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.When enough gas settled in the basement, they would suffocate.Too many problems, all beyond her solving.There was nothing to do but go on with her story.WHEN IT WAS TIME FOR ME TO GO TO COLLEGE, I CHOSE A PLACE far from home, although I knew my parents would have preferred it otherwise.It wasn’t that I had a bad relationship with them, or that they were tyrannical, in the way Indian immigrant parents sometimes are.I was just eager to strike out on my own, without their protective presence.It never struck me that my presence might have been protective for them, too.The college I picked was in Texas: expensive and private, with a reputation that a parent could brag about.Still, the key lure for me was its distance from home.My mother took my absence hard.Though she was a successful manager, fairly high up in her company, she defined herself mostly as a mother and homemaker and took more pride in a made-from-scratch Indian dinner than in acquiring a new customer.My first month of college, whenever my mother and I spoke on the phone, she would dissolve into tears while insisting I describe every detail of my day.My father admonished her to pull herself together.He kept his questions brief and basic—how was my health, was I able to keep up with the workload, did I need money—and he was satisfied with monosyllabic answers.He always ended his conversation with a joke about prospective boyfriends—mostly the same joke—while my mother remonstrated on the other line.I was thankful that my father was handling my departure so well.I admired his suavity.Up until this time I had been closer to my mother, but now I felt a subtle shift in allegiance.The student population at the college was different from my high school but not drastically so.I loved the lush campus with its tropical foliage and old Southern elegance; the single dorm room that I could decorate as I wanted; the small literature symposiums where famous professors treated me as an adult, which, deep down, I wasn’t certain I was; the coffeehouses that remained open until two a.m.and where students held heated intellectual discussions; and the partying, which was available in hot, medium, or mild.My mother’s cautions must have rubbed off on me; the pleasures I chose were innocuous ones.One evening, a couple of months into the semester, my father phoned me.This was unusual on several counts, though I didn’t think about that until afterward.Our family calls usually occurred over the weekend, when cell phone minutes were free.Generally my mother initiated them.And it was barely five p.m.in California, which meant that my father, who worked late, was calling from his office.My father had never wasted time with small talk.“Now that you’ve settled down in college and done so well in your first midterms,” he said, “I can tell you this.I’m planning to get a divorce.You mother and I no longer have anything in common except you—and we’ve launched you successfully into the world.” He paused for a moment, and I wondered (as though he were a stranger) what he was feeling.If he was nervous.“All my life I’ve done what other people expected from me,” he continued.“Whatever time I have left, I’d like to live it the way I want.Do you have any questions?”It struck me that he did not see how ridiculous his last sentence was.I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid that once I started I might not be able to stop.Apparently he took this to mean that I had no queries, because he went on.“I haven’t told your mother anything yet.I suggest you don’t call her until I’ve had the chance to break the news to her.I’ll do it over the coming week.” He became aware of my silence and added, “I’m sure you’re upset, but try to see it from my point of view.Is it fair to ask me to remain in a relationship that’s killing me?” While I pondered his choice of gerund, he said his good-byes, promising to phone me back with an update.After he hung up, I lay down and tried to understand what had just happened.For some moments, I wondered if I had dreamed my father’s phone call.All these years I had been sure, in the unthinking manner in which we skim over the absolutes of our lives, that my parents had a good marriage.They had approached their joint activities—child-rearing, entertaining, traveling, movie-watching, gardening—enthusiastically.Within the boundaries prescribed by the culture of their birth, they had expressed affection, kissing in the morning when they left for work, putting their arms around each other in photographs, admiring a new outfit, sitting close on the couch as they listened to Rabindra Sangeet CDs.They often read together on that couch, my father laying his head in her lap as he turned the pages of Time, my mother absentmindedly stroking his hair as she read a Bengali novel.Had that not been love? If it had—and I would have bet my life on it—how had it crumbled overnight? Could all the things of the world crumble so suddenly? What was the point, then, of putting our hearts into any achievement?Amid these metaphysical questions, a couple of practical ones popped up from time to time: Was there another woman involved? And, what would happen to my mother when my father told her? But that last question was rhetorical.I already knew she would not survive the blow.I SPENT THE NEXT DAY, AND THE NEXT, IN BED, FIGURING things out.I had a single room; there was no roommate to wonder what was wrong.I did not brush my teeth or bathe or eat, though I did drink three cans of Coke that were in my mini-fridge.I did not attend my classes.This was a first, and deep down, the old me worried about consequences.But the new me merely shrugged and turned on the TV.My cell phone rang.I checked the number, and when I saw it was my father, calling from his office again, I turned it off.On the third day, I resisted the urge to go and see my professors and, pretending I had been ill, pick up my missed assignments.Instead, I went on a rambling drive around the city and lunched at a fancy Italian restaurant I’d been eyeing for weeks.The food was as excellent as I’d hoped.I ordered too much, along with wine, but instead of asking them to pack the remains, I ate everything.Back in my room, I slept away the afternoon, feeling decadent and full of ennui, like a Roman patrician.I awoke with a headache and recalled that my weekly kickboxing class was that night.I considered skipping that, too, but fortified myself with ice water and a double dose of Tylenol and went to it.The kickboxing class was held in a part of town my parents would have termed seedy, with tattoo parlors and adult video shops.(But enough of my parents.I would exorcise them from my mind.) I had learned about the class from a flyer I’d been handed at a café I had stopped by one day, out of curiosity.I’m not sure what made me try the class, or what made me keep going back.Perhaps it was that the other students were so different from me.In class, I usually ended up next to Jeri, a waif-thin woman with hair of a redness I had not encountered before.Her ribs showed through her tight black leotard top, the same one every week.She worked at a used-clothing store named Very Vintage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.When enough gas settled in the basement, they would suffocate.Too many problems, all beyond her solving.There was nothing to do but go on with her story.WHEN IT WAS TIME FOR ME TO GO TO COLLEGE, I CHOSE A PLACE far from home, although I knew my parents would have preferred it otherwise.It wasn’t that I had a bad relationship with them, or that they were tyrannical, in the way Indian immigrant parents sometimes are.I was just eager to strike out on my own, without their protective presence.It never struck me that my presence might have been protective for them, too.The college I picked was in Texas: expensive and private, with a reputation that a parent could brag about.Still, the key lure for me was its distance from home.My mother took my absence hard.Though she was a successful manager, fairly high up in her company, she defined herself mostly as a mother and homemaker and took more pride in a made-from-scratch Indian dinner than in acquiring a new customer.My first month of college, whenever my mother and I spoke on the phone, she would dissolve into tears while insisting I describe every detail of my day.My father admonished her to pull herself together.He kept his questions brief and basic—how was my health, was I able to keep up with the workload, did I need money—and he was satisfied with monosyllabic answers.He always ended his conversation with a joke about prospective boyfriends—mostly the same joke—while my mother remonstrated on the other line.I was thankful that my father was handling my departure so well.I admired his suavity.Up until this time I had been closer to my mother, but now I felt a subtle shift in allegiance.The student population at the college was different from my high school but not drastically so.I loved the lush campus with its tropical foliage and old Southern elegance; the single dorm room that I could decorate as I wanted; the small literature symposiums where famous professors treated me as an adult, which, deep down, I wasn’t certain I was; the coffeehouses that remained open until two a.m.and where students held heated intellectual discussions; and the partying, which was available in hot, medium, or mild.My mother’s cautions must have rubbed off on me; the pleasures I chose were innocuous ones.One evening, a couple of months into the semester, my father phoned me.This was unusual on several counts, though I didn’t think about that until afterward.Our family calls usually occurred over the weekend, when cell phone minutes were free.Generally my mother initiated them.And it was barely five p.m.in California, which meant that my father, who worked late, was calling from his office.My father had never wasted time with small talk.“Now that you’ve settled down in college and done so well in your first midterms,” he said, “I can tell you this.I’m planning to get a divorce.You mother and I no longer have anything in common except you—and we’ve launched you successfully into the world.” He paused for a moment, and I wondered (as though he were a stranger) what he was feeling.If he was nervous.“All my life I’ve done what other people expected from me,” he continued.“Whatever time I have left, I’d like to live it the way I want.Do you have any questions?”It struck me that he did not see how ridiculous his last sentence was.I wanted to laugh, but I was afraid that once I started I might not be able to stop.Apparently he took this to mean that I had no queries, because he went on.“I haven’t told your mother anything yet.I suggest you don’t call her until I’ve had the chance to break the news to her.I’ll do it over the coming week.” He became aware of my silence and added, “I’m sure you’re upset, but try to see it from my point of view.Is it fair to ask me to remain in a relationship that’s killing me?” While I pondered his choice of gerund, he said his good-byes, promising to phone me back with an update.After he hung up, I lay down and tried to understand what had just happened.For some moments, I wondered if I had dreamed my father’s phone call.All these years I had been sure, in the unthinking manner in which we skim over the absolutes of our lives, that my parents had a good marriage.They had approached their joint activities—child-rearing, entertaining, traveling, movie-watching, gardening—enthusiastically.Within the boundaries prescribed by the culture of their birth, they had expressed affection, kissing in the morning when they left for work, putting their arms around each other in photographs, admiring a new outfit, sitting close on the couch as they listened to Rabindra Sangeet CDs.They often read together on that couch, my father laying his head in her lap as he turned the pages of Time, my mother absentmindedly stroking his hair as she read a Bengali novel.Had that not been love? If it had—and I would have bet my life on it—how had it crumbled overnight? Could all the things of the world crumble so suddenly? What was the point, then, of putting our hearts into any achievement?Amid these metaphysical questions, a couple of practical ones popped up from time to time: Was there another woman involved? And, what would happen to my mother when my father told her? But that last question was rhetorical.I already knew she would not survive the blow.I SPENT THE NEXT DAY, AND THE NEXT, IN BED, FIGURING things out.I had a single room; there was no roommate to wonder what was wrong.I did not brush my teeth or bathe or eat, though I did drink three cans of Coke that were in my mini-fridge.I did not attend my classes.This was a first, and deep down, the old me worried about consequences.But the new me merely shrugged and turned on the TV.My cell phone rang.I checked the number, and when I saw it was my father, calling from his office again, I turned it off.On the third day, I resisted the urge to go and see my professors and, pretending I had been ill, pick up my missed assignments.Instead, I went on a rambling drive around the city and lunched at a fancy Italian restaurant I’d been eyeing for weeks.The food was as excellent as I’d hoped.I ordered too much, along with wine, but instead of asking them to pack the remains, I ate everything.Back in my room, I slept away the afternoon, feeling decadent and full of ennui, like a Roman patrician.I awoke with a headache and recalled that my weekly kickboxing class was that night.I considered skipping that, too, but fortified myself with ice water and a double dose of Tylenol and went to it.The kickboxing class was held in a part of town my parents would have termed seedy, with tattoo parlors and adult video shops.(But enough of my parents.I would exorcise them from my mind.) I had learned about the class from a flyer I’d been handed at a café I had stopped by one day, out of curiosity.I’m not sure what made me try the class, or what made me keep going back.Perhaps it was that the other students were so different from me.In class, I usually ended up next to Jeri, a waif-thin woman with hair of a redness I had not encountered before.Her ribs showed through her tight black leotard top, the same one every week.She worked at a used-clothing store named Very Vintage [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]