At first sight of it, Kavita’s legs feel boneless. She gropes for Nirav’s arm. They are told to take as long as they wish before the funeral director shuts them inside the dreadful room. If there is a moment when Kavita’s heart breaks irreparably, it is then, as she witnesses her parents break right before her eyes.
Her mother runs her hands along the casket in a stupor, as though trying to see Sunil’s body through the wood grain. At his feet, she pauses. Slowly drapes herself over the casket. Kisses his feet in an act of prostration, supplication. Her weeping echoes against the vaulted ceiling, echoes inside Kavita’s hollow middle, the awful sound spreading cracks along her veins. Her skin is the only thing keeping her together.
Her father delicately lays flowers on the coffin lid above Sunil’s heart, places one hand over his head, and gently strokes the mahogany, as though stroking Sunil’s brow, like he did on the nights Sunil had trouble sleeping when he was a child. His shoulders begin to shake. “My baby,” he whispers. “My boy.”
There is cruelty in having Sunil back, less then a foot beneath their aching palms, and yet still so far away. If only they could see him, touch him. But the coffin shows them concretely what they have known abstractly for days. There is a barrier between them now, and there is only one way to cross it.
Oh Sunil, Kavita whispers as the first tears crest. What have you done to yourself? My poor Bear. Look what you’ve done to yourself.
Into the coffin, she sends a stream of regret. You’ll never marry the woman of your dreams. Or have children. Or teach them to skip stones. You’ll never meet your nieces and nephews. Or hear them call you Sunil mama. And they’ll never know their uncle….
She stops. The coffin is too small to contain all the dreams that should have been, had he lived.
She imagines the moments after her death. Sees herself as an old woman—grey-haired, round, wrinkled—dressed in an ivory sari, surrounded by the white glow of the hereafter. A few steps away stands Sunil, young and beaming. As young as the day he died. She steps toward him. Cups her frail hands around his luminous face. Gazes deeply into his coffee-coloured eyes for an age. Wraps her arms around his broad shoulders. Pulls him close, and even closer still. Leans into the warmth of his body. “Life was the dream,” she tells him. “Life was the dream.”
She stands numbly for a while, until her parents’ weeping has risen and fallen like ragged peaks, and Nirav holds her waist, telling her it is time to go.
Do they have to? They’ve only just gotten Sunil back. She doesn’t want to leave him there in the unfamiliar place, with the hidden closet of fire. She doesn’t want to leave him at all. Stop, she wants to cry. But since the nightmare first began, she hasn’t been able to stop any of it.
At the French doors, Kavita pauses, glancing backward at the casket, knowing the next time she sees her brother, he will have changed again, in some unfathomable way she is not, and never will be, prepared to witness.
By dusk, it is time to collect the ashes. Kavita drives herself and Nirav to the chapel. When they arrive, the funeral director is waiting for them in the lobby with Sunil’s urn.
As she takes hold of it, she is shocked by its lightness, and especially its warmth, the memory of fire still clinging to his remains. How can all six feet of him—all his breath and bones and beauty—be reduced to the ashes held inside the comparatively tiny urn? If she holds her ear to it, will she hear his big laugh trapped in there, like the ocean inside a shell?
They return home to find Kavita’s mother waiting for them at the top of the stairs, reaching out with beggars’ hands. Wordlessly, Kavita gives her what is left of Sunil. Her mother clutches the urn to her chest as she rushes to her bedroom. From the doorway, Kavita watches as she walls the vessel in with pillows, as though it is a slumbering infant in danger of rolling off the mattress, something she must have done countless times when Sunil was a baby.
“Soja, mera beta,” her mother coos, as she strokes the balmy metal. “You’re safe now. You’re home. Sleep. Sleep.”
Steeped in shadows, Kavita stands by the front window and gazes out onto the street dotted with tangerine light, while sipping ginger tea from her yellow mug.
The others have gone to bed. She tried to sleep too but her thoughts, loud and agitated, flit like a swarm of birds reacting to danger. Her mind keeps going places it shouldn’t, wanting to know the things only Sunil can know for sure.
A small, still voice inside her warns her to stop. There are places in the mind that are unwise to travel, just as certain parts of the world. But she can’t stop the flood of unknowns, or the hounding need to answer them. Stopping them would be like trying to dam a river with a net.
So, she surrenders to the flood. When was the precise moment Sunil died? Was it on the first night, when her pulsing gaze rarely left the street, as every part of her being focused on willing him home? Could it have been that soon? They waited for nine more days after that first night. Could he really have been gone while they prayed and searched and filled his voicemail with pleas?
When did he decide on the ski lodge? Had he chosen it weeks earlier? Had he been there before? Or had he simply driven past it and thought: Good enough.
Where did he buy the sleeping pills? At the Shoppers Drugmart a few blocks away, where they buy eco-friendly toilet paper and toothpaste and milk—life items? Did he visit more than one? How many boxes of pills did he buy? How many did he swallow?
What about the vodka? Sober Sunil buying vodka. Words that are too incongruous to make sense, like “Sunil killed himself.” What kind was it? Smirnoff? Polar Ice? Did he splurge on something expensive, the way people toast special occasions with Champagne? Or did he see a cheap bottle of gut-thinner and think: Good enough.
Who was the last person to see him alive? A man or a woman? Old or young? Were they bored? Or—her chest tightens—were they rude? She prays they were kind. If they were kind, did it make him pause, and reconsider his plan? If they were awful, did it reinforce his resolve that the world was better off without him, and he was better off without the world?
Did he have any doubts during the long drive to the ski lodge? Did he think of turning back? Did he check his phone? Did he ever see 50 missed calls reach for him with electric glare? Did he listen to the voicemails, their pleas, especially the last one that got cut short: “Hi, Bear. Just me aga—”
Her thoughts creep to the inside of his car, the inside of his mind during his last moments. She needs to know what he saw, what he felt, what he thought as he left the world. Was he scared to die alone? Was he relieved? The detective said they found the driver’s chair reclined. Did he simply close his eyes and wait for poisonous sleep? Or did he lean his chair back, slip into a moonbeam, and star gaze one last time?
Did he listen to the radio? If so, what station? What CD? Or did he prefer the sounds of the night? Crickets chirp louder in the country, and stars shine brighter.
As tears slip down Kavita’s cheeks, she wonders if he cried too before the end. If he mourned all the things he was about to leave. If he thought of her and their parents and Nirav as his eyes closed for the last time. If he missed them when he did.
Did he care about strangers finding him? Or was that part of the plan too? Was that why he drove so far from home, so they would be spared the sight of his destruction?
What about the man who found him, the ski lodge manager? And later, the police and paramedics. Who were they? What did they look like? What did their faces look like when they found him? What did they say? Did they handle him with care?
Did he really think they could live without him? Did he really misunderstand his importance so entirely?
Could death’s quiet embrace really have been more comforting than the loving arms of their family?
Just then, a sky-blue car rolls by the window. Her neck jerks to follow its path.
A blue car.
Like Sunil’s.
She dwells inside a second of pearlescent hope.
The yellow mug slips from her weak hands. She only glances at the broken pieces for a second, barely feels the warm wetness on her feet. She lifts her urgent gaze and finds the blue car again. It slows down as it approaches the stop sign on the corner.
Her reason catches up. A sky-blue car, yes. Sunil’s sky-blue car, no. She remembers that the time for searching is over. The car disappears around the corner. When you lose your person, you never stop searching for them.
Kavita stares at the scattered shards and her naked feet soaked with sweet tea in a state of belated devastation. Squatting, she numbly gathers up the broken pieces of the last gift Sunil will ever give her.
5.
ON THE MORNING OF THE MEMORIAL, Chi texts, saying that something has come up and she won’t be able to make it after all.
Sorry, Kavs. xo
The sorrier thing is that Kavita isn’t entirely surprised.
Mourners start arriving around eleven o’clock. Along with condolences, most bring flowers and cards, although a few offer practical gifts of casseroles and soup.
Her parents sit on the couch in a half-comatose state to receive visitors, the way unconscious patients might from hospital beds. Kavita notices that they sit closer together than they would have in the absence of company.
The afternoon trudges on. She and Nirav tend to the guests. They weave in and out of conversations, freshen cups of tea, clear plates, offer consolation. Whenever someone asks how she’s doing, she replies, “Fine, thank you,” when all she wants to do is howl and howl.
Each time she recites the fiction about the car accident, she feels a bit thinner, as though deception is slowly corroding her. She finds herself having to answer an assault of questions she hasn’t prepared for. Where did it happen? Was the other driver at fault? Did the other driver survive? Was alcohol involved? Were they thinking of pressing charges? Why wasn’t there an obituary in the paper? A report on the news?
Somehow she fumbles through with short replies. It happened on his way to work. He collided with oncoming traffic while taking a left-hand turn. The other driver suffered minor injuries. Sunil died in the ambulance on the way to hospital. No, they weren’t pressing charges. Everything happened so fast, they didn’t think of an obituary.
“How tragic,” says her neighbour, Janet. She is a short woman with a figure like a potbellied stove, a globe of permed chestnut locks, and pale grey eyes. She wears black, and in her hand, clutches a silver rosary. When they were younger, Janet occasionally babysat Sunil and Kavita after school. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” she proclaims, as she rubs her rosary beads.
Kavita strains for calm. She knows a sermon is on its way. Back when Janet used to babysit them, she once made Kavita stand in the corner of her living room with her nose to the wall for ten minutes for the highly punishable offense of muttering “Oh my God.”
“He always takes the good ones young,” Janet continues. “And who are we to question? After all, everything happens for a reason. And He never gives us more than we can handle. I know you miss your brother, dear, but don’t weep for him. He’s in a better place now.”
Janet grabs Kavita’s hand, closes her eyes, and mouths a soundless prayer. As Kavita watches the woman’s lips move, ecstatic with liturgy, fibrillations flick under her skin in waves, hot and fizzy. Janet finishes with an audible “Amen,” then kisses her rosary and opens her eyes, beaming.
“Thank you,” says Kavita, flat on the outside, seething underneath. Pulling her hand away, she excuses herself.
Other mourners impart their grief wisdom upon her, words she knows are meant to comfort but instead stoke her anger like hot breath. When she can’t tolerate any more, she slips out the back door, leans against the side of the house, and lights a cigarette. If one more person tells her “everything happens for a reason,” she might have to kick every last one of them out of her house.
She pulls a deep drag. Her thoughts drift back to Janet, her words about God’s faithfulness, God’s plan, God never giving a person more than they can handle. How can she reconcile her brother’s suicide with any of that?
Anger rises, hot and fast, like a line fire up her spine. No, not anger: rage. Like a blaze. She exhales smoke. It needs some direction, this inner fire, someplace to go, beyond her fleshy carapace. Somehow it needs to be released, before she is forced to go back inside, and get filled up again.
Without another thought, she flips the direction of the cigarette, opens her left hand, and presses the fiery end into the centre of her palm. It burns, sears, singes. She cloaks her eyes. Focuses on the pain, the sharp rise and taper like a bell curve. This pain she can manage. This pain she knows she deserves. Then she opens her eyes. Glances at the fresh scar with little interest. For now, the Blaze has been subdued.
Nirav will be wondering where she is. She stamps out the cigarette, kicks the butt into the cedars, and tucks her hand into the sleeve of her cardigan.
The last of the mourners finally depart a few hours later. Almost instantly, her parents disappear into their bedrooms; her mother, with Sunil’s ashes tucked under her arm. Nirav helps with the clean-up, then goes downstairs to play video games.
Kavita flops on the couch, relishing the blessed solitude, and at last gives in to little weights that seem swept along her lashes. When she opens her eyes again, it is as dark in the living room as it is outside. She checks the time on her cell. Unbelievably, it tells her it’s after seven.
She rubs at an ache in her neck, remembering the Band-Aid on her palm with a sharp wince. As she cradles her hand, she looks around the room lazily. Bouquets cover nearly every table surface in the living and dining rooms. The abundance of blooms is an unusual sight for their household. Sunil was allergic to flowers. Her mother, too. Her father would rather plant marigolds in the garden than pluck their lifeforce from the earth. The flowers, however well-meant, are clearly out of place in their home. Almost to the point of obscenity.
Kavita rises to her feet and fetches a garage bag from the kitchen. Something must be done about them. No one will mind, she tells herself. She hasn’t even seen her parents stop to admire them. Probably because the flowers bother them as much as they do her. They will probably thank her for getting rid of them.
Looming over the dining table, she takes a passive inventory of the assortment of roses and lilies, Gerber daisies, and sunflowers. She knows the flowers are supposed to make them feel better. Remind them that people care. That they are thought of in their time of hardship. But all they do is remind Kavita that Sunil is dead. Isn’t that why the flowers are really there? Because her bother is gone. Well, she knows that already. And she doesn’t need to be reminded by things that are so shamelessly joyful.
With a snap of her wrist, the garbage bag billows. Kavita reaches for the arrangement closest to her. It is an extravagant bouquet of Calla lilies sent from her co-workers. She drops them into the bag without sentiment. Next, she grabs the orange Gerber Daisies sent from Chi. Followed by the sunflowers from her in-laws in London. Then an assortment of carnations. A basket of lettuces and purple cabbage. An arrangement of chocolate-dipped fruit.
Kavita stops noticing what they are, as she tosses them into the bag, one after another, until the table is clear. The one thing she spares is the basket of sympathy cards, filled with sentiments too visceral to read, in case her parents may want to someday, although she doubts they ever will.
Once she declutters the side and coffee tables as well, Kavita pauses, taking note of the weight of the garbage bag, and its inverse relationship with the light feeling that has befallen her. This is the most therapeutic thing she has done all day. The closest she has come to anything resembling closure.
She ties a knot in the garbage bag, hauls it to the garage, and stuffs it into the large black bin. Then she wheels the b
in to the curb. In the morning, the flowers will be gone for good.
Back inside, Kavita locks the side door, rests her weary head against it, and whispers, “It’s done.”
PART II: CRAWL
A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty.
—Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
6.
THE WEEK FOLLOWING Sunil’s memorial, Kavita does little more than sleep. Occasionally, she wakes to check in on her parents or use the washroom or mindlessly eat a banana over the kitchen sink. Every other day or so, she somehow finds enough energy to shower and change into a fresh pair of pyjamas. Other than that, she prefers to drift in unconsciousness. What she hopes for every time she closes her eyes are dreams of Sunil, a message that he is all right wherever he is. What she dreams she can’t remember.
Sometimes she awakens startled, as if the house phone has rung or the alarm on her cell has beeped. Her heart flutters like a hummingbird in a cage. Her breath is rapid and shallow. Her gut blares like a warning beacon. Its message: Danger is imminent. Be warned, be ready. And her first waking thoughts: Mom and Dad. Where are Mom and Dad? When this happens, she rushes out of bed and checks each of their bedrooms. Once she sees that they are safe in their beds, the maniacal panic tapers, but not completely—a pool of it remains like a pesky sip of pop that lingers at the bottom of a bottle, fizzing. Then, drained of the little energy she has acquired in sleep, she stumbles back to bed and hides inside a tent of covers.
Her parents keep to the same unstructured sleep regime; her mother in particular, like a newborn, tires herself out with weeping until her swollen eyelids finally shut. Her father has taken to staring at things—walls, hedges—with the same purposeless focus of a housecat, often leaving Kavita to wonder when she catches him, not only what he is staring at, but why? Nirav spends most of the time playing video games in the basement.
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