CHAPTER TWO
George was on a train that clattered and shook all the way from London to Nottingham. A swift punch to the side might have jogged its parts into place. The side of his head rattled against the windowpane and went numb. He didn’t know how the cold seeped through trains, but it always did. He wished he were back in London, in the cheerful anonymity of St. Pancras, where the people were too busy to be sad, and not on this train that hurtled toward his old town and his father and their small, dark, terraced house. A woman sat next to him. She was pretty and young and wore a skirt with a slit up the side. He considered speaking to her, but the moment passed and she got off at Milton Keynes. Now there was nothing left but to sit back and watch the high phone lines that stretched past the window. They danced against the gunmetal sky, leapt off each pole and dipped and dodged and leapt again. He watched them for an hour or maybe more. Then, with his ear pressed against the cold shuddering window, he fell asleep.
George awoke. Where am I? Home. Bedroom. He looked to his right, where the pillow was smooth and the sheets pulled flat. She had made the bed, leaving not even the lopsided impression of her head. She was gone. Not even her smell lingered, not even the ghost of her. It was as if she’d wanted to disappear from him completely.
Beyond the spot where she would have been lying, a crack of light winked through the curtains. He hoisted himself out of bed. Curtains closed, autumn. Curtains open, blinding white. George squinted against the sun, radiant and perfectly round, its edges sharpened by cloud. All color had leaked from the sky. In the yard the roses had tumbled from their bushes and the trees were bare. The pool gaped dumbly at him.
She’d left a note. Dear George. He’d found it on his return from the airport, folded on the dresser. I have to stay awhile with my sister, and I have to decide what to do with myself. He’d wondered what it was that she might possibly have to do with herself. Because I might not come back. I am not happy and I don’t know if I ever was. I never had the chance to even ask myself this. He grew cold, something inside him beginning to drip. You once asked me why I was here, with you. It was a good question. I ask myself this question now because I have to, because I’m not sure anymore of why I am here, in this place, with you. Because I found myself in a life that was not mine. He wondered when she’d had time to write this note, whether she’d written it while he was sleeping or in the shower or at work, whether she’d written it last-minute that morning, or on some previous day, saving it in a drawer or tucked beneath her pillow. The paper was soft, as if it had been sweated on, the creases slack with refolding. Because maybe I should never have left my home. Because I hardly knew you. Because I never knew myself, or if I did, then I must have forgotten. The children will be back by January in time for school, but I may not. I hope you understand and can forgive me. Well, no, George thought. No, he did not understand. He’d found the note yesterday evening. She had positioned it carefully on the dresser, perfectly aligned with the edge of the drawers. The paper whispered between his shaking fingers as he read.
So that was it, then. She was leaving him. Groundlocked, helpless, he wanted to find Viji, but she was on an airplane gliding peacefully away. He wouldn’t even be able to phone her once she’d landed, not until she phoned him. He crumpled the paper and tossed it on the table. He kicked the wall, and kicked it again, then backed up a few paces, ran up, and kicked it again. His big toe screamed with pain. It wasn’t enough—he snatched the note back up and tore it and pinched it into the smallest possible shreds. He wouldn’t miss it. The words were burnished into the backs of his eyes. Poetic drivel. Because because because. That wasn’t his wife speaking, it was a sad woman novelist writing something from a sad novel for women.
Because I might not come back. The enormity of what Viji had said punched into him, specifically into his gut, which began to tremor and unravel and sent him running to the toilet to release an avalanche, stinking and shameful. He rested his head on his bare knee. He was weak— nothing he did would change that.
And then he waited for her call. The first day, he checked his watch at eight a.m. and calculated that she would just be landing, sweating her way through Madras International, climbing into a taxi for the short drive through the nighttime streets. The children would be itchy and exhausted from the flight. At ten a.m., he guessed she’d be lying awake, listening to the sounds of shadows in the house from which he’d rescued her long ago. That first day inched along painfully. His morning, her night, his evening, her dawn. And still she didn’t call. Maybe it was a holiday; the STDs would be closed.
The second day, he got up early and went to the university and was utterly unable to work. The third day, he packed a sandwich, so he wouldn’t miss her call on his lunch break, and left for work before dawn. He was liquid with fatigue those mornings. There was nothing he could do but hold his head in his hands to keep it from flopping to the desk. He tried to imagine the small events of Viji’s days but found that he couldn’t. “You don’t look so hot,” Amaré observed.
“I’m waiting to hear from my wife. She and my children are in India.”
“Oh yeah? That’s nice for you, a vacation from the family.”
He’d never before seen the inside of the washing machine, not even at the shop where they’d bought it. A filter of some sort rose up from inside, a narrow metal volcano. The whole thing looked like a doughnut and made him want one. It was Tuesday evening, and George was in the laundry room. They had an entire room for laundry. At home in Nottingham, his parents had had, luxury of luxuries, a so-called washer-dryer crammed next to their fridge, just to the right of the kitchen sink. So-called because it washed, but never properly dried. It was impossible to expect the same machine to both wash and dry a garment. Still, it roused the ire of their neighbors, who trudged to the launderette with their netted sacks of dirty clothing, then trudged home again to hang their damp clothes on the line. Here, the dryer was a colossal thing. He could have climbed inside and tumble-dried himself.
At his feet sat a plastic basket full of clothes, brimming with the innards of his father’s hamper, and with his own collection of dirty underwear. He’d separated Viji’s clothing and left it in the bedroom. He feared he would ruin it with some sort of bad decision.
“No way around it” he whispered, “may as well get stuck in.” With that, he grabbed a handful of Stan’s underwear and chucked it in the washer, followed by another and another. His father had more underwear than he’d expected. He was well stocked with underpants, though they’d been battered and stretched with time. Holes, apparently, were no reason to throw out a pair of underpants. And then, from among the sad gray flags emerged a pair of bright pink panties, as shocking and beautiful as a butterfly on a rubbish heap. They could only be Lupe’s—Viji didn’t own lace panties. These were finely woven, and surprisingly small. For a moment he let himself imagine the fabric peeking from Lupe’s folds, lost between her belly and her thighs, a rhapsody of silk and flesh. And then he felt sorry for Lupe, that this delicate web of hers should be handled by the likes of him, that she should have found her round and well-meaning hips in the rough hands of his father. Women were spider silk, so easily torn. Men were clamoring children.
It occurred to him, before long, that Viji could have done the laundry herself. It was really the least she could have done before leaving him forever. God knows she’d had the time, those hours and days spent staring at the bedroom wall. She might as well have turned her gaze to the clothes hamper, to the dial on the washing machine, to this box of blue and white powder. She might as well have turned her listless hands to sorting and folding. But eventually, he would have had to do this himself. There was no way he could have lasted until after Christmas on the clothes he had in his closet, not even if he wore the same clothes and underwear several times a week. With a prayer for the pink delicates, he threw a cupful of detergent in, closed the washer door, and pressed the button that looked most faded—surely this would be the setting that Viji used
most. The machine hummed and whirred through the night, and by the next morning, it was done.
By the fourth day, he’d stopped calling her Viji and started calling her “that woman.” Why hadn’t that woman called? Why hadn’t she bothered contacting him? His student visited, chatting and spreading her legs and even winking at him once. He was unresponsive and spoke in monosyllables until she got up to leave. He fought the urge to throw a pen at her large head as she walked out of his office. He glared at Amaré when she brought him a syllabus to sign. Amaré glared back. He had a feeling that women worked in collusion. They worked in covens, covetous, capricious, complicit, and covert. There were other words he could think of.
That evening George hovered in his father’s doorway. Stan sat upright in bed, eyes closed and silent. What if he’s dead? George thought. What if he’s dead and I can’t reach Viji and I have to throw him a funeral on my own, with no one to invite but Kamla and Lupe and maybe the neighbors? He would have to choose a coffin himself and order the small triangular sandwiches.
Just then a glorious snore erupted from Stan and woke him, startled and blinking. He shifted position, farted, then leaned back and closed his eyes again.
“What is it, son?” he asked with his eyes closed.
“Did you want dinner?”
“What’s on?”
In the cabinet, a box of macaroni and cheese awaited the children’s return. “Pasta?”
It wasn’t until George emptied the packet of yellow powder over the boiled macaroni, fingering the remnants that hid in the foil corners, that he realized the meal wasn’t big enough. He didn’t feel much like eating, but Stan would demolish his serving in two mouthfuls. In the fridge were two tomatoes and a gallon of milk, plus several Tupperwares that had crusted over with time. Viji could have cooked and frozen some meals for them. It was the least she could have done. He sighed and picked up a tomato. He hadn’t wanted dinner, hadn’t even wanted to make Stan dinner, but it was all that had come to him when he’d stood in his doorway.
What he really wanted was a little fatherly counsel. But how to ask Stan for advice? Dad, I think my wife left me. What would you do?
He emptied the entire pan onto a plate, chopped some tomato, and set it before Stan. George would eat later, or maybe not. They sat together as Stan chewed thoughtfully and without complaining about his macaroni. His father was the last person George would normally have asked for relationship advice. He’d spent his life despising Stan’s ways with women, but now he had no one else to turn to.
“Dad,” he began. “Dad—” Stan looked up, chewing. “What would you have done if Mum had left you?”
“If she’d what, now?”
“If she’d left you. If she’d got up and left and said she wasn’t coming back.”
“Are you saying she should have left me?”
“Would you answer the question, please?”
“Probably gone down the pub and got pissed.”
“Really?”
“Then I’d have topped myself.”
“Hmm. Romantic.”
“Aye, that’s me. Dead romantic.”
Stan scraped the last of the cheese sauce onto his fork. “Not bad, son,” he said. “Not a bad meal at all.” He patted George on the back, got up, and headed out the front door. It was nearly freezing outside—frost already coated the bushes, and Stan wasn’t wearing a coat. Never mind, he was only going next door. He had a woman there, warmth enough for a still winter’s night. Warmth and skin and hair. George left the kitchen adrift in dinner mess, a dusting of yellow powder on the countertop, a plate abandoned on the table.
Day five, and Viji hadn’t called. By now she’d become “that fucking woman.” That fucking woman had run away to hide. That fucking woman had taken his kids. That fucking woman should have called to let him know that they hadn’t been massacred or kidnapped, that his children weren’t lying in the middle of a godforsaken rice paddy. It occurred to him briefly that his children could indeed have been lying in a rice paddy or a sewer or the dark hotel bedroom of an international organ dealer. And soon he began to fear that even Viji, that fucking woman, could have fallen in harm’s way. Indians in a crowd couldn’t be trusted not to riot. There might have been a crush at the airport, a stampede at customs. Or a customs officer who took her into a back room. Or a drunken cabbie, his rheumy eyes seeping over her bosoms as he opened the car door. She might not have made it to her family’s house at all. They might have been looking for her themselves, sick with worry and unable to phone him. Six servants, no telephone. Not even a pencil could make him feel better.
He passed the minutes and hours in his office, one hand holding his head up and the other punching keys as the words streamed through him K-I-N-G-D-O-M-C-O-M-E-T-H-Y-W-I-L-L-B-E-D-O-N-E-I-H-A-T-E-T-H-I-S-M-I-K-E-Y-L-I-K-E-S-I-T-T-H-I-N-G-S-W-E-S-A-I-D-T-O-D-A-Y-T-H-A-T-F-U-C-K-I-N-G-F-U-C-K-I-N-G-W-O-M-A-N. He was starved for her. She’d never done this to him before.
The phone rang.
“Hello.”
“It’s Viji.” A pause. “Hello?”
“Darling!” He felt dizzy. “Darling, where are you? Where have you been?”
“I’m in India.”
He began to laugh weakly.
“George? George, what’s wrong?”
“You didn’t call, Viji. Why didn’t you call?”
“What?”
“I said, why didn’t you call?” But the phone line crackled and hushed.
“We’re fine here. The STDs were closed.”
“Oh.”
They fell quiet and let the precious international seconds tick by. George’s thoughts snuck away from relief and clung greedily to Viji’s note. Because because because and the final verdict: I may not. His head flopped to the table and he listened with his nose smushed against the desktop.
From Viji’s end he heard the dinging of bicycle bell. And all at once he saw her, the folding chair on which she sat, the damp-stained walls of the STD office, the rolledup garage door that framed the street. Just outside the door was a woman at a cart piled high with white and orange flowers and hulking garlands for the temple. Auto rickshaws, round and dusty, black as woodlice, puttputted by. Cycling past were men with grasshopper legs of pure bone and sinew, their calves yellow with dust.
“George?”
“Ypsh?”
“Are you still there?”
“Ypsh.” He lifted his head. “That note you left—” The phone bleeped three times. Their time was running out. “Call again, Viji, please. When will you call again?”
“I will soon. Next week.”
“Darling, we need to talk about that—”
Aloud click, followed by silence. Not even a dial tone to tell him the call had ended—just the cold suspension of sound.
It was time for home, and for Stan, assuming that Stan was even home.
When George was fourteen, a psychic had come to the house, invited by his mother. She dressed normally, in brown trousers and a baggy white wool jumper, the sort that sheep farmers wore. She had an enormous bust, boring hair and a boring face, and glasses that made George think of his lettering teacher. She asked for a cup of herbal tea and proceeded to tell George’s mother that she had strong eyesight, a possible termite problem, money in her future, not long to live, and a daughter with green eyes. The prediction of the non existent daughter didn’t soften the blow of his mother’s imminent death.
“Don’t fret, my love,” his mother had laughed. “In cosmic terms, “not long” could mean a hundred years!” But some fragile bud of psychic ability told George that his mother would not live for another hundred years. And from that day, he began to dread her inevitable absence. His dread took on different forms and set at last, like quivering jelly, on this. The scene that trundled before him now, on this Tuesday before Christmas, was exactly and precisely what he’d feared his life would come to: a wordless dinner with his father; dreary evening rituals of nursery food followed by hours of television. Only th
is evening, Stan would disappear to join his girlfriend, and George would be left with the television. Or a book. Or his flaccid pink member in his hand. He would read halfheartedly the book of Cheever stories he’d bought earlier that year, and ponder how he might make better use of this time, this vacation from his family.
Before he left for university, his mother had taught him the principles of cooking forhimself—how long to fry an onion, the dangers of raw garlic, the proper consistency for chicken stew, the beauty of rare beef, the travesty of allspice. Every dish, like every person, had to have a dominant flavor. Texture was as important as taste.
To his credit that evening, George created a plate of fish fingers that tasted predominantly of breaded cod, peas that tasted primarily of pea, and mashed potatoes that tasted first and foremost of mashed potato. It was probably identical to the last meal he’d ever cooked, in his student flat in Exeter, before Madras, before Viji, before dinners cooked daily without fail and placed faithfully on his table. Fish fingers were easy enough to find in Sacramento, though they were a food meant for children, judging from the cartoons and word jumbles on the box. He wondered why he’d never thought of them before now. Stan chomped appreciatively at the meal, coating fish in potato and jabbing happily at the peas.
“Christmas soon,” he grunted.
“Yep”
The evening spread between them like a thick paste.
Outside, the screeching of brakes.
“Ten days away,” Stan said.
“Yep.”
“Any plans?”
“Plans? No, not really.” There was a department holiday party the next night, but George never went to those. “How ’bout you?”
Stan shrugged and stabbed a stick of cod.
“I suppose you’ll be with Lupe? Going to church, maybe?” George couldn’t help grinning at the thought of his father kneeling, standing, kneeling, standing, at a Catholic Mass. It didn’t occur to him that Stan would spend Christmas with his son.
The Prayer Room Page 17