Mariam Sharma Hits the Road

by Sheba Karim

  “No,” I said. “Unless he dies, I don’t want to know.”

  “Yes,” she replied, her eyes weighted with sadness, “I understand.”

  We’d almost reached the gate when I told Umar to stop the car.

  “Here?” Umar said, but he braked.

  I opened the door and ran through a field of wildflowers until I was out of breath, then lay on the ground. Closing my eyes, I willed myself to slowly fade to black, to sink to safety, where I could think, but the conditions were all wrong, the sky too bright, the ground too hard, my mind spinning like a Tilt-A-Whirl.

  “Mars!” Ghaz said. I opened my eyes, the sky replaced by my friends’ faces, hovering a foot above mine. “You okay?”

  “I don’t even know how you process something like that,” I said.

  They lay down on either side of me.

  “I kinda felt like we were in a movie,” Umar said.

  “Or a tricked-out Tennessee Williams play,” Ghaz suggested. “He was like . . . a Shakespearean Shashi Kapoor meets the Dude.”

  “Why are you trying to bring down the Dude?” Umar objected.

  “Who’s the Dude?” I asked.

  Ghaz groaned. “That’s it. At some point on this road trip we are watching The Big Lebowski. And did you see the charming in him? Because I didn’t. Golden apple of my life? Barf.”

  “Shoaib,” I said suddenly.

  “What about him?” Ghaz asked.

  “He didn’t even ask about Shoaib. God, does he even know my brother’s name? He didn’t ask about my mother, either.”

  “Are you surprised? He’s a total narcissist. Probably the only way he can live with all he’s done is by shutting himself off emotionally,” Ghaz said.

  “Yeah, he’s clearly a very unhappy man,” Umar agreed.

  “But man, that French single malt was delicious,” Ghaz said.

  I shook my head. “The next Raja of Totapur?”

  “White lady got played,” Ghaz remarked.

  And my mother? My iron-cored, steely-eyed mother? Had she gotten played?

  “Something about him . . . all those dramatics,” I said. “It was like almost nothing he said was real. I’ll never know who he really is, and I don’t want to. At least I know that now.”

  “See? That’s a positive development,” Ghaz said.

  “Yeah,” Umar agreed. “Think of it this way—on the bright side, after Grandma Bigot and your father, Tennessee can only go up from here.”

  Twenty-Four

  UMAR WAS HUNGRY, and we went straight from the Tipple estate to eat some of Nashville’s famous hot chicken. Even at eleven a.m., there was a line out the door. Thankfully, unlike the line at Starbucks, it moved quickly.

  Umar kept wiping the sweat from his forehead with the edge of his scarf, which always grossed me out a little because I was pretty sure he hardly ever washed his scarves, unlike his ass. At least he took them off when he ate.

  Forty-five minutes later, Umar and Ghaz were in the throes of a culinary orgasm. Every few bites, Umar would make an enthusiastic proclamation. Delish! Roy Rogers has nothing on this. So good.

  “This is amazing,” Umar said. “My parents would love this.”

  “Screw your principles,” Ghaz told me. “Have a bite.”

  I wasn’t disgusted by meat like some of my vegetarian friends, and I used to love it growing up: I still remembered this goat and okra curry my grandmother used to make. But six years of abstaining had made me lose interest. I wondered if it was the same way with sex. I really enjoyed hooking up with Doug, but when Ghaz complained about being hard up and horny, I couldn’t relate. Ghaz said it was because I’d never had amazing sex, but with Doug it had been pretty amazing.

  It sounded like Hannah Rae and my father had once had amazing sex.

  Sick.

  “Earth to Mars,” Ghaz sang out.

  They’d consumed their chicken like good desis, relishing every last bit of meat and cartilage, leaving only a carcass of slender bones resting atop a slice of grease-soaked white bread. I’d eaten less than half my fries and pimento macaroni and cheese but was already feeling ill.

  “I’m back, I’m back. What were you talking about?” I asked, offering Umar what remained of my food.

  “I’m so full I can’t,” he said, before taking a bite.

  “I was saying we should hit up the honky-tonks tonight,” Ghaz said.

  “I hate country,” I said.

  “You and half the world’s population,” she countered. “The point of a road trip is to expand your horizons. Have either of you ever been to a honky-tonk before?”

  We shook our heads.

  “Exactly.”

  “You guys go,” I said. “It’s not that I’m anti-new experiences—I know I won’t be up to going out tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Umar chimed in. “Let’s get a couple of pints and watch a Lifetime movie.”

  Ghaz regarded me with the intensity of a mind reader. “Hmmmm. You’re obviously upset about your father; even though you knew he was a wastoid, it was another thing to witness his full wastoid-ness in the flesh. You were concerned that you might have inherited some of his less desirable traits, but I think we can safely say you’re nothing like him.”

  “Nothing at all!” Umar piped up.

  “You feel sad for yourself, sad for Hannah Rae Tipple, sad for your father. You feel sad for the polar bears and the polar ice caps.”

  “They are melting at an alarming rate,” I said.

  Umar snickered.

  “What did I miss?” she pressed.

  That was Ghaz—she’d keep prying and poking until satisfied that I’d laid my heart bare.

  “Well, I’m debating what to tell my mother, though I know she won’t ask herself. Do I tell her he didn’t even mention my brother? And, I don’t know, I guess I thought that when I saw him, we would have a connection, like there’s an invisible rope that binds a father and daughter together, even if they’ve never met, even if the father’s an asshole. I thought I’d feel some tug of emotion, some subconscious memory of attachment, if that makes sense. But I didn’t. All I saw was a stranger, a selfish narcissist who happened to be my father. Blood doesn’t mean much if it’s not tied to love. Like my brother: he can be such an ass, and so many things about him drive me insane, but we grew up together, we’ve looked out for each other, I love him. But my father, he was nothing to me, and I realize now he never will be.”

  Umar broke the contemplative silence that ensued by saying, “Now do you see why she doesn’t want to hit the honky-tonks?”

  As she considered my words, Ghaz chewed on her bottom lip, leaving teeth marks. “There was a part of you that was hoping that meeting your father would offer some sort of reconciliation, or healing. But now you know you never really had a father, and you probably never will. So, what you need to do is mourn him.”

  “But like you said, I never had him,” I objected.

  “But you were thinking you might.” She snapped her fingers. “I know what we’re doing tomorrow!”

  Umar and I exchanged a wary glance. “What?”

  “We’re having a funeral. For the father you’ll never have.”

  “Is this so you can wear that black doily dress again?” Umar said, protesting as Ghaz punched him in the arm.

  “I’m serious,” she said. “I think it’ll be good for Mars. A step toward moving on.”

  Once Ghaz was convinced of an idea’s brilliance, she’d cling to it tenaciously. Umar and I had learned to pick our battles, and who knew? Maybe it would be a little cathartic.

  “Where would we have a funeral?” I asked.

  “A cemetery,” Ghaz replied. “Where else?”

  Twenty-Five

  AFTER HOT CHICKEN, Ghaz and Umar decide to explore the city more and I returned to our Airbnb to call my mother. Since she’d always been deliberately opaque about my father, I wasn’t sure how much detail I should share, and if hearing of my father’s pathetic state would mak
e her feel better, or worse, or nothing at all. My mother’s emotional journey in relation to my father remained even more of a mystery than my father himself.

  In spite of the heat, I headed outside to make the call. Sometimes tough conversations felt easier if you were unconfined.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “How are you?” I greeted.

  “Came home early from work.”

  Because you were distracted by today’s events? I thought, but didn’t bother to ask. She’d never admit it anyway. “Drinking a glass of wine?”

  I could sense her smile. “Opening a bottle as we speak.”

  “Old world or new?”

  “Australian Shiraz. Very new.”

  I pictured her, sitting at the kitchen island, elbows braced against the gray granite, her silvery hair tied back in a loose bun because she couldn’t stand to eat or drink with it down, swirling her wine, waiting.

  “So I met him.”

  “All right.”

  My mother listened quietly as I briefly described the house, the grounds, the aviaries, Hannah Rae, and her beloved bird. I described the bloat of his face, the bathrobe, the pink furry slippers. I said he quoted poetry and had started drinking mid-morning, that he seemed uninterested in me, or in making any kind of amends.

  “I almost feel sorry for him,” I said. “He’s very unhappy, but it’s not for me to worry about. He’s made his choices. He didn’t even try to engage with me; it was like he was acting out some play, like we were all second fiddle to his dramatic stage presence. Anyway, we won’t be having any kind of relationship.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it was difficult. He was actually even worse than I expected.” I hadn’t meant this to be funny, but laughed anyway. “I’m glad I met him, though. It was something I felt I needed to do.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it didn’t go well. I hope it brought you some closure.”

  I’d been thinking of how Hannah Rae had described my father as charming, romantic, a good lover, how she claimed to have once been giddy in love with him. Had this been the pattern with my mother? Had she been as taken with him as Hannah Rae was? I couldn’t imagine her being anything but levelheaded.

  “I have a question,” I said.

  “Go on.”

  I had walked down the street to a local park, where children were climbing all over the undulating body of a mosaic dragon sculpture. Parents watched, smiling, as their children chased one another underneath the arches of the dragon’s body, and I suddenly felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of what my father had missed.

  “Mariam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You were going to ask me something.”

  “Right. Now that I’ve met him, I keep thinking—why did you marry him? I know you prefer not to talk about it, but I’d like to know.”

  “Ah. I thought you might ask this.” She paused, and I could hear her breaking her one-glass rule by pouring more wine. “He was the opposite of my parents, spontaneous, nonjudgmental, poetic, unconstrained by expectation, or what people might think. He made everything an adventure, even going to the bodega for ice cream in the middle of the night. I was infatuated, I knew he wouldn’t make a good long-term partner, but I was only twenty-four. I didn’t want a long-term partner. I cared that he was good for me then. A few months after we started dating, I got pregnant. I always insisted that we use protection, but one night, the condom broke. There was no morning-after pill back then. I thought, what are the chances?”

  “You were pregnant with me,” I said.

  “Yes. When I found out, I wanted to terminate the pregnancy. I was young and I had misgivings about your father, but when I told your father, he was ecstatic. He said we’d live in a cottage in a magical wood, and make art and raise lambs. And when he saw I wasn’t convinced, he called my mother. I hadn’t even told my mother about him, can you imagine? But my mother agreed I should have the baby, and get married, and . . . I couldn’t fight them both. Your father, he would sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ to my belly, and part of me thought, maybe it could work out between us. Maybe having a child, starting a family of his own, would give your father stability.”

  “Oh, Mom. Do you think you would have been happier if you hadn’t had me? Maybe you would have met a better man, wouldn’t have been a single mother.”

  “Nonsense,” she said brusquely. “Not at all. I am content with the choices I made. I am happy with the life I have.”

  “You sure?”

  “Mariam. I may keep my emotions somewhat cloaked, but do I ever say things I don’t mean?”

  “No, you do not.”

  “But listen to me carefully—I have never, not for a single moment, regretted that I chose to have you, but if, at the time, I’d chosen to have an abortion, I wouldn’t have regretted that either. Do you understand?”

  My mother was staunchly pro-choice, and I understood the message implicit in her words: that if I was to find myself unexpectedly pregnant, I should not look to what she did but instead do whatever was right for me.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to have a baby at twenty-four just ’cause you did,” I teased her.

  “I’d rather you say you’re not going to have a baby at twenty-four because you’re careful about protection.”

  “Believe me, you really don’t have to worry. Is everything else okay? Shoaib isn’t driving you too crazy?”

  “He likes to press your buttons far more than mine. You know he doesn’t mean half the things he says; he’s trying to goad you.”

  “Well, that’s really immature.”

  “He is a sixteen-year-old boy. How are Ghaz and Umar?”

  “Honestly? We’re having fun, and at the same time we’re all a little emotionally screwed-up.”

  “Would you like to elaborate?”

  “Yes, but I think I have enough to process for one day,” I said. “I need to go lie down and try to think before Ghaz and Umar come back. I love my friends, but it’s hard to get lost around them. In thought, I mean.”

  She laughed. “Okay, go get lost. Anyway, I’ve got work to do. And Mariam?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  Twenty-Six

  TO GHAZ’S DISMAY, we spent our second night in Nashville on the couch, so when she woke up the next morning insisting upon funeral preparations, Umar and I felt obliged to play along. A few hours later, we arrived at the historic Nashville City Cemetery, bordered by a busy road on one side and railroad tracks on the other. As we walked through its black iron gates, we were greeted by a sign that said In Memory of the Confederate Soldiers.

  “Ugh,” Umar said. This had become his standard response to anything with the word Confederate in it.

  “Should we spray paint black lives matter over it?” Ghaz suggested.

  “And get arrested for vandalism? No way,” Umar protested.

  “Hey, look at that beautiful magnolia,” I said.

  In one corner of the cemetery was a majestic magnolia tree, framed by deep blue sky, so tall it dwarfed the slim, pillared tombstones surrounding it. The city had an abundance of magnolia trees but this was the most impressive one I’d seen.

  “Pretty,” Umar said, taking a photo.

  “Let’s do this before we melt,” Ghaz said. “We need to find the right spot.”

  We walked by another massive tree, a weeping willow half the height of the magnolia but twice its breadth, its wispy, hanging branches swaying gently in the breeze.

  “How about there?” I said.

  “It’s very apropos,” Ghaz replied. “But it’s almost too dramatic. Let’s keep walking.”

  We followed her deeper into the cemetery, along the paved paths, each of which had a name, marked by wrought iron street signs. Though the cemetery itself was serene, its nineteenth-century graves were now subject to twenty-first-century industry; the birdsong and rustle of leaves competing with the
sounds of eighteen-wheelers whizzing past, the whir of heavy machinery from nearby industries, the pounding of a jackhammer.

  “Here,” Ghaz declared, stopping in the shade of a small willow tree next to an old-fashioned streetlamp, at the corner of two paths named Walnut and Cedar.

  I couldn’t see why this particular spot resonated with her, but figured it was as good as any other.

  Ghaz stood and faced us, clearing her throat. She was wearing her black dress from yesterday, even though she said it stank. She’d parted her hair in the center, dark waves tumbling past her shoulders.

  “Dearly beloved,” she began, “we are gathered here today to mourn the father Mars will never have. Even though her real father is alive, he’s as much a father to her as a male grizzly bear who eats his young.”

  Umar and I glanced at each other, trying not to laugh.

  “To varying degrees, we all wish our parents were different. But on this road trip, Mars has come to realize that her father is incapable of being a parent. And so, we stand together underneath this small, lovely willow tree, to put to rest Mars’s hopes for a paternal relationship, and to help her move on and live an even more fulfilling, amazing, and irrevocably awesome life. And now, Mariam Sharma will read a eulogy to the father she never had.”

  This morning, while Ghaz and Umar slept, I’d gone to a French café in Hillsboro Village and sat at a window table to write my letter. After the first half hour, all I had written was the beginning of a poem—

  Elegy to My Father

  Normally, I’m a scotch man

  but this!

  a single malt French whiskey

  so fine

  Aged in cognac barrels

  Then I’d sat there grieving that these were the words of my father that I would carry my entire life—not I’m sorry, or I missed you, or forgive me—and a solitary teardrop had fallen poetically into my mug, salting my hot chocolate. When I finally began to write the letter, I did so not because I believed in its power of catharsis but because I didn’t want to disappoint Ghaz, who wanted so badly to help me heal.

  Ghaz and Umar had folded their hands in front of them, bearing such solemn expressions that I almost wanted to laugh. A yellow-and-silver freight train creaked along the side of the cemetery, and I waited for its deafening screeches to fade before reading.