“I’m hungry. Where were you?”
“I’m hungry too.”
The wind whipped her hair into her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Where were you? We were waiting!”
“I said I’m sorry!” she snapped. The triplets fell silent. “I was here the whole time,” she said, and paused.
A few seconds of quiet, filled by the roar of the sea.
“Where are we going to eat?”
Like baby birds abandoned in a nest, they demanded her attention now, so cocksure when they knew she was there, suddenly helpless in her absence. She ushered them to the hotel terrace, where they ordered jam sandwiches and veggie pakoras. The waiter gazed too long at her chest, then at her bare lap. The hotel balconies were caught in the midday glare. If Aaron was looking down at her, she couldn’t tell. She felt exposed, completely, and wished she had picked up her towel from the beach. By now it would have curled into the shore and vanished, buried by a thin layer of sand, no more than a hushed memento of the morning.
That night, lest she forget what had happened, the pain returned to her shoulder. It kept her awake and coaxed her onto the balcony for fresh air. Below her the ocean surged and receded, calmly and without judgment. It didn’t surprise her to see Aaron, planting his walking stick in the sand as he moved down the beach. He would have been at the church. He would have sat quietly, meditating, possibly thinking of her.
The corridor was close and humid. She waited for his footfall on the stairs before emerging from the shadows, startling him. “How are you?” he asked. One look back at her bedroom door to make sure it was closed, and she took his hand. She said nothing in response, not even when he asked her, for the hundredth time, if she was all right. Nor when he opened his door and the chill of the air- conditioning made her wince. His fingers slid around the buttons of her nightgown, and she let it drop to the floor, an ivory puddle at her feet. A fine column of sand had gathered in a fold of his bedsheet. This she brushed away with her hand before she sat on the bed, before she eased herself onto a pillow, lay back, and waited.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
If I do this , George thought, I will be changing things, perhaps forever. If I don’t do this, I will have to face the endless stretch of days, and not regret my choice. Above all, I must not regret my choice. George weighed the pros and cons of what he was about to do, or not do. The only fault in his process was that already Kamla had taken him by the hand, already she sat on her bed, and already he stood between her knees. He combed his fingers through her silken curtain of hair. Effectively, the decision had been made.
Her movements were hesitant. She’d lost her usual zest and now seemed thoroughly unsure of herself. He would help. He would lean down, kiss her on the mouth, and sink her onto the bed. He would unbutton his own shirt so that she would not have to.
There were no mirrors in this room and he was glad for it. It would have shamed him to see himself, clunky and pale, in the arms of a beautiful woman. The thought of Viji passed often through his mind during those few minutes. Something of her was in the room, a spirit imp that leapt from chest to dresser to headboard, hissing and scratching at the people on the bed. But it was easy not to listen, easier than George had guessed it would be. Their hesitancy swelled to urgency, they began to work with hurried fingers, undoing, pulling, loud breaths punctuating their movements, and thus it was easy to ignore the girl in the doorway. An unwelcome mirage, nothing more, a subconscious manifestation of his last dogged tendon of morality.
“Mom!” This he couldn’t ignore. Kamla whipped her face from his and pushed him off of her.
The girl stood in the doorway. They hadn’t even closed the door. She held a sandwich low beside her hip, and its contents slid individually to the floor.
Kamla clicked her tongue.“Anisha-beti, careful please. You’re spilling.” George stared down at Kamla, propped on her elbows on the bed, her skirt hiked above her knees, lace bra half-exposed. He was aware that his own zipper was open and that a flag of white cotton poked through the opening. He sat up straight and hid his lap with his hands.
The girl gazed at George as if he were a nuisance, a disruption to her schedule and nothing more. She seemed to focus on the white strip of his undershirt. With such a flurry of hands, they’d hardly managed to undress.
“Can I watch Three’s Company?” she asked.
Kamla sighed and assented, still propped on the bed, her legs askew. They waited in silence as she turned and exited, leaving a square of pink lunch meat on the rug. Kamla turned back to George, slithered further along the bed, fingering the buttons of her shirt. “I don’t like her watching that show.”
“I—I should be going.”
“What?”
“I shouldn’t be here. You know…”
“Anisha doesn’t mind. She’s busy.” Kamla bounced to her knees and made her way over to George, sliding her leg over his. She fingered the hair at his temples. She was incandescent, filled with a glowing, aching sort of need. Once again, he had the choice to make. To say no, and force himself into battle with regret. Or to say yes, to dive into the pool of warmth, if only for an afternoon.
But it wouldn’t be just an afternoon. It couldn’t be. He stood up now, and with liquid eyes, Kamla offered her hand. He could take it and pull her close. He nearly did. Her fingers lay gently in his. But then, instead, he dropped her hand and fled—from the room, down the hall, away from the stale television laughter, through the front door, down the drive, past the oleander bushes, up Ladino, left on Winding Creek. And in fleeing, he left behind afternoons of meeting away from the girl and the triplets, away from Viji. He left the innocent wanderings around bookstores (though these, he knew, had ended long before). He left behind the he he got to be with Kamla: the intellectual, the friend, the guide. He left the smell of hotel soap on Kamla’s skin, on his skin too. The receipts thrown in distant trash cans, the constant showering. He was ending, before they began, the months or maybe years of this, pushed finally to an ultimatum, a threat to reveal all, a need for a decision. He jogged down Winding Creek Road, his head heavy and his feet light, just as a dappled rain began to fall.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The specter of Kamla wrapped itself around Viji in those few days. She tried to burrow away from it, to hide in the folds of sheets. She did not know why George had been to her friend’s house for over an hour. What she did know lay deep within her, beyond the reach of reason. From this knowledge, Aaron was her only escape.
Her insides were like her outsides, like the world that coursed past the hotel entrance. The streets of Kovalam were a topple of everything, life spilling into itself, coursing out of windows and down the muddy lanes like the torrent of a flash flood. But the gush of it all stopped here. In this bed, soft against Aaron’s back, she paused to breathe the warm salt. She let her lids drop, and slept.
And the thoughts of home that had weighed so heavily on her were sinking now between the sheets and pillows. The memory of George and Kamla, that Thanksgiving night, ran down the smooth groove in Aaron’s back, dripped off him, off the bed, onto the floor, and away.
She remembered, though vaguely, her life in America, the daily business of moving from one place to the next— house, store, gas station, school. Each door was a full stop where the outside ended and the inside began. But here, the outside oozed in, the days careened into one another as if caught in a mudslide, like Aaron sliding over her now. The collisions couldn’t be stopped. She opened her eyes. “You’re not a very good missionary,” she said.
He turned to gaze at her. “What makes you say that?” She would go to him at night, once the children were asleep. He was awake, of course, every time. In the high heat of the afternoons, she and the triplets slept indoors, each exhausted for their own reasons. Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep, she watched their sun-baked bellies rise and fall, at peace with the fact that on the shore, their man-made swimming pools were filling up and caving in. She had three
days of this, though they seemed to stretch languorously into twelve.
On the third night, Aaron fell asleep right away. She watched as air swelled into his chest each time he inhaled. He was two different people: night Aaron, sage and tranquil, and day Aaron, young, splashing in the waves. Here in this room, she could catch him somewhere in between. He was nearly transparent when he stretched out like this. She traced the indigo veins that wound like rivers around his wrists. In his sleep he brushed her hand away. This was the last time she would see him. She tried to feel sorrow, but she couldn’t. He was already of another world.
She left an envelope for him at the front desk. If she’d slipped it under his door he might have heard her and opened it before she could leave, standing tall in the filtered sunlight of his room. For days afterward, she would be sideswiped by flashes of their nights together—his fingers gripping her arm, his mouth on her breast, the startling force of him. A pleasant, faraway ache lingered in the dip of her back.
The old Viji, young Viji, would have stayed. She would have stayed in the hotel for as long as Aaron did, or moved into his room to soak up every night he had to offer. Without a second thought, young Viji would have risked everything for a man. But this Viji had other things to think about—dropping a key into the bellhop’s waiting hand, herding the children outside to find a taxi, counting backpacks to make sure there were three, and taking a final, stolen glance back at the beach.
It was her secret that when she’d first found out she was pregnant, she wanted to make it go away. She could barely discern the outlines of her own existence—to sustain another wholly dependent one was unthinkable. She discovered morning aerobics on the television, followed them vigorously, jumping against the unusual weight in her middle, hoping to jiggle it out, whatever it was, boy or girl. She imagined it as a small and tenacious spider, clinging to her insides in an earthquake, spinning webby reinforcements. If she’d known at that time that there were two little spiders, she would have felt sicker than she did. If she’d known there were three, she would have been horrified. She imagined all the worst possibilities—her father’s chins, Stan’s craggy nose.
The night before, she’d packed the triplets’ luggage, flattening stacks of folded T-shirts with her palms. She placed their small sandals in the suitcase. For some reason, the sight of their shoes exhausted her. They were still petite children, still growing out of having shared a womb. Now she watched them walk down the tunnel to the plane, and the same stubborn womb began to ache with fear. She was sending her children away, her drops of gold, perfectly spun. She was casting them deliberately from her sight, alone, breaking the first rule of motherhood. She’d done it for Shanta; she couldn’t leave her sister now, not yet, and certainly not for another twelve-year span. She would have to make this worthwhile, this clench in her stomach, this sudden wave of revulsion.
When the children were very small, Viji had found a list of Indian names. On the list, defined at last, was Neha. The name didn’t mean “air”, as Viji had hoped. It didn’t mean “freedom” either, or anything like it. The meaning was stated simply: “love, rain” Love or rain. Love and rain. She watched the back of Babygirl’s head, a step behind her brothers, until it sank into the crowd. They would be suspended over an ocean until she saw them again.
Home again. She stood reluctantly in the doorway to her sister’s house. The door had been unlocked, as always, despite Viji’s warnings. This was Madras, not a village in the country where neighbors wandered in and out of each other’s homes. Anyone at all could drift into this house full of women.
There was no one to welcome her this time, only the shriek of the dog in the distance. She could hear the usual sounds of the kitchen, and then a low shuffling from the puja room. Pushpa Athai inched across the floor, glanced at Viji, and made her way to the kitchen.
“There’s a ghost in the sitting room,” the old woman called. For several minutes, no one came out to greet her. Why should they? At last she made her own way upstairs, with just her one suitcase and a mild ache in her back.
She smoothed the covers on her bed, which had been pulled together sloppily, as if they’d expected her return. The only sounds were water running through the walls, and the dog, shrieking steadily to count off the seconds.
“It’s good that you came back.” Shanta stood at the threshold of the room.
“She called me a ghost,” Viji said.
“Never mind her.”
It must be easy to be mad. The aunts were accountable for nothing. No explanations, a backstage pass to do and say what they wanted. Briefly, Viji considered turning mad herself, but it wasn’t as easy as rubbing turmeric on her face and squinting into the sun. Sanity was a demanding master.
Something occurred to her then. “How do we know they’re mad?” she asked. “Have they been tested?”
Shanta scoffed at this. “Tested for what? No need for testing, sister. They’re crazy and that’s all.” In English,“The proof is in the pudding!”
“The pudding is in their brains.” The sisters giggled. Finally, Shanta sat down.
“Here’s proof,” she said, turning serious. Viji scooted closer to her. “Listen closely, you. I’ll say this only once. Do you remember what Appa did to Old Krishnan?”
“He turned his face to pudding.”
“Yes. Do you know why?”
“I assume—” Viji’s voice faltered. Why Shanta should be talking about this, after weeks of silence, she couldn’t fathom.“I assume because of Amma. Krishnan and Amma.”
Shanta waved this away.“No. Yes, he might have known of that, but that is not why.” She tugged at a thread that sprang from the bedspread. “It’s what they told him, those old hags. They would say anything, and Appa listened.”
“What did they say?”
“It was about Krishnan. It was nonsense, really. I think.” Shanta stared, then glanced away. “Did he…do anything?”
“What?”
“No. He mustn’t have.”
“What are you saying?”
“I heard them say it. Foul-minded old bitches. See how he holds her on his lap, they said to him, why do you think he does that?”
“What?”
Barely audibly, Shanta asked, “He didn’t touch you, Viji, did he? He didn’t do anything like that?”
“Is that why they sent Appa away? For what he did to Krishnan?”
“Yes. No. I was small too, remember.”
“I remember.”
Shanta’s eyes snapped up at these words. “You do?”
“Krishnan did nothing to me,” Viji said. “He was a good man.”
Neither sister said it, but it drifted past them like incense, the thought of how it would be, in some other life, to have Krishnan as their father.
“Come with me,” Shanta said. She led Viji by the hand to Shanta’s puja room. Viji hadn’t been here since that first time. “I want to show you.”
Against the wall, chests made of teakwood stood in stacks of three and four. Clumsily, Shanta pulled one crashing to the floor.
“This was mine,” she said. “This was for my wedding.” She unlatched the chest. The lid was hard to budge, fastened tightly by time and neglect. At last it flung open and from it a flurry of moths spewed, hung like a cloud, and then scattered. They settled on the walls and idols, fanning their wings and waiting.
Shanta’s wedding trousseau contained all the elements meant for a bride of a good family: heavy Kancheevaram silks, willowy chiffons, a bright pink Mysore silk, freckled now with holes. She pulled out a red sari that ran with rivers of gold thread, thick with embroidery that still hadn’t faded. This could have been her wedding sari. The moths had chewed through the cloth but not the gold, so that in spots it looked like a weaver’s loom.
“What’s the use?” Shanta asked. “All this…”
“It’s my fault,” Viji said. “Shanta. It’s my fault that you couldn’t marry.”
“Nonsense.” But Viji saw it then—wh
o would marry their son to this girl, whose sister had run around with a strange man, who’d carried on like a prostitute with a vellakaran, and yes, they knew—everyone knew about the girl with no respect for her family.
“Don’t be silly, woman,” Shanta said. “We wouldn’t have married, either of us, no matter how many trousseaux they collected. People knew about Appa. And the aunts. Who wanted that?”
“But we were a good family. Appa was a magistrate.”
“You really like to think that, don’t you? Appa was a magistrate because we had money. We had enough money to buy a madman a title. Do you think they ever let him in a court?”
Viji ran her fingers along the threadbare silks, lost in the corners of what she did not know. “But he was smart. He was a reader, remember? Remember how he loved the library?”
Shanta sighed and fixed a stray hair on Viji’s temple. “You think he was reading? I think he liked the quiet. I think he liked the dark.” There were times, Viji recalled, when she’d found him alone at night on the veranda, or sitting on his own in the dining room, the candles blown out, the curtains drawn.
“Vijaya,” Shanta began.“Viji,” she smiled.“That’s your American name, no? Viji. It sounds nice, it’s a nice name.” Her face fell. “When you say you remember that day with Krishnan and Appa—I don’t think you do.”
On the pillars, along the chests, the moths were still.
“What don’t I remember?”
“No, I shouldn’t say. It was nothing.”
“Shanta, don’t do this again.”
Where the chest had been brought down, a banister of sunlight angled through the window and fell on the stack of saris—a highway of light, a million particles of dust traveling along it, too busy to notice the sisters or their silence.
“Okay,” Shanta said. “I will tell you.” She paused. “Close your eyes, and I will tell you.”
Viji shut her eyes and yielded her hand to Shanta, who lifted it to her own face. First, beneath her fingertips, was something hard and thin, the bridge of Shanta’s nose. Viji could feel how it leaned to the side. She knew the unappealing lump that divided the top of the nose from the bottom. She could see it with her eyes closed.
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