After about a week of living like this, Kavita’s back aches and she knows it is time to leave her bed, if only long enough for the aches to stop their incessant moaning.
It is mid-afternoon—according to the cell phone—Sunday. She dresses in a forgotten pair of sweats she finds in her closet, then hobbles a path to the kitchen, hopeful they have run out of bananas.
The fridge shelves are stocked with leftovers and gifts of food from the memorial. From the top shelf, she grabs a Ziploc bag full of samosas and a jar of tamarind sauce. She bites off the pointy tip of the samosa. Her mother’s samosas are better, and this one is a little stale, but neither of these facts stops her from taking another bite.
Out of nowhere, Anchor pulls at her insides.
Eat up, you pig, it says, cool and clipped.
With effort, she pushes down a swallow, a ball of glue and sand that scratches along her throat. At least while she slept she was spared the company of her unwelcome guests. Part of her had dared to hope they had gathered up their torment and left. Anchor, at least, shows no signs of leaving her in peace, yet.
“Look at me, stuffing my face,” she frowns, sickened by the pleasing taste in her mouth. Sunil always loved samosas. “Sorry, Bear.” She holds one hand over her navel, half-expecting the bites she took to revolt from her gut. When, after a few moments, this doesn’t happen, she throws the rest of the samosa in the trash can under the sink.
“Who are you talking to, love?” says a voice from behind.
She jumps, the way their cat, Coal, does whenever he’s surprised by the vacuum cleaner, the blender, the hairdryer.
“Niru, you scared me. I didn’t hear you come upstairs.”
“No, I don’t suppose you did.” He glances around the kitchen. “I heard voices and came up. Thought perhaps your folks were finally out of bed.”
She blinks at the brown linoleum. “No, it’s just me.”
“Right, well, hello there.” He steps forward and kisses her longingly on the cheek. “It’s good to see you out and about.”
She grins a millimetre.
“It’s been terribly lonely round this place. I haven’t played video games for this many days straight since uni. It’ll be good to go home and sleep in our bed though, ay? Coal misses you like mad. I’ve been popping round every day to feed him and play with him for a bit.”
She sits at the table and stares numbly at Sunil’s vacant chair. “I didn’t know you went anywhere.”
He takes a seat across from her. “You’ve been dead to the world. But never mind all that. The point is, now that the fray is over, we should be getting on with it, shouldn’t we?”
She reaches across the table with big eyes. Emotions weren’t his thing, he used to tell her. In the beginning, it was a quality she admired. No drama. Not like her parents. Of course, that was before she realized how lonely life could be as the entire right brain of a relationship.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he continues. “But they’re adults, Kavita. They can look after themselves.”
“It’s still too soon. I need to be here.”
“You worry too much.”
“I can’t explain it. But I have this awful feeling that something bad is going to happen. Something else is going to fall apart. I know it.”
“What do you reckon’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know.” She holds her elbows. “It’s just a feeling of unbearable dread. Like every cell in my body’s been fixed with an alarm and I’m just waiting for them to go off. But I don’t know when. So I can’t ease up. I can’t get comfortable like last time. I won’t let myself fall into another false sense of security. Who knows what my parents will be like once their exhaustion wears off and they have to actually face a day rather than sleep through it.”
“You’re just stressed out. You need to go out for a stroll. Get some sun.”
She stares at him with her lips slightly parted. Blaze churns, slow and thick. So, it hasn’t left either. She hides her hands underneath the table and presses her thumb into the cigarette burn on her left palm that is covered up with a manky Band-Aid. Focuses on the pain. The scar has healed while she’s been asleep. She presses harder and waits for the release.
“What about work?” he asks her.
“I’m not ready yet.” The government job she slags off from time-to-time has its benefits, and extended leave, given the circumstances of her bereavement, is one of them.
“Well, I don’t think that’s a good idea. The sooner we get back to our old lives, the better.”
Her eyes soften with pity for Nirav. He doesn’t realize there is no old life to go back to anymore.
“I wish you wouldn’t rush me through this, Niru.” She wishes he would talk to her about what has happened, what is happening, rather than distract away from it. “You won’t talk to me about Sunil. You won’t even mention his name.”
He scowls at the floor. “That’s perhaps for the best.”
“You know you can—”
“No, Kavita, I can’t. And you wouldn’t want me to either.” He stands up. “Right, well, I can’t take it anymore. It’s too sad here, Kavita. I’ll stay one more night but then I’m moving back to the condo. Tomorrow, I’m going back to work.”
He storms out of the kitchen, tumbling down the stairs with noisy steps, she assumes, to resume his video game marathon.
She blinks at a Sunil’s empty chair, wishing he was sitting across from her, like he had during every family meal. How do I do it? she wants to ask him. How do I split myself into pieces and please them all?
She agonized about how to save her relationship only once before, at the end of Nirav’s one-year exchange in university, the summer he went back to London. Back then, she had no desire to split herself in two, she wanted to follow him across the ocean, whole and devoted, all of herself with all of him, always. Even though she was young, twenty-one at the time, she knew he was different than the soppy sucks she usually attracted, and the accomplished assholes that attracted her. He was worth crossing the cold Atlantic for, because even in those early days, she knew she had met the man she was going marry, for love, not obligation, like her parents.
They met in Microbiology lab, arguably the least romantic of locales with its pungent scents of agar and microbial cultures oppressing the air, vapours sweet and mouldy. She arrived late for class after getting lost in the unfamiliar and winding halls of the newly constructed Biology building. By the time she tiptoed into the room, red-faced and hunched, and took a seat at the nearest unoccupied bench, the other students had already paired up. She was in the process of accepting that she would have to figure out the labs on her own, when she heard an intriguingly-exotic English voice say to her, “Pardon me, but you wouldn’t be in the market for a laboratory partner, would you?” He beamed at her with a toothy smile that crinkled the corners of his hazel eyes. “I’m Nirav,” he said. She noted his Indian name along with his fair complexion. It wasn’t until their first date, after midterms, that he told her about his mixed heritage, an experience he described as not white enough for the English and not brown enough for the Asians. She eyed him, sceptical. A charming accent wasn’t going to earn them nineties. Still, she needed a partner. “I’m Kavita,” she grinned, not knowing at the time that such a small choice would change the course of her life.
When they weren’t in class or at the library, they explored the city together. She assumed the role of tour guide and took him to the usual places—Parliament Hill, the Byward Market, various museums that had free admission on Thursday evenings.
During Winterlude, when the canal froze, she lent him a pair of Sunil’s skates and taught him how to skate. She found it irresistibly cute every time he exclaimed, “I can’t believe I’m actually skating on a river!” While inwardly she corrected his misnomer—canal not river—outwardly she could only smile. They
shared their first kiss after an evening skate, in the orange glow of a Beavertails stand, the taste of cinnamon and sugar on their lips.
That kiss started everything. Sweet and innocent and plump with new love. It made her think they were different than her parents, they understood each other. Now, as she senses the growing distance between them, as cold and choppy as the ocean that once kept them apart, she wonders if this is how it happens, how people turn away from each other, one time, then another, and another, until all that is left of love are unspoken words crushed inside throats, and silence.
7.
THE NEXT MORNING, Kavita wakes up to an empty bed, except for the laptop that is beside her in Nirav’s place. She must have fallen asleep watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, again.
She reasons that Nirav probably left for work early that morning, except she doesn’t remember him kissing her goodbye, something he never fails to do, even when they are fighting. Then it occurs to her, like a weight in her stomach, that she doesn’t remember Nirav coming to bed at all last night. Slowly, she rolls out of bed, her body heavy and sore, her mind still thick with the mists of sleep. On the way to the washroom, she peers inside her mother’s half-open door. It takes a few seconds for her to register that she is staring at a vacant bed. The mists part instantly as she scours the rest of the room. Sunil’s urn is missing from her mother’s nightstand, too. The warning beacon in Kavita’s gut blares. Danger is imminent. She knew it was coming, and here it is. Danger, danger, danger.
She rushes down the hallway. Her first instinct is to check the driveway for the station wagon. Please be there, please be there, with every step. She pulls back the curtains, her eyes, large and pulsing. She releases the breath she has been holding. The car is parked where it should be. But then, where is her mother?
She backtracks toward the bedrooms. Her father’s door is still closed but she knows her mother won’t be in his room anyway. The rest of the floor is empty. She rushes outside to check the front lawn, garage, and backyard in case by some miracle her mother has decided to get a little fresh air, but she isn’t in any of these places. Back inside, Kavita hurries downstairs, but no one is watching TV in the family room, or napping in the guest room for a change of scenery, or doing laundry to keep busy.
There is only one place left to look.
Sunil’s door is ajar. “Mom?” she calls out. “Are you in there?”
As she presses her fingertips into her sore palm, she doesn’t think she can do it, enter his private space, see his things. But she’s wasting time. She knows better than to waste time. What if her mother is…? She squeezes a tighter fist and approaches the darkened threshold.
She finds her mother crouched on the floor, dressed in her lavender robe, with her head resting at the foot of Sunil’s bed. She has walled his urn between two couch cushions. One of her hands rests upon it. The other loosely grips some tissues.
Kavita gently touches her mother’s shoulder.
Her mother wakes, startled. Glances at Kavita, dismissively, and then closes her eyes again.
“Sorry,” she says, gently. “I didn’t mean to scare you. What are you doing down here? Why are you on the floor?”
“I didn’t want to disturb anything,” her mother answers. “You can still see where his head rested on the pillow.”
Kavita can only glimpse at the indentation for a second. “Come on, Mom.” She holds her mother by the shoulders. “Let me help you up.”
“Leave me.”
“I’ll fix you some tea. Or maybe you’d like some—”
“I said leave me!” her mother shouts. “I feel him here.”
Kavita kneels, placing a light hand on her mother’s back. “Come on, let me fix you something. You have to keep your strength up.”
“What does it matter?” Her mother strokes the urn. “I’ve already lost the most precious thing in my life.”
Kavita contracts, pulling her hand away, as though protecting herself. Her mother’s words replay inside her head: …already lost the most precious thing.…
As Kavita kneels there mutely, waiting for the bite to stop throbbing, a gloom rolls over her, black and heavy, like leaded fog. Then it speaks. She thinks the wrong child got sick, it tells her. Its voice is cold confidence, so sure, so even, that what it says must be true. She thinks the wrong child died.
The weight of the fog holds her within its cave of dark thought. Kavita sits motionless, almost breathless, for some time, afraid to consider whether the Black Gloom is right.
Eventually, her throat to loosens, and she tries again. “Please, let’s go upstairs,” she manages to say. “You’ll feel better with some food in your stomach. Then maybe you can take a shower and we can go for a walk? What do you think?”
“Just go,” her mother mumbles. “Leave me alone.”
Kavita releases a quiet, defeated sigh. She knows it’s no use. She pushes herself up off her aching knees, reluctantly conceding to leave her mother in the hellish peace of Sunil’s bedroom, as she wishes. At the doorway, she stalls, as she peers over her shoulder, with one last thing to say.
“I’m not going to leave you,” she tells her mother. Perhaps for the moment, to respect her mother’s wishes, but not in the greater sense. No matter how hard her mother shoves or bites her with words, Kavita won’t leave, and she will never give up on her.
Kavita waits for her mother to acknowledge what she has said, waits for her mother to see her standing there, desperate to be seen. But today isn’t the day her family comes back together after being blown apart. Today, they remain the pieces of what once was whole.
Without another word, Kavita carries the Gloom upstairs, its weight upon her shoulders like a cloak of stone.
After showering and changing into a pair of black jeans and a soft green sweater, she lets her hair air-dry as she sits on her bed and dials Chi.
“Chi’s cell, here!” chimes the voicemail message after three rings. “I can’t take your call right now, probably because I’m busy saving lives. Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you stat!”
She hangs up the phone. She has left half a dozen messages for Chi already and leaving another feels too needy. Is she that busy? she wonders. Or is Chi avoiding her? An itchy paranoia makes Kavita want to redial Chi’s number, but she supresses the impulse. The paranoia, however, remains. She considers creeping Chi’s social media accounts to see what she’s really been up to, but a second later feels ridiculous and juvenile, and blames her bout of insecurity on a lack of sleep. Sternly, Kavita orders herself to stop being ridiculous. Then she tosses her damp towel over her bedpost to dry, and starts combing her fingers through her hair, catching herself on a net of loose strands.
Beyond her bedroom walls, she hears her father’s bedroom door whine open, followed by the creak of the floorboards as he thumps down the hall. She is grateful that he’s at least moving around a little. Maybe she will have better luck convincing him to join her for a stroll around the block.
The clamour of cupboard doors slamming startles her, jerking her head in the direction of the living room. She rushes towards the clatter and finds her father sitting cross-legged in front of the walnut wall unit with family albums scattered around him on the carpet. “Dad?” she asks. “What are you doing?”
He seems too absorbed to hear her.
“Dad?”
“Pictures,” he says. He is flipping through an old album she hasn’t seen in years, made of shockingly-bright orange patent leather. “I’m looking for pictures.”
“Which ones?” She kneels beside him. “Maybe I can help.”
“All of them,” he says as he turns another page. He scans the plastic sleeve with a pulsating sort of mania in his eyes. “I want to make an album of all his pictures from when he was a baby until….” He pauses. “I’m going back to the beginning. Back when everything was fine. Back when
he was small and carefree. Mera sunder beta.” He caresses a grainy photo with his fingertips. “My sweet boy.”
Kavita glances at the photo. It is a baby picture of Sunil. He is dressed in a cloth diaper and lying on his stomach on a maroon paisley comforter. His mouth is wide open in a toothless smile. He has a full head of black hair. A youthful version of her father—slimmer and smooth-skinned—is sitting on the edge of the bed beside him, his giant hand resting on Sunil’s back. A look of gentle love softens her father’s eyes as he gazes at his son, his sweet boy.
Anchor pulls. She diverts her eyes to the dusty rose carpet. “How old is he in this picture?”
“Maybe six months or so. Back then, I never dreamed something like this was even possible. How could my sweet boy grow up to be so troubled?”
“I don’t know.”
“When we first moved here, I felt depressed for a long time. We were far from home, far from our families and friends. Your mommy and I got along better back then. I guess we had no other choice. I remember being scared of everything. Not speaking the language well enough. Getting pulled over by the police. Not being able to pay our bills. Somehow, even after we became landed immigrants, I still felt like we could get kicked out and sent back to India.”
Despite never having to apply in order to stay in Canada, Kavita has often felt a similar insecurity, as if belonging depended on how small she could make herself, how accommodating, how obedient. But wasn’t this inherited self-doubt part of every first generation’s experience? Her father couldn’t blame himself for that.
“All I ever wanted to do was provide some safety and security for all of you,” he continues. “My own father died when I was very young, before I started going to school. I saw how my mother suffered as a widow. I was always scared, even as a child, because we had to depend on the kindness of others, and they were not always as kind as they should have been. I wanted to give you all the good things in life. But in the end, I think the only thing I passed on was my fear.”
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