Love Story #1 to 14

by Annie Zaidi

  I wished he would get a job. Whatever he used to do, why didn’t he go back to it? But I didn’t want to ask him directly. I decided to ask her, when she and I were alone. But that didn’t happen for a few weeks.

  She began to spend more and more time outside the house. She left for work earlier, saying she wanted to beat the traffic. If I woke up early, she would be in the kitchen, mumbling to herself about how she could hardly hear herself think. Suddenly, she also decided to join the gym that was in the basement of our building. She would come back home at eight, make herself a cup of tea, then pick up her gym things, and run off again.

  He would keep trying to persuade her to wait, not to swallow her tea in such a rush, to enjoy the evening breeze outside, in the balcony. He would hold out a biscuit, like she was a toddler and he an indulgent grandfather, coaxing her to eat something before she rushed off to chase a lizard or something stupid like that. But she always shook her head and said, you aren’t supposed to eat much before a workout.

  He looked so silly, holding out a biscuit, smiling like a puppy trying to wheedle some affection out of a stranger. It was pathetic. I wasn’t sure which of them I was madder at.

  He was stiff and alert as long as she was in the house. He loved being around her, though; I could see that. But he almost physically expanded when she stepped out. And he acted like he was in charge of the house now. He brought home a new nameplate one day, with all our names engraved on it, his own came last. She didn’t say a word when he showed it off, and it annoyed me so much that I snapped at him, telling him I didn’t like it at all.

  Then one day, he went out and got himself insured. We were the beneficiaries. Me and her. He didn’t tell her at once. He took me aside first and showed me the papers. Then he told me he did it so that if anything were to happen to him, our future was secure, mine and hers. I watched him put it away inside the locker in her cupboard, and did not remind him that we did fine without him for six years. That he should worry about what he would do, if something happened to her.

  I suppose he was counting on me to relay the message to her about his life insurance policy. I didn’t. So he left the papers lying on the dining table one night. She saw them. He sat in his usual place, on the sofa, and watched her slyly as she looked over the papers.

  She swore softly under her breath. Then she suddenly stood up and swore loudly. Over and over, she said, bastard, bastard, he has ruined my life.

  When I asked what the matter was, she pushed the papers towards me and pointed to something. I read through and saw that the policy was bought on a plan that directly deducted a certain amount of money from his bank account every six months.

  I didn’t understand what she was so angry about. Then I looked at his face and saw how he looked like a frightened child, like a guilty dog who had been pissing on the sofa. Then I remembered. It was still a joint account. She had not bothered to get a new bank account after he left. He hadn’t put any money in it for the last six years. But he went out and bought an expensive policy in his name, using her money.

  She was screaming, the words tripping over one another so she hardly made any sense. She said, this is typical, typical, typical. Then she broke off suddenly and went into her bedroom, leaving me in that awful silence. I could hear his uneven breathing. From the other room came sounds of her rummaging in her almirah.

  I went into her bedroom. She was bent over a file. Her head was in her hands. I looked at it when she went to the bathroom – it was the first time she slammed a door shut – and found bank statements and property papers. That is how I found out that the house belonged to him. And I knew now that she would have thrown him out weeks ago, if only the house was not in his name.

  It came as a shock. I hadn’t thought about our house in that way. As a question of who gets to throw who out. But now I saw. He left us. The house was his. He was back. The house was still his. And he couldn’t be made to leave. I looked at the papers again. His name was boldly, curvily set down, and the date. He had bought the house fifteen years ago.

  When she emerged from the bathroom, she told me to look at the papers carefully. She said I needed to know these things. Then she sat down heavily and said she didn’t know what she was saying. I was not to worry, she said, and she went to sleep without any dinner.

  I never saw her cook again. The maid who did the dishes was asked to cook lunch and dinner. I wondered if he was upset. He didn’t show any anger. Maybe he didn’t feel any. The house was his, and he could always make her leave if he wanted to. Sometimes I wondered why he didn’t.

  But it seemed as if he really did want her around. This was new, because I did not remember him smiling much at her. Six years ago, I remember him smiling at me. Not at her. Not in the mornings, as he began his rushed routine of going to work. Not when he came back from office. I did not remember him trying to feed her. He bought things for me, of course. Toys, T-shirts. He had probably given her money to go out and buy what she needed. Now, he started bringing flowers. They were not very expensive. I guessed that he walked down to the market near the bus stop while she was at the gym. He would get a handful of gerberas, or narcissus. Once or twice, he even bought orchids.

  She would mutter something about how he should have put them in a vase with water and a pinch of salt. But she never said thank you, or how lovely, or anything like that.

  One day, I decided to wake up in time to make her a cup of bed tea. When she woke up and came into the kitchen, we could talk alone. I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to talk about. But I felt like I would explode if the atmosphere in the house didn’t change.

  I set the alarm for five-thirty in the morning and when it rang, I padded out of my room and found she was up already. She was standing near the sofa, folding a blanket. And she wouldn’t look at me, although she must have known I was standing there.

  I went to sit on the sofa and pulled the blanket out of her hands. She sat down beside me. She was silent until I asked if she would like some tea. She nodded.

  I didn’t ask any questions, after all. I didn’t know how to begin. I was old enough to know that if she had been sleeping on the sofa all this time, she didn’t want to share his bed. And that was okay, I suppose. She wasn’t in love with him. I knew that. What was the point of making her explain?

  He, on the other hand, was trying to draw me into his little plans for wooing her back. When I returned from college, he would ask me to sit beside him. He would ask about school, then correct himself, laugh at how I was a college student not a kid. You’ll be a registered voter next thing I know, he’d say.

  He would look at objects in the house and ask where this or that thing came from. Who bought it, and how nice. He would talk about how refined her tastes were, always had been. How she had made this house more beautiful than he had thought possible. It had cost a whole lot, of course. They had broken down two walls to convert one of the three bedrooms into an extension of the living room. He was opposed to it at first, because what if they had more kids and needed that extra bedroom? But she had always wanted a long, roomy living room. And he finally gave in. It was the right decision, he now said, and asked me if I didn’t agree.

  I said I agreed. Then he went on about dark, thick curtains. He had protested, but she was right. He always slept beautifully in the bedroom. Besides, thick drapes helped to keep the dust out. He was allergic to dust and, in another house – and here he paused, not telling me any details, but letting me sense that there had been another house, with another woman, who had different tastes – there had been light, lacy curtains that had looked really nice, but he didn’t sleep well. Not well at all.

  He said it was important for a house to be just right, so that it could pull you back into its embrace each time you stepped out. Because, if it didn’t, you began to feel homeless. Like a bit of straw in a storm. Or like dust. No matter how many houses you live in, you don’t feel at home until you make a home. That was the main thing, he said. And this place, this
was home.

  I felt like he wanted me to worm it out of him, to demand explanations about where this other house was. What were these other people with whom he had not been able to make a home? So one day, I asked.

  He looked coyly at me, displaying an embarrassment I wasn’t sure he felt. He asked if she hadn’t told me yet. I said, no, she never said a word about him. His eyes filled with sudden tears then, and he kept saying what a good woman she was. Such a beautiful woman! Inside-out beautiful. But he said nothing about those other houses with other women, those houses that had failed him.

  He now took to following her about the house. I often caught him looking at her, looking her up and down. The gym wasn’t doing much for her figure. Her hips still stuck out prominently, and there was no ignoring them when she put on tight track pants. I saw him looking at her chest, and if she could see his lust, she gave no sign of acknowledgment. If it bothered her, she didn’t complain. Not in front of me, anyway.

  It annoyed me. To think this was her husband! That he should be looking at her like a starved dog. Again and again, I would think of her messy hair, the imprint of the cushion design on her cheek, her hurried folding of the blankets at five in the morning to hide from me her sofa nights. Again, I would think of the way she said she loved me, that I must not think about not being a love-child.

  She patted my head often. If she caught me looking at her, she would stare into my eyes as if looking for a sign. As if I could show her the way out of this mess.

  For the six years that he was gone, I had not been very happy. I had resisted people, and got sick of things very quickly. I didn’t like being around her too long, but I also didn’t like it when she was not around. It was a mish-mash of discontent, and I was at home in it.

  I have no memory of my feelings up until the day he left. I remembered events, not feelings. I don’t even remember the word ‘love’. It never occurred to me that she was, or wasn’t, in love, with him, or with me. Things just were as they were. We lived here in this house. That’s all I remember.

  But once he came back, I saw she had never been happy with him. She had been content enough to be a wife. And she was furious when he left. But those six years did something, something that took her towards happiness. Not ecstatic happiness. Not raining sunshine from her lips. But still, happiness. I hadn’t even noticed until she slipped into unhappiness all over again, and made pitiful attempts to escape.

  Twice a week, she would be late coming back from work. Thrice a week, she would leave earlier than she had to. Maybe he noticed too. He never asked me about her work, but he seemed to develop a religious side. He began to pray.

  Every evening, he lit a diya, covered his head with a hanky, and sang devotional stuff. On Sunday mornings, he went to the gurdwara. He brought back karha-prasad in a leaf-bowl. She couldn’t say no, because it was from the gurdwara. But she complained bitterly, saying it took three days of gymming to work off one bite of that stuff.

  He would wait patiently, holding the bowl, and after she fell silent, he would feed her one spoonful of the ghee-soaked halwa, then another. At first, she would take the spoon from his hands and eat it herself. In a few weeks, she began to lean forward and eat from the spoon he held out. I suspect his hands shook.

  It made me warm to him. I hadn’t been ecstatic at his coming back, but there was something comforting about him being there, standing in the balcony, bringing back flowers. Sometimes he brought a small potted plant instead. I watched him tend the plants. I watched the cloying hunger in his eyes as he watched her, the way he thrilled when she allowed the slightest physical contact – passing a dish at the dining table, brushing past him on her way to the washing machine. She barely noticed. He was just in her way. I saw the way he put himself in her way, so that she would touch him even if she clicked her tongue with impatience.

  I spent more time in the house. Not with him, really. Just in the house. Perhaps it was not even because of him. I wasn’t talking much to anybody. Not to my gang from college. I hadn’t even told my friends that he was back. They still thought I lived alone with her, and they were careful not to bring him up. I just didn’t want questions. I didn’t want any of them coming home either, so I stopped going over to their houses.

  One evening, I went down to the gym. He had sent me. He kept saying over and over that she had been at the gym ten minutes longer than usual, perhaps she was ill or needed something. I told him, no. That if she needed help, someone would have told us by now. Everyone knew where everyone lived. But he kept saying, she shouldn’t be overdoing it, she hasn’t even eaten yet, and so on.

  It made me mad to hear him and it made me mad to think that she was a hard-hearted, unforgiving, mercenary woman. It was all because he didn’t have a job any longer. Hadn’t she been anxious to hold onto him six years ago? Hadn’t she looked for him desperately, filing police reports and whatnot? And now, she won’t even say good morning to him.

  I stomped into the basement. But she wasn’t in the gym. The instructor said she hadn’t been working out today. I started to leave, but then I looked at the opposite end of the room, where the shower rooms were. A figure was slumped on the ground near the door, against the wall. I recognized the red shirt and froze. Then I ran.

  She was bunched up on the floor. I touched her and her head jerked up. There were messy little rivulets of tears on her face, the sides of her nose. But she stood up quietly and came home with me.

  Eight months after his return, they had the row. I woke up hearing voices. I heard enough to know that they were talking about the house. He was saying he had a right to it. She was saying they had a deal. They had both invested in it, with the understanding that if either one left the other, it would mean leaving the house as well. He said he had paid most of the debt. She said, nonsense! She was still paying the instalments. His voice got louder. He accused her of trying to destroy him. I heard her shushing him. He said that if she was applying the rule to him, she must apply it to herself too. She said, alright then, because the house wasn’t worth the pretence of happiness. Then I heard him saying something in a voice so tremulous the words were incomprehensible. She shushed him again.

  They must have spoken in whispers after that because I didn’t hear any more, and then I fell asleep again. It was past nine when I woke up, and found her still asleep on the sofa. I shook her awake and asked if she didn’t have to go to work. Or was she ill?

  She drew me into her arms and we lay together on the sofa for a while. I don’t know why, but I started crying. She must have felt the teardrops slide from my eyes onto her neck. I got a grip on myself, and then I said that the sofa was pretty comfortable. It was softer than my bed. I felt her face move into the contours of a smile.

  Later that day, she went to the police station. She took me along. We sat on a bench in the corridor leading to the ACP’s office. It all seemed familiar. I had been here before. The first time we were here was nearly seven years ago. About a week after he left, when she was still hoping to get him back. At night, she wouldn’t put the safety chain on the door. Just in case he returned and didn’t want to ring the doorbell, so he could let himself in quietly with his key. I remember the day she told me I might have to skip school. She got me dressed up in an ankle-length skirt, put on a cotton saree herself, and headed to the police station. Neither of us had been to one before.

  She cried throughout. I remember the station had smelt of piss and garbage. But nobody paid us much attention until a very brown officer came up and spoke to her. He must have had a name – it was written on a badge on his uniform shirt, in fact – but I just thought of him as the brown officer. His hair was brown, eyes were brown, uniform was sort of brown. His face was an even dark brown, including his upper lip and chin, and it seemed to melt into the pale, khaki-brown uniform. When he spoke, his voice reminded me of rich, dark chocolate.

  The brown officer had been an inspector then, and he had led us to his desk, and asked what was wrong. She said her h
usband was missing. The officer had looked at her a long time, into her eyes, before asking any questions. Had her husband said something? He had said he was leaving, she admitted. But he hadn’t said where, or when he would be back? No. But he had disappeared. Even if that wasn’t the legal definition. Even so. She had a right to know, didn’t she? She was a wife with a missing husband, and she wanted to file a report. She had cried very hard.

  The brown officer had reached across the table then, and given her a hanky. He had pushed a covered glass of water towards her. I remember that clearly.

  We went back one more time. No, I remember now. We had gone to meet the brown officer, but not to the police station. It was at India Coffee House. She had picked me up directly from school, and we took a taxi. She had sat at a corner table on the terrace of the coffee house, and was tapping her feet nervously. She was in a sleeveless blouse that day. I had never seen her wear one before.

  I knew the meeting was about him, the husband who was gone for over two months, but she had let me order a lot more than I could eat. Cold coffee with ice cream and chocolate sauce; a dosa, cutlets. She said it was a treat day, because she had found a job. The brown officer arrived late, still in his uniform. He had slipped a white envelope across the table. She had opened it, taken out a photograph, looked at it, nodded a couple of times and then slipped it back into the envelope. The brown officer had asked for black coffee with cream on the side. Neither of them spoke much. She grew weepy at one point. He didn’t offer her any hankies. I had been preoccupied with my cold coffee and was already too full to touch the cutlets. The officer finished them for me. I remember that he had paid, had insisted on paying.

  I remember, she had gone out often in those first few months, telling me she was going to the police station to see if any news had turned up. There wasn’t any news and I stopped expecting any. Because I assumed this, I also assumed that she, too, had stopped going to the police station to check. She never mentioned the visits.