by Pasha Malla
‘Have you eaten?’ he said, wheeling into the kitchen. ‘Want something?’
‘Depends. Too early for a grilled cheese?’
‘Cut into triangles?’
‘With Patak’s, please.’
‘Indian style! But does Mom have—’
Mona was a step ahead: from her purse she produced a jar of lime pickle.
‘You carry that around?’
‘Always come prepared,’ she said, and shrugged, and laughed. Kraft Singles and Wonderbread had been embargoed so Ash had to play it fancy with sheep cheddar and sourdough. And he felt a little surge of pride, however ridiculous, that the sandwich he presented to Mona was toasted a platonic golden-brown. She opened it to spoon in some pickle and the cheese fanned in molten filaments. His own sandwich he burned.
Mona slid her plate at him. ‘Take half of mine.’
‘No, I have to endure this one,’ said Ash, scraping the charred toast with his knife. ‘It’s my punishment.’
‘For what?’
He laughed. ‘For everything.’
‘Oh shut up and just split it with me. We’ll suffer equally, it’s less lonely that way.’
They traded sandwich halves and ate. Burt prowled under the table for crumbs, occasionally emerging for a snuffle between Ash’s legs.
‘Hey,’ said Mona. ‘Do you think Rick and Ma ever act out that scene from Ghost? You know, where he comes up behind her at the wheel and—’
Ash nearly choked. ‘For god’s sake!’
‘No?’
‘The last thing I want to think about is…that.’
‘Your mother being intimate, you mean? Making love?’
‘Mona!’
This was an old game, big sister mortifying little brother. He’d not seen this side of her in ages; her eyes sparkled.
‘I wonder,’ she whispered, ‘if Rick makes a private line of leather-wear. You know, assless chaps and one of those masks with a zipper for a mouth? For special moments.’
‘Stop it, seriously. You sound like Matt.’
‘Ouch! Low blow!’
‘You do. You both live for terrorizing me.’
‘Except he’s an actual terrorist.’ She spread a little more pickle onto a final bite of bread. ‘Did he end up going to India?’
‘Just heard from him. Goa.’
‘Raving?’
‘Ranting and raving, more like.’ Ash eyed their empty plates. ‘Another?’
‘You know me too well.’ She rubbed her belly. ‘Though at least now I can blame this little guy for my appetite.’
‘You know the gender?’ Ash laid out four slices of bread.
‘No, no…God, I hope it’s not a boy. Especially if he takes after his dad.’
An opening. Carving pats of butter into the pan, all Ash said was, ‘Yeah.”
‘So Ma didn’t tell you Harj wasn’t coming?’
‘No,’ he said, slicing cheese. ‘Though I got in pretty late last night.’
‘So she probably didn’t mention, either, that my idiot husband picked my second trimester to start sleeping around over there in Turkey.’
Ash turned, knife in his fist. ‘That piece of shit!’
‘With, get this: a Swedish nurse.’
At their wedding Ash had welcomed Harj to the family as a ‘brother.’ And signed his online petitions against whatever tyrannical regime, and tolerated his self-aggrandizing moral one-upmanship and disgusting habits and insipid, passive-aggressive slights, and, for Mona’s sake, never, despite several flaming urges, punched him in the face.
‘Swedish nurse, Swedish nurse. It could be a round.’ Mona bungled the tune of ‘Frère Jacques’: ‘Harj the jerk, Harj the jerk…perving on…a Swedish Nurse.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Ash, I found photos. In his email. But before you go judging me it was because there was some tax stuff with the will that needed dealing with right away, and I’d written to him and didn’t hear anything for a couple days, and I know how hectic things in those camps must be but I wanted to make sure he’d got the message…So, anyway, I checked to see if he’d read it. And then: ta-da!’
‘I’m not judging you.’ Ash hoped this was enough to keep her going. His sister hadn’t opened up like this to him in years.
‘In her nurse’s outfit, can you believe it? Swedish or not, how cliché can you get?’
‘What are you going to do? Does he know that you know?’
‘No. He’s in the middle of a war zone and has lives to save. The last thing he needs is me telling him off.’ Typical Mona, burying her pain under practicality, the affair reframed as a logistical inconvenience. ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I told him to stay there for Christmas and we’ll talk after. Too ominous?’
Ash swirled the melting butter around the pan.
‘If you’re keeping score,’ said Mona, ‘within two months I blow my first big case, my dad dies, and my husband cheats on me. I wonder what’s in store for the spring?’
‘These things only happen in threes,’ said Ash feebly.
‘What’s this about you losing your job?’
‘I didn’t lose it. Just…taking a leave. Or been asked to take a leave.’ He stacked the bread and cheese and moved it to the stovetop. ‘Or put on leave, I suppose.’
‘Shitty.’
The sandwiches sizzled. Ash poked them around, flipped them, then split them in two with the spatula. They ate in silence and when they were done Mona cleared their plates. Ash watched his sister at the sink. A slight hunch to her shoulders struck him as wounded. But then she straightened and announced that she was heading to the gym.
So Ash descended to the basement to ‘work,’ i.e. troll the internet for news of himself. Matt’s alleged video had yet to surface, though Ash did track down a few speculations posted to bookish forums about his leave from the radio, however that news had leaked. His favourite: Big coke problem I heard from a reliable source. Ash had never done cocaine in his life, and wondered who this imaginative—or imaginary—‘source’ might be. Under the handle BigMatt he replied, Hookers too I heard. Huge misogynist.
But he wasn’t erased quite yet. The following night was the airdate for his botched Behemoth interview, which Sherene would have been forced to whittle shipshape. It would be good to hear himself, to confirm his existence. But that was a whole day away. Ash closed the browser, revealing his dad’s novel open in Word. The hero had reached a plateau. With nothing else to do, Ash resumed his transcription.
And below the world spread out in all its glory, the green valley, the trees, the gurgling brook, the village far below, and the hero took it all in, breathing the clean sweet air. But his goal still loomed above. So he took to climbing again. Up toward it went the hero with the song of longing in his heart, each step then the next ever closer to the end.
Always ‘his goal,’ ‘it,’ ‘the end.’ So vague, the answer to a question never asked. If this really were Amarnath, the story provided no sense of impending spiritual awakening or edification or what would be achieved on the mountaintop. Ash was reminded of that adage: the journey, not the destination. Except the journey in Brij’s story seemed futile, the destination elusive. Maybe this was the point: a novel about the unachievable, the unobtainable, and what forever might lie just beyond reach.
—
ASH EMERGED AT DINNERTIME, joining his sister and mom and Rick for a meal of quinoa-based sludge and mixed shrubbery, then retreated again to the basement. At just before nine, pages from the end of Brij’s manuscript, a knock came at the door.
Ash froze.
His sister peeked in: ‘Still up?’
He slammed the laptop shut. ‘Just doing some work.’
‘Not watching porn.’
‘No!’
‘Then why the panic?’ Mona chuckled. ‘Anyway, I want to show you something. Once you’ve, you know, cleaned up your desktop or whatever.’
‘Mona! I was working!’
‘Whatever. It’s your busines
s. You’re an adult.’
‘You leave now.’
‘Aw. Come on, little brother. You’re going to like this.’
From behind her back she produced a VHS tape, the spine magic markered with their mother’s neat, square printing: XMAS 1984.
‘No way,’ said Ash, following his sister into the basement den. He sat while Mona put the tape in. ‘Where did you find it?’
‘Remember how I talked for years about having it digitized? Never got around to it. It’s been sitting in my closet the whole time.’
She joined him on the couch and hit play on the remote. As the TV crackled to life Burt came slinking downstairs and, after his attempt to mount Ash was rebuffed, curled up between them with a grunt.
The video opened with shadows and jostling before focusing on the kitchen floor. From behind the camera Brij spoke: Is it on, Ash? I don’t know if it’s working. And then a little boy’s voice, shrill as a whistle: All systems operational!
‘Such a nerd, even then,’ said Mona.
Ash kicked her gently; the dog growled.
The camera swung up: Ash, six years old, standing in the hallway. Reporters’ stance, shampoo bottle microphone. This is your correspondent Ash Dhar coming to you live from Christmas. There are reports that Mona’s already opening presents. Let’s go find out! And he shambled out of frame with an ease that his adult self, watching, wished were still his own.
‘You little shit-disturber,’ said Mona. ‘Trying to get me in trouble.’
‘Let me watch!’
They found Mona reading in a chair beside the fireplace, Christmas tree twinkling in the background—presents untouched. Say hello, said her father. You’re on film. She turned a page, didn’t look up.
‘How old are you there? Eight?’ said Ash. ‘So serious.’
‘Just trying to have some private time away from you lunatics, probably.’
Ash’s kid-version summoned the camera into the kitchen. Searching that cheerful face for some echo was like stargazing, that fanciful project of forging pictures out of dots a million miles apart—and long dead.
Mona’s reading, the kid on TV whispered. Interrupt her and feel the wrath.
‘The wrath,’ said Ash. ‘Hilarious.’
‘Hilarious until you felt it. You want a reminder? Maybe an Indian burn?’
‘Wait, is it over?’
The image had turned garbled. Eventually things wobbled into place and the next episode began. To the blasts and bleeps of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Rockit,’ Ash and Mona were dancing before the Christmas tree. In a recliner sat their mother, rapt. The kids were wearing pyjamas. Outside it was night.
Ash dove into the Worm and undulated across the floor. Mona escaped her glass box to writhe on the rug like something larval and sick. Ash’s attempt at a handstand was interrupted by Brij—Get down, idiot! That’s dangerous! For their finale they linked hands: an Electric Shock rippled through Mona’s body to Ash, who passed it back, flapping his arms like a flightless, convulsive bird. Back it came, back it went.
‘Did we practice that?’ said Ash. ‘Or is this improv?’
‘You don’t remember? We rehearsed for ages before telling Brij to turn on the camera. I mean, we’re making a music video here—you think we’d just go in without a routine? You even had a plan to make copies and sell them on the street.’
The number ended. Applause from their mother. Bows. Then Brij’s voice intervened: ‘Okay, that’s enough of that.’ And the video cut to black, then static.
‘That’s it?’ said Ash.
Mona frowned. ‘I’d have sworn there was a scene of us opening presents.’ She fast-forwarded through blank tape. ‘Do you think it got erased?’
‘It’s possible. Magnets, maybe?’
‘That sucks.’
‘Where’d Brij even get the camera?’
‘Dave,’ says Mona. ‘You don’t remember Dave?’
‘Vaguely,’ Ash lied.
‘Oh my god.’ She sat up. ‘He was this hippie who did his PhD with Ma. He lived in a trailer. We went over there once, and you went inside to use the bathroom and—this is so gross and hilarious—his bedroom had a mirrored ceiling and a waterbed and a swing, and Ma found you on it screaming, “I’m a swinger like Dave!” ’
‘No.’
‘Yes, little brother.’
‘I must have got that from Brij. Can’t you just hear him, all grumpy and dismissive? “That bloody swinger friend of yours.” ’
‘God, let’s hope it was dismissive.’
‘What do you mean?’
Mona tucked her feet under Burt. ‘What if he and Mom were into swapping too?’
‘Stop.’
‘Imagine?’
‘No I will not fucking imagine. You’re sick.’
‘Who knows what other movies got made with that camera?’ She nodded at the static on screen. ‘We should keep watching and find out.’
Ash reached for the remote; his sister snatched it away. Burt groaned and slid off the couch to the floor.
Mona sat back, curled her knees to her chest. ‘Didn’t we look like a real family then?’
‘Are we a fake family now?’
‘We were just so happy. Like there’s only good in the future.’ She turned off the TV. ‘It’s sad how much can go wrong.’
Ash thought of that loose, shambly way he’d had as a kid, so full of love and light.
Mona continued: ‘Part of me wants to go back and warn those kids, “Life is going to be hard. Life is going to beat the fucking shit out of you at every turn.” But then another part of me thinks, isn’t it better to be like that? So blissful and oblivious? That there’s just now, and now is good, and each next moment could only be as good as this one.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And now-now, check it out.’ She polished her belly as if it were a crystal ball. ‘Think of all the sadness this person is going to go through. And so much of it will be my fault.’
‘Oh come on,’ said Ash. ‘There’ll be tons of good stuff too.’
‘Doesn’t that make it worse?’
‘No way.’ A chance to bolster his sister’s spirits, even against his instincts. ‘The happiness of those kids has to still be in us somewhere. Which…is a good thing to realize, hiding away in my mom’s basement with my life collapsing around me.’
‘Well, our dad did just die.’
Ash’s throat tightened. ‘He did.’
‘And my shit-bag husband is humping Swedish nurses.’
‘Right. And there’s that.’
‘And you might have lost your job.’
‘Temporarily.’
‘Say it.’
‘But—’
‘Say it.’
Ash gathered a breath. ‘I might have lost my job.’
‘Because you’re an asshole.’
‘Because I acted like an asshole.’
‘Are an asshole.’
‘I’m an asshole, fine. Happy?’
‘And now here we are.’
‘And now here we are!’
‘At our mom’s house.’
‘At our mom’s house. With Rick.’
Mona snorted. ‘Oh, Rick. Rick and his leatherwork.’
‘Easy now. Rick’s an artist. An artiste, even.’
Mona buried her laughter in a pillow. ‘And tomorrow’s Christmas Eve.’
Ash smiled. ‘Oh, wow. I nearly forgot. And then it’s Christmas.’
‘And that’s not so bad, is it? To be home for Christmas?’
‘I believe there’s a song about such a thing. You can count on me, and so on.’
‘Even if we’re Hindu. I mean, tenuously.’
‘Ha!’
Ash sensed his sister watching him intently from the other end of the couch, hugging her knees. There was something imploring in her eyes. He thought of them passing the shockwave up and down the line: big sister to little brother—and back. Mona’s face, so focused; his own alive with joy. And yet such harmony betwe
en them.
What could Ash say or do now?
He hoped that sitting there together in the dark, with the TV off and the dog snoring gently at their feet, might be enough.
3
WITH NO CALLS FROM INDIA having woken him the night before, Ash lay in bed the next morning speculating on Matt’s first night in Goa. He pictured the big man arriving after dark and, having failed to book a hotel, rolling shirtless down to some beachfront rave, moshing his way into the great unwashed, pounding drinks and whatever drugs came his way, obliterating his senses, seducing a potential sexual partner with the dance-floor forays of a walrus flopping about on dry land; then, later, a moonlight stroll down the beach, his voice turned soft, a pause, a hand ruffling her dreadlocks, some possibly genuine profession of love—for Matt, acting was the same as being—and a skirt hitched and a fly unzipped and a wet spot left in the sand.
And then? A desperate run into town, wild-eyed and frantic, convinced he’d contracted some infection. Finding the streets clotted with Russians, Matt would abandon his hunt for an antidote to cower in the shadows. Any pale face could be a mob informant or lackey, he’d think. Or worse: an assassin.
He’d seek refuge. He’d seek, probably, Mieke—his real true love. He’d text her madly. Maybe call her too, his voicemails choked with fear and loathing and the searing shame of a hangover. But it was eight in the morning; she was sleeping; he’d have to find her on foot. So he’d begin a covert search of the hostels, whose signage was not just Hindi and English—but Russian too. (They’d not just infiltrated this place; they’d colonized it!)
Still he’d enter one, stealthily, the brim of his cap pulled down, through a lobby decorated in yuletide fashion (albeit, Ash imagined, with a Desi flavour: the tinsel bushy, the lights pulsing with funhouse urgency, the Christmas tree fashioned from a broomstick and palm fronds and tape) to inquire at the desk after Mieke.
Ash pictured the concierge eyeing him with suspicion. ‘Surname?’
‘No idea. She’s from Holland though?’
‘We have many Dutch visitors.’