Home Leave: A Novel by Brittani Sonnenberg Page B

wakes up early, thanks to jet lag. The clock blinks five a.m. He flips through the channels to kill time before the breakfast buffet in the hotel restaurant opens at seven. After breakfast, with five hours to go until his meeting, he decides to walk around Bombay a bit. He is soon sweating, so he meanders to the dusty shade of a park and watches the morning slide by. One of the best things about his travel schedule is the constant momentum. Like his first basketball season as a freshman, Chris finds, work demands leave him exhausted. But such a ruthless schedule keeps him on his toes, and he relishes the challenge. Right now, for instance, as he sits here, watching India, his mind is also on the factory tour he will take at three, and which questions he should ask. Sure, you could call him distracted, but that’s how he works best: multitasking. Chris spends the next ten minutes brainstorming questions he might be asked on Logan’s profit margins. But it’s impossible to concentrate in the heat. He gives up, feeling suddenly jet-lagged, listless, and a little lonely.
    His mind wanders to the States: to Elise, Leah, his parents. What is his father doing now? This is one of Chris’s favorite mental games to play, and it always cheers him up. Eight a.m. in India: six p.m. in Chariton. Mom and Dad must be sitting down to dinner, Chris thinks, the same kind of thing they always eat this time of year, sloppy joes on white buns, corn on the cob, and Jell-O salad. His sister might drive over and join them. Then prime-time news and bed. While I, Chris thinks, am securing the future of business in India for my firm. Exploring Bombay, one of the world’s largest cities. Representing my country overseas. Chris loves playing this game of comparative realities because he always wins.
    Chris’s pride at the miles he’s put between himself and his hometown is an ease Elise does not share; something he has often tried to impress upon her, with no luck: there’s no need to feel guilty for getting out when they did. They both escaped their small towns, both dodged the pointed finger of their respective fates: Chris, as the eldest, the only son, narrowly eluded farming; and Elise, just as mercifully, skirted becoming a preacher’s wife, handing out lemonade at prayer meetings, or God knows what she would have done down there. But whereas Elise frets about having “abandoned” her family, Chris sees their absences in the family pews of First Baptist and Pilgrim Lutheran, respectively, as cause for celebration. We’re American, Chris tells Elise, we do whatever the hell we want, and we do it better than the last generation.
    What Chris does not tell Elise, what he himself could not put into words, is that every day he shows up to work at Logan he is nonetheless obeying his father’s commands, a stern inner voice with a slightly nasal midwestern accent: Work your tail off. Don’t take a thing for granted. Forget the easy way out. Don’t blame others for your mistakes. Even though his current white-collar tasks are a far cry from his teenage chores (hoisting hay bales into trailers, cleaning cow stalls), Chris is following in his father’s footsteps, and he knows that he has made Frank Kriegstein proud. (It is only thirty years later, when the farm is finally sold, and his father’s voice, over the phone, is heavy with grief, that Chris will come to understand Elise’s dull guilt, and the once stern, authoritative voice in his head will grow petulant, accusing, cracked with sorrow.)
    “Do you mind?” A middle-aged Indian gentleman with glasses and a newspaper indicates the space next to Chris. Chris does, but there’s no way to politely refuse, so he simply nods. He considers standing up and continuing his walk, but his new sense of satisfaction feels somehow tied to the bench, and he is loath to leave it.
    The man unfolds the paper. He reads as though he is listening to a friend relate a story of deep misfortune, shaking his