by Shani Mootoo
I didn’t think Priya was a liar exactly, but rather that she was secretive, and I wanted, this late in our relationship, to know what those secrets were. What I saw were old discoloured photos of her parents — at least, I thought that was who they were, for the young woman resembled Priya — and photos of their marriage, then ones of each of them with groups of people who might have been relatives or close friends. They appeared to be fun-loving people. Groups of them in front of landmarks I didn’t recognize, at house parties, in gardens. So many group photos. And several of an older couple. In one of them that couple is standing on the front step of a house, waving to a young woman as she is about to get into a car. Was the couple her grandparents, the woman her mother? It seemed terribly unfair that I was seeing these without Priya there to tell me who was who, and how she was related. Why wouldn’t she have shared her family photos with me, I wondered. Did she not trust me? Or did she simply not think I might be interested? There was lots of smiling for the camera; you could almost hear the laughter of the people sitting around food and drink, and in the frothy, frilly water’s edges of what I imagined were Caribbean beaches. Jealousy that she’d so guarded these photos made me want to scatter them all across the floor of her office and later confront her. But, of course, considering how I learned of them, I wouldn’t have done that. There were a handful of her as a baby — her name scribbled in a flowery hand on the back — her as a toddler, and then in her various school uniforms. I wanted to stay with each and examine them all, but there wasn’t time. Sharing the contents of those boxes could have been a kind of gift given to me by her, a glimpse into parts of her life or her mind. My sense that she kept things from me was validated. This was the real problem — not that she had an old friend coming to visit, but that she kept things from me.
I shuffled the photos as I continued to search, and then in one of the boxes was the album she’d shown me once, years before. I looked through it quickly, stopping at one photo I recalled of a table-tennis team she’d belonged to. There was her first love, a woman named Fiona, and there, in that same photo, was Prakash. There were no more of him or Fiona. But in an envelope at the back of the album I found a stack of loose pictures, all of which were of Prakash, some of Priya with him. I could not help but note that this stack did not include any other people, and it was this — this isolated but specific grouping — that weighed on my mind. What did it mean that she’d gathered these together? There’s madness in such scrutiny and questioning. I knew this, but I couldn’t help myself.
He was an unremarkable presence. He was thin, and there was in almost all the photos what I remembered Priya calling years ago “the trademark V sign” made with his fingers. The photos were likely taken by her; I recognized her signature in the manner of framing the subject. If I am correct that it was she who took these photos, they must have travelled together to various places across the province and perhaps even across Canada — I recognized landmarks in Toronto: the zoo, the Islands, Kensington Market, as well as the landscape of Tobermory — and there were photos of him posing on large rocks at the seashore, and from the vegetation and colour of the rocks I guessed the location was the east coast. There were two photos, both taken on the same occasion, of the two of them standing side by side. A body of water was behind them, an ocean or perhaps it was a lake, with no sign of land save for the bare rock on which they stood, both of them thin and young, and though their feet were planted wide apart to steady them, they looked as if they would topple forward. They seemed happy, laughing or with large smiles spread on their faces, but there appeared to be no obvious closeness between them, and it might even be said the distance between them had been intentional. I wouldn’t know whose intention that was, but given that he was supposed to have been enamoured of her, I would say it was likely she who initiated the apartness. There was an odd resemblance between them — not their Indian appearance, but perhaps the shyness, the hesitation in their stance, both seeming unsure of themselves, each other, the world in which they were caught.
I found nothing that day to suggest she and Prakash had been involved in an intimate relationship. An envelope of photos of no one else but him and her proved nothing. But since then I’ve wanted to tell her that I found evidence of something graver — of how closed she was with me. But I would have had to admit I’d searched through her office. Secrecy and snooping seemed like different sides of a single coin.
* * *
Priya had not yet returned when, from the kitchen, I heard an unfamiliar car pull into the driveway. I went to the front of the house and pulled down a slat of the blinds to have a look. He’d arrived in a grey convertible BMW with a blue soft top.
I suppose I had expected a simply ordinary person to arrive at our door, perhaps fattened by age and of no remarkable uniqueness. So I was quite surprised to find a medium-build man, fairer in colour than I’d imagined. He was a year younger than Priya, but he looked older than she. He had the kind of almost-handsome face that is cast in Bollywood films as the good-natured supporting character. Too soft, too fleshy for the hero, but sensible enough looking to be confided in.
It wasn’t as awkward as I’d expected. I explained that Priya had had to run an errand and would be back in no time. He was unfazed by her absence and immediately talkative: “I’ve been down this way before, you know. Just for the day. Just once. The dunes, we spent the day there, some guys from work and I.” In the foyer, as he slowly removed his shoes, he said, “I’ll never forget, at sundown just before we left the beach, we heard what we thought was a pack of dogs yipping as if they’d just been let loose from a cage, but they weren’t dogs.”
“Coyotes,” I said.
He nodded. “Yep. Three of them, but they sounded like they were half a dozen or so. At the edge of the water, tugging at the carcass of a large animal. I remember the vultures silently circling overhead.” He’d taken pictures with a film camera using a telephoto lens, he said, but couldn’t bear to look at the photos once they were developed.
It took him an eternity to stuff a plaid scarf into the sleeve of his grey-green coat before he handed it to me. He had an immediate kindness about him and a credible effervescence, and I had the impression he must have grown up pampered by his mother, sisters, aunts, and female cousins. His hair was grey and cut close to his head. From the coat emanated the hot scent of leather and lime.
I said something inane, along the lines of there’s neither kindness nor malice in nature, and he chuckled as if what I’d said was terribly funny or astute. I was not immune to the flattery in such a response, but as intrigued as I’d instantly become by his appearance and manner, and this talkativeness I hadn’t expected, I still didn’t want to have to entertain him on my own for any length of time.
I took him up to the guest room, where he plunked down his overnight bag, and suggested he could rest or freshen up if he wanted, but he followed me back down the stairs. Intending to excuse myself and return to the kitchen, where before he arrived I’d been chopping onions, garlic, and herbs for a marinara sauce for their dinner, I thought I’d set him up in the living room with a magazine or two to browse while we awaited Priya’s return. But he herded me through the living room, and we both ended up in the kitchen. I put on the kettle for a pot of tea for him and tried not to look at the clock. He wasn’t short of chatter — I asked questions — he asked me nothing — and he answered at length. We could just as well have been strangers seated next to one another for hours on a flight, our bodies pinched into our seats to minimize the possibility of encroaching on the other’s space, our immediate fates bound inextricably, and yet, like horses wearing blinders, our eyes locked straight ahead, not a neigh between us until just before landing, when one of us thought it too weird not to know a thing about who it was she’d sat next to so almost-intimately for endless unstable hours, and, with only minutes left before the end of the journey, decided it was imperative — and finally safe — to utter a word or two to
the other: Are you going home or on holiday? Oh, business. What kind of work do you do? Your first visit here/there? But in this case, it was me asking the questions. How was the drive? From where was he coming? How long was it?
The drive was fine. He enjoyed cross-country driving. He’d once driven to Vancouver and once to San Diego to a friend’s wedding, so the drive here was nothing at all. He has lived in the same house for almost twenty-five years. His was the first built in what had previously been a barren area, about an hour northwest of Toronto, he told me. Today it’s a city with its own mayor. There was a mall with a Winners, a Starbucks, a food court, and behind it a Cineplex. There were numerous game arcades, one of which one of his sons frequented — plenty to do in his neck of the woods, he said.
He might have asked what it was like to live down here, on an island, in the countryside, or in a tourist town, but he didn’t, and I didn’t bother to offer an opening for such an exchange. He hadn’t been to Uganda in more than four decades, I learned, but was planning a trip there soon. He wasn’t worried all that much about flying and planes exploding in mid-air — what is to be will be — there was so much to be afraid of in the world, he said, that you couldn’t live your life in fear, otherwise you wouldn’t ever leave your house or open your windows or doors.
Nothing personal.
Then, as if seizing on an opportunity he had been looking for, he said, “When Priya left her island in the Caribbean, it was a peaceful place, but it’s become like Uganda. Daily murders that by the end of a year make up mass-murder kinds of totals. Aren’t we all glad to be living here?” It was rhetorical, and elicited from him laughter. I didn’t know if he was serious or being ironic. “You know, I’ve known her almost as long as I’ve been in this country. But it’s been years since we’ve seen each other. Is she still painting these days?” I pointed to two paintings on a far wall in answer. He glanced over at them. From where we were, he would not have seen the details, the surface of green lake water, fanciful weeds waving beneath, all rendered in thick paint with knives. I suggested he go and have a closer look. He said, “There’s time. I’ll see them later,” and he turned back to me.
“You lost touch with her?” I asked. “When was the last time you saw each other?”
“Oh, maybe six years ago. But then she just kind of disappeared. She’s always been hard to pin down.” I might have agreed, but I wasn’t about to let him in on the private details of my relationship with Priya. He looked around the kitchen and said, “But finally she’s found a home. Looks like a lovely home, too.”
“What made you decide, after all these years, to come down?” I asked. They’d last seen each other “maybe” six years ago. She and I had met and begun living together six years ago. Was it during that time, then, when he and she last saw one another? If so, she had never mentioned it.
“I saw she was active on Twitter and I wrote and told her to write me at once. I wasn’t going to let her disappear from me again. That’s how we reconnected.”
He laughed at everything he said.
Trying to sound as casual as possible, I said, “And you decided to come down and, well, here you are. Let me get you a drink.” I didn’t want to press. It seemed too obvious that I was fishing.
But then he offered, “So, yes, when she invited me, how could I not jump at the chance? Priya was my closest friend, but, you know, she used to come and go — appear and disappear — but never had there been such a long period of silence between us. And, of course, I accepted the invitation because I also wanted to meet the new partner with whom she was so happy that she’d forgotten all about her old friend.” At this last he opened his palm to take me in, and I smiled, and again he laughed heartily.
So she did invite him. I turned away so he wouldn’t see my lips purse and wiped the granite counter with the edge of my hand. This crossed a line, because this very thing, how he came to be visiting us, had been contentious from the start. Everything, it seems, always comes out one way or the other in the wash.
Other than that, I didn’t ask questions or comment more than a nod to indicate I was still with him. I let him speak, which he was clearly happy to do.
He said she was the first friend he’d made in this country. The reiteration wasn’t lost on me. She’d known him before he’d properly learned to use a knife and fork, he told me with what seemed oddly like pride, and he remembered her smacking his hand once when he used the fork incorrectly. This was, I imagine, meant to be evidence of something — trust perhaps, or intimacy — and I could have added, Ah, yes, so she’s always been particular, has she? and confided that this trait of always wanting to get things “right” had been the frequent cause of arguments between us, but I kept quiet.
He persisted, though. He opened his arms and held his palms out in front of him as if to hold or behold all that was before him, and said, rather paternalistically, “So she’s landed on her feet. I can’t tell you how happy I am to see this myself.”
I did not want to know what he meant. Any substantive response would have been to discuss her life as he once knew it and as I know it today, and such scrutiny behind her back and with someone I was only just meeting seemed unfair, regardless of what was transpiring between her and me. You can, I know, feel alienated from your lover and still not want to disrespect her.
As he spoke, I continued with my task, dunking tomatoes into a pot of boiling water and scooping them up a minute or so later. I dropped them in a bowl and covered it with plastic wrap. When he saw no response was forthcoming, he added, “When you’re young, it’s inconceivable you’d ever reach your parents’ age, and when you do arrive at the age at which they had once seemed so ancient, the world has changed so much and you realize they were not role models for the changed world you’re living in. There’s triumph and disappointment at once. It’s a miracle we survived our youth and evolved in the ways we have.”
If I were younger, more tarted up, would he have been more curious about me? I could have told him my parents did not live to the age I currently am — I have, in fact, survived well beyond the ages to which they’d lived, dying one soon after the other when I was in my early thirties — so sometimes I feel as if I am coasting on borrowed time, as the saying goes. They were not role models; I had to figure it all out on my own.
* * *
When finally we heard the front door open, he swivelled to face Priya as she entered the house but remained planted where he was, and from him erupted ebullient laughter. He outstretched his arms and, addressing both of us, exclaimed, “Look at her. Just look at you. Long time no see.” Still he stayed where he was. I gathered he wanted to share the reunion with me, so I leaned against the stove on my side of the counter and watched. Priya didn’t take off her jacket and boots, but came through the house directly to him. The warmth of his greeting was touching — he clearly wanted to hold on to her longer than she wanted. Priya was less effusive. She seemed less delighted than I’d imagined she’d be. I hoped this was not for my benefit.
She said to him, “You’re entirely grey.”
“I’m not grey,” he returned, his voice seeming to feign a peevishness belied by the irrepressible grin he wore. He looked at me — an appeal, it seemed — and I gathered this elaborate show of offence was a way of creating complicity among the three of us. He wore thin, gold wire-rimmed glasses, and behind them his eyes had turned misty. I thought I should turn away, leave them for a while, but I was more curious than ever about some obfuscated truth about their connection and did not want to miss any of this, so I continued with the task of removing skin from the blanched tomatoes as I looked on.
After inane banter about what time had and hadn’t done to them both — Priya commenting that he’d come to resemble his father, at which he beamed — he reached for and held on to both Priya’s hands and attempted to pull her toward him. That was a bit much, a bit theatrical, I thought. Perhaps she did, too, as she step
ped in toward him for barely a second, and then, rather oddly, pulled a hand away and, although it seemed — mostly because of the smile she wore — as if it were meant to be playful, gently slapped his cheek. There was an intimacy to that odd gesture that I admit made my heart skip a beat, but I didn’t want to succumb to petty jealousies. I needed, I’d earlier decided, to remain strong and focused.
I couldn’t have known for sure, but I thought hurt flashed on his face — despite the ensuing chortling, which I took to be a manner of defence. Priya removed her jacket and threw it around one of the chair stools at the island counter. She made her way around the counter as I slid the skinned and chopped tomatoes into the skillet with the softened onions. And with more warmth than there had been between us earlier in the day, she wrapped her arms around me and kissed my cheek. She had taken on the scent of his lime-and-leather cologne, and this was like a fist tightening around my heart. To an onlooker there would, I’m sure, have been no hint, in the swift and almost ordinary gesture for two people who live together, of the distress that hung like a heavy curtain between us. It is possible such warmth was an indication, a display, either to him or to me, perhaps to him and to me, of where her allegiance lay. It is possible, too, that in front of a third person, dispensing affection was less complicated, required less of us both, than when we were alone. Her kiss on leaving the house with Skye earlier is a case in point.