America for Beginners. Leah Franqui

the joy of the holiday had died for her the day that Rahi left. Without him in the house, her celebrations felt hollow. Rahi had always loved to take his lantern and dance in front of the goddess, thanking her for her triumph over the evil demon and imploring her for her grace. Ram would watch, disapproving of his son’s dancing but unable to say anything because it was traditional. Once Rahi was gone they didn’t decorate their house or their shrine; instead they visited with others during the holiest days of the event, leaving their own house empty and allowing the servants time off.

      She had thought she had nothing to thank the goddess for this year, but as she watched the empty street she realized Durga Puja was giving her the opportunity to escape. It would be like the child in the road. People would be so distracted by the festival that they would never see her slip away. She watched the child scratch at his scabs and made a mental note to send down some food from the kitchen if there was extra. The cook had yet to learn how to prepare meals for Pival alone, and they always had too much. The child would have something to eat that night, at least.

      Why had Mr. Munshi not returned her calls? Was there some problem with the guide, or worse, the companion? Mr. Munshi, whom Pival would not want to insult but who sounded vaguely Bangladeshi to her, had assured her, “All is possible, probably, prepared, madam!” Now she feared that this was not the case. Her tickets had been booked. She left in a week, at the height of the festival. What would she do if there were no tour guide and companion waiting? She hated to admit it but Tanvi’s dire warning echoed in her brain.

      She wished she had kept more of herself whole throughout her long marriage. She could have used her youthful boldness now, but it was gone. In its place was fear, and what could that help her now? She thought about Rahi. Why had he left her all alone? What had he found in America?

       4

      Jacob Schwartz fell in love for the first time sitting in a traffic jam on the way back from the airport and it was only because of the horrible congestion of the Los Angeles freeway that he realized it. If he had lived in another kind of place, who knows what might have been possible? But he looked over at the face next to him, the strong jaw, the straight nose, the smooth tanned skin, and the mouth stretched wide as Bhim belted out a power ballad from the early nineties, and there it was. Love. They were two miles from their exit and in the half an hour it took to travel that distance Jake had convinced Bhim to kiss him back, and by the time they reached Jake’s apartment their inhibitions were long gone, as were their shirts.

      For as long as he could remember, Jake’s life had been dictated by traffic. He had grown up in Los Angeles, so commuting had been a way of life. His mother, a divorcée and part-time yoga teacher living in Venice Beach, had carted him from school to guitar lessons to soccer practice to the mall to movies and finally, three nights a week, to his father’s condo in East Hollywood for awkward meals from nearby Chinese food takeout joints. Together he and his father would eat moo shu chicken in silence, with his father’s tentative overtures met with surly rebuffs. What they talked about, because they couldn’t talk about anything else, was traffic. How to get where, what route they had taken that day, what its potential benefits and downsides were. Traffic was the language of neutrality in Los Angeles and Jake learned it young.

      The early years after his parents’ separation, which occurred just after his tenth birthday, had been filled to the brim with activities, as if his life could be made too full for him to notice the difference. Jake, as he had been called by everyone in his life but Bhim, had observed his parents carefully after they split up, like a scientist monitoring a long-term experiment, noting changes and constants, variations and radical outliers. He kept a diary with carefully maintained charts, as he was, according to all his teachers, a visual learner. His ultimate conclusion, after several years, was that in fact the best situation for them all was this, for his parents to live in two separate bubbles, with Jake as the only connection between them. This hadn’t stopped Jake from craving a partner, however, though it did make him wary about finding one.

      Like many children of divorce, Jake was so good at telling the story of his family that by the time he was an adult he could gauge which detail would amuse his listener the most and play to it. When he had first met Bhim through mutual friends at a bar outside of San Francisco called Bangers and Mash, which served neither, their conversation had eventually shifted from hours of discussion on the nature of monotheism, marine life, and architecture to Jake’s family. When Jake had cheerfully described the divorce, wringing it for the kind of humor he thought this quiet Indian graduate student might enjoy, Bhim had turned pale and quite seriously apologized to Jake for his “broken home.” Jake, having never heard that phrase outside of Lifetime original movies, laughed hysterically. His home was far from broken, he gently explained to Bhim. The other man looked at him with such compassion in his eyes, and Jake had to admit, he couldn’t help but lean into it, hoping it might turn into something more.

      There was something about Bhim that was completely hidden from Jake, and although it should have driven him insane, he loved it. Right off the bat, Jake could tell that Bhim had the gift of real empathy, something Jake always worried he lacked. Bhim could put himself in the shoes of any person; he could get complete strangers to speak to him about their lives, their fears, what lived in their hearts, all without sharing anything of himself. He had perfected the art of imitating a deep conversation, all without the other participant’s ever realizing that it was entirely one-sided.

      To Jake, right from that first conversation, Bhim seemed so apart from things, his own island. He was unexplored territory, and Jake wanted to be the explorer.

      Bhim had never dated a man before. In fact, he had never dated anyone before. Although men were what he wanted, or rather, what his heart desired, as he told Jake in his serious way, it felt wrong to him, because he knew, as he had been taught, that it was unnatural to feel this way. As the bar lights flickered around them and the once-roars of the crowd turned to the murmurs of a handful of other patrons, Bhim told him that while he wanted Jake, he knew that this was because he had lost his morality under the influence of America, and he didn’t want to become corrupt for his whole life, the way Jake was. He put his hand on Jake’s knee and Jake felt the warmth of his palm radiate through his body as Bhim asked him if he would be with him for one night only, so that Bhim would know what it was like before he agreed to marry a woman.

      The scent and feel of this man so close was intoxicating to Jake. He had been with others before, but something about Bhim resonated with him in ways no one else ever had. Perhaps it was the fact that this was the first crack in Bhim’s reserve, the first spark of emotion he had displayed. Or perhaps it was the way Bhim said such horrible things in such beautiful ways, the smooth tenor of his voice and slurring affect of his accent making bigotry sexy. He could almost forget what was being said and concentrate solely on the mouth that was saying it.

      Jake had been more than a little afraid to come out to his parents. It wasn’t that Jake’s parents had ever expressed the opinion that homosexuality was in any way negative. They had gay friends, knew gay couples, described gay people in their lives with the same adjectives and nouns they would have used for anyone else. Nevertheless, Jake had no idea what their reactions would be when they heard it from their own child. He had never dared displease his parents in any respect during his entire young life. He had had a Bar Mitzvah for his father, and spent vacations in spas devoted to raw foods and meditation with his mother. He was the poster child for a happy product of an unhappy union. What would they think of him now?

      But it turned out what they thought of him was exactly the same as it always had been. And from the day he came out, life was fairly simple. Jake was what he was, and anyone who didn’t like it could go to hell, including those who remained closeted themselves.

      The first time he had ever even questioned that was when he met Bhim, the boy in the bar in Berkeley. Jake wanted to give Bhim what he wanted. He wanted to do it for his younger self, the child of wealthy liberals who nevertheless was petrified of being an outcast. He knew what it was to wish you were something different even when it was the thing that made you yourself.

      But he also knew even in those