No Other World
Page 25
Much later that night, Kiran, lying awake in the room he was sharing with Preeti and Sheila, his bed just inches from theirs, would think how strange it felt. Even as small children he and Preeti had always had separate bedrooms at home. There was the odd vacation here or there, the last being Myrtle Beach, 1991, but aside from that Kiran had no experience sharing a room with his sister. In the dim light of the bedside lamp Sheila insisted remain lit, he would look over at them. Preeti and Sheila were curled into one another. Preeti had finally wiped off the makeup she persisted in wearing even in the hospital room. Her face was soft, slack.
Asleep, everyone was vulnerable—all breath and beating heart. Asleep, everyone was a child. Whatever armor protected them during the day was shed. Kiran thought of his own armor, the walls he’d erected, the way he’d betrayed and repeatedly pushed his family away. And yet they’d all come. Even his cousin-brothers abroad had made calls and sent cards. A couple even threatened to travel, though they didn’t follow through. Still, one way or another they were all represented, every last minkey.
As they were finishing their room service, Sheila turned cranky, clinging to her mother and crying into her shoulder. “There, there,” Preeti said, patting Sheila’s back with one hand and trying to finish her food with another, but Sheila’s wails only intensified. Preeti couldn’t blame her. She’d been cooped up for so many days and no doubt missing her father and her life back in Mississippi.
“I know,” Preeti said. “I know what will make you feel better. How about we play . . .” She paused dramatically. Sheila’s eyes widened, waiting for her mother to finish the sentence. “. . . musical chairs!” Sheila squealed and clapped her hands, her eyes still wet from crying. How easy it was to turn her desperation into delight! She hopped down from her mother’s lap and toddled over to a wooden chair, struggling to drag it from the dinette set to the empty space in the center of the room. Preeti popped up from her chair, repositioning it near Sheila’s, and Kiran followed suit.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to play,” Shanti said to Kiran. She looked at him pointedly. “Your injuries. You’re still so fragile.”
“It’s musical chairs,” Kiran said, “not tackle football.”
“Kiran,” his mother pleaded.
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll be careful.” Ameera had died. Kiran himself had almost died. He’d been given another chance. He was going to do it all right this time. He wasn’t going to sit anything out.
Shanti sighed.
“I’ll do the music,” Nishit said. He’d already sunk into the small couch and had no intention of moving. He started whistling a romantic Kishore Kumar song he knew none of his children would recognize, but after a couple of bars Shanti looked over at him, once she’d caught the melody, and flashed him a smile. Her hair was cut short, as it had been for many years, now dyed a chestnut brown light enough that she was sometimes mistaken for Hispanic. He remembered when she’d first cut it, not long after Prabhu returned to India. He knew how close he’d come to losing her that year. Since then, how often had he told her he loved her? Not often enough, not nearly enough. He watched her chasing her granddaughter around the chairs, looking so joyful. He had not done everything right, he knew that. He was so young when he came to America, younger than Kiran was now, and he knew no one. He’d had to find his own way. But Nishit believed he had done his best, and look, here they all were; they had come together when it really mattered. As a father, as a husband, was there more he should want?
They played several rounds. Not wanting anyone else to lose, Shanti was always the first one out. “Oh, I’m no good at this,” she’d say, flopping happily on the couch with whistling Nishit. They made sure that Sheila always won, but for second place Kiran and Preeti fought fiercely, Preeti tucking her hair behind her ear, Kiran trying unsuccessfully to leverage his injuries for sympathy. All the while Sheila shrieked and laughed—leaping, skipping, dancing, even as her eyes never left the chairs.
It was a game they all knew. Round and round and round you go. Where you’ll stop, nobody knows. Now you’re in someone else’s chair. The music starts, the music stops. Chairs disappear. Before you know it, the chair you thought was beneath you isn’t. You’re out. Someone wins. Someone loses. Eventually, it all starts again.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Nat Jacks, agent and friend, for your enduring faith and for being so superb at all the stuff I stink at.
Thank you to Rakesh Satyal for believing in this book when it was only a page long.
Thank you to my editor, Terry Karten, for asking all the right questions, and for gently but firmly guiding this book toward the best version it could be. And thank you to Jillian Verrillo and all the other wonderful folks at HarperCollins.
Thank you to Susan Morehouse for being the other member of our Writing Group of Two. You helped nurture and shape this book at every stage; it simply wouldn’t exist without you.
Thank you to the other readers of various drafts of this book for providing valuable feedback and needed encouragement and support: Janet Iafrate, Mel Gilles, and BFF extraordinaire Erin Brooks Worley.
The son of a librarian, I grew up in libraries and consider them to be sacred spaces and librarians themselves to be protectors and brave warriors. Much of this book was written in libraries. Thank you to the David A. Howe Library in Wellsville, New York; the Lovett and Chestnut Hill branches of the Free Library of Philadelphia; and the Grand County Public Library in Moab, Utah.
Thank you to the canyons and creeks and sunsets and creatures—human and otherwise—of Moab, Utah, for providing perspective and that crucial last bit of heat to help this book finish baking. I am especially grateful to Mike, Wendy, and Sugar Newman; Mathew Gross; and again Mel Gilles.
Thank you to the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Philadelphia and to all the independent booksellers across the country for carrying the torch.
Thank you to Monday Night Sangha.
Thank you to Kimona, whose canine brain likely will never comprehend just how much she’s helped me and how much she is a part of this book.
Thank you to Kunj Mehta, Nalini Mehta, Nimish Mehta, Kim Cross, and to my nephew and niece, Jay and Mia (great sources of joy!), and to all of my uncles and aunts and cousins and their little ones who are such a big part of my life. I couldn’t ask for a better family.
Thank you to the Lambda Literary Foundation, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and the San Diego Multicultural LGBT Literary Foundation for all your fierce advocacy for queer writers and writers of color. Keep fighting the good fight.
Thank you to my students at the University of the Arts, and to my colleagues, especially Elise Juska and Zach Savich.
Thank you to Michael Sledge and Brian Leung for encouragement and support.
Thank you to Jane Hirshfield for your amazing work and for kind permission to use your remarkable poem. You are an inspiration in the truest sense.
Thank you to George Saunders for superhero levels of mentorship and generosity, and for providing a shining example again and again.
And thank you to Robert Bingham for being my everything and more.
About the Author
Rahul Mehta’s debut short story collection, Quarantine, won a Lambda Literary Award and the Asian American Literary Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Sun, New Stories from the South, the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, Marie Claire India, and other publications. An Out magazine “Out 100” honoree, he lives in Philadelphia with his partner and their dog, and teaches creative writing at the University of the Arts.
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Also by Rahul Mehta
Quarantine
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, lo
cales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
no other world. Copyright © 2017 by Rahul Mehta. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
first edition
Cover design by Milan Bozic • Cover illustration by Liana Finck
Epigraph from The October Palace by Jane Hirshfield. © 1994 by Jane Hirshfield. Courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mehta, Rahul, author.
Title: No other world : a novel / Rahul Mehta.
Description: First edition. | NewYork : Harper, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016032306| ISBN 9780062020468 (hardback) | ISBN
9780062199119 (ebook)
Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / General.
Classification: LCC PS3613.E4258 N6 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016032306
Digital Edition FEBUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780062199119
Print ISBN: 9780062020468
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