by Neel Patel
“Look at this,” Brendan said, laughing. “They’re holding hands like a couple of fairies.”
“Fags,” someone said.
“Fruitcakes.”
“Queers!”
They laughed.
“You disgust me, you know that?” Brendan said. He walked up to both of us and folded his arms, but his eyes were focused on me. “You little sand nigger. You’re garbage. Dirt even. The Dumpster’s too good for you.”
He threw his head back and spit a cold wad of mucus onto my shirt. I recoiled, screaming like a girl, wiping it off with the corner of my sleeve. Brendan and his friends erupted in peals of laughter, pointing at me. So absorbed in my task was I that I hardly noticed Jordan rush out from behind me and punch Brendan in the face.
I froze. Brendan fell backward, blood, thick as molasses, oozing from his nose.
“What the fuck?” someone said. But no one moved. They were staring at Jordan, who was wringing his hand and pacing the parking lot like an ornery cat. He grabbed me by my arm, towing me away. He turned and kicked Brendan in the shin. “Fuck you,” he said, glowering, before leading us back to my car.
* * *
Later that afternoon, after dropping Jordan home, I pulled in to my driveway and found Lisa standing in front of our garage, crying.
“What is it?” I said, getting out of the car. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s your father.”
“What about him?”
“He’s gone.”
I led her into the house. We sat down on a suede couch. Lisa crossed her legs. She wore a rose-colored blouse over white silk shorts; her legs were tanned and smooth. Even with tears in her eyes she was beautiful. “Did he tell you where he was going? Did he leave a clue?”
She shook her head. I handed her a tissue and she blotted her cheek. I waited for her to say something. My mother was out running errands, and I wondered if Lisa had known this, if she had waited until my mother’s white Audi flicked by her window before getting into her car. She pressed the fabric of her shorts to smooth away a few wrinkles. “He needed time,” she said. “He needed to get away.” I asked her what had happened. She broke into a sob.
They’d had a fight, the particulars of which were vague; my father had been missing for two days. I pictured him in a hotel room somewhere, drinking Jim Beam. He had done the same thing to my mother years before. Perhaps he had gone to Bloomingdale or Itasca or another small civilization miles away from our town, staying up until late, watching HBO. The sun shone through the windows and highlighted the peach coloring of Lisa’s skin, the blond fuzz on her arms. I reached for her hand. “Give it time,” I said. “He’ll come around.” I had said this same thing to my mother, and she had slapped me, telling me to mind my own business. Lisa gave me a hug. Her skin felt like silk. She kissed me on the cheek before heading toward the door. Then she slipped into her red Toyota and waved to me as she disappeared down the road, a trail of exhaust in her wake. Later that evening, when my mother found out the news, she said it was a miracle: finally, after all these years, God had answered her prayers.
* * *
We called my father’s office. We drove to his favorite restaurants. We asked around at the golf course, too. There was no sign of him. My mother seemed unworried. Lisa stayed away. She was no longer in the front yard, tending to the flowers, or by the mailbox, retrieving the mail, or on the narrow pathways in our neighborhood, going for a jog. She didn’t answer the front door when I knocked on it, either. It was a mystery. Then one morning, I drove past my father’s house to find his black Jaguar parked by the curb, Lisa’s Toyota in the driveway, the rhododendrons flattened, desecrated across the yard.
The relationship resumed. I had expected some sort of cataclysmic ending, the kind my mother and father had had, but Lisa remained, though I saw very little of her. She no longer waved to me from the front yard or invited me in for a snack. When my father barbecued for me on Saturday nights, Lisa remained indoors, on the phone or in front of the computer, in her bedroom for hours on end. Sometimes she didn’t come out at all, claiming to be nauseous. I assumed she was punishing me, that I was his scapegoat.
My mother had different theories.
“She’s embarrassed,” she said, one day in the kitchen. “She’s weak and embarrassed and now she is living in her karma. I bet you there’s someone else. I bet you he’s seeing someone else.”
The prospect of another woman fueled my mother’s indignation, appeasing her at the same time. I watched her thrive with these new developments. Vast amounts of her time were spent on the phone with her sisters, reporting my father’s daily activities.
“I saw him in the backyard today,” she would say. “He was alone. She doesn’t even sit with him anymore.”
If I went over to his house for dinner or to watch TV, my mother would grill me afterward.
“Was Lisa there?” she would ask, her eyes flickering. “Did she talk to you?”
If I said no, that she had spent the majority of her time in her bedroom, my mother would be pleased, smiling inwardly. But if I told her that Lisa had sat with me through The Wiz, that she had sung along to the songs, that we had gone for ice cream later and that Lisa had made me laugh, she would be furious, banging dishes, slamming doors.
I started ignoring her again. I spent my evenings with Jordan. We went to the park and lay flat on the merry-go-round and passed a fifth of vodka between our lips. We looked up at the stars and talked about our futures, the people we would be, the places we would go. By that point, I had accepted my admission to Brown, and I started planning the weekends I would visit Jordan before he left for Brazil, the holidays after, when I would fly overseas. He showed me pictures of the landscape and architecture and beaches and cliffs. He said things like, “When you visit me, I’ll take you here,” or “Maybe I’ll convince you to stay forever.” We lived through the lives of our future selves, passing our remaining days in a fugue. The semester was winding down and the summer lay ahead of us like a mirage, promising long afternoons by the pool, humid nights in the park, sun-soaked mornings in bed. On our last night of school, Jordan reached into his backpack and pulled out a condom, asking me if I was ready, and though I wasn’t, though it would be years before I ever was, I couldn’t imagine a more appropriate time to lie.
* * *
Three days before graduation, we had our last dance class. The days had grown long, full of deep, lilac sunsets. There was a fervent energy in the air. I was looking forward to spending the whole summer with Jordan. We walked into the dance studio and found Anton waiting for us at the center of the room, a boom box behind him, a smile on his face.
“I want to try something different today,” he said. “I want you all to dance freestyle, with no direction.”
None of us moved. Anton walked over to the boom box and popped in a CD. He selected a song: “Smooth Criminal.” Then he pointed at me. “You, Mr. Jackson. I want to see you dance.” I was startled, aware of the many heads turned in my direction, the canned beat bouncing off the walls. I stood in place.
“Well?” he said. “What are you waiting for?”
He squared off a space for me at the center of the room, and I made my way toward it, aware of my reflection in the mirror, the blank stares behind me. I moved, slowly, from side to side. I thought about all the times I had danced like this in my bedroom, my mother standing just outside. I closed my eyes. I opened them and moved faster. The classroom cheered and started singing along to the words. But I could no longer hear them. I was aware only of the sound of my heart, the beat of the drums, the melody in my head. The music stopped and Jordan reached for my hand, leading me outside. We ran across the parking lot under a canopy of stars. There was a playground beyond the parking lot where students went to drink or smoke or kiss behind the slide and it was there that we found them, gathering by the swings.
“Samir the queer.”
* * *
There were five of them altogether. Brendan
was in the lead. The others stood behind him, forming a human wall. “And the boyfriend.” Brendan’s face was obscured by the dark. A cigarette sparked at his lips. He tossed the cigarette aside and charged at us. I screamed. If they saw me standing there, if they noticed me at all, they didn’t show it. It was Jordan they wanted. It was Jordan they dragged across the mud. It was Jordan they towed to the merry-go-round and pummeled in the face. It was Jordan they took turns kicking and punching, kicking and punching, until blood burst like lava from his lips and his nose. I begged them to stop. I threw rocks at their heads. I ran over to Jordan and pulled him by his leg. But it didn’t work. I started praying: Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna, until a white car pulled in to the parking lot with its headlights on. The crowd dispersed. Brendan ran away. The car turned around. It zipped down the road in the opposite direction, as if it were needed somewhere else. I held my breath, reaching for Jordan’s hand, wiping the blood that had collected under his nose and on his chin. He was unrecognizable, pink and bloody like a piece of uncooked steak. He touched my face and his hand felt like sandpaper against my skin. I closed my eyes, afraid that one of the other boys would return to finish off what they had started, but no one did. I could still hear the prayer echoing in my head when Jordan rose to his feet, spitting out some blood, and later, in his driveway, when I carried him into his house.
* * *
In the end, my mother was right: Lisa and my father split up. This time it was because of an Indian woman named Kalindi. I was surprised, not that my father would stray, but that he would find a woman exactly like my mother to take Lisa’s place. Lisa moved out of my father’s house and disappeared from our lives altogether. My mother forgave her. She forgave my father, too, and, three weeks before I left for college, on a dark and gloomy afternoon, he moved back into our house. I was not surprised: I had learned enough to know that life was like a strong current, sweeping you in whichever direction it chose.
One evening, I was emptying the trash in my father’s office when a torn letter surfaced, wrinkled and smudged. It was addressed to my mother. It was from Lisa. It said that she’d been pregnant. At least that’s what she claimed, among other things: that my father had forced her to get an abortion, that he had threatened to leave if she didn’t, and that it was he who had pursued her in the first place—not the other way around. I remembered the evenings when Lisa would remain indoors, claiming to be nauseous. I wondered if she had been pregnant then. According to her letter, Lisa had tried to get my father to reconcile with my mother, that it was my father who had gone looking for her the moment she was back in town. I didn’t know whether to believe this or not. I was not supposed to know these things at all. I waited for a fight that never happened, listening through the walls, perking up whenever my mother slammed a door in the kitchen or raised her voice in the hall. Then one day, I walked into the kitchen with the mail in my hands when my father accosted me from behind, snatching the mail from my grasp, and I knew, by the grave look in his eyes, that everything Lisa had written was true.
* * *
I never made it to Brazil. Weeks later, after his bruises had healed, Jordan and I broke up. That night on the playground had withered whatever had grown between us, turning it ugly and vague, until we no longer remembered what had drawn us to each other in the first place. I suppose, in the end, we were afraid. I went away to Brown and he went away to some far corner of the world. Every now and then I got a picture from Jordan in the mail, some smiling image of himself in front of a temple, or on a beach, or climbing the steps of a monument, or swinging from a tree, but soon, even those stopped coming, and eventually, I learned to stop expecting them.
Looking back on it, I realize that my experience with Jordan was just a phase, an initiation, an access point through which I entered a new world. I learned how to love and be loved in ways my parents had never taught me before, and, by the time I was in my thirties, I’d had my heart broken three more times.
My mother was there through it all. She stopped feigning oblivion; eventually she grew to understand my inherent differences, and even to accept them. She was there for me when one man broke my heart after the next, giving me sound advice. She was less cynical, too, though she still continued to pray for us each morning: for my father, for me, and, I suspect, for some greater understanding of the world. ◆
hey, loser
We were friends—Eun-ji and I—in the way you were friends with people you hadn’t slept with. That is to say, I really wanted to sleep with her. I got a boner just thinking about it. Sometimes I got a boner thinking about the boner from before. Once, I got a boner thinking about all the other boners I’d had in my lifetime, and how they didn’t even compare. I was a wreck. I sat next to her in Anatomy and pretended we were at an opera: the podium a stage, the professor a nymph, Eun-ji reaching for my hand during the final act. Then one day, she invited me over.
“I’m stressed—are you stressed? We should study together or something.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing myself, cutting my hair, trimming my beard, buying a new deodorant because I had begun to cultivate a smell. I shaved my body in places I had never shaved before—or even seen. I didn’t have condoms, so I stopped at the free clinic and stuffed my pockets with a handful. Then I went home, showered, dried, put on jeans and a shirt. I was ready.
Eun-ji answered the door wearing sweatpants.
“Oh,” she said. “Have you been out?”
Her apartment was nicer than mine, with plush white carpeting, soft cream walls, pictures of kittens placed all over the bookshelf and bar. I told her I loved it. She said it was just okay. We were sitting in her bedroom, spreading our textbooks over the floor in front of us, when Eun-ji turned to me and smiled.
“We can do it if you want; just don’t get it on my sheets.”
We started kissing—quick, darting kisses that were like the brush of a moth’s wings. After it was over, we sat around staring at the floor.
“Well,” she said, quietly, “that was different.”
* * *
It happened again, after the final, and once more, before winter break. The streets were covered with hard glittering frost when Eun-ji reached for my hand.
“I like you, Raj.”
We went to coffee houses and bars, traded secrets in the dark, told each other things we had never told anyone before: the time I went to summer camp and got a blow job from the counselor, the time I cheated on my physics final. The time I attempted suicide by taking a bottle of pills—it was my senior year of college, and my girlfriend had stopped returning my calls.
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I said. “I just wanted her to call me back.”
Eun-ji kissed me, offering stories of her own—like the time she got drunk in Chicago and woke up in a strange apartment in Kenosha, sixty miles away. She described the harrowing journey home: the clogged traffic, the circling birds, the pregnancy test she hid from her roommate, which was positive, and which she dealt with swiftly, never saying a word. I held her hand and kissed every goose bump and mole.
We were inseparable. Long afternoons were spent walking hand in hand, from class to class, studying in the library, stealing a touch or a kiss. Final exams were approaching, but I couldn’t focus on a single word. I was transfixed by her: the way she held her highlighter, the way she flicked her hair, the plastic sheen of her creamy white skin. The things that fell out of her bag: pink cookies and a box of red bean jelly her parents had brought back from Korea, which she plucked surreptitiously between her manicured nails. Sometimes she looked up at me and frowned.
“Are you even studying?”
“Of course I am.”
“I’m worried about you, Raj.”
“I’m fine.”
I wasn’t. Each hour that passed brought me closer to the realization that winter break was approaching, that we could be separated for weeks. That I could be forgotten, forsaken, cast aside lik
e yesterday’s news. On our last night together, Eun-ji made pasta primavera and straddled me on her bed. Then she was gone.
* * *
I went home and sulked for days. I tossed and turned in my bed. Eun-ji was in St. Lucia, posting pictures from the beach. My parents wanted to watch movies and I wanted to track her every move on Facebook. Friday night: dinner with family! Saturday morning: jog on the beach! Saturday night: all dressed up for drinks! In each picture her face was bright with exertion and her hair, slicked down or scraped back into a bun, was the color of damp earth. One night she called me. It was late. The house was dark. My cell phone vibrated on the pillow next to my head.
“I want you, Raj,” she said, breathlessly. “Oh, god. I wish you were here.”
I told her I wanted her, too. It was like that for a while. We sent messages back and forth, promising to meet as soon as she was back; toward the end of break, we did, at a condo her parents had rented for the season. It was there that I told her I loved her. She said we needed to talk.
“I like you, Raj—don’t get me wrong—but things are moving a little fast.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we barely know each other, and already you’re saying these things.”
“What things—that I love you?” My heart dropped. “But it’s true. I love you more than anything in the world!”
“Oh, Raj.”
It was over; she needed a break. The semester was starting up again and she needed to concentrate on school. Maybe I should do the same. I didn’t tell her the truth: that I was failing. I’d received a letter that afternoon. My parents had asked me how my first year of medical school was going, and I’d said I got all As.
I was used to getting As, though. In high school, my name—Rajesh Desai—was perched precisely above Matthew Desilva’s on the school honor roll. In college, I breezed through the courses, spending most of my time at bars. The summer after graduation was one of my brightest. I went to Europe, backpacking through Spain, screwing dark-haired women in even darker hotels. I returned in August and my parents insisted I stay home: This is our time together. But I moved in early, two weeks before class, and when they offered to come with me I refused, telling them I could do it on my own. I spent a weekend familiarizing myself with the campus. I bought my textbooks ahead of time. I took notes in anticipation of the work we would be slapped with: the dissections and lectures and exams. I took notes of my notes, using sticky tabs and markers and pens. I went to the library and sat there until five in the morning, until a peach color proliferated across the sky. Then something strange happened.