The room was totally silent for a moment, one of the longest moments in Siddharth’s life. But soon other parents started whispering. Soon people were scowling and yelling, and a chaotic uproar swept over the cafeteria. Siddharth tapped his forehead against the table. When he looked up, his father’s eyes were gleaming in a way they hadn’t for months.
Mrs. Antonelli banged a gavel.
Eddie Benson’s father stood up. He walked up to the podium and pointed at Mohan Lal. “With all due respect to him — Dr. whatever-his-name-is — everything that guy said, it’s. . it’s totally baloney.” Mr. Benson turned toward Mrs. Antonelli. “Pardon my French, but that’s a bunch of crap.” The entire audience started clapping, except for the large woman with the glasses who had wanted the encyclopedias. Mr. Benson removed his baseball cap and patted down his hair. “My cousin was in ’Nam, and when he got back, they spat all over him. That’s not gonna happen this time — not on my watch.”
After some more applause, the blonde with the bangs made a motion to spend six hundred dollars on the ribbons, not three hundred. That way they could buy two for every student.
Siddharth stood up and yanked his father’s arm.
Mohan Lal shrugged him off. “Let go of me,” he said.
He released his father and fled the cafeteria. He ran toward the car and wanted to keep on running. He wanted to run all the way home — but to his old home, the one where his mother had lived. For a moment, he wished it were his father who had gone. If he could, he would trade in his father for his mother. But he immediately regretted this line of thinking. He told himself that if his father were to die now, it would be all his fault.
* * *
Later that night, Siddharth couldn’t keep himself from relating the incident to Arjun. He made Arjun promise not to say anything, but as Mohan Lal was washing dishes, Arjun sat himself at the kitchen counter and started speaking about the Gulf War. “Dad, isn’t it America’s duty to protect innocent countries from tyranny? My history teacher says that if America hadn’t intervened in World War II, we’d all be living in Fascist dictatorships.”
“Son, listen,” said Mohan Lal. “Youth makes you naive. Yes, the Muslims need handling. But Kuwaitis aren’t Jews. And Bush? Your President Bush is no Churchill. He’s no Churchill, and he’s certainly no FDR.”
“Whatever,” replied Arjun. “That’s not the point.”
“Tell me, son,” said Mohan Lal, smirking again. “What’s the point then?”
Siddharth glared at his brother. “Guys, can we just drop it?”
Arjun said, “Dad, Siddharth told me what you did tonight.”
Mohan Lal turned toward Siddharth and raised his eyebrows. “What did he tell you?”
“It doesn’t matter what he told me. But you gotta start prioritizing your family. You gotta prioritize your family over all your crazy ideas and conspiracy theories.”
Siddharth said, “Arjun, don’t say that. Dad isn’t crazy.”
“Listen, Arjun,” said Mohan Lal, “I can do without advice from a child.”
“You’ve got two kids to put through college, Dad,” said Arjun. “You’ve gotta stop being so irrational. You’ve gotta stop pissing people off and just keep your head down — if not for your sake, then for ours.”
Mohan Lal’s eyes were now wide with rage. He raised the plate he was rinsing above his head. Siddharth leaped out of his seat and grabbed his father’s shoulder. “Dad, please!” he yelled. But Mohan Lal threw the plate into the sink, and it shattered into three big pieces and countless little shards.
Arjun hopped off the counter and kicked one of the iron kitchen chairs, then stomped to the other end of the house. Siddharth’s heart was pounding. He wasn’t sure what to do. He watched his father pour himself a whiskey and then followed him to the television. Mohan Lal sat down in the armchair and told Siddharth to put on channel thirteen. Siddharth obeyed, then went to check on his brother in their bedroom.
Arjun was sitting up on his bed. His head was resting on his Beatles poster, one in which they had facial hair and little round glasses. Arjun’s nose was swollen, and pink lines were now woven into the whites of his eyes. He was sucking on the coin that hung from his gold chain, a coin embossed with the image of King George VI, former ruler of the British Empire. These coins had been a gift from their maternal grandfather. Siddharth thought wearing a chain was too feminine, so his coin was in a safe-deposit box.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Arjun opened his mouth, and the coin softly thumped against his chest. “Why should you be sorry?”
He leaned his head on his brother’s knee. “Please don’t cry, Arjun.”
Arjun used his white undershirt to wipe his eyes. “Did you finish your homework?”
“Yeah. After school.”
“Well, you should read then,” said Arjun. “You know, every day you don’t read, your SAT scores are gonna go down. They’ll go down, like, ten full points per day.”
Siddharth knew this wasn’t possible, that if this were true, he’d end up receiving a negative score on the SATs. But he kept quiet. Arjun got up and grabbed a piece of paper. He wrote down some multiplication problems and handed them to him. Siddharth completed the math at Arjun’s tidy wooden desk. Then he left to check on Mohan Lal in the family room.
3. Slut
Back when she was still Sharon Miller, Sharon Nagorski had lived less than a mile from Siddharth, on Miller Farm. He and Sharon had attended first through fourth grades together, but they didn’t speak much during those years. He had his own friends, at least a dozen of them. As for Sharon, she was a loser. She was always staring at pictures of horses, always lugging around a big black case that contained her stupid trumpet. Like Siddharth, Sharon switched to Deer Run Elementary at the beginning of fifth grade. She didn’t transfer for the after-school program, but because her mother had gotten divorced. The only rental they could afford was on the other side of South Haven.
During the first days of fifth grade, he had caught Sharon staring at him once or twice, but he refused to meet her eyes. Her social status was definitely a problem, but the big issue was that she knew what had happened to him. She was the only kid in his new school who knew about his mother’s accident, and he didn’t want her to give him one of those fake sympathy smiles. Those smiles made him feel pathetic, like he was dying of AIDS. Like he was retarded. And he didn’t want her to say, I’m sorry. He’d heard those words ten thousand times, and they now filled him with loathing. Sorry was something you said for little things — if you cussed at dinner, or coughed without covering your mouth.
One day during the fall of fifth grade, it was pouring out, so they had recess inside. Siddharth was alone at his desk drawing. Without his realizing it, his sketch of a Beverly Hills dream mansion was slowly morphing into one of those ancient Delhi tombs. Those broken-down tombs smelled like piss, and they contained dead people, right there in public parks. But they had arches and domes and were the only pretty buildings in that ugly city. When he had gone to India the previous summer, his aunt’s driver showed him a tomb with dozens of rose-beaked parrots perched inside. The driver got one of them to sit on his finger, and Siddharth fed it little bits of fruit. That had been one of the only good moments during the worst summer of his life.
As Siddharth worked on his drawing, Sharon seated herself at the desk next to his and stared. He tried to ignore her, but she wouldn’t take the hint. Eventually, she broke the silence: “That’s cool. Is it a palace?”
“A palace? Nah, it’s just a bunch of lines.”