by Shani Mootoo
“But eh-eh, so what, now? You want to leave home, now? As long as you’re living here, you’ll do things the way your father and I are comfortable with. Look, don’t make a problem out of this. Why does everything have to be so complicated with you? We just want to have him over, that’s all, and to have a nice pleasant day. Your father is looking forward to it. Don’t spoil it for him, Vik. Now, what are you going to wear?”
TREVOR AND VIVEKA FOUND THEMSELVES LEFT ALONE, WHILE EVERY-one else went inside the house into the air-conditioned living room. She showed little interest in him, but still he told her of his life.
He seldom spent his time off in Toronto, he told her. He was a mechanical engineer and worked with one of the major airlines. Because of his seniority he was afforded unlimited free trips worldwide, as long as space on a flight was available. He worked four days in a row and then would have four off. Sometimes he worked five days in a row so that he could take five off. A couple weeks before he had spent three days in Tahiti.
That seemed strange to Viveka. Surely it was too long a distance between Toronto and Tahiti to go for only three days?
But that’s the point, Trevor told her. That he was able to do it. The sheer craziness of it. Before that, he and a co-worker had been in Argentina, and before that he had gone on his own to Lisbon. He and his colleagues chose places based on seat availability on a flight. Sometimes they arrived at the airport with a change of clothing, a toothbrush, that sort of thing, all in a small carry-on bag, and took whatever was available.
Trevor paused, then suddenly asked where Viveka’s beautiful friend Anick was. Viveka was caught off guard; she hesitated. He reminded her that he had seen them together at volleyball practice. Wayne and Helen had told him about Anick, and he had expected to see her here. Mention of Anick made Viveka’s stomach rise and fall like a kite in an erratic wind. She wondered, and worried, what Helen and Wayne had said about Anick. She shrugged, and Trevor carried on, “I thought she must have been a very special friend to come and sit by herself in those stands to watch you play volleyball. And then when she walked off the way she did that time I came to speak with you, without even looking at me, I thought to myself — hmm, she’s got a thing for Viveka. So, has she?”
Viveka thought this a bold conversation. She noted that Trevor had waited until no one else was present to make mention of Anick. Since he was leaving the island again the following day she, in equal measure, challenged him. “What makes you think it wouldn’t be the other way around?”
“Nothing at all. Is that how it is?”
Viveka didn’t answer.
“Fair enough. It’s hard to pin you down, isn’t it? I like that. You’re pretty complicated.”
Her mother often threw it at her that she was too complicated for her own good, but the way Trevor said it was almost a compliment. He kept his eyes on her and this made her blush. He took advantage of the moment.
“So, I was wondering what you would say this time if I were to risk having my ego bruised and ask you out, again, to dinner. After all, I think your parents like me, and I have a list of places from your mother still to go through.”
“What do you mean? Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?” Viveka’s blush turned into a moment of panic. This flirtation was harmless enough precisely because Trevor was around only momentarily. She wanted to tell him that he was wasting his time. That she was already inextricably and deeply in love. That even if she never saw Anick again, her heart would always belong to her.
“Well,” Trevor began slowly, all the while keeping his eye on Viveka for her reaction, “I am considering returning in a month’s time.”
“For what?” She did not mean to sound as hostile as she did. Trevor was oblivious to her truculent tone.
“To have dinner with you,” he beamed, and added, “because I am able to do it, and for the sheer craziness of it. What do you say?”
THEY WENT TO THE LOUNGE AT THE VICTORY HOTEL. THE TABLES were arranged to give the illusion of privacy. Groupings of large planters that contained tall plastic trees — banana, and palm, and the baliser and haliconia shrubs, little clumps of jungle — divvied up the room, creating caves where couples could steal a little more than time.
Trevor sat back comfortably in a deep love-sofa, the palm of his hand flat on the seat cushion next to him, as if indicating a spot that was available. Viveka sat in a chair opposite. She was not at ease. She thought of Anick, of how, at a party or in some public place, she would strike a pose in the presence of a man who was paying her attention. Viveka used to enjoy watching her, knowing that Anick was teasing the man and her, but that it was she who held Anick’s entire attention. She looked around the lounge and noted that there was not a woman there who did not appear to be posing.
Trevor, she had to admit, was unusual. He led a more interesting life, she supposed, than most men she knew. Since they had last talked at the party, he had been to Delhi. It was his first time. His father’s ancestors were from there. He had sent her a post card with a picture of a building within the Red Fort. It said on the back, This is my new favourite destination. I bet you’d find this place fascinating. You’d be looking for your ancestry in every corner. I am. It’s here, I can feel it. I bet you would too. In other words, I wish you were here with me. That he had thought of her so far away, in India, had, admittedly, flattered her. Since it was a postcard and it had arrived in a pile of the household’s mail, it was very likely that her mother had read it.
Although he had lived abroad for many years, Trevor returned often to visit family and to indulge in his love of Trinidadian cultural life. He knew the island’s nooks and crannies well and offered to take her to remote parts of it on future visits. He clearly noticed that she neither accepted nor declined his invitation, and he grinned at this.
Trevor did not eat, but he consumed three beers rather quickly — his dinner, he told Viveka. She had a shrimp cocktail and a Bentley with gin. He wanted to know, he said, every detail of her life. She reluctantly offered a few more sketchy details on subjects already familiar to him — her course work and volleyball. Even though Anick was at the front of her mind, Viveka didn’t speak of her, and this time Trevor too made no mention of her.
When she returned home, just before ten-thirty, all three members of Viveka’s family were sitting in front of the television watching a late-night movie by way of waiting up for her. There was an unusual, excited kind of attention paid her by her mother and Vashti. They wanted to know what she and Trevor had drunk and eaten, exactly what kind of work Trevor did, and if he had siblings, and how long he had lived in Canada and why. Viveka told them she thought he was on the prowl for some meek woman to wash his clothes and cook his food. Her mother, at that point, became quite irritated and said that relationships were a give and take. Her father interjected, humour intended, that in most cases the same person who was giving was also the one taking.
Viveka was embarrassed by the sudden attention. Still, in a way it felt rather good.
HOW EASILY THEY LET HER USE THE CAR TO TAKE HIM TO THE AIRPORT.
On either side of two sections of the highway, fields were ablaze. Ribbons of glowing cane leaves spiraled upwards and sailed through the air. They floated back down as grey strands of ash. Although she had the air intake vents closed off and cold-air blower turned on high, the sweet smell of the burning cane fields, the heaviness of the smoke, managed to enter the vehicle. An unpleasant cold draft was hitting her upper left arm. She fiddled with the louvres on the vent to redirect it. Turned on low volume, the cello suite could barely be heard.
Curbside at the airport, Viveka left the car engine idling and remained inside. She gripped the steering wheel. Trevor hesitated, stared ahead.
“I had a really good time, Viveka.”
She tapped the steering wheel with her fingers to the beat of the music, and said, “Yeah. Me too.” There was no need to be effusive.
“But I’ve been thinking. You’re an expensive date!” Trevor w
as solemn. “I can’t keep coming to see you like this, you know. We have to do something.”
Viveka felt a sense of doom at Trevor’s words. There immediately arose inside of her that particular hunger she had only known in relation to Anick. It was a hunger but it did not come from her belly. It was Merle Bedi’s hunger. It was bigger than she was, and would not easily be quelled; it would, rather, forever gnaw at her. She knew this. But she was determined not to become Merle Bedi. Nor to become Anick.
She, rather, had to do something.
“Like what?” she said, but not waiting for an answer, she quickly offered, “Get married?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Trevor replied jovially, adding, “It’s always a means to an end, isn’t it. Would you like to?”
She wondered why he would say such a thing. It’s always a means to an end. Did he know how true his words were? Perhaps he, too, like everyone else it seemed, had his reasons. If he had, they didn’t interest her. “Where would we live?”
“Well, in Toronto, I suppose. We’d travel a lot, I think you might like that. But we’d live in Toronto. That’s where my work is. So, what do you say?”
Viveka thought for a moment. Finally, as if agreeing that they should make a left turn rather than a right at a fork, she shrugged and said, “Okay. I guess so. Let’s.”
Trevor chuckled. “I will have to speak with your parents, then. Won’t I? Don’t say anything. I’ll return in a few weeks and we’ll surprise them. What do you say?”
He held her face in his large hands and kissed her mouth. His skin smelled like burning flesh.
Viveka and Trevor, Part Two
ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT A MONTH LATER, VIVEKA HUMMED TO the taped Bach cello suite she had long ago memorized well.
How happily her parents had let her take the car for this trip, too.
Waiting in the midst of a small and animated crowd, Viveka’s eyes were fixed on the guarded, tinted doors ahead. She could have stepped out of the crowd and waited for Trevor closer to the doors, but she wanted to see him before he saw her. The automatic sliding doors parted and he, tall and skinny, squinting into the late afternoon glare, emerged from the air-conditioned Customs and Immigration Hall. He was met by a blast of dull, suffocating heat. He scanned the crowd for her. She held back for a brief second, shielding herself behind a woman with a mass of frizzy hair that exuded an odor of petroleum jelly. Trevor spotted her nevertheless, and so she broke into a broad smile as she shouldered her way through the crowd.
He came to her grinning and hugged her long. She returned the embrace, noting a faint cologne rising off his shirt. She felt as if she were on an escalator that was moving more swiftly than normal. Her greeting was a quick, nervous, embrace, cooler than he — and even she — expected. A long lash of cane ash floated down in front of him. He blew at it and it broke apart, some of it catching in his hair and on his shirt.
Crossing the street to arrive at the parking lot she reached for his bag, a black canvas knapsack so light he was able to sling it over one shoulder. He nudged his shoulder upward, out of her reach, and said gaily, “Thank you, thank you. I can carry it, my dear.” She hadn’t looked at him, but could hear the grin in his voice.
He took the key from her and opened the trunk. The white car had turned a dusty grey from the ash that had settled on it in the short time it had been parked there. He dropped his bag in and handed the key back to her.
Trevor dozed in the car, snoring so heavily that Viveka felt he could have been anywhere, and not necessarily in her presence. She took her eyes off the road to look at him. His head was tilted back on the headrest. He wore a black polyester/cotton shirt with tiny green palm trees printed on it, along with yellow martini glasses and pink flamingoes. His head was thrown back on the head rest, and his lower jaw had dropped. His breathing rattled in both directions against his epiglottis.
In the hope that Trevor would be awakened by it, Viveka turned on the CD player. The Bach cello suites. Viveka’s lungs felt suddenly bereft of air; insatiable desire mixed with regret rose in her chest. She hit the button to turn off the CD player with more force than was necessary.
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER, VIVEKA AND TREVOR SET OUT FOR THE beach. In the village of Maracas, on the only road that serviced the north’s most popular beach and the fishing villages that dotted this coast, traffic alternated between crawling no more than a car length or two ahead, and standing still. Cars coming from both directions met at the entrance to the beach’s parking lot, and formed a loosely linked chain of thrumming metal. The air inches above them shimmered in the heat.
Drivers wilted inside their infernos, each awaiting a hard-to-come-by vacancy in the sole, over-full lot. Their passengers had abandoned them along the crawl-route to the lot. Loaded with beach paraphernalia retrieved from the trunks, these escapees joined ragged groups that ambled on the road. The road had turned into a hot, noisy playground. The air just above the softened asphalt danced in waves. A slow parade of people in bathing suites, some wrapped in sarongs, some with towels around their waists, strained under the weight of Styrofoam coolers or boxes and baskets that contained food. Their rubber slippers slapped at the asphalt as they toted canvas bags, rolled-up grass mats, bright towels slung over their shoulders, and hoisted impatient, excited toddlers in their arms. Those without footwear bounced swiftly across the road, lifting their legs high after each protracted step, and blowing as if they felt the heat of the asphalt on their tongues. There were shrieks at children to watch left, watch right before crossing. And there was a constant shuffle of young women — high school girls, really — with movie-star-thin bodies and swimwear intended to fulfill only legal requirements, and strutting in their wake young hairless boys, surfboards like trophies clutched under their arms. All of this, and more — children armed with spades and buckets, heedless of the fact that they were on a roadway, a couple of sombrero-wearing men with guitars, a cacophony of car horns, and the boom-boom-booms from “sooped-up” car stereo systems — contributed to the impression that the state of the roadway was part of the general beach outing, and no one was in any hurry.
Those who remained inside their cars did so knowing well that they could be trapped there for what would seem like hours. The air floating into the cars was thick, and as the cars limped on, it reeked in turn of carbon monoxide, of pee in the bushes, of coconut-flavoured sunscreen lotions, and nearer the vendor stalls, of oil used in the frying of bakes, shark and king fish. By the river, the stench of stagnant water repulsed, and then suddenly, on each cooling and heaven-sent breeze, was washed away by the salty scent of sea water.
In the driver’s seat Trevor had angled himself, partially resting his back against the door, his eyes closed. His exaggerated breathing conveyed ire. As the car had idled in the same spot for too long, the fan had gone into high gear with a sudden and frightening soprano-like whir, and so he had switched off the engine. Viveka’s door was ajar, and all the windows were rolled down, but still it felt as if an electric heater was on at full power. Breezes from the sea were infrequent and when they did ripple in they were disappointingly warm. Trevor dangled one arm out of the window, down the length of the door, and leaned his head against the door frame. With his fingers he tapped the hot outside metal of the door in time to the beat of a calypso wailing out of the car behind. His other arm extended across the interior, and he rested his hand loosely on Viveka’s leg. He jerked his head slightly in time to the music. Even so, there was an air of impatience about him.
His eyes remained closed as he said in a voice low with weariness, “I will never stop loving this country. Too bad it’s run by a bunch of disingenuous incompetents.”
“They say people like you should return,” Viveka offered. “Not for a holiday, but permanently. To try to make things better.”
Trevor opened his right eye and looked at her. “This heat, and . . .” He sat up and pulled his hand from her lap, balled it tight and with his thumb rigid he pointed to t
he back, pumping his fist at the row of cars behind. The sharp parson’s nose of his fist alternated accusing jabs at the endless row snaking ahead, and he continued, “This kind of inanity would kill me. You would think they’d have cleared that land over there and created another lot, or better yet, they’d ferry people in by public transport and alleviate the area of this kind of congestion, and . . .” he waved his hand in a circle in the air, his index finger now stiff, pointing toward the roof of the car, “. . . all this fucking pollution.” He closed his eye and leaned his head back again. Viveka suppressed a smile at his use of the word inanity. The way, too, he stressed it, inanity. The same rigid hand came back down, rigid but now studiously weightless as a feather, to rest on her thigh again.
Inanity and fucking in the same sentence. How easily “fucking” slipped out of his mouth lately.
With his eyes still closed, Trevor spoke in such a low voice that all she heard was short hair, and several seconds passed before all the words of his question materialized in her consciousness.
“Have you always had such short hair?” is what he had said, she realized.
When she finally answered, she sounded terse without intending it. “Only most of my life.”
Viveka had never said fuck, had not even whispered it when no one was around to hear, which is not to say that she hadn’t tried it out in her head. It was a word scrawled on public walls, heard shouted angrily in the streets by people she would not have known. It was not a word used by people she knew, except, she imagined, in the privacy of their own heads, too. It is true that Trevor said it only when they were alone, but more often now than when they first met.
He opened the left eye now, leaned his head forward again and squinted at her. “You like that boyish look, don’t you?”
“I don’t think it is boyish.”