The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (13 page)

In hindsight, everyone had premonitions, if you believe the accounts. One man, a Sikh but no extremist, leaving on business, leaving his family behind, saw a man he knew to be an extremist at the airport. They exchanged pleasantries, after which the departing man went
straightaway to a kiosk where he bought a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of life insurance before getting on board the jet.

Another man, after seeing his family off, noticed the British Airways line was full of observant Sikhs while the Air India line had almost none. “What’s going on?” he asked a friend. “Hadn’t you heard?” the friend replied. “Sikhs are warning each other: avoid Air India.” The man tried to go after his wife and kids, but was stopped.

Suresh fought with Kritika on the way to the airport. “Did I do that to make it easier to say goodbye?” he asked me. I didn’t answer, that people often pick fights with loved ones on the eve of a separation, because I didn’t know what he most wanted to believe.

I phoned as they were getting ready to go to the airport. Some small thing, an excuse. I had no premonition. I only wanted to hear their voices. My sister was stressed: in a hurry. My nephew was curt: monosyllabic. My brother-in-law was out getting gas. My niece—my niece was all ready, her knapsack packed. She told me which books she was bringing, what games, stuffed animal, candy.

For a long time after, I couldn’t remember any of it, though I remembered now that I pictured her, leaving the security cage, hoisting her small, stuffed tote onto her shoulder, pulling a ponytail from under the strap, her shoes slipping on the newly waxed floor, Sikh women cleaners looking past her impassively. Unless I’m making that up.

For a long time, I thought that all I had heard, over the line, was pure sound: her voice. Her voice, the sound of which I will not try to describe, the sound of which had no precedent in history; the sound of which will never be heard again.

She was sweet beyond sweetness. She was not a saint. She was not a future unrecognized Canadian asset. She was beautiful and peculiar and still-unknown. She was just a child.

Oh, her voice! What sound fell into the sea? My child, oh, my child, oh, my lost, my smiling child.

I WOKE ON THE FLOOR BESIDE THE BED
instead of in it, not with the sun, which was above and beyond me, but to my phone’s jangling. My mouth was glued shut and my knees, old unreliable knees, were not bending. The floor. I want to say this is not as sordid as it seems. My own mother only moved to a bed late in her life, and her mother never used one. When we holidayed at relatives’ homes, we all sacked out on bamboo mats on the floor, wherever we found a free spot.

I wished I had made it to the bed. My brain had swollen so that I couldn’t open my eyes, but the floor stayed still as long as I didn’t move. The phone beeped a voice-mail alert as I pulled myself to sitting, grasping the bedclothes on one side and the dresser on the other. The wrought-iron balcony chair had left a legacy, I discovered, as I stood, breathing shallowly: hemorrhoid. Blood feels the pull of cold iron.

My own iron smell of unappetizing leafy greens filled the space around me as I shuffled miserably toward the shower, disrobing as I went. The steam drew out the alcohol as well. I smelled
pickled
. Kimchee, that was me, with a thousand-year-egg in my ass. What a wreck.

As the coffee decocted, I tried to figure out who had called me. Not a number my phone or I recognized, but there was a message: Brinda.

I perked up a little.

Her voice was breathless and uncertain on the message, thin and small when I reached her on the phone. She wanted to meet.

“But yes, I would be happy to …” The throbbing had returned. “Tomorrow? The same café?”

“Um …” I heard her swallow, and grew concerned that if she had to wait, she might not show up.

“Or now?” I could pick up Tylenol on the way and surely the coffee would help.

She exhaled. “Now would be great, but, I don’t suppose you have an office or anywhere, that— I would really prefer somewhere private?” She had tears in her voice. The bombing anniversary, perhaps? My mind was working slowly. More privacy—why?

“I’m so sorry. I don’t have an office.” The dentist started his drill downstairs. I felt it in my molars, loosened by the drink. “I suppose, if you don’t mind, you could come here. It’s a studio apartment, but it has a sitting area. There is a dentist’s office beneath, but the place itself is quite private. Come, why don’t you?”

We agreed that she would, within the hour. I opened a window, cleared an empty bottle off the balcony table and scouted for further signs of my binge. A burst of laughter from downstairs. Elsewhere, people were eating or opening a window or just walking dully along. Not everyone re-died each June 23.

I lay down on the bed with a cool washcloth over my eyes, then drank my coffee, but the fog was only starting to recede when Brinda tapped on the window of the door.

“You found it,” I said to her. She, too, was newly showered, hair wet. Eyes also wet? “I feared it would be tricky.” She seemed unsure whether to enter. “Please.” I indicated the sofa. “Take a seat.”

She stepped over the threshold, but stopped, one elbow in a hand, painful indecision. “I shouldn’t have come.”

“Not at all. A cup of—”

“I really should …” She was turning again toward the door. But then, with a shuddering breath, she let her hands and head drop.

I touched her back lightly, moving her toward the sofa. She sat and
I brought her a glass of water and a kitchen chair for myself. Then I waited.

She sipped and began. “I’m sorry for coming, but I’m in such a bind. I need so badly to talk to someone and I don’t really want to talk to my friends, because, well, I guess you’ll understand once I tell you the whole thing, that is, if you’re all right with hearing it. It’s a long story, and I’ve never told anyone, and …” Finally, the tears arrived.

I put the box of tissues near her, small tidal waves assaulting my cranium as I stood, as I bent. Despite this, the ol’factory wheels were turning: shampoo, clean clothes, and something peppery. Fenugreek? Nothing unhealthy. I sat and squeezed my eyes closed for a second. Massaged my temples. Brinda’s hairline, her eyes, something about her features reminded me of Asha. Nearly the same age, they would have been. It could so easily have been Asha, coming to me for a word of comfort. Or perhaps she would have been hit by a car, or overdosed, or come to mistrust me. This was an old game, alternative misfortunes, and I’d exhausted its philosophic compensations. No. Asha would be like this: healthy, accomplished, stretches of contentment, hard work and love, occasionally troubled by matters where my help was useful. But then, I should never have moved back to India. The loose skin of my forehead slid easily over my skull. I pulled it taut. The kettle rang. I opened my eyes. Brinda was looking at me.

“Are you feeling okay?” She wiped her nose.

“Yes, fine,” I said, blinking. I stood up to fill a teapot. “Tell me.”

“I need to see a therapist, badly, but I’m not in town for very long, or I don’t know how long I’ll be here, and since you and I already met, I thought perhaps I could— I’m obviously willing to pay.”

This was sticky. “I’m sorry. I’m no longer licensed here in Canada. But I’m sure I can help you find someone. There must be many therapists in Lohikarma.”

“No, no, no—please?” Her eyes and nose were red and her shirt looked too big for her. “I don’t want to deal with trying to find someone I connect with, all that. Is there any way you— We could do it informally, or—I …” She blew her nose assertively. “Never mind. I’ll figure it out. I never should have come.”

I poured a cup of tea for her. Milk. Sugar. I had no biscuits; what’s a cup of tea without biscuits? “No—let’s talk. Informally, as you say. No payment, no … promises. This is not therapy. It is merely talking. Is that all right?”

“I need one promise, though. You can’t breathe a word of this to my parents.”

“Tch. I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Well, not to anyone. Like, I don’t want this in your book. It’s not related, anyway.”

“So, not therapy, but therapeutic confidentiality.”

She nodded through the tea-steam. “I kind of have two problems. The first one, maybe it’s the biggest one … maybe they’re the same problem.”

I waited.

“Let me back up.” She took a big breath, sipped her tea and smiled at it. I do make a good cup of tea. “As I told you yesterday, I wasn’t allowed to date in high school. I had crushes, fooled around a tiny bit in secret, but never a proper relationship.”

This was the preface: no intimate relationships while she was in university, such that this fact itself became something of a burden. After undergrad, a terminated relationship with a slightly older fellow who didn’t feel comfortable taking her virginity. A year working for a London NGO that included an affair with a married doctor—he was her first lover, though she hid that from him—and a fling with some young man on holiday in France. I imagine her story’s start was different from those of most young Canadians, though perhaps it became more like theirs at the end? She stated that she hadn’t rebelled much, and she did seem more attached to her parents, more concerned for their approval, than I recalled was the case with those young Canadians I saw all those years ago. But here I am, generalizing about them.

“After my year abroad, I headed to Edmonton to start my PhD, lonely all over again. I wasn’t totally pathetic. I lived in a house owned by a co-op, with six others, which gave me a built-in social life. And grad school was better than undergrad. I met people from all over,
people who were passionate about what they were doing. But I was conscious of residual pain and insecurity. I thought I didn’t know how to have a normal relationship.” She frowned, deeply. “I still have no reason to believe I can.” She had confirmed my guess: Problem #1 was Dev. “All I wanted was a regular boyfriend, someone who lived where I lived, a normal, routine relationship. Was that too much to ask? I didn’t think so.

“There was a video store, a few blocks south of my house. The Film Wagon, specializing in old films, foreign films. That’s where I met Dev. We had tons in common. We’re both science people who aren’t fundamentally science people. We both have Indian parents, but grew up here. I’d never met anyone like him. It felt so easy.” She slowed as she sounded her thoughts out. “For all our problems, it’s so painful to think of not having him to talk to.” A possible separation? “At first, it wasn’t a big bang of attraction. But that was fine. He was a buddy—encouraging, funny. It was so comfortable that when I realized I was developing a crush on him, I resisted the feeling. Until it became clear he felt the same. But when he finally spoke up, he didn’t, really. He gestured toward his feelings without making a real declaration. Now, looking back on it, I have to wonder if there was something he couldn’t bring himself to say.”