CROSSROADS 

by Dola Dutta Roy

All rights reserved

Please check earlier stories by clicking on the month on the right 

For over a month, everyday, I had been fretting over this. Helen had given 

us enough notice and secretly, I did try looking for an excuse to get away 

somewhere when she was gone, but didn't quite succeed. My best friend, Mauricette, was also 

leaving for Jacksonville to be with her boyfriend’s family overThanksgiving; 

then the time came when Helen left too -- visiting her daughter in Irvine 

over the long weekend leaving me to share the cottage with Naomi.

This made me enormously nervous.

Naomi and I had been boarding with Helen Baker for some time. Neither 

Naomi nor I had any family out here in the valley. Me, coming all the 

way from India and Naomi from New York, a place she hated to be. 

Unfortunately, we didn't have any close friends to visit either for a 

hearty turkey meal over Thanksgiving.

For some reason, Naomi Goldstein was one of God’s many     

quirky creations. She was five feet nothing and slender, in my opinion -

just skin ‘n bones - Twiggy style. Her dish-water hair that

came down straight to her shoulder blades, was mostly unkempt and

straggly. It framed her perfectly contoured face where every feature was

fine except for the large blue eyes that had a moist, 

reminiscing look at all times. But when, and, if she smiled, they lit up her

face and made her look angelic. Well, almost. That is how I found Naomi,

the first time I set my eyes on her, as she walked in through the front

door with bag and baggage -- and her violin.

2.

We had woken up late that morning and chose to linger at the breakfast table before 

we embarked on the motions of our holiday routines -- of 

shopping and cleaning for the week. As for me, I was killing time trying to fuel myself 

for the day and making discreet plans to engage in activities that would 

give me time to spend alone, away from Naomi. But Thanksgiving being a 

family affair, I was at a loose end and thought it best to visit the Art 

Exhibition at the Griswold’s Inn mainly to soak in freedom away 

from monotony and, not to mention, some unsavory disquiet at home.

I looked furtively at Naomi, who at the best of times, hovered 

between sleeplessness and the twilight zone. She seemed to be still 

in a ‘nowhere’ state that she herself was unaware of.

But that was nothing new; not because she was unwilling to face 

the world -- but due to an overdose of prescribed sedatives the night

before. These were meant to keep her nerves calm and steady. 

There was no telling with her.But to my surprise Naomi seemed 

unusually relaxed.  If this was a sign for her being bored with life, I welcomed it.

Naomi emptied her box of Kellogg’s into a bowl with a faraway look in her eyes, and folded her legs on the chair. Helen would have vehemently objected to it, if she were to see that. Her eyes had a touch of vapid pensiveness, perhaps out of sheer loneliness and lack of anything exciting to embark upon. For some time she stared into space sipping coffee and spooning her cereal. Finally, jerking out of her somnambulistic trance, she felt the inclination to talk.

There is indeed some comfort in unburdening yourself to a stranger or alien who would move out of your orbit sooner or later. But I grew apprehensive.

Naomi grunted and whined at the same time about how meaningless these celebrations were for her and why she left her life behind in New York, never to return. She sounded a little wistful and nostalgic, no doubt, and even in my half-awake state, I realized that she had plunged into another of her abysmal “dark” days that swept over her at regular intervals. It was a bit disturbing for me especially with Helen and Tim, the third ex-boarder, nowhere in the scene. Somehow it made me nervous to be her focal point of at the breakfast table.

I avoided looking at her hoping she might decide to stop midway and spare me the unpardonable right to peek into her private life even by accident. I certainly did not wish get too involved in her personal state of affairs.

I watched her moves carefully and nodded appropriately while I bit into my toasts. I wasn’t sure when she would crack up without warning or what she would tell me could be the truth or half-truth or -- no truth at all.

We had known each other for some time now. We meant Naomi, Tim Sullivan and myself– all at different areas of academics -- pursuing our personal goals trying to equip ourselves to combat the tough world that lay ahead.

Timothy Sullivan from Boulder, Colorado, a Grad student at Claremont Graduate School nearby, had come in a few weeks before I became a boarder with Helen, and then it was Naomi, the following semester.

Timothy or Tim was rather elusive. He never had his meals at home and was out of the house most of the time. I wondered if that was a guy thing, to be out and grazing around at the slightest opportunity! We hardly ran into each other except in the hallway that led to the common washroom for boarders, which we took turns to keep clean every weekend. As it appeared, our conversations never progressed beyond exchanging greetings.

3.

Helen’s comfortable little cottage was on East Bonita in La Verne, a slumbering little town, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel - Pomona Valleys situated a few miles east of Los Angeles. For us it was very conveniently located in an area that was decent, quiet and peaceful, and more importantly, reasonably priced. 

Naomi was faltering through her undergraduate studies at Pomona College not too far away. She had found student housing on campus rather expensive, so opted for home-stay. Soon she got her second-hand red Honda Civic and wandered about La Verne, Pomona, Claremont and even Upland-- discovering every nook and corner in her orbit and making friends and --sometimes foes.

Little did Helen, Tim or me have any idea what we were in for making her a part of our tribe.

A widow in her mid- sixties with well-manicured hands, close-cropped hair and a high-pitched voice to match, Helen Baker unknowingly betrayed a muffled southern accent. She told me over a stray conversation one day, quite inconsequentially, sipping coffee out of monstrous cups in the backyard that the cottage was left to her by her late husband who passed away some years back. With her only daughter married off, she got lonesome and thought it was a good idea to have boarders for company on a temporary basis. 

Later, I realized that she had financial problems. She was, however, hard- working and in a way forced to let lodgings to generate some income that took care of her monthly expenses. I also understood that she was undoubtedly quite insecure to live by herself, especially when crazy psychopaths made it their passion to go on a rampage attacking elderly women who lived in quiet neighborhoods. 

Of many of the commandments that governed our stay at the cottage, Helen was very particular about how far we could tread in her territory.

The house had four bedrooms, three to let out and the Master-bedroom that Helen occupied at the far end of a passage that ran along the other bedrooms. The large -living room was stuffed with American oak furniture in fading upholstery, Navajo artifacts and some fake crystal. The dining area was attached to the living room, adjacent to a fairly large kitchen and the den. Every little space apart from the hallway, kitchen and the den was out of bounds for the boarders. The living room opened up to the backyard that was also accessible from the master-bedroom. The backyard enclosed a patch of green and flowering plants surrounding it. Helen loved to tend the garden. The big gardenia tree outside my window was my favorite, which is why I had decided to pick that room for a bit of nostalgia. Gardenia was my favorite flower and reminded me of rainy summer evenings in Calcutta, India.

On Sundays Helen generally woke up early to visit the Church nearby and came back after having a heavy brunch with her community friends. Needless to say, on those days we could stretch our legs at her dining-table which was a ‘no-no’ under normal circumstances. Of course, she had no knowledge of it.

Or perhaps she did.

However, Helen usually left us alone. She had her dinner early and disappeared into her room to watch her favorite soaps in the evening. She hardly came out of her confinement unless she had a community dinner or any other special events to attend. Basically, she gave us space and was quite fond of us, especially Naomi, even though she was neither an angel, nor a constellation of virtues.

But Naomi was not embarrassed or apologetic about her erratic manners.

On her ‘bright’ days , like the day she landed a job at the music store at The Village in Claremont, she’d stroll in the hallway with a box of croissants or pastries and hand it to Helen with a flourish. She would give a hug to anybody in sight. On her ‘dark’ days the front door bore the brunt of her displeasure and the kitchen shook with the music she created with the banging of utensils. This drove Helen out of her reverie in her room who charged out shrieking, reminding Naomi of the rules and regulations of boarding with her.

Needless to say, Naomi was deaf to all that. Nobody knew what irked her. At times she would fume in silence and at some other times she would nag and complain rolling her eyes in fury and then take her car out in a huff and return only after she had had a chat with her shrink.

The following few days would be peaceful until the next outburst. She hovered around like a solitary creature with a look of maligned madness -- indifferent to the world and played the violin in her room to comfort her aching soul till she got tired of it.

There was indeed a communication gap that kept us apart. Fortunately, she preferred to stay by herself most of the time. We got used to her mood swings and periodic reticence and learnt to give her space. But today she wanted to talk!

* * * 

to continue......