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by Sameer Pandya

  I had been hitting the ball well during warm-ups. I felt the same way when the match started. Whatever was happening off court I could atone for on it. But before I knew what was happening, we were down 0–6, 1–5. As expected, Stan had been consistent. But no matter how many times I told myself not to Gandhi the shots, I had. Over and over again.

  The only levity in the match arrived during what turned out to be the last game. I was about to serve when I heard squawking above me. Sometimes hawks flew high overhead, doing a mating dance, maybe, or simply mocking all of us below for the fact that they could fly and we couldn’t. This time, the bird was much lower, and less graceful. A duck. It landed on the service line on my side, the majesty of its green feathers matching the court. It inspected me, then Stan, and then our opponents.

  With any other duck, I might have stepped toward it and made a threatening gesture with my racquet. But I knew it was best not to fuck with this particular duck.

  Every couple of weeks, this duck or one of its flock made its way to the TC. Adjacent to the club was a massive property, well over forty acres, with flowing gardens, multiple ponds, and an enormous Spanish-style villa in the middle of it all. The owner had made her money—lots of it—in television. I had never seen her in person, but I liked that she was there. And because I liked her, and liked that she, an African-American woman, was the biggest landowner in town, I respected her ducks.

  “Hey, sweet thing,” I said, walking toward the duck. “We’re almost done here.”

  My opponents looked at me like I was crazy.

  The duck waddled to the side of the court and hopped onto a bench. It only flew away when I double-faulted into the net, ending the match. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d played so poorly. Given that we were at the number one line, and that I knew we were the team’s sacrifices, I’d wanted to do well. And so of course I’d hit one nervous shot after another.

  I placed the game balls, still bright yellow, back into the can and shook hands with my opponents. When I turned to do the same with Stan, I saw that he’d already grabbed his racquets and walked away. Our opponents pretended not to notice.

  I made my way from the court, past the swimming pool, and toward my car. I didn’t want to hang around for the beers we usually had after our matches. But Leslie was walking toward me as I was attempting my escape. When we got close, she leaned forward and gave me a kiss on the cheek and then a hug, with the same intimacy she always held between us. I felt relieved, especially after the shunning from Stan.

  “Nice match?” she asked.

  “We lost,” I said. “So no. I tell my kids it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. But that’s horseshit. You here to play?”

  “No. The kids have a joint lesson with Richard.”

  For Leslie, the week was moving along as it always did.

  “We should all play again soon. It’s been a while.”

  “Yes, let’s do that,” I said.

  “You good otherwise?” she asked, now with concern in her voice.

  “What’s up, Leslie?” I was in no mood for small talk.

  “I hear you spoke with Suzanne.”

  I nodded my head. I hated that the two of them were discussing me.

  “It was an unfortunate moment,” Leslie said. “But I wonder if a simple, easy chat with the Browns might put all this to rest. I can see why you wouldn’t want to talk to Mark and Jan. They’re insufferable.”

  “I regret doing it,” I said. “It was stupid. I shouldn’t have had so much wine. And I truly don’t give a shit that Mark and Jan are livid with me. That’s a badge of honor. But in regard to the Browns, I don’t see how what happened between us is anyone’s business but ours. Why has everyone suddenly decided they’re experts on race relations? The sins of this place run pretty deep.”

  “What sins?” Leslie asked.

  Leslie could be both keenly aware and completely ignorant.

  “I’m sorry, but there’s not going to be any big public apology from me. If I apologize to the Browns, they’ll be the only ones who know about it, and I’m certainly not apologizing to anyone else.”

  “Fine, suit yourself,” she said.

  In all the years I’d known her, this was the first time Leslie had snapped at me. I knew that smoothing everything over was the easier way to go. And I didn’t like the idea of her, or anyone else, being mad at me. But being liked, I’d learned, had its costs.

  “Are you coming to the meeting on Friday?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “I’ll see you there.” She walked away.

  I was about to head to my car, but I turned back to the pool. Children in pools were like little colonists in training. They weren’t happy unless they occupied every last inch of water. There were about five couples talking and drinking poolside. I knew them, but Eva and I didn’t socialize with them. A few of the dads were working the barbecue. It was unusually crowded for a Tuesday evening. I went and found an empty lounge chair away from them.

  I took off my tennis shoes and shirt and walked over to the deep end. I dropped in feet-first and tried to think what might happen if somehow my body gave up and I didn’t rise from the bottom. The cool water covered me, and when I hit bottom, I crouched and lunged up. After a few seconds of beautiful silence, I heard the laughter and splashing of the kids. There were at least ten of them in the pool, and now that I was in the water, I could see a slight film of dull muck on the surface, the collected formula from all the sunscreen their parents had insistently lathered on them, swirling together with their grime and escaped pee.

  I swam over to the far end. There was no hard-and-fast rule, but once an adult started swimming laps at one end of the pool, the kids knew to keep out of the way. I wasn’t much of a swimmer, but I had barely broken a sweat on the court and wanted a workout. I didn’t care that I was in my tennis shorts. I got into a rhythm. I tried to see how far I could swim without coming up for air. I loved the peace of swimming underwater.

  In the last few years of his life, my father had insisted that the family go on vacations, to make up for all the ones we’d never taken as children. One year, we went to the cold Alps, another to warm Kauai. On that island, away from their regular lives, my parents actually talked and laughed together for several consecutive days. Our first full day there, we all went down to a beach known for easy, calm snorkeling. My mother had bought herself a very modest swimsuit—essentially a dress—and my father wore a pair of swim trunks with little elephants on them that must have been at least a decade old, but were still in perfect shape. The two of them sat on the beach under an umbrella in low chairs. I went into the warm water right away and struggled for a while to breathe through the snorkel. But then it clicked, and I floated for the next hour, watching the schools of colorful fish, the occasional ray, wanting to get out of the water to tell my family about it but not wanting to miss a thing.

  Finally, I went back to the beach. “You have to come in,” I pleaded to my father. I was in my early thirties, high off the idea of experiences, and annoyed that my father didn’t govern his life in a similar way. I thought he was too passive.

  “You go ahead,” he said.

  “Please. Just this once.”

  I fitted a snorkel and mask on him, shared my newfound breathing lessons, and watched as he stepped gingerly into the water. He put his head under and tried to figure out how to work the little tube. I realized then how seldom he put himself in situations where he didn’t know exactly what he was doing. I swam away so that he could work this out in private.

  Several minutes later, I looked back toward the shore. He had just pushed his feet off the sand and was slowly but surely swimming toward me. Though it was hard to see his face through the mask, I knew there was wonder in his eyes. Wonder at the fish, wonder that he was underwater, and wonder that he was floating in the air. I motioned for him to come toward me. He put his thumb up and gracefully swam out. I had never been in the water with him; he was a smoot
h swimmer, piercing the ocean ever so slightly as he moved. As a kid, I had learned to swim by myself. I’d always assumed he didn’t know how, because he’d never go in the pool with me. When I’d asked him to come in earlier, I figured he’d just stay near the shore.

  The two of us swam farther and farther out. There were hundreds of fish, deep blue, red. We saw two turtles, one enormous, the other a little smaller, leisurely circling just below us. It was the longest stretch of uninterrupted time my father and I had spent alone together as adults. He died soon after.

  As I swam in the pool now, the memory of that afternoon carried me through my laps. When I stopped to rest, I grabbed a hold of the side and looked around. While I’d been under, the entire pool had emptied of children. Every last one of them. There was still plenty of daylight and the air was very warm, but the kids were all jam-packed into the hot tub and some of the parents were guarding the edge, as if to ensure that their children would not get out. I felt a sudden chill come over me. Maybe it was all just a coincidence. They were warming up in the hot tub before they sat down to eat.

  I got out of the water. I hadn’t brought a towel, so I went into the bathroom, pulled a handful of paper towels, and dried myself with them. Despite a liberal use of the towels, my body still felt damp. Outside, I put on my tennis shirt and my shoes. As I was tying my laces, there was a small jailbreak from the tub: a few kids jumped into the deep end of the pool. By the time I got up and was heading out, the rest of the kids had returned to the cool water. On the other side, none of the parents looked my way.

  * * *

  As I walked from the car to our front door, the sky was orange and pink from the sunset. Inside, the house was surprisingly quiet. I rummaged through the fridge, made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and headed to our bedroom. I needed to get out of my wet shorts. As I left the kitchen, I noticed a thick, coiled snake right outside our back door. It didn’t move, but every few seconds its forked tongue slithered out of its mouth.

  I quickly walked down the hall. The kids’ doors were open, but the lights were out. Eva was in bed, reading.

  “They’re both asleep and it’s barely eight,” she said, smiling. “What are we going to do?”

  “Come. You need to see this.”

  We walked into the living room. Eva stopped when she saw the snake, then leaned down to get a closer look.

  “The rattle is missing. But that’s definitely a rattlesnake.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “I can feel it,” she said, pointing to the prickly hair on her arms.

  Uncoiled, the snake would have been several feet long, as thick as a baguette. It was full and mature.

  “What now?” I asked. I’d grown up on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Bombay. In matters of wildness, I deferred to Eva.

  “We have to kill it,” she said. “If it thinks this is its new territory, we’re in trouble. It’ll start laying eggs.”

  “Kill it?” I asked. “Are you kidding? Let’s call animal control and have them do it.”

  “It’ll be gone by the time they arrive. We have to do it now.”

  “Maybe it’ll just go away.”

  “It won’t. It’s here now.”

  As we were discussing its future, the snake slowly uncurled and slithered away, as if it knew that its life was under attack. We watched it head into a thicket of Mexican sage to the left of where it had been resting, and we rushed out another door to the yard to see if we could find it. It was gone.

  We went back inside. Eva checked in on the sleeping kids and then went into the bedroom. I could sense her agitation.

  “We should’ve killed it,” she said. “The kids can’t go in the yard now. I’ll always think it’s lurking. I wish you hadn’t waited.”

  “Waited?” I asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “Say it.”

  “You deliberated about what to do. We should’ve gone outside right away.”

  “I didn’t sign up for this. You were the one who wanted a house with a little land. This isn’t my childhood. If it were, we’d still be living in a small apartment in an overcrowded city.”

  Eva stared at me.

  I walked into the living room to get myself a pour of something warm. I quickly turned and went back to the bedroom.

  “It’s returned.”

  “In the same place?” she asked, jumping out of bed.

  I nodded. This time, we both went outside immediately and armed ourselves with gardening gloves and a shovel. Eva was in her pajamas and had slipped on her rubber boots.

  “We have to cut its head off,” Eva said, making practice lunges with the shovel. “That’s the only way.”

  “You want to do it?” I asked.

  “I was hoping you would. I’m sorry about what I said inside. Please help me with this. I’ll never feel comfortable being back here if we don’t kill it.”

  I took the shovel.

  “One quick stab,” Eva said. “No hesitation.”

  “What if it jumps at me?”

  “That’s why you’re using a shovel. You can keep your distance.”

  I walked up to it. My instincts—fight, flight, and preservation—were turned up way past ten. My head was telling me to do it. I had to do it. And yet, I suddenly felt unable to kill this living creature. Why should killing a snake that was threatening my family bother me? And yet it did. I gripped the shovel hard. And then I loosened my hands. I always hit a tennis ball much better when I held the racquet lightly in my hand. I readied the shovel. If I didn’t get a proper strike the first time, the snake would leap right into me. It was facing us now, aware of the danger, prepared to strike the second I moved toward it. The skin was a deep shade of olive and rust.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, stepping away. “I’m a Hindu. We don’t kill things.” I was only half joking.

  Eva took the shovel without looking at me or saying anything. And she clearly went through the same thought process I just had. She walked up to it, got herself ready, then walked away. She handed the shovel back to me. “I’m a Catholic. We don’t kill things either.”

  We laughed nervously as the snake’s eyes shined in the porch light. I was holding the shovel and Eva was right behind me. Then, in one swift motion, she snatched the shovel from my hand and, with one forceful blow, took the head off the snake, letting out a shriek as she stabbed. The snake hissed and its fat body convulsed. Eva let go of the shovel and it fell to the ground.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked, nauseated. In all the years I’d known Eva, I’d never encountered this violent reaction to danger. I hoped that, given different circumstances, I would have the same impulse to protect my family.

  “I have no idea,” she said, somber. She had teared up. “Can we clean this up in the morning?”

  “I’ll get rid of it,” I said. “You go inside.”

  I got a couple of garbage bags and scooped the head into one. I had to use the other bag as a glove to pick up the body. It was heavy, and while I’m no herpetologist, I knew the bulge in the midsection was a sac of eggs. Without thinking too much about it, I gathered everything up and threw it all into the garbage can outside. I washed the blood and the bits of guts from the ground with a hose, then went into the kitchen and got some dish soap and a sponge and carefully scrubbed the ground.

  When I got into bed later, I thought Eva would be fast asleep.

  “What did you do with it?”

  “I put it in the outside garbage can.”

  “Maybe we should bury it tomorrow.”

  I didn’t want her to know that it was carrying eggs, though they were the very reason she’d needed to kill it.

  “No. It’s pretty mangled. Let’s leave it.”

  “Do you wish we lived somewhere else?” Eva sounded resigned, as if she were certain that I was going to say yes.

  “No,” I said, feeling a little unsure about my answer. “I just don’t want to deal with snakes.
”

  Wednesday

  AS I DROVE TO WORK, I turned on the air conditioning. We’d taken a hopeful turn toward cooler weather earlier in the week, but now it was warm again. I dialed my mother to check in on her gentleman caller.

  “How’re the boys?” she asked.

  “I just dropped them off. They’re fine. Neel got into a little trouble at school yesterday.”

  “What kind?”

  Before I could answer, she continued, “Do you know how many times one of your teachers complained that you couldn’t sit still?”

  She’d said this to me before as a catchall when we were having trouble with Neel. I didn’t know if it was true or not.

  “And what did you say to them?”

  “That it was their job to keep you occupied.”

  “I’m sure that went over well.”

  “It was fine. You grew out of it. On your way to teach?”

  “Yep. Any more calls?”

  “No, but he usually calls in the afternoon. After his yoga class. He says he feels most at peace to talk to me.”

  “He sounds like a piece of work.”

  “No. It’s good that he exercises.”

  Despite her concerns the previous day, it seemed that she was actually looking forward to the call. I hoped her misplaced guilt wouldn’t deter her from the pleasures of a new friendship.

  “Exercise is important,” I said. “I’m glad you have a new friend. Just keep getting to know him however it feels comfortable to you and you’ll be fine.”

  There were a few seconds of silence as she processed this. I knew she wouldn’t say anything more on the topic, so I moved on.

  “Who were our neighbors in Bombay?” I asked. I wanted to ask her about Reza Faruki, but for some reason was nervous to come out and do so.