29. If You’re Not Sri Lankan - Lords of Serendipity

Cham and Katrina were already talking seriously even before they’d left the dark part of the restaurant. They kept talking as they went up and down the blue-gray cobblestoned streets of Castel Gandolfo looking for gelato, and in the short line in a tiny yellow café, and while walking down through the town to the smooth, gunmetal-gray front gate of the Vatican’s astronomy research institute. Waiting for Martin and Jack, they leaned against the biscuit-colored brick wall beside the gate and ran their hands over a series of papal crests featuring carved keys, crosses, crowns, and, depending on the noble Italian family involved, bees, doves and olives, studded balls. They waited a long time. Katrina didn’t bother texting her dad. She and Cham were talking. For the first time since they’d met, move-in day, freshman year, Katrina felt like she was speaking to a real person, and that she was being treated like a real person, too. Katrina told Cham what really happened with Mather, and not just about the tattoos. Cham didn’t make any jokes. She really seemed to be listening. But she still didn’t say much at all about what was going on in her own life, being back in Rome. This went on for the rest of that day and for the days that followed in Rome, where the two of them started running together again in the mornings. They didn’t try their chances with oncoming Roman traffic but instead ran along the paved basin lining the slow, muddy Tiber, passing sullen African men fishing at dawn. They started studying together, too, and Cham came over for meals many times a week. They made dinner because Jack was suddenly very busy. He was learning about Martin’s research. That summer, he would begin a visiting appointment with the new data science institute Martin was founding at a university in Sri Lanka.

Before they left Italy, Cham asked if she could stay with Katrina and Jack back home to finish writing her research paper, before going on to her parents’ place in California.

Are you going to say yes, and then say no, like last time? asked Cham.

Katrina raised her eyebrows like they were suddenly on stilettos.

Actually, that’s your move, isn’t it?

So, the Christmas thing.

That’s right.

Has that been beef, this entire time?

Katrina shrugged.

So, do you want to talk about it, or do you want to let me stay at your house?

I want to talk about it.

Okay.

Okay.

So?

But Katrina liked the idea of hanging out with Cham at her father’s house instead of being by herself with Jack, again, more than getting an explanation and apology that felt, after all this life had happened in Italy, so long ago. Mostly.

Whatever, just come and stay with us.

Now they were sitting in the screened-in back porch of Jack’s house, on a midmorning in late May. It was cool and damp, gray and misty. Each of them was in a teak and wicker wingback with a light checkered throw covering their folded-up bare legs, drinking mugs of salted hot water with lemon and ginger and tiny red Thai chili peppers that pirouetted with every sip. Around them were phones, earbud cases, laptops and tablets, wooden hairbrushes and scrunchies and lip oil and the new Sally Rooney novel they were sort of meta-reading in between R. F. Kuang books. The Wi-Fi was spotty on the back porch, but they could go inside if they absolutely had to.

The only consistent evidence of Jack’s daily existence was the jazz music they could hear coming from his office. Martin was sending Jack articles about the behavior of supernovas that he’d been listed on over the years and asking him to comment on the data sections. In turn, Martin assessed Jack’s analysis and sent him more. Jack found Martin’s data remarkably clean and quiet; it was not, as Jack was expecting based on years of his own, more mundane research, loud and messy. How was it that Martin’s stars and galaxies were so much better behaved and predictable than people and their opinions?

This work kept him occupied while Cham and Katrina finished their independent study projects. These were due before July 1, though they had options for penalty-free extensions that neither wanted. What they did want was for this strange year of college away from college, from courses, from professors and other students, to be over. Haven put no pressure on them to return. Their academic counselors had in fact suggested they pre-qualified for a gap year. But they wanted to be back on campus, back in classes, back with other students. They requested rooms in one of the college’s themed academic houses: rambling century homes where professors lived with their families and a small number of students. Katrina knew going back to Haven meant having to see Mather again. He had dropped all his social media after they broke up, so she had no idea what he was doing, but she didn’t really care. The infection from her tattoo had healed and disfigured the design. Now it looked like she’d splatted a blackberry or a big bug. She alternated between hating it and thinking it was a good reminder of what happened when you just went along with something, with someone, as Katrina had done, too much in her life. Thinking of all those Italian churches they’d visited to take a break from the heat and crowds, the mark on her palm made it look like she’d come down from the cross.

And she had, sort of. Jack was ignoring her more than he ever had, which was great. He was finally interested in something of his own. And Katrina had decided things with Cham were good enough that it was time to talk about the things neither had brought up in all the hours and hours of talking since that afternoon waiting for Jack and Martin, beside that Vatican wall in the hills outside Rome.

Hey, can I ask you something?

Sure, said Cham.

It’s kind of awkward, but important.

Yeah, I can tell from your tone. Is it about my staying here? Want to take it back now? Am I drinking too much of your fancy green tea?

No, it’s not that. Not the Christmas thing, I mean. Or, let me say, just because it should be said, I was kind of really offended that you invited me to stay with your family for Christmas and then took it back and never explained why. Or, um, apologized.

Okay. And this is why you invited me and then took back the invitation to hang out with you and your dad for Christmas when we were in Rome, right?

You make it sound so immature.

Do I?

Or fine, I was being immature. I was upset. I was offended, Cham. I thought we were friends, I thought your having me come and stay with your family was a major, major statement of that, and it never happened.

Katrina, there was a lot going on in my family. There’s always a lot going on with my family.

Meaning?

No offense, but that Christmas thing? It wasn’t about you, at all. It had nothing to do with you, really.

Katrina’s face flushed.

Well, you want to know something you did that has everything to do with me? My dad’s moving to Sri Lanka for a year because your professor got him drunk and convinced him to. Was that why you invited us to lunch?

That was his decision, Katrina, not mine. I had no idea Martin was going to ask him about that.

Seriously?

Seriously.

Okay, so . . .

So what? Why is all of this coming up now, Katrina? I kind of feel like things are going okay between us, certainly a lot better than before, right? Or they were, until a minute ago. Are you, like, reconsidering whether we should live together next year?

Cham, that’s why I’m talking about this now. Because I feel like if we’re going to be real friends—I mean, I told you everything about Mather, fucking everything—we need to talk about what’s really going on here.

Which is what?

I guess it’s that whether, on purpose or not, you take chances and don’t care about what this might do to other people.

Cham laughed.

Inviting you and your dad to lunch was taking a chance with other people? Come on! And this is you talking. You! You’re the one saying this? Seriously?

What? said Katrina.

Am I the one who went stalker for my study abroad research project?

I don’t even know what’s going on right now.

Katrina, you know my story.

She took a strand of her hair and began rubbing it between her fingers.

What about your story?

Well, let’s just say it’s kind of weird that your roommate decides to research migrant women in Rome, when your mother was a migrant woman in Rome. Don’t you think?

It’s not about migrant women in Rome, but about their experiences with religious organizations in Rome.

Whatever! It’s about migrant women in Rome! And my mother was a migrant woman in Rome!

Then why didn’t you say something?

What was I supposed to say? Did you really not know how it would make me feel, that you were doing it?

How can I know what you feel, unless it’s a joke? You keep everything inside.

That’s what happens when your mother left you at a gate and then made you keep a secret for the rest of your life, I guess.

What’s the secret? Also: your mother left you at the gate? That’s not the story you told me the first time.

I have a lot of stories, Katrina.

Oh my god, thought Katrina. Was she about to find out that Cham was some kind of pretend orphan, a pretend migrant who just made up the whole story to get into college?

What? said Cham.

What do you mean?

You have a funny look. Like you’re thinking something about me. So just say it. Say what you’re thinking about me.

You really want to know?

Yes. For once, I’d like to know what someone really thinks about me.

You made it all up.

I made it all up?

Yes. The whole story about being a migrant girl and getting adopted by the ambassador. It’s easy to fake a picture like that. You made it all up to get into Haven, and you feel bad about it, so you think other people are fakers or hypocrites, like the Gaudy cast, or you play with people who are totally vulnerable. Like my dad. Like me.

Cham stretched out her legs and the throw fell onto one of the faded Indian rugs covering the back porch’s concrete floor. She got up and walked to one of the windows looking into the gloomy, frowsy backyard. She worried a tear in the screen.

Katrina got up and went over to her. Cham still didn’t turn.

Is it true?

Cham started crying. She stopped, wiped her eyes, wiped her nose with her wrist, and giggled.

What the fuck, right?

So it’s true? You made it all up to get into Haven?

No, Katrina. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

Why should I believe you?

Being in Italy, you know, had an effect or whatever. Fine, whatever. Remembering when I was first there, I mean. Because I really was there, and yes, my mother really was a migrant. So no, I didn’t lie to get into fucking Haven. I told the story I’ve had to tell my whole life, because that’s what my mother asked me to do.

Katrina put her hand on Cham’s shoulder and turned her, gently, so that they were facing each other.

Why? What’s the story? Can’t you tell me the truth?

Cham smiled, her eyes still full of tears. But she didn’t speak.

Can I make a guess? said Katrina.

Cham sighed and went back to her chair, wrapped herself in the blanket, and sat down. She felt something sharp at the back of her mouth, like when she had Covid or ate mustard.

My mother’s not in Italy, Katrina.

But you know where she is?

Yes.

So you know she’s alive, and you know she’s not in Italy.

Yes.

Do your parents know? Does your sister know?

It’s hard to explain if you’re not Sri Lankan. They definitely know and definitely pretend they don’t know, and everyone will go crazy if you call them on it.

Whatever. Either way, you’re sitting here, in my house, instead of being with her, wherever she is.

Yeah. Not wherever she is. I know exactly where she is, all the time. That’s part of the secret.

And, just to confirm, you know that my mother’s not alive, right?

Katrina, I never wanted to—

No, look at me, said Katrina. Do you want us to be friends? As in really, truly friends? Then tell me how you know your mother’s alive—Katrina was crying now—she’s alive, and, and you’re not with her?

I can’t be!

Why not? Tell me!

But Cham didn’t. She just started sobbing. So did Katrina. Eventually, still heaving, they hugged each other. Going to the kitchen for more coffee, Jack heard the girls out on the porch. He stopped and listened. They weren’t crying, were they? No. They were laughing so hard they were crying, he predicted, about something he could never understand. If he went out there and asked what was so funny, they’d just laugh more. Why bother when he still had so much of Martin’s data to go through? He was happy Katrina was getting along with her friend from college. Who was Sri Lankan. He had some practical questions for her, but they could wait. He went back to his office and shut the door on their happy sounds.