Habitations, page 33
“I’m so busy wrapping things up,” she said. “Packing and whatnot.”
* * *
All around them were stories of movement. Ameya had accepted a tenure-track position in Boston. Halima’s husband, Adnan, was joining the faculty at University of Maryland, and they had bought a house in Gaithersburg. Within a radius of ten miles were a mosque, a synagogue, and a Hindu temple.
“Goodness,” Vega said. “How will you ever choose?”
“Idiot,” Halima said. “But it’s a sign, no?” Their green card had been approved, and she was a finalist for a position at Towson University. Shoba and Mohan planned to decamp to Coimbatore for the remainder of the summer. Even Gayatri was thinking of leaving Chennai. “There’s a research institute in Bangalore,” she said. “Might be good to have a change of pace.”
Vega had been putting off packing, but when their final week approached, she lugged her black suitcase from the guest bedroom, wiped off the layer of dust, and left it open on the floor. Periodically, she would toss in something—the skirts she had bought at Kalpa Druma, the red dress she had brought with her and never worn.
“You’ll be okay going back home?” she asked Asha.
Asha shrugged. She was quieter than normal and had resumed an old habit of chewing the tips of her hair. Vasanti had cut a mango for her, slicing a grid of vertical and horizontal lines across the halves and pushing it outward so it formed protruding squares. Asha stared down at the skins.
“Your Ashwini Chiti used to call that a turtle shell,” Vega said.
“Why?”
“Doesn’t it look like the pattern on a turtle’s back?”
Asha looked more somber. “Does it make you sad thinking of her?” Vega asked gently. Gayatri had recently given Asha a small wooden loom and Vega had sat with her for a full afternoon, watching as Asha eventually produced a lopsided, woven rectangle. “We can put this in the pooja room, next to your chiti’s photograph,” Vega said, and she thought she detected a change in Asha’s expression. A flash of interest, then a slow dimming.
“Asha,” Vega said. She cupped her daughter’s chin.
“I’m not sad,” Asha said.
“Then what?”
Asha picked up the mango half and took a small bite. “I just don’t like to think about eating turtles.”
* * *
Vega hadn’t meant to tell Suresh about Sudhir, primarily because there was nothing to tell. But as her departure date drew closer, she had a nagging feeling she was throwing something away.
“What’s the problem?” he asked. “You have five days remaining. Ample time to get together with this fellow. You can arrange to meet for a juice.”
Vega laughed at the suggestion of juice. Vikram’s party had come and gone, and she and Suresh were at P.N. and Kamala’s house. It was nearly midnight, and they were the only ones still awake. Shoba had spread old saris on the grass for people to sit, a style tip she had seen in Vogue India, and Vega was collecting and folding them. Suresh was crouched by the outside faucet, washing the last of the empty pots.
“I may have missed my chance. He called and I declined. Anyway, he lives in Dhaka.”
“No harm in trying again.” He set the pot upside down at the edge of the step to dry. “Rupa said something interesting some days back. She said when people visit from India, even if they come to Boston or New York City, they will make an effort to visit New Jersey only to see us. But if we live in the same place as somebody, we may go months or years without even crossing paths. We don’t make an effort when we are close by.”
“That isn’t true of you and Rupa, though. You always make the effort.” Suresh often updated her on visits to or from people she could scarcely recall. When Rupa was seven months pregnant, he had driven them to Pittsburgh to attend the first birthday of a former classmate’s daughter. “Harsha’s baby,” he had said. “Naturally we couldn’t miss.” Who the hell is Harsha? Vega wanted to ask.
They folded the last of the saris and Suresh crouched next to her, looking pensive. He had an old-world way of squatting, on his feet with his knees bent, the way her grandfather used to sit. “One small question I’ve always had.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Is it difficult for you to see Shoba and Rupa together?”
She wasn’t sure what question she had been expecting, but this certainly was not it. She stared at him.
“I know you care for them both,” he said. “But they’re such close sisters. And I think, sometimes, of your loss.”
Her eyes burned and she was grateful for the dark. “I love Shoba and Rupa,” she finally said. “I love seeing them, and I love seeing the children all together.”
He nodded. He was still squatting. The sight of him made Vega’s knees ache.
“I wondered sometimes if that is why you moved so far. So that you wouldn’t be reminded of your sister.”
She wiped her face with her dupatta. “I moved for a job, Suresh.”
“There are jobs in many places.”
“Not in my field. I was lucky to receive an offer anywhere.”
They were quiet for a few moments, then he said, “I miss my daughter.”
“I know you do.”
He stood and began stretching. When they lived together, Vega had found it maddening how—apropos of nothing—Suresh would launch into a series of lunges or knee lifts or begin practicing his backhand. It seemed cruel now that she could have harbored such rage over something so small.
The light went on in P.N. and Kamala’s bedroom. One of their middle-of-the-night bathroom trips, Vega figured. She thought again about how she should coax them to spend more time in New Jersey. Kamala’s mind seemed to be unraveling, even beyond the sphere of politics. Earlier that week, Vega had asked her why she didn’t see a doctor for her arthritis. “If it is God’s plan for me to have this condition, then so be it.”
“But you use Tiger Balm. Do you think God made Tiger Balm?”
Kamala had seemed surprised by the foolishness of the question. “Of course God made Tiger Balm.”
The light turned off. Suresh finished his stretches and sat down. “Both of you,” he said quietly. “I miss you both.”
That night, alone in her bedroom, she opened the trunk. She was too tired to sort through it in the way Rukmini had asked, but with Asha away—sleeping at P.N. and Kamala’s—she was able to turn on the light and force the latches open. They were both rusty, one slightly bent, and she had nearly given up when she felt them loosen.
Vasanti had wrapped everything in an old sari. It was a pink cotton that Vega peripherally remembered from her childhood, one of Rukmini’s nicer daytime saris that had faded over the years to something she would wear only around the house. Vega opened the folds. Stacked on top was Ashwini’s favorite silk pavadai, an eggplant-purple that had been sewn by Rukmini’s tailor. Vega pulled it from the trunk and laid it on the floor, touching the fabric tentatively, as though it would fall apart in her hands.
She pulled out a dupatta, two skirts, and a ziplock bag containing Ashwini’s old hair clips. There were a few T-shirts and kurtas, and the red harem pants Ashwini had begged for at the Mylapore Tank. Then she came across something yellow. It was a cardigan with wooden, heart-shaped buttons that Rukmini had bought at the mall in Cleveland, one that Ashwini wore constantly, and Rukmini used to handwash for her in the bathroom sink, always laying it to dry on a towel on their bedroom floor. Vega draped it across her lap. She ran her finger along the seam, the inside of the sleeves, the flower pattern embroidered across the neckline. She returned the rest of the contents to the trunk and carried the cardigan to bed with her, breathing in the mustiness of the wool, pressing it to her chest in the way she used to hold Asha when she was a baby.
35
Three days before Vega was to fly back to the States, she and Sudhir sat at the side of the pool at the Park Hotel. It wasn’t the most inspired of locations, but she was grateful for the quiet. They had started their evening at a Turkish restaurant on the second floor of the hotel, which turned into a nightclub after hours—a fact unknown to Vega when she suggested they meet there. “There’s a hint of the mystical harem at Pasha,” Sudhir read from the dinner menu. He had found it all funny. The host dressed as a sultan, wearing an enormous gold fez, the belly dancer who wove between the tables. “I’m so sorry,” Vega kept saying, though they could barely hear each other over the music. She wished she could have laughed along with Sudhir, but to her it was painfully embarrassing. At the table next to theirs, a middle-aged businessman gestured to the dancer, trying to coax her onto his lap. She and Sudhir left before ordering food, and now sat with their feet in the water, her red dress pulled up to her knees.
“I’m so sorry,” she said again. “That really was hideous.”
He laughed. “It was fine. I think you were more bothered than I was.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t a better sport.”
“You’re a fine sport.”
“I’m not, really. I’ve never been. When my sister was sick, there was a performing clown who used to come to the hospital every Sunday. I hated it. I would sit in the waiting room until he had left the children’s wing. I couldn’t even bear to look at him.”
“Clowns are another matter entirely. Nobody can blame you for that.”
Vega looked away, but she could still feel Sudhir’s eyes on her. She wondered if her dress was ridiculous. She had been too self-conscious to wear it in her house, in front of her parents and Asha. Instead, she had employed the teenage trick of leaving the house in a kurta and jeans under the auspices of a night out with Gayatri, then had gotten dressed in Gayatri’s flat.
“Where do you stay when you’re in town?” she asked Sudhir.
“Sometimes Gayatri puts me up. Now I’m staying at this eco-hotel in Anna Salai. Rainwater barrels. Lots of Europeans. You can imagine the type.” He went to collect their drinks. When he came back, he asked, “It seems silly to sit next to a pool and not jump in. I wish we had planned better.”
“Do you know I can’t swim?”
“Come on.”
“Really. I took lessons at the Boat Club for years, but it made no difference. I used to think there was something wrong with my lungs or my bone structure.” In truth, water made her so nervous that she dropped her feet to the pool floor each time she felt herself float. Her teachers didn’t seem to notice, and she moved through the rungs of her coaching lessons through whatever blend of privilege or indifference led children to be mindlessly promoted. Sometimes she took Asha to the pool at the Baton Rouge YMCA, where the water never exceeded four feet. She stood in the corner, watching as Asha jumped from the side and swam to the surface, untouched by her mother’s failures. She wondered if any language had a word for this: the knowledge that your child could do something you could not.
“There’s a trick to floating,” he said. “I taught my nephews. I could teach you in five minutes.”
“I’m certain it wouldn’t work for me. My sister was a good swimmer, though. So I can’t even blame my parents for this particular failure.”
“I remember your sister when she was a little girl. Maybe nine or ten years old.”
“She wasn’t much older when she died.” She felt, as she always did when Ashwini’s name hung in the air, two conflicting hopes: that they would talk about her, and that they would change the subject and never return to it. Sudhir opted for the former.
“You must have been a comfort to her when she was sick.”
Vega thought about that. She could recall countless moments of comforting Ashwini, but always for minor losses and grievances: a fight with a friend, a middling exam grade. If they ever talked about death, Vega had no memory of it. “I don’t think I was, actually. She was so young. I don’t know if she ever fully believed she would die. I didn’t believe it either.”
He moved his hand closer to hers, but just let it rest on the ground. “Well. There’s some mercy to that. For her, at least.”
“Maybe. There’s no way of knowing, though. Maybe she wanted to talk more openly about death but didn’t know how. And our quiet on the subject didn’t help.”
Their food arrived—spring rolls and Thai curries—and they walked to their table. “Tell me about the last twenty years of your life,” Vega said. “I lost track of you when you left Chennai.” She was relieved to escape the topic of Ashwini, but the moment she did, she wished she could go back to it. She remembered Suresh, on one of the last nights they ever slept in the same bed. You never talk about your sister.
“What is there to say? My family moved to Delhi. I studied at Doon School, did my undergrad in the UK. At East Anglia. And then, I’ve moved around a bit through my position at Al Jazeera. I was in Cairo for a year, then Qatar.”
“The famed Doon School. I hear it’s a life-altering place.”
“I think it can be. My mother was diagnosed with cancer and my parents were in the States for treatment quite a bit. So, maybe it was easier for me to be away. But sometimes I think it would have been better to have stayed with them. I didn’t understand the gravity of the diagnosis until after she died.”
“I’m sorry.” She tried to think of something more meaningful or useful to say. Instead, she opted for honesty. “You may not have known the gravity of the diagnosis until she died, even if you had been with her. It’s difficult to accept death until you have to.”
“Maybe. Who knows?” He ate a spring roll, wiped his hands, then said, “It wasn’t my intention to spend the evening talking about death.”
“It wasn’t my intention to lead you to a Turkish nightclub.”
He laughed again, and Vega felt herself soften, give into him. “Are you in a rush to go home?” she asked.
“I’m not. I assumed you would be.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
An hour or so later, they stood in his hotel room, like children unsure how to initiate play. He spoke first. “We should swim.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not. There’s a pool downstairs. It’s warm and shallow. In five minutes we can prove there is nothing wrong with your lungs.”
“I have nothing to wear to swim.”
“The hotel is practically empty. I have an extra T-shirt and shorts. That’s all you need. What is the worst that will happen?”
“I will hate it, and I will embarrass myself. The night will end abruptly, and we will never see each other again.”
“Five minutes,” he said.
“All of that can happen in five minutes.”
But Sudhir was already riffling through his drawer. Moments later, Vega stood in the bathroom, wearing a white T-shirt and his cotton shorts, the latter rolled up to fit her waist. That summer, staring at herself in the mirror, she had started to feel old. She was troubled by the wisps of gray—too few to conceal, but too many to pluck. There were slight wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and she had taken to using Rukmini’s anti-aging face moisturizer. But now, dressed in white, with her hair in a loose bun, it startled her to see how young she looked.
“You could still have another child,” Rukmini had told her weeks back, unprompted. “You don’t realize this. How many choices are still ahead of you.” They were alone in the kitchen together, peeling almonds. Asha had gone for a walk with Vega’s father and was no doubt off somewhere, eating more ice cream.
“I have a child.”
“I said another child, kanna. I had two. It was a lovely number.”
And now we both have one, Vega thought. To Rukmini, there was nothing more tragic than childlessness. Vega knew what she was implying, though neither of them would ever say it aloud. If you have one child, and you lose that child, you’ve lost everything.
“Do you want children?” Vega asked Sudhir. They were standing in the pool. The water reached her shoulders and her shirt ballooned around her. It had made her nervous when she’d first stepped in, but now she settled into it. Her face and neck felt cold compared to the rest of her body.
“I think I do. Meaning, I don’t have a burning desire. But if I did become a father, I’m sure it would make me very happy. I enjoy doing fatherly things. Reading. Playing board games. Sometime back, I was making an omelet and thinking, ‘If I had children, I would do this for them.’ ”
“You would make them omelets?”
“Sure.”
His tone was so honest, so unrehearsed, that it made her laugh. “I imagine you would. Is Dhaka your permanent home?”
“I don’t think it is. I don’t have ties to the city. I like my work, and I have friends. But they aren’t deep relationships.” He exhaled slowly, and Vega recalled Gayatri mentioning that he had once been a smoker. She found this attractive—not that he had smoked, but that he had quit, that he was sturdy enough to remake himself. She listened as he talked about his years in Cairo, the city he had loved most aside from Delhi. “I had a flat overlooking the Nile. And there was a vendor who sold roasted sweet potatoes in the winter and that smell sometimes comes back to me. This was around seven years back, during the first Palestinian intifada, and there was a convergence of journalists in the area. We were together all the time. And then slowly, everybody trickled out. Before anybody left, we threw a party and said, ‘Oh, we’ll visit you in Beirut or Jerusalem or wherever,’ but most of us have never even seen each other again. A few get togethers here or there, but never the large group.” He paused. “There was a teenage boy who worked in the garage below the building. He loved Bollywood, and he would always sing these songs, but, you know, he would muddle up the lyrics. I used to give him small things. Cash during Eid, some old clothes that no longer fit. And then one day, he just disappeared. Somebody said his father had died, and the family went back to their village. But I think about him so often. These characters who just pass through your life, and then you never see them again.”
