Quiet in Her Bones

by Singh, Nalini

  He hadn’t built the homes, had just sold the land once the sections were ready.

  The native bush was a living, breathing force around me as I stepped onto the street. You couldn’t see a single property from the road, and that was exactly how the residents liked it. Each of the houses was unique, the designs created by different architects, and built at different times over a period of six years.

  My father’s house was at the very back.

  When I looked outward from my room, I could see the entire Cul-­de-­Sac. To my father’s immediate left were the Fitzpatricks with their intensely modern black glass construct, while Cora and Alice’s luxurious “log cabin” style home stood to the right. Next to the Fitzpatricks was Diana and Calvin’s home.

  I had a vague memory of riding a bicycle up the drive of that grand showcase of square edges and black timber now softened by masses of fo­liage. It suited Diana, with her tidy mind and liking for routine and order.

  My mother had always said her best friend had the neatest mind she’d ever known. “Forget about going back to practicing medicine, Diana could run a hospital,” she’d said once. “I wonder if Calvin knows how lucky he is that she prefers to focus all that intelligence and heart on her home and family.”

  I suppose the home suited Diana’s husband, too. Given recent experiences, I was of the opinion that surgeons were anal by ­nature—­and I was more than okay with that. My foot would’ve been fucked three ways to Sunday if Dr. Tawera hadn’t noticed a single bone chip in the wrong place and removed it with what I liked to imagine were surgical tweezers.

  A little murmur of noise hit the air as I neared the Corner Café. Located just outside the gates of the Cul-­de-­Sac proper, the tiny place just big enough for five tables inside and a couple outside made most of its money from locals who stopped for coffee on their way to and from work. Most discovered it thanks to small signs about a hundred meters up Scenic Drive in either direction.

  Still, located where it was, it was never going to be a major operation. The original owners had asked permission from the Cul-­de-­Sac residents before setting it up, and that permission had transferred to the current owner. The secret of its success was that the people who lived here liked coffee as well as anyone ­else—­and the place only operated a limited number of hours.

  I stopped, walked inside.

  The murmuring halted as if a switch had been flicked.

  Trixi and Lexi stood at the counter, having paused midword in their chat with the owner of the café. The mother and daughter duo were dressed, as always, in spandex tights and fluorescent tops. They wore sports bras in summer, switched to ­long-­sleeved tops in winter.

  Today’s colors were ­eye-­searing pink and blazing yellow. Their shoes matched. All bore the emblem of a ­well-­known designer. Trixi gave me a look I thought might be aiming for concerned, but her unmoving forehead made emotion difficult. Bleached blonde, the older of the two women had a face that would’ve been beautiful if it wasn’t so hard, with so little fat on the bone.

  Trixi and her daughter didn’t live in the Cul-­de-­Sac, but it was part of their “walking route.” I’m not sure how much walking took place between the gossiping with those they met along the way.

  “Are you all right, Aarav dear?” Trixi asked. “We heard they found something out on Scenic Drive and well, the police came to take you and your dad ­away …”

  I’d known her and Lexi as a boy, hadn’t been the least surprised when I returned to the Cul-­de-­Sac and found the two still doing the rounds. They’d given me jelly beans back then, and while I knew gossip was their top priority, I’d never found them unkind. Today, I had the feeling the sympathy was genuine.

  “The police found my mother’s car,” I said, because the news would be all over the street soon enough. “The car from that night.”

  A gasp cut through the air. Not Trixi or her younger shadow.

  No, the sound had come from Lily.

  The owner of this café and my ­long-­ago lover. At nineteen, she’d been all slender limbs, golden brown skin, and an awakening sensuality.

  Today, her skin remained unblemished, her body as slender, but she’d contained the sensuality behind a simple black sweater and jeans. Her slick ­brown-­black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her dark eyes wide.

  Born in Thailand to a white Kiwi father and an ethnically Thai mother, Lily had come to New Zealand at age two. She’d begun working for my family a year before my mother’s disappearance and had been let go about eight and a half months into working there.

  The maid and the scion of a rich family.

  It sounded so simple and so sordid, but I’d never been the one in control in that relationship. I’d been ­a—­barely—­sixteen-­year-­old boy in awe of her sensuality, far too awed to even speak to her properly. That I’d get to see her naked one day hadn’t been a possibility I’d ever considered.

  I also hadn’t been the only Rai to notice Lily.

  My father used to stand in the doorway of his study and watch Lily as she swept and vacuumed and dusted. She’d never worn revealing clothes, not even anything particularly tight, but she’d been as sensual as a ripe peach bursting with juice.

  My editor would immediately strike out that metaphor if I put it in a book, writing “cliché” next to it, but this cliché fit who Lily had once been. The quintessential young woman on the cusp of erotic discovery.

  So when, one week after my sixteenth birthday, while my parents were out, she’d walked into my room and shut the door behind her, I hadn’t even thought of saying no. She’d stripped slow and easy, dropping her clothes to the floor one by one while I sat frozen in bed. Naked, she’d walked across the room to undo my pants, take out my cock. Her fingers on the turgid flesh had been the first time any hands but mine had touched that part of me since childhood’s end. Then she’d put her mouth on me.

  The results had been inevitable. But she hadn’t laughed.

  She’d just worked me up again, then taken my virginity, riding me to oblivion.

  All of it in absolute silence, not a word spoken. She’d returned to my room five more times. My mother had fired her before the sixth, and I hadn’t seen her again until I returned home a month ago.

  As always when I looked at her lovely oval face, I remembered both the pleasure she’d given me, and the nausea I’d felt the day after my mother fired her, when I’d overheard my parents fighting.

  “You slept with her! You’re going to be screwing schoolgirls next.”

  “I did not sleep with our maid.”

  “So her panties appeared under your desk by magic?”

  Since then, part of me had wondered. Had Lily been having sex with both father and son? Maybe I’d ask her. Not today, with Trixi and Lexi listening to every ­word—­no doubt to mentally record for later broadcast.

  I still liked them. Unlike most people, the two women didn’t hide who they were or pretend for an audience.

  “Coffee please, Lily,” I said. “Usual.”

  She moved jerkily to the gleaming machine and I wondered not for the first time how she’d afforded this ­place—­and how she kept it going. Yes, it had the local traffic but that was hardly bustling. When Calvin originally set up the café, it had been as a “hobby” shop designed to occupy Diana. They’d sold it off to a similar couple after the birth of their first child, and that couple had later on sold to Lily.

  Lily certainly didn’t seem to be hurting. Her black sweater and jeans weren’t from the budget shop, and the sparks in her ears were diamonds. Nothing ostentatious, but obvious to a man who’d grown up with a mother who’d hoarded jewels and a father who’d thought he could buy anything if he offered enough carats in exchange. I’d wondered more than once if Lily had a rich lover in the background, one who wanted to keep his mistress close.

  The Cul-­de-­Sac had plenty of possibilities: my father, Calvin, and let’s not forget Hemi Henare. The school principal and recipient of gene
rational wealth via his wife was the model “outstanding” citizen, but those were often the people with the biggest secrets.

  Then there was Isaac, owner of an ad agency and an inveterate gamer. He was also a player in another sense; in his late forties, he was already on wife number four. According to Trixi, said ­wife—­the plump and voluptuous ­Mellie—­had been his ­side-­piece while he’d been married to wife number three.

  Last but not least was Adrian. Much younger than the others, but owner of his own gym in the local town ­center—­and often in the Cul-­de-­Sac for personal training sessions with a clientele that seemed to skew almost fully female.

  “Will you be able to carry your coffee?” Trixi asked as Lily walked around from the coffee machine. “I can carry it for you.”

  Maybe it was a genuine offer and maybe she wanted longer to dig at my soul, but I smiled my best sociopath smile, charming and warm with nothing behind it, and said, “Lily’s put it in an insulated go-­cup for me. It’ll be a bit awkward, but I should be fine not spilling it.” I shifted my attention to Lily. “Thanks for that.”

  “It’s not a problem.” She handed over the coffee, a look in her brown eyes that was difficult to ­read—­but that was no surprise. Lily, I’d learned, had a way of opening herself up while keeping herself shuttered at the same time.

  The day she’d taken my virginity, she’d been a sensual siren, but afterward, her expression had hardened, holding an edge as harsh on the tongue as the bitter melon my father’s second wife so loved.

  8

  I thought of Lily’s ­postcoital expression at times, had often wondered if I’d been a pawn in a much bigger game. Maybe my mother had been ­right—­but the one thing I’d never been able to square away was why Lily would’ve slept with the ­school-­aged son if she was involved with the powerful CEO father.

  Leaving that question for another time, I walked out the ­door—­trim and tanned Lexi helpfully held it open for me. Her surgically plump lips were downturned, her thick brown hair pulled off her face in a ponytail. “I’m sorry, Aarav. Your mum was always nice to us when we saw her on our walks.”

  “She enjoyed talking to you.” I remembered how the three of them had laughed together more than once.

  “They remind me of the gossips from back home in India,” she’d said to me with a smile. “I never thought I’d miss those biddies.”

  As I went through the door on the ghostly echo of my mother’s laughter, I had the sudden thought that I’d be better off picking up a cane. It’d give me the full use of one arm while also offering my leg some support.

  I paused just beyond the Cul-­de-­Sac gates to take a sip of the coffee. Only as it went down, burning all the while, did I realize I was frozen. Numb.

  “Aarav!”

  Diana, dark hair shiny and tumbled with a few curls where it hit the middle of her back, her body clad in cuffed jeans and a fine pink cashmere sweater. Whether walking the dog or watering the lushly blooming plants in her garden, Diana was never less than perfectly put together in a neat and elegant way that befit the wife of one of the country’s best surgeons.

  She also baked cookies with her children and went to every school event. Any time I’d turned up at her house as a kid, she’d smiled and asked me to grab a seat, then given me milk and cookies. I’d watched her since the day she and Calvin moved in to the Cul-­de-­Sac. She’d been a luminous young bride, had turned into a lovely young mother.

  My first crush.

  Today, she hugged her arms around herself as she stood on the other side of the drive, her creamy skin flushed from the cold. A small French bulldog sat panting at her feet. Glossy black, Charlie was old, had been around when my mother disappeared.

  At Diana’s side stood Calvin, tall and lean. Must’ve been one of his rare days off. Born of immigrant Chinese parents he’d lost in a traumatic incident in his youth, Dr. Calvin Liu was the ­clean-­cut ­high-­achieving son of Asian parents’ dreams. I, meanwhile, was the opposite. Unlike Diana, Calvin wore running gear. Probably heading out to one of the few open trails.

  It had been Calvin who’d partnered with me while I was training for that ­half-­marathon ten years ago. I’d never completed it, though Calvin had urged me to keep going, telling me that it might help take my mind off my mother’s sudden absence from my life.

  Though I was in no mood to talk, I shifted direction to cross the drive. I respected Calvin, and Diana was one of the few people in the Cul-­de-­Sac whom I genuinely liked. Not because she’d been my mother’s best friend, but because she hadn’t gossiped about her in the aftermath of her disappearance. She’d also made the time to find a confused ­sixteen-­year-­old and tell him that the one thing on which Nina had never wavered was her love for her son.

  “She’ll come back for you,” Diana had promised. “I know she will.”

  She’d been wrong, but I’d never held it against her. I’d known my mother in ways even her best friend hadn’t. My mother’s love had come with strings attached. She’d demanded absolute loyalty, heartfelt ­devotion—­and I’d just gotten serious with my first real girlfriend weeks before she disappeared.

  “Aarav, why do you go out with these silly girls?” Her fingers in my hair, kneading, her fingernails scraping my skull. “Aren’t I enough?”

  She’d been drunk, the taste of vodka in the kiss she’d pressed to my lips.

  Hadn’t told my shrink that one; he’d probably start worrying about child abuse. It hadn’t been that. My mother had been kissing me on the lips since I was a toddler, just her way. But the attachment she’d demanded, the unflinching dedication, that hadn’t exactly been healthy. Had she lived, my mother would’ve become the mother-­in-­law from hell.

  “No girl’s going to be good enough for my beta,” she’d slurred the same night. “My lovely boy, mera pyara Ari.”

  “Hi, Diana. Hey, Calvin.” He’d been good to me, too, in his distant way. In my final year of school, he’d even carved out time to talk to me about my future, and where I saw myself in five years, then ten.

  Neither one of us could’ve predicted this future.

  I glanced down. “Can’t pet you today, Charlie. Got a serious ­bending-­down issue.” The dog nuzzled my moon boot, his distinctive ears less pointed with each day that passed. “How are Mia and Beau?” I’d babysat Diana and Calvin’s ­now-­teenaged children a lifetime ago. A glorious summer full of transitory happiness.

  I’d helped Mia put ribbons on her sparkly green trike, shown Beau how to fix a broken toy. The ­six-­year-­old boy had attached himself to me for a long time afterward.

  Father figure at fifteen.

  Because Calvin was too busy, too critical to the flickering lives of strangers. Cardiothoracic surgeons weren’t exactly plentiful on the ground.

  “Mia’s just been chosen for a ­government-­backed exchange trip to Beijing next year. Can you believe it?” Diana shook her head. “She’d throw such tantrums when I sent them both to Mandarin classes and look at her now.”

  “You must be so proud.” I wasn’t surprised when Diana was the one who answered with an enthusiastic nod. It had always been white-­as-­snow Diana who’d fought to preserve the children’s ties to their father’s culture.

  I’d never been sure if Calvin’s lack of involvement was on purpose or just another casualty of his schedule.

  Calvin finally spoke. “It’s good the two can converse with relatives in China.” His English was crisp and precise, without New Zealand’s soft ­vowels—­he’d told me once that he’d studied in England for a number of years.

  The sojourn had left a permanent mark.

  “And Beau. Still a science whiz?” The kid who’d loved music as a child was following in his father’s medical footsteps.

  Still wanting Dr. Calvin Liu to see him.

  “Second in his class in biology and chemistry.” Diana beamed, but Calvin’s expression was grim.

  Number two wasn’t good enough for him. Ah,
Beau. Just another poor little rich kid with an absent parent who held him to impossible standards. I felt a pang. Maybe I’d reach out to the kid again. I might be a ­self-­diagnosed sociopath with a mask for every occasion, but I wasn’t a monster.

  “I saw an unfamiliar car by your place,” Diana said. “And Calvin was stuck for ages behind a police roadblock after his night shift, weren’t you, honey?”

  “Lost an hour,” Calvin muttered, hands on his hips. “Now I’ll only fit in half my run.”

  Going running after a night shift: Pure Calvin.

  “They found Mum’s car with her inside,” I said, knowing that, unlike the telegraph of Trixi and Lexi, Diana and Calvin would tell no one.

  Calvin went motionless. Diana’s fingers flew to her mouth, her eyes huge. Charlie’s lead fell from her fingers. The elderly dog sat where he was. No dashing off into the bushes for this bulldog. Those days were long behind him.

  “Oh my God, Aarav.” Trembling fingers leaving Diana’s mouth to land on my arm as Calvin finally snapped out of his shock to put an arm around her. “Are you all right?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just said, “I’m still processing.” Dr. Jitrnicka had taught me to use certain phrases to give myself time to respond, so I didn’t rage. Turned out they were also good for giving me time to think up lies.

  Diana hugged me, gentle and maternal.

  Drawing back when I didn’t really respond, she wiped away a tear and leaned back into Calvin’s embrace. “She loved that car.”

  An unspoken question in the words, but I wasn’t ready to tell her the rest. About the bones and the missing money. “You were the only person for whom she allowed dirt into the ­Jaguar—­I remember us driving out to the rose farm to get that special rose for your birthday and how carefully she drove home, not wanting to jostle it.” Family aside, the blooms were Diana’s ­passion—­everyone was welcome to look, but touch one and you’d feel her wrath. “She’d have loved to see how your roses have thrived.”