She shook her head. He opened a small chocolate ice cream bar for himself and sat down on his seat.
“Restless more than tired,” she said. She looked down the dimly lit aisle of the plane and said, “I’m traveling with my ex-husband, current boyfriend, and daughter.”
“Forget ice cream. Need a whiskey shot in that ginger ale?” he asked.
“How long do you spend in Delhi?” Radha asked.
“I’m here for forty-eight hours and then doing this same route back to Heathrow,” the flight attendant said. He got up to throw away the ice cream wrapper and then restocked the small wicker basket with packets of chips and biscuits. “But then I’m taking a month off and going on a cruise with my wife, son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughters. I’ve never been on a cruise before.”
“That sounds like fun,” Radha said. “A family holiday.”
“I get seasick on boats,” the flight attendant said. He was dreading this holiday but his daughter-in-law had planned the whole thing and his wife had never liked the daughter-in-law much and always felt guilty about it so she had agreed to this cruise and forced him to also sound enthusiastic. He would try one of those motion sickness wristbands.
A small beep sounded and he looked up and said, “Six C. Off I go. I bet they just want a glass of water.”
He filled a plastic glass with water and said to Radha, “This way I’ll save a trip,” and went down the aisle.
Radha leaned against the bathroom door and looked at all the passengers. Next to her own empty seat she saw David’s face lit up by the light of his Kindle. He certainly was handsome.
“Is this door stuck?” came Mr. Das’s voice, suddenly frantic, from inside the bathroom. “Help! Hello? Flight attendant! Pilot! Tina! Anyone?”
He pushed against the door and Radha said, “Ow, no, Neel, stop pushing, you aren’t stuck.”
She moved away from the door and Mr. Das burst out of the bathroom and said, “That was terrifying. You know I’m always worried about getting trapped in small spaces. And an airplane bathroom would be the worst. Imagine the embarrassment of having to knock and bang and shout to get rescued and then all the passengers stare at you as you return to your seat.”
“Are you nervous about going back to India?” Radha asked Mr. Das.
Mr. Das looked at her then he looked down the aisle and said, “You know people cry more easily on flights? Something about the altitude affects your emotions, believe it or not. I was watching an episode of The Office and nearly cried.”
“Some of those episodes will make you cry at any altitude, though,” Radha said.
“True.”
“We were a happy family the last time we made this trip all together,” Radha said.
“Ice cream?” the flight attendant, now returned to the galley, asked Mr. Das.
“I would love some, thank you,” Mr. Das said.
“I love this time of a flight,” the flight attendant said. “The silence, watching everyone sleeping or watching movies or reading. It’s such a forced break from the world.”
He went back to the galley to get himself a cup of coffee. In the third row Radha could see Tina and Marianne fast asleep. Tina’s face was covered with her blanket and her arm was draped over the side of her seat.
“I’m going to put her arm in so it doesn’t get knocked,” Radha said to Mr. Das.
“I’m going to ask the flight attendant if he can spot a nervous flier by the way they stare at him during takeoff and landing,” Mr. Das said.
Radha gently moved her daughter’s arm up to her side, away from the aisle. She then covered her exposed arm with the blanket and touched her fingertips to Tina’s hair. Tina, always a light sleeper, could smell her mother’s perfume and opened her eyes and peered out from behind the blanket to see her walking back to her seat. Then she looked ahead and saw her father in the galley at the front of the cabin talking to the flight attendant. She could see him nodding and nibbling an ice cream bar.
Radha sat back down, leaned into David, and said, “I’m nervous about this trip.”
David put his large hand on her leg and left it there.
TUESDAY MORNING
Colebrookes Country Club, New Delhi, India: Jet Lag Is So Nice at First When You Wake up Early and Energized
OF COURSE ROCCO GALLAGHER WAS here for the wedding. Why was Tina surprised? Early her first morning in India, energized from jet lag, she was sitting out on the porch outside the cottage she was sharing with Marianne for the week. There were about twenty cottages around the grassy knoll. Tina had a lilac shawl around her shoulders and was looking out onto the Colebrookes gardens trying desperately to conjure up a sense of nostalgia. Home, she thought, then slapped dead a mosquito against her right calf. She grimaced at the trace of blood on her palm, looked around, wiped it against the cushion on the next wicker chair, and scratched her calf.
She had never lived in India but she had always enjoyed the feeling of looking like everyone else here. In America, Lizzie Ainsley in middle school had thrown out the plastic fork and spoon from Tina’s lunch tray one day and said, “I read a book that said Indian people only eat with their fingers so I guess you don’t need these.”
It was chicken nuggets and tater tots for lunch that day so Tina didn’t need the cutlery but she still made a point of walking back to the steel cutlery table, getting replacements and using the fork to spear the crumbling tater tots and deliver them to her mouth.
She had told Andrew this story once, over a bottle of wine and a plate of jalapeño poppers somewhere in Fort Greene.
“I hope it’s easier being Indian in middle school in America now,” Tina had said to Andrew. “You know, my mother always wanted to name me Priyanka but she was worried I’d be made fun of for my name so she picked the race-neutral Tina. I bet all the Indian kids are named Priyanka now.”
“Probably some white kids too,” Andrew added. “But come on, being Indian, even fifteen years ago, could not have been that hard.”
“My classmates used to ask if I preferred eating monkey or elephant,” Tina said.
“Okay, my classmates used to say they wanted to have sex with my mother. The term ‘MILF’ had just been coined and my mother, well, you know how she likes tight jeans and low-cut tops,” Andrew said. “Middle school sucks for everyone.”
“But yours has nothing to do with your race,” Tina said.
“And yours has nothing to do with your mother,” Andrew said. “Look, I’m not defending what people said but sometimes you label someone racist when it’s maybe just personal distaste. Like instead of saying this person doesn’t like you, it’s easier to say this person doesn’t like Indians. I’m not talking about your middle school classmates, all kids are assholes, but I’m talking about now. Like last week when you called the barista at that coffee shop racist because she was rude to you.”