I was surprised to see Lance, the manager of the grocery, working the checkout counter. His shirtsleeves were rolled up. His forearms glistened. A cashier had quit all of a sudden, he explained. He cocked an amused eyebrow at my purchases.
“What’s up, Kenneth? David out of town?”
I made a noncommittal sound. It surprised and embarrassed me that he knew our food habits so intimately.
I liked Lance. David and I ran into him once in a while at a pub or a café, and he would come over to say hello or introduce the man he was with. He was good at telling jokes. Though David said he was a show-off, I enjoyed his quirky humor. But I wasn’t about to discuss my situation with him.
I was no longer hungry by the time I got back to the apartment. Still, I put the nuggets in the oven. I searched in the closet for the video games I had put away soon after David moved in. I dusted off my N64 and loaded my old save from GoldenEye. I was pleased to discover that although I had not played for a year and a half, my reflexes were as good as ever. When the nuggets were done, I ate a plateful. It was novel, even enjoyable, to eat something that tasted different from the organic-Euro-Austin-gourmet cuisine that I had grown used to with David. After dinner, I planned to delete David’s number from my cell phone. I planned to get on Facebook and change my status to single. Maybe even block him from my page. But when I fished out the phone, it seemed like too much effort. Instead, I went to the fridge and took out a Klondike bar. My mother used to give them to me as special treats during my childhood. I bit into it, hoping it would rekindle in me a feeling of goodness and self-worth. It did not.
Someone was at the door. I turned off the TV to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating from loneliness. No. A key scrabbled against the lock. The doorknob rattled. There were thumping sounds, obscured by the pounding of my shameless heart. I threw the Klondike into the trash and covered it up with a used paper towel. I composed my face into forgiveness.
When I opened the door, I did not find a repentant David. Instead, there was a disheveled woman dressed in jeans and a bulky sweater. I guessed her to be Indian or Middle Eastern, in her fifties. She appeared confused. At first she spoke in a language I did not understand. Then she said, “Why is my key not fitting? Why are you in my apartment?” Her speech indicated that she had been drinking.
I informed her that this was in fact my apartment. Disappointment made my tone sharp. I banged the door shut. I heard no more sounds.
I came back to the couch and turned on Saturday Night Live. That was a mistake. We watched SNL almost every weekend, curled together under a quilt. On those occasions, David would indulge my plebeian tastes and make buttered popcorn. Today, watching alone, I couldn’t keep my mind on the actors. What was David doing? Who was he with? Breaking up, he had slid his apartment key across the table and said, “Kenneth, I’m sorry, we just don’t fit well together.” As though we were jigsaw pieces from two separate puzzles. After I got over my shock, I thought it a plausible reason. Now, stranded inside a night lit only by the flickering TV screen, I was assailed by doubt.
David had taken his books. The few remaining volumes—mostly texts from my college years or freebies from the bookstore—lay toppled on the shelves. I had to tilt my head to decipher the titles. Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Ellison’s Invisible Man. Civilization and Its Discontents. Cloud Atlas. It dizzied me.
I considered getting another Klondike, but the thought of its intense sweetness made me queasy. Already I could feel the chicken nuggets roiling in my stomach, belligerent with grease. I decided to sleep. That was what I really needed. I had work tomorrow, for which I was thankful. I reminded myself that I enjoyed my job. I liked the bookstore. I liked my boss. I had flexible hours, intelligent customers, and medical benefits. I went into the bedroom, but it was congested with emptiness. I carried my pillows and a blanket to the sofa and lay down. I imagined David. I could not stop. I pictured him with another man, pinning him down—on a rug, perhaps, or a tabletop. David was adventurous with venues. He was smiling in a way I knew well, the side of his mouth quirking up. His hands gripped the man’s hair.
The mind is a treacherous thing. Before I guessed what it was up to, it had pulled me back into our early days, when we used to lie in bed after sex, fighting sleep because we had so much to say to each other. Sometimes I traced the outline of his face with my fingertips until he laughed and said I was tickling him.
What is more painful, the misplaced past or the runaway future? I did not know.
To give myself something else to do, I went to the door and opened it. The woman was still there, sitting with her back against the passage wall. I asked if she remembered the number of her apartment. She stared at me. I repeated the question twice. At last she rummaged in her purse and came up with a sheet of paper. I saw that she was in twenty-eight, one floor below, the apartment underneath mine. Unsuccessfully, I attempted to explain this.
There was nothing to do but help her down the stairs and unlock her door. I instructed her to lock it from inside. I was not sure how much she understood. She did not look at me or thank me. I was surprised to find that I was not annoyed by this. I waited until I heard the click of the bolt.
I saw her a few days later in the apartment parking lot when I returned from the bookstore. She was struggling with a couple of grocery bags. When she noticed me, she looked away. This was how I knew that she remembered.
In my David days I would have ignored her. I heard his voice in my head, where it seemed to have taken up permanent residence. Better leave her alone, Ken. It’s easy to get tangled in someone’s troubles but hard to cut free.
I introduced myself and offered to carry one of her bags. Perhaps it was an act of rebellion. Perhaps I merely wanted a reason to delay my return to my apartment. She appeared suspicious but finally nodded. The bag I carried contained an assortment of microwave meals and two bottles of cheap wine. I set it on her kitchen counter and waited. For what, I wasn’t sure. Her face was blotched; there were bags under her eyes. Still, I could see that she had once been beautiful. When the silence rose to a certain level of discomfort, I said goodbye. I was at the door before she asked if I would like some chai.
The apartment was full of boxes, most of them unopened. Styrofoam pellets littered the floor. She rummaged around, finally locating a saucepan and mismatched cups. The tea was pungent with strange spices, nothing like the beverage I drank at the cafés David and I frequented. Had frequented, I mean.
Her name was Bela Dewan. Her story was not uncommon, at least the parts she told me. Some time back, she had had a difficult divorce. Last week she had moved from Houston to Austin, hoping to start over. She was looking for work.
What kind of work? I asked.
Mrs. Dewan confessed that she had no degrees or training. She had been a caregiver in a preschool, but that was years ago. “All this time I was a full-time wife and mother,” she said. “Now I’ve been fired from both jobs.”
Her prospects did not sound promising. But I told her I would ask around.
The next time I went to the grocery, I stopped by Lance’s office to ask if he was looking to replace the cashier who had quit.
“I already found someone,” he said, “but if you want to come and work for me, I’ll fire her right now.” Was this a joke? His eyes glinted in a way that made me wonder. His shirt was partially unbuttoned. I could see the hollow at his neck, the tanned, taut skin below. In his ear, he wore an iron stud, a foxy touch. Now that David was gone, I was free to notice such things. The thought filled me with a kind of desolation.
I told him about Mrs. Dewan.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t hire people without experience.” I must have looked disappointed, because he added, “I’ll talk to her since she’s a friend of yours. But tell her not to get her hopes up.”
Gloomily, I thanked him and turned to leave. I was already thinking about other places where Mrs. Dewan might work. A hardware store? A restaurant? I was at the door when Lance said,
“I ran into David last night at Harry’s.”
Had David been with someone else? Harry’s was a dance club, so I guessed yes. Had he said anything to Lance about breaking up with me? From the curious sympathy in Lance’s eyes, I guessed yes again.
“I have to go,” I said.
The world never ceases to surprise. How had I forgotten that?
A couple of days later, Mrs. Dewan came by my apartment to tell me that Lance had hired her as a shelf-stocker. To show her appreciation, she invited me over for an Indian dinner.
This presented me with a dilemma.
I was familiar with Indian food, introduced to it by friends in college. I did not care for it. The curries I encountered in restaurants were too hot. The heavy sauces gave me heartburn. Even David had not been able to cure me of this culinary timidity. When we went out for Indian, I made my meal out of rice and raita, resentfully picking green chilies out of the yogurt. Leaving me, David had said, “Kenneth, you never want to try anything new.” This was blatantly unfair. I had made my loyal way through any number of his concoctions, from cotija-and-chili-stuffed enchiladas to pear bok-choy soup. “Living with you,” he added sadly, “is like slowly sinking into mud.”
Now I decided to prove him wrong. I informed Mrs. Dewan that I would be happy to come, though I did mention that I preferred my food mild and recognizable.
The evening began well. Mrs. Dewan had risen to the challenge posed by my finicky stomach. She named the dishes in Bengali, her language, writing them down for me on a paper napkin. The triangular appetizers were singaras. They were stuffed with cauliflower. Dessert was a light caramelized yogurt, mishti doi. The chicken simmering in a mild yogurt gravy was murgir jhol. The yellow lentils were muger dal, seasoned with whole cumin. Cumin was a digestive, Mrs. Dewan informed me. “My daughter Tara—she, too, has a fussy stomach,” she said. “That’s how I learned to cook this way.”
I wondered where Tara-of-the-fussy-stomach was at this time, when her mother could have done with some family support. I knew not to ask.
Over dinner, Mrs. Dewan opened a large bottle of wine and told me about Kolkata, the city where she had lived before marriage. Life in Kolkata seemed dangerous and exhilarating. Kolkatans loved desserts; they thought nothing of traveling across the traffic-choked city to the famous sweet shop Mrs. Dewan’s mother owned to sample her Durga Mohan. Streets flooded during the monsoons, so that as a girl Mrs. Dewan had to ride a pull-rickshaw to school. During her college years, when the Naxals were in power, she had once come across the body of a young man in an alley, the word traitor cut into his forehead.
In reciprocation, I offered her tidbits from my youth in Waco. I went to church with my parents twice a week, listening with fascination as our pastor eloquently described the devil and the myriad snares with which he pulled us to hell. I got drunk with high school friends in the back of the Target parking lot. In my senior year, I took long, solitary walks along the rain-drenched Brazos River, tortured by the suspicion that I didn’t belong. Mrs. Dewan listened, her brows creased in fascination, as though my stories were as exotic as hers. Perhaps, to her, they were.
By the end of the evening, we were pleasantly inebriated. When I was leaving, she asked if we could do this again next week.
The David-voice inside me whispered, Careful, Ken. I’m telling you this for your own good. Leave her alone. She clearly has problems.
To the voice I said, Who doesn’t?
To Mrs. Dewan I said, “Love to.”
I was surprised by how much I looked forward to our dinners. We met at my place one week and hers the next. It gave me a reason to clean up. I suspect it was the same for her. She still hadn’t unpacked most of her boxes, but when I came over, they would be lined up neatly against the wall and shrouded with colorful saris.
After a couple of disastrous culinary episodes, we decided that she should be responsible for the food. I brought the libations. The trick was to provide enough alcohol to put her at ease without getting her drunk. I managed this by mixing her numerous weak, fruity drinks. Sometimes she gave me a glance indicating that she was on to my strategy, but she did not complain. It seemed that she was drinking less than before. Perhaps it was my imagination. These evenings, we stayed up too late. Next day I would wake bleary-eyed and require twice my usual dose of caffeine in order to make it to the bookstore. It must have been harder on Mrs. Dewan since she worked the morning shift. But I never heard Lance complain, so clearly, somehow, she managed.
I was unsure as to how to classify our relationship. We were friends, but also something else. Sometimes we played video games. (I played while Mrs. Dewan applauded.) Sometimes we watched Indian movies. (She paused them to translate; the subtitles were cryptic and mystifying.) Mostly we talked. I found myself speaking to Mrs. Dewan the way I might have to an older sister or a favorite aunt. In reality I had no siblings, and my aunt was a harridan with whom I communicated as infrequently as possible.
Often we chatted about inconsequential things. Mrs. Dewan liked to hear about the quirks of the authors who did readings at our store. I invited her to attend the events, but she refused. Crowds made her nervous. She also liked hearing about the store’s latest acquisitions, though she never bought any of them. Best of all, she liked me to recount the plots of novels I had read. Her favorite genre was domestic noir. If the boyfriend or husband was revealed to be the killer, she would suck in her breath, delighted.
“I knew it,” she’d say. “I just knew it!”
In return she would tell me stories she had heard in childhood, gruesome Bengali folktales filled with foolish kings who got their noses chopped off and unlucky criminals who were buried alive in holes filled with thorns.
Sometimes, as the night progressed, we would get personal. She told me more about Tara, who had dropped out of school, then cut herself off from Mrs. Dewan soon after the divorce. “She acted like the whole thing was my fault,” she said, sounding astonished. I told her about Tufts, our black Labrador, and how I would come home from school and whisper into his ear the humiliations of the day. They were many, because I was a boy who attracted bullies the way garbage attracts flies.
Mrs. Dewan hadn’t been able to reach Tara for years, though she had left her contact information at every address she could find for her daughter. Through the Indian grapevine, Mrs. Dewan heard that Tara had become involved with drugs. “I called her cell phone,” she said, “but she wouldn’t pick up. I even went to the university and talked to her classmates in case they knew anything. I was so frantic, for days I drove around the Montrose area. I never did find her. Finally, the dorm people packed up Tara’s stuff and mailed it to me. That’s what’s in the big box in the corner, in case Tara ever comes by.”
My happiest childhood memories were of taking Tufts for his daily walk, just him and me. Walking behind him, holding his leash, I believed myself to be useful. I didn’t even mind cleaning up after him. Then Tufts developed cancer. The vet said he would have to be put down. I wanted to go with him to the clinic, but my parents would not let me. I was too young, they said. Later they told me he had passed away peacefully. I did not believe this.
“I sometimes dream about Tufts,” I told Mrs. Dewan. “His eyes are wide, his body spasming. He swings his head from side to side, looking for me.” It was something I had never discussed with anyone.
Mrs. Dewan said, “Oh, my. I have dreams like that.” I waited for details, but all she said was, “My husband once poisoned a dog.”
Sometimes, lying in bed sleepless, I thought about Mrs. Dewan. She appeared so ordinary. Yet she had lived a life filled with violence and mystery. Once, when she was a child, a magician—or perhaps it was a hypnotist—had tried to kidnap her. It amazed me that I had become friends with such a woman.
There were things we did not speak of at our dinners. Mrs. Dewan did not bring up her drinking problem. Or the details of her divorce. Or why she had not returned to India, where her dollars would surely have ensured her
an easier life. I did not mention David’s defection, or how often I found myself thinking of him. I did not describe how I had come home from college during my second semester and told my parents that I was gay. My parents had not condemned or disowned me. They had turned to me faces stricken with an incomprehension that was worse.
Something was wrong.
David would have caught it sooner. He was a more perceptive man than I. But even I could see that our dinners were dwindling—just a lentil dish and egg curry, the rice not basmati but generic long-grain. Mrs. Dewan spoke with her usual animation, inscribing hieroglyphs in the air with her hands. But she hardly ate anything. She said she was dieting. She wanted to lose the twenty pounds she had gained since the divorce. But one night when she was in the bathroom I checked her kitchen. The cabinets were bare except for a box of cornflakes and a few cans of beans. In the fridge were a reduced-price bag of mini-donuts and a half bottle of wine. Once when I stopped by unannounced, the apartment was sweltering; the air conditioner was turned off.
“Heat doesn’t bother me,” Mrs. Dewan said, surreptitiously wiping her sweaty forehead on her arm.
She was running out of money.
This surprised me. I had guessed that the grocery job would not pay for all her expenses, but I had thought she would have a sizable alimony. She had been married for over twenty years. I hesitated to ask—she had tried hard to keep her financial problems a secret from me—but finally I had to know.
“I’m not getting any alimony right now,” she said. “Mr. Dewan filed for bankruptcy last year.”
The situation sounded suspicious. I advised her to get a lawyer. But she shook her head vehemently and changed the topic.
I stopped by Lance’s office again and asked if he could find Mrs. Dewan additional work. She was a good cook. Might his clientele be interested in a Saturday cooking demonstration?
Before We Visit the Goddess Page 15