.”

  “Sit, Mum! I’ll do it.”

  Grace winced.

  “It hurts?”

  “No, just my head a little.”

  “You want the medicine, Mum?” Colleen put down her knife. “Or a cup of tea? What can I do?”

  Grace smiled weakly. “Ask Sachi to come. She can rub my head for a few minutes before Father arrives.”

  Father Adalbert was a few years younger than Grace and had come to the parish directly out of seminary. He had known Colleen, Biddy, and their elder brothers throughout their childhoods. He was not unusually tall, but he was solidly built, robust, with a strong, ringing voice (ideally suited to the pulpit, Colleen had always thought) and large hands that he lifted high in greeting. He wore a leather jacket over his clerical collar and rubber-soled loafers that squeaked on the floor. When he had kissed Colleen, and called “Hallo, hallo, here we all are!” to Biddy, who was just coming down the steps, and gone to press Grace’s hand, peering at the bandage and announcing that already he could feel she was much, much happier with the surgery behind her — isn’t it? yes? — looking around affably, certain of the affirmation he sought, he finally settled on the sofa and crossed his legs, beaming at them each in turn. Colleen felt both disconcerted by the stir of his entry and grateful for it; she had not realized into what quiet patterns she and her mother had already fallen.

  “You’ll have sherry, Father? Or tea? We’ll have a fresh pot. Babe?” Grace waved faintly toward the kitchen, a gesture her daughters understood to mean, Put on the kettle.

  “He’ll have a sherry, won’t you, Father? Or what about a shandy? Come on, I’ll join you.” Biddy had already busied herself with glasses.

  “Yes, yes, shall we?” Father Addie rubbed his hands together, a butcher’s hands, Colleen thought. When he held the Host up for the congregation to see, the bread looked frail and brittle, bone-white in his thick fingers. It was then, and not in contemplation of the crucifix above the altar, that Colleen had found it possible to imagine an emaciated Christ, pale and broken.

  When he had inquired about the surgery and learned the details of Grace’s near escape — Biddy rising up out of her chair to veto a viewing of the cataract in its handkerchief shroud — he turned his attention to Colleen.

  “You’re looking very good, very happy. Blooming with health! Living in the States agrees with you, isn’t it?”

  Colleen glanced in her mother’s direction but admitted this was so.

  “Keeping busy?”

  This, also, was true. She worked for an international aid organization, writing grants and appeals.

  “Good for you,” he said. “I tell you, I don’t know if I could do it. A fresh start in a new country?”

  “This one was always bold,” Grace piped up. “Such a girl for running, I don’t know how I kept up with her.”

  Colleen thought of Biddy: her bright red lipstick and ringing voice, the business she had launched.

  “That was only as a little girl,” Colleen told her mother.

  “No, no, no, you were always bold. Can you imagine? She went with two suitcases only. And she was gone almost two years before she came home. So young-looking
— she always had a baby face.”

  “And you don’t find it lonely?” Father asked.

  “I’ve made friends. Mark and Rowena aren’t too far away, and I have cousins nearby.”

  “And she has a roommate, Father.” Colleen looked up in surprise. “A single girl, Vanessa is her name.” Grace pronounced the name carefully, so that each syllable received equal emphasis. “She sent me a card for my operation.”

  This was the first Colleen had heard of a card. When, she thought in confusion, had Vanessa sent it?—as though that were the point about which to wonder. She telegraphed a quick question to Biddy, who raised her eyebrows and shrugged in a pantomime of ignorance.

  “It’s a nice card. I have it just here —” Grace was digging into the pile of papers she kept on a nesting table near her chair. “Here, here it is. See?” She held it up for Father to admire: an off-white stock with a four-leaf clover embossed in gold. “The inside is blank,” Grace said. “Sometimes they put little verses, but not always. So she has written: ‘The best of luck for your recovery.’ The four-leaf clover is for luck, you know.” That was not all Vanessa had written, Colleen could see immediately. A letter was folded inside, but Grace had removed this to pass the card to Father Addie, who said what a thoughtful girl and smiled at Colleen in approval.

  The week before she left India for good, Colleen went to confession. She had been baptized at St. Anthony’s, a member of its parish her whole life, but the airline ticket locked in her mother’s cupboard at home had cast all the neighborhood in a new and startling light. She was struck, suddenly, by the church’s beauty. The church was cream-colored, gold in the late-afternoon sun. She passed through the heavy doors. The walls were a meter thick, meant to sustain a chalky cool, but rows of fans hung down from the blue arched ceiling on long, rigid poles that rocked with the motion of the blades. She dipped her fingers in holy water and walked slowly up an aisle. It seemed to her that she was walking in a track of her own footsteps, worn through years of moving easily from one Mass to the next, one week to another. Now, suddenly, she wanted to notice the niches for the Stations of the Cross, the statues with their white-painted faces and startling red lips, the gilt-edged robes of Mary and Saint Anthony, who each presided over a side of the nave.

  The confessional was on Saint Anthony’s side. Colleen had not expected to hear Father Addie’s voice; the parish was sizable enough to require many priests and he had risen to a position of some authority among them. He seldom heard confession anymore, she imagined, and of course he would recognize Colleen — for a moment she considered bolting. But he had begun, the rhythms so familiar: how long had it been since her last confession. She answered, two months, and then, having spoken, she knew she would not run away.

  She confessed to fits of temper, to various acts of frustration and pettiness. To fear, to lack of faith.

  “In God or in yourself?”

  She did not quite know.

  “He is your strength. You can lean on Him, wherever you are, whatever your worry.” Colleen thought briefly of how it felt, as a child, to lean against her father’s legs. It was hot and close behind the drapery of the booth; she felt suddenly near tears or illness.

  “What else, my child?”

  Colleen hesitated. She could not put into words what she knew to be the truth, nor could she go without trying to name some portion of the pain she caused and carried. She thought of Toby, shifting in his seat when she had given her answer too quickly; she thought of Biddy and the two nephews she adored, wheedling her to stay with them; she thought of Grace.

  “I am hurting my mother. I’m hurting her badly.”

  “How?”

  She caught the note of surprise in his voice, and it undid her. She began to cry and could not answer. He waited.

  Then, quietly: “What is it you’re doing to your mother? How have you hurt her?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  There was a pause before he answered. “That’s not a sin, my child.”

  She cried even more, unable to explain what was, and he did not press her. Again he waited, and then he began to pray, in a strong, firm voice, until she felt that she could join him.

  Before Father Addie left, Grace suggested that he lead them in a prayer of thanksgiving for her eye. They joined hands. Colleen stood between her mother and Father, with Biddy winking irreverently at her until it was time to bow their heads. “You begin,” Father suggested to Grace.

  It was past the time for her pain medication, Colleen realized suddenly. Her mother seemed small and defenseless, the bandage over her eye the sign of a terrible wound.

  “Thank you, Lord, for returning to me this gift of sight,” her mother said in a quavering voice, and Colleen realized the essence of Abdul’s diagnosis had not been lost on her mother. Her mother understood full well—the power of a life of faith behind her—that her eye, once dead, had been resurrected.

  The next day, when Biddy was downstairs in her office, sorting through piles of embroidered silk, when Lionel was at the bank and the children at school, when the hour of three had come and gone and prayers were at an end, Grace switched on The Bold and the Beautiful and Colleen came to join her.

  “What’s happening, Mum? Who’s this one?”

  The program lurched forward, scene after scene. “He won’t tell his wife that he’s gone to dinner with that girl, and see, she’ll suddenly discover. Then he’s caught in a trap!” She shook her head at this bit of stupidity.

  The mother of twins does not tell her husband he isn’t their father. “There again, you see? For one night only she made a terrible mistake and that was because of an earlier misunderstanding. Maybe he would forgive her, but.” Colleen marveled at this habit of her mother’s, to end a thought firmly with “but,” as though nothing more needed saying.

  A brother plots to take over his father’s business.

  “This boy is always scheming and the father is a good man, he doesn’t see the truth. All of them are hiding this and that. Then the secrets tumble out and everyone’s plans are upset.”

  When the program was over, Colleen gave Grace a teacup and she accepted it, the soft hands shaking slightly until the cup was steady in her hands. She breathed deeply, letting the steam warm her face. The strain of watching her program had tired her, and she closed her eyes for a minute or two, keeping their sight locked safely in the papery skin of her body for a little longer, a little longer. Abdul had said his piece; she knew her husband had been gone for nearly as many years as they had spent together, she knew that she too had grown old. But the next day the mother may confess; the decent man may win the girl; the prodigal son may repent. And Grace will have eyes to see it.

  “Sleep a little while, Mum.”

  But Grace only rested her eyes until her tea had cooled. By then, Colleen had brought a package in from her room. She unwrapped the new frying pan she had bought for her mother. She did this in front of Sachi, who accepted the new pan with pleasure, and in front of her mother, who frowned when she saw what was happening but decided to let it go.

  The Crow and the Monkey

  On the day of the New Year’s party, Jude was invited to go next door and help his cousin Neil and Uncle Peter make the old man for the bonfire. It was a mild season in Santa Clara; the sun was not too hot to spend afternoons outdoors. But his mother insisted that Jude lie down for an hour first. He was recovering from a cold, and she did not like the sound of the cough in his chest.

  Jude did not usually mind his afternoon sleep, but the lure of this invitation was too powerful to endure a wasted hour and he could hear tantalizing activity next door. The channa-wallah had been calling, his voice adrift as he made his way down the street, and Jude heard Uncle Peter stop him at their gate. Already he had missed a treat of spiced chickpeas.

  “You’ve had your lunch,” his mother said and jerked his sweater over his head. “Now go to sleep or you’ll be dropping like an old man yourself at midnight.”

  J
ude strained to listen. Uncle Peter was not alone outside; Jude could hear Neil’s voice, high and excited. Clearly Aunty Freddy had not imposed a nap on such a holiday, although Jude knew better than to point out this distinction to his mother. Just a few days ago she had called Aunty Freddy crazy as a crow after Aunty Freddy came to borrow her old blue coat. “For what, I’d like to know,” his mother had said. “For a trip to Delhi she has no money to take?” Uncle Peter, Jude heard his mother say, had lost his shirt; he wondered if Aunty Freddy was giving him a coat instead. If so, he agreed that she must be crazy—Uncle Peter would not want a lady’s coat. He was tall, with a loud, ringing laugh that made Jude think of parties. He did not have a job in an office the way Jude’s father did; he had trips and meetings instead. When he was home, even in the middle of the day, he played cricket with Neil and the other boys on St. Hilary Road. Uncle Peter taught Jude’s older brother, Simon, to bowl, and before Simon went to boarding school he was best in all the neighborhood. He had come home for the holiday; Jude hoped they all might practice once the old man was finished.

  But Jude didn’t mention this possibility either; he knew the sniffing noise his mother would make if he brought up Uncle Peter’s cricket matches. Instead he promised that he did not feel ill, not one bit. And since it was nearly a new year, he would soon be six, old enough to miss one nap.

  “Old enough to stop whining.” Jude did not like the smell of the Vicks his mother spread on his chest. She rubbed so vigorously that Jude felt his skin sliding along his ribs like a piece of washing against a board.

  He would sit down while he worked, Jude offered. He would be resting the whole time. Otherwise the old man would be finished before he could so much as stuff a leg.

  “Enough!” His mother gave him a warning look. When she had gone, his older sister, Marian, came to the door and smiled at Jude as she put up the netting; the mosquitoes would not be out so early, but she knew he liked to sleep beneath a tent or a ship’s sail. “Just lie quietly if you can’t sleep. It’s only an hour.”