chapter 1 Meadowbrook, New Jersey, looks like it''s right out of an old-time postcard. It has a big town hall, with huge columns and a neat border of red tulips. There''s a quaint little Main Street, its wrought-iron lampposts twined with evergreen sprigs at Christmas; a big green park, where the kids trace ice-skating loops on the frozen pond. The town is nestled in a valley, and on one side is a steep incline that thrusts up into the ravine, where some of the expensive modern houses are perched like wood and glass boxes. On the other side the larger homes slowly give way to two-family houses and apartments on gritty Haley Avenue and to the big box stores of Route 12. More and more, shiny new condos have sprung up in the open gaps of land, a grove of pale brick McMansions standing where an old horse stable used to be. Halfway up the hill, in the old section of town, is Mrs. Abigail Harmon''s house.
It isn''t much of a house, as far as Meadowbrook houses go. More it''s a cottage, with a steep gabled roof and low exposed beams. The garden is a froth of eccentric tastes: pinwheels and tangled raspberry bushes, a crumbling slate wall and herb garden with chipped zigzagging paths. Mrs. Harmon inherited the place from her mother, who''d been born in the pink-wallpaper nursery, and whose grandfather once owned the hundred acres of farmland that makes up what is Meadowbrook today. Around the time Mrs. Harmon was born, her family''s apple orchard was sold off to build the train station. Nowadays, when the early train draws up, a stream of women, mostly from the Caribbean or Latin America, step down in their rubber-soled shoes, cradling their Dunkin'' Donuts coffees, and make their way to the pretty clapboard houses.
A few minutes later, up and down the streets, comes a chiming of voices, good-byes, slammed doors, cars backing down driveways, mothers and fathers rushing across town with their briefcases and still-wet hair to catch the next train to the city. It was one of those not-quite-spring days, weak sun slanting through the drafty windows, and Mrs. Lal, the housekeeper at Mrs. Harmon''s place, was giving the vacuum one last firm push on the bedroom floor. Mrs. Lal stood tall at nearly six feet, black hair cropped short and stylish, showing her broad neck and shoulders. Mothers liked her because she gave them a tidy sense of everything in its place: children in bed by seven o''clock, no whining, no peas left behind on the plates. Downstairs, Mrs.
Lal''s daughter, Jaya, was sitting at the big table in the kitchen. She was supposed to be memorizing the periodic table. Really she was trying to work up the nerve to tell her mother about the middle school spring dance. "Jaya!" Jaya''s mother stood in the kitchen doorway, holding up three colored markers. "Jaya Lal, you have something against putting the tops on things?" "Sorry." "How many times I have to tell you? This isn''t your house. You can''t just go mooning around like it''s yours. What''s Mrs.
Harmon going to think of the way I''m raising you!" "Okay, okay." In fact, what Jaya liked about Mrs. Harmon''s house was that she could treat it like hers. She didn''t have to say hello. Or good-bye. Mrs. Harmon just assumed she''d walk in if she felt like it. Of all her mother''s bosses, Mrs.
Harmon was the only one who seemed to want Jaya there-she encouraged it. Make yourself at home. I''ve got too many rooms as it is. Jaya would spread out her homework at the nicked pine table or help herself to what was in the refrigerator, even though half the time the milk was well past its expiration date. As Mrs. Lal was turning away, Jaya called out softly, "Mama?" "Yes?" Jaya hesitated. Shoved into her backpack was a bright pink flyer saying SPRING DANCE EXTRAVAGANZA! Quietly she handed the sheet to her mother, watching Mrs. Lal''s brow furrow while she read it.
Usually Jaya didn''t bother showing her mother any of the permission slips for ski trips or overnights to Washington, D.C. She just threw them into the garbage. Even if there was some kind of disclaimer in tiny print at the bottom that the school would pay for those "in need." No way was she going to sign up for that. "It''s a really big deal." Her voice quivered. "Me and my friends, we wanted to go.
" Her mother''s mouth made a tight line. "And . I thought maybe I could get a new dress?" "What''s wrong with that blue dress you bought last year?" "That was last year." Silence fell as her mother kept standing in the doorway, the flyer clutched in her hand. Jaya could hear her mother go on: Don''t you be like those American kids. So spoiled. Wasteful. Designer clothes and doing drugs and bad things.
I take care of them all the time. They show no respect for their parents. They run the house. "Mama-" "Jaya!" Her mother was using the Keep Your Voice Down, This Is Not Your House and Where Did You Learn to Talk That Way voice. "About the dress?" "Next year you get your work permit and you can have a job and buy yourself dresses and whatnot. Jolene from church told me her daughter got a good job at the Home Depot." Oh, great. Jaya imagined herself wearing an orange apron and standing around giving advice on garden shears to all the dads in Meadowbrook.
Was there nowhere she could hide who she was? Did everyone have to know how much they needed money? Why couldn''t she just be casual, like all those other kids, who sauntered into the cafeteria with a new pair of hundred-twenty-dollar sneakers, as if it were nothing? "And what about your homework?" Jaya''s face burned. "Is that a drawing?" She pointed to a quick sketch Jaya had started with her markers. Mrs. Lal didn''t approve of Jaya''s artwork, even if Jaya''s father had been an artist. Keep your eye on your science, she would often say. That''s what will get you a job. "Now go and see if there''s anything that Mrs. Harmon needs.
" "Yeah, sure." Shoving the flyer into her bag, she thought about the dance again, how all the kids got to dress up and spin across the polished parquet floor under a ceiling of balloons, the golf course lit up just for them. It reminded her of her father: how back in Trinidad, they would wake up early and go to the tourist part of town. Before Jaya opened the front door, she paused in the hall, looking over to the living room, where Mrs. Lal was now tidying. She felt a whiff of sadness watching her mother punch the sofa pillows, just a little too hard. Sundays in Port of Spain, while her mother studied her nursing books, Jaya used to accompany her father to the beach, where he would set up his easel by one of the resorts and paint, and sometimes sell his work to the tourists. She would lean against his legs, digging her toes into the hot white sand, watching the foamy surf curl and break on the shore.
Not far away was an octagonal restaurant, where she could hear the tap-tap melody of a steel band, men and women dancing under Chinese lanterns that shivered in the breeze. Then her father began to complain of stomach troubles and went into the hospital for tests. As he grew sicker, his hands trembled and he could barely hold up the brush; he still lugged his easel to the beach, but it became harder for him to work for long stretches. His figures became more ghostly, as if he didn''t have the energy to fill them in. At the end, he would lie in bed with a board propped across his knees and try to draw, but most of the time he fell asleep before he was done. After Jaya''s father died, her mother began to say, Your parents, Jaya, we''re unfinished business. That''s because she never completed nursing school and her father never finished engineering school-or his life. Whenever her mother said those words, Jaya felt she was the unfinished one, like one of her father''s drawings, with its spindly lines, all that unfilled space.
By the time her father passed away, she was nothing, just pure air and sadness. Mrs. Harmon was standing next to a garden bed, two sacks of new planting soil slumped on the top step of the porch. "Oh, there you are!" she called. "You think you can help me with this?" She held up a lattice basket filled with drooping black-eyed Susans. "I''m getting an early start." "Sure," Jaya answered. Usually, on the good-weather days like today, Mrs.
Harmon was bent over her flower beds, dressed in her usual khakis and a worn work shirt, a straw hat with a beaded string tied around her chin. Crouching down, Jaya helped Mrs. Harmon dig a hole, plant the flowers, and sprinkle mulch on top. Jaya noticed-not for the first time-how much Mrs. Harmon''s hands trembled and her eyes watered. "Why so glum?" Mrs. Harmon asked. Jaya shrugged.
"My mother won''t buy me a dress for the school dance." She added, "She never buys me anything I want. No new art supplies. Not even a set of markers." Mrs. Harmon laughed. "What a dictator." Jaya pushed her trowel hard into the ground.
"It isn''t fair. She''s always bossing me around." "That''s what mothers do. Although in my case, it was my husband who did the bossing." Mrs. Harmon didn''t have any children of her own. "Yeah. Well.
She does it too much." Jaya lifted a black-eyed Susan from the basket. She was surprised by the bitter rush of tears in her eyes. "She is trying to do what''s best for you." Best for you. Jaya hated t.