A Change of Heart

by Sonali Dev

  No mention of the fact that he hadn’t gone home in two years.

  No mention of the woman he had lost two years ago.

  Tomorrow he was going to be home, in the house where he had promised his wife a lifetime together the day before their wedding while entering her long and sweet on his childhood bed.

  He broke into a run. He hadn’t run in three days, hadn’t touched a drink in four days. And today he had noticed the shape of another woman’s eyes. He felt like someone had gouged out his skin and left his ripped-up flesh to fester.

  A car honked at him as he ran across six lanes of traffic. He stuck his hand up and flipped it the bird. Two men stumbled out of a door. He looked up at the sign. BEER AND SPIRITS. That’s all he needed to know.

  * * *

  She let herself into the room that opened straight into the night. Nothing but a covered verandah separated the rooms and the parking lot edged with a high, chain-link fence. There wasn’t a soul in sight. Even the lobby had been isolated. She felt the strangest sensation in the pit of her stomach when she remembered waking up in the car and then making her way inside the hotel, her eyes searching for Nikhil’s stark-white shirt.

  He had been standing at the reception desk. Recognition had sparked in his eyes for just one second before disappearing, the Nikhil who had sat with her on the grass while she ate her way through the contents of an entire vending machine, gone. The Nikhil who had dipped a tea bag into her tea had been the Nikhil who had leaned over the railing and looked hungrily at the ocean, longing for the strength to let go, unable to find the strength to hold on.

  She thought about him working to remove the top of the car, rolling up the fabric, pinning it back. It wasn’t just the skill with which he had quickly and efficiently taken care of it that had struck her. It was the look in his eyes when he had asked her if it would help.

  It was the look of someone cleaning up a wound. Singularly focused on making sure she felt no pain. As if the entire world had boiled down to him taking care of what hurt her. The sheer magnitude and purity of the empathy in those eyes, in those words, it was like nothing she’d ever experienced. This man, for all his brokenness, was a healer.

  The tiny room was almost fully occupied by a bed. She dumped her bag on the floor, her shoulder cramping with relief. At the far end of the room was a mirror over a sink and a door that led to the bathroom. She stared at the thick hair that still took the place of her own wispy locks, each tacked-on strand a reminder of her actions. It was as if something alien had taken up residence on her head to make sure she didn’t forget.

  She threw the hair back and shook it out. The motion freed her neck. She rolled it around a few times more, then reached back and lifted the hair into a ponytail and bound it together between her fingers. Her limbs missed movement. She let the hair slip from her grasp and reached up and stretched out her arms. Fingers pointed. Reaching for something. Stretching every muscle. Her other hand trailed from her wrist to her shoulders. Then down her body to her toes. A beat thumped inside her head. Dadum. Da da dum. One foot came up. First the heel, then the arch, until only one toe remained on the floor. She dragged it up her calf. Da dum. Tracing the curve. Bringing her knee up and up until her leg kicked out. Da da dum.

  She brought her foot back down. Flipped the other heel up, her heels alternated, her feet following the beat that slammed inside her. One, two, three. One, two, three. Anger surged through her body. Lit her up like a current. Her spine curved over it. Her arms wrapped around it, then flew open as she spun and spun until her blood churned the anger out. Sadness. Then anger, sadness, then anger, her feet pounded it. Kicked at it. Da da dum. Da da dum. Da da dum.

  Her head rolled forward. Emptying everything out. Shaking it off. The rhythm was all she felt. The rhythm and her breathing. Her breath still carried that scent. Summer and life and sparkling-fresh cleanliness. Fake cleanliness. For all the pain blanketing his skin, wrapped around his limbs, pegged like spikes into his eyes, he still smelled clean. His eyes. God, his eyes. She spun until they disappeared, spinning around her head, but not fast enough to keep up with her. For all that pain, he smelled untouched, un-ravaged. Pure.

  More smells came back. Sick, turgid sweat. Alcohol and cigarettes and car freshener. Sick and sweet like overripe mangoes. They had splashed it into her face, splashed it all over her. Just because her flailing hands had tipped it over.

  Drink it, whore.

  She hadn’t opened her mouth and they had flooded her face with it as they pounded. She had tried to scream.

  Shut up. Shut. Up.

  As if she could have screamed. With hands cutting off her breath. A wet mouth eating up her screams. As if anyone would have heard her. If you were pathetic enough to scream for help, no one was going to help you. That was just the way the world worked. No help for screamers. No alms for beggars. No mercy.

  She stopped spinning. In the span of an instant the room stopped spinning around her. She hated that, hated that all the practice spinning had taken the dizziness away. She slammed her hand into the door that led to the bathroom and turned on the shower. Then, without taking off her clothes, she stepped under the burning-hot spray.

  * * *

  Nikhil had really lucked out. Not only was the bar packed with the loudest crowd, but the entire rowdy horde seemed possessed by an insatiable hunger for heavy metal. The scream of the electric guitar tore through all the noise in his head. He slung back what was left in his glass and tapped it for a refill. One more time. Again and again. Until he had lost count. The bartender in his black golf shirt and preppy haircut looked like he’d just finished a full day of classes at the local MBA program. But the way he bobbed up and down as he moved from glass to glass, a splash here, a spray there, the way he kept his eagle eye trained on the dance floor, he could’ve been in the Secret Service, or the Mafia. Or both at the same time. He was what Jen would have called hardcore.

  Hard. Core.

  “These guys think they are so hardcore,” she would have said. “Imagine putting them on a minefield. They’d run whimpering.” She might’ve leaned into that guy with skull tattoos inked up and down his arm and his neck and asked him if he’d ever seen a baby with half its body blown off.

  Yeah. She had loved being a buzzkill, his wife.

  His wife.

  “Who died?” A woman in a dress so tight he couldn’t imagine how she wasn’t asphyxiated leaned into the bar and stared at him from beneath some serious quantities of blue eyeshadow.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You looked so sad, I was just . . . I didn’t mean someone had actually died. . . .” She trailed off.

  “It’s just a manner of speaking,” he wanted to say, but she hopped up on the stool next to him and pressed her thigh into his.

  “I can make it better.”

  He laughed into his drink. Like actually laughed until he was choking.

  She started to rub his back, looking hurt and alarmed and too many things all at once. She was so young. Definitely too young for her eyes to be this exhausted. Too young to deal with his humorless laughing fit.

  “How much?” he asked as the coughing subsided.

  She tried to brighten her eyes, even attempted a pout. “Fifty bucks?” She said it as though it were a question. How young was she?

  He shoved himself off the bar stool. She spun around him; the rest of the bar joined her. He dug into his wallet. There was a wad of cash he’d withdrawn at the airport. He slid a few notes under his empty glass and slipped the rest of the cash into her hands.

  Her too-young, too-tired eyes widened. He almost snatched the money back from her. It would make no difference, not the money, not anything. Her life would stay exactly the same with or without his help.

  “The bathroom is through there.” She pointed across the dance floor and actually batted her eyelashes over those too tired eyes.

  “Take the day off. Go home and get some sleep,” he said, turning away before the sheen that spra
ng up in her eyes spilled over.

  He stumbled across the spinning bar. Stumbled into the night and into the parking lot.

  He had to lean into the cars as he passed them to keep from tasting the pavement.

  Cars.

  The woman who had his wife’s heart hated driving in cars. Had she lost someone in a crash? Had she run someone over? But the way she had pushed him away when he tried to shake her out of her panic. He knew it was nothing that simple. The twin needs to know and not know what it was tore him in half.

  He hated wanting to know. Hated that it mattered. He turned onto the road and started walking along the shoulder. The sky was an endless black. The only light in the night came from neon signs and cars zipping by. He swayed on his feet. All it would take was for him to lose his balance and stumble onto the road. Wind slapped his face. He veered toward the road. But escape no longer seemed that easy. Freedom no longer felt close.

  14

  Maybe this is what they call pregnancy brain, but I had forgotten what it was like to be with Nic. To be loved like that. Or maybe it’s the darkness here that made me forget. But Nic is my cocoon. I can burrow into him a listless worm and come out a butterfly every single time.

  —Dr. Jen Joshi

  The water had been running cold for what felt like hours. She pushed herself off the tub floor and stepped out of the shower. Trying to remove the soaking sweatshirt felt like moving a passed-out body. God knows she’d dragged Sweetie to his bed enough number of times. And Nikhil. When he’d fallen face-first on the cruise-ship carpet.

  She wrung out the soaking fabric. Water gushed onto her feet. She kept twisting and squeezing until her wrinkled palms felt like they were being skinned, then tossed the sweatshirt aside and did the same thing with the rest of her clothes. All the black fabric landed in a heap, leaving her inexplicably exhausted. She never felt physical exhaustion. It was her special gift. The only thing her aunt had loved about her. Strong like a man!

  Even when she had found her way to the Sisters of Mercy in Calcutta after running away, Sister Mary had marveled at how she could carry full buckets of water in both hands and walk up four flights of stairs. Even when Sister Mary had found her that first Junior Artist role where the dancing had involved jumping up and down for hours. Instead of exhaustion she had found exhilaration. Found dance—the only thing that ever exploded through that shut-inside-a-hard-shell feeling.

  She slid the bar of soap out of its wrapping, got back under the water, and started to rub her skin with it. On and on and on, until the embossed letters disappeared, until layer by layer the soap itself shrank to a sliver. She washed it all off with ice-cold water, then started over. Going until the soap was gone. Still she didn’t feel clean.

  Filth sat like a layer on her skin. It had been years since she’d felt like this. Those panic attacks had exposed all she’d buried away, ripped off her scabs. Her hard-earned scabs. No, it wasn’t the panic attacks, it was even before that. It was learning what had happened to Jen. The mess in her mind was thanks to what those men had done to Jen, and thanks to the man who had had to watch.

  She grabbed a white towel off the rack and started rubbing her skin. Her scar slashed angry red across her chest. So dark it was almost tinged in black. She ran her finger over it. A tight little bump extruded down her chest like a piece of wire embedded in her skin.

  We are copper, kanchi.

  She tucked the towel around her breasts and stepped out of the bathroom, just as the door to the motel room flew open. Before the scream could escape her lips, Nikhil tripped over her shoes and went flying face-first into the floor.

  The shock froze her in place. She stood there staring at him sprawled across the carpet, motionless as a corpse, his hands splayed out over his head, a key card clutched loosely in one fist.

  “Nikhil?”

  Nothing.

  Behind him the door gaped wide-open into the night.

  A frog croaked. She heard voices approaching and ran to the door. She lifted his feet out of the way and slammed it shut just before the sound of footsteps passed by.

  He lifted his head. “Baby?” His voice was almost a sob.

  She walked around his body. Somehow it seemed wrong to be standing upright when he was sprawled at her feet. She went down on her knees next to him.

  “Nikhil. It’s me—”

  “Jen.”

  “No, it’s Jess. What happened to you?”

  He laughed and made it sound exactly like another sob. “Jess. Of course. Jess Koirala.” He stretched out the two words, using her accent, placing emphasis on the notes the way she did instead of the way he usually did, in his American way.

  “I had a question for you.” He lifted his face off the carpet again. His face was wet, his words a slurry mess. His bloodshot eyes sought her but couldn’t focus. “I just . . . I can’t remember what it was.” He blinked and it made him look so lost, it reminded her of Joy.

  “Can we get you up first?”

  He pulled his elbows off the floor and pushed himself up a few inches with his hands. His elbow was bleeding. There was blood on his white shirt. He winced, gave up, and his body slammed back down.

  “What happened?” she asked, reaching out and slipping her hands under his shoulders. His body was a sack of bones. Sharp, hard, and not heavy enough for his wide frame.

  Again, just that sob-like laugh. She lifted him up to his knees and then up to standing. He stumbled, trying to find purchase with his feet, grabbing on to her arms. The towel loosened around her. As if in slow motion, she felt the tuck she had secured it with come apart and lose its grip around her breasts.

  She tried to pull away, torn between grabbing the fabric around herself and letting Nikhil fall back down.

  He found his footing and his eyes met hers, scattering her thoughts.

  His hands clamped around her arms.

  She struggled to push him away. But he wouldn’t let her go. His fingers dug into her skin and pressed her arms into her body. Panic welled up inside her, water filling her lungs. No, please, not this.

  Some of the fog cleared from his eyes. Look at me. I’m not going to hurt you.

  His hands weren’t ripping her apart. All they were doing was using her arms to hold the towel in place. His eyes locked on hers, as she struggled to calm her heartbeat. Once she had clenched her upper arms against the rough fabric, he let her arms go, grabbed the front of the towel, and tucked it back in place.

  The backs of his hands brushed her breasts. A horrible shaking started in her body again. But his mouth wasn’t on hers, pushing her screams back down her throat. His eyes weren’t crazed, putrid with lust.

  They were just sad. Sadder than anything she had ever seen. They anchored her in place, pushing her panic down her throat, not her screams. His eyes. Bloodshot and grief-stricken, and kinder than anything she’d ever seen. They brought her down from the heart of panic and set her back on her feet.

  Then tipped her off-balance again, darkening and flickering with something entirely new.

  The backs of his fingers pressed against her scar and stroked up and down. The pain in his eyes grew unbearable. His lids came together, his head tilted back, as he traced the raised skin as though absorbing the feel of it and soaking it into his being. There was such agony on his face, she raised her hand to stroke it away.

  A moan rose from his lips. If he said his wife’s name, the ringing in her ears drowned it out. Her fingers froze inches from his skin. He dropped his head into her shoulder, his own shoulders quaking. The wetness hit her shoulders, streamed down her back, her breasts. Sobs racked him, harsh and relentless. Every part of him shook as shuddering breaths tore from him and slammed against her.

  She wrapped her arms around him, but instead of calming him down, it only made him shake more, as though she had added insult to injury by attempting to soothe him. Still she stroked his arms. Just the barest of movements. Knowing in her heart that anything more would be too much.

&
nbsp; When his sobs slowed, she pushed him into the bed and sat down next to him, one arm still around him, his face still pressed into the crook of her neck. For long moments she held him like that, his sobs mapping his grief as it ebbed and flowed and set itself free.

  “Tell me what to do with him?” she whispered soundlessly to Jen. Tell me.

  He lifted his head and slid his face into his palms, not meeting her eyes. The wound on his elbow was bleeding again. “You’re bleeding. Stay here.”

  He made no move to acknowledge he had heard her. But it wasn’t like he was going anywhere.

  She went to the bathroom and noticed that she was still wrapped in a towel. Mortified, she grabbed a pair of yoga pants and another black sweatshirt out of her bag and pulled them on. Then she quickly slid a hand towel off the rack and soaked it with hot water.

  When she came back to him, he was sprawled across her bed, eyes closed, body twisted at awkward angles. Every piece askew, as if someone had forced a jigsaw puzzle together even though the pieces didn’t fit the way they were supposed to.

  Her heart twisted in her chest, mimicking the angles of his body. His feet hung off the bed, two shoes pointing in different directions, one knee going off on one tangent, the other one bent in on itself, his spine caught in the middle of a twist as he’d fallen backward. His face, that heartbreaking, sunken mirror of his soul, was half pressed into the mattress.

  She didn’t know what to put right first, but leaving him in this mangled mess would mean aching limbs tomorrow. If the alcohol on his breath and his bloodshot eyes were any indication, there was going to be enough pain.

  She pulled his elbow out from under his body. The skin had been gouged off. Blood coagulated around gravel and dirt. She pressed the wet towel into the wound as gently as she could and cleaned it out. He didn’t even stir. She went back to the sink, washing out the blood and dirt, then coming back and wiping away more. Back and forth she went until finally the wound looked clean. She wished she had some antiseptic, or gauze and tape, but she had nothing. She unzipped her bag and dug through it, looking for something, anything, to wrap around the nasty-looking wound. Back home she always kept Dettol cream and Band-Aids with her.