Leave It to Me - Bharati Mukherjee [16]
“No, she had us buy a Delhi-San Francisco ticket. We didn’t want to see her. We wanted to give you a clean start, that’s why we changed the name the nuns gave …”
“Faustine?”
“It sounded so foreign. Fossteen. Why’re you doing this now, Debby? You didn’t show the least curiosity before, you never asked questions …”
“It’s not because I miss them, Mama. It’s about medical history.” And psychic legacies.
I hadn’t yet met Madame Kezarina, the pay-per-prediction prophet with unusual props. I hadn’t yet stuck voodoo pins into her Hate-Me Hand nor rubbed the big toe of her bronze Vishnu Foot for good luck. I hadn’t sat under Madame K’s Mariposa Mystic, a wooden doll bought on sale at a Taxco boutique, and meditated on genetic mysteries. The mariposa is a butterfly-woman with horns and wings in dramatic reds, blues and greens, with big-nippled breasts and larva legs and feet. She hangs on the wall of Madame K’s “office,” a bug evolving into deity, a deity dissolving into bug. I see myself in the mariposa doll. Just as I had in the freakish dog in the pound.
Finders/Keepers took my fee and told me to get in touch with its San Francisco office, which would be in a better position than the Albany office to help. My file had been electronically transferred. I wouldn’t have to pay new start-up charges, though the hourly rates might be a little higher out west. The California bug in my head, I followed my file; I fulfilled my fate.
But before I got in my car to track down Clear Water Iris-Daughter, whatever her current name, on the other side of the continent, I made sure the bad times I’d pledged did indeed roll Francis Albert Fong’s way. One late-August night, I stood with gawkers across from the turreted and gargoyled Fong house on Union Avenue and watched rivers of flame lick at vintage velvet drapes, then split off and multiply, and crawl like amoebas across massive oak doors and curved-glass windows. A spectacular extravaganza of light, sound, heat. I was an auteur, too. Frankie had no right to be angry. He had a duty to take pride in my accomplishment.
Clarity. That’s what I prize more than knowledge. In the hot, harsh light of clarity I saw for myself the difference between justice and vengeance.
Frankie would file an inflated insurance claim. That was okay with me; the Flash’s losses deserved some extra compensation from corporate thugs. The costs I extracted—loss of past and loss of pride—were unreimbursable, and permanent. Frankie wouldn’t pursue any case of arson. He couldn’t afford to invite too much investigation, not with the undocumented Chinese aliens in his basement, the ones who did the cooking and cleaning for First Class Fong. The Fong Home Products frontman would hire new waifs and run them through mock interviews in other motels. And maybe get lucky next time.
Inner peace. That’s what I gained that smoky summer night as a wide, gracious porch smoldered and Frankie wept. Nirvana is finding the tiger balls within you. I ambled to the used Corolla Pappy and Mama bought me for graduation, and I made my sputtery getaway while the firefighters were still hacking away at Frankie’s dream house with their axes.
Part Two
Eastern, Central, Mountain, I ate the zones a day at a time, Chicago to Cheyenne to Salt Lake and Reno. For twenty years I’d set my watch back and forward twice a year, now I was turning it back every day. It seemed like a gift from God, that extra hour, then two, then three—no wonder Californians were different; they had more daylight to do things, longer nights to sleep through. That went a long way to explain the difference between Serena DiMartino and Clear Water Iris-Daughter.
Like Columbus, I was on the Pacific glidepath looking for the westward passage. Out west, prime time must start in the afternoon. Letterman was already back home in Connecticut when he was just starting in California. Weirdness.
Before that week I’d never been west of Niagara Falls; now I was driving through places that were only rumors. States no DiMartino had ever been in or talked about kept taking me