Three Ways to Disappear

by Katy Yocom

  I am sick about all of this. But I do still love you.

  Quinn

  She sent the message before she could change her mind.

  Sarah

  She said goodbye to Quinn at the airport and Hari at the railway station—he was staying on in Delhi an extra day—and returned to Sawai alone. At the station in Sawai, she found William waiting for her. She’d been expecting Sanjay.

  They took the long way home, stopping at a bridge over the river to watch two mahouts on a sandbar, washing their elephants with buckets and scrub brushes. Sarah and William stood side by side, leaning their forearms on the railing. He was holding something, an object wrapped without ceremony in paper. He was working up to saying something, she could tell.

  “I’ve decided you should have this,” he said.

  She opened the paper to find the Sundarbans mask staring up at her. “William, no. It’s too special.” She tried to hand it back to him, but he wouldn’t accept it.

  “I want you to have it. Please. It appears you need it more than I do.”

  That sounded worrisome. She looked around to make sure they were alone. The mahouts on the river couldn’t possibly hear them.

  He kept his eyes on the mask. “Look, it’s really none of my business, but I find myself in a position where I have to warn you. I saw Sanjay’s brother-in-law the other day. He asked about you.”

  The hair on her arms rose. “What did he want to know?”

  “You can imagine. About the rescue and so on. Just general inquiry, I suppose. But it doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that he asked.”

  “He’s watching me.”

  “I don’t like to think what would happen if he looked too closely into your private affairs,” William said. It seemed to cost him something. “This is a dangerous place, Sarah. You’re something of a celebrity now as a conservationist. I’ve been in that position. It doesn’t always make one the most popular person.”

  “Wait. Are we talking about my private life or my public life?”

  A pair of cormorants flew over the bridge. William tracked their flight till they disappeared around a bend. “Look, this kind of conversation is not my strong suit,” he said, and suddenly she saw that he felt something toward her. They had become friends, but he was still her childhood hero. She liked him immensely. But she had never caught sight of his feelings.

  “You’re kind to talk to me about this,” she said.

  He smiled at her, rather sadly. “Be careful, my dear. He’s a powerful man.”

  In her flat, she sat on the low couch, holding the mask between her palms like a vinyl record, studying its staring eyes. The honey hunters in the Sundarbans went into the forest every day knowing they were stalked by a predator they couldn’t see. Now she found herself in someone’s sights. Someone with a capital S: the hard-hearted gentleman. But, unlike a tiger, this Someone had chosen to reveal himself.

  Her bag, still packed, sat by the front door. She could buy a ticket and leave, just like that. She could walk away from it all.

  She thought of Sanjay. And of Machli, doing her best to protect her children from the new male who would kill them if he could.

  .

  November 12, 2000

  She must know he is gone. It’s been weeks now. Still, I imagine she calls for him each night: aaooongggh. Silence meets her roars, but she can’t stop herself.

  Her cubs are growing. If the intruder lets them live, they will stay with her another year. Everything depends on his patience.

  Today in the park, from the next valley over, we heard the voice of another tigress calling and calling. Weeping for her children, and refusing consolation, because they are no more.

  What must it be like for Machli, protecting her daughters from the intruder? Today she surprised us all. It happened like this:

  He comes to her as she’s resting beneath a ficus tree. She rises to her feet and faces him, growling a warning to her children, who retreat. The intruder makes no move to menace them, and maybe it’s this fact that emboldens her to do what she does next.

  She takes a step toward him. They stand face-to-face. The intruder looks a bit unsure of himself, and, lacking any other plan (so it seems), he chuffs a hello. She greets him with a touch of her nose.

  Then she turns her back to him, settles to the ground, and shifts her tail to one side.

  He mounts her, and they mate briefly. Afterward he plops down in the clearing not far from her. A few minutes later, they do it again.

  If they were going about the business of creating a litter, they would mate for three or four days before she sends him away. But this appears to be a transaction of a different sort. They couple three times, and then she snarls, leaps to her feet, and slashes him across the nose. He shakes off the blow and stands watching her as if she hasn’t made herself perfectly clear. She hisses, body tensed to attack. Left no choice, he turns and walks down to a deer path at the side of the stream. She watches him go till he disappears around a bend.

  For an hour she stands watch, in case he should return. At last she allows herself to turn away and calls her children to her side.

  .

  That night she stole outside and descended the stairs silently, willing herself invisible as she slipped past William’s flat. She walked a few blocks to an anonymous neighborhood, where Sanjay picked her up on his motorcycle. They ate a late dinner of leftovers from his fridge.

  Near midnight, they sat together on his floor cushions. She felt exhausted but strangely wakeful. The plaster against her back felt chalky through her shirt. They watched moon shadows brush the wall opposite the window.

  “What is it?” he whispered into her hair.

  “Your brother-in-law. He asked William about me,” she said.

  His body stilled. “That’s not good.”

  She got to her feet and crossed to the window, making sure to stand where she couldn’t be seen from the street. Bats swooped across the dingy yellow sky. He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist. She turned to him and they crashed their bodies together. She felt their time together coming to an end. Judging from the desperate light in his eyes, he felt it, too. They stumbled to the bedroom and undressed only partly before her hands groped for him. She pressed a palm against the flat of his belly and searched his eyes.

  “I want you,” he said.

  “You have me.”

  “I have no one.” His voice was sharp. “No family. I can’t have you.”

  His belly burned beneath the palm of her hand. The decision was right there before them, demanding to be recognized. She saw him see it in her eyes. “Fuck it,” she said. “We want to change things, let’s change them.”

  His pulse beat against her palm. The nightstand held a stash of condoms, but she pulled her hand away from his stomach and he wrapped his arms tight around her and buried his face in her neck. She clenched him to her, kissed him hard, let herself call his name out loud.

  Quinn

  At the airport in Louisville, she looked for Pete, afraid to find him.

  There he was. She felt something lift inside her and nearly cried from relief to realize she was happy to see him.

  He’d brought the twins, beautiful and fresh-skinned. To Quinn’s eyes, they seemed visibly bigger than when she’d left. Or maybe it was just their sturdiness she was seeing. Her children were Shetland ponies compared to the Indian kids she’d seen. They jumped up and down, flung their arms around her waist. Pete hugged her tightly. “I’m glad to be back,” she said into his ear.

  He pressed his cheek to hers. “We’re glad you’re back, too. A couple of people around here have missed you.”

  She pulled back. “A couple?”

  He smiled with the right side of his mouth, a complex smile, unfamiliar. It reminded her of William’s. “Three people, actually.”

 
They gazed at each other, both looking for something.

  The drive home disoriented her. It was less the fact that cars drove on the opposite side of the road and more that she could hardly grasp the orderliness of the expressway. No one honked, every car kept to its lane, and she saw not one bicycle or auto-rickshaw or cow, not one single man getting a haircut by the side of the road. Office buildings slid by, shiny and blank. Not a hint of the past anywhere. When they walked into the house, she was shocked to find it so enormous and spare.

  She’d brought tiger-themed souvenirs: stuffed animals and stickers for the twins, a Ranthambore ball cap for Pete. The kids gleefully hugged the stuffed animals and lobbed questions at her. She told them yes, she’d seen a tiger, a beautiful tiger with a coat the color of turmeric.

  “What color is that?” Alaina asked.

  “Picture Cheetos,” Quinn said.

  Later that night, she tucked the twins into bed, then emailed Sarah to say she’d made it home. Downstairs, she found Pete waiting for her on the couch. He lifted one arm, inviting her to slide in next to him. She closed her eyes and nestled against the warmth of his chest.

  “I guess we’ve got a lot to say to each other,” he said.

  “I’m too tired to have much of a conversation right now, though.”

  “I figured. You’ve covered a few miles today.”

  She yawned enormously and fell asleep.

  Sarah

  Back in her apartment, she sank to the floor. Twelve days, thirteen, before her next period was due. She hadn’t even counted before she threw her body open to Sanjay.

  She placed her hand on the soft tissue just above her pubic bone and tried to gauge whether it felt any different. This could be the moment of conception: Right now. Sperm and egg coming together. And after that, a zygote, floating free as a planet for a few hours or days, soon to be tethered. She had heard women say they just knew. Quinn said that, when she got pregnant with Nick and Alaina. She just knew. Sarah had never asked her when, exactly, or how.

  What would it mean for Sarah to be pregnant in Sawai? She was already the foreigner, the anti-poaching activist, the reason a man was in jail. But a pregnancy: That would suddenly make things unbearably personal for the Sawai community. It would take no time for them to figure out Sanjay was the father. They wouldn’t accept the child, or Sarah and Sanjay for making it. Tarun could very well kill Sanjay for their crime.

  Let’s change things. What had she been thinking? How could she have been so foolish?

  But wait: Sanjay’s wife. She had forgotten their story. The thought threw her free of her trance, and suddenly she was pacing, chewing ferociously at her thumbnail. Because that changed things, didn’t it? They’d tried to get pregnant and failed. Tried for three years and never—

  So the chances were slim that—

  No. They had made a baby. Babies. But lost them.

  An hour ago, in the moment of decision, she and Sanjay had both been willing to change their lives. But if it came down to it, could he leave Sawai, the park, the tigers? Sarah had never met anyone so connected to a place. He was made of it. She couldn’t ask him to leave Ranthambore. She would have to leave without him, to keep him safe. She’d go somewhere with good health care. London, Paris. Someplace a woman with a child could thrive on her own.

  Twelve days. Thirteen. She didn’t feel any different. But she did.

  What if. What if.

  This was crazy. Sanjay would never give up being with his child. He would insist that they start over together somewhere else. They could move to Delhi. To Cornwallis Road. The thoughts flashed like lightning and tilted the room till she had to reach for the wall. And what if there were two worlds spinning inside her, orbiting each other like curious dogs at the park? A boy and a girl. Like Nick and Alaina. Like Marcus and her.

  She lowered herself to the sofa and tucked her feet up under her.

  Sanjay would make such a good father. He radiated kindness. She saw it in the creases at the corners of his eyes, in the set of his shoulders, which sometimes slumped softly forward. He often stood with his arms crossed, not in defiance or defensiveness but when he was considering something. His head tilted softly to one side, and his crossed arms became a shelf for his heart to rest on. A man giving himself over. She didn’t know if anyone else understood that about him.

  And maybe she wasn’t pregnant after all. What then?

  Then—life would go on, like before. But somehow that didn’t seem possible. Something had already changed.

  Her phone rang. Sanjay. This day was never going to end.

  “I am so sorry, Sarah.” His voice low. “Where are you?”

  He was asking about her cycle. “Right in the middle.”

  “We have to think.”

  “We have to sleep first.”

  “This is my fault.” There was wonder in his voice, as though he didn’t recognize the man he had become.

  “If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Things became impossible.”

  He said nothing. And she no longer knew what was in that silence.

  Quinn

  Autumn rain spattered her windshield as Quinn, still jet-lagged, drove to Mother’s house. They sat together at the glass-topped kitchen table, the room dimmed by the gray day outside. Quinn drank coffee and showed photos from India on her laptop. She included a picture she’d taken of Marcus’s headstone but no photos from their visit with Ayah.

  “You went to Cornwallis Road,” Mother said. “It was a beautiful house, I’ll give it that.”

  “Mother? There’s something I need to ask you.”

  Mother’s face did not invite whatever was coming next.

  “Before Sarah and Marcus got sick … there was a day when Ayah wasn’t there.”

  Mother got up from the table and retrieved a bag of potatoes from the cabinet. Quinn watched dumbfounded as she began briskly peeling them, flicking ribbons of beige skin into the sink. “I’m supposed to make a dish for my women’s club tonight,” Mother said.

  Quinn strode to the counter. “The day I’m talking about. Why did you send the servants home?”

  The knife paused, its tip balanced on the cutting board. Mother turned to her. “Who told you that?” She pointed the knife at Quinn. “You saw her. You and your sister saw Ayah. Didn’t you?”

  Quinn eyed the blade. “Sarah found her. We went to her apartment.”

  Mother’s eyes fixed on hers. “What did she tell you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what did she tell you! Damn it, Quinn, tell me what she said.”

  “Holy crap, would you put the knife down? You’re scaring me.”

  Mother let her arm fall to her side. Quinn took the knife, set it on the cutting board, and led Mother back to the table as the wind flung handfuls of rain at the window. “She said you sent her home. She didn’t say why. I swear that’s all. But Sarah and I … there are things we still don’t understand. Maybe if we knew what happened that day, it would help.”

  “‘What happened that day’ should have never happened.” Mother drew a breath. “Look. Quinn. I should have told you girls this a long time ago. I almost took you kids and left India. Before, I mean. When the twins were five.” She looked away. “Think what I could have spared us.”

  A wind gust rattled the panes. The lights went down and came back up, and the clock on the stove began blinking. “I would have been eight,” Quinn said. “The year we went to the Taj. Wait. You were going to leave Daddy? Why?”

  “I didn’t realize how lonely it would be. He was married to his clinic. I couldn’t do it anymore.” She collected herself. “He begged me to stay. He swore he’d do better. So I stayed, but nothing changed. But now if I was lonely, I had no one to blame but myself.” She looked up at Quinn. “You kept trying to tell me i
t was your fault, what happened to Marcus. And every single time, without fail, I told you it wasn’t. So now you understand. We were in the wrong place, living the wrong lives, and that’s my fault, not yours.”

  Quinn started to cry, which infuriated her because she wasn’t sad; she was just jet-lagged and confused, and it was too cold and raw outside and she should have waited to come here till she had her feet back underneath her. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? When you told me it wasn’t my fault, it felt like you just wanted to shut me up. Like what I’d done was too horrible to be acknowledged.”

  Mother folded her hands. “That was never what I meant. It was complicated. Not the kind of thing you can explain to a ten-year-old.”

  Quinn got up and flung her cold coffee in the sink. “You could have explained it to me when I was sixteen and starving myself. You could have explained it when I was in the psych ward after I swallowed a bottle of pills. Those things were pretty goddamned complicated, too.” She stood at the counter, holding the empty mug in front of her like a shield.

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to protect you.”

  “To protect me? What the hell, Mother? You sent Ayah home that day, and you won’t say why. Fine. But where were you? When you sent Ayah and all the other servants away and left me in charge, only somehow you forgot to tell me that little fact? Where were you?”

  Mother met her eyes. “I left the house.”

  Quinn set her cup down hard on the counter. Tears sprang to her eyes. “You did what? How could you do that to me?”

  “There’s no excuse, all right, Quinn? I made the worst mistake of my life that day.” She stood and crossed the room to look into her daughter’s face. “But I was the adult, not you. I never meant to make you suffer.”

  “But you did.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Quinn’s tears were flowing fast now, but she no longer cared. “Can you at least tell me where you went?”

  “Oh, Quinnie.” Mother reached out to cup her face, but Quinn shied away. “It’s something I have to live with, but you don’t. Count yourself lucky.” She let her hand drop, left the room, came back with a tissue, and handed it to Quinn. In a brisk voice she asked, “Was Ayah’s husband there? Arjun?”