by Akhil Sharma
The festival was held in the Edison First Aid Squad’s square blue-and-white building. A children’s dance troupe performed in red dresses so stiff with gold thread that the girls appeared to hobble as they moved about the center of the concrete floor. A balding comedian in oxblood shoes and a white suit performed. Light folding tables along one wall were precariously laden with large pots, pans, and trays of food. Gopal stood in a corner with several men who had retired from AT&T and, slightly drunk, he improvised on jokes he had read in 1,001 Polish Jokes. The Poles became Sikhs, but the rest remained the same. He was laughing and feeling proud that he could so easily become the center of attention, but he felt lonely at the thought that when the food was served, the men at his side would drift away to join their families and he would be alone. After listening to talk of someone’s marriage, he began thinking about Mrs. Shaw. The men were clustered together, and the women conversed separately. They will go home and make love and not talk, Gopal thought. Then he felt sad and frightened. To make amends for his guilt at not bringing Mrs. Shaw along, he told a bearded man with yellow teeth, “These Sikhs aren’t so bad. They are the smartest ones in India, and no one can match a Sikh for courage.” Then Gopal felt dazed and ready to leave.
WHEN GOPAL PULLED into his driveway, it was late afternoon. His head felt oddly still, as it always did when alcohol started wearing off, but Gopal knew that he was drunk enough to do something foolish. He parked and walked down the road to Mrs. Shaw’s. He wondered if she would be in. Pale tulips bloomed in a thin, uneven row in front of her house. The sight of them made him hopeful.
Mrs. Shaw opened the door before he could knock. For a moment Gopal did not say anything. She was wearing a denim skirt and a sleeveless white shirt. She smiled at him. Gopal spoke solemnly and from far off. “I love you,” he said to her for the first time. “I am sorry I didn’t invite you to the fair.” He waited a moment for his statement to sink in and for her to respond with a similar endearment. When she did not, he repeated, “I love you.”
Then she said, “Thank you,” and told him not to worry about the fair. She invited him in. Gopal was confused and flustered by her reticence. He began feeling awkward about his confession. They kissed briefly, and then Gopal went home.
The next night, as they sat together watching TV in his living room, Mrs. Shaw suddenly turned to Gopal and said, “You really do love me, don’t you?” Although Gopal had expected the question, he was momentarily disconcerted by it, because it made him wonder what love was and whether he was capable of it. But he did not think that this was the time to quibble over semantics. After being silent long enough to suggest that he was struggling with his vulnerability, Gopal said yes and waited for Mrs. Shaw’s response. Again she did not confess her love. She kissed his forehead tenderly. This show of sentiment made Gopal angry, but he said nothing. He was glad, though, when Mrs. Shaw left that night.
The next day Gopal waited for Mrs. Shaw to return home from work. He had decided that the time had come for the next step in their relationship. As soon as he saw her struggle through her doorway, hugging sacks of groceries, Gopal phoned. He stood on the steps to his house, with the extension cord trailing over one shoulder, and looked at her house and at her rusted and exhausted-looking station wagon, which he had begun to associate strongly and warmly with the broad sweep of Mrs. Shaw’s life. Gopal nearly said “I missed you” when she picked up the phone, but he became embarrassed and asked, “How was your day?”
“Fine,” she said, and Gopal imagined her moving about the kitchen, putting away whatever she had bought, placing the teakettle on the stove, and sorting her mail on the kitchen table. This image of domesticity and independence moved him deeply. “There’s a guidance counselor who is dying of cancer,” she said, “and his friends are having a party for him, and they put up a sign saying ‘RSVP with your money now! Henry can’t wait for the party!’ ” Gopal and Mrs. Shaw laughed.
“Let’s do something,” he said.
“What?”
Gopal had not thought this part out. He wanted to do something romantic that would last until bedtime, so that he could pressure her to spend the night. “Would you like to have dinner?”
“Sure,” she said. Gopal was pleased. He had gone to a liquor store a few days earlier and bought wine, just in case he had an opportunity to get Mrs. Shaw drunk and get her to fall asleep beside him.
Gopal plied Mrs. Shaw with wine as they ate the linguine he had cooked. They sat in the kitchen, but he had turned off the fluorescent lights and lit a candle. By the third glass Gopal was feeling very brave; he placed his hand on her inner thigh.
“My mother and father,” Mrs. Shaw said halfway through the meal, pointing at him with her fork and speaking with the deliberateness of the drunk, “convinced me that people are not meant to live together for long periods of time.” She was speaking in response to Gopal’s hint earlier that only over time and through living together could people get to know each other properly. “If you know someone that well, you are bound to be disappointed.”
“Maybe that’s because you haven’t met the right person,” Gopal answered, feeling awkward for saying something that could be considered arrogant when he was trying to appear vulnerable.
“I don’t think there is a right person. Not for me. To fall in love I think you need a certain suspension of disbelief, which I don’t think I am capable of.”
Gopal wondered whether Mrs. Shaw believed what she was saying or was trying not to hurt his feelings by revealing that she couldn’t love him. He stopped eating.
Mrs. Shaw stared at him. She put her fork down and said, “I love you. I love how you care for me and how gentle you are.”
Gopal smiled. Perhaps, he thought, the first part of her statement had been a preface to a confession that he mattered so much that she was willing to make an exception for him. “I love you too,” Gopal said. “I love how funny and smart and honest you are. You are very beautiful.” He leaned over slightly to suggest that he wanted to kiss her, but Mrs. Shaw did not respond.
Her face was stiff. “I love you,” she said again, and Gopal became nervous. “But I am not in love with you.” She stopped and stared at Gopal.
Gopal felt confused. “What’s the difference?”
“When you are in love, you never think about yourself, because you love the other person so completely. I’ve lived too long to think anyone is that perfect.” Gopal still didn’t understand the distinction, but he was too embarrassed to ask more. It was only fair, a part of him thought, that God would punish him this way for driving away his wife and child. How could anyone love him?
Mrs. Shaw took his hands in hers. “I think we should take a little break from each other, so we don’t get confused. Being with you, I’m getting confused too. We should see other people.”
“Oh.” Gopal’s chest hurt despite his understanding of the justice of what was happening.
“I don’t want to hide anything. I love you. I truly love you. You are the kindest lover I’ve ever had.”
“Oh.”
For a week after this Gopal observed that Mrs. Shaw did not bring another man to her house. He went to the Sunday board meeting of the cultural association, where he regaled the members with jokes from Reader’s Digest. He taught his first Hindi class to children at the temple. He took his car to be serviced. Gopal did all these things. He ate. He slept. He even made love to Mrs. Shaw once, and until she asked him to leave, he thought everything was all right again.
Then, one night, Gopal was awakened at a little after three by a car pulling out of Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. It is just a friend, he thought, standing by his bedroom window and watching the Toyota move down the road. Gopal tried falling asleep again, but he could not, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. His mind was blank, but sleep did not come.
I will not call her, Gopal thought in the morning. And as he was dialing her, he thought he would hang up before all the numbers had been pressed. He h
eard the receiver being lifted on the other side and Mrs. Shaw saying “Hello.” He did not say anything. “Don’t do this, Gopal,” she said softly. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Hi,” Gopal whispered, wanting very much to hurt her. He leaned his head against the kitchen wall. His face twitched as he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be that way. I love you. I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s why I told you.”
“I know.”
“All right?”
“Yes.” They were silent for a long time. Then Gopal hung up. He wondered if she would call back.
FOR THE NEXT FEW WEEKS Gopal tried to spend as little time as possible in his house. He read the morning papers in the library, and then had lunch at a diner, and then went back to the library. On Sundays he spent all day at the mall. His anger at Mrs. Shaw soon disappeared, because he thought that the blame for her leaving lay with him. Gopal continued, however, to avoid home, because he did not want to experience the jealousy that would keep him awake all night. Only if he arrived late enough and tired enough could he fall asleep. In the evening Gopal either went to the temple and helped at the seven o’clock service or visited one of his new acquaintances. But over the weeks he exhausted the kindheartedness of his acquaintances and had a disagreement with one man’s wife, and he was forced to return home.
The first few evenings he spent at home Gopal thought he would have to flee his house in despair. He slept awkwardly, waking at the barest rustle outside his window, thinking that a car was pulling out of Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. The days were easier than the nights, especially when Mrs. Shaw was away at work. Gopal would sleep a few hours at night and then nap during the day, but this left him exhausted and dizzy. In the afternoon he liked to sit on the steps and read the paper, pausing occasionally to look at her house. He liked the sun sliding up its walls. Sometimes he was sitting outside when she drove home from work. Mrs. Shaw waved to him once or twice, but he did not respond, not because he was angry but because he felt himself become so still at the sight of her that he could neither wave nor smile.
A month and a half after they separated, Gopal still could not sleep at night if he thought there were two cars in Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. Once, after a series of sleepless nights, he was up until three watching a dark shape behind Mrs. Shaw’s station wagon. He waited by his bedroom window, paralyzed with fear and hope, for a car to pass in front of her house and strike the shape with its headlights. After a long time in which no car went by, Gopal decided to check for himself.
He started across his lawn crouched over and running. The air was warm and smelled of jasmine, and Gopal was so tired he thought he might spill to the ground. After a few steps he stopped and straightened up. The sky was clear, and there were so many stars that Gopal felt as if he were in his village in India. The houses along the street were dark and drawn in on themselves. Even in India, he thought, late at night the houses look like sleeping faces. He remembered how surprised he had been by the pitched roofs of American houses when he had first come here, and how this had made him yearn to return to India, where he could sleep on the roof. He started across the lawn again. Gopal walked slowly, and he felt as if he were crossing a great distance.
The station wagon stood battered and alone, smelling faintly of gasoline and the day’s heat. Gopal leaned against its hood. The station wagon was so old that the odometer had gone all the way around. Like me, he thought, and like Helen, too. This is who we are, he thought—dusty, corroded, and dented from our voyages, with our unflagging hearts rattling on inside. We are made who we are by the dust and corrosion and dents and unflagging hearts. Why should we need anything else to fall in love? he wondered. We learn and change and get better. He leaned against the car for a minute or two. Fireflies swung flickering in the breeze. Then he walked home.
Gopal woke early and showered and shaved and made breakfast. He brushed his teeth after eating and felt his cheeks to see whether he should shave again, this time against the grain. At nine he crossed his lawn and rang Mrs. Shaw’s doorbell. He had to ring it several times before he heard her footsteps. When she opened the door and saw him, Mrs. Shaw drew back as if she were afraid. Gopal felt sad that she could think he might hurt her. “May I come in?” he asked. She stared at him. He saw mascara stains beneath her eyes and silver strands mingled with her red hair. He thought he had never seen a woman as beautiful or as gallant.
SURROUNDED BY SLEEP
One August afternoon, when Ajay was ten years old, his elder brother, Birju, dove into a pool and struck his head on the cement bottom. For three minutes, he lay there unconscious. Two boys continued to swim, kicking and splashing, until finally Birju was spotted below them. Water had entered through his nose and mouth. It had filled his stomach. His lungs had collapsed. By the time he was pulled out, he could no longer think, talk, chew, or roll over in his sleep.
Ajay’s family had moved from India to Queens, New York, two years earlier. The accident occurred during the boys’ summer vacation, on a visit with their aunt and uncle in Arlington, Virginia. After the accident, Ajay’s mother came to Arlington, where she waited to see if Birju would recover. At the hospital, she told the doctors and nurses that her son had been accepted into the Bronx High School of Science, in the hope that by highlighting his intelligence she would move them to make a greater effort on his behalf. Within a few weeks of the accident, the insurance company said that Birju should be transferred to a less expensive care facility, a long-term one. But only a few of these were any good, and those were full, and Ajay’s mother refused to move Birju until a space opened in one of them. So she remained in Arlington, and Ajay stayed, too, and his father visited from Queens on the weekends when he wasn’t working. Ajay was enrolled at the local public school and in September he started fifth grade.
Before the accident, Ajay had never prayed much. In India, he and his brother used to go with their mother to the temple every Tuesday night, but that was mostly because there was a good dosa restaurant nearby. In America, his family went to a temple only on important holy days and birthdays. But shortly after Ajay’s mother came to Arlington, she moved into the room that he and his brother had shared during the summer and made an altar in a corner. She threw an old flowered sheet over a cardboard box that had once held a television. On top, she put a clay lamp, an incense-stick holder, and postcards depicting various gods. There was also a postcard of Mahatma Gandhi. She explained to Ajay that God could take any form; the picture of Mahatma Gandhi was there because he had appeared to her in a dream after the accident and told her that Birju would recover and become a surgeon. Now she and Ajay prayed for at least half an hour before the altar every morning and night.
At first, she prayed with absolute humility. “Whatever you do will be good because you are doing it,” she murmured to postcards of Ram and Shivaji, daubing their lips with water and rice. Mahatma Gandhi got only water, because he did not like to eat. As weeks passed and Birju did not recover in time to go to the Bronx High School of Science for the first day of classes, his mother began doing things that called attention to her piety. She sometimes held the prayer lamp until it blistered her palms. Instead of kneeling before the altar, she lay facedown. She fasted twice a week. Her attempts to sway God were not so different from Ajay’s performing somersaults to amuse his aunt, and they made God seem human to Ajay.
One morning, as Ajay knelt before the altar, he traced an Om, a cross, and a Star of David into the pile of the carpet. Beneath these, he traced an S, for Superman, inside an upside-down triangle. His mother came up beside him.
“What are you praying for?” she asked. She had her hat on, a thick gray knitted one that a man might wear. The tracings went against the weave of the carpet and were darker than the surrounding nap. Pretending to examine them, Ajay leaned forward and put his hand over the S. His mother did not mind the Christian and Jewish symbols—they were for commonly recognized gods, after all—but she could not tolerate his praying to Superman. She’
d caught him doing so once, several weeks earlier, and had become very angry, as if Ajay’s faith in Superman made her faith in Ram ridiculous. “Right in front of God,” she had said several times.
Ajay, in his nervousness, spoke the truth. “I’m asking God to give me a hundred percent on the math test.”
His mother was silent for a moment.
“What if God says you can have the math grade but then Birju will have to be sick a little while longer?” she asked.
Ajay kept quiet. He could hear cars on the road outside. He knew that his mother wanted to bewail her misfortune before God so that God would feel guilty. He looked at the postcard of Mahatma Gandhi. It was a black-and-white photo of him walking down a city street with an enormous crowd trailing behind him. Ajay thought of how, before the accident, Birju had been so modest that he would not leave the bathroom until he was fully dressed. Now he had rashes on his penis from the catheter that carried his urine into a translucent bag hanging from the guardrail of his bed.
His mother asked again, “Would you say, ‘Let him be sick a little while longer’?”
“Are you going to tell me the story about Uncle Naveen again?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t I? When I was sick, as a girl, your uncle walked seven times around the temple and asked God to let him fail his exams just as long as I got better.”