by Divya Sood
With love,
Ma and Baba
I had, at one time, taken everything I had ever written and shredded it away. But somehow I could never throw that letter away. That afternoon, standing alone in Anjali’s apartment in a soundless melancholy I cried. I would return someday. But when? How? To what end? With whom? I couldn’t do it alone, could I?
I wanted to write something no matter how trivial, no matter how meaningless it would be. I wiped my eyes and took the leather journal and smelled the cover. It was reminiscent of late night writings and sunrises watched as I scribbled words on napkins at random cafes. But that had been a long time ago. Ironically, when I had invested in a journal, I realized I had nothing to write. The pages stayed stark just as my soul stayed blank, devoid of heart, devoid of words.
I left the apartment knowing I would bring my journal back as blank as it was. I took the subway to the Starbucks on Astor. I ordered a Venti coffee and chose a table under the slanting glass windows. I sipped the coffee and opened my journal. I took a pen from my pocket and held it in the air above the paper, waiting for words, even empty words, to flow onto paper. Nothing came. I drank more coffee. Nothing.
I sat back and thought of Vanessa. I wondered what she was doing and whom she was with. I took out my cell phone. I pressed the top button to make the Eiffel Tower appear and then, realizing I had no calls or texts, put it back into the pocket of my jeans. I tapped my sandals on the floor, thinking of what I wanted to do. I wanted to see Vanessa. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to talk to someone. I took my phone out again. I scrolled through my phone book. I closed my phone again.
I looked through the glass. Outside, I saw what I always saw. People I did not know walking to destinations I did not know. I wished that I had to work that day. I was off until Thursday and I didn’t want to stay home, wanting Vanessa and having Anjali. I felt my phone vibrate. My heart beat harder and faster. I fumbled in my pocket and finally took it out.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Jess.”
“Hey what’s up, Anjali?”
“You feel like going out for drinks tonight?”
“Where?”
“Ish called and she asked if we’d like to go out with her and Katherine.”
I swallowed hard. “Sure.”
“Where are you?”
“Starbucks.”
“What are you doing?”
“Fantasizing about you.”
She laughed. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”
“Yeah well I thought it was better than saying I’m doing nothing. Which is what I’m doing. Nothing.”
“Have fun just be home by seven, okay?”
“Sure.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
I hung up and was relieved that I had plans for the evening even if they involved Ish. I didn’t want to be home alone with Anjali. I didn’t want Anjali to gallivant around New York City with Ish. And I didn’t want to wander alone. For all these reasons, I was happy that Anjali had arranged something. It was always she that arranged dinners and drinks. I don’t know if I was lazy or just not aware but I seldom took any initiative to get together with anyone. The ease with which she called people and arranged to get together sometimes annoyed and sometimes surprised me. But most times, I was merely grateful because if it weren’t for her, I would be nothing better than a hermit.
I thought about how the evening would go, whether Anjali would use the entire evening to talk about the unfinished engagement. I thought back to last winter when she had thrown a party at the apartment. The more she drank, the more insistent she had been in touching my arm, my face, finally kissing me. It was as if she was proving to everyone in the room that we had a solid relationship, no matter how convoluted.
Looking back, I don’t think Anjali was trying to prove our love to anyone else more than to me, more than to herself. And while I hadn’t deflected her advances, I remember I certainly hadn’t invited her touch either. I wished at that moment that I had been better about it, but instead of bolstering her belief, I had, ultimately destroyed it and, in doing so, destroyed her.
I had slept with a beautiful Brazilian woman that night. She was visiting from California and someone, I don’t remember who, had brought her to the party. What I noticed about her was her eyelashes, thick and long and flirtatious. I had opened a beer bottle for her and she had whispered to me in a thick, erotic accent that she found me irresistible. I remembered taking her to my room. I remembered her being a savage lover, a hungry lover. Most of all, I remembered Anjali’s face, the defeat in her eyes when she had opened my door the next morning to ask me if I wanted breakfast. I had expected her to yell or to at least give me a lecture. Instead, I watched her eyes as they welled with tears. In almost a whisper, she said, “No more. Aar paari na.” Then she quietly shut the door and left.
We never spoke of the incident thereafter and although time blurred some of it, I felt Anjali’s pain never left her but became buried under more trespasses on my part, more hurt, more disregard for who she was in my life.
I had brought many lovers into Anjali’s life. And at Astor Place that day, for the first time in all the years that I had, I felt uncomfortable. I was consumed with restlessness when I looked back. Tonight, I thought, I would let her win. I would let her have her way and if she insinuated we were engaged, I would smile and kiss the top of her head. I wouldn’t agree but I wouldn’t disagree either. I had promised to try and I would. And silence was the best I could do so I would offer that to Anjali.
My thoughts turned and I wondered if Vanessa was with a savage lover as I sat and sipped coffee. Not that it mattered. “You do your thing and I’ll do my thing,” she had said. But I didn’t have a thing. I felt as if I had nothing but efforts to grasp at something elusive. And whether that was Vanessa or Anjali, I didn’t know anymore. I felt invisible, like people walked through me to the other side but never saw me.
“The problem, Jasbir C. Banerjee,” I said aloud to a half empty coffee cup, “is that you have no conviction.”
After having said it, I wondered if it was true or just another bullshit sentence I had uttered, hoping that it would find meaning after I heard it. I decided I didn’t want to know.
I finished my coffee and decided I wanted to leave, empty journal or not. Before I left, I stood in line to use the bathroom. As I waited, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and, to my surprise I saw a face I recognized.
“Hey, Jess.”
“Hey Aldo!”
I hugged him long and hard.
“At least you didn’t forget your first boyfriend,” he said smiling.
I looked at him and he was still slightly too thin, his hair always begging for a haircut. What I remembered most about Aldo was that he smelled like Halston and it was a cologne that since I had known him had always made me close my eyes and feel safe.
“How are you?” he asked.
“I’m great. How are you?”
“I’m doing just fine. I live in Chicago now. I’m just visiting for the week.”
“Yeah? So how are things?”
He smiled and shrugged. The shrug was a gesture that defined Aldo. The shrug with either thumbs tucked into the front pockets of his jeans or the shrug with palms up, hands outstretched, arms bent at the elbows. Either way, Aldo owned the expression and it suited him, as if “I don’t know” were his mantra. And it was.
“Things are fine. What about you? Still into the women?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said without any hesitation, “I do. Her name’s Anjali. She’s sweet and kind and beautiful and I love her.”
I meant everything I said but I also felt I should get some award for saying it. As if Anjali should be hiding somewhere, should jump out and say, “Good job, Jess!” Nothing of the sort happened. But Aldo’s face contorted, formed a smile and was expressionless all in less than a m
inute. He looked at me as if he had a question stuck in his throat.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Just so strange that I arrive in New York, shower, come out for coffee and the first person I see is you. I thought of you this morning. And here you are.”
I looked into his clear blue eyes. Aldo had been, more than anything, the friend who had held me when I left him, his heart sinking into the ground way past his feet, past earth, into a place he could never reach to retrieve it again. And yet he never complained, was never bitter, never angry. Aldo was the kind of person I could call in the dead of night and expect him to be wherever I asked him to be by morning. His voice startled me from my thoughts.
“I always meant to ask you,” he said, “and I guess I might as well.”
“What’s that?” I asked although somewhere within me I knew what he wanted to know. And I knew what I would say.
“If you weren’t into women, would you have stayed with me?”
The answer was no. The answer was that as sweet as he had been, I had cheated on him with his best friend Bobby while Aldo was visiting his family in Chicago and before I had discovered Bobby’s sister, Julia. The answer was I had fallen out of love with him because he was plain and boring and I felt trapped with him. But Aldo was, despite everything, a simple man. And I would not take that away from him, even if the truth was that he had lost me because he was who he was.
“Yes, I mean if that weren’t the case, then I guess we’d be getting married right about now.”
I looked at his pale blue eyes and for an instant they became darker, gained another shade of blue. And then he relaxed, shrugged his shoulder and he was, once again Aldo with dirty blonde hair that needed cutting, pale skin that begged for a tan and blue eyes that were almost transparent.
“I still love you, Jess,” he said as he hugged me.
I let him hold me for a long time. The line to the bathroom extinguished itself and started again but we stood there. Finally, I pulled away from him and kissed him softly on his cheek.
“Be good, Aldo,” I said.
“You too,” he said.
I decided not to wait in line for the bathroom and left through the front entrance. I started thinking about those days so long past when everything had been orchestrated by events that had led me to destinations that I had not chosen. Except Bobby. Him I had chosen because I had been bored with Aldo. And yet even then, as I had snuck moments with Bobby for six months, I had noticed more his sister Julia and less Bobby. It was she who had told me, plainly, as if I should have known, “You spend more time looking at me than you do my brother.” It was Julia, ten years older than I was, who took from me my fears, my hesitations to let go of the easy things and the settlements that had become permanent because I refused to shake the their flimsy foundations.
She had been beautiful to me with her clean, flowing hair and dirty brown eyes. I had adored her dark skin, the way she said certain words like “suggeschun” and “Febuary.” I learned from her what it meant to desire a woman, how to make love to a woman and finally, how to let go of a woman whom I loved.
Julia was the first person who ever cared about the rhythms and desires of my body. Julia was the first person who had invested the time to make me come.
She had held me after, my body drenched with sweat, my heart flying somewhere above her bed, my mind scared to know the intensity of such pleasure, such vulnerability. Julia had whispered to me phrases throughout the night, things that I still repeated to myself at time when I was sleeping alone and no one was breathing next to me.
“My angel, it’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.”
I had looked into her dirty brown eyes, speckles of green and black spotting random places on her irises.
“Julia, I have never, never felt like that. And…I love you.”
She had held me to her. When I think back to that night, I realize that she had never said she loved me. She had always told me I was her angel with a broken wing. She had always touched me with grace and made love with patience. We had taken weekend trips to Cape Cod and Long Beach Island. And when I had moved into my dorm at NYU, she had helped me with all my boxes. She had nursed me when I had bronchitis. She had helped me study for finals and had listened to my written words, poetry and short fiction, essays and random thoughts alike.
Julia had whispered to me about how being honest with myself, allowing myself to fly would heal my broken wing. She had said that once I could fly, she would fly away. I used to wait by a fruit stand outside the ad agency where she worked and we would take the subway together back to the village. Those evenings I had already begged my roommate not to come back for the night so Julia and I could make love, endlessly, until dawn teased us with yet another day that came.
Julia had never promised me that she would be with me forever. She had never said she loved me. I had wanted her to and had thought she had because I loved her. And although the day she packed and left without as much as a note I tried to blame her heartlessness, I knew that she had never promised me anything except her presence and comfort and that she had given me, freely, with tenderness.
I had gotten a letter from her two months later, handwritten in scribbles with the handwriting of someone who one night feels guilty for having left a life behind and decides a letter will absolve that guilt. Her letter had said simply this, “My angel, I pray you find the one who can heal your broken wing. I did much before you, and when she asked for me I had to be with her, despite everything. With all our memories, Julia.”
I had felt cheated. I had felt as if she thought of me as a child, writing letters of what she already knew and hoped I would someday find. But as I had gone through my years at college, as I had met more women and lived more and fucked more, I realized Julia had never lied to me about how she felt. She had cared for me and nurtured me and taught me what pleased me. I also realized that Julia had taught me how to make love, she had never taught me what it was to love. I wondered if I would ever know. But even despite that one technicality, even as I thought back, I knew I would always think that Julia, with all our memories, was perfect.
I arrived at the apartment at 4:30 and showered. I decided to take a nap and finally, as I fell asleep, I thought of Julia in semi sweet dusk. I envisioned her coaxing my body to let go its reservations and its fears. I imagined her holding me as I came, stroking my fears away. I thought of Julia, as she might be now, eight years older, still full of grace and patience. I wondered if I could find her somewhere in Italy, coaxing a lost lover. I imagined them in a gondola on the river sharing all that Julia and I never shared. I thought of them sharing a life, something I desired with someone I was sure. But with whom? I shared my spaces with Anjali and Vanessa, nothing ascertained, everything as unsure as if I were alone. As I fell asleep, a slow sadness washed over me. I realized then that I hadn’t ever found a woman to mend my broken wing.
Chapter Ten
That night we ended up at a small booth at Kush lounge on Chrystie Street. I was admiring the carvings on the square, short legs of the table. Anjali was sitting beside me, holding my hand in a loose handshake. I squeezed her hand and she squeezed back. I sipped my strawberry martini and listened to Ish tell us of her travels to Kenya.
“Every year I go home to Nairobi,” she was saying, “see my parents, my grandparents, my great grandparents, my seven uncles and six aunts. And every year I pretend to be searching for the perfect man somewhere in Manhattan. Well this year, I came so close to telling them.”
“But you didn’t tell them,” I said. “You didn’t tell them shit.”
“Jess!” Anjali whispered. “What is the matter with you?”
Ish waved her hand, her freshly henna-infused hair shining red in the light.
“It’s all right. Jess is right. I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
This conversation took place every year. And every year while Ish went to Nairobi, Katherine would be waiting for her to come home, waiting for an email she
had sent or a phone call she may have had the privacy to make. Neither ever came.
Not that Ish and Katherine were by any means any less dysfunctional than the rest of us. I had personally fucked Katherine in Ish’s bed while Ish had been away to Nairobi last year. Katherine was a distinctly attractive woman, a tall woman who had soft, resilient skin and great posture. She looked bold and could get away with being quiet, almost too quiet most times, because her towering figure intimidated most people. Her almond eyes, chiseled nose and overly full lips gave her the distinction of looking like the image of a model on a billboard in Times Square. I had had no hesitations about sleeping with her because, honestly, it wasn’t just that I did not like Ish. I hated Ish.
“…So darlings there is Ish and there is Yashika, “Ish is a true life Manhattan-ite redefining the terms and conditions of life as we all are.”
Here, she waved her hand across the air.
“Yashika is the sweet and quiet Indian girl born in Nairobi, studied at Harvard to graduate at the top of her med school graduating class. She has nothing on her mind but studying and finding the ideal man. I keep Ish and Yashika very separate and far away from each other. But this time, I came close to letting the Ish out! But I didn’t. My therapist says I am a people pleaser so this is a hard place for me.”
In case I haven’t said it enough, I didn’t dislike Ish. I hated Ish.
As she spoke of her grandparents almost finding the photo in her wallet of her and Katherine kissing, I looked at Katherine. She caught my gaze and rolled her eyes at me. Why she didn’t leave Ish for the many women that hit on her constantly I did not know. Katherine never spoke much and even the night I had stayed with her, her voice was lost to her and I hadn’t even heard her come and had had to ask if she had. She had said yes and had been quiet once again.
Ish was still talking. I tried listening to her. I tried to care.
“…So they almost found the photo and I shouldn’t carry it around but Kat’s my baby. I have to have that photo with me because I love her so much. So they almost found it one day when I left my wallet on the windowsill but I grabbed it from my grandfather before he had a chance to look through anything.”