by Divya Sood
‘Oh dear,” Sally said in her usual quavering voice, “I am so sorry. I thought you would know.”
“Know what? Is she okay? What’s going on?”
There was silence at the other end.
“Is she okay?” I asked again this time more forcefully.
“She got into an accident night before last. She broke some ribs and her leg. She should have gotten home last night. But she may still be at the hospital. Oh dear, I don’t know what to say. I thought you knew. I can give you the number to the hospital if you’d like.”
“Yes, please.”
“Hold on, okay?”
I held for what seemed like an eternity. Sally came back on the line, read me the number and the extension to Anjali’s room and, after apologizing again for scaring me, finally hung up.
I saw my fingers shaking as I pushed the keys to match the number. I felt tears in my eyes, hot and stinging as if to say “You fucked up, Jess. You really fucked up.” I was glad Vanessa had gone downstairs for a drink in the middle of the afternoon. I had told her I’d meet her and that we’d get drunk and fuck and then go dancing because we could and there was nothing stopping us. It seemed so long ago that the conversation with Vanessa had taken place although it had been less than an hour ago. And in less than an hour, everything had changed.
I heard the phone ring. Once. Twice. It rang all of eight times and I hung up. I called Anjali’s cell.
“Hello?”
“Anjali?”
There was silence.
“Anjali, it’s Jess. What the fuck happened? Are you okay? Why didn’t you call me?”
“Fuck you, Jess.”
I chose to ignore her.
“Are you okay?”
“Maybe instead of lying to me and running off with some bitch you could have been here. Then you’d know how I was.”
“What…what are you talking about?”
“You really think I’d never find out? You lied to me. I want nothing from you, Jess. I give up. I give up trying to love you. What is it that you say? ‘Aar pari naa.’ I’m done.”
She hung up. I stared at the phone, the screen blinking at me as if to accuse me. I called back. She didn’t answer.
I had never known Anjali to not allow me to be there. She was quick to ask and I was the first person there for anything that happened. Calling me would have been the perfect way to get me back home. She knew that. Even before her accident, if she had called me, she could have evoked enough guilt in me to make me go home. But she hadn’t. And I knew that this time, Anjali was not going to pretend on my behalf. This time, perhaps she was truly through. But it couldn’t be. We were Jess and Anjali, Anjali and Jess. It couldn’t be, I convinced myself. It couldn’t be.
I threw my clothes into my suitcase.
“I’m coming, Anjali,” I said very quietly, “I’m coming home.”
Chapter Twenty-four
As we coasted back to New York, I didn’t think that Vanessa and I would talk. When I had told her I had to get back immediately, she had quietly and quickly packed her duffel bag and checked out. She hadn’t said much to me except to ask whether I wanted to use the bathroom or get some coffee before we started to drive. She had put our bags into the trunk slowly and then rolled down the top. But she had not spoken to me about the situation or how I felt about it or, for that matter, how she felt about it.
Once we crossed the bridge, I decided I had to talk to her. I could not stand the full silence and felt that even empty words would be better. Not that the words I chose to say were empty.
“I’m sorry that things didn’t work out like we thought. I had a great time though. I want us to keep seeing each other.”
“I lied to you,” she said.
“Lied to me?”
I did not know if I could handle any more emotional drama at that moment. I hoped she hadn’t lied to me about anything that mattered.
“I told you I lit incense so that people could notice me. Remember?”
“Yeah…”
“That’s not why I light jasmine. I light jasmine because Tara used to light jasmine incense on nights that I was with her. The entire room, the entire night smelled like jasmine and I fell in love with it. I light jasmine because I feel like she’s with me when I do.”
“That’s what we do though, isn’t it?”
Vanessa looked at me for a few seconds before she looked back at the road in front of us.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“We hold onto the best that was given to us. We leave lovers behind as if chapters in a book we have finished but we take a quote here and there. We all do that, Vanessa.”
“Is that your analogy?” she asked.
“It’s better than hula-hooping tigers and shit, don’t you think?”
“Okay smart ass, I’ll give you that.”
She wore a smile so faint, I kept staring at her mouth waiting for it to vanish altogether.
“When do our lives stop belonging to us, Vanessa?”
“When we start to love, Jess, is when we lose ourselves. Love changes you.”
“It’s easy talking to you,” I said, “about the past, about love. I don’t really understand all of it. And I’ve never been able to talk to anyone about it.”
“Maybe, princess, you never tried,” she said as if she knew it for a fact.
She was, of course, right. I had never held discussions with Anjali regarding our pasts or the meaning of love. I could say it never came up, but it did, and when it did, either she changed the topic or I did. As I thought of Anjali, my stomach churned. I imagined her in a hospital bed alone thinking of my lies and my betrayal. I felt consumed by a desire to make things right. I wanted everything to be the way it was when we were convenient lovers and yet the world was still in place. How we had started unraveling the past four years in less than a season I did not know. But I knew I had a lot to do with it. And maybe so did Tracy Chapman.
“Jess, I will leave him,” Vanessa said.
Her words were abrupt, clipped, rushed. Her eyes were focused on the road and I noticed that she was pressing harder on the accelerator as she spoke.
“Slow down, babe.”
She released some pressure and the car relaxed a bit.
“Jess I want to be with you. I want to risk again with you. And I want us to try. Just give me some time to figure it all out.”
“I guess I have no choice. Right now, I have to make sure Anjali’s okay. What we do after she gets well, I don’t know. I will leave. I just can’t right now. So I guess we’re both in the same place.”
“Except that you do love her. I say I love Danny. I do in a weird way. But not the way you love her. With me, I’m mostly scared of Danny walking into Papi’s house and telling him that he married me because I was afraid Papi would die if he didn’t. I’m afraid he’ll say, ‘Your daughter’s a fucking whore in New York who sleeps with women.’ And Papi could not take that. I know that. You love her, Jess. There is nothing holding you to Anjali. Unless you want to tell me you stay with her for her money. That means you’re FUBAR as far as I’m concerned but if that’s what it is then that’s what it is.”
“What the fuck is FUBAR, Vanessa?”
“Fucked up beyond all repair.”
“From where?”
“What, you never heard that before? You live under a fucking rock, Jess?”
“No, I’ve never heard that.”
“It’s a military thing. I thought everyone knew FUBAR. Anyway, back to your situation. Are you with her for her money?”
“No. No, I am not with her for her money.”
“Then you love her?”
“Not like I should.”
“Babe, shit or get off the pot for your sake and mostly for her sake. Let her live her life if she doesn’t have a chance with you. Or own up and be with her. Don’t fuck with her.”
“I know. I know.”
I didn’t need Vanessa telling me what I was thinking. I knew
I had to do something. But was there a rush? Not really. But then I had spent four years living with this woman and convincing myself that there was no rush. And I knew I could easily do it for another few.
“You do your thing and I’ll do my thing, right?” I said.
“Right,” Vanessa said. And then, softly, “It’s harder now. Because I am in love with you.”
I closed my eyes and let her words resonate inside me. How long had I waited to hear her say those words just as she had said them? And the funny part was, knowing about Danny and rushing home to Anjali, I believed with everything inside me that her words were true. There was no doubt in my mind. And I wanted my mind to stay there just for a minute, in that rare place we sometimes find that is free from doubt and full of hope.
I leaned on her shoulder and put my hand on her thigh. I thought back to the thunderstorms and wished we were back in bed. Specifically, I wished I could lay with her naked, arch my body to hover over her and then slide kisses over her entire body. I wanted her to undulate as I touched her gently with my fingers, more savagely with my tongue. I wondered when I would know Vanessa’s body again.
“Jess, for what it was, I liked Philly.”
“Me too.”
I settled back into the seat and felt tired all of a sudden. I wanted to close my eyes and lose myself somewhere other than where I was. I closed my eyes and then forced myself to open them knowing Vanessa’s rules about sleeping in the car. I tried to concentrate on the license plate in front of us. It was a New Mexico plate and I tried to create stories as to how it had ended up on the road somewhere between Philly and New York. I wondered what New Mexico looked like and remembered that I had seen a postcard that a patient had sent to the doctor’s office where I had worked. It seemed like such a long time ago that I had been there and yet it was less than three months in which things had changed as they had. My eyes closed again and again I opened them.
“Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“If you want to sleep, go to sleep, princess. I got you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve it.”
As I drifted to sleep I felt a sadness I hadn’t known for a long time. Vanessa was wrong. I deserved nothing. I had to make sure Anjali was okay. But I realized that, more than anything, I did not want this to be the last time that I saw Vanessa.
“Vanessa?”
“Yeah?”
“We’re still going to see each other, right?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“What do you want?” I asked.
“As little drama as possible which, at this point, is a stupid thing to ask for.”
I don’t know when I drifted off to sleep but I do know that Vanessa did not wake me. I know that when I awoke, it was because the car had stopped moving and I felt a slight jerk as Vanessa slammed the trunk shut. I looked around and my stomach started to somersault again. We were in front of Anjali’s building. I looked at Vanessa as she held my bag out to me. I wanted to cry. I looked into her eyes and I did not want her to leave me.
“Jess,” she said softly.
I hugged her. I held her. I hoped that I could impart to her what I felt and how much I wanted her.
“Jess, you should go upstairs,” she said.
I took my bag and walked towards the entrance. I turned around and watched her get into the driver’s side and pull her seatbelt across her body. I watched her run her fingers through her hair and then place her hands on the wheel. Before she put the car in drive, she looked at me. I held her gaze for as long as I could before I had to look away. When I looked back, she was gone.
In the air around me, there lingered her essence. For an instant I smelled the fragrance of peaches and tasted the sweetness of guava upon my tongue. But for all that she left behind, Vanessa took my heart with her. And I knew she would hold it for me until I was ready to claim it back.
Chapter Twenty-five
I took the elevator up and walked quickly to the apartment. I stopped outside the door and breathed. “Breathe in and out, Jess. One…two…” I told myself. I took conscious breaths that allowed me to focus on air. I slid the key in place and turned. I walked in as if I were walking into someone else’s life.
Anjali was lying on the couch, crutches resting against the coffee table. She had a slight bruise on her forehead and it made her look helpless. Across from her, there was a man in a white shirt and black slacks, his tie a mess of colors. As I walked in and shut the door, he stood up to greet me.
“Hello, you must be Anjali’s roommate. I’m Dr. Gulati but you can call me Abhay.”
“Hello,” I said. “You make house calls?”
He laughed slightly and I watched his movements, trying to place him in Anjali’s life.
“No, usually no. But Anjali and I did our residency together. She had just gotten out of medical school and I had just come here from abroad, so we studied together. We had lost touch and when I saw her at the hospital, I guess I found her again.”
“I guess so,” I said.
“Abhay, this is Jasbir,” Anjali said as she held her hand out towards me. It made me uncomfortable that she had called me Jasbir, a name reserved for times when people were estranged to me either because I did not know them or because I had lost them. I walked to her and sat at the edge of the couch. The leather felt unstable under me.
“Anjali,” I said, careful to respect her in front of this stranger. The least I could do was call her by the name she loved instead of corrupting it by saying “hey baby” or “hey babe,” because I thought it my birthright despite my great transgression. I reached towards her hair to push it back from her face and she pulled away.
“Jasbir,” she said.
I looked in her eyes and the sadness I saw made me look away. I had seen Anjali sad. But to know that this was probably the saddest I had seen her and that I had made her feel that way was something that made me feel worse than I had ever felt. I did, after all, have a conscience, didn’t I? It was becoming more and more difficult for me to tell.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
“Can you get me some water, Jasbir?”
I tried to ignore the fact that she was calling me “Jasbir.” I also tried to wish away Dr. Gulati. He remained. So did Anjali’s reserve.
“Sure, I’ll get you some water,” I said.
I walked to the kitchen and heard Anjali talking to Dr. Abhay Gulati. Something about him bothered me although he seemed nice enough and I should have been grateful that he had been there in my absence taking care of the small things for her. But something about him did not sit right with me. I went back into the living room and found them laughing at some joke that I was sure would have been obscure to me. I sat by Anjali as she drank her water in small sips, her fingers leaving an imprint on the condensation that had settled on the glass.
I looked from her to him. I studied him as if his appearance could tell me more about what was inside him. His hair was gelled back, the imprints from the comb still fresh in ridges that were stiffened to dryness. Why men with receding hairlines combed their hair back, I had never understood. His eyes were light, darker than Anjali’s but still green. His skin looked surprisingly soft, his complexion a rich hue of olive. As he smiled at his own jokes, I noticed the skin around his eyes had slight creases and his sideburns had a glint of silver buried within the black.
I studied his watch, a Mont Blanc, his clothes simple but tasteful except for the multi-colored tie. He wasn’t fat but he wasn’t thin either and there was definitely the swell of a beer gut under all his expensive clothing. His shoes were not shined and this bothered me immensely. I always believe that unpolished shoes revealed deceit. I felt that anyone who was genuinely dressing to please himself would never forget to polish his shoes. Anyone who was dressing to gain the admiration and trust of others wouldn’t remember that his shoes were part of the ensemble. Dr. A
bhay Gulati’s shoes were worn and unpolished and had definitely been neglected.
“What do you think, Jasbir?” he asked.
For a moment, I didn’t even realize that he was talking to me.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“Well I was telling Anjali that I could arrange for a nurse to come and take care of her. She insists that it is not needed but it is no trouble.”
“I will take care of her, Dr. Gulati,” I said.
“Well it’s a 24 hour thing, really. For the first four weeks it is crucial that she doesn’t put any pressure on her ribs or on her foot.”
“I said I will take care of her, Abhay.”
The transition from his title to his name was easy. I didn’t like him. I didn’t like the way he spoke to me and I didn’t like the way that he looked at Anjali.
“Very well, then, I am going to take off,” he said as he raised his hand and pretended to imitate a plane flying in the air.
“Bye, Abhay and thank you,” Anjali said.
I was too glad to walk him to the door and nod as he walked out. He stopped and turned to face me.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said and as soon as he turned around I closed the door.
I walked to Anjali and sat by her side. His cologne lingered in the heavy air that surrounded us. It was musky and dense.
“Anjali,” I said gently. “That’s what you want me to call you, right?”
“I don’t want you to call me anything, Jasbir. I don’t want you to do anything or say anything. I just don’t want it.”
“Anjali, please don’t do this. I love you, jaan. Tell me what happened, who this clown is, what’s going on.”
“This clown,” she said sternly, “is the person who was here and helped me through this. He is an old friend and I don’t want you saying a damn thing about him because you weren’t half the friend he was.”
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said. “If you’d called me, I would have come home. I could have done that, baby.”
“‘Jaan’ and ‘baby’ my fucking ass, Jess. What should I have done? Called you and said ‘Hey, if you get a minute between fucks, can you hook me up with a doctor because I’m hurt? You can’t fix this. You can’t fucking fix this.”