38. Ammi? - Lords of Serendipity

Cham and Katrina were back.

No, they were more than back!

They had never felt more like they belonged at Haven than just now, after giving their papers at the symposium. People liked what they had to say and said so during the reception. Other students found them on socials and added them to chats and groups. Professors mentioned capstone seminars and summer research jobs. And Cham and Katrina asked the other students questions about their own papers and asked the professors about their research. Standing under warm light, in a room loud with the noise of happy human voices, surrounded by books and excited people, by other excited people, the two of them were amazed and grateful.

Who knew college could be like this?

To celebrate, they went back to Heterodox House and found a bottle of warm sparkling wine. Aidan told them they were welcome to it, but that it wouldn’t be drinkable unless it spent a few hours in the fridge. Seeing the disappointed looks on their faces, he told them about an old trick from his summer bartending days. If they put the bottle in a pot of cold water, then put the pot in the freezer, it’d be ready in thirty minutes.

Cham, let’s go on a victory run! To town and back, like the old days.

They were juniors. They had gained the pleasant weight of campus memories, of a past life at college.

Aidan warned that if they left the bottle too long, it would explode and they’d spend the night cleaning the freezer.

We’ll have to run fast!

Yes!

They hugged, ran upstairs, and changed into leggings and tops and their running shoes, all of them black and streaked in silver reflective strips.

They rushed through the house and out the door, the dogs barking at the front window as they ran to town.

Allard was walking these same streets, thinking.

What was he supposed to do, hit his mother?

That’s why he had walked out of the apartment. The way she’d suddenly started behaving. Old and white, with an empty drink in her hand, acting tough. Tougher than she was. Picking a fight she would lose. Acting like a Trump voter. What was she going to do, go up to the main academic building and make the university great again?

It never was to begin with. He had been lied to, since childhood. Worse than that, he had been used, this whole time. Even worse than his father wanting nothing to do with him was his mother wanting to do just one thing with him. He was good at math and he liked patterns. That was all. That was it! Who had made him want to do a PhD just because of that? Whom? Fuck that. Because why did he create a risky, brilliant plan and make it work perfectly? Just to give the money to a university to create a research chair that would pay someone to spend years working on things very few people understood, and even fewer people cared about? Frauds. They were all frauds. Not just his mother and father. All of them. All of it. The whole thing. The university world. Of course someone like weak, poor Adi Bhopal would kill himself when he figured this out, after whatever he had done to get to America, to get into Arcadia. Of course he had killed himself after what America, Arcadia, had done to him.

Whereas Allard was rich and strong, and he knew what was real and what was a fraud. And he knew this well beyond his mother and father’s fantasy-camp campus lives. Car accidents were real. Or they were fake. And the world looked to people like Allard to tell the difference. This is what he would do from now on, and not from his mother’s sad apartment in this cult village of a college town, but from Costa Rica, among fellow independent contractors, as soon as he could figure out how to buy an ocean-view condo with the millions he’d made off the university.

Looping back toward Patricia’s apartment, certain she’d be in bed with her nightcap and latest prizewinning whommy novel, Allard heard sirens approaching. A fire truck and a police car and an ambulance drove past him, down the Gaudy-bannered, lamp-lit street, their flashing lights menacing all the dark, pretty windows. They were speeding toward the end of town and the beginning of Haven. Feeling proud of himself and even more right about his plans, Allard figured that if it was a car accident and the claim went through the third-party site where he bid for contracts, he would look for it and probably get it and then be asked to work out what was true and what was false, right here, where he was from. What he was leaving behind. The work a parting shot. No. Not a parting shot. This place didn’t deserve his talents. Because even if his life around this place made him want to call all of it false, he wouldn’t do that. There were principles. Standards. He was responsible for these. They looked to him. And they would continue to, from now on. If it was a car accident and if his bid was accepted, Allard would study the matter and render his judgment, and he would be respected for his findings and he would be paid. The costs and damages he would leave to the rest of them. He’d finally figured it out. He’d done it. Not any of the Arcadia professors. Not his mother. Not his father. It was Allard. He was the truest professor.

It was a car accident.

Cham had been out in front, and the light had just turned green but she went anyway, dark clad and sprinting, laughing, checking her watch to see how long until the freezer was frothing with prosecco. She ran across oncoming traffic the way she always did. Katrina followed, as she always did. It was the last major crossing before the tree-lined boulevard that led back into the heart of campus. And, as always, the cars slowed down and stopped and waved on the beautiful, happy young college things. Except, this time, the last car didn’t. It was a massive black luxury pickup truck, driven by a contractor’s kid. He had been turning right, nice and smooth, with one hand on his phone, filming his foot going down on the pedal to gun it along the main road leading back into the country. He never saw her. He only heard the bang and felt something smash against the custom metal grill. Braking, he saw Katrina almost at his door, screaming, and he couldn’t figure out how he’d hit her so hard but she was somehow standing right there, and he was his own kind of amazed and grateful until he followed Katrina’s gaze to Cham, knocked right out of her shoes, lying just outside the light, motionless on the dark road.

When she woke up in the hospital, Cham thought she was paralyzed. She couldn’t move anything from her hips down. Except, wait, she could still wiggle her toes. How could that be? Was it phantom nerve endings or something like that? Maybe only her legs were paralyzed? Was that even possible? Or maybe they were gone? Her earliest memory, from before even going onto the boat to Italy with Ammi and Thathi, was of a big sister holding a little brother with dead legs like giant okra. Her mother had held her close like that, down in the bottom of the boat. No one was holding her now. Cham shook her head back into the now and just before. They’d been running. They were nearly back to campus. The last crossing. The cars had all slowed down and stopped. Like normal. What went wrong? She could remember sound and light, sudden sound, so much light. The car hitting her, and the sirens, and lying on a hospital bed shutting her eyes because it was so bright.

No doctor or nurse seemed to know she’d woken up. She was alone in the room. There was no one to ask what had happened. What would happen next. Beside her wrist was a large, wired controller with buttons. Cham put her thumb on the nurse button but she didn’t press it. Not yet. She didn’t want to have to deal with all of that, yet. Because whatever had happened, she couldn’t move very much at all. Only her hands and arms were free. There was an IV tube in one of her forearms. She made up-and-down motions with her arms, like a movie mummy, like a waiter holding an invisible tray. She gripped the empty air and snapped her fingers. All of that was working, at least. She could even press her elbows down and prop up and pull back the blanket covering her lower half to see what was there.

She didn’t want to.

Whatever she saw was going to tell her that the rest of her life was going to be very, very different.

How could there be a worse version of nothing from before, nothing from before, than what her mother had told her the day she stopped being her mother?

But now there was.

Cham didn’t want to look. But from under the blanket she could reach down and touch and see what it felt like, if anything.

She closed her eyes and reached and touched and felt padding around her right hip, and squeezing her eyes, she pressed. It hurt.

It hurt so much!

She reached a little farther and touched her thigh above the cast. It also hurt so much!

Things were broken but they were still there, still feeling, still alive. She was still here, still feeling, still alive.

She cried. She was alone. She wanted to call her. She would promise she would never call her Ammi or ask about anything from before if Ammi would just answer and ask if she was okay. Cham reached and felt for her phone on the table beside the bed. It wasn’t there. She knocked over a Styrofoam cup full of water and melted ice.

She sank back down, sobbing. She was so, so tired. She fell back asleep.

Cham was dreaming.

She was back in her freshman dorm, with Katrina. They were sitting on their beds, going over dinner options. Dining hall or order something? They were hungry. But they couldn’t move off their beds. And Cham really wanted to, because she could smell food. Not just food, but home food. Someone had warmed it up, but she couldn’t eat it because she’d thrown it all out. Every week, every oily care package Nanny had sent, all of it thrown away. Where was it, the garbage bin full of home food? And who was warming it up now, not for her, never for her anymore? She’d never eaten it when she could, and now Cham was stuck on the bed, hungry and crying.

Someone was shaking her shoulder.

She woke up.

Her mother was sitting beside the hospital bed. Her black eyes were shining, wet, soft. Beside her was a steaming bowl of rice and dhal.

What’s happening? asked Cham.

Nothing is happening, child. I’m here.

Really?

Yes.

Where’s everyone else?

Never mind.

Are they okay?

Yes. I told them not to come just yet. I told them I would come first, by myself.

Okay.

Here, take some rice and dhal.

Why?

It’ll bring you back better than useless hospital jam and eggs.

No. That’s not what I meant. I meant, why did you come first, by yourself?

Because, Chaminda, I am your ammi.

But—

Listen to me. Are you listening?

Yes.

She leaned in, trembling.

Nothing from before, Cham. Nothing from before. I am here now. Your ammi is here.

Ammi?

Yes.

Ammi?

Yes, child.

She wiped the hair from Cham’s forehead and pressed the back of her hand against Cham’s tear-stained cheeks. She wiped her own eyes and turned and reached for the food.

Now just take a little rice and dhal, girl.

Ammi?

Yes. Ammi. Finish this bowl and then say it all you like. Your ammi is here, Cham.

Ammi. Ammi.