by Anita Desai
Still driven by resolve, he turns into Elm Street and jogs on past silent houses with rhododendrons screening their picture windows, under dense trees where wind chimes and hammocks dangle in the still air, and out onto Oak Street. His toes stub into his shoes, his ankles ache with the weight thrown on them, pain shoots up his leg muscles. He clenches his fists, and his teeth, and jogs on, hoping the barking dog will not break free of his chain to the dog-house, and that cars that roar their warning into his ears will swerve in time.
Sweat pours from under his hair onto his cheeks and runs down his chin. The heat of the still morning has a sullenness about it, the sparkle it had had earlier has dulled. He is slowing down. He is much slower now, tiring. But he will jog and jog—like Rod, like all those others; he has seen their contorted faces, their closed eyes, their shut expressions as they struggle to leave behind the town, the suburbs, the shopping malls, the parking lots, struggle to free themselves and find, through endeavour most primitive, through strain and suffering, that open space, that unfettered vacuum where the undiscovered America still lies—
Opening his eyes, Arun looks around wildly to see if he has arrived. Just in time, for he is about to run into the low-dipping branches of forest trees that crowd the road along its upward slope, casting shadows like nets in the way of the unwary. It is not where Arun has meant to end. Lifting his feet heavily out of the dust, he plods on, and his shoulders are hunched now, his head is sinking lower. He must go further, further, and leave the trees behind, the smothering wilderness of them.
Cars are flashing by, dangerously close, forbiddingly silent and fast. He observes them with a kind of desperate appeal, willing one to stop and give him a ride, convey him quickly and efficiently to a given destination. Not one so much as slows down, the drivers clearly assured by his jogger's outfit that he has none.
Arun is dizzied by their passage; he gives his head a shake that sends beads of perspiration flying, and looks down at his feet pounding along the strip of dirt beside the road. Feet: he has never been so aware of their plodding inefficiency, their crippling shortcomings of design. He watches them come down in the dirt, lift up and boringly repeat their rudimentary action from which they seem unable to proceed or improvise, all the while aware of the chromium-centred wheels that flash past with mocking ease and smoothness, blowing insolent fumes back into his face.
The cars speed away like metal darts aimed into space by missile launchers in the towns they leave behind. Up at the top of the road, where it meets the interstate highway, they pause, then part as each makes its decisive movement towards its chosen destination. All along the highway there will be signs, shelter, food, gas stations, motorists' aid call boxes, Howard Johnson motels—everything for the convenience of motorists, the owners of the dream machines. Their passage will be easy, their destinations infinite. It is they, not the earthbound joggers, who are descended directly from the covered waggons and the trusty horses, who are the inheritors of the pioneer's dream of the endlessly postponed and endlessly golden West. They alone can challenge the space and the desolation, pit their steel against the wilderness and the vacuum, and triumph by rolling over it and laying it in the dust—contemptuously. In their sealed chambers, the drivers display their identities, their histories and their faiths in their windows for everyone to see and, with sacred charms dangling all about them, laugh as they plunge on, reckless.
The jogger only pretends. The jogger cannot even begin to compete. The jogger is overtaken and obsolete.
Arun stumbles to a halt at the top of the road, and sinks down on a dusty bank. A driver comes down on his horn in alarm, lets out a toot of warning, then whirls away. He is left sitting blinded by the dust and his own perspiration, nursing his knees and groaning at the thought of making his way back.
WHEN he limps into the Pattons' driveway, he finds Mr Patton has just returned from work. He is getting out of his car, heaving himself out clumsily, holding a briefcase in one hand and a paper bag from the Foodmart in the other. 'Hi, Red,' he says to Arun. 'Here, will you hold this while I lock up?'
Arun puts out his hand and dumbly receives the bag damp from the seeping blood of whatever carcass Mr Patton has chosen to bring home tonight for the fire that will soon crackle its flames on the patio and send its smoke spiralling in at the open windows of the rooms where Melanie hides, where Mrs Patton bustles, where Arun will seek shelter.
Mr Patton locks up the car, emerges from the garage. They walk round the house to the kitchen door together. He asks, 'Where's everybody? Sitting on their butts in front of the TV? Doesn't anyone in this house do any work? That lawn could do with some cutting. Where's Rod?'
'He must be out jogging, Mr Patton,' Arun tells him, uncertain if this is an activity that Mr Patton approves of or not.
'Jogging, huh? Jogging. That boy spends so much time getting into shape he hasn't time left over to do anything with it.'
Mr Patton sounds tired, irate. Arun is wary and follows him into the kitchen where he puts the bag down on the table so he can leave quickly.
Mrs Patton, who has indeed been sunk deep into the cushions of the sofa, watching Dallas on television, struggles to her feet and appears, blinking. 'Oh dear,' she says, 'the freezer is full to the top with chops. I don't know that I want any more.'
Mr Patton ignores her. He is getting a can of beer out of the refrigerator. Opening it with a sharp jerk of his thumb, he demands, 'Where are the kids? Are they going to be in for dinner tonight? What have they been doing all day? Are they doing any work around here?'
Mrs Patton begins hurriedly to put away the chops. As she busies herself, she says, 'You know Rod's in training for the football team, Chuck. It's what you wanted him to do yourself—'
Arun knows when to leave a family scene: it is a skill he has polished and perfected since his childhood. He sidles out of the room and has his foot on the stairs when he hears them starting on Melanie.
'And Melanie? What's she up to? What's she in training for, huh?'
ARUN needs a wash but Melanie has taken the cassette player into the bathroom with her and shut the door. The sounds of the saxophone and trumpets and a lead singer in distress are pounding upon the door, hammering it with all its fists. But the door stays shut, a slit of light beneath it. In between songs, Arun can hear, through his open door, water furiously rushing.
When she comes out, stumbling across the landing blindly, he looks up to see her passing the door, perspiration beading her clammy face. She can scarcely drag the cassette player along. Going into her room, she slams the door. He thinks he hears her crying but it could be the singer, in agony.
ROD is lying on his bed, amongst toy animals, music albums, comic books and dirty socks. He is bicycling his legs vigorously around in a giddily whirling motion that is however perfectly steady and rhythmic. His hands support his back and his face is contorted and inflamed.
Arun stands at the door, waiting till Rod's legs slow down and come to a halt. Then he says, with a slight cough, 'Uh, Melanie is sick, I think.'
Rod lowers his legs onto the bed. He lies there waiting for the blood to recede from his head, breathing heavily and evenly. 'That kid,' he grunts at last, 'just poisons herself. All that candy she eats. Won't eat a thing but candy. Anybody'd be sick.' He gives a snort that is both derisive and amused. 'Wants to turn herself into a slim chick. Ha!'
'By—eating candy?' Arun ventures, unconvinced.
'Yeah, and sicking it up—sicking it up!' Rod sits up abruptly, swinging his great legs onto the floor and planting his feet squarely on the boards. He bends down to pick at a nail. 'Man, she's nuts, that kid, she's nuts,' he mutters. 'That's all these girls are good for, y'know. Not like guys. Too lazy to get off their butts and go jogging or play a good hard ball game. So they've got to sick it up.' He straightens himself and sticks a finger into his mouth and wiggles it graphically. 'Can you beat that? Who'd want to be sick?' He gives his head a shake, then rises to his feet, straddles his legs and begins to
swing his arms as rapidly as he had done with his legs.
Arun gets out of the way, quickly: one can't tell what is more dangerous in this country, the pursuit of health or of sickness.
Twenty-four
IN the morning, he finds Melanie seated at the kitchen table, her chin lowered to her chest while her mother talks to her.
'Daddy thinks you ought to go outdoors and play games, Melanie,' Mrs Patton says as she cooks eggs. 'You have such a bad colour. You're not sick, are you, dear?'
Melanie does not raise her chin or answer. Arun, finding it is too late to retreat, tries to pour himself some milk and cereal as quietly and unobtrusively as he can. He sits down to eat it, painfully aware of the crunch and crackle, wondering if he should grasp the moment and tell Mrs Patton that Melanie is sick all the time, that Melanie spends her days vomiting in the bathroom. Melanie's face across the table looks like blotting paper that has soaked up as much water as it can hold: it is blotchy and discoloured; it sags. Does Mrs Patton not see?
Mrs Patton brings the saucepan of eggs across to the table. She starts spooning it out onto Melanie's plate, saying, 'Just plain scrambled eggs, dear, they'll do you good—' when Melanie violently pushes the plate away, gets to her feet and begins to cry.
'Why, Melanie, dear!'
'I hate scrambled eggs! Why don't you ask me what I want? Why can't you make me what I want? What do you think we all are—garbage bags you keep stuffing and stuffing?'
'Melanie!' Mrs Patton is scandalised. 'All I'm doing is asking you to eat a little scrambled egg—'
'I won't eat anything you cook. You can give it to the cat. Give it to him!' She points dramatically at Arun. 'I'm not going to eat any of that poison. Everything you cook is—poison!' she howls, and blunders out of the room, leaving her mother white with amazement.
Arun sits frozen in his chair: it does not seem right to continue with his breakfast but, after a moment, Mrs Patton gives a little shaken laugh and says, 'Poison! Did you hear that? What's gotten into her? What can she mean? My family is just so strange. Now you'd never say that, Ahroon. You know it's nothing of the sort.'
He has no alternative then but to eat.
A LITTLE later she is jiggling the car keys. 'Ahroon,' she calls up the stairs. 'It's shopping time!'
He comes out on the landing and holds onto the banister, looking down at her gravely. 'Mrs Patton,' he says, 'I think we should finish the food in the freezer first.'
She stares at him in astonishment. 'Finish the food in the freezer?' she repeats. 'What an idea! Whyever should we do that? What would we do in an emergency? Come on, off we go,' she sings, rattling the keys more loudly, in a manner undeniably peremptory.
The white Honda Civic carries them smoothly over the trail of tar that lies melting in the blaze of the summer sun. The suburban houses with their screened porches on which old men sit dozing, their yards mown by tirelessly vigilant power lawnmowers, the booths of flowers and vegetables that bear cryptic signs—Mums and Cukes—the garages overflowing with old furniture and obsolete garden equipment, give way to fields of wildflowers—streaks of yellow, crimson, orange, hot vivid colours woven in with grasses—and of corn, ripe and glittering a gun-metal blue in the hot noon light all the way to the horizon where the forest stands a solid blue-black. Arun still finds it disconcerting to find, in this setting, the sprawling car park of the shopping mall into which Mrs Patton glides with accustomed ease. She parks the car amongst all the others that lie roasting in the sun, and leads the way into the Babylon of plastic plants, fountains constantly recycling water, artificial odours of vanilla and chocolate, children in strollers stupefied with ice cream and candy, and old people slumped on benches as if gloomily waiting for the show to begin.
Mrs Patton makes her purchases, Arun escorting her and following her with her bags. She seems tense, makes errors, cannot remember where the aisle of socks and stockings is, then forgets Rod's size. When they enter the Foodmart, she relaxes: it is as if she has come home. She tosses packets and cartons into the shopping cart lightheartedly. It is Arun who grows tense, finds his throat muscles contracting, tight with anxiety over spending so much, having so much. Wondering if this is how Melanie feels and if it is what makes her sick, he tries to persuade Mrs Patton to put back a carton of icecream from which she is reading out the label with a chuckle: '"Our icecream is the best icecream. We know because we made it..."' She is giggling but when Arun tries to take it out of her hands and put it back, 'I want it,' she cries, snatching it back. 'It's Chunky Monkey—my favourite.'
At the check-out counter he waits beside her while she leafs through a magazine full of pictures of pregnant starlets, babies born with two heads, and prisoners on Death Row. A young man in front of them who wears a T-shirt that says Give Blood. Play Rugby tosses packages of potato chips and nachos, jars of mayonnaise and mustard onto the counter for the girl to check.
'Settlin' in for the weekend?' asks the check-out girl who wears a jaunty jacket of red and white stripes and a red bow tie around her white collar. She snaps her bubble gum as she makes out his bill.
'Nah. My girl friend's bringing her parents to dinner. I'm gonna cook for them,' he explains. 'I've been cleaning the apartment and now I'm going to go home to cook the dinner.'
'Gee,' she says tonelessly, 'that's awesome.'
It is Mrs Patton's turn next and Arun helps her arrange all her purchases on the counter for the girl to check. Having made out a bill so long that it curls around her hand, she suddenly eyes Mrs Patton with close interest and demands, 'You pregnant?'
Arun is so startled that he steps backwards and flushes crimson. Mrs Patton is brought to a halt. 'At my age?' she cries.
The girl is not disconcerted. She goes back to snapping her gum and feels for change in the change drawer. 'You aren't that old,' she assures Mrs Patton kindly, handing her some coins. 'You had that glow, y'know, the kind that pregnant women have. I see a lot of 'em here so I can just tell. Thought you had that glow, y'know.' Then she loses interest in Mrs Patton and turns to say, 'Hi,' to a young mother who has placed her baby on top of bags of diapers and rolls of toilet paper and is unloading her cart with half-moons of perspiration staining her pink T-shirt even in the cool of air conditioning. 'Kooky-koo,' the check-out girl says to the baby. 'Bet you're Daddy's darling.'
'It's a boy,' the tired mother informs her, 'and I'm a single parent.'
Mrs Patton and Arun silently wheel their loaded cart out to the parking lot. Arun helps her unload it; he cannot bring himself even to look at her. He sees her fingers trembling a little as she lifts out the heavy grocery bags.
When they have strapped themselves into the car seats which smell of scorched rubber and feel like sticky tar, she says in a dry, cracked voice, 'Did you ever hear anything so silly?'
Arun shakes his head but dares not speak.
'That girl—she's just the silliest creature I ever met. Can you beat it?'
Mrs Patton is driving too fast. The car is veering in and out of the traffic dangerously. 'I mean, do I look pregnant?' her voice rises in anxiety. 'I'm not fat, am I, Ahroon?'
He shakes his head and mumbles. She is not fat, only shapeless. The slacks and T-shirts she habitually wears divide her shapelessness into different segments and bring them together in a piece that is so lacking in singularity that it is surprising it would occur to anyone to comment on it.
The car bounds forward as if it were being chased. Mrs Patton gives a strange little laugh. 'Or young,' she adds, 'am I? Ahroon?' then swerves suddenly to avoid the bumper of a loaded pick-up van she has ignored till the last possible second. It bears a sticker that says Like My Driving? i-800-EAT-SHIT and its driver lets out a loud hoot of warning.
Arun finds himself saying shakily, 'Slow down, please, Mrs Patton.'
Twenty-five
SUMMER is beating at them, out of a sky so blue that it threatens to spill and flood the green land. The horizon blurs, watery.
Arun wakes earlier and earlier
till he feels he hardly sleeps. The window is too bright, too impossible to darken or ignore. A bird shrieks and shrieks in the top of the maple tree, its voice harsh and jagged. He tries to be quiet in his room, not to disturb the others who breathe invisibly around him. He walks barefoot into the bathroom and back. He dresses in clothes as light as he would in India. His eyelids are already heavy with the weight of heat and sleeplessness.
He goes downstairs with the cautious tread of a burglar. He pours himself orange juice, not wanting to make a noise with cup or kettle. The cat, who has spent the night outdoors, comes up to the window and sits amongst the laurels, watching him with a predatory air. The house rings with emptiness. Has everyone left already, or are they asleep?
When he returns from the library, Mrs Patton is there. He has to walk past her because she is sitting in the yard, in a deck-chair. Her eyes are covered by large dark glasses. She is wearing clothes so minimal that they cover only a few inches of her chest and hips. The rest of her flesh is bared to his gaze. It seems to be frying in the sun because she has spread quantities of oil over it—a large bottle stands beside her in the grass—and it gleams brown and shiny. Her feet in sandals are stretched out in front of her: she has painted her toe nails a startling crimson. She breathes in and out deeply as if she were asleep.