She’d called out, “Chalo, Ismail, what are you doing in there? You know I’m ovulating!” He cringed at the thought that the quarrelsome couple next door might be listening through the thin, shared walls. Since they had heard about Zubi, those neighbours seemed to bicker less, and Ismail believed their quiet life could only mean that they were united in spying on the Boxwalas.
Again a loud yell from the bedroom: “Are you coming?”
Ismail yelled back, “Just be a few minutes.” Sweat, a constant in his life at that time, seeped through his pajamas. He took a shower, hoping to buy himself a little more time. He prayed the sound of trickling water would lull his wife to sleep.
—
Of course, Ismail understood why Rehana wanted to try for another baby so soon. They both harboured the hope that a new child would ease the pain of Zubi’s absence, a new life distracting them from her death. A baby would facilitate their moving on, placing the tragedy firmly behind them, downwind, allowing them to breathe fresh air again.
Support for this project came from all sides; both sets of parents sent air-mailed letters, chock-full of advice informed by previous generations who’d lost children within their first year. One embarrassing blue envelope from Ismail’s mother contained drink recipes to increase a man’s potency.
“Juice for your juice!” Rehana guffawed, while Ismail winced in embarrassment. Of course, the advice was far less amusing to her when her mother visited that year and began to focus her energies on her daughter’s ovaries. She chided Rehana for being “as thin as a servant” and tried to fatten her up with badam halwa and bowls of creamy shrikhand to fortify her womb.
Even more intolerable to Ismail and Rehana were the dinners with Rehana’s sister, Zahra, and brother-in-law, Hussain, who were intent on helping the pair recover.
“So are the two of you doing okay these days?” Hussain would ask, eyebrows raised.
“Yes, we’re fine,” would be Rehana’s answer.
“Good, but you know, it is all right to talk about it,” Zahra would broach.
“We’re fine,” Ismail repeated. There would be another full round of this before both couples could sit back, break into gendered pairs, and discuss more inane subjects.
Once, Zahra and Hussein invited dinner guests that Ismail and Rehana hadn’t met before: a couple whose six-year-old had died of leukemia earlier that year. Although never explicitly stated, all parties involved understood that Zahra and Hussein were playing matchmaker for bereaved parents. The Boxwalas and the other couple carefully avoided any conversations about children, or death or disease, in an unspoken pact against Zahra and Hussain’s scheming.
With their tendency to shy away from contentious or emotionally uncomfortable topics, Nabil and Nabila were far easier company. They wanted to be helpful and so they simply behaved as though everything were normal. And since normal was still a long shot for Ismail and Rehana, they found the pretense calming.
Back home, alone in their bed, Ismail grew terrified of the possibility of making another fatal mistake with a second child, and this fear brought with it a powerful impotence. Under the sheets in their dark bedroom, the couple bumped up against one another like uncoordinated teenagers, knocking elbows against hips and shoulders against chests, the new awkwardness like a foreign invader annexing their bed. Rehana toiled to arouse Ismail while he struggled to maintain interest.
Ismail never could tell if Rehana was aroused herself, but it didn’t seem to matter to her. He, or rather his limp, uncooperative penis, was the sole focus on those embarrassing nights. Eventually, sleepy and frustrated, she would give up, smile wanly and say it was all right, while Ismail apologized and silently pleaded with God to either let him die or permit Rehana to give up and leave him.
But Rehana persevered against Ismail’s problem, battling against his impotence as though it were her worst enemy. She pressured him to see his family doctor and then made appointments with two different, but well-recommended, specialists in the field of male problems. The first, a popular older doctor, had a waiting room full of shame-faced men like Ismail, who hid behind withered copies of Time and National Geographic. After an hour’s wait, the physician ordered a set of tests that duplicated those done by the family doctor, and then upon follow-up, scratched his head and apologetically told the Boxwalas that he couldn’t find anything wrong with Ismail’s health.
The second doctor, who was punctual and had an empty waiting area, also reassured Ismail that he was fine, slapped him on the back, and counselled the couple to keep trying. On the way out of the office, he offhandedly shared with them the bit of wisdom everyone had offered, “You know Mr. and Mrs. Boxwala, the best thing you can do to recover from a child’s death is to have another one.” Ismail and Rehana smiled tensely as they hurried out of the office; they hadn’t mentioned Zubi to that doctor, and realized that her death had been recorded somewhere in Ismail’s medical file. They worried about how this information had been written up and in what level of detail. By that point, they had learned it was best to remain vague, allowing people who hadn’t already heard about them, to make assumptions about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and other childhood illnesses.
When they got into the car, Rehana scrounged around in her purse and placed a glossy brochure in Ismail’s hand. He’d seen it in the racks of both specialists’ waiting rooms, but had been much too self-conscious to pick one up. He shoved it deep into his coat pocket and started the car. They drove home, both of them in a hopeless funk.
Later, Ismail locked himself in the bathroom to study the brochure in private. On the front cover, large yellow letters flashed:
ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION (ED)
AND IMPOTENCE
He sat down heavily on the edge of the tub, then got up, checked the lock on the door, and sat again. He looked at the image on the brochure’s front, a photo of a blissful-looking white couple walking hand in hand on a beach. He closed his eyes, imagining Rehana and he on that beach, their fingers interlaced, the two of them happy again.
Zubi squealed as Ismail held her forearms, letting her bare feet dip into the surf. It was a trip they’d all taken together: four adults, three children, and an overstuffed cooler, packed into Nabil’s station wagon. Ismail felt close to Nabil that day; they were two proud brothers with their young families on a day trip to Wasaga Beach. Altaf was almost five and had just started swimming lessons while Asghar was turning three. They both stayed in the shallow water, testing out the lake with orange water wings strapped to skinny arms.
Zubi wasn’t yet old enough for swimming, but Rehana had dressed her in a green polka-dot bathing suit that the women oohed and aahed over. She tottered around in the sand, picking up tiny fistfuls and then flinging the grains back into the water. It was a month before she died.
—
Ismail opened his eyes, Wasaga Beach disappearing. He spread open the pamphlet and read:
Erectile dysfunction (ED), or “impotence,” is the ongoing lack of ability to attain or maintain an erection that is stiff enough to engage in sexual intercourse. Impotence may also refer to difficulties such as severely reduced or limited libido, ejaculation or orgasm.
Ismail’s buttocks were numb from sitting on the hard porcelain. He readjusted, crossed his left leg over his right, noticing his reflection in the full-length mirror that hung on the bathroom door. He uncrossed his legs, and sat more like a man.
He skimmed the section on “Causes of Erectile Dysfunction,” long paragraphs about ED and vascular disease, diabetes, and aging. Finally, at the very bottom of the last page was a single line that seemed to apply to him:
Although little is known about psychological causes of ED, it is believed that stress and other psychological causes may play a part in some cases of impotence.
He concluded that he was among the stressed, nervous, or crazy men who could not get it up. He turned over the br
ochure, seeking more information about psychological issues and treatment, but no relief was to be found there. He reread the material twice more. Then, he tossed the brochure into the dustbin.
—
Since the problem was only in Ismail’s head, the couple redoubled their efforts. He came to dread those “three good days” each month, and a once-pleasurable activity turned into a gruelling and humiliating chore. Rarely could he achieve an erection, and if he did, it didn’t last long enough to matter. After nine months of this tiresome routine, Rehana finally gave up.
She was generally a patient woman who took her time to arrive at important decisions. The couple had a two-year engagement so that she could be sure about marrying him. She considered emigration from India for many months, doing research and speaking to countless relatives about the matter. It somehow made perfect sense to Ismail that she conceived, gestated, and birthed the idea of a divorce in about the same amount of time it would have taken to have another baby.
Psychology is a mysterious thing. Once the divorce was finalized, Ismail’s ED problem cured itself, in an ironic sort of way; suddenly, erections appeared spontaneously, and were terribly timed. They were also freakishly frequent, as though his penis had to make up for all that “dead” time. He’d have to excuse himself from meetings, a file folder or binder his camouflage as he found the nearest exit.
It seemed almost anything could trigger the condition. The outline of a colleague’s bottom through a tight skirt, a momentary glance at cleavage while on the bus, a kissing scene on television. Ismail was thoroughly embarrassed when once he didn’t change channels quickly enough while watching a documentary about male bodybuilders. At times, the cues were more innocuous and he couldn’t understand how a city development meeting or a chore like laundry could have a similar libidinous impact on him.
The staff bathroom became an oasis in which he found limited succor and privacy. He’d try to calm himself in the stall farthest from the door, willing away the throbbing stiffness by visualizing the most unstimulating things; he took his mind on excursions into his project files, traveling through tedious details about curb heights and traffic volume on residential boulevards. He wouldn’t have wanted to admit it, but sometimes images of his mother in Mumbai, or her frumpy sisters in Ahmedabad, sprung to mind. Imagining the taste and smell of North American food, which at the time he was still unaccustomed to, was also a useful strategy.
Most of the time these tactics worked, but unfortunately there were moments when Ismail’s mind turned traitor, finding reckless enticement in negative fantasizing; lewd acts inserted themselves into highway diagrams or plates of open-faced hot turkey sandwiches. Once or twice, an old aunty’s saggy breasts revealed themselves when he least wanted them to.
Every now and then, there wasn’t enough time for lengthy de-arousing meditations. In those moments, he would have to listen for the bathroom to empty, and then, as quietly as possible, he’d shamefully permit his gluttonous body to be satiated. He didn’t even consider looking for a lover. There was something about the entire experience that gave it the feeling of a penance to be suffered alone.
He pondered the larger meanings behind the problem. Had he let Rehana go too easily? He considered calling her to tell her that his problem was resolved, thinking she might return if she knew. Ismail sat by the telephone, Rehana’s new number memorized, dialing the first three digits, then the fourth, and hanging up. Once he completed the entire seven and was relieved when she wasn’t home. Ismail knew he wasn’t in control of his spontaneous erections any more than he was in control of the impotence. He predicted it would only be another disgrace he wouldn’t be able to hide from her.
Anyway, he couldn’t allow Rehana to be dragged back into his life — setting her free was something he owed her. Besides, he didn’t want to face a second scrape of rejection; he’d heard from Nabil, who heard through Nabila’s grapevine, that Rehana was heading to India for an arranged marriage. Despite her age and divorceé status, she was marriageable enough with her Canadian citizenship and lack of children.
In the end, Ismail shook off his desire to telephone her, eventually forgot her number, and allowed her to go on without him. Over the years he heard snippets of gossip about her and learned that she did quite well for herself. She married an entrepreneur who grew wealthy in the auto parts business. Within a few years of their marriage, he gave her two more children (a boy and a girl), and a sprawling home in the suburbs of Windsor. They’d never have the occasion to see one another again, Rehana and Ismail.
— * —
Celia and Marco stepped into the warm house, snow puddling onto the foyer’s tile floor. She began the process of freeing him from his outer layers. First, she unwound the long scarf, turning him round and round until his flushed face emerged and he was giggling with dizziness. His hood slipped off sweaty hair and wet mitts were laid over the heating vent. She bent down, unzipped his blue snowsuit, and he leaned on her shoulders to step out. Like a prisoner liberated from restraints, he did a jig around the foyer, shaking his arms and legs, singing an ode to his next meal, “Lunchtime, lunchtime, yaaaay lunch!”
“Okay, okay,” she muttered, irritability meeting his joy.
She prepared them each a sandwich and nibbled at hers while he chomped ravenously through his. He was having a growth spurt, filling out around his middle and stretching up an inch in the last month, while she was gradually shrinking. Her housedresses were looking baggier than usual and last week she’d had to safety-pin the waist of her Sunday skirt so it wouldn’t slip off in church. This morning after her shower, she glimpsed the changes in the bathroom mirror: narrowing hips, flattening stomach, new lines etching themselves beneath skin. It was like she had a teenager’s body, only without the energy of youth. Surprisingly, her breasts were as ample as they’d always been. As she cupped one in her palm while putting on her bra, it felt like a useless appendage she no longer wanted to carry.
Marco rose from the table and ran to the living room. She called after him to wash his hands, and, like a wind-up toy in reverse, he zipped into the powder room. She heard the water go on. “Use soap! Sabão!” She had a habit of speaking to him in a Portuguese-English blend and sometimes feared it might be confusing for the boy to hear English and Italian and Portuguese all in the same house. But she supposed it was alright; she managed Portuguese at home with her family and English in school. She even picked up some French along the way. Her brain figured it all out.
The water stopped and Marco raced back into the living room and switched on the television. She sat down on the couch beside him, heavy in her vanishing body.
— 16 —
Homework
Ismail cleared off his desk at home, and piled under a stack of newspapers, were the notes and handouts collected during that first writing class almost two weeks earlier. He scanned the sheets, admiring the level of detail in his note-taking. There were three pages of description about the arc of a story, reminders of important dates and scratched in the left-hand margin was a little box with the words: Fatima. Writing about her family’s immigration. He wasn’t sure why he’d written that down, but perhaps he’d felt at the time that it was something to remember.
On the next page was a detailed description of the week’s writing homework, which was to describe his story’s main character. PROTAGONIST, he’d inscribed in his notebook, all in capital letters as James had done on the board. The assignment was to create a physical and psychological depiction that would guide them in their story’s development. The following words were circled in red pen: GESTURES, INTERNAL, STRUGGLE, CONFLICT TO BE RESOLVED, AND HABITS. At the bottom of the second page, was a reiteration of the word PROTAGONIST, and three consecutive question marks. Although he’d blurted “my daughter” when Fatima asked him what he wanted to write about, he wasn’t completely sure at the time whether she should be the main character of his story.
> He gathered up the papers into one meagre handful and took them downstairs to deposit in the recycling bin — he had already missed the second class, and had no intention of returning. But before he could get to the blue bin on the porch, something stopped him. Perhaps it was a sense of challenge, boredom, or curiosity, but instead of throwing the sheets away, he left them on the kitchen table.
An hour later, he brought his laptop down to the kitchen, untangled its cord, and plugged it in. He ignored the one hundred and seventeen emails waiting for him — he was not much of a computer person at home. He opened up a blank document. The black cursor blinked expectantly against a white background. He stared at it for awhile, waiting for something to happen.
He opened Creative Writing for Idiots, which he’d recently borrowed from the library. A skim of its first chapter provided some reassurance. He recalled how much he’d enjoyed writing as a young person, and how he thought it would be worth a try to re-establish the hobby. He considered how he’d already paid the creative writing class’s non-refundable fee.
He typed: Protagonist. He centred the word, bolded, and underlined it. He changed the font from the default eleven point Times to a more forgiving Arial twelve. He widened the margins, inserted a page number in the footer, and, as an afterthought, included the date in the header.
Then he decided it was time to turn on the kettle. He ogled the tea bag as it soaked languorously in the hot water, its leaves leaking brown into the clear. While adding heaping spoons of sugar and condensed milk, he glanced over at the blank screen as though half-expecting it to have magically populated itself with words while he wasn’t looking. He burned his tongue taking a first sip of the tea. And then the shortbread biscuits, so provocative in their red box, lured him with buttery charms. The computer waited like a wallflower.
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