by Neel Patel
“Get in,” she said. “The water feels amazing.”
I watched her like a shark. She watched me back. Her hair was flaxen, fanned out like a jellyfish. Her eyes were liquid green. In the sparkling light she smiled at me.
“You’re high.”
“No, I’m not.” I giggled. “I’m not.”
“You are. Prove it.”
I undid my pants, sliding them down to my feet. I peeled off my T-shirt and jumped right in. The water was cold, freezing my spine and making my nipples shrink like raisins. Tara swam over to me immediately.
“You’re cute.”
She slipped her hands into my shorts, rubbing the tip of my cock. I was harder than hell. When she pulled away, there were little rivulets of mascara running down her cheeks.
“You could fuck me, you know,” she said, kissing my lips, my chin, the dark hair on my chest. Then she drifted away. She stepped out of the pool, water sluicing off her legs.
By the time I turned around she was gone.
* * *
That night, I drank two Jack and Cokes and watched a marathon of Mad Men on TV. I thought about my parents. They had emailed me from Australia, where my father had gone snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. My emails back to them were full of lies, stories about school, about a math exam I had taken and how I had gotten the highest grade—in reality I had missed the exam, and my math teacher, Mrs. Beaumont, had left three messages on my parents’ machine. On Sunday morning I slept through my alarm, skipping my shift at work, and at ten thirty Chloe called.
“You’re making a huge mistake.”
“What?”
“My sister—I know you’ve been seeing her.”
“So?”
“So she’s crazy.”
The light outside my room was blinding. I got out of bed.
“She lies, you know. One time, she told my parents she was teaching English abroad and then later we found out she was working at a diner in Illinois.” She paused. “And then there’s the other stuff.”
“What other stuff?”
I went downstairs. The kitchen was in disarray. There was a box of dried-up, half-eaten pizza on the stove.
“I’ll tell you later,” Chloe said.
“You’ll tell me now.”
“I’ll tell you in person. When can you meet?”
“What for?” I said, growing impatient. “What do you want from me, anyways? What’s wrong with you?”
* * *
The next day I looked out for Tara but there was no sign of her. I waited for her in the parking lot but she never came. I circled the IHOP and drove by her house and after stalling for twenty minutes I drove back home. I lit up a joint. Chloe called six times that evening. I need to talk to you. She left voicemails I deleted, sent text messages I ignored. She wrote emails with the subject heading “please read now.” I discarded each one. After a few days of this, I blocked her number altogether. I started drinking again, a few Jacks here and there; sometimes it was so much I couldn’t remember where I was. Once, I swallowed a handful of molly and woke up hours later in my parents’ garage. The phone rang and I answered it. It was Tara.
“Let’s hang.”
* * *
The first time we fucked it was raining: one of those cool autumn rains that soak through your skin. The streets were slick and glistening and the clouds were like clumps of steel wool. Tara was aggressive in bed.
“I like it this way,” she said. “And from behind.”
She visited me at work, planting herself in the back, reading thick yellow novels by Russian authors she loved. She wore the same three T-shirts with flared skirts. Her arms, long and thin, were covered in bracelets. She never took them off. I didn’t know what Tara did; she’d spent a year in college before declaring it a doomed enterprise, a waste of her intellect. Then she went crazy. I didn’t know about her past, about the mental wellness facility or why she was there, but then one day she took off her bracelets—gold, pink, silver, blue—and showed me the scars.
She said the first cut was scary in the way most good things seem scary at first—like diving off a cliff or a bridge. But the fear quickly changed into something else. Something she couldn’t describe. It had happened in college, during the spring of her freshman year, and her roommate had found her lying on the floor.
“My parents didn’t know what to do with me,” she said. “And I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
We became entwined like those trees in the forest that bind together to form one giant tree. I continued to skip school, a result of Tara’s exhortations, and the messages mounted on my parents’ machine. We had picnics at my house, feeding each other with our hands. We kissed for hours in the back row of foreign films. Sometimes we would get drunk and go to the park and play on the swing set and gaze up at the stars. Once, Tara showed up at my work wearing a trench coat.
“I’m naked underneath.”
We fucked in the backseat of my car. In the moonlight Tara’s raised scars looked like streaks of mother-of-pearl. She asked me to kiss them and I did.
“It feels the same,” she said, shivering. “It feels just like before.”
I told her I felt it, too. Then one evening, I was alone in the kitchen when I started thinking about Melissa and The Little Mermaid. I don’t know why. Maybe it was one of those things: one thought follows another, naturally. I wiped the image from my mind. I called Tara. Later that evening, we were drinking absinthe by the pool.
“What’s it like?” I said.
“What?”
“That place—the one where you used to live.”
“The loony bin?” She laughed. She was wearing a leather jacket and denim shorts. She was shivering. “It’s like summer camp,” she said. “Except that everyone’s crazy. And the counselors have Ph.D.s. And every morning you have to fill out these stupid questionnaires.” She lit a cigarette in her hands. “And no one writes to you. Your parents stop pretending you exist. They visit you every now and again but never ask you how you are.”
“My parents do that anyways,” I said. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It’s worse.” Tara shook her head. “It’s like being in a zoo. But it doesn’t matter, anyways, because I’m never going back.”
She walked over to where I was sitting and kissed me openly on the mouth. Then she sat on my lap. We stayed like that for a while, Tara and I, until the sky bled purple and orange and pink. Later that morning, I told her I loved her.
* * *
It was like that for a while: sex and talking, talking and sex. We never went to Tara’s house; instead she slept over at mine. I figured she was embarrassed about where she lived—once, Tara had asked me what my parents did for a living, and, when I told her my father was a cardiologist, she had made a snide remark. And then there was Chloe. She still emailed me from time to time. She called from private numbers. Once we saw her car parked outside my garage.
“And I’m the crazy one,” Tara said.
It was gone by morning. Tara made French toast with caramelized bananas and we ate them in my parents’ bed. Her dream was to study pastry in New York, open a bakery of her own. When she asked me what my dreams were I didn’t know what to say.
“A boy without a dream?” She began kissing me all over. “Now that’s the saddest thing I ever heard.”
* * *
Then one day, Tara disappeared. It was seven o’clock; we had planned to meet at the park. The sun was setting and the sky had turned the color of blood. I was sitting under a tree, watching a group of teenagers playing touch football near the swings, when I began to lose hope. I called Tara’s cell phone; there was no answer. I sent her a text message. There was no reply. The sun dipped behind the trees like bright molten lava. I smoked a cigarette and left.
I ate Cheerios in front of the TV all the next day and waited for Tara to call—she didn’t. I went to her house and she wasn’t there. I waited three more days and heard nothing. Then I drove to school
.
* * *
She was standing by her locker, a smile on her face. When she saw me approaching the smile quickly vanished.
“Where is she?” I said.
“Who?”
“Tara. Where did she go?”
She said nothing.
“Where, Chloe?”
She let her purse slip from her hands. “I called you—I called you about a million times. I sent you text messages. Emails. I thought maybe you were dead or something. You could have just told me to get lost.”
“I’ve been busy.”
She shook her head. “Well, you won’t be busy anymore. She’s gone, you know—Tara. You won’t be seeing her again.”
“What do you mean she’s gone? Where did she go?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Because I’m her friend, that’s why. I have a right to know.”
“Her friend.” Chloe laughed. “Tara doesn’t have friends. She doesn’t stick around long enough to make them.”
I could see it in her eyes: the smugness. I wondered what would happen if I punched her in the face. I remembered how she had snuck into my bedroom that night and done what she did. “You’re wasting your time,” Chloe said, packing up her things. “But I think you realize that by now.” She stood back and shook her hair and I caught a whiff of her bodywash or her shampoo. “She’s back in the hospital,” she said, giving me a look I would never forget. “She cut herself again.”
* * *
At the hospital, I was greeted by a short black woman sitting at an information desk lined with silver frames.
“I’m here to see Tara Evans.”
“Who?”
“Tara Evans. She’s on the psychiatric floor.”
She glanced at her computer. A family rushed by carrying silver balloons. I was reminded of the time my father took me to the hospital, seating me in the doctors’ lounge, handing me a stethoscope in hopes that I would become a doctor as well. I remembered the day we drove four hours to visit Ohio State University. I was only twelve at the time, but I had roamed the campus anyways, sipping coffee on the quad, and after dinner my father gave me my first taste of beer. The next morning, there was an application for the six-year medical program at Ohio State University sitting on my desk at home. I pinned it to my wall. I knew what was expected of me. I knew what he wanted. There was never any question of that.
A few minutes passed and the woman looked up at me with a frown.
“I’m afraid the patient is no longer here.”
“What?”
“She checked out this morning.”
“Where did she go?”
“She’s been transferred.”
“Transferred where?”
“She’s been transferred to Graves,” the woman said. “The mental wellness facility.”
* * *
For three days I sat by the pool, drinking cheap wine. I got fired from the IHOP. I called Tara’s cell phone about a million times. Then one day I got an email from her. It said that she was sorry, that she didn’t mean for it to happen, that she loved me and that if I loved her back I would find her—if I had the time.
It was all I needed to hear.
The facility was sixty miles away, in a town I had never seen. It was nicer than I had expected. The walls were made of glass and steel. A woman with sculpted blond hair told me to sign in—visiting hours were just beginning—then directed me to a waiting room out back. There were other visitors: women in business suits, grandmothers with their dogs, young girls wearing tank tops over name-brand jeans. They looked nothing like I had imagined. The facility, with its antiseptic gleam, looked nothing like I had imagined. And then I realized something: Tara’s family weren’t who I thought they were. I took a seat by the windows. I stretched out my legs. I glanced at the coffee table and picked up a magazine. The cover featured a pretty young girl standing in a field with a question mark floating above her head: “Do I belong?”
“No,” I whispered, turning the page. “You do not.”
* * *
Moments later, a woman in a white coat led us down a hall. My stomach began to turn. I thought about that night in my car, the dazed look on Tara’s face. I thought about Melissa, too. It had been years since it had happened, but the memory was still fresh in my mind. It was her parents who’d caught us. We were in Melissa’s basement, on a bed reserved for visitors, in a corner of the room we hadn’t thought they would look in. “Sex-play” is what they called it. This was what they explained to my parents that evening, sheepish yet calm, their smiles frozen beneath designer frames. They said it was perfectly natural: these things happen. But only I knew the truth. Only I knew what I had done to her. Years later, I could still hear her cries. I could still feel her rigid body beneath my frame. I realized that this was what Tara noticed when she saw me that first day at the IHOP, and the day after that, in the parking lot.
I realized we were the same.
The woman in the white coat opened the door and everyone filed into a room—mothers, daughters—everyone but me. I stood outside and waited. I shifted my feet. I swallowed the lump of coal that had lodged itself in my throat. I peered into the room. Tara was sitting with her arms folded across her chest. She was staring at the wall. I could almost hear her breathing. Earlier that morning, the secretary had told me that Tara was expecting my visit and that it was nice to see someone show some initiative for a change.
She never saw me leave. I never saw her again. By the time I reached home, the clouds were gray and the rain fell harder than I had ever felt it before, lashing my skin. I can think of one time afterward when it rained that hard. The time I saw Chloe. It was the Saturday after homecoming, and I was drunk at a bar. Chloe was with her friends. She spent the whole evening giving me weird looks from afar, until finally, just as I was leaving, she reached for my hand.
“Take me home.”
I did as I was told. By the time we reached Chloe’s house my pants were around my ankles and we were fucking in the backseat of my car, as if nothing had ever happened. Two days later, I got a letter in the mail. It was from the six-year medical program at Ohio State University. It was a letter of regret. I took it inside. I placed it on the stove. I poured myself a whiskey and went searching for a knife. Then I took the knife onto my parents’ patio and locked the door. For an hour I did nothing. It was not Chloe who saved me, or my neighbor, Mrs. Williams, but my parents, returning home from their vacation, prying the knife from my hands. ◆
an arrangement
I never wanted to marry Akhil. My mother found his picture on a website I had never heard of (and to which I unwittingly belonged). He was an anesthesiologist. He was a graduate of Yale. We were married in a small ceremony outside of Skokie, Illinois. On the day of our wedding, I wore my mother’s silk sari and her diamond-studded choker with rubies and pearls.
I didn’t know him very well. He was cute in a way. His arms were corded with muscle. His thick dark hair was flecked with gray. Sometimes he would do something—bite his lips, flex his arms—and I would want to rip off his clothes. But then the moment would pass. We made love sparingly, at night usually, with Akhil on top. It was a life, I guess.
We moved to Chicago, where Akhil started a practice in pain management and I got a job at a prestigious law firm downtown. We made friends, too. Sometimes I would pretend to like one of them—then go home at night and complain to Akhil:
“What a bitch.”
He never said a word. He didn’t say much at all, really. Once, I went shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue and spent half our mortgage on a pair of shoes. Afterward I tried hiding the bill. A month passed and then two and then one night we were at dinner with the chief of medical staff when our credit card was declined.
“That’s strange.”
He pulled out another one. Later, he checked the statement online.
“Looks like we never got a bill.”
The first time we tried to get pregnant, I went to CVS
and bought a package of Plan B.
“It’s your sperm,” I told him. “It’s not strong enough. You’re not a strong enough man.”
He made an appointment with the gynecologist. I canceled it. A woman? I didn’t want her anywhere near my parts.
“I don’t want her touching me there,” I said.
After a few months of this we put the baby on hold.
“It’s Akhil,” I told my parents, crying to them over the phone. “He won’t touch me anymore.”
* * *
It was like this for a while. I pushed his buttons on purpose. Then one evening, I came home to find a bassinet sitting in the corner of our living room.
“For when the baby arrives.”
I dropped my briefcase on the floor.
“Where did you find it?”
“At Macy’s, on my way back from work. I thought you would enjoy it.”
I stared at him.
“But you can’t even get me pregnant.”
He packed it away. I expected him to shout at me or to scream, but as usual he took the derision in stride, saying nothing at all. The next morning, we made love in our usual way: for twenty minutes, or until one of us got bored. Then he kissed me on the forehead and went straight to the gym.
* * *
I should have known there was someone else. I discovered it one evening after a party: a napkin fell out of his pocket containing a phone number written in bright red lipstick, next to a name. Celine. I put the napkin back into his pocket. I wanted him to have it. I don’t know why. All week long I waited for his betrayal: a whispered phone call, a canceled plan, the scent of another woman’s perfume. But nothing happened. Then one evening, I was tidying up in the bedroom when I found the napkin pressed into Akhil’s textbook, quietly preserved. The lipstick had smeared. But the number was still there. I went into the kitchen and dialed it.
“Is this Celine?”
She hesitated a moment before saying, “Yes.”
“Oh, hi,” I said. “This is Rupa—Rupa Varma.”
I poured myself a drink from the bar.