If You See Me, Don't Say Hi

by Neel Patel

  “She has gone to her cousin’s house in Michigan.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t Deepak go?”

  She was silent. After a while she folded up the rest of the laundry and walked out in a huff. “I don’t know,” she said, traipsing up the stairs. “I don’t know anything anymore. Nobody tells me anything in this house!” And she slammed her door.

  * * *

  That evening, Deepak walked into the living room and punched me on my arm.

  “Where is this gori girl you’re hiding?” he said.

  “Her name’s Marissa,” I said. “And she’s in the shower.”

  He stared at me blankly.

  “I’m just kidding, man.”

  But at dinner, Deepak was quiet, staring down at his plate, responding to Marissa’s questions with one-word answers. I was uncomfortably aware of how he towered over us at the table, his long arms folded across his chest. My parents asked Marissa about her house in Evanston, her friends at school, gazing up at her in wonder, absorbing each fact, but not Deepak. When Marissa asked Deepak how he enjoyed working at the motel, if he had any interesting stories to share, he snorted.

  “It’s a job,” he said. “Not everyone can be as lucky as my brother.”

  “It’s not luck,” I said. “It’s hard work.”

  No one said a word.

  After dinner, I decided to take Marissa on a drive, maybe go for a beer. I asked Deepak if he wanted to join us, but he refused, saying he had work to do. Then, just as we were sliding on our coats, he changed his mind.

  “Wait,” he said. “I’ll come.”

  He was chatty in our father’s car, telling me which way to turn, asking Marissa questions, including her in his jokes. He even complimented her, saying it was nice of her to take time away from her family to spend Thanksgiving with us. I was surprised. I’d never heard Deepak compliment anyone in my life. He was a different person, eagerly suggesting we go to a new bar that had opened up on campus, encouraging Marissa to order whatever she wanted on the menu. When the waitress came by he looked up at her and smiled.

  “Is Lauren working tonight?”

  I stared at him.

  The waitress scanned the room before pointing toward the bar. “She’s over there,” she said. “In the red top.”

  My eyes followed Deepak’s to a young woman dressed in a red top and skinny jeans. Her stiff hair was frosted, her makeup shiny under the lights. Deepak waved to her and smiled.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  But he didn’t come back, not until it was time to leave. By then, Marissa and I had had our fair share of beers.

  “Is that a friend of yours?” I said, as we stepped into the chilly parking lot and approached our father’s car. He didn’t respond. He drove home in silence. All night he remained in his bedroom, whispering over the phone.

  * * *

  The next morning, Marissa and I woke up early to prepare the turkey and stuffing and sweet potato pie, but Deepak stayed in his room. He didn’t come out until the bird had been carved, explaining that he would have to go to the motel: one of the desk clerks had called in sick; it being Thanksgiving and all, he would have to fill in. No one said a word. My mother stared down at her plate. My father pretended not to have noticed. It was I who went after Deepak, following him into the driveway and grabbing him by his arm.

  “Hey,” I said. “What’s going on?”

  He looked impatient. It was then that I realized how much time we’d spent apart, how little we spoke. I couldn’t remember the last time we had listened to an album together in my room. “Where are you really going?” I said.

  He was silent.

  “Where, Deepak?”

  He turned his head.

  “Are you going to see that girl—the one from the bar? Are you having an affair?”

  He laughed. “An affair,” he said, mockingly. “Only white people have affairs. Jesus, man, you already sound like one of them.”

  “One of whom?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Why is Deepika at her family’s house?” I said. “Why didn’t you go with her?”

  “Why are you involving yourself?”

  “Because she’s my sister-in-law.”

  He walked away. I caught a flash of Deepika crying in the bathroom. I followed him onto the road.

  “You can’t treat her this way,” I said, shouting now. “You can’t do that to people!”

  He ignored me.

  “You need to think about someone else for a change, Deepak. You need to think about Mom and Dad.”

  He paused to contemplate the rows of identical brick houses ahead of us, the metallic sky above. Then he shook his head.

  “You know,” he said, softly. “I like Marissa—I do. But to be honest, I’m a little surprised.” He was staring at me now, scratching his head. “I figured that, if one of us ever brought home a white girl—if we ever did that to Mom and Dad—she would at least be beautiful.”

  I don’t remember what happened next, only that we were struggling on the ground, shouting. Deepak was surprisingly weak for his size, capitulating to me easily. A neighbor came out of her house and started yelling, “Stop it. Stop it. It’s Thanksgiving!” but we didn’t listen. I said things that afternoon that I had never said before in my life, that I would spend a lifetime regretting, wishing I could revise: that my brother was a failure—a loser—and that, if it weren’t for our family, he would probably be dead. I saw the fight drain from his eyes. I saw his fingers loosen their grip. I saw what was once anger fueled by love turn to indifference fueled by hate. I watched him stand up and brush himself off, heading toward his car, turning around to address me one last time. There were tears in his eyes.

  “You’re done,” he said. “I mean it. Don’t talk to me. Don’t even look at me. If you see me on the street, don’t say hi.”

  I didn’t try to stop him as he slammed the door shut and drove away. I went for a walk. Later, when I came back into the house, my mother shot up from the dining room table and asked what was wrong. But I shook my head. It was then that I realized tears were rolling down my face, collecting at my chin. But I hadn’t felt a thing. It was windy outside, I explained to everyone in the room, and something must have got caught in my eyes.

  * * *

  Six weeks later, after New Year’s Eve, Marissa and I broke up. I never told her about what happened between Deepak and me in the driveway. I didn’t tell anyone. Not even my own parents. The day after Thanksgiving, I made up an excuse about an exam I had to study for, forcing Marissa to play along. For weeks I was impenetrable, remaining silent for hours, avoiding Marissa’s exhortations to open up. The more she tried to probe me, the more I pushed her away. I could have told her what Deepak had said; it wouldn’t have been a big deal. Probably she would have laughed even, thrown her head back and made some witty remark. She wouldn’t have hated him the way I did—that’s for sure. Sometimes I think it was this fact alone that made me pull away from her: that she could so easily forgive someone. That I still could not.

  Over the years, I dated girls at a distance, diving into my work, graduating from medical school and entering a rigorous orthopedic surgery program out of state. I used this as an excuse to avoid going home. For a while, my parents were oblivious, asking only if I had talked to Deepak recently, if we were in touch, reminding me of his birthday, apprising me of some minor incident—a fender bender, an illness, a problem at the motel—that afflicted his life. But after a while my mother grew suspicious, pressing me for details and, when I made something up, catching me in my lies. She asked me why we hadn’t spoken, why he never mentioned me at home, why I never invited him to visit me once in a while. I had no answer. I assumed he and Deepika were fine, because one day I received an email from her inviting me home. It was my parents’ anniversary. She was hosting a party. She signed the email, “Love, Deepika Bhabhi.” I packed a small suitcase and b
ooked the next flight.

  * * *

  There were thirty people in my parents’ backyard when I arrived, drinking and laughing and eating. I saw Deepak in passing, but he didn’t look at me. He was drunk, and Deepika was watching him from the kitchen window. She was pregnant. My mother had been waiting to tell me the news: that I was no longer just a brother; I was going to be a kaka as well. I was surprised. I spent all night watching Deepika answer questions about the baby, sipping a glass of cider. She had gained some weight in her face and her arms, but she still looked beautiful, just as radiant as she had that night of her engagement party. In fact, she was glowing, pausing to allow someone to touch her belly, take her picture, refusing to sit down when my mother insisted she take a break. Later that evening, I joined her in the kitchen and listened to her complain about my brother while she rinsed dishes in the sink.

  “He can drown in his drink,” she said, sharply. “I should never have married him.”

  But I knew, by the flicker in her eyes, that it was only a joke. I helped her dry the dishes and stack them in a pile on the counter. I led her to the couch. She wore a blue silk dress. Her belly pushed through it like a drum; she rubbed it with her hand.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked. “Juice? Seltzer? Water?”

  She shook her head. I was about to go outside to talk to one of the uncles who had just arrived when she called out to me from behind.

  “Have you heard what he wants to call the baby?”

  I turned around, shaking my head.

  “Deep,” she said.

  I laughed.

  Later, when my mother called to tell me it was over—that the baby was dead—I cried: for Deepak, for Deepika, for all of us.

  * * *

  In three years, I said three words to my brother: “I’m very sorry.” I said them the moment he came back from the hospital. I said them in a sympathy card. I said them in an email, too. I wanted him back. I was sorry for everything. I broke my silence, crying on the phone with him until I couldn’t speak anymore, until my throat closed up and I could no longer swallow. But he didn’t say a word. He made a “Hmm” noise which meant that he acknowledged my apology but had nothing further to say. Then he hung up the phone.

  We spent the next few years acknowledging each other from a distance. I congratulated him in person when they finally had a baby girl, Shreya, who weighed six pounds two ounces. She had soft brown eyes and hair as thick as wool. She looked more like Deepika than Deepak—which, I said jokingly, was fortunate. But Deepak said nothing. Sometimes I would ask him a question about work or his health and he would stare at me like I was an interloper. Once, we were in the kitchen reaching for the same beer when our hands locked. It was the first time we had touched each other since that night in the driveway. It was also the first time he had spoken more than two words to me.

  “I was going to drink that,” he said.

  “So was I.” I looked in the fridge. “It’s the last one—split it?”

  “No.” He let go of my hand. “You have it.”

  I was flattered, buoyed by his generosity, but later, when he didn’t talk to me for three days, I realized what he’d meant: that he would rather go without a beer than split one with me.

  I moved to Los Angeles and drowned out the noise: my mother’s complaints, her lengthy diatribes, the articles she would send me about the unexpected tragedies of life. Sometimes I would YouTube old music videos Deepak and I used to watch when we were young, remembering all the times I rode around with him in the car. Once, a girl I was dating paused in front of the mantel above my fireplace, pointing to a picture of Deepak and me in India—in matching black T-shirts, our hair slicked into spikes—asking me who he was.

  “My brother,” I said, and I was surprised by how quickly it rolled off my tongue, how easily he came to mind, as if I had been waiting for the right moment to mention him. As if I had been hoping she would ask me this all along.

  * * *

  Years ticked by like the hands of a faulty watch—quick, then slow—and finally, in the fall of 2015, forty years after my parents had first landed in America, thirty-three years after I was born, ten years after Deepak and I had stopped talking, my parents made an announcement: they were retiring. On the phone, my mother informed me that they would sell their motels to Deepak and spend six months in India, six months at home. The Indians in our hometown threw them a retirement party; I flew in from Los Angeles to attend it. Instead of having my father pick me up from O’Hare, I rented a car, preferring to drive past the rows of never-ending corn, the advertisements for shopping centers, the all-you-can-eat buffets. I stopped at a convenience store near my house and picked up some beer and a bottle of champagne. The cashier stared at me pointedly.

  “Are you Premal Patel?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  She could have been anyone, any blond-haired, blue-eyed girl from my past, but then I stared at her name tag, the swell of her breasts, and suddenly, it was clear.

  “Alicia?”

  I remembered the way she had looked at me in class that morning when I’d told her I liked her hair. She looked older now, with swollen cheeks and a few lines etched into her skin. Still, I was nervous, remembering all the hours I’d spent obsessing over her. She asked me what I was doing in town and I told her. Then she asked me what I did for a living. I could have told her that, too. I could have told her I was a doctor, a surgeon, that I saved people’s lives. I could have made her feel small and insignificant, the way I had felt all those years. But I didn’t.

  “I work in health care,” I said, paying for my items and signing the receipt. “In California.”

  She smiled.

  “Well, it was good seeing you,” she said, watching me head out into the bright summer afternoon. “Take care.”

  * * *

  My parents’ house was exactly the same. It was late summer, and the days were getting shorter. I saw my mother’s suitcases piled on top of one another near the landing upstairs. They would be flying to London in a few days, and then to Mumbai, and then to Gujarat, where they would stay in a rented flat. I dropped my bag off in my room and freshened up in the bathroom. Then I took out one of the beers I had purchased and felt its warmth stream down my throat. I thought about the last time Deepak and I had drunk a beer together in my room, the night of his engagement party.

  Downstairs, I was too preoccupied with the uncles and aunties who had, over time, become like second parents to Deepak and me, to notice him in the backyard, playing with his kids—by then, they’d had another child named Hiral. I was still single, still childless, still the source of my parents’ anxiety. Deepika was drinking wine with me in the kitchen, teasing me about prospective brides, when her expression suddenly changed.

  “He talks about you,” she said, gravely.

  She looked pretty in a sleeveless peach dress, a string of pearls at her throat. Her hair was shorter now, no longer streaked with highlights. “He says things like, Premal used to say this, or Premal used to say that. He asks the kids what they want to be when they’re older. He asks them if they want to be a doctor like their Premal Kaka.”

  I was on my third glass of wine by then, but the news shattered the thin membrane of my buzz. “And what do they say?” I asked.

  She laughed, gazing out the window.

  “They say they want to be a businessman like their daddy.”

  I followed her gaze to the grassy knoll where Deepak was running around with a rubber ball, stopping frequently to bounce it over his children’s heads. There was a plastic swing set that looked brand new, a tire that hung from a tree. The sun was going to set soon, casting a pinkish hue across the sky. By this time, most of the guests had left, leaving behind paper plates smeared with red chili sauce and half-eaten samosas. My parents had gone for a walk. We were alone in the house. I poured her another glass of wine.

  “Oh, god. I think that’s my third.”

  “Who’s counting?” I said. />
  She laughed again, and I was reminded of the time in our living room when I had joked with Deepika about her name, and later, in the bathroom, when I’d seen her cry. She told me she didn’t really understand what went on between my brother and me, why we drifted apart, but it didn’t matter, anyway, because she was glad I was there.

  “I miss you,” she said. “I miss your sense of humor. We could use more of it around here.”

  “I miss being here, too,” I said. I poured myself another glass of wine and felt the membrane envelop me again, loosening my tongue, so I asked her.

  I asked her what I had been meaning to ask her all these years.

  “Do you remember that night of your engagement party?” I said. “Do you remember running into me in the bathroom?”

  She was silent.

  “You were crying,” I said.

  She nodded her head. “I remember it.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why were you crying?”

  Her eyes clouded. I offered her another glass of wine but she shook her head, moving her glass away. Then she changed her mind, pushing it toward me. I emptied the bottle. She took a sip from it and shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was practically a kid then.”

  “And?”

  “And I didn’t want to marry your brother,” she said, firmly.

  “Oh.”

  “Of course I love him now. We have a life together. It’s all worked out for the best; it always does.” She examined her glass before taking another sip. “Anyway, it was a long time ago.”

  I nodded, satisfied with her answer. Then I shook my head.

  “But why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you marry him? What made you change your mind? Your parents didn’t even want you to marry my brother. Everyone knew that.”

  She laughed.

  Then she told me that, just before I had walked in on her in the bathroom, she had been planning to leave. She’d told a friend to drive down from Michigan. They had it all planned out. She couldn’t bear the thought of confronting Deepak about it, and my parents had spent all that money on the party, so she was going to run away, disappear, change her phone number, her email address. She spoke rapidly, pausing to laugh at something or to catch her breath, taking a sip of her wine. And then it happened: I watched her lips moving and felt the strange compulsion to kiss them. To feel them. To know, once and for all, what my brother had known all those years.