Side by Side

by Anita Kushwaha

  “Niru?”

  “Hm?” he says, focused on his dinner.

  “I was wondering if we could talk about something.”

  “Oh?” lifting his gaze.

  “It’s important.”

  He lowers his fork.

  “I wanted to talk to you about what happened in London.” She veils her eyes, partially. “I know I haven’t brought it up since we got back, but it’s been on my mind. I know you didn’t want to talk about it before. And I understand why. It was a hard time for you, and I’m sorry. But some time has passed, and you seem like you’re doing better, so I thought I should bring it up, before it festers any longer. I was hoping we could talk and figure out what we’re going to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At the very least people need to be told Sunil that passed away. But equally, we need to know why they’ve kept it a secret. I have a million reasons spinning through my head. I just want to know the truth.”

  The corners of his mouth droop into a subtle frown. “Look,” he says. “It’s in the past. What’s the sense in dredging it up again? ”

  “It isn’t in the past for me, Niru.”

  “I don’t want to row, Kavita.”

  “Neither do I. I just want to talk to you.” She pauses. “I was so nervous to see your family for the first time since Sunil passed away. That would’ve been hard enough. But as it turned out, the hardest part wasn’t facing their questions, or even their awkwardness at not knowing what to say to me, which was what I was expecting. The harder part was having to pretend. Getting caught up in an awful secret. Being blindsided and silenced. Can you even imagine what that was like?” She waits for an answer, but nothing comes. “Do you even care, Niru? You’ve never asked.”

  “I wasn’t there.”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “We both know you’re a bit off at the moment, don’t we? Remember how you scared off Chi?”

  “What does Chi have to do with this?”

  “You’re not seeing things straight.”

  “I’m grieving, Nirav. I haven’t lost my mind. And I didn’t make this up. It happened.”

  He stares at his lap.

  “You obviously don’t think anything wrong happened.”

  “I told you, I don’t know what happened.”

  “What am I supposed to do now? Pretend that my brother’s still alive every time we visit London?” A rhetorical question. She knows she is never going back there.

  “Well, it’s always something with your family, isn’t it?”

  “Our family, Nirav.”

  “No, not my family. Your family. We wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for your family.” His mouth screws with anger. “I hate being part of your family.”

  She can tell by the guilty look on his face he has let something slip that he meant to harbour in silence. God only knows how long he has been harbouring it. “You what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You hate my family?”

  He shoots up from his stool, grabs his half-eaten plate, and lets it clatter in sink. “I didn’t say that,” he tells her.

  “You said—”

  “Just stop, all right? I haven’t the patience for this tonight.” He strides to the washroom and slams the door.

  “You never have the patience,” she mutters to herself. “And I never have the nerve.”

  Her cheeks burn. She crosses the room and steps onto the terrace in her slippers. The light evening wind carries with it the scent of snow, clean and metallic. She hugs the front panels of her cardigan close to her body, lifts her gaze, and stares fiercely at the pale grey sky.

  “How can I speak up for you, Bear,” she says, “when I still haven’t figured out how to speak up for myself?” A braver, confident woman wouldn’t have let Nirav escape. A woman with more self-esteem wouldn’t have given up until she reached the resolution she knew she deserved. What kind of woman was she turning out to be? What kind of sister?

  The rims of her eyes shiver. She wants to see beyond the ashen prairie of clouds, straight into Heaven, if it exists. See Sunil’s pleasing half smile. Know what he thinks of them now, the people who have splintered so unutterably without him. Soft snow begins to fall, thick and wet, icy fairy footsteps tapping across her face.

  29.

  A WEEK LATER, while she is scrolling through the library’s DVD catalogue online, the phone rings. Her heart leaps in her chest, the way it always does whenever she is surprised by an unexpected sound. Maybe it is one of her parents calling to check on her, she thinks. Hopes.

  “Hello?”

  “Is that Kavita?”

  Something inside her sinks. Not her mother’s voice, or her father’s.

  “Mrs. Stone?” she says. “Nirav’s not home at the moment. He won’t be back from work for another couple of hours.”

  “I know,” Mrs. Stone replies, curtly. “That’s why I’m calling. I wanted to speak with you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Listen, Kavita. Nirav called me the other day in quite a state. He said you were upset with me. Do we have anything to talk about?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m asking you, Kavita: Do you have anything you want to say to me?”

  The bluntness of the question catches Kavita off guard. Nirav didn’t mention he had spoken to his mother, or warn her that she might call. Now, the moment of confrontation Kavita has been awaiting is right in front of her, but thrust upon her in such a way, she can’t think of what to say, as if Mrs. Stone has wiped her mind clean with her thumb, before pinning Kavita firmly under it.

  “Because if you do,” Mrs. Stone continues, “now is the time. Or I don’t want to hear about it again.”

  Kavita doesn’t know how to respond to this ultimatum, this limited time offer. This: speak now or forever hold your peace, or else.

  “Well?” Mrs. Stone presses. “Was it our last conversation about the two of you having a child? That’s the only thing I can think of.”

  Kavita opens her mouth, pulls in a tiny breath, and holds it.

  “No? I didn’t think so. No one can blame us for wanting to be grandparents, regardless.” Mrs. Stone releases a frustrated breath into the phone. “Well, that settles it then. I’ve done my part. Tell Nirav I called, will you? And Kavita, that’s the last I want to hear about it.”

  With the drone of the dial tone burrowing into her ear like confusion, Kavita blinks at the wall, wondering what just happened.

  30.

  THAT EVENING, Kavita breaks the silence of their dinner. “Your mother called today.”

  Nirav’s eyes shine, alert. “She did?”

  “You didn’t know she was going to?”

  “I never know what she’s going to do.”

  “So, you spoke to her?”

  “Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well, I did. And you’re still having a go at me. I can’t do anything right, can I?”

  “Calm down, Nirav. I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. I would’ve appreciated a little warning. When she called today, I was totally unprepared for it.”

  “Did you talk things out?”

  “She thinks I’m upset about the baby stuff.”

  “Well, you set her straight, yeah?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Why not?”

  “She caught me off guard and I didn’t know what to say. The whole thing was over in about thirty seconds.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what to do. I talked to her like you wanted me to. At least she gave you the chance to speak your mind. It isn’t her fault that you didn’t, now is it?”

  Kavita pauses, wide-eyed. “She didn’t exactly give me the floor, Nirav. Now we can never talk about i
t again because she says so? Please tell me you see how slanted that is.”

  “Oh, Kavita, come on. Not every scenario is going to play out perfectly. Sometimes you just have to go with it.”

  “You still don’t get it,” she tells him. “It’s hard for me to talk about. If I’d had time to prepare, things might have gone differently.”

  Nirav puffs his cheeks with a breath.

  “You don’t seem upset by how she spoke to me.”

  “At least she tried.”

  “Is that what she did?”

  “Yes,” he tells her. “And so have I. I’m not sure what more you want from us.”

  The explanation waits for breath behind her lips, like kites waiting for a breeze, but Kavita doesn’t speak, out of weariness more than anger.

  “Never mind,” she tells him as she gathers her plate and carries it to the sink. Some things are meant to happen instinctually. She has many memories of Sunil, but not one of having to explain to him why she sometimes needed his support, when she was wronged or disrespected, he simply did so, as if by reflex. Some things are meant to happen naturally, out of love.

  31.

  LYING IN THE BATH, Kavita gropes for the hot water tap with the dextrous toes of her left foot. A thick beeswax candle by the faucet offers warm, spare light and mildly honeys the air. Coal is crouched on the lid of the toilet, entranced by the vivid glow of the candle’s occasional flit.

  Nirav is out for the evening, attending his office’s annual Christmas party held this year at a trendy wine bar in hipster-occupied Hintonburgh. Although he tried to entice her with promises of plentiful drink tickets, an open bar, gourmet poutine, and midnight karaoke, she didn’t have the energy for chitchat and cheer.

  Instead, she spent the evening watching episodes of Family Ties on DVD. Growing up, it was one of the shows she and Sunil rarely missed, like The Facts of Life and The Cosby Show. As she mixes the hot water in with the lukewarm, she softly hums the theme song. I bet we’ve been together for a million years. And I bet we’ll be together for a million more…. Compared to the Keatons, the Guptas are like one of those candleholders made of wood or marble, of a family linked arm in arm—a family circle—only with the arms lopped off. She hasn’t heard from her father since he arrived at the abbey. He hasn’t answered any of her messages. Her mother called once, but mostly they talked about the upcoming sale of the house, and if Kavita could forward her mail. She sinks a little deeper into the bath, the waterline skimming her lower lip, and closes her eyes. This year whenever she hears I’ll be Home for Christmas the wound of losing Sunil splits its weak stitches. Christmas lights jar, cards are unreadable, setting up the tree—impossible.

  So instead, she loses herself in memories of Christmas past, like Ebenezer Scrooge. Time condenses. It feels like mere weeks ago instead of almost a year.

  On Christmas Eve, they watched It’s a Wonderful Life (she’ll never watch that movie again—where was Sunil’s Clarence when he needed him?) and ate pizza in front of the fireplace. At midnight, their mother made cocoa that they sipped while opening one present each before bed. Thinking of the gift Sunil gave her weakens her stitches a little more. It was a blown-glass ornament made of red and white swirls with Our First Christmas written in gorgeous loops on one side. She pictures the ornament now, safely wrapped in green paper, among the others she has stored away in the closet, which she hasn’t had the will to confront, let alone display. She brushes the slanted writing with her mind, knowing her brother meant the first Christmas of many, but now she doubts whether her marriage will survive another year. She went to bed that night with the feeling it really was a wonderful life, wasn’t it? The tinny sound of a bell ringing made its way into her dreams. The next day, Sunil woke up first and cooked a breakfast of eggs and pancakes for breakfast. They ate hastily and then opened presents She had knitted him a blue scarf, her first ever, obvious from its raggedy edges. He wrapped it around his neck and told her it needed breaking in. They tried to recruit Nirav in joining their childlike regression, but he wasn’t a fan of playing in the snow. They built a fort that could rival any they had made as kids, then had a snowball fight, and when their age finally caught up with them, collapsed in the snow and swept a pair of snow angels to life. Sunken in the drifts, she listened to the faint tap of snowfall against her hood, the ghostly trill of the north wind, and Sunil’s breath, deep and constant, beside her.

  Out of the tender memory, a heaviness descends upon her, like the heel of a god.

  No more good times, says Anchor. Every Christmas, and birthday, and milestone big and small, incomplete, like your family.

  …No more good times.

  Because of you….

  The heel crushes her even more, the heaviest weight yet, an unearthly gravity. Her body isn’t built to endure its pressure. She grips the filmy rim of the tub to stop the sensation of plunging through the floor, as if she is being forced to the centre of the earth.

  You never say or do the right things at the right time, says Gloom. You never found the perfect words to make him stay. The perfect words to convince him everything was going to be all right. Now nothing is all right. Everything is broken. Everything is broken beyond repair.

  You tried to fix it. But you aren’t him. You don’t have the magic he had.

  All you do is fail.

  Although she has battled them for months, waited for them to sink back into the buried places from which they crawled, she can’t deny their dark logic any longer. She has heard them for too long. She has seen too much of her life through their charcoal veil.

  I know, she tells them. I hate myself for it.

  Blaze slips through her veins like hot oil, lit by a spark of deep self-loathing, and spreads its wicked heat, a consumptive force she both fears and desires. Her body doesn’t feel built for this force either, as if her skin is too thin to hold the molten energy searing against it.

  She sits up in the bath. Pulls away the Band-Aid from her palm. Scrapes at the scab with her nails, digging them deeper into the wound. She focuses on the pain—torn, itchy, inflamed. This pain she can handle. This pain she knows she deserves.

  But it isn’t enough. Blaze burns, burns, burns. A few seconds and it will burn her alive.

  This fire can only be met with fire. She reaches for the candle. Holds her breath and hovers her palm over the flame. Squeezes her eyes tightly as it bites into her lifeline. She doesn’t wince.

  She knows she doesn’t deserve to wince.

  She doesn’t scream.

  She knows she doesn’t deserve to scream.

  All she deserves is pain.

  Blaze retreats somewhat, fire waiting within coals. She stares into her blistered palm. Her head is dizzy from the pain. Her sluggish thoughts reach for Sunil.

  I know I failed you, Bear. And I’m sorry. I should have been a better sister to you. I should have watched over you more closely.

  She cries.

  I tried to keep things together here, look after everyone, but I failed at that too. Now nothing’s the same. You wouldn’t recognize us. Everything we were left with you. But I promise you I tried.

  She weeps.

  Losing you is the wound that never heals. It’s bigger than me, Sunil. It’s everywhere. It’s everything. And this thing that’s happening to me, whatever it is, it’s bigger than me too. I’m sinking. I can feel it. But I don’t know how to stop it.

  She sobs.

  I would have traded places with you.

  …The wrong one got sick.

  The wrong one died.…

  Violently, she sobs.

  Enough.

  I know I’m not enough.

  But enough.

  Please, dear God, enough.

  After a little while, her sobbing peters to weeping, her weeping to crying, and her crying to staring at the tepid bathwater.


  We will always be here to remind you, Gloom tells her. You will always feel this way.

  Maybe she will hear them less underwater. Maybe she can drown them out. She takes a deep breath, and slips beneath the surface of the bathwater. Staring at the spackled the ceiling, she waits. All she hears is the muffled sound of air bubbles in her ears, like microphone static. No Anchor, no Gloom. She wonders how long she will be able to stay like this, in the quiet, the still.

  Nothing else occupies her mind. Seconds tick by. Then, minutes. She ignores the protests of her body, its demands for air and life. Her vision swims. Her eyes cross and start to close.

  Just then, Coal pads the bathwater, the way he sometimes swats at flies by the windowsill. Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. The ripples disturb her dark trance. Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap. Her eyes pop open as if startled from a dream. Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap.

  Her lungs scream for air.

  You deserve to sink, they tell her.

  Inwardly, she sinks deeper and deeper, as if she is descending into a well.

  Sink.

  Dark walls grow around her.

  Sink.

  She lowers so deep, she drops out of the noise and into a quiet place inside.

  The noise hangs over her like a snowy arctic wind tumbling over a deep ice-covered pool. It’s still there, she can hear it, but in a detached way, as if standing behind glass. It isn’t as loud as a moment ago. A moment ago, it nearly overwhelmed a deeper sound; a small, still voice she has heard before, that tells her: Breathe.

  Minutely, she shakes her head, no.

  Breathe, it repeats.

  No, no, no.

  Breathe, Kavita.

  She resists.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  The voice is so steady, wise, and true that she can’t deny it any longer. She feels her resistance start to slip away like slowly unclenching eyes. She pushes her feet against the end of the tub and emerges, gasping. Her chest heaves. Her heart pounds. Her head throbs. She breathes, breathes, breathes.

  Panting, she gazes at Coal with soft eyes. He is crouched on the toilet lid, hair bristled, ears perked, pupils wide and round. She reaches out to pet him, but he whines and rejects her. She is ashamed by how frightened he looks, how frightened she made him.