by Pasha Malla
‘That’s it,’ said Chip. ‘You got him.’
The bathroom was steamy. Ash stopped. ‘How do I get him in the tub?’
‘Kneel down. Slowly. No rush.’
Ash did as he was told, terrified he might stumble and smash Ty’s face through the shower door. But the boy had gone still.
‘Easy,’ said Chip. ‘You’re doing great.’
Ash was on one knee with Ty resting atop his other thigh.
‘Now put him in.’
As if offering the boy in sacrifice, Ash moved Ty over the water and let go: he landed with a splash and cried out. Water slopped up over the edge of the tub.
‘Shit! Sorry!’
Chip laughed. ‘No way, man. Look how happy he is.’
Ty was grinning. Waves rocked him this way and that. He hummed and burbled and his body made a rubbery squelch as it skidded around the tub.
Chip patted Ash on the shoulder. ‘Nicely done,’ he said. ‘You did great.’
And then Ty rolled onto his belly and Ash saw the cuts, healing but recent: one long one along his spine, and another shorter gash between his shoulder blades. Around them was a massive, yellowing bruise.
Ash froze. Caught himself staring. Stood hurriedly.
‘Okay, that’s good,’ Chip said quietly, guiding Ash by the elbow out of the bathroom. And the door closed, stranding Ash in the hallway, where he listened for a moment to the soft splash of water from within before fleeing to the living room.
—
‘I NEVER BOOZE LIKE THIS,’ Chip said for the third time since putting Ty to bed. ‘But it’s the holidays, right? And how often do we get to hang out?’
The late game was on TV, the sound down. Ash watched it in silence, thinking about Ty. That body, so dependent and defenceless—and wounded. Chip still hadn’t said anything about it, which felt to Ash like an admission of guilt. And Ash, as witness, was complicit. But guilt over what, and complicit in what? Negligence? Abuse? The only option was escape, best introduced casually: ‘Actually, I should probably get going.’
‘What are you talking about? It’s not even eleven!’ Now Chip drank straight from the bottle. ‘And there’s still all that food. You barely ate any.’
‘Sorry, man. I just shouldn’t be home too late, staying at my mom’s…’
‘Fine, go if you want.’ A pause, a switch: ‘Just sleep here. The couch folds out.’
After one quarter, the game was already a blow out; the teams retreated to their benches looking equally unenthused at the chore of the remaining thirty-six minutes.
It went to commercial and Chip killed the TV. He turned to face Ash, sudden sobriety shadowing his face. Here it was, the confession; Ash braced himself. Instead Chip gestured outside, down the path of some other story. ‘Around the corner, on Poplar, like three weeks ago this guy moved in. No kids, no wife. Solo.’
Ash’s phone buzzed in his pocket. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Every few days he’s throwing out these industrial-looking chemical containers. Ten-gallon tubs, right there on the curb. And stuff’s getting delivered at weird hours and people are coming and going all the time. People in lab coats.’
The phone quieted.
‘So I start watching them, right? Because what’s the most obvious thing going on?’
‘I don’t know.’ But the story wouldn’t proceed until Ash participated. ‘Meth lab?’
‘Exactly.’ Chip tapped his temple. ‘Last thing I need is a fire or explosion or something and my kid inhaling toxic fumes. Or addicts breaking in here to steal my TV.’
‘You really think they’re cooking meth?’
‘Check it out.’ Chip held up his phone, swiping through photos of vans in the driveway, a woman in a white smock, a pair of plastic drums on the lawn. ‘I had all the evidence, ready to call Crime Stoppers, and then one day that lady comes knocking. I hide Ty in the bedroom before I open the door, because what if she’s here to’—he made a gun, pointed it at Ash, pulled the trigger—‘take me out? But nope! Guess who she is?’
Ash shook his head: no idea.
‘A—get this—nurse. Guy who lives in there is on dialysis. Guy my age. Our age.’
Ash’s phone began ringing again.
‘Anyway, she wants a neighbour to keep an eye out—like, if I don’t see him for a while or if something just seems wrong.’ Chip shook his head, made a clucking sound. ‘Imagine? Being sick and not having anybody? No parents or kids or wife? You could collapse one day and no one would have any idea. Die there on the floor, totally alone.’
Ash checked the number: foreign. India, probably.
‘What, you’re taking calls now?’
‘I think it’s Matt.’
‘Go ahead.’ Chip shook his head. ‘Not like I was telling you something important.’
‘No, it’s okay—look, he hung up.’ But the caller was persistent: the phone started up again, humming insistently. ‘Maybe I should see what he wants. What if he’s in trouble?’
‘Trouble?’ Chip snorted. He drank. Shook his head. Drank some more.
Ash fingered his phone. Its ringing seemed urgent.
But Chip was standing now, reeling and shouting. ‘Suddenly you’re Mister Big Heart who cares about everyone? You act like my kid’s got a fucking contagious disease—don’t shake your head, you always have—and then you go judging me for how I’m raising him?’
‘Whoa, Chip. That’s not what’s going on,’ said Ash, hands up. ‘Hey.’
‘The moral of my story, if you’d listened? Don’t think you understand anyone. What they’re going through, what they’re about.’ Chip fell onto the couch, tilted his head back, closed his eyes. The bottle slipped from his hand; the last bit of whiskey dribbled onto the carpet. ‘I’m a good dad,’ Chip said quietly, nodding to himself. ‘I’m a good dad.’
And Ash’s phone buzzed faintly through the room.
FINALE
In some fugues all the voices enter with either subject or answer in the final section…This is followed by the coda, [which] is a passage added at the end of a piece of music to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.
1
HEATHROW: A ROW OF HEATHS UNFURLING moorishly over the land, Ash thought, searching for Sherene among the travellers rushing past the airport pub. He’d claimed their intersecting flights to be coincidence, though his need for her was obvious. And like any good friend she was happy to oblige.
Ash took a sip of his beer and imagined what the surrounding countryside might have been before the airport ruined it. A series of undulating hills, windswept and misty, billowing down to the fetid metropolis of London. Two shepherds gazed down into the valley, the city domed with smog. One sucked from a pipe, the other held Bo Peep’s staff, and around them flocked their wooly charges. ‘Change is afoot,’ said the first. ‘Ay,’ said the second. ’Tis true, ’tis true…’
And here was Sherene, cutting across the terminal. Even through a crowd she moved with breezy nonchalance, slipping this way and that with a playful half-smile. This spread into a full grin when she saw Ash. She broke into a jog, arms out.
He stood. They hugged.
‘I’m glad I got to see you,’ she said, sitting opposite him. And winking.
The verb tense was strange, suggesting the purpose of meeting had already been achieved. Ash passed her a menu; he’d already settled on the tandoori chicken wrap.
‘Oh, I’m saving my appetite for Brick Lane,’ she said, waving it away. ‘Speaking of: you ready for the subcontinent?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘Aren’t you excited?’
Ash stared at her. ‘Excited that I’m being dragged over there by my idiot friend?’
‘Come on, Ash—India. When was the last time you went?’
‘When I was twelve, maybe? All I remember is Hindi soap operas on full blast all the time. Boredom, resentment. And never feeling clean.’
‘Well you’re welcome to stay with us in London, hit the clubs.’ She
examined him. ‘I’d love to see that. I bet you dance like a dad—cross-country skiing with handclaps.’
‘Like my dad, then,’ said Ash. And they laughed.
Their server came over. Sherene asked for a tea, then Ash waited for some racialized reaction to his order. Not even an ironic flicker, just a nod and withdrawal. He wondered if, to the outside eye, Sherene might look like his date. But why the airport rendezvous? The end of some illicit foreign affair, this final goodbye before they slunk home to their families. Or two assassins trading dossiers. Yes—less melodrama, more action.
‘So, your friend Matt,’ said Sherene. ‘He’s in jail?’
‘No, the High Commission put him up in some sort of guesthouse until his trial. Not sure why the royal treatment. He did break the goddamn law.’
‘He seems troubled.’
‘Troubled? He’s an idiot. Trust me. It was inevitable that something like this would happen to him, acting like the world is his personal playground. Spare him your pity.’
‘Yet you’re going all the way to India to help him. To support him.’
‘Well I already helped him, god knows why. I paid his fucking bail.’
‘Call it loyalty, maybe?’
‘More like obligation.’
‘Dharma,’ Sherene said with a grin.
‘Let’s not lose our minds.’
The tea and tandoori wrap arrived, the latter garnished with a sprig of parsley masquerading as coriander.
‘I’m not sure where they’re firing their tandoor,’ said Ash, ‘but you can’t argue with a colonialism sandwich.’
‘McEmpire,’ said Sherene, pouring hot water through the strainer into her cup. ‘over 1.2 billion ruled.’
Two bites in, the wrap was disintegrating. Pink sauce splooged down Ash’s arm. He wiped his elbow with a napkin. ‘Oh, I nearly forgot.’ He dug through his carry-on. ‘I bought you a present. Merry Christmas. Or Eid, whatever. Sorry I didn’t have time to wrap it.’
Sherene accepted the book: Don Quixote. ‘Wow. Just some light reading for the holidays, huh?’
‘I’m reading it too. I thought we could…’ He trailed off, watching her fan through the novel as if it might be judged by the flap of the pages. ‘Have you read it before?’
‘No, never. A very nice idea, sweetie. A little book club. Thank you.’ She nodded at his carry-on. ‘What else have you got in there?’
He surveyed her for a moment, wiped his hands and reached down again. Out came the grey box that held the remains of his father. Its weight surprised him every time—almost frightening—and he felt the contents shift as he set it on the table between them.
‘Is that…’
Ash nodded. Did he detect her shiver?
They were silent for a moment. With the box sitting there beside his ruined lunch, Ash felt like Brij himself were perched on the table and glaring at him in reproach.
‘Some winter so far,’ he said. ‘November, Mona calls with the news. Then the funeral. Then that stuff at work.’ He watched Sherene for some response—forgiveness, an update. None came. ‘Then at Christmas I find out my sister’s marriage is falling apart. I’ve got one friend living in a kind of suburban nightmare while another one goes and nearly kills some kid in on the other side of the goddamn world. And now here we are,’ he said, nodding at the box. ‘Mona figured if I’m going to India anyway why not…’ He couldn’t manage the word scatter—a term for birdseed or buckshot, not a person. ‘You know what kills me most? I keep forgetting he’s gone.’
‘Oh, sweetie.’
‘It’s just—life goes on. Living becomes coping. But isn’t coping just forgetting?’
Sherene reached around the box, touched his forearm.
‘It’s got to the point that I have to actively remember he’s not around anymore. And the feeling that comes isn’t sadness, exactly. More guilt and’—he spread his hands—‘emptiness. Just this void where the grief ought to be.’
‘That sounds hard.’
‘Anyway, here we are,’ he said again, tapping the box and laughing drily. ‘Ash to Ash. To, I don’t know, some Indian drain. Not like Brij cares at this point, right? ’
Sherene winced. Drank some tea. ‘They say you haven’t dealt with someone’s death until you dream about them,’ she said finally. ‘Do you dream about Brij?’
‘Weirdly, I’ve been dreaming about that book he was writing.’ Ash looked around the pub. Other than a solitary character sipping a martini at the bar, he and Sherene were the only customers. ‘What I want to know,’ said Ash, leaning in, ‘is who this they is who know so much. I picture an underground laboratory in the desert, guys in lab coats with clipboards, secret trials behind two-way glass. See that dude at the bar? Do you think he’s one of them?’
‘Ash, come on,’ said Sherene, reaching again for his arm. She squeezed, let go. Sat back with her tea. Eyed him for a moment. ‘So what else did you do in London? Ontario, I mean. Not the real one.’
‘Don’t you know that authenticity is a hoax? The faker the place, the realer it is.’
‘What about that Asian guy you ran into at the library? Didn’t he have some party?’
‘Yeah, Chip. He’s the one I was talking about.’ Ash assumed a regretful, pained expression and paraphrased the evening, stressing its pathos with key details: the olives, the whiskey. Even that Chip had been adopted. Yet he didn’t mention Tyler at all.
‘Well, now at least you’ll get to see Matt.’
‘Not by choice.’
‘Oh, come on. That guy seems so devoted to you. The Falstaff to your Hal. The Yogi to your Boo-Boo.’ Sherene laughed. ‘No, you’re more like that squirrel…’
‘Rocky? Sure, he was an aviator, a hero! Though wait, that would make Matt—’
‘Exactly. You’re his little Rocky, and he’s Bullwinkle the big dumb moose.’
—
SOMETHING HAD SNAGGED IN ASH’S BRAIN, though he wasn’t sure what—just a nagging feeling of irresolution—and on the connecting flight to Delhi he sorted through his conversation with Sherene, topic by topic. It wasn’t until they were well over Europe that he identified it. The realization was like a fishhook yanked free from a tangle of reeds, the line zipping up out of the water and reeled swiftly to shore.
Chip. He’d told Sherene about that night out in the sticks, the failed party, watching his friend drink himself into oblivion, yet avoided the detail of Ty’s wounds and whatever they might mean. The omission was less about a fear of outing his friend than self-preservation, as if that sanitized version might replace his memories of what really happened, and fill the worrying space of what he didn’t know.
Before saying goodbye, Sherene had raved about the impressive fraternity of flying halfway around the world to help out a pal. But he’d abandoned another. Chip hadn’t seen him out after Ash had hung up and explained Matt’s arrest. He’d just sat there on the couch rolling the empty whiskey bottle under his foot, eyes glazed. Travelling to another continent to play the hero was easy. Chip had required something else, something beyond action: to be met and seen. Instead Ash had fled.
Ash lifted the blind and watched the wing tip blink amid the ozone. After a minute or two he closed it again. Through the darkened cabin a few TV screens glowed from seatbacks. Mostly people were asleep. The air was static and sterile; there were no smells. Ash never slept on flights. He watched movies, read (though he’d barely cracked Don Quixote), and monitored the live map of the plane’s progress, its outsized icon blotting out entire nations below. Now this seemed too much of a cartoon. He dimmed the screen until it went black.
On the other side of all this was Matt, waiting in some consular safe house for Ash—to what? Save him? There was no plan and nothing he could do. Ash had no power in India, didn’t speak the language, found its labyrinthine bureaucracies mostly disorienting and mindless. All he could offer was a feeble act of companionship. At best. His feelings weren’t of vigilance, or even duty. He was mostly just tired—a fa
tigue so profound that it was indistinguishable from sadness.
The hours passed; the airplane hummed. Ash dipped in and out of restless, head-snapping naps until the pilot announced their descent. Up went the window shade and there was Delhi, a sprawling orange glitter like something radioactive spilled below. One of Brij’s old, waddling sisters had ended up here amid the Hindu exodus of 1989, and her concrete apartment block had been a required stop whenever the Dhars visited from Canada. Even Brij had loathed those trips, complaining about the crowds, the heat, the filth, the noise, the inescapable fury of that massive, bewildering city.
Though it wasn’t just Delhi. He harboured such disdain for anywhere in India that wasn’t home. The south was a particular target for scorn. Dravidians were darkly treacherous and backward; Aryan Kashmiris were superior in every way—better looking, more intelligent, more honourable. Kashmir had the tastiest food, the most exquisite handicrafts, the richest culture, the bluest lakes and most magnificent mountains. It wasn’t until university, when Ash found himself on a rec league basketball team with Keralite brothers, that these certainties were revealed as pure chauvinism. ‘Kashmir is fine,’ said Shik, ‘but to hear your people talk about it you’d think they were the chosen ones.’ Shal was less delicate: ‘That kind of bullshit is how the Nazis got started.’
The landing was almost delicate: the wheels nudged the runway and the plane eased down behind it carefully. As they taxied to the terminal Ash eyed the palm trees edging the tarmac: he’d forgotten that even India’s north was so tropical, a civilization hacked from jungles and deserts. The airport itself was a rickety building patched with billowing tarps, though signs threatened improvements—Coming soon, like a Bollywood blockbuster.
The New India seemed to thrive on this sort of thing: everything was coming, in process, under construction, all of it projected into some misty, utopian future. A place perennially in transition. Which it might always be, Ash thought, heading to the baggage claim with one of the same wobbly carts that Brij had let him commandeer as a kid.
Ash’s memories of India were sensory: mothballs and diarrhea, car-horns and horking, the custard-like squish of some Auntie’s bosom as he was ensnared for another rampage of kisses. Childhood irritation due to missing March Break for interminable family time and forced lunches of yellow dhal and yellower paneer now, on his clandestine return, found more adult targets: the clutter, the inefficiency, India’s dubious embrace of everything that was wrong with the West. And at Matt for dragging him here.