The Lightness Page 4

  Of course, I told them nothing about how good he smelled, like wood and sweat and burnt sugar, and something else familiar I couldn’t name but that tugged at the back of my throat like a swallowed lure. I told them nothing about his soft inner-elbow skin, or how intensely I wanted to touch him, to climb onto his back, to have him swing me through his legs the way my father had when I was small. He could have managed it: he was almost exactly as tall as my father. I had measured this by standing very close to him and noting where my nose hit his shoulder. This measurement was not at all related to the shape of his mouth, except in the ways that it was.

  Once, after two hours with the spade, I stood up, shaking out my wrists, and Luke grabbed my hand, just as Magda had. Clearly, Buddhists are not shy about this sort of thing. (It’s only the physical body, after all.) I tried to pull away, but he only smiled and pulled on my middle finger, hard, and I heard my knuckle pop. He popped them all, one by one. I closed my eyes to focus on the sensation of my bones shifting beneath my skin. Had any man ever touched my hands before? Only my father, and Luke’s hands were much rougher than his, and much dirtier too. My father’s hands were always clean, even in the garden. That is one thing I remember about him.

  That day, during free hours, I went looking for Shastri Dominique’s office. It wasn’t difficult to find: the main building was smaller than it looked from the outside, and though there was no map or directory, each of its doors was marked with a small handwritten sign framed in blond wood, indicating its use. When I found the door with Dominique’s name on it, I knocked, and could hear her sigh from the hall. “Yes?” she said.

  The office was plain, much plainer than I had expected after the shrine room’s gilded drama. The walls were white, their only adornment a series of identical-looking framed photographs that ringed the room. The only real color came from the window frame, which was painted red—the same saturated shade as the door of the garden shed.

  Dominique herself was sitting at a white desk flanked by large metal filing cabinets. She looked tired—or perhaps that day she just looked her age.

  “What can I do for you?” she said.

  “I was hoping you could help me,” I said, hating the whine creeping into my voice but unable to stop it. “I’m looking for someone who was here at the Center last year.”

  Dominique frowned. Her fingers were long but unpainted. They looked like lit candles. “I’m afraid I can’t give out any information about program participants,” she said. “We have a strict confidentiality policy. It’s to protect you girls more than anything.”

  “It’s not a girl,” I said. “It’s my father.”

  She hesitated, and seemed to look at me a little harder, as if she might be able to guess whose child I was on resemblance alone.

  “Even so,” she said.

  The coolness of her tone startled me. I looked away from her and noticed that one of the photographs on the wall showed a small group of men standing in front of the Center’s main doors. At the bottom of the photograph, a piece of yellowing tape read Darshan Family 1982. I looked at the photo to its right. 1983. Dominique cleared her throat; I ignored her, and followed the photographs around the room until I came to the last one—but no, it was two years old. There was no sign of my father in it. I did see Luke, looking young and clean, his hair short, one arm around Dominique’s waist, the other around the shoulders of a woman I didn’t recognize, all three thin and grinning. I put my hand against the wall where the next year’s photograph should have hung. It felt strangely warm.

  “If that’s all,” Dominique said. “You’d better get ready for dinner.”

  I didn’t ask Harriet and Nisha about my father. Instead, I asked them about Serena, but they only knew what everyone did, which was everything.

  What was known about Serena: that she had been to the Center every summer since her birth, sixteen years ago. That she’d been born there. That she was part Tibetan, and was in fact related to the monk who had founded the place, and that’s why she always got the best tent. That’s why she was never required to do any of the required activities. That no, obviously she was the heiress of a fat, cigar-sucking oil tycoon, and had more money to her name than any of us could imagine, a number there isn’t even a number for, and that’s why she was never required to do any of the required activities. That actually she was a gypsy princess, and her father was a pirate king, and he’d left her on the Center’s doorstep in a basket when she was a squalling hot-faced baby and the kind-hearted Buddhists took her in and in all her years she had never left its boundaries. That no, she had left its boundaries many times, and had in fact been kicked out of thirteen boarding schools, seven of them military. That she had a sister who wasn’t really her sister, but her daughter—that old slog. That she’d slept with a movie star. That she’d slept with a teacher. That she was a virgin. That she was a witch. That, virgin or witch or virgin witch, she could fly, and that she would zip around at night, stark naked, and catch birds and rabbits with her hands, and rip out their throats with her teeth, and that their blood would run down her bare breasts in the moonlight. That she was no witch, but a werewolf, and about that moonlight, well—just wait until the fat moon, girls. Then you’ll see something! That it wasn’t thirteen boarding schools, but thirty, and that they hadn’t been boarding schools, but mental hospitals. That she could convince you of anything, anything at all, by looking directly into your eyes and telling you it was true.

  And that might have been the end. I might have merely watched Serena and her friends all summer, bingeing on recycled rumors, working silently in the garden, confusing Luke with my father and also with the lover I thought I might have someday, or maybe sooner rather than later, why not, and forgotten why I was there, and what I wanted, and then gone back to my mother’s house without having changed a thing and let myself grow up just like her, logical and harsh and unbelieving. And maybe that would have been better, all things considered. In fact, I’m sure it would have been. But one afternoon, during free hours, I wandered toward the east side of the main building and came upon a group of visiting monks in maroon robes, huddled on their knees before the Center’s elaborate front entrance, building a bright sand mandala on the stones.

  At first glance, the mandala seemed to be glowing, but soon I saw that it was only the richness of the colors, reds and golds and ultramarines that had been coaxed into lotus flowers and knots of eternity, spoked wheels and conch shells and tiny Buddhas. It occurred to me that all this careful artistry would soon be destroyed. The half-finished mandala was spread across what was likely the single most trafficked spot on the mountain. Once the monks stood and dusted themselves off, it wouldn’t be long before their work was scattered across the road.

  “They’ve been at it since dawn,” someone said.

  And there she was: Serena, standing next to me, looking down at the mandala. It was as if she had simply materialized there, close enough to touch. She was wearing that white dress again. Up close, it looked slightly wrong on her, as though it had been carefully handmade for someone else. I’ll say it now: she was beautiful.

  “It’ll be ruined there,” I said.

  “Everything is impermanent,” she said.

  My stomach turned over at the echo. “It seems sad,” I said without thinking.

  She reached out and touched my arm. Her fingers were cool against my skin, and I remembered something I had read: how at extreme altitudes, your heart can explode, without warning.

  “There’s nothing sad about destruction,” she said. “Or oblivion.” She let go of my arm and took something out of her pocket—a mirror. She looked into it, turned it over a few times in her hands, looked into it again. Both of her wrists were ringed with red threads, like the tatters of fabric handcuffs. She lifted the mirror into the air, caught the sun in it, made it wink. Woolly continents of green polish floated in the centers of her fingernails.

  “Impermanence is neither negative nor positive,” she said. “It is si
mply a fact.” She held the mirror out to me and twisted around to look at my reflection instead of my face, so that soon it became our reflection, her small shoulder pushing into mine. I saw myself blush.

  Consider Narcissus, kneeling at the pond: While he desires to quench his thirst, a different thirst is created. While he drinks, he is seized by the vision of his reflected form. He loves a bodiless dream. Or consider the girl standing in front of the mirror, raising a hand. First the mirror-self obediently raises a hand back, but then she smirks, revolts. The horror of the self not quite reflected, the imprint with its own agenda, the created, imperfect double off to throttle its maker—well. It gets us every time.

  “Who are you?” Serena asked my reflection.

  “Where is the self?” I said. “What color is it?”

  Her eyes widened a little. “Oh,” she said. “You’re one of us.”

  I said nothing. How could I have, then? It was as if she had seen through me at once, put her finger on the tenderest place, the reason I was there, the reason I already loved her. How badly I wanted to be one of them, yes, one of anyone, but especially this, a believer, a Buddhist, yes, like her, like my father. Even if I wasn’t sure I knew what that meant. Did it mean anything at all? My mother’s voice was still in my head. Here was Serena, offering it to me anyway, like a crown, assuming it was already mine: behold the easy generosity of the truly secure.

  She closed one eye, then the other. She slipped the mirror back into her pocket. “You’re also the girl who’s doing rota in the garden,” she said. I nodded, but it hadn’t been a question. One of the monks tutted softly under his breath. Another murmured in response. I wondered if they were listening to us. What drifted through their minds as they crafted their pristine monument to nothingness? It could have been anything. It could, of course, have been nothing.

  Without warning, Serena took a step forward and kissed one of them on the very top of his bare head. He looked up at her and smiled. “Thank you,” he said. I was startled at his lack of an accent, and then ashamed.

  “Bye,” she said, like she was leaving me at the mall.

  “Wait,” I said, but she had already walked away, and if she heard me, she didn’t turn her head. I stood there, watching the monks work, vaguely hoping she might change her mind and come back for me, until I heard the blow of the conch shell that summoned us all to dinner.

  That night, I heard Laurel tap, and Janet tap. As usual, I turned my face toward the door, waiting for that slice of light to open against the ceiling. But instead, after a few seconds, I felt a hand prod my shoulder.

  “Get up.” It was Laurel. “Get your shoes.”

  I sat up so quickly I nearly hit my head on the overhead beam. Harriet shifted above me.

  “Come on, Olivia,” Janet said, her voice flat but not unkind. “Come with us. Carpe PM.”

  Laurel snorted. I hesitated, wondering how it was that a girl who never smiled found it within herself to make a pun. Then I pulled on my sneakers and followed them out of the dormitory. They paused in the doorway, only long enough for each of their tongues to appear, dark wet shapes in the dim light, thrust toward Magda, who was snoring in her single bed, her night guard already spat onto the pillow next to her face. I kept my own tongue in my mouth, not ready, after all, to pledge my allegiance just yet.

  They led me across the dark grounds in silence, until we finally turned into what I could barely identify as one of the canopied trailheads Magda had pointed out on the first day. Janet and Laurel stalked upward while I tripped over rock and root, dirtying my palms, scraping my knees. Neither of them stopped to help when I stumbled. After I cried out for the third time, Janet paused and lit a flashlight, a little mercy. It bobbed against her hip, and the circle of light it left on the ground widened and tightened, widened and tightened, as if breathing.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out,” Laurel said, her voice dim and disembodied.

  But of course, I already knew.

  When I think about Serena’s tent, I remember it as bigger than the others. Though I know that memory is false, or perhaps implanted. In reality, it must have been a utilitarian, one-person triangle like all the rest of the tents on the mountain. Inside, there would have been a thin mattress on top of a narrow wooden pallet, a small clapboard bookcase, and a single flashlight that expanded into a weak yellow lamp, all of it tinged green by the nylon sheeting, all of it smelling of bug spray. The expansiveness I remember must have been Serena herself, or the fact that, as I was about to discover, she had brought pillows and blankets and candles and a gold Moroccan ottoman and sheepskins and silks to throw over everything, like layers of luscious fat draped over cold gray bones.

  Janet whistled as we approached, and when we heard an answering cough, Laurel unzipped the tent from the outside. I stepped in after them to find Serena sitting cross-legged at the head of her cot in a red silk kimono, a large book open in her lap and a box of ladyfingers, almost as large, on the pillow by her side.

  “Oh good,” she said, without looking up. “You’re here. Listen to this description of Maya, will you? ‘Her hair is soft, clean, and sweetly scented, black like the excellent bee and arranged in braids.’” She raised her head. “Black, like the excellent bee!” Her mouth looked like it opened on fishhooks; she had a joker smile. Her teeth were a little disorganized, I noticed. This did not detract from her overall appeal.

  Janet settled cross-legged on the ottoman in the corner. “What’s that now?” she asked.

  “Lalitavistara Sūtra,” Serena said. “‘Her eyes are like lotus petals, her teeth are like stars in the sky, her thighs and calves are like the trunk of an elephant, and her knees have a shapely form. Surely she can only be a divine maiden.’”

  “Shapely knees indicate divinity,” said Janet. “Noted.”

  “It does make sense,” said Serena.

  “I have ugly knees,” said Laurel mournfully. She lay down on the foot of Serena’s bed and stretched both legs into the air. Her knees looked normal to me, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Well, no one’s making any particular claims about your divinity,” Janet said. “Besides, you’re no maiden.” Laurel sat up and threw a pillow at her. Janet ducked, and it hit the side of the tent, sending a shiver through it. “Let me have one of those?”

  “She sounds rather ghoulish, is all I’m saying,” Serena said, passing her the box of ladyfingers. “Eyes like lotus petals? Teeth like stars? Elephant trunk calves?”

  “There’s really no logic in what people find attractive,” Janet said. She held up one of the spongy biscuits.

  “There is too logic,” Laurel said. “It’s actually extremely simple. Just maybe not in fourth-century Tibet or whatever.”

  “Third century,” Serena said. “And probably India. Though I think the Lalitavistara is actually a compilation of several sources, so it’s hard to say.”

  “Why is she still standing?” Laurel said.

  They all looked up at me. I hadn’t realized that I was. I sat instantly on the cold floor of the tent. Serena closed the book, slipping a leaf between the pages to mark her place. Her kimono shimmered with her every movement. I became uncomfortably aware of my pajama pants. My pajama pants had popsicles on them. The popsicles had faces. I think the faces had their tongues sticking out, but I may be self-flagellating now.

  “Olivia,” Serena said. “Thanks for coming.” She motioned for Janet to pass me the ladyfingers. “Have you three met?”

  I nodded slowly, taking a cookie. There had been introductions among the Garudas, but I knew that wasn’t really what Serena meant. “She’s friends with Harriet,” Laurel said, prodding one knee with a finger.

  “Well, that can be corrected,” Serena said. She slid over to replace her book on the shelf, her movements so fluid it seemed the world itself shifted to accommodate each of her intentions.

  “Laurel,” she said, “let Olivia sit on the bed.”

  Laure
l looked appalled.

  “She’s our guest. Guests should be given the best seat.” When Laurel didn’t move, Serena frowned at her. “You can have it back next time,” she said. “If you’re here, I mean.” Laurel glared at me and pushed herself onto the floor. I hesitated, but Serena gestured impatiently, so I took Laurel’s place at the foot of the bed. It was still a little warm, and I had to keep myself from kicking Laurel in the back of the head for good measure. You might as well learn this now: even the tiniest bit of power turns me instantly immoral.

  “For what it’s worth, I like Harriet,” Janet said.

  “You would,” Laurel said.

  “I just said I did,” Janet said. “Are you quite slow?”

  “So,” Serena said, turning to me. “How’s Luke treating you?”

  The full force of her attention in that enclosed space was almost shocking. I thought of Maya, whoever she was: those lotus-petal eyes, enormous, white, and searching. “Fine,” I said. “He doesn’t say much. Just sort of hands me things and wanders away.”

  “That sounds like him,” she said. “But would you say he likes you?”

  I didn’t understand where this line of questioning was leading. “He gave me a flower,” I blurted.

  “Did he,” Serena said. She and Laurel exchanged a swift glance.

  “I still don’t understand why they gave the garden rota to a new girl,” Laurel said.

  “Well, they’re not stupid,” Janet said.

  “They are, though.”

  I could feel Serena watching me. I looked down at the popsicles: they had turned evil and leering in the half-light of the tent. “My dear Olivia,” she said at last. “I was hoping you’d join us tonight for the feeling.”