“Hi, Baruch,” Ottilie said. Her arms were making raising motions like she wasn’t sure if we were going to hug or not. I hugged her lightly, trying my best not to have my crotch touch hers. You can never trust a penis not to get erect at all the wrong times. Even with all those days on a bus, even with all of those days without a shower, she still smelled amazing, like a mixture of gym mats and jasmine. And I wanted her more than ever and at the same time knew that I’d never have her. She was too beautiful, too smart, too wild for me. I’d never run away with her. At least not out of the county. I was never going to be able to concoct a gesture so dramatic that I’d sweep her off of her feet. She let go of me and whispered, “Has my mom been crazy?” I answered her by waggling my hand in the so-so gesture. She laughed and then went back to Gurbaksh. They were pressed against the open door to the extra room. They held hands. Resolute. My crush and my former best friend. I resigned myself to being betrayed and heartbroken. It wasn’t great. At least I had a role to play though.
My dad popped the brakes off on each wheel with a loud click-thump and stiffened his posture into one of “let’s go already.”
Mr. Singh cleared his throat loudly. He had pulled a chair from the other room and sat in it in front of the doorway out, leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. “It’s all good. Kids are safe. We all slipped a noose here.” My dad grunted out a laugh so down the ladder of utterances it could be confused with a growl. “I’d like for all of us to have a chat. We all care for these children of ours and we’ve worried ourselves mad during this . . . episode.”
I wasn’t sure if Mr. Singh was including me as one of the children who everyone cared about.
“Our families are interconnected and we need to have trust and communication, honest communication. We might not necessarily even be fond of each other.” My dad nodded and said something under his breath. “As adults we need to recognize the value that we all share: our children. So let us start a conversation about what has been going on here? I have not slept much recently and I have been watching TV at night. Anything, really. I saw an advertisement that said, ‘it’s eleven o’clock, do you know where your child is?’ ” Mr. Singh dropped his head, and his shoulders shook. The crown of his turban was a geode of folds. “This advert hit me here.” He chopped a hand at his chest. “Because I did not know where my child was. I did not know if I would ever see him again. I did not know if the last time I saw him was the last time I would ever see him.” Gurbaksh gnawed at his lip while staring at a specific patch of the ceiling. “I do not want to ever have that feeling again. I cannot have that feeling again. If things are so bad, then we talk about them. That is what a family does. It talks.”
A brief silence was broken by Miriam. She jumped up and said, “Oooooh, don’t cry, Mr. Singh.” She pronounced it for some reason as Singe. “The kids are back. We have our babies. We’re not going to let go of them ever again.”
“What we need to talk about is consequences,” Rick said, folding his leg up on the bed with him. “Because this kind of behavior is not what is OK in our home.”
“Like it’s okay in ours?” my mom asked, steel in her voice.
“I don’t know. I have no knowledge about what kind of whatever goes on in your house.” Rick’s eyes did a quick inventory of Mom, Dad, and Mr. Singh.
“Let’s not go there, dear,” Miriam whined.
“I’m sorry I’m not following you, Rick.” My mom was staring Rick down. He’d been in Vietnam. He was a veteran. He looked away first.
“There is, how should I put this, some obvious turbulence in your house,” Rick said. “I think your odd little situation—it’s all a bit Peyton Place for my taste—is what directly caused this.”
“They named their daughter Ottilie,” my dad said. “But we’re the ones who are odd.”
“What did you say?”
“Calm down,” my dad said. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch.”
Rick stood up but he couldn’t find a way to get closer to my dad other than climbing over the bed. “You know you won’t be the first person I’ve punched in a wheelchair.”
“Do it,” my dad laughed. “You can add it to my bill down at the hospital.”
“I don’t care what people do in the privacy of their own whatever. I do care though when my daughter is exposed to it.”
“This is about our relationship? About my marriage?” my mom asked.
“What is going on in your houses is just fine, people have to find themselves.” He flicked his fingers in the air. “But what I don’t think . . . it’s the example you’re setting. Parents need to set an example.”
“I’m not setting a moral enough example?” Mom wasn’t going to back down.
“No,” Rick thundered back. “Be married or not. Be with Mr. Singh or not. I don’t care what you choose. But pick one. This is not healthy. For anyone. You can’t flit around from house to house and expect either of them to be stable.”
“Oh, oh, look,” Miriam said. “The shuttle is about to launch.”
The countdown was at less than a minute. The shuttle now seemed to shiver with energy as smoke billowed out of its idling rockets.
“Maybe we should have this conversation without the children present.” Mr. Singh stood up just to remind everyone that he was tallest.
“You’re the one who wanted communication,” Rick said, pointing at Mr. Singh. “This looks like communication to me.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” My mom had her fingers at her temples. “If I’m the cause of all that’s wrong with this, so be it. I fell out of love with my husband. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I fell in love with someone else.”
“You don’t love him,” my dad said.
“I do. I’m sorry but I do,” my mom said.
“Fine. You love him. But you know who thinks marriage is all about love? Kids, that’s who. Marriage isn’t about love. It’s about hard work, it’s about seeing things through. It’s about keeping promises, discipline.”
“You make it sound like the most awful thing in the world,” Mom said.
“We were due for dalliances,” my dad said. “People have dalliances, flirtations, crushes. We’ve built something together, years of devotion, of uxoriousness.”
“Does he always talk like this?” Rick asked the room. “Or is it part of his injuries?”
Now that my mom and dad seemed to be having a private conversation with all of us listening in, Miriam decided to ask us if we’d count the last ten seconds down out loud with her.
“Don’t talk to me about love either. You’ve loved me plenty. What about when we were in Vancouver? The larches in Manning Park that autumn? You loved me then. Or that tiny town outside of Miami? The place with the burgers? And the rain? I’ve never loved you more than that moment.”
“Here we go,” Miriam clapped. “Forty-five seconds to launch.”
“Yes. I did love you during those times. I loved you so much, you taught me things about philosophy and about the world, you motivated me on my career. I’ve done so much because of you and with you—a girl from a farm in Wisconsin couldn’t even dream of. But I don’t love you anymore. It just happened. Vancouver and Miami? Those were a decade ago. And I’m not a cicada, I can’t burrow down and wait years and years to live again. You’re not in love with me now. And you definitely don’t like me. Don’t pretend.”
“Thirty seconds,” Miriam trilled. She counted out loud and clapped her hands on every second, really expecting everyone to count down with her.
“Like you? What does that have to do with marriage?” Dad asked. “You disappear from us for weeks at a time. I have been the single parent for Barry. Do you know anything about what he’s been going through? You get to do everything and I sit at home waiting for you to come back.”
“It’s because of me that you and Baruch have a home. You think I like living out of my suitcase? Catching flights and hotel bars? You whining about my business trips? It’s all
been an investment in you, in your academic career.” My mom lit another cigarette. “But then, without telling me anything, without consulting with me, you abandon everything we’ve worked decades for. I was in love with you, I was ready to do anything for you. A PhD student while I was a lowly undergrad, you seemed full of the world and engaged with deciphering important things. But something happened, something broke inside of you, and you became something I don’t recognize. I don’t love this new you. I see you now and I see how much of my life I’ve wasted being unhappy, how much of your life I’ve wasted.”
Mr. Singh cleared his throat loudly and said something absolutely superfluous. “Maybe the children should go into the next room.”
“Yes, they don’t need to hear all of this,” Rick said. “I don’t think I need to hear all of this.”
“Screw you, Singh,” my dad said. “You don’t have a leg to stand on here. I’ve done some research on you and I think you need to be honest with us.”
“What is he talking about?” Mom asked.
“I have no idea.”
“What qualifies you to do the job you have?”
“I was offered a job. I do the job. Everyone is happy with my performance.”
“But your qualifications?” My dad raised a little out of his chair, winced, and collapsed back down. “Where are your qualifications?” Dad let that sink in for a second and then continued, speaking to the room. “The schools you claim to have degrees from have never heard of you, Singh.”
Mr. Singh sat back down and shook his head.
“You probably thought it was to put me in my place to get me to leave the college to be your assistant, to drive a wedge between my wife and me.” The room was silent other than the TV. “But I did it to keep an eye on you, you slick bastard.”
“OK, kids. You need to go,” Rick said.
“Ten! Nine! Eight!” Miriam yelled, oblivious to everything going on around her. The shuttle rocked on the pad, the weight of it now suddenly obvious, its ability to unglue all of the weight from the Earth in question.
“Can’t I stay and watch?” I asked.
“You should go, Barry,” my mom said, squeezing my upper arm in a lame attempt at physical reassurance.
I sulked into the next room. Ottilie and Gurbaksh were sitting on one of the queen beds bent into each other, talking quietly. I sat on the other bed. The bedspreads were a riot of blotchy colors, which my mom says is evidence of a hotel that has dealt with a lot of people’s blood and semen and pus, a design choice that allows the failings of the human body some camouflage. Nobody had turned on the lights, so the only illumination of the room came courtesy of the doorway into the other room, which went away completely when Mr. Singh closed their door.
The other room was noisy with yelling, the slow-motion destruction of my parents’ marriage. I remembered the scene of Gatsby standing in the bushes, waiting for Daisy to come down when she never would. This is what it was like for him: in the dark, staring at a wall, some mechanisms on the other side of that wall that would break his life apart.
“Do you think we should call the front desk and complain about the noise?” Ottilie asked the room and then laughed at her own joke when it became clear no one else was going to.
Gurbaksh murmured into her ear and she peeled off a laugh that sunk me completely. It was full of intimacy. It was awful. Their little jokes. Their relationship. Who needed a wall? You could be in the same room and have no access to understanding a relationship.
“It’s pretty intense in there,” Ottilie said and looked briefly at me. “I’m sorry that you have to deal with this, Baruch.”
“Fuck it,” Gurbaksh said and reclined back on the bed. “Long as they’re doing that they can’t punish us.”
I waited to see if Ottilie would rebuke him, protecting me. But she didn’t, probably happy to realize that they were kicking a lecture down the road, probably happy to be in a darkened hotel room on a hotel bed with her amazing boyfriend.
“Are you crying?” she asked me.
I didn’t think I was but it was likely. I wiped at my eyes to check.
“Waterworks is exactly what we need right now.” Gurbaksh’s voice had a knife edge to it, he might have picked it up on their travel out west. “You know what? Let’s get out of here.”
“We’re already in trouble,” she said with a voice that was warming to the idea.
“They,” and here Gurbaksh held up his middle finger at the shared wall, “won’t notice we’re gone for a while. Also fuck them.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
Gurbaksh stood up. My opposition to his plan made it even more urgent for him. “Nobody invited you, man. Let’s go.” He held out his hand to her.
“I think you should stay. They’re gonna come in here any second.”
“Why are you here?” Gurbaksh asked me. His shaved head was a mask, a new costume he’d put on. He was so much less naked than when he had his turban on. “No, really. Why in the fuck are you here? None of this has anything to do with you. This isn’t your story at all. Bad enough we had to come back to this shitty town but you, and your dumbass dad, are part of the welcome party?”
“What happened to you out west, man? We used to be friends.”
“You think I got beat up out west? Is that what you believe?” Gurbaksh rubbed his hand back and forth over his head. “This all happened here. This is the reason we left, you little shit. Your redneck friends caught up with me to get some revenge for Randy.” He blinked back tears. “They beat me up and then they held me down and shaved my head. You fucking rednecks. All of you. Just die already.”
He paused with his hand re-outstretched to Ottilie. She took it this time. And the two of them left, the door slamming hard behind them. I sat there in the near dark. Alone.
In the next room, Miriam started screaming. Even Rick was yelling. Even Mr. Singh. I pushed the door open and all of them were staring at the TV. Except for my mom. She was gone.
“What happened?” I asked.
“It’s awful, so awful,” Miriam whimpered.
I edged my way so I could see the TV.
There was a blue sky with smoke carving a giant Y into it.
“Where’s the shuttle?” I asked, sitting on the bed.
“It blew up.”
“Are the astronauts okay?”
“No way anyone survived that,” Rick said.
“There was something falling,” Miriam said. “Like a bright yellow hot thing falling, maybe they’ll hit the water and be okay. I should pray or something.”
“They’re dead, Miriam.”
“We should all pray.”
My dad sat there motionless. I didn’t realize it but he wasn’t looking at the TV. This made me furious and once I started to get angry, it was like a hose being unkinked. Whhooooshh. All those astronauts dead and what was he doing? Thinking about his heartache. He should just die already.
“I am going to go fetch her,” Mr. Singh said. “I don’t think she knows what just happened.” The door slammed.
“We should go too,” Rick said, putting on his coat.
“I wanna watch this.”
“Miriam, we don’t know if this was an attack. We need to get home and off the roads as soon as possible.” Rick slapped his gloves together and flexed his fingers. “This is a tragedy and all. But the only place I know we’re safe is at home. Let’s go get Ott.”
Miriam pouted but stood up and started reluctantly to put her coat on. Right before she left, she hugged me, my arms pinned to my sides by the violence in it.
Rick stomped back in a second later, “Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“You didn’t stop them?”
“How could I?”
“Your family, man,” Rick shouted. “You all are fucked up. Stay the hell away from me and mine from now on.”
Bang, the door slammed.
My dad and I stayed in the r
oom. Me staring at the Y in the sky, him staring at the drapes.
“It’s my birthday,” I said to the TV. “I almost forgot. I’m fifteen today.”
My dad grunted.
He sat there staring. After a half an hour, I turned off the TV and left.
The door slamming behind me.
THIRD PART
“The house of pain and disease has been demolished.
The men and women celebrate.”
—Guru Granth Sahib, Sorat’h, Fifth Mehl
Hate is Safe. Hate is urgent. Hate is unkind. Hate is ubiquitous. Hate singles the hated out and provides anonymity for the hater. Hate is comfortable. Hate tells the hater that they never need to change, that they have special sight into the failed world, that they are justified in hating.
Glorious and holy circular logic of hate.
Hate gives us friends but since the basis of friendship is hate, each person will be wary of the other. Communities of hate form quickly and dissipate quickly, looting one another of our emotions, leaving traces of themselves everywhere while everyone involved claims they’re blameless. Hate makes us lonely. Hate plus time ossifies us into that loneliness. We all die alone. Hate helps us realize what death will be like, so when death shows up, people who’ve spent their lives hating will recognize it for what it is. Hate is a coffin buried six feet in the earth, sealed away even from all the other dead. It’ll take decades before the first worm breaches the ornate lacquered wood and finds its food. Hate is rage and sadness and vengeance given voice. Sometimes hate acts like it’s the only thing left to trust when your world falls apart.
I was in a daze for about three weeks after what happened at the airport Days Inn. I dropped out of school because I was having a hard time getting out of bed. I was too young to drop out so my dad told them that he was homeschooling me, which was true I guess. He had taught me a lot recently.
How I Learned to Hate in Ohio Page 18