by Pia Padukone
It isn’t fair to say that he has felt constantly abandoned, always alone. He had always been intensely loved as a Seth, a quintessential part of the strongest bond he thought he would ever feel, a bond that he felt tightly stretched like a rubber band before it snapped once his parents were washed away from him forever. With them went his entire family, or what he thought was his entire family until he learned about his birth parents when he ventured curiously into that bedside drawer on that fated day. He hadn’t thought he could feel more alone than when he had read those words, that he had been abandoned not once but twice by parents who, it appeared, couldn’t seem to hold on to him. But—and he’d had to remind himself of this daily until he’d read these pages—his form of Arun, his Gita, was not a figment of his imagination. He didn’t have to conjure her up, because she was right there next to him. But he knows that like Arun in the story, his Gita will not wait around forever. How can she? Sooner or later her frustration with him will boil over and she will be forced to turn down the heat and walk away from the mess. He will have left her with no other choice, and he will have no one to blame but himself for losing her, his fiery girl.
She lopes sleepily beside him now, pulling her carry-on bag down the long hallway. Her embers have died down during the long flight. At the entrance to immigration, they part ways, Karom moving toward the international passengers/visa holders line. This line is always longer, it smells stronger and it tries his patience.
This is one of his regrets: he’d been an American citizen his entire life, but when the tragedy in Poompuhar had struck, he’d renounced his status and applied fully for allegiance to India. At the time, it had seemed like a brave, romantic move, not to mention the fact that he couldn’t imagine feeling so terribly stripped away, so alienated from the horror that had happened on the beach that day. But now he carries an Indian passport and he realizes that carrying it doesn’t prove his loyalty to his family or his country of origin. It means lines, long lines, and disdainful looks of scrutiny when he arrives back on this end of any international trip. Gita has been urging him to re-renounce it, to see if the American Consulate and the country will accept him back, but like any station of bureaucracy, it is taking longer to get back than it did to be released.
A lump forms in the hollow of his throat when Gita and he part to join separate lines at the end of an international trip. It throbs as he watches Gita go through her own immigration gate. When they’d flown internationally for the first time years ago, she had told him that she was a sucker for that gate—after the stamping and peering and conjecturing was over, and her passport was handed back and the immigration officer told her, “Welcome home, Ms. Nilssen,” tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, and although she wasn’t particularly patriotic, these were the moments when she felt for the first time what it meant to be an American. Gita will be the first to collect their bags from the belt, while Karom deals with immigration officials, explaining his situation to them and then finally swallowing the lump completely upon entering baggage claim.
As they stand in line at the taxi stand, a gray gloominess surrounding the early morning, Karom pulls Gita close to him and buries his nose in her hair. He wants to hold on to her, the melancholy of immigration spilling out of him into the sidewalk where they stand waiting. Her slim arms wrap around his waist like vines.
The ride back into the city seems endless, even longer than the flight from Delhi. Karom’s breath catches, as it does each time, at the sight of the New York City skyline appearing in the distance. This is majesty, he thinks. Akin to the Taj Mahal, his love for this city rivals that of Shah Jahan for his wife. A low fog lies over the city like gauzy cobwebs woven among the very tops of the tallest buildings. Even from this distance, a hum appears to emanate from the island, pulling him back in, as if he is in the early-morning throes of trying to escape a dream.
She is his strength; that’s what Gita had told him. She would help him through this challenge of returning to the country that had over the years taken shape in his heart as a harrowing land. She would be by his side as together they traipsed the Golden Triangle, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur. It had all been dry, sand, heat: desert. It had been lizards and camels and dusty dogs in the dirt at the side of the road. That was the one condition Karom had maintained about the trip: that they stay inland and never meet the ocean.
Which is why it is ironic that they are returning to their home, an island surrounded on all sides by water, two flowing rivers and a creek to contain it. The only way to leave is to cross a bridge, tunnel under, board a boat or swim. His city holds him captive, away from the rest of the country, the rest of the world.
How could it all be over? The dust settling on everything they set down, the spiciness of lime soda, the calls to prayer that awakened them each morning in every city they visited. The sweet, pungent taste of mysterious fruit. The mangy mongrels who followed him right up until the door and then lay down on the doorstep, forgetting their allegiances to him as soon as they saw someone else emerge from a rickshaw laden with bags from the market. Is it over? Is he finally over his vow to never return, never forgive, never forget?
In a few weeks they will travel again, westward this time, to Lloyd and Malina’s wedding. They will get back on a plane and lose that feeling of homecoming. But right now he feels that limbo he enters when he travels from an overseas trip in a cab, that weightlessness he feels when he can see the city from afar. You see the skyline, you see the bridges, you see the water, you see the buildings, but your head and your senses and even your speech patterns are left behind you, either on the plane, wedged forgotten between two seats, or in a hotel or at the sites from where you came. It’s a strange feeling, this feeling of hanging, because you feel as if you don’t belong anywhere. Not to this place or that place. You’re suspended in time, hanging in this existence, and you’re not sure where you’re going or if you’re here or there. It’s as if you’re watching yourself arrive. He knows the feeling won’t subside until his cab fully passes onto the land on the other side of the bridge or the tunnel, when he opens and closes the doors with that gentle chunk and lowers his suitcase onto the sidewalk, where for a moment, for maybe the only time ever, he will trust it to rest there on its own while he pays the driver. Then it will grow fainter as he walks into his lobby wheeling his suitcase, feeling the click of his heels against the floor, and fainter still as his key slides into the lock and he stands on the threshold of his apartment, on the edge of the future with his back to the past. And it will only be when he takes that first step, when he lifts his suitcase up and over, that he’ll feel a gentle popping in his ears, as if he’s just descended levels in an aircraft, and that is when he will know for sure that he is home.
Lloyd
It is an intrepid move not having a rehearsal dinner. But skipping a rehearsal dinner means saving a couple thousand dollars. At the very heart of it, people know what to do. You walked down an aisle, hopefully without tripping, using whatever rhythm you have inside you to accompany the music without looking like a complete moron. You are serious, keeping your gaze on the appropriate person; there should be no turning of the head to smirk at friends and family, no smiling or giggling. No resurrection of inside jokes. You should stand there, focused, serious, eye-sure of all around you, and you will make your way to the front of the room, to the altar, to where everyone’s eyes will eventually rest and stand there in front of everyone and take your vows. Vows are to be repeated and they are smart enough to repeat words back that a man has just said to them moments before; they have listening and regurgitation skills. They have both been to college.
But Lloyd’s parents are incensed. They berate him again and again. “Your friends and family have flown a long way for this day. This rehearsal dinner is for them. If you wanted to cut financial corners,” they say, “this isn’t where to do it.” Lloyd is calm, for the first time in his life, calm about this decision. He stands behi
nd it, and Malina stands beside him, gripping the inside of his wrist, that soft, vulnerable part, as though to protect it from his father, whose own large blue vein pulses at the side of his neck, incredulous at his son’s poor planning.
Karom and Gita arrive at the vineyard inn at that moment, just as Lloyd’s father is getting warmed up. Lloyd takes this opportunity to excuse himself from the fracas and hug Karom tightly, whispering, “Get me out of here.”
Gita hands him a chilled bottle of wine she has purchased for herself and Karom to enjoy on their second-story veranda, along with two frosted glasses she has swiped from the adjoining bar, and whispers, “Go. Quickly.”
Lloyd grips the bottle of wine by the neck, beads of sweat already perspiring on the green glass, and Karom steers him by the elbow out to the gazebo on the far part of the grassy knoll where the wedding will take place the next afternoon. They will sit there for the better part of the afternoon, chatting as fat bumblebees hover at their knees and the sun casts long shadows across the neatly trimmed lawn.
Gita moves in to introduce herself to Lloyd’s parents and Malina, talking rapidly about the weather and the serene surroundings and whether there is anything she could do to help—she knows how to fold napkins into swans and tie intricate bows, and her calligraphy, though a bit rusty, has been prominently displayed on the outside of several wedding-invitation envelopes. Malina looks at her gratefully as she speaks, nodding her head, her eyes large with gratitude.
“Please,” she breathes. “You can absolutely help. We have gift bags to distribute.” And the two walk off, leaving Lloyd’s stunned parents on the porch of the inn.
Later, Gita watches Lloyd and Karom from the terrace of their room, warmed inside by the thought of Karom taking care of another who needs him so much right now. She feels flushed, delighted by that need, the urgency that someone else other than herself might need Karom and that Karom might be able to provide.
* * *
But now they are gone, both Lloyd and his bride. They have escaped in the early-morning hours, after the girls fell asleep in various parts of the bridal suite and Lloyd slipped away from his college buddies, who were already tottering backward on their heels, numbed by alcohol.
They have left a note, or Malina has, in her carefully slanted letters, that they have decided to get married on their own, where they are honeymooning, that they are sorry, and that everyone should go on with the party and the open bar and the dinner as though they were there. It’s been paid for; it shouldn’t go to waste and everyone has time off from work and has traveled so many miles. Please, enjoy yourselves, the note says.
At first, Karom guffaws. He doubles over in laughter wearing the voluminous hotel robe that, though plush, barely covers his shins. He leans his hand against the wall, holding himself upright, and laughs straight from his stomach, pushing out his diaphragm and enjoying the sensation of feeling heady. The note has been photocopied and slipped under guests’ doors and Gita is scarcely awake when Karom starts laughing. Bleary-eyed and ripe smelling from sex and sweat, she stumbles out of the bed toward where Karom barely stands, doubled over in laughter, and snatches the paper from his hand.
The night before, Gita had been drinking with the ladies in the bridal suite, where the bathtub had been filled with ice and splits of cava and frosted champagne flutes had been settled among it. But when the girls dropped off one by one, she politely excused herself, not feeling as if she had the background or the history to fall asleep in the chaise longue or drape herself across the bed as so many of Malina’s college friends were comfortably doing. Everyone was perfectly friendly, of course, but there was some protocol as to who you spent your wee morning hours chatting with, and Gita didn’t feel as though she deserved to be there, not having shared those embarrassing first days at college or those rat-trap teensy apartments in the Mission District with them. Karom was down at the bar convincing Lloyd to hold at least one glass of brown liquor in a tumbler for the evening so that his friends wouldn’t chastise him about not drinking heavily the night before he tied the knot.
“It’ll give an illusion,” Karom said. “And I guarantee that they won’t even notice that you’re not drinking it. Hold it, swirl it from time to time and then put it down somewhere.”
The boys from college, their friends, were all there in a tight horde, staying close to the mahogany bar while their wives and girlfriends and significant others sat up in their bedrooms or had a polite glass of bubbly with the bride-to-be before retiring to pay-per-view and nail filing in bed. And Karom was right. Lloyd sipped demurely at his one glass of Scotch all night and there were never offers to refill his glass, and no one berated him for not enjoying himself.
After some time, Lloyd leaned in to Karom. “I’m going to check on Malina,” he whispered.
“These guys are done,” Karom said quietly. “I’ll wrap up with them. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Lloyd set his untouched glass down on the heavy oak bar and walked quickly out of the room. At the doorjamb, he turned back to glance at the scene. The rest of his friends were still entangled in an argument over the greatest quarterback of all time, but Karom gave Lloyd a slight knowing smile before turning back to insert himself into the huddle.
Hours later, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, with the plane’s wing lights blinking assuredly in the black of the night, Lloyd and Malina are going backward in time, subtracting hours from the wedding time, moving against reality. With Malina’s heavy head curled up in the reclining chair of business class, Lloyd reaches for the in-flight phone. When he has flown in the past, this phone has always been an anomaly. What kind of a situation would necessitate using this? What emergency would arise that you would need to bleed dollars from your bank account with each ticking second that you were on it? What fool would fall for it? Birth or death? Medical malfunction? Terrorism? And now he realizes that it’s not an emergency that requires the use of this phone at all, but a revelation.
Everyone in the cabin is sleeping; the lights are dimmed and there are gentle snores emanating from a vestibule somewhere behind him. Each of the sleeping capsules are hooded enough that this call will be private, but at this point, as their plane barrels toward Bangkok, Lloyd realizes that this flight is the first one where he hasn’t imagined an engine failing as the plane gains miles or oxygen masks tumbling forth from the ceiling. As the plane took off, he had sat up in his pod and grabbed Malina’s soft hand in his, looking into her large brown doelike eyes, and leaned over and kissed her eyelids as she wept. She was crying as they took off, as they were soaring over the bay and the Golden Gate seemed like a pile of orange cinderblocks beneath them.
At first, he’d been shocked to see her tears, until he realized that he was crying, too. She looked surprised at first to see his tears, but she stopped crying long enough to ask, “Why you?”
“Because,” he said, “there’s no one in the world I would rather be doing this with.”
Malina nodded, fat drops clinging like dew to her eyelashes. “I wish we had done this in the first place. I wish we’d thought of it before.” He’d held her tight until the flight attendant had apologetically asked them to buckle up, as they were still ascending.
The phone feels heavy between his hands, but he dials without hesitation. The rings are international and seem more insistent and important than the ones on land; he remembers how the phone purred instead of rang when he studied abroad in London for a semester. And in an instant, he is on the other end.
“Unknown number. This is certainly fishy,” Karom says.
“Hi.”
“Where are you?”
“Somewhere over the Pacific. Malina’s passed out.”
“Are you calling me from one of those in-flight jobs?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. I’m touched. I don’t think anyone’s ever called me from a plane before.”
�
�You should be. This costs, like, half my honeymoon, so say something profound.”
“What the fuck?”
“Ha.”
“Are you guys okay?”
“More than okay. We’re going to be great.” There is a pause and Lloyd feels the plane bump over a pocket of air. “What about over there? What’s going on?”
“Well, since you ask, your parents are amidst a shit-fest. Gita and I have been with them all morning, making calls and figuring out logistics. Malina’s friends are dealing with her folks. We called the justice of the peace this morning to tell her the situation and that she’ll be paid. Pretty much your run-of-the-mill scene at an elopement. So what are you going to do when you get there?”
“Eat pad Thai. Get married. Ride elephants. Have sex. Relax. Sightsee. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“It does.”
“Hang on.” There is commotion on the other end of the line and then rhythmic crunching.
“Sorry. Your parents wanted to know who was on the phone. Gita’s got them under control. Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine. They’re just a little...tender right now.”
“Sorry I left you with them.”
“Please, they’re cake. Plus, you know Gita can handle almost anybody. You’re the one I’m worried about. You want to tell me what this is all about?”
“I think you know.”
“I do?”
“On some level.”
“Yeah...I do.” And just like that, it is in the air, in the already hundreds of miles between them, lingering there in space like a cloud or a wisp of smoke from a snuffed-out candle or the wish that came before it. It hangs there in the atmosphere suspended outside the plane, suspended in the hallway where Karom stands leaning against a maid’s cart, fingering the tiny soaps wrapped in plastic. Karom feels it pricking at the corners of his eyes. And then, just as quickly as it was there, it is gone. Lloyd feels it, too, but on his end like a giant cloud outside the window of the moving plane, following them until the plane reaches a higher altitude, until the cloud is left behind, until it’s just Lloyd in his seat with his bride next to him and lots of nameless passengers barreling forward into the sky along with him.