Side by Side

by Anita Kushwaha

  She hoists herself onto the wall, and swivels to let her feet dangle off the side. To the left, the gentle slope of the hillside is bright with the lushness of late spring. In the distance, at the far edge of the patchwork farmland, the river meanders from north to south, and then beyond her view.

  A fresh wind rushes into her unbuttoned jacket. She folds the front panels over her waist and lifts her gaze to the lightly clouded sky. A few hawks dip and climb and loop with the air currents tracing swirls in the blue. Her eyes follow their kite-like flight.

  What should I do? she asks Sunil. Please, Bear. Tell me what to do.

  She used to be so sure of everything. So certain of the path she had chosen. But ever since his passing, it is as if the lines of her life’s map have been burned away by grief. Which way is she supposed to go now?

  Hawthorn’s proposal kept her up last night, as haunting as restless spirits, echoing over in her mind: A fresh start with someone who understands you. Isn’t that what you’ve been searching for?

  She shivers, exposed. Is he right? Has she been looking for a way out of her misery all along? Did the hunger of her lonely heart lead her to Hawthorn? Is he the missing piece that is meant to fill the hollowness she carries inside like trouble? This person with whom she shares a language of loss, a connection through pain few understood, whose strange melody of Tibetan singing bowls and yogic chanting, organic farming and backbends, drifted into her darkness just as she was leaning into the silence in search of a new rhythm to follow? Can she live within the movements of this new song? Will its resonance be enough to fill the icy sphere of loneliness she carries inside?

  With an unfocused gaze, she keeps a passive watch of the hawks, distracted by the war within her. Conflicting sides tug in opposing directions—duty versus desire; staying versus fleeing; rebuilding versus starting over.

  Is it even possible? To start over? Or will she simply carry her troubles with her like items in a suitcase? After suppressing them all day under the noise of a new life, will she be able to stop them from howling in the night?

  Part of her fears change. This part says that it is best to stay with what she knows and continue rebuilding her life from the debris. She’s been doing it and it’s working. She’s finding a better way.

  The other part of her craves freedom, like the hawks soaring above. This part says it isn’t wrong to want a fresh start. People do it every day. People start over. Sometimes things are broken—broken beyond repair. Hawthorn’s family likes her. He adores her. He accepts her, broken pieces and all. Without him, this part reminds her, she might not have found a better way.

  As the two sides jerk and yank, Kavita feels close to splitting. She can’t deny the allure of Hawthorn’s proposal, its temptation, its promise. The reckless selfishness of a fresh start. She isn’t sure she has ever made a decision like it before in her life. She is accustomed to consulting her loved ones, weighing her wants against the good of the family, adjusting her wants accordingly. She has been raised to be a good daughter, and that is what good daughters do. They compromise, for the good of everyone, even if doing so makes them feel as if they are being torn from the truest part of themselves. They stay.

  And she has. Stayed. But where has everyone else gone? Despite her devotion, her love, she has found herself alone.

  And she is tired of it. It is exhausting, this cold.

  At its heart, that is what Hawthorn’s offer is. A hand to hold. A way out of winter.

  He offers, so easily. The opportunity to hew herself from her past, like a tree branch, and escape downriver with the fast-flowing current. Is that so bad? Everywhere she looks, she sees failure, loss, pain. Is it so bad to want to get away from that? To start over as the person she is today? Whoever that is.

  Of course, leaving isn’t easy, not that Hawthorn will ever truly understand, winged-like creature that he is. Sequoia was right about that. There is Nirav to consider. The man she fell in love with. The man she married, who once seemed as essential to her as sunbeams and air. The man who abandoned her to loneliness and shame. The man she doubts she can ever forgive.

  The wind blows harder. Kavita hugs her jacket around her waist a little tighter.

  In the end, she always confronts the same obstacle. Filial duty, as weighty as tradition, as present as her cells, not easily dismissed, especially not by something as anaemic as her own wants.

  The truth remains that her life is her family.

  Their joy is her joy.

  Their pain is her pain.

  Their survival is her survival.

  Even if her family hasn’t always treated her with such care, to her, they are inseparable, like the tangled roots of a banyan. What she feels for them is more than duty—it’s love. The most tangled connection of them all.

  Hawthorn assumes she can deny the strength of this bond, and be like him, spin through the air as free and daring as the papery, winged seeds of a maple.

  If she joins him, he has promised her good earth in which to plant themselves, a new place to grow green things that will creep over and cover the memory of all that went wrong, maybe even growing so thick one day, she might forget what was ever underneath.

  Closing her eyes, she stares at the blood-orange imprints on the insides of her eyelids. The low chatter of the other visitors feels far away. She tries to remember the last time she visited the park with Sunil, the autumn before he disappeared.

  They hiked around Pink Lake, with its surprising blue-green waters, straying from the trail to discover a small beaver pond. Sitting on a fallen tree, hushed with awe, they watched as a beaver swam noiselessly through the water, ever-watchful of their presence. Afterwards, they drove up to the Lookout. She might have sat in the same spot she is sitting now. Without speaking, they enjoyed the flight of the hawks.

  Please, Sunil, she begs him. Send me a sign.

  Slowly, she opens her eyes. Wincing against the midday light, she sees two hawks gliding side by side, drawing interconnected figure eights in the sky, symbols of infinity braided together on the wind.

  Her body starts to tremble. The rims of her eyes shiver. As she watches the skyward dance, Kavita feels her brother’s absence that is so present, the missing part of herself that is him. She can’t say it is simply a hole in the heart, or the stomach, or any place in particular. Rather, the loss of him is an ever-absence, a void that can’t be filled, because it isn’t meant to be.

  The wind gusts against her with even more force, as though the hand of life is trying to upset her precarious balance on the wall. Kavita curls in on herself, holding on fiercely, so she won’t blow away.

  37.

  PERCHED ON THE EDGE of the couch, Kavita waits for Nirav to arrive from work. A small suitcase of her belongings sits by the door, along with the cat carrier. Not long ago, she lured Coal inside with a toss of his favourite treats, and the irresistibility of his ratty blue towel, upon which he is now curled. She made arrangements for him to stay at the vet’s office while she is away at Muir Woods, after which they will both have to find somewhere else to live. All she knows for sure is that wherever she ends up, Coal will be with her. Throughout the upheaval of the past year, he has been her comfort, her company, even her saviour when she thinks of that night. Not to mention, he is the only thing she has left that still feels like home.

  She glances at her watch. Nirav is late. After they talk, she will call a taxi from the corner store down the street.

  She expected to feel more jittery. Yet somehow, nothing shakes or quivers inside her, as if she has reached a point beyond fear and upset. Still, something about the calm is unsettling. Maybe she is experiencing the stillness that comes from resolve. From finally accepting that when it comes to her marriage, she can’t control everything, she can’t hide forever from the way things are. Nirav is free to act as he chooses, and she needs to know what he will do when finally confronted.
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  After all, what he does is who he is, and how he feels about her.

  Perhaps that is the reality she is ready to confront, at last.

  The metal sound of the key in the lock draws her from her thoughts. Swiftly, she rises, presses her shoulders back, and braces herself with a short breath. The door shuts behind him. He doesn’t call out hello like he used to, in his overly-cheerful way. They are long past that kind of effort.

  Instead, his first spoken words are, “What’s this?” He would’ve seen the carrier and suitcase by now. He emerges from the hallway, pointing his thumb at the front door. “Going somewhere?”

  “Nirav, please sit down. We need to talk.”

  With his mouth slightly open, he drops his leather messenger bag on the floor in a noisy display and takes a seat at the island.

  She lowers back onto the sofa and folds her hands over her lap.

  “Well?” he asks.

  “I’m going on a trip.”

  “Oh really? Nice of you to tell me. Where abouts, might I ask?”

  “California. I’m helping a friend from group scatter his sister’s ashes. I didn’t tell you because it’s taken me a while to decide whether or not I was going. Besides, we haven’t exactly been on speaking terms.” He leaves for work early and stays late and eats and sleeps in the guest room. Part of her thought it was possible he might not register her absence for days.

  “He?”

  “Hawthorn’s parents are going too.”

  “What does this have to do with you?”

  “He’s helped me a lot this year. Now it’s my turn to help him.” That is what relationships are supposed to be about: give and take. Although, Kavita realizes now that she and Nirav have always struggled to find the right balance.”

  “How long will you be away?”

  “We’ll be in San Francisco for a week.”

  “All right, so you’ll be back in a week, then.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “You said a week?”

  “What I mean is, I don’t know when I’ll be coming back here.”

  What she sees on his face isn’t shock, exactly. It is more like the arrival of something inevitable, something he has had his eye on for weeks, and is finally as large as a ship in front of him. “I know we’ve been having problems. But I didn’t think things were this bad.”

  “Well, they are.” She walls her courage around her. There is no time to waste. She needs to ask him what she has been too afraid to ask for too long. “Nirav,” she says. “Why don’t you ever talk about Sunil?”

  His eyes flare for a moment, then close halfway. “I don’t know what you mean. I talk about him plenty.”

  “I wish that were true. But it isn’t. Didn’t you love him? Don’t you miss him?”

  “Of course I did. I do.”

  “Don’t say of course like it’s obvious. It hasn’t been obvious to me. You never so much as mention his name.”

  A tight-lipped pause. “I suppose I don’t have anything good to say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Three long beats. “I’m angry.”

  “Angry?”

  “Yes.”

  “With me? Have I done something?”

  “It’s not you,” he says. “It’s him. I can’t speak his name because I’m too angry at him all the time.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? It’s all his fault. This mess we’re in. The fact that you’re depressed and can’t work. That we’ve drifted apart. That your parents have split up. That you’re fighting with my family. It’s all his fault.”

  For several shallow breaths, she only glares at him.

  “That isn’t fair,” she says, attempting to steady her voice. “You can’t blame him for being ill. And you can’t use him as a scapegoat, either. He didn’t force your mouth shut all these months. He didn’t make your family shun him. He didn’t make you do nothing about it. He didn’t make you say that you hated being a part of my family when we needed you the most. All of that, you did on your own.”

  “He’s your golden boy,” he snorts. “I can’t do anything right compared to him.”

  “That isn’t true and you know it.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “I want to talk to you about what’s happened. I want to go through this with you. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “No, you don’t. You want to pummel me.”

  “I don’t, really. I don’t even have the energy anymore.” She pauses. “My brother died, Nirav, and I needed you. I needed to talk to you about it. I needed your support. But instead you treated Sunil like he didn’t exist. And when things went wrong with your family, you acted like that didn’t happen either. It breaks my heart that you expected me to pretend, too.”

  “Here we go. See? All my fault.”

  “No, it’s my fault. People treat me like shit because I let them. I should’ve spoken up ages ago, but I didn’t. I’ve had this incredible secret pressing against me for months. I’ve been such a stranger to myself—such a mess—that I thought I’d done something to deserve it. I thought, keep your mouth shut, Kavita. You brought this on yourself, so deal with it. No one wants a mess, so shut up and take it. But it’s gnawed away at me. At us. And I can’t live like this anymore.”

  “I thought that was behind us.”

  “And I’ve been waiting for it to come to the surface.”

  They sit in silence, briefly.

  “Listen,” he says. “What happened wasn’t right, all right?”

  “No, it’s not all right. You still don’t understand how shaming it was for me, back then and even now. Can you imagine what that must’ve been like for me? Have you?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Well, it added to my guilt. Because even though I didn’t do anything wrong, I still felt guilty for not standing up for my brother.” She glances at her palm, the scar, that he has never asked about or noticed, or maybe has noticed but never asked about. “I was devastated. To be honest, on top of everything else I’ve been struggling with, it almost pushed me over the edge.”

  She pauses expecting some sort of reaction from him, but he only keeps blinking at the floor, so she goes on.

  “If our places had been switched, you know I would’ve stood up for you. Right then and there. Like always.”

  Isn’t it typical for men to wax lyrically about fighting for a woman’s honour in songs and poems, only to fall short when the time comes to transmute words into actions. Isn’t it often the case that women are the actual protectors, while receiving no credit for being strong and steadfast, loyal and devoted, to everyone but themselves.

  “Look, I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. I don’t why I didn’t say something back then.”

  She stares at him, unblinking. “You did say something, Nirav. You told me I was selfish. Selfish for wanting my brother’s memory to be treated with dignity. All I have left is his memory.”

  “It’s just a big misunderstanding. No one’s shunning Sunil. My family just didn’t want to embarrass you.”

  “Embarrass me? They did worse than embarrass me, Nirav.”

  “They didn’t want you to have to face the community and feel, you know, ashamed or anything.”

  “Ashamed of what?”

  “Sunil…taking his own life.”

  “I’m not ashamed of that.” But something else is clear to her now. “I’ve never been ashamed of Sunil. But your family assumes that I am, because to them there’s something to be ashamed about. Is that right?”

  “Not my immediate family, no. But you know what community gossip can be like. My family figured they see us so infrequently, it would be easier on them to—”

  “Not be associated with something so shameful? To
save face?”

  “It sounds so harsh when you put it like that.”

  “What else could it be? How long have you known about this?”

  “It came up a while back.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me? After our last blowout, you didn’t think I might want to know?”

  “Well, you haven’t brought it up since then. I thought you were over it.”

  “I’ll never get over it, Nirav. I will never forget this. Do you understand that?”

  He rolls his lips and they disappear into his mouth.

  “I haven’t brought it up until now because after getting shutdown so many times, it’s taken me this long to muster up the courage. Besides, I shouldn’t have to chase down explanations, let alone apologies.”

  “Listen, I know I cocked up. I see that now. I know I’m not perfect. But I want to be a good husband to you, Kavita, really I do. And I think I’ve done pretty well, considering.”

  “You do?”

  “I’ve been here for you. Through thick and thin. I’ve been here the whole time.”

  “Like all those times I asked you to go to group with me. I even begged you.”

  “I supported you going.”

  “By not going.”

  “I told you, I don’t need therapy.”

  “Maybe not,” she says. “But I needed you. I needed you to hear all the things I couldn’t articulate about what I was going through. I needed you to learn as I was learning. I needed to feel like I wasn’t going through all the pain and the grief alone, with only a bunch of strangers to relate to. I needed you to be my husband.”

  “I am your husband.”

  “Sunil’s death is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s probably the worst thing that will ever happen to me. I’ve never needed you more. And you’ve never been harder to find.”

  “I didn’t leave you.”

  She thinks about this, and realizes, there is more than one way to leave someone.

  “So, group is where you met that bloke, then?”

  “His name is Hawthorn. And yes.”