by Sonali Dev
He had stepped in throw-up with his favorite sneakers at the Mumbai railway station once when he was ten. Aie had taken them to the bathroom and scrubbed them with her travel-sized Bath & Body Works’s soap for so long they’d almost missed their train, but the shoes had continued to stink so bad he’d had to throw them away. Somehow this chaos reminded him of that day. It had to be midwinter break or spring break or something because everyone looked all set to go somewhere, to do something, to somehow make life matter.
Jess walked up to a booth marked INFORMATION. “We need to get to Chicago today and there are no flights available for two days. What can we do?”
The woman behind the counter gave her an entirely blank look. How could you work at an airport and never get that question?
“Have you tried to get a rental?” she asked, speaking very slowly and loudly. The way some assholes spoke to children with disabilities.
Jess had an accent, but her English was remarkably good. Even a little Colonial British, the way his aie sounded. Only Aie had an attitude honed from thirty years of being a college professor, so God help anyone who dared to talk to her that way.
Jess didn’t seem to notice. “Rental?” She turned to Nikhil and gave the enunciating woman her back and it made him want to high-five her.
“What is she talking about?” she asked when Nikhil didn’t answer.
“We could rent a car and drive there.” How had he missed that? Oh right. Because he hadn’t driven in two years. Didn’t know if he even remembered how. And because there was that whole coward thing.
He turned away from her, choosing not to interpret her expression, and forced himself to the rental counter, turning around only once to make sure she was with him.
* * *
Miraculously enough, the rental company had one car available. This was explained by the fact that it was a soft-top Jeep. The woman at the rental counter had repeated only about fifteen times how lucky they were to get the one available car. Yes, so lucky that they would have a good ten hours before they started to freeze their asses off in earnest.
At least the car wasn’t hard to find in the empty rental lot. It wasn’t until he pulled open the door that he realized that Jess had stopped all the way across the lot.
She had gone utterly still.
Not her usual calm-as-a-lily-pond stillness, but an unable-to-breathe, white-as-a-ghost stillness.
He walked back to her. “Jess? What’s the matter?”
Her fingers clutched the strap over her shoulder so tightly her knuckles looked like they were going to pop out of their sockets.
“Is that, is that the, is that the car?” She wrapped her arms around the bottom of the bag and hugged it to her chest, then moved it to her hip. He had never seen her fidget before. “How long would we have to be . . .” It took her a few tries, but she managed to swallow. “How long is the drive?”
“Some twenty hours.”
Whatever was left of the Mask of Calm shattered. For one long moment her terror flashed before him like a bolt of lightning illuminating the darkest storm.
“Twenty hours in . . . in th . . . that car?” she stuttered and swiped her hand across the sheen of sweat that dotted her lip.
Without meaning to, his voice switched to physician-in-emergency mode. “We’ll take breaks. Stop for the night at a motel or something. It won’t be twenty hours at a stretch.”
“You were right—let’s wait and fly out the day after tomorrow.”
Her terrified eyes met his, and suddenly, he didn’t want to be stuck here with her for two days.
“That’ll just delay everything. Don’t you want to get back to Joy?”
A cheap shot.
She wrapped her arms around the bag again and struggled to regain the Mask of Calm. Until five minutes ago, he could never have imagined her in a panic. But she was definitely in a full-blown panic now. A live volcano under a snowcapped mountain with all that barely contained smoke hissing out.
He tried to slide the bag off her shoulder, but she didn’t let go. He waited for her breathing to even out, then he pulled his own bag over his shoulder and walked back to the car.
She ran to fall in step next to him, her shoulders squared. One mention of Joy and she was going to do this. He felt like the worst kind of shit. This was the last time he’d ever use her son like that.
When he yanked the car door open, she stumbled back as though flames had shot out of the car.
He almost wrapped his arm around her, but she found her balance on her own, set that jaw again, set those shoulders. And even then she couldn’t make herself climb in.
The strength of his reaction to her helplessness, to her terror almost knocked him off his feet. He backed away from her. He didn’t want to know. He was no longer in the business of fixing people’s problems. But he couldn’t walk away from what he saw in her eyes.
“Why don’t you take a moment? We’ll be on the road a long time. Let’s use the restroom, pick up some water.”
She turned around and disappeared into the rental office so fast, it left him spinning.
* * *
She knew she had to leave the bathroom and get into that car with Nikhil, but she couldn’t. Leaning her back against the wall, she clutched her tote to her chest. Her hand traced the rectangular outline she could feel through the fabric bottom of the bag and tried to draw strength from Jen’s voice.
Jen would never have understood the abject fear that gripped Jess’s belly. Jen always sounded so sure of herself. So strong. Except maybe at the very end. She had to have felt fear then. The kind of fear that was pushing up Jess’s throat now—a sense memory so strong it was like reliving the horror. It was horrible to be jealous of the dead, but not having to feel this over and over again would be nice.
“I’m so sorry, Jen,” she said into the empty bathroom.
It was her millionth apology and yet it felt like it wasn’t enough.
She walked to the sink, hugging her trembling arms around herself, squeezing the sweatshirt that was three sizes too large close to her body. The usual security of her bulky clothing did nothing to comfort her. But it wasn’t the clothes. The armor she generally wore under her clothes, over them, seemed to have disintegrated when she saw that car. She felt naked.
How had she let herself lose control so completely in front of Nikhil? How on earth had she let him see her like that? And he’d seen it. He’d seen all the way to the heart of her terror.
“Jess?” he called from outside the door, and followed it up with a quick knock. Bloody hell.
She held her hand in front of her face. It was still shaking.
She leaned into the sink and splashed her face.
“Jess, come on, open the door.”
She couldn’t answer him, not with her insides still churning like an ocean gone mad. She tried another splash across her face. A hand pressed against her mouth. It’s not real. Not real. Hands ripped at her. This was not happening. Another splash. She scrubbed at her lips. All over her, hands and breaths collected and fogged. Sticky cobwebs of memories. She pushed at them, but they only clung tighter and coated her skin.
She stopped struggling. Let herself fall.
“Jess.”
That was Nikhil’s voice. She focused on it. The crowding, gnawing pressure around her eased. She breathed. Let it slide off.
“Jess, if you don’t come out, I’m coming in.”
“One moment.” She didn’t know if the words came out. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Give me one moment.” She went to the door.
It swung open just as she went to push it with both hands, and she stumbled forward.
He grabbed her arms. “You okay?” He set her right, then let her go even before her skin registered the shock of the contact.
The door he had pulled open with such force swung back and smacked him, pushing him into her again.
This time she held him up.
“Sorry,” they both said together. T
heir words clashing just as their bodies pulled apart.
“I’m fine,” she said, pushing past him to the glass doors, needing to get out of the confined space. How was she ever going to explain this to him?
As soon as the thought entered her head, she realized how ridiculous it was. She didn’t need to explain anything to him. He was nothing but an assignment she needed to finish and leave.
She pushed through the glass doors, and the wind hit her face like another splash of water. It was about time she got in that car and got this over with.
11
All you need to fix a torn-up body is a clean scalpel, needle, and twine. Nic doesn’t seem to get that our work is done when the incision is sutured. The rest is just self-indulgence.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
When she had pulled herself into the car, she had believed that she could do this. That she could block out being thrown in, being thrown out. That she could block out the box-shaped ceiling so high a man could rear up on his knees with you under him.
No. Don’t think about it. Don’t. Don’t push yourself deeper into the seat either. It only makes it worse. Don’t think about it.
Don’t. Don’t.
The chant hadn’t helped. Nikhil’s silence hadn’t helped. It had to have been hours, but she couldn’t get herself to look out the window. Sounds kept lashing at her ears, getting louder and louder. The slash of passing trees and cars whipped against her cheek even though the windows were up.
This time the windows were up.
She refused to tremble.
Refused to feel the pop of her shoulder as it snapped out of its socket or the crunch of bone as she hit the caked earth. Or the torn wetness that burned between her legs as she rolled herself into a ball and waited for the world to end.
The car slid to a halt. A door opened and closed. Someone cursed, hands dug into her arms and shook her. She struggled and tried to get away. Oh God, please make it stop. The scream stuck in her throat. She gagged around the taste of a wet, horribly moist mouth holding her screams in place, pushing them back down her throat. No. No.
Hands shook her harder. She struggled harder. Until wetness splashed against her cheeks, against her forehead. She sucked in a breath and opened her eyes.
Nikhil’s face was inches from hers. A frown slashed across his forehead. But the hand on her cheek was gentle. She swatted it away and scrambled back in her seat.
He took a step back. “Can you breathe?”
She let a stream of air fill her lungs and looked beyond him at the thick green that stretched out behind him in an endless backdrop. Woods. There were no woods in Calcutta. She was not in Calcutta.
America. She was here in America. Where there were woods, right next to cars zipping past. And there was Jen’s Nikhil.
She sat up. “I’m fine. I’m sorry. I fell asleep. It was just a nightmare.”
He pushed a bottle of water at her. It was half empty from being poured onto her face. Her sweatshirt was soaked all the way to her shirt. The wetness grounded her. She took the bottle and drank.
“We’re turning around. We’ll wait for the plane and go the day after tomorrow,” he said, watching her drink.
No. She had to get back to Joy. Get this thing over with. “No.”
“Well, obviously, you can’t handle being inside a car.”
She could handle anything. “I can.”
“Really?”
She wasn’t discussing what she could and could not handle with a man who hadn’t been on dry land in two years.
“Yes.”
“Your eyes have been squeezed shut ever since you got in.”
And your hands have been shaking on the wheel. I’m not pointing that out, am I? “I’m just sleepy, okay?”
“Sleepy. Right. That’s the word for it?”
“Yes.” And what was the word for being terrified of going back to your own home?
He looked annoyed at her monosyllables. But there was no question of getting sucked into talking about what had just happened. Again. This was exactly what she had sworn would never happen. Those bastards would not take her life away.
It had taken her years to stop avoiding getting inside cars, but she had done it. She no longer took rickshaws, or the train, or the bus, even when she could take a cab. She could handle cars just fine. It was just this car, the one that had been her coffin.
Twenty. Hours.
She sat up and stared out at the thick wall of trees behind him. Tiny yellow flowers dotted the grass-covered slope leading to it. Her hometown had been sprinkled with flowers and she had loved picking them for her mother. Aama, whom three years of cancer hadn’t broken. We are copper, kanchi. They can bend us and twist us but they can’t break us.
She made herself turn around, eyes wide-open, and took in the dashboard, the steering wheel. Focused on the differences. No leather, there’s no leather and it’s not black, it’s beige, and the backseat, well, that she wasn’t going to look at.
When she looked back at him he was still standing on the gravel, his arms spanning the open car door, one hand resting on the door, the other on the frame. He was boxing her in. But instead of feeling threatened, she felt, well, she didn’t feel threatened, and that was something.
She realized with a shock that Nikhil was the only man she’d ever met around whom she didn’t feel threatened. Sweetie Raja was her best friend and flatmate, but even him she had been wary of when they had first met, the fact that he cross-dressed as a woman notwithstanding.
Out of nowhere anger swept through her. “I told you, I’m fine. I’ll try to stay awake, if that’s what you need.” Her voice was as cold as she could make it.
He held out his hand. “Just step out for a minute. The fresh air will help you breathe.”
She could breathe well enough. But he was a doctor so she might as well take his medical advice. He was giving it away for free, and when did doctors ever do that? She grabbed the car door and stood. For a second his body was inches from hers, then he took a quick step back and wind whooshed between them as a car whizzed by.
The air was fresh and cool and she filled her lungs. Earth and trees and spring and another scent. His sweat. Not stale and rotten-smelling like the Mumbai trains but fresh and clean and filled with life. A complete contradiction to the person it belonged to, who was trapped in death.
“We can still turn around and wait for a flight.” His voice was like his smell. Fresh and clear and gentle.
What would delaying this another two days accomplish?
Of all the things she hadn’t anticipated, a car was going to ruin everything. This, this travesty on four wheels, the script hadn’t covered. She should have known, because when had her life ever followed any kind of plan?
She had already told him she was fine. How many more times did he need to hear it? “Delaying it by two days won’t make going home any easier.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I wasn’t talking about myself.”
She shrugged. He opened his mouth, then he too shrugged. Their two shrugs, it was becoming their language.
He walked—no, stormed—to his side, got in the driver’s seat, and shut—no, slammed—the door.
She gripped the door hard, took one last gulp of air, with the lingering hint of his fake-alive scent. Then she climbed into the car and slammed her own door shut.
He hit the accelerator, making her stomach somersault. His only response to the sound that escaped her was a quick look at her fingers clutching the seat.
She tried easing her grip and worked on breathing, tried to focus on the world zooming past without shutting her eyes. One step at a time. Everything passes. This would too. If he’d only ease up on the accelerator so her stomach would stop spinning.
He eased up on the accelerator. Her grip on the seat eased. Her relief was so completely out of proportion to the amount of kindness in the act, she wanted to kick herself for how much gratitude flooded through her. She liked him better when he was detache
d. Liked him even better when he brought out those flashes of mean that he wore like a borrowed shirt. His anger she recognized, understood, found easy to process. Anger in all its forms comforted her.
“Did you and Jen go on many road trips?”
He sucked in a breath so deep it left a vacuum between them. “Why don’t you ask her?” He slammed on the accelerator again and her entire focus returned to staying upright, staying calm. Staying in the here and now.
* * *
Nikhil’s stomach was pumping acid like a ripe colitis infection. It took him hours of speeding before he admitted to himself what had happened. What he had allowed to happen. The numbness that had frozen him off from the world for so long was gone.
In that moment when the woman next to him had folded in on herself, all but screaming without making a sound, her face ghost-white, he had felt panic. Not the memory of panic that had been his constant companion these two years, but panic in real time, panic for what she was going through. Panic and concern and a need to act. He hadn’t felt the need to act for so long, it sat like a foreign body wedged between his ribs.
If he hadn’t recognized exactly what had been concealed in those silent screams, he might have believed she had fallen asleep and had a nightmare. But being haunted by the ghost of memories that were too graphic to wrestle off when they started wrapping their arms around you like a straitjacket, and closing in strap by strap, was too familiar to him to mistake for anything else.
This stubbornly meditative woman, who shrouded herself in darkness and appeared impossible to touch, was nothing but an eggshell. One that held a torn-up yolk within. The last thing he wanted was to care. But the fact that she sat next to him, so erect, so proud, and swallowed whatever shit had spewed from her past, made him insane with anger.
If Jen was really visiting her, he needed to keep Jen the hell away from whatever sewage of horrors was erupting inside her.
“You ready for a break?” he asked hours too late.