The Prayer Room

by Shanthi Sekaran

  With sunrise came new thoughts of breakfast, ocean air, hole digging on the shore. She sat in the sand and watched the boys with shovels, her girl at her side.

  He found her again. She knew from the tremor of sand around her that he was approaching. These Christians, she thought. Would they never give up? She thought of the poor Mormons, how brash she’d been with them.

  He sat in the sand beside her. He was wearing long shorts and his chest was bare.

  “Are you a priest?” she asked, before they even knew each other’s names.

  “I’m Aaron,” he said, “And you are?” He was avoiding the question.

  “Viji.”

  “Viji?” He gazed at the water long enough for her to wonder if their conversation was over.“I’m no priest, Viji.”

  “If you’re not a priest, then why are you at the church?”

  “I guess you could say I’m a missionary.”

  She clicked her tongue. Babygirl, on the other side of Viji, stared up at him.

  “And why have you chosen to come to India?”

  “Well, I didn’t choose, exactly. I was chosen. Spreading the word, I guess. You know.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I know.” He had a lazy way of talking, as if he knew the words would come and felt no need to push them. They were silent for a while. It was difficult to speak to someone without a solid, predetermined reason for speaking to them. “Do you know many people here?”

  He shook his head. His skin was baked, and the sun had trodden lines as fine as spider trails into the corners of his eyes. Twenty-five, at the oldest. Or thirty. Viji had forgotten what twenty-five looked like.

  “Mom? I’m going.”

  “Okay, chellum. Stay on the sand.”

  She felt a twinge of guilt, dismissing her daughter so she could speak with this man.

  “I was wondering,” Viji said, “why you didn’t wear a priest’s collar.”

  He laughed aloud. “That’d be kinda weird. Swim shorts and a collar? I’d look like a stripper, actually.” This shocked her slightly.“We know about strippers, you know.” He winked.

  “Are you from the Mormon church?” she asked. He grinned to himself, though she couldn’t think what might be funny, unless he too imagined Jesus bebopping with the Ladder-day Saints.“I met some missionaries once,” she said, shyly. “I think I was quite rude.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He nudged her with his elbow. “Chances are, they had it coming.”

  Really, a priest shouldn’t be nudging and winking like this, she wanted to say. Not even a missionary. The truth was, she wanted to be alone. It made her uncomfortable to have a man next to her, here on the beach, acting friendly like this and winking.

  “I’m not trying to convert you, you know.”

  “Oh no, just spreading your message of faith, is it?”

  “I detect a hint of sarcasm. Listen, if you do want to come to the church, just to see—”

  “You never know,” she said. “You might like to be a Hindu.” She stood up. “We have a flying monkey.” With that she turned and headed for the ocean, the thick sand turning her tread inward, so that each step nearly spun her around.

  She could still see him from the ocean, his chest browning slowly in the sun. He’d smelled of sunscreen, which reminded her of the triplets. She saw him in the hotel lobby that night, but he didn’t see her. He was sitting in an armchair, his hands folded, and thinking deeply about something.

  “Who’s that man?” Kieran asked. His voice was flat.

  “You met him, no? He’s a priest. He works for the church over there. You remember? The bells were ringing?”

  “How come you were talking to him?”

  “He was talking to me,” she said, suddenly on the defensive. “Grownups talk to each other, Kieran, no big deal.”

  “Yeah, Kieran, no big deal.”

  Viji glanced down at her daughter.

  “How come he’s here?” Babygirl asked.

  “I don’t really know. He’s trying to get other people to join his church, I guess.”

  “Are you going to join his church?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Why not?” Avi asked. “We could have Christmas for real, then!”

  “Yeah!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Viji scolded. “He’s a nice man, anyway.”

  “He’s boring,” Babygirl muttered.

  “Yeah, he’s boring,” Kieran said.

  Babygirl whispered into his ear and he shrieked with laughter.

  “What?” Viji asked.

  “Nothing!”

  “What?”

  Bubbling with giggles, “Babygirl said he has hair coming up from his butt.”

  “He doesn’t! What do you mean?”Viji scolded.“What’s wrong with you three?”

  That night, she lay in bed, stroking the sand-whipped softness of her neck. From above, she was a ghostly sculpture beneath her sheets, casting her own shadows in the moonlit room. How silly she felt, thinking of him. She wondered what it would be like to be alone in a room with him. Minus the triplets, minus the church and the watchers on the beach. She thought of his bare chest and wondered if the sand made his skin as soft as hers, or if it had that rough clamminess of men.

  From beneath her pillow she pulled out the picture of Kama and smoothed its corners down. This was what she’d come to, without her puja room, hiding the picture like a teenager smitten with a movie star. What a sight he must have been, burned through the core by Siva’s rage. Was there a hole through his middle? Did he burn first around the edges like a piece of paper, the rest of him charring away in black crumbs? Did he disappear poof in a cloud of smoke, like those villages in Japan? Was there a crater where he had stood?

  There had been craters, fleshy depressions, in Krishnan. Viji had watched from the upper balcony as he stumbled from the kitchen to the courtyard. He’d looked up to find the sun. He wasn’t crying. His cheeks were crushed plums. His eyes swelled against their sockets in permanent surprise. When he bent over, the blood dripped from his lips, like syrup, to the earth below. He gagged, but nothing more came. To the bathhouse he stumbled, to wash the blood away.

  She sat up in bed. This was when she went to the big house, the house with the swing. She was sent to stay with them. A family, she remembered clearly now, a woman with gray hair at her temples. A man with a massive wart on his cheek. The wart made Viji gag once at the dinner table. These were the big-house people. She flushed with heat. There was no air in the room.

  At Kovalam Beach, the sands were white, even at night, and the sea was wise old indigo. On that television show, the one with the island and the small man who shouted, “The plane! The plane!” she’d seen seas that were clear and turquoise like the water in a child’s wading pool. Not so here. Here, the ocean was opaque with secrets. And at night, dark blended into dark. She could sense, for the first time, that the world was a sphere.

  The wind was stronger on the beach than it had been on the balcony. Her nightgown wrapped around her calves and clung to her belly and breasts. She was walking down the beach, on the wet sand because it held her weight, shoeless, so she could grip with her toes. She was nearing the church.

  The big-house people had taken her to church. The convent nuns—Sweet Dolores, Tall Dolores—had gazed approvingly at her. We knew you’d find us, their smiles had seemed to say.

  At Kovalam Beach, the church was round and squat, like the old mission buildings in Sacramento. The walls were perfectly white. Dark beams held the corners of the building, and a bell hung from a tower in the front. It was a church that could have been made from clay, shaped by a giant’s hands.

  Sand swallows sounded. She didn’t hear the footsteps approaching; she didn’t know another soul was awake anywhere in this bottomless night. She saw him, at last, in the scant light that cast itself off the church wall. He held a walking stick, like a prophet.

  “How do you always find me?”

  “What do you mean?�
� But he smiled as if he knew.

  “Why are you awake?” They could speak directly at night, free from constructs and reason.

  “Jet lag,” he said.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Three months.”

  “And still you have jet lag?”

  “I’ve kept it. I like it. I like being awake at night.” He shrugged. “Will you come in?”

  “Yes.” She gazed at the heavy doors. Inside the smoky silence, everything meant more. Their footsteps echoed. She could smell the incense that had once been used to hide the smell of dead bodies, a fact she had learned from the nuns. A colossal cross hung at the front of the room, and there were no pews, only chairs. The shadows made more chairs, and darkened netherwalls made the chapel seem bigger than it was. The interior, she was surprised to see, was painted bright blue. A small pool, dank-smelling, rippled with air currents. He moved to the front of the church and sat down with his back to her. She loitered by the wall, waiting, she supposed, for instruction. He sat like he had that day in the lobby, deep in meditation, hands folded in his lap.

  She expected him, when he shifted position, to turn around and speak to her. Her mind was too full, and she felt on the verge of epiphany. The things she could tell him— how bizarre they would sound! He could be her confessor, though she’d committed no sin. He could be her George, poring over the partial details as if they were X-rays.

  There was no point in making small talk, not at this hour of the night. Nor was there room for big talk. She hesitated, wondered if she should walk out, scamper back to her hotel, whether that would bother him or whether he’d even notice. Then she walked down the aisle, every footfall a pronouncement, and sat behind him. Above her, beyond the ceiling, she knew that there were stars. In the distance she could hear the sea. The church was a conch shell, smooth and white and slumbering on the shore.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “How was your Christmas?” Kamla picked an almond flake off the plate.

  “Rubbish. Yours?”

  She shrugged, then looked straight into him.“Lonely.”

  George gulped his coffee. “Get any good presents?”

  The girl was here. Anisha. George had bought her her own croissant, which she accepted silently. Now she picked at it and trailed powdered sugar around her mouth. “Did you get any good pressies, Anisha?” She rolled her eyes at him. “Babygirl’s getting a jewelry box.”

  “That’s lovely,” Kamla sighed.“Isn’t that lovely, Anisha?”

  The girl sized him up, then crossed her arms. She was obviously troubled and spoiled, but she made him nervous all the same.

  Kamla studied the croissant. “Anisha wants to spend New Year’s Eve with her father. He hasn’t said anything about it, and he hasn’t returned her calls.” Smiling ruefully, “Who could have known it would turn into this?”

  The café was open the day after Christmas. Unusual. If Viji were here, she’d say it was because the owners were Chinese, and the Chinese didn’t care about Christmas. George smiled. Back home it was Boxing Day, meant for visiting relatives and watching television and eating even more than they’d eaten on Christmas. Originally it was the day when peasants went to their landlords’ houses with empty boxes to be filled with coins and toys, whatever trinkets it took to distract them from the fact that they lived like pigs.

  He hadn’t been exaggerating. His Christmas was rubbish. He’d never loved the holiday, but spending it with Stan and Lupe had been nearly unbearable. The steaks from Super-Duper had been tough and fatty, and the worst of it was that they still had thirteen in the freezer, stacked to the top and spilling from the shelves. The potatoes had been potatoes, nothing better and nothing worse. The potato chips, at least, had been crispy and well salted. Stan and Lupe had held hands at the table, and after dinner they’d slunk up to Stan’s bedroom. When the noises started, George left the house without his coat. He walked the streets of Maple Grove.

  Through the squamous dark he roamed, skirting ditches, peering now and then into the bay windows of Winding Creek Road. When he hit Ladino, the leafless trees made way for the moonlight. His feet led him to Kamla’s house, where the air was thick with the smell of damp grass. From halfway down the drive, he could see her empty kitchen window. She was there, rinsing plates, scrubbing at them with a sponge. She was talking, probably to the girl, or maybe singing. But no, he’d seen her sing before, in a distracted way, turning her head this way and that. She wasn’t singing. She stopped, suddenly, and looked out the window.

  He froze, terrified that she’d seen him. She turned and walked from the room. George ran down the drive, numb to his neck with cold. He ran all the way home, certain he’d been spotted, and arrived in his silent house, panting.

  He lay awake. It was the second twilight, the milkhued hush between night and dawn. He rose and wondered if he had to pee, but he didn’t. So he moved to the bedroom window. At the other side of this sky, the bright afternoon side, his wife and children played. He imagined them with buckets in the sand, Viji in sunglasses, waving at a camera, her sari billowing like a sail in the wind. If he backed up a bit, retraced his steps to the next continent, he would find Victoria. In a leather office chair, probably, chewing on her cuticles, with her eyes crossed in concentration.

  It was morning in England. He could call her now, if her number had stayed the same. He hadn’t spoken to her since that last evening in Nottingham, and she wouldn’t call him. She would never call him. She did send him something, an envelope with a small lump of tissue paper inside. No feces this time. He picked up the phone and dialed. It had been eight years.

  “Hello?” a man’s voice said.

  “Hello. Hi, could I speak with Victoria Banks, please?”

  “And who shall I say is calling?” He was what they called posh.

  He heard the rustle of her before she picked up. “George?”

  “Hi, Victoria?”

  “Is that—who is this? Is that George?”

  “George Armitage, yes, George.” He paused. “How are you?”

  “Well, George Armitage!” she gasped. “As I live and breathe!” It was something someone’s mother would say. Then, panic in her voice.“Is everything all right? Is Stan all right?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine here. Stan’s visiting me, actually… well, living with me.”

  “Is he, now! Old Stan. Is he there?”

  “He’s sleeping, actually. It’s late here.”

  “Is everything all right, George? You sound—so he’s living with you? Just you?”

  He scoffed at this.“Well, no, not just me. With me and Viji, of course, and the children.”

  “Oh. Right. So everything’s all right?”

  He wished she would stop asking that. “Sure, everything’s great. Listen, Victoria, I’ve got to go.”

  “Of course you do, this must be costing you a packet. Happy Christmas!”

  “It was good talking to you.”

  “Ring anytime, George.”

  “Bye, Victoria.”

  “Love you, George. Toodle-loo!”

  He hung up on the false ring of her voice. In his chest, his slamming heart had slowed to a stutter. He didn’t want to know any more about her, whether she was married or had two kids, or what they were called, or what she’d published, or where she’d bought a summer house. He feared that she had turned into one of those women, the sort who would call and assault him with the petty news of their lives for ten minutes without pause and then sign off by saying, All right then I’ll let you get on with it now, it was lovely talking to you bye! Bye bye bye….It was enough, for those first few seconds, just to hear her.

  When she’d lain with him that night in Nottingham, amid the mountains of his mother’s clothing, neither of them had slept. They would have looked naked and laughable to anyone else. George had reached for his trousers and fished out the earrings.

  “These would suit you, I think.”

  “No, George. I can’t take tho
se.”

  “Why not?”

  “Your dad would want them.”

  “My dad doesn’t want these.”

  “But they were hers; he would want to keep them.”

  “He wants her back, Victoria, not her earrings.”

  She let out a cavernous sigh. He worried he’d set her off again.

  “What about your wife? Wouldn’t she want them?” Her words were flat, monotone, but not bitter.

  “I want you to have them, all right?” He pushed them into her thin fingers.

  “All right.”

  She’d worn them the next morning at breakfast. Stan noticed them, or seemed to, staring at Victoria’s ears but saying nothing. He had never, as far as George could tell, noticed them on Marla.

  When the earrings came back to George a year later, without a letter, he didn’t ask why. He never called her or wrote, but simply slipped the earrings in his drawer, amid the mess, and hoped they would go unnoticed.

  Outside, next to the pool house, Stan sat alone. As if on cue, he stood and walked back across the yard and into the house. George got out of bed to go downstairs and close the sliding door.

  “I’m worried about my father.” The line to Kamla’s house was thick with static. He’d called her in the morning, hoping she’d be home. He had no idea what she did in the mornings.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Physically, yes. He has these…I guess you’d call them episodes.”

  “What kind of episodes?”

  “Are you busy now? Do you want to go somewhere?”

  “Everywhere’s closed.” It was New Year’s Eve.

  “Could we go for a drive?”

  It was raining when they went. They drove around the park, this time in the same car. Two of them in the quiet front seat, fogging the windows as any two bodies would on a humid December day. Raindrops fell on the windshield like exploding marbles. Along the drive, weeping willows swung their leafy dreadlocks, lovely things dragged to the ground by their own weight. And the smell of warm wet earth seeped in through the air vents and edged past the windowpanes. It made George want to do something. It made him want to strip down and lie in the mud, to sling his leg around a willow tree and gnaw on its gray-white bark, to wrap those long limp branches around his neck and pull on them until he felt he could strangle himself.