My father was silent through most of this, but he had been giving Amanda a series of long, cool looks. Now he said, “The Persian Gulf, that’s your neck of the woods, no?”
Amanda smiled. “No, not really.”
“No? Oh, that’s right—you’re Indian. Indian from India, correct?”
“I was born in Bramalea, actually.”
“What part of India’s that?”
“It’s a suburb of Toronto. But my grandfather was from Gujarat.”
“And what’s that a suburb of?”
“It’s a state, in the west of India.”
Amanda’s grandfather had immigrated in the 1960s and married a Canadian woman. Amanda’s father had raised her in a secular household, though the family still celebrated some Hindu festivals—I had helped them light candles for diwali. My own father was putting on his redneck act, probably hoping to draw Amanda into an argument that would make her appear shrill or condescending. His racism was selective: he did business with Indian wholesalers, and a sales rep named Banerjee had been a dinner guest on occasion. “Dad’s been to India,” I said. “That trade show, what was it, 2009?”
“Twenty-ten,” my father said levelly, his eyes still on Amanda.
“Mumbai, right?”
“As I recall.”
Amanda’s smile looked more genuine that it could possibly have been. “And how did you find Mumbai, Mr. Fisk?”
“It was outside the airport.” He unclenched a little and added, “Hot. Crowded. Real bad traffic.”
“I’ve never been,” Amanda said. “I’d like to visit someday.”
Mama Laura asked about Amanda’s family, and Amanda gave her the short version: her father was an architect, close to retirement but still doing design and consultation for a Toronto firm. Her mother was an engineer for a forestry company. Her older brother was a physician, currently living in Vancouver. I had been invited often to her family’s house in Bramalea, and I had been received with a graciousness that made my father’s attitude all the more infuriating.
“And you?” Mama Laura said. “Adam tells us you work at a restaurant of some kind?”
“A vegetarian café,” Amanda said, at which Aaron smiled and my father repressed a derisive snort.
Amanda had taken the job when she dropped out of the University of Toronto. She’d been taking pre-law courses at the urging of her family, excelled at research but hated the career prospects. She liked to say she was being educated by Tau: she had learned more from a couple of tranche meetings than she had in six months at school. Tau would find a place for her, she liked to say. And maybe that was true. One of our tranchemates, Damian Levay, was trying to set up an all-Tau investment fund, and Amanda was keen to work with him. I imagined she wouldn’t be serving kale and spirulina much longer.
“And you met Adam through that, uh, interest group?”
“Affinity group,” Amanda said. “Yes.”
“People say it’s, you know—”
“I’m not insulted by what people say.”
“A cult,” Mama Laura finished in an apologetic whisper.
“It’s not a cult. There’s no doctrine, no creed, no leader. Nothing we have to believe in or swear allegiance to.”
“It costs money, though, doesn’t it?” my father asked.
“For evaluation, plus an annual membership fee.”
“Like a cult because it breaks up families, too.”
“I don’t believe that’s the case, Mr. Fisk.”
Amanda put a hand on my knee to let me know she wasn’t rattled.
“Well,” he said, “all I know is, I hear things. People develop a loyalty to these Affinity groups.”
“They do,” Amanda said. “But not for any sinister reason. The whole point is that it’s a group of people you can trust, who trust you.”
“That’s all?”
“Think about it this way. Everything human beings do—everything worthwhile—depends on cooperation. We cooperate better than any other species. But cooperation can get derailed pretty easily. People lie, people cheat, people misunderstand each other. So we learn to be wary and mistrustful. Once burned, twice shy, no?”
“Happens in business often enough.”
“Sure. It happens to everyone, and it slows you down, it costs you time and money, it leaves you cynical.”
“That’s just human nature, Miss Mehta.”
“But an Affinity group is a place where that logic doesn’t apply. It’s a place where you don’t have to watch your back. Where people like you, for sensible reasons. A place where—”
“Where everybody knows your name?” Geddy asked. Followed by his own goofy rendition of the old Cheers theme song.
Amanda returned his grin. “Yeah, like that,” she said, laughing. “But in real life.”
“Can’t replace family,” my father said, looking pointedly in my direction.
“Some of the people in our tranche come from pretty unpleasant families, Mr. Fisk. Some of them need a replacement.”
“Do we seem that bad to you?”
“I don’t mean this family. Is that a blueberry pie, Mrs. Fisk?”
“Boysenberry,” Mama Laura said, beaming.
“It looks great.”
“Bless you for saying so. I think we’re about ready for dessert and coffee, now that you mention it.”
“Dessert,” Geddy agreed, nodding.
* * *
After the meal we adjourned to the living room. And the conversation turned to the subject of Grammy Fisk. We told our favorite stories and shared the poignant business of missing her. Amanda had nothing to contribute, but she listened attentively and put an arm around Mama Laura when she started to cry.
Displays of emotion made Geddy uneasy, and he excused himself early and went up to his room. A little while later a sound echoed down the stairs, a brassy hoot that made me think of geese heading south in autumn. “Oh, Lord, Geddy’s saxophone,” Mama Laura said. “It’s way too late for him to be practicing.”
“Geddy took up an instrument?”
“For band, at school. Yes. And not just the instrument! He brought Grammy Fisk’s old record player down out of the attic and set it up in his room. Plus maybe a hundred or so of her dusty old records.”
It was getting on time to leave, so I headed up to Geddy’s room to say good night and investigate his newfound interest. Geddy’s enthusiasms tended to monopolize his conversation and most of his waking thoughts, and when he opened his door I saw this was no exception. Grammy Fisk’s fifty-year-old turntable and receiver covered most of the free space on his desk. The cloth-grille speakers were set up at the foot of his bed, and Grammy Fisk’s record collection (mostly old jazz, folk, rock) snaked along the floorboards under the window.
Geddy put down his sax and waved me in. He told me about the instrument—a Yamaha alto sax, secondhand from Schuyler’s only pawn shop—and about the music he’d been listening to. Forget My Chemical Romance, he was all about horns and reeds now. His favorite saxophone player was Paul Desmond. (“Because of his tone. He plays a real pure note. Only a little vibrato. He doesn’t fancy up the sound. I want to learn to play a pure note like that.”) Geddy was daunted by the difficulty of the instrument, but he honked out a scale for me, and I thought I could hear what he was aiming at. Years later I would admire his skill, but what I heard that night was more ambition than talent.
He grimaced when a high C went sour. “I’m just learning.”
“Yeah, but I can tell you’re getting better at it.”
He gave me a tight smile that was both a thank-you for the compliment and an acknowledgment that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about.