Siddharth sucked down some Sprite. “I’d only wanna know if I was, like, Cornelius Vanderbilt or J.D. Rockefeller or something.”
“I’d be Michael Jordan,” said Marc. “Or maybe Donald Trump.”
“Dude, they’re not dead,” said Siddharth.
Marc smirked.
“What now?” asked Ms. Farber.
“Nothing,” said Marc. “But last time around, I musta been some sort of serial killer or something.”
Siddharth laughed, but tensed upon noticing his father staring out the window.
Mohan Lal was grinning to himself. “Siddharth,” he said after a moment, “tell me — what happens to a caterpillar as it grows?”
“What? Dad, I have no idea what you’re saying.”
“A caterpillar,” said Mohan Lal. “How does it grow?”
Marc grabbed a second roll. “It becomes a butterfly. What’s going on with the food? It’s like they’re flying in the subs from Italy or something.”
Mohan Lal’s eyes were gleaming. “Kids, answer me this: Do you think a butterfly can remember his life as a caterpillar? Does it have any recollection of what things were like before it could fly?”
Siddharth began to answer the question, but Ms. Farber cut him off: “Oh, I see what you’re saying. That’s quite an analogy.”
Marc said, “I have no freaking clue what any of you are talking about.”
“Honey, think of the caterpillar as our soul,” said Ms. Farber. “Its metamorphosis is like our rebirth into a new body.”
Siddharth glanced up at the ceiling. He had never noticed how high it was, but today it seemed a hundred feet tall. The ceiling was lined with wooden beams and heavy, tubular piping. He wondered what would happen if one of these ventilation pipes were to fall. Would it kill somebody? Or just wound them?
Mohan Lal took a sip of wine. “Yes, we could be like the caterpillar,” he said. “Death could just be our cocoon.” He let out a sigh of satisfaction. “The ancient Hindus, they understood some truths. They knew about maths — even love.”
Marc crunched on an ice cube. “If they were so smart, then why are they all so poor now?”
“Jesus, Marc!” snapped Ms. Farber.
“What? Haven’t you seen those commercials? The kids all got those big bellies. They got all those flies buzzing around their heads.”
Siddharth forced himself to cackle.
“He’s right, Rachel,” said Mohan Lal. “What can I tell you, son? If you aren’t a forward thinker, then it’s easy for others to destroy you.”
When the food finally arrived, Mohan Lal proposed a toast. He called Ms. Farber a wise entrepreneur. He said they felt grateful to her, and were lucky to call her a friend. It dawned on Siddharth that his father had never proposed a toast to him. He tried to remember if the man had ever toasted his mother.
* * *
He lay in bed that night wondering if he and Marc had been friends in a previous lifetime. Then he fell asleep and had another strange dream. In this dream, he got home from school and the house was completely empty. Everything felt eerie and looked the way it did when he was much younger. The family room had no skylight, the fake wooden paneling still lined the hallway that led to the bedrooms, and the old National Parks wallpaper covered the wall behind the leather sofas. Staring out the kitchen window, he found that the backyard was occupied by big machines — yellow backhoes and bulldozers and a couple of smaller orange ones. There were nine of them in total, just sitting there like giant, lazy animals. He felt relieved upon spotting Mohan Lal, who was standing beside a dozer, his hand resting on one of its enormous fanged tires. Mr. Iverson from up the street was standing next to Mohan Lal. He still had a ponytail and a thick beard. He was wearing a Red Sox cap. Siddharth jogged toward the men, and Mr. Iverson picked him up, raising him into the air so that he could peer inside the machine. A baby was lying on the driver’s seat sucking on a bottle. It was a girl, and she had brown skin and a big crown of curls. Siddharth felt as if he knew this child, and a jolt of electricity pulsed through his bones.
And then he woke up.
He stared at the ceiling, his father’s muffled snores echoing through the wall. His waist felt moist, so he ran a hand under his sheets. They were wet, as was his underwear. He felt hopeful. He might have just had a wet dream. He touched the wet patches again, then smelled his fingers. They were sour. Realizing what had actually happened, he went to the bathroom and stepped into the shower. As he soaped himself, the image of the curly haired baby lingered in his mind. It was her. He closed his eyes, allowing the hot water to pour over his face. He had previously told himself that dead meant the opposite of infinity. Like infinity, it was something human beings couldn’t truly understand, so there was no point in thinking too hard about it. But if all that caterpillar bullshit were real, then she might be alive.
She could be in a zillion possible towns or countries, and if they ever passed each other on the street, they wouldn’t even recognize one another. But it didn’t seem to matter. She would have a new family who loved her, and he wouldn’t have to feel bad each time he offered up his forehead to Ms. Farber. He could stop feeling tense whenever Ms. Farber grasped Mohan Lal’s hand, for his mother would one day love another person too.
Siddharth dried himself in his bedroom, then stuffed his soiled sheets into his closet. Sunlight streaked his worn, stained mattress. He heard a dull rumble overhead, squirrels scuttling across the roof. Some blue jays were squawking. His mother hadn’t liked these birds. They had ugly calls, and they bullied the other birds that frequented her feeder. He wasn’t thinking straight and needed to talk to somebody. He didn’t want Marc to think he was a freak, and he didn’t want to worry his father. Besides, Mohan Lal was clearly confused. One minute he was an atheist, and then he was a Buddhist. Now he wouldn’t shut up about the ancient Hindus. Siddharth picked up the family room phone and punched in Arjun’s eleven-digit number.
His brother answered after five rings, and his voice was tired and scratchy. Siddharth suspected he had a hangover. He started rehashing what had happened with Michigan in the NCAA finals, saying how Weber had really blown it.
“Are you serious?” said Arjun. “This is why you’re calling me at eight in the morning? Siddharth, we’ve been over it, like, five times already.”
“Jesus, shoot me for caring.”
“Siddharth, what’s going on?”
“Nothing’s going on. Can’t I just call my big brother?”
“You better tell me,” said Arjun. “Now.”
“Well, it’s kind of a weird question.”
“Just talk. You can tell me anything.”
Siddharth took a deep breath. “Like, reincarnation and all that stuff — do you believe in it?”
Arjun sighed. “You know, I wish Dad wouldn’t burden you with all of his fundamentalist crap.”
“It wasn’t Dad, I swear.”
“Look, you’re still young, but you’re mature — so I’ll be honest. I used to believe a lot of things, but the more I read, I just can’t anymore. Religion, it’s just meant to control people — to make them feel better. But it’s all a total fiction.”
“Dad used to say the same thing.”
“Used to being the operative words here. If you ask me — and you are asking me — reincarnation was something cooked up by people in power. They just wanted to justify their lives. They wanted to suppress the people who were below them in the caste system.”
“What’s the caste system?”
“Siddharth, you should know that. Look it up.”
He swallowed hard. “Arjun?”
“What?”
“There’s something I need to tell you.”