Shoes

NEW YORK

Prologue:

He had wandered Liberty Island for more than five hours. He had watched the little waves running in and out and the sea gulls arching their way across the sky. Now, it was raining.
He is a refined man, but today he is not above scrounging the trashcans for some dirty newspaper, and holding it over his head. He sits on a bench, the rain in rivers around him, carefully holding his shoes where they won't get wet. The world looks strange, when you're suddenly homeless.

Vishal Gopal was never late for work. But this morning, he would be. He jumped out of bed at ten o'clock, and threw on the same suit he'd worn the day before, now lying kicked and rumpled at the foot of his bed. He straightened his tie in the mirror and rinsed his mouth with water before dashing out the door. Malati was still asleep, her face buried in the pillow. He kissed the top of her head before he left.
He ran through his house, grabbing at objects and throwing them helter-skelter into his briefcase. At the last minute, he turned and saw the box, still sitting on the table where he had left it. He hesitated, then picked it up, almost as an afterthought.
At quarter to eleven, Vishal was running down the walk between the flowerbeds. As he reached his car, he looked down at his feet and realized he wasn't wearing any shoes.
The shoes! Go back to your house and get your shoes. And that was how it started.





Part One:

America is a land of immigrants. A melting pot. Vishal had heard this word before, and he liked it, envisioning the country wreathed in the aromatic spices from his mothers kitchen. It was surprising and a little exciting to learn, in sixth grade, that everyone, far back, came from somewhere else. After the Schoolhouse Rock "Melting Pot" jingle had been sung to satisfaction, Vishal was naïve enough to raise his hand and say, "So everyone is like us?"
Vishal's mother, Tara Chopra, always maintained that she never meant to come to the United States. Raised on the outskirts of Bombay, she had nothing and at the same time everything to lose. When her sister Leela was lucky enough to be married off to an American-bound scientist, Tara frowned for a few days, then doggedly set herself to work, eventually moving to Bombay where she worked at a restaurant. It was in that city, Tara liked to say, that she came alive, away from Papa Chopra's old-fashioned ideas and Maa Chopra's fears that had seemed to shade the little compound she had lived in for the first fifteen years of her ambitious life.
When people pointed out that Tara had actively worked for a plane ticket to the United States, she would nod her head wisely and say, "Only at first." Citing the eight years she lived in Bombay, she would say, "I was very contended, having carved out of the universe some small existence for myself. But sometimes, it's when you're the most happy that fate comes to you." Fate came for Tara in the form of an airmail letter from an acquaintance of her sister, promising a passage over if she would help in the restaurant he had moved to Manhatten to start from scratch. "He must have heard of my cooking," Tara said proudly. "Some people have crazy dreams," her mother said.
Tara remembered the plane ride most vividly. She had traced their flight overhead for years but had never been in one. Though she was not usually so sentimental, as the trees and the barren grass of the airfield got smaller and smaller below her, she had a sudden feeling like being stabbed in the heart.
Tara met Prem Gopal her second year in America, when she had ascended to the position of a part-time cook at the restaurant, dubbed Monsoon. He worked in a law firm in Brooklyn but swung by Monsoon often because it reminded him of his mother and her home cooked meals. He had grown up in the suburbs around Boston, a place Tara had never heard of. When she told him, one day when she was on the late shift and he was the only customer left, he took a postcard from his pocket and put it on the table in front of her. It showed some sailboats and a bridge in the background. "That's Boston," he said.
Prem Gopal was tall and always wore tailored black suits, and when he spoke it was quietly and precisely, like a schoolteacher, not a lawyer. But what
Tara noticed first about him were his shoes. Leela always said that Tara had an economical eye; she noticed only the things in a man that indicated something about his long-term stability, and she ignored charmers, the reason her younger sister was the first to be wed. Prem Gopal's shoes were never dirty, no matter what the weather outside. Eventually Tara realized that he always wore the same pair: black oxfords. Maybe he had no other, but then it was surprising that after a year they were still so clean. When he was deep in conversation, he would lift his right foot slightly out of his shoe, then slide it back in with the grace of stepping into water.
A year and a half later, when they were married, Tara found a box in the back of his closet. She slid it open and drew back the faded tissue. Inside were the shoes, side by side, laid there as one would lay children down to a nap. Tara stared at them in surprise, her brow furrowing, as she understood that he was a man of two sides: wearing the shoes as long as they fit, then packing them away just as carefully, in the back of a closet, as though they had never been. Then she folded the shoes in the tissue paper and put the box back on the shelf, and did not speak of it again for a long time.
A few minutes after Vishal was born, Tara had Prem drive down into the city to buy some baby shoes. She laid them beside his crib, so they would be the first thing he saw when he woke up.
It was not until much later that Tara told Vishal these things, but when she did she had said, "Remember," and pressed his hand, as though giving him a piece of something.

The winter that Sanjaya was born, Vishal was eight. He loved the playground, where Tara took the two every day as soon as the weather was warm enough. Vishal loved to swing, but he did not play with the other children and could not be coaxed to try any more vigorous activity, such as climbing on monkey bars or sliding down the fireman's pole. He liked to be by himself, at school his teachers had noted a certain reserve about him, and he went through his childhood as though in a bubble of dreams. Not knowing of what visions these dreams were made, Tara tried neither to draw them out nor destroy them. Children will be children, she thought, and sometimes dreams are necessary. One night, walking by his room at night, thought she could hear him whispering in the dark to some imaginary companion.
. One windy day in April, Tara saw people in line for tickets to see the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island. Inspired, she was delighted to find she had exactly enough money in her pocketbook for one ticket and two children's fares. They boarded the ferry watched as the Lady of Liberty come closer and closer, surreal as if in a dream. When they got off, the line was very long to climb up to the Crown, so Tara took the children for a walk around the base. She was trying to tell Vishal what Prem had told her about the Statue of Liberty, how she had been given to our country by France and had served as beacon and symbol of hope for so many. She looked down at her son, clad in a Spiderman sweatshirt, starting curiously out at the gulls that skimmed the waves. What does he see? she wondered. It cannot be what I, a grown woman, see. Not that here, at the foot of Liberty, we are still strangers. He was standing obediently beside her, but his small hand twitched in her own. She had paused and looked out over the water, trying to imagine India, and Vishal had taken advantage of her silence to run away. Tara snapped out of her reverie when she heard him fall, tripping on his untied shoelace, hitting his knee to the pavement with a dull scrape. Sanjaya cried and Tara tried to cradle him as she ran to her son. But a tall man got to him first. Unshaven, barefoot, dressed in ragged clothes, Tara's first thought was don't you dare touch my son! But she had been too slow; he was picking Vishal up, dusting him off, and bending to talk him, asking if he was all right. Tara murmured thanks, embarrassed as her prejudiced thoughts of a moment ago flitted quickly away. She pulled Vishal close to her, asked if he was alright, when she noticed that he held in his hand a wire hanger bent in the shape of a square and covered in saran wrap. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth became hard, but the man was already gone.
The next year, Prem said, "The city is no place to raise two children," and Tara agreed.

What Vishal liked best about Prem were his neckties. When he was very little, Prem wore a different necktie to work each day of the week. "You have to spice it up when you wear the same suit 365 days a year," his father had explained and Vishal would chant, "Spice it up! Spice it up!" thinking of the curry Tara sometimes made. Prem had neckties with golfballs on them, neckties with nautical symbols, neckties with frogs, music notes and sushi. His ties were red, yellow, green, blue. When he came home from work, Prem would sit Vishal on his lap and he would touch the silk, loving the feel of it on his fingers. He secretly wanted his father to give him one of his ties, and he imagined them all hung in his closet in a colorful row, when he was a grown up. He didn't notice the exact day when Prem stopped wearing them. But one afternoon, when he was seventeen, he asked, "Dad, whatever happened to your ties?" and Prem answered, "Don't know son. I guess I just didn't feel like wearing them anymore." Vishal never saw them again.
Vishal graduated top of his class and went to Columbia. Prem, reserved and tact as always, never talked to him about jobs, and yet Vishal became a lawyer. When he left home, Tara went to clean out his room and was touched to find a stash of Hindi paperbacks under his bed. She had not taught her children the language because Prem was not fluent, yet she had whispered lullabies and sang songs to them when they were tiny children, in the soft darkness of their old city apartment.
When Sanjaya, too, left a few years later, Tara found the house strangely quiet. Prem announced that he did not plan to retire for six years, so Tara was resigned to being by herself for most of the time. She had stopped working when her children were born and counted it a blessing that she had a man dependant enough to support her. Now she realized that Prem was at the office more than he was at home, that he had always been. Ah well, Tara thought, it is the usual fate for American families. We raised a good son, and now we have the rest of our days to learn to live happily, together and separate. Tara was no romantic.
She began to look forward to the school holidays when Vishal would come home. She would heat him a cup of tea and talk to him as she stirred a pot of curry. Prem would nod and smile but make no special fuss. Vishal felt slighted but didn't show it.
One visit, when Vishal was pouring over schoolbooks at the dining table, he felt Prem's shadow in the doorframe.
"You're not too stressed, are you? With all your work?" Prem asked.
"No, not at all," said Vishal, pushing some hair out of his eyes. "Anyway, that's what it's all about, right?"
"No," said Prem, "but it's certainly important." Vishal stopped working, and looked at him intently.
"Well what I mean," said Prem, "is don't lose sight of yourself. Don't let it eat you up."
"Eat me up?" said Vishal, amused. Prem smiled apologetically, and Vishal was annoyed at him for being a lawyer yet not able to articulate such a little thing as a word of wisdom to his son.

Vishal met Malati when he was waiting for a traffic light to change. She was tall and wearing black skirt that flattered her hips and fell just to her knees. Their eyes met across the flood of cars and when they finally stepped out onto the pavement, suddenly they were the only ones crossing the street.
Malati was studying to be a doctor, and Vishal saw this as fate, as she would understand that he would not have time for her when he was studying to pass the bar. Somehow, of course, they did find time, over early morning walks in the park, dinners at high end restaurants neither could afford, and Vishal began to understand with no particular ceremony that he was deeply in love.
They were married a year and a half later. The day of the wedding, Tara took Vishal aside. "I have a present for you," she said, and gave him a box wrapped in red paper. He opened it and was surprised to see a pair of shoes, black oxfords. "They were your father's, when I first met him," said Tara. Vishal nodded solemnly.
As both were still struggling to complete training, Vishal and Malati had to stay in the city for a few years. One winter Sanjaya, dropping out of school, flirting with drugs and a disgrace to his family, moved in with them, and the two brothers become closer than they had as children. Sanjaya was dashing, his smile big and boyish, the glint of his eyes and conversation equally infectious. Vishal was handsome, tall, dark, witty, his rare bursts of energy always a pleasant surprise. He saw his brother back on his feet again and then he and Malati began to plan for a baby. They got a son a year later. Prem helped them locate a house and they moved to the suburbs, where their second child, a girl, was born.
And Vishal Gopal continued to live a very normal life.

The winter that Malati was expecting her third child, Prem died. It was a heart attack, sudden and not unheard of, for a man of Prem's decent age. People said that it was an odd death for such a mild mannered man. The funeral was quiet, just a few friends and business partners. It wasn't until they were all standing around the coffin that Vishal realized how few acquaintances his father had. When they came to shake his hand, he nodded his head but found there was not one familiar word to pass between them. These were men Vishal had never met before. When he looked at them, he felt more empty than he had holding the phone to his ear when Tara had told him the news.
Vishal stayed a month with Tara, helping her go through Prem's things. Usually so capable, Tara was overwhelmed with their finances, something she had let Prem take care of. Vishal had to sort them all out for her and in the end hired a cousin to help her keep her taxes straight. They went to clean Prem's office but there wasn't much to empty out; once he had finally retired, Prem had been quick to discard anything he no longer needed.
"I should have known this about your father," Tara said, dusting an empty filing cabinet. "Gone-and not even anything to leave behind."
Later, alone, Vishal went through all the drawers of Prem's desk methodically, without knowing why. Maybe he was looking for something, a passionate love letter penned to Tara in a fit of youth? A mysterious key to a family fortune? A badge? Or maybe just one of those colored neckties he remembered so well from his childhood.





Part Two:

It began one day in December. Malati was alone in the house trying to embroider. Nikhil was in school, and Chanda was playing upstairs. Malati stopped her work periodically to listen for the reassuring scrape of drawers opening. Chanda was at that precocious age when nothing is more fascinating than others' possessions. Malati smiled. Vishal said often that his daughter reminded him of Sanjaya in his youth. But she was the picture of her mother, a perfect version of a mini-Malati, with eyes so dark they were the color of coal.
Malati rethreaded her needle, cursing her fingers, which were so long and graceful one would think them easily capable of sewing, but in fact they were only quick on the operating table. She was tracing a design of birds and flowers, a stylized garden, and she found herself imagining an oasis in the desert. What a useless design for an American woman, she thought. She was sewing around the beak of a bird when she heard a crash. Dropping the needle, she dashed up the stairs, taking them two at a time, her breath so quick it seemed not to come at all. At the top of the stairs, she stopped. The crash had come from the bureau, which had fallen forward to the floor. Chanda was standing beside it, and in her hands was a strange object. It was a wire hanger bent into a square and covered with saran wrap.
"I don't know what it is, honey," said Malati when the dresser had been resurrected and her heartbeat regular again. "Where did you find it? Why don't you just put it back?"
"Dad will know!" asserted Chanda. Malati picked her up. She left the frame on the bed. She meant to throw it away later; Vishal would be tired when he got back from work.
But Chanda dug it up again. When she showed it to Vishal, he said, "It's a star frame. If you hold it up to the sky, you can align the stars with the pieces of paper in the cellophane." Chanda played with the star frame all evening, but soon tired of it. Almost as soon as it had been abandoned, Vishal took it and tucked it into his briefcase with surprising care, his fingers tracing the frame the way they had caressed Chanda's head when she was a newborn. When Malati asked if it was a favorite toy Prem had made for him, he said no, it was just something he had found while playing with his mothers saris, kept in cellophane bags in the back of her closet.

Winter dragged on and Vishal felt like he lived in a haze. It was hard to keep his mind on what he was doing. He didn't quite know what was troubling him, but he felt some sort of annoyance about the star frame. It felt familiar to him, as though it had a significance that he had forgotten. He fought for the memory of where it had truly come from, but he could never quite reach it, murky thoughts rising and always falling just below the surface of his consciousness.
Vishal started becoming forgetful. He had to be reminded of car keys, grocery lists, appointments and errands. Malati noticed but decided to say nothing. It's still so soon after Prem's death, she reminded herself. But as winter melted into spring she began to watch him. "Why don't we go out tonight?" she said in May, wrapping her arms around him and kissing his head. "It's been awhile. We can get a sitter for the kids."
"Okay," he agreed, and they made the drive all the way to Manhattan and sought out a little Italian joint that reminded them of the places they used to eat fifteen years ago when they were courting. As the sun went down and the New York lights went up, they walked along a bridge together holding hands. The air was warm, the water looked inviting. Far away, he could see the Statue of Liberty. Suddenly, he was gripped with a strange and crazy idea.
"Let's go to the Statue of Liberty. Let's climb up to the Crown."
"Vishal, it's getting late. Are you sure there's a ferry running?"
He was not sure, but he found no harm in checking. With a confused Malati in tow, he ran many blocks down to the ferry terminal. She was right, there was no ferry going out this time of night. He stared around at the lot, empty except for a group of teenagers on bikes. He sat down on a bench. Malati hesitated, then sat down beside him. In her face there was soft, tender, fear. She took his hand, he let her. They walked back to their car in silence and drove away from Manhattan.

It is a few weeks later, surfing the Internet for something, that Vishal comes across an Albert Camus quote:
In a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. The divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

So that's what's happening to me, he thinks.

A few months pass. The baby is born, it is a girl, and they name her Pia. Malati's face is flushed and her eyes now seem to tear up easily. It is clear to Vishal that this child will be her pride and joy. Following a tradition started by his mother, Vishal goes out and buys baby shoes. Pia will wear them for a year, and on her first birthday, they will be put in a box beside the first shoes of her sister and brother. It is nothing Vishal has ever understood, or ever thought about, until now. When he returns from shopping, he goes to his closet. There, on the highest shelf, half obscured by a mess of shirts, is the box. He carries it to the dining table, sits down and opens it. He examines his fathers' black oxfords, his brow furrowing. He puts them on his own feet. They fit.

It was ten o'clock. Vishal looked his clock in shock-what had happened to his alarm? How absurd, he thought. Then he saw the light coming through the blinds. It was just another day.
He got out of bed on wobbly legs. He pulled on his suit from yesterday, and methodically, maniacally, straightened his tie. He looked at the clock, 10:15. No time to brush his teeth; he rinsed them with water.
He looked at Maya sleeping. At that instant, a warm wind seemed to go through him. He kissed her, and pulled the covers over her exposed arm.
On his way out, he saw the shoebox, still sitting on the table. He shoved it into his briefcase on an impulse, barely recognized.
He walked out between his flowerbeds, checking his watch. He looked down at his feet and realized he had no shoes. He looked back at the house, then to his car, then at his watch.
And on that day in June, Vishal Gopal went to work without his shoes.

"Vishal Gopal is never late for work," the man at the desk was saying as Vishal strode in and slammed the briefcase on his desk. "At least, not usually." He hangs up the phone and looks Vishal up and down like a doctor. "What happened to you?" he finally ventures.
Vishal does not know if he is referring to his rumpled suit or his askew tie. Not knowing which disorder he is remarking on, he does not know which disorder to address, so he says nothing. He holds the man's eyes carefully and then follows his gaze down to his feet.
"Vishal." It is not a question, but a remark. Vishal opens his mouths, then closes it. The man, Dick Chambers, his secretary, sits down on his desk and looks at him, as though he is an animal that might bite.
Eventually Vishal becomes aware that the man is talking to him. "Marital troubles?" he's saying, "I know all about them, man. I got divorced two years ago, myself. Pity. Nice woman, but sometimes things just don't work out, know what I mean? No one's fault really." He twists the stem of a fake flower Vishal keeps in a jar on his desk. "No one's fault really," he murmurs, and Vishal struggles to correct him, "No...no, it's not my marriage..."
"Kids? They're stressful I've heard, wouldn't know from personal experience, but a friend of mine..."
"No it's not my kids," gasps Vishal. Dick thinks he looks dreadful, like he's just run a marathon or something, for goodness sake.
"Well, what is it then?"
"Have you ever seen one of these?" Vishal opens his briefcase and pulls out the star frame. Dick takes it, looks at it in the light, turns it upside down.
"No? That wire looks like copper though."
Dick is looking at him, but he doesn't look back because a sudden thought is stirring in him. Copper. Copper skin. The Statue of Liberty. He stands and puts the star frame back into his briefcase. He starts toward the door.
"Hold on there, Vishal! Vishal, where are you going? Now Vishal..."

Vishal drives to the Liberty Island Ferry. The line is not long; it's the middle of the day in the middle of the week. Vishal fumbles in his pockets and is delighted to discover he has just the right amount of change for one fare. When he reaches the window, the woman smiles at him and says, "Wonderful day to go over there, isn't it?"
"Yes," says Vishal. "Absolutely wonderful."
He walks toward the dock and does not stop when the woman calls out suddenly, "Sir! Sir, you'll need shoes to get on the ferry! Sir, it's required!"

It's raining on the Statue of Liberty. Vishal has been sitting on the park bench for hours, having exhausted himself with wandering. He is wet, but Lady Liberty must be far more uncomfortable. He'd read in history books how she'd come to adorn our harbor, a gift from France, a beacon of hope for so many hopeful immigrants. Immigrants like his mother, always resolutely looking forward, ignoring stubbornly every hardship, be that obstacle their own marriage at the expense of their children. Immigrants like his paternal grandparents, hard workers, high achievers, breeding meticulous, careful sons who in their turn would make their sons in the same mold, but still never know how to talk to them about what really mattered. Vishal sits down on a bench and looks out across the ocean. He thinks of Malati, just waking, putting on coffee, getting dressed, looking in on the baby, smoothing her beginning curls. He thinks of Nikhil and Chanda, raising their hands in classrooms, learning how to bat their eyelashes and smile to teachers whose minds were elsewhere anyway, ready at the ringing of the bell to dash off with their comrades into the bright schoolyard, laughing, swearing, fighting, well on their ways already to becoming doctors and lawyers or thugs and prostitutes. And maybe, Vishal thinks, these are things that are already decided, as random as the shoes we wear.
Vishal opens the box and stares at his father's black oxfords. He remembers the look in his mother's eyes when Tara had given them to him. "I fell in love with your father because of the way he took care of his shoes," she had said. Her tone was serious and Vishal felt somehow reprimanded, and she must have sensed this because she added lightly, "Never neglect the little things," and pushed him with a smile out toward his new wife and the festivities. He remembered how he had wanted one of Prem's neckties, not only because he wanted to remember Prem when he had been young and spontaneous, but also because they were same the bright silk of his mothers saris, stuffed unused and unworn since she came over from India. If Tara had an economical eye, then her son had a compassionate eye, loving the things about a person that represented what they had lost.
Vishal falls asleep on the bench, his briefcase a pillow, his jacket a blanket. People pass him, and he hears the whispers of children. He can hear the mother's reprimands, and his dreams are full of children's sticky fingers reaching toward him and mothers hands pulling them away. When he wakes, he sees he has company. A man in rags and dreadlocks is sitting on the ground near his bench. As Vishal sits up, the man turns around and looks at him. Vishal decides the gaze is friendly and nods.
"It's a nice morning," he says.
The man nods. Vishal now realizes that he is busy twisting wire. It looks as if he is making a frame. Vishal opens his briefcase and pulls out the starframe. He looks at the man, the man looks at the frame, and something passes between them. Vishal puts the star frame down on the bench, gathers his few possessions, and starts off again.
"You look like a wandering monk!" shouts the man suddenly. Maybe I am, says Vishal to himself, Maybe what I am looking for is nothing less than divine.

It is already noon and a line is forming to climb up to the Crown. Vishal knows that he probably has to have money or a token, but he pushes himself into the front of the line nonetheless. He finds a large group of Japanese tourists, and slides into the Statue when they do. Climbing to the Crown is more work than he had thought, but almost from the moment he started walking he could taste salt and fresh air, and their promise pulls him to the top. He jostles for a position to look out through the crown and down to New York.
America, India. India, America. Tara never told Vishal much about her life in Bombay but Vishal realizes that, were she standing here with him right now, she might feel homesick. She might tell him that New York looks like Bombay, and maybe he would believe her. Maybe he would ask her to talk more about Bombay, and hearing it would be like finding another half of himself. Or maybe it would be meaningless.
Homeless, the wind seems to say, homeless, homeless stranger. Vishal would usually have protested, picturing his small white house, but today he decides to let the wind wash over him.
But it is to that home he must go. What now? The starframe had led him here, his fathers shoes must lead him back.
Vishal begins to think again about his children. They are growing up without any knowledge of India, of the land that their grandmother loved so much. And Malati herself, a third generation, as American as any Caucasian. Vishal thinks of the long hours Prem had sacrificed, always for his family, even when being at home would have perhaps been better. Tara too, striving always ahead, when all her children needed were roots. Let me do better, Vishal thinks. If I can give my children shoes, I can give them bigger things as well.
The sun was shining fully now and he shook out his jacket, wrinkled from being slept on. He put the shoes in his briefcase. He walked back toward the ferry terminal. As the boat pulled away, he looked back at Lady Liberty and smiled. "When I first saw America, I told myself, welcome home," Tara had told him. Vishal recalls but does not do the same. Instead he imagines, with a joy that is suddenly beginning to surge through him, how he will whisper those same words when the plane he will take his family in finally touches down in India.