“I don’t understand. Are you mad at me?”
“My grandmother just died, Kavita. I have to give a speech tomorrow that I don’t want to give. We just had a really, really nice dinner with my family. But you have to go and spoil it, don’t you?”
She stares at him, astonished. “I waited to tell you, Niru. I wanted you to finish your speech first. I’ve been so confused and hurt by this, but I waited, all day.”
He leans forward, resting his forearms on his knees, and pushes a sigh past his flared nostrils.
“Don’t you at least think it’s odd?”
“Well, I don’t know, do I?”
“Me neither. I was hoping we could figure it out together. That’s all. Was I not supposed to tell you?”
Wordlessly, he clenches his jaw, the muscles pulsing like a slow heartbeat.
“It’s been really upsetting for me, Niru.”
He rises from the bed and towers over her, blocking the lamp light with his long silhouette. “Not everything’s about you, Kavita,” he tells her, bluntly, before marching out of the room, and shutting her inside with only the yaw of her confusion for company.
21.
DID THAT JUST HAPPEN? she thinks, stunned. Did he really call me selfish?
Her thinking self says it’s her own fault for raising the subject at the wrong time. Nirav isn’t himself right now. He has a short temper because he’s grieving. She needs to give him time. Once the fog settles, he’ll see things more objectively. Then he’ll make things right. Her thinking self tells her she really should have waited.
Her feeling self careens as if shoved off balance. As it falls, this part of her knows that no reasonable explanation is coming. For whatever reason, Nirav’s family has kept her brother’s suicide a secret. Families can talk about anything, she remembers from the lecture at the dinner table. But not everything, apparently.
For a while, Kavita sits, holding her knees, still yet buzzing.
Then a sound breaks the cold silence of her mind. It is her mother’s voice, monotone and frank: No one judges people who die of cancer.
Back then, when they had gathered around the kitchen table, on that first bleary morning after Sunil had been found, and struggled with how to plan his memorial, Kavita had criticized her mother for being paranoid about people’s reactions. Now, she understands her mother’s reasoning, perhaps in the only way children ever come to sympathize with their parents, in hindsight.
Her mother was right. People didn’t judge. They pinned pink ribbons on their jackets and wore t-shirts that shouted FUCK CANCER and ran in all-night relays and made record-breaking donations during celebrity-hosted telecasts.
Because no one asks for it. Because the ill fight courageous battles. The ones who make it are conquerors. The ones that don’t are heroes. They deserve to be remembered.
Kavita’s throat aches. Well, it was the same for you, Bear. You wanted to get better too. You wanted to live as much as anyone. Living is all you ever wanted.
With every tremulous moment, her hurt calcifies a little more, casting her like a splintered bone, until the only fluid part of her is her stark thoughts. The awful words surge back, and this time she has nothing left to stop them.
No one knows about him.
No one knows about him.
No one knows about him.
Selfish….
As the words spin and spin, they core her, they empty her. Cold spills into the vacant space where something important once lived. In its place, frigid emptiness.
At last, she knows what it is: Shame, cold and dark as a cellar.
They always say tell the truth. Tell someone. They never say be careful about who you tell. They never say the people you tell might be ignorant or awkward or unwilling to help you. Still, they say tell. Tell someone. Tell your dark truth. Even though the people you tell may use your truth against you.
22.
THE STONES ARE IN THEIR BEDS. But Kavita is not. She is not a Stone. The combination of insomnia, jet lag, and the quiet rage that quakes her insides has kept her from finding any rest. Defiant, she invades her in-laws’ well-stocked liquor cabinet and pours herself an inch of Glenfiddich—no water, no ice. Taking a generous gulp, she welcomes the sting at the back of her throat, which matches the blue heat cycling through her veins. Standing by the sliding doors that overlook the garden, she gazes up at the smoky night sky.
“Why am I here?” she asks Sunil. She hasn’t spoken to him openly since she arrived in London. Now, they are alone at last. She knows it is safe enough. Leaning into the silence, she dilates her ears in the chance that he might finally answer her.
“All along, I’ve known something bad was going to happen. But I never dreamt of this.”
The awful words unspool inside her head.
No one knows about him.
No one knows about him.
No one knows about him.
And mix with Nirav’s words too.
I can’t believe how selfish you are.
Not everything’s about you, Kavita.
Is this her reward for pushing aside exhaustion and crossing the cold Atlantic? Smiling although she has lost her joy. Cooking even though the thought of finishing a meal repulses her. Supporting them in their grief while they openly deny hers. Is this her reward for giving, and then, despite the inch of water left inside her meagre well, ladling out a little more?
She takes a deep sip, and another. Then she reaches for the bottle and pours the same again
Yes, she gave.
And it cost her.
Shame hollows her midsection—round, chilled, empty. A shiver rattles along her bones.
She forces down the drink with a few strained gulps, pushing through her gags for the promise of warmth shining at the bottom of her glass like an ice cube, an end to the unforgiving hoarfrost at her core. She relives the scene and its confusion, seeing all the things she should have said and done at the time. Why didn’t she speak up? Why is she always too slow to act?
“I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach,” she explains to Sunil. “I didn’t know how to react. I was in the middle of something I didn’t understand and it stole my voice. This whole situation is inconceivable to me. How could I prepare for something I didn’t think was even possible? Please understand, Bear.” Her chest tightens. “I need you to understand.” She wishes he was beside her, his arm wrapped around her shoulder, telling her of course he understands, he probably would have reacted the same way, so stop worrying, nothing has ever come between them, and this won’t either. She longs for him to tell her that everything is going to be okay. He doesn’t forgive her because there is nothing to forgive. But, as ever, the only sound that pours into her ears, is silence.
The skin of her face feels feverish. She holds the cool glass against her searing forehead, trying to slow her speeding thoughts, which race like frenetic molecules pinging off her inner skull. But there is no cooling their sickly motion. She finishes her drink and sets the glass aside. Even the power of whisky can’t bolster her against Anchor’s drag.
Despite all your promises, it tells her, you’re still failing him. You had a chance to do something, to set things right, but instead you did nothing, as usual.
As Anchor pulls, it gets harder to breathe, as if her guilt is water, and she is at risk of drowning in the open air.
The heaviness comes next, its shadow passing through her like a ghost, from her crown of her head, to the soles of her cemented feet.
Aren’t you tired of these broken promises, says Gloom. These thin apologies?
You know he must be tired of them.
…You’re an excuse for a sister.
A waste….
Anchor, Blaze, and Black Gloom all at once—subcutaneous, unsparing, swelling—moving in quick ripples, volatile fluids sliding together in an oi
ly slick, a force that is building toward a burst, the want for release rising to need.
Moving mechanically, Kavita fetches a tea towel from the kitchen, retraces her way to the sliding door, and steps onto the wet patio stones, barefoot. After wrapping the tumbler in the towel, she places the bundle on the ground, hovers her foot above it for a second, then smashes it with her heel.
As she squats low, she unwraps the towel, and searches among the shards, choosing a piece that resembles a spearhead. Holding her breath, she presses the sharpest edge deeply into her palm, resurrecting her cigarette scar. Pain roars up into her throat where she gags on it. The rims of her eyes quiver with little vibrations that blur the edges of her vision.
She does not wince.
She knows she does not deserve to wince.
She does not scream.
She knows she does not deserve to scream.
As she closes her eyes, she dips into the pain—raw, bruised, slippery. This pain she can manage. This pain she knows she deserves.
When the roar of pain tapers to a whisper, Kavita slowly lets the night back into her eyes, and peers into her pitted palm, watching with detachment as blood pools and drips. Her throat aches. Her chin trembles. Hot tears slip down her cheeks.
She straightens her sore legs, pushing up from the squat, and lifts her tearful gaze to the smoky night sky. Sunil’s face raises the silver topography of the moon. Is that where he has been? Watching them from on high? Shuddering at what he has witnessed since he’s been gone? A charcoal puff of cloud slips across his eyes.
Shadows may obscure beams of moonlight, Kavita reasons, but the moon itself remains, waiting behind the veil for the darkness to move on. The moon is still the moon. It is always beautiful. Kavita thinks of Sunil, viewing from a distance the light masked by trouble, the silver beauty of his glow. That is what he deserves: To be remembered, with beauty.
The charcoal puff of a cloud drifts on. Moonbeams pour into her cold middle, filling it with silvery light. The empty space within her remains cold, but for now, not as lightless as before. She doesn’t wish upon a star at that moment. Instead, she vows to the moon, promising to reclaim beauty for Sunil, somehow.
23.
KAVITA FUNCTIONED THROUGH the next few days with the rigid mechanics of something made of more metal than flesh. The only time she felt much of anything at all was when she stood over Nani’s casket, but even then she was touched by greater disbelief than sadness, at the greying skin, the artificial plumpness of lips and cheeks, the husk without a soul to liven it, which left her thinking, That isn’t Nani. Nani isn’t here, and made Kavita realize she wasn’t either. To live was to feel. Survival was doing what was necessary to get by.
Now they are at Heathrow, saying their goodbyes at the security gate. She lets them hug her and peck her on the cheek, but she doesn’t feel any of it.
Normally, passing through security makes her anxious, especially in airports outside of Canada, where she somehow feels more conspicuously brown. Today, though, as she walks through the metal detector, and collects her things from the plastic bin, she breathes in ease, as if with every step she senses her humiliation shrink and shrink behind her. It’s over, she thinks. Soon she will be home again. Soon she will be safe.
They stop at a newsagent for water, gum, and magazines. While they wait in line, Nirav says, “I know our reason for coming was horrible. But it was a lovely trip in the end, wasn’t it?”
Dumbfounded, Kavita hides her shock by reaching for a copy of National Geographic from the bottom shelf of the magazine stand. As they wait to pay, she considers how incongruent her husband’s perception is from her own. How you can live a life with someone, and yet, not be living the same life at all.
On the way to the gate, Nirav tries to hold her hand, which she keeps hidden in her sleeve, and she lets out a faint whimper. When he asks her what’s wrong, she tells him she accidentally cut herself while making sandwiches for the wake. Silly bean, he calls her. She needs to be more careful, doesn’t she? He moves to the other side of her and takes hold of her good hand, thanking her for everything she did leading up to the service and after. She was his rock, he tells her. He couldn’t have gotten through it without her. He doesn’t bring up their fight, neither seeking an apology, nor offering one, as if whatever happened has been resolved in silence, as if by virtue of pardoning her, he himself has been pardoned.
At the gate, she flips through her copy of National Geographic and daydreams of jumping into the photos of exotic locales—bathing in the blue waters of Cuba, trekking on the sandy-coloured plains of the Savannah, and sailing the dunes of the Sahara. Of taking flight.
24.
THE PLANE LANDS in the early afternoon. Without speaking, they disembark, wait in line at immigration, collect their bags from the carousel, and wait in another line for a taxi.
During the short ride to their condo, exhaustion begins to sink into her limbs as though her body is finally free to express the cost of the last few days. Leaning her head against the window, she gazes at the familiar surroundings, grateful for home and the cloudless sky. She craves the warm particulars of home—a scalding Epsom salt bath to ease the old-woman ache in her muscles, a strong cup of ginger tea, and Coal curled up on her lap purring in absolute bliss.
As they enter the condo, Coal welcomes them with urgent mews, brushing off his body against their legs as they pry off shoes and hang coats. Kavita picks him up, buries her face in his soft fur, and inhales his reassuring scent. They have a box of Marks and Spencer Scottish shortbread biscuits in her suitcase for her neighbour as a thank-you present for cat sitting.
Reluctantly, she sets him down, travels to the kitchen, and checks on his food and water bowls, while Nirav wheels their suitcases into the bedroom. She is about to top-up his kibbles, when the red blinker of the answering machine catches her eye: 5. 5. 5.
The warning beacon in her gut blares in tandem with the flashes. Danger is imminent. Something must have happened to her parents while she was away. She knows it. She can feel it. The bag of cat food slips from her hand with a bash. Coal’s claws skitter across the hardwood as he bolts for cover. Kavita braces herself, then presses play.
“Kavita?” her father says. “It’s Papa. I’m staying at a hotel. Call me when you get back. Bye.”
What? she thinks. Why is he at a hotel?
The next message plays.
“It’s Papa again. After I hung up, I realized I forgot to tell you where I’m staying. The hotel is called the Traveller’s Lodge. The phone number is…have you got a pen? Okay, the number is….”
Kavita scrambles for the message pad beside the phone and scribbles out what she hears.
The third message begins.
“Hi, beti. Me again.” For a few seconds, the message breaks, and all Kavita can hear is the static sound of her father’s breath, its strain amplified through the receiver. “Your mother and I had a fight. She….” Another break in the recording, more heavy breathing. “…She blamed me. For his death. Said it was my fault. If I had been a better father, more attentive, then he wouldn’t have.…” Someone else might have filled the pause with their tears, but Kavita has still only ever seen her father cry at Sunil’s cremation, the day he was brought back to them, and then taken away. “Remember when you caught us fighting in the living room? She said it then, too. But I didn’t think she meant it. I thought she was just angry and needed to take it out on someone. Anyway, I hope you get home soon.”
Before the fourth message plays, Kavita already knows who it will be.
“Kavita? It’s Mom. I’m sure your father has called you by now. Don’t listen to him. I didn’t kick him out. He chose to leave. I’m sorry he dragged you into this. But please don’t worry. It’s nothing. I hope you had a good trip. Nirav’s mother must have been so happy to see him.” A pause that lasts a few beats too long. “Call me once you’ve settl
ed in.”
The last message on the machine is an automated recording is from the Canadian Diabetes Foundation notifying them about donation collection happening in their area next week.
Nirav enters the kitchen buttoning up a fresh shirt. “Anything for me?” he asks.
“We have to get Dad,” she mutters past her shock.
“Get him from where?”
She holds up the message pad, stupefied.
Nirav reads her scribbles. “The Traveller’s Lodge? What’s all this about?”
“That’s where he’s staying. I think he’s been there for days.”
“Why isn’t he at home?”
“They had a fight. The biggest one yet, by the sound of it. I think.…” She can’t quite bring herself to say it, swallows, tries again. “They’re over, Niru.”
“Over as in split up?”
“Didn’t I tell you I can’t leave them alone?”
“Surely it’ll blow over like every other time.”
“You can’t take back the kind of things they’ve said to each other. Dad’s blaming Mom. Mom’s blaming Dad. Who am I supposed to believe? How am I supposed to choose sides? It’s all falling apart. I didn’t think things could get any worse, but they have.”
“One thing at a time, yeah? Call your dad. Let him know we’re on the way.”
“He’s allergic to cats.”
“We’ll arrange for him to stay in one of the guest rooms on the way out, all right? No one ever uses them.”
Kavita knows she has to move; they’re wasting precious time. Her brain tells her hand to pick up the phone and dial the number for the hotel, but her hand won’t listen, as if she never had a hand to begin with.
“Kavita?” she hears Nirav say outside her shell. She feels his hands gently grip her shoulders. “Take a deep breath,” he tells her. “That’s it. And another. Good. We’ll figure it out, okay? But first you need to call your dad.”
He dials the number for her and places the receiver in her stiff hand. As she listens to the tireless ring of the bell, she gnaws on her bottom lip, anxious for her father to put an end to the noise, and her worries. At last, he answers.
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