The Prayer Room

by Shanthi Sekaran

  “That all?” the old man at the counter sneered. “Sure you got enough there?” He sighed when George handed him a credit card, and made a show of blowing the dust off his mimeograph machine. “Come again,” he said, handing over the purple-shadowed receipt. He ladled a slow, thick gaze over Kamla, and nodded to George before handing over the plastic bag.

  They went for coffee. There was one café in the area, with pink tablecloths and Toulouse-Lautrec prints, which seemed to serve only almond croissants. They shared one. And then they drove home, separately. They returned to that café the next time. It was close to his office, and easier than walking the streets of Maple Grove. They met in the evenings and then, always, drove home in separate cars.

  I could show her my office , George thought one dark afternoon, as he gazed at her headlights in his rearview mirror. But then, why would she want to see my office? And then he remembered Amaré, who’d taken it upon herself to guard his marriage like a bulldog. She scared him more than the neighbors did. He’d passed the man and woman with their dog in front of Kamla’s house the week before, and found himself feeling guilty. He could very nearly hear the crinkling questions from the woman to the man—who do you think—isn’t he—maybe they—the sort of questions aman on his own wouldn’t bother with, questions it took awoman to ask. If his neighbors knew he went to Kamla’s, would they care? Would Stan say anything, or Lupe? It was nobody’s business in the first place, and secondly, there was no business to discuss.

  There were places they could go, away from Maple Grove, where they would be highly unlikely to see anyone they knew. There were dozens of other neighborhoods outside of his own leafy hamlet. And if they left in separate cars every time…but George was thoroughly certain he was doing nothing wrong. He could ask her if she’d seen the park. Land Park lay across from the children’s school, a vast and grassy pasture with nothing but trees and rambling shrubbery, where the school held its annual picnic. So of course she’d seen it. But had she really seen it?

  This was the sort of thing George thought about while lying in bed alone. This was what he thought about when he sweated into his pillow, one hand working beneath the sheet. He hated himself afterward, without fail. This was what he was thinking about, one late night, when the phone rang.

  “Hi,” said the voice. “It’s me.”

  “Viji.”

  “Are you okay?”

  He sat up. “Hi, yes, I’m okay. Are you okay?”

  “Were you worried about me?”

  “Of course I was,” he said. He realized he was lying.

  He’d finished worrying. His aim now was to look past the hole she’d left, as if it weren’t there, as if she hadn’t left him. “Are the kids okay?”

  “We’re in Kerala now.”

  “Kerala? How on earth did you get there?”

  “A very long bus ride. George, are you all right? You sound strange.”

  “I’m fine. I’m in bed.”

  “Oh.”

  “How are the children?”

  “They’re happy, very happy now. They like it here.

  The beach, you know.”

  His throat stuck a little when she spoke of the children. He imagined them, bellies jutting, jumping into the ocean as if it were a swimming pool.

  “Be careful with them. Where are you staying?”

  “At a hotel. But there’s no phone in our room.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  “Have you been eating?”

  “Of course I’ve been eating. Viji?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you go?” He was asking because he’d promised himself he would. He heard how uncommitted his voice sounded, and wondered if Viji heard it too.

  “I couldn’t stand it at my sister’s anymore, you know, it was just so—”

  “No—what I mean is, why did you leave here? Your note…”

  A silence. “I know. It’s hard to explain. I needed to get out of there for a while, just to come back home. You understand that, right? You understand that I needed to come back here for a while?”

  “But are you coming back here?”

  “I don’t know. I think I am.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll send the children back in time for school, like we planned.”

  Like we planned. He hadn’t planned on anything but having a normal Christmas with his family.

  The phone clicked its signal.

  “Time is running out.”

  “Have a good Christmas,” he said. “Will you call on Christmas?”

  “I’ll call, and you can talk to the children.”

  “Give them my love?”

  “Okay.”

  “All of my love,” he added. The phone clicked off, and she was gone.

  They met in the bookshop later that week. I read a poem of you last week and thought of his. He wanted again and again to say those words, but never found a chance to. He and Kamla didn’t discuss the fact that they were meeting, because there was no need to explain something that didn’t mean anything. He asked himself what they spoke about and how they managed to fill so many hours with so much talk and so little in common. It was a question Viji would have asked, and that George, truthfully, could not answer.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was Christmas, and George and Stan were alone.

  “Are you going to church today?”

  “Am I, bollocks. Have I ever gone to church on Christmas?”

  George shrugged.

  “I’ve got my lady coming to dinner. Is that all right with you?”

  “Really? Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought about dinner, though.” He didn’t even know if the shops were open. He’d never planned a Christmas, not once in his life. He bought presents, he was present, and that was always enough. He knew about some dried pasta in the cupboard and a chicken leg in the fridge that was due to go off the next day. There was a dusty bottle of wine in the pantry. And his students had given him, among other things, a box of chocolates. “We don’t have any vegetables,” George said. Stan strolled to the pantry, opened one cupboard, then another. He returned to the kitchen with a potato in each hand. “Potatoes aren’t vegetables.”

  “Like hell they aren’t.”

  “They’re not real vegetables.”

  “Well they don’t have feet, do they? If they were good enough for me, they’re good enough for you.”

  Potatoes done three ways—boiled, roasted, and mashed. These had constituted the major part of his parents’ Christmas dinners. Before his father’s arrival, George hadn’t eaten a potato since he had left England, not even a french fry. And he hadn’t spent a Christmas with his father since 1975. Christmas was his mother’s game.

  The morning after the night of the ax, George had asked Stan if he knew what happened.

  “What are you getting at?”

  “You were outside, Dad, with an ax, chopping a tree.

  You were sleepwalking.”

  “No. I snore. I’m a snorer. I don’t sleepwalk.”

  “You were chopping at a pine tree with an ax.”

  “You know my brother Charlie? Now, he was a sleepwalker. One Christmas Charlie got himself up dead in the middle of the night, went over to the neighbor’s yard and killed their hen. Just snapped its neck with his bare hands, like he was taking a piss, then turned back home and went to bed. We only knew he’d done it from the bloody feathers in the kitchen thenext morning.”

  “Did you hear me? You were up last night, chopping a pine tree with an ax.”

  Stan shrugged. “It’s Christmas, anyway. We’ll be needing a tree.”

  George stared at his father.

  “You do do Christmas in this house, don’t you?” Beneath their Christmas tree were four presents: a wrapped box of fruitcake from the art history department, and three small boxes for the children. Viji always bought their gifts, from the long lists they drew up in October. Sometimes she got the discounted imitation versions of what they wa
nted, and their faces fell just a little as they tore the wrapping away. But still, Wow, thanks! they would cry, and, Hey, this is what I wanted! This year George had stopped into an antique store. For Babygirl he’d bought a silver and mahogany jewelry box with tulips engraved on the lid, and for each of the boys, an antique model roadster, hand-painted, with a moving steering wheel. None of these had been on their lists, but he’d wanted to get them the best things possible.

  The only store open on Christmas was Super-Duper, the sort of gigantic supermarket that had begun to spring up around the outskirts of town. It was as large as the Sacramento airport, a florescent beacon on the valley landscape. Its warehouse shelves were stacked to the ceiling with bulk-buy crates of potato chips, screwdrivers, and chicken nuggets. Who, George wondered, would need eighteen screwdrivers?

  Later, George pressed his nose to the window and watched the steam from his breath condense and drip down the pane. In the kitchen, his father was frying steaks. In one pot, potatoes were boiling. In another, they sat mashed. And in a punch bowl on the counter, he’d emptied a two-pound bag of Super-Duper-brand potato chips. George groaned into the window when he heard Lupe arrive.

  Early that afternoon, Viji had phoned. He’d spent most of the call speaking with the children and less than a minute with Viji. It hurt his neck to pretend to be cheerful, but he did it anyway. He told Viji about the potatoes and she laughed. He was proud, for a moment, to hear her. But when he hung up, he felt he’d been speaking only to a pleasant acquaintance. Now he had nothing but the day to cling to. It stretched before him, vast and dry.

  “Hello?” Kamla answered.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said softly.

  “How’s it been?” In the background he heard a girl’s wail, angry words. “George?”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t talk now, maybe tomorrow?”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  “Thank you for calling.”

  “Bye, Kamla.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  George’s mother once took him to see a pianist. He was playing in an underground tavern, with heavy air and barrels stacked against the wall. Aunty Dona was there with a man he’d never seen. At first the adults stared at George, but then they lost interest. Do you see what he’s doing? Marla whispered. He was playing with two hands, she explained, but one hand played a full bar ahead of the other. The sound felt groundless at first, like a rowboat on a turbulent sea. It made him shake his head. But then it began to sound fine. Never beautiful, just fine. It was something to get used to. George was one of those hands, Viji was the other. On the day George married Viji, she loved him, or at least he thought she did. He did not love her. When she had the triplets, his love for her hit him like a speeding truck. But she was too distracted by those three new lives to remember that she loved him. And then, saying goodbye to her on Christmas morning, he loved her desperately and suddenly.

  She might have felt the same way, for just a moment, if she hadn’t turned and seen what she saw: wide cheeks, eyes like half-moons.

  The children had spoken in high excited voices to George. He had gifts waiting for them. They stood in the STD office, sun-dried now, the boys in their swim trunks and Babygirl in her bathing suit. The man who ran the office stared at her. Viji wanted to hiss at him.

  “Come on,” she said.

  “But we didn’t get to talk to Grandad.”

  “Other people are waiting, Avi. Next time we’ll talk to Grandad.” Behind them a line was forming, white tourists phoning home for Christmas. She herded the children out the narrow door and looked back, instinctively, to make sure she hadn’t left anything. A man stared back. He was young. He didn’t stare like an Indian. His eyes were soft. When he smiled, she could only blink before turning out the door and following the triplets home.

  She saw him twice that day. It wasn’t clear if he’d followed her, or if they’d found each other by chance in the lobby of the Sea Rock Inn. Something was pulling at her sari. She looked down. “What is it?”

  “I have to go number two,” Kieran whispered. She handed him the room key.

  What kind of life was this, which could be knocked off its tracks by a child’s need to poo? But it couldn’t be blamed on this, not solely.

  He walked toward her purposefully, as if they had business to discuss. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “Merry Christmas.” She could hardly breathe the words. She didn’t know why.

  “Can I ask where you’re from?”

  “India. Madras. Well, America.”

  His eyes shifted to the bindi on her forehead. “Do you celebrate Christmas?”

  “Yes,” piped up Babygirl.

  He looked down and grinned. “Well, great, ’cause we’re having a very special visit from you know who.”

  “I’m too old for Santa Claus,” grumbled Avi. “Mom, can we go to the beach?”

  Her child was rude. She looked up at the man and had nothing to say.

  “There’s a service also, in the chapel. You’re probably not interested, but…”

  “No,” Viji said, “I’m not.”

  “I’m from Michigan,” he said.

  “I see.”

  Kieran was back, tugging at her wrist.

  “Did you wash your hands?”

  “What?” the man asked.

  She looked down at Kieran and repeated the question.

  “Yes.”

  “Come, let’s go.” She gathered them hastily and began to run with them once they hit the sand. The lobby had been stifling; she’d barely been able to breathe.

  “Mom?”

  “Hmm.”

  “I want to see Daddy.”

  “I know, chellum.” Babygirl lay on the towel beside her, her small, hot head pressed into Viji’s armpit. She wore heart-shaped sunglasses from the Country Club Mall and her child belly rose like a muffin top.

  “When is Daddy coming?”

  “He isn’t coming.”

  “Oh.” She considered this.“When are we going home?”

  “Next Wednesday. After New Year’s.” In so much sun, Babygirl had turned into a negative of herself, her light skin now dark brown, her chestnut hair almost yellow. Viji didn’t tell her that she and Avi and Kieran would be flying alone, or that a nice stewardess would sit with them and give them games to play.

  Later, Viji felt herself falling asleep in the shade of an aged catamaran that lay halfway up the beach. The splintered logs of the boat blocked most of the wind, and only a coy breeze ruffled the pleats of her sari. No bathing suits for her, not like the white woman sunbathing in the bikini, ignoring the fishermen’s stares as if they didn’t matter to her. From beneath, the sand warmed Viji’s towel. The children were on the shore, digging a hole. Each day they dug a hole. Their only goal was to make it as wide and deep as possible and then let it fill with water, their very own swimming pool. As if the ocean weren’t enough. She sighed, and soon she was asleep.

  The mind wanders when released from wakefulness. Hers tried to act casual, sauntering over to that place it wasn’t supposed to go. Amma’s kitchen, Old Krishnan, chapati dough, and a heavy granite rolling pin. There is police tape around these memories; the door that leads to them says emergency exit, alarm will sound. She hears heavy footsteps—it is only her father. But he ignores her when she speaks, he pounds past her toward the kitchen. And then he stops, looks back at her. He takes small steps now, kitten steps, moves like a phantom to the kitchen door. Viji wants to shout, she knows now what is happening. Amma’s voice, Appa’s. Appa roars. Alarm bells. The heavy granite rolling pin, Amma screeches no-no, nono, like a wild nocturnal bird. Krishnan wails and holds the back of his neck. Appa pounds his own head against the wall, and Amma escapes to the puja room. When Krishnan cries out, he sounds like the shrieking dog.

  The alarm was wailing now.

  She woke to the distant ham
mering of church bells. It was Christmas. The sand was warm. On the shore, with the froth of the ocean lapping at their ankles, her children were digging a hole.

  That night, they ate fish on the balcony, chili-fried barracuda, a Christmas treat. Only an hour earlier, she’d seen a fisherwoman carrying a stack of the wide, flat bodies in a vessel balanced on her head.

  The children were in bed, asleep, murmuring fishdreams, when Viji rose and opened the balcony door. Below, the ocean rose in steady black waves.

  Then she was on the beach, her nightgown whipping around her legs. There was so much in it, this peaceful roaring thing. It had a power that frightened her. It could rise up at any moment and come crashing down, wrecking the dry world, swallowing her and the triplets whole.

  Her mind swirled. Thoughts of Krishnan and Amma, of the squelching sound of broken flesh, the canine cry of pain, of George. What would her father have done to George?

  She hadn’t prayed for three days. In her suitcase waited the dusty picture of Kama, god of love and fascination. This was all she cared for now. He was all that mattered in the end, wasn’t he? She’d left the others behind. Ganesha—let the obstacles come. Lakshmi—let her be poor, who needed money? What did it buy besides hotel rooms? Saraswathi—knowledge only brought more questions. Better to have none of it. And Durga—mother goddess, protector. It was the moon’s decision. If the moon wanted to stir the ocean into a frenzy, it would. Nothing in Viji’s measly ant prayers would change that.

  A meadow of moonlight spread over the children. It didn’t wake them the way sunlight did. They hadn’t asked for gifts this year; they hadn’t said a thing that morning when there were no packages to open, no wrapping paper to tear into or ribbons to strew over the hotel room floor. She held her chest and swallowed a sob. It rose suddenly from within, like a wave of nausea. Children found ways to protect their parents. How kind hers were to her.