A Deconstructed Heart (6 page)

Chapter 8

The restaurant was almost empty. It was Thursday night, and the staff was not fevered yet with the weekend rush. The waiter, Steve, who served Amal’s table was swapping stories about mountain biking trips with Sven. Vanessa looked at Steve, raised an eyebrow at Amal and winked. Amal rolled her empty macaroon paper into a ball and flicked it at her. It missed and hit the waiter on the thigh. Amal groaned and sank down in her chair. Vanessa burst out laughing, but Steve had not noticed. Amal glanced over at Rehan who was grinning.

“Smooth,” he said.

“Oh, shut up.”

They had arranged to meet for dinner a few days after the slideshow in Mirza’s garden. Mirza had told Amal that she must go, he insisted, and she had not protested. It felt good to be around young people again, she had to admit, and the fact that Rehan had said he would be there had made up her mind. He was sitting opposite her, and she did not think she was up to the job of eating spaghetti in front of him, so had ordered a salad that she really did not want and knew would leave her hungry. He had bent his face over his bowl and shoveled in the spaghetti without a break for breathing.

Kiran was next to him, and he had brought his cousin Nikhil, who looked like a rougher version of him, shorter and stockier, with thick, shaggy black hair. Jason had arrived with his Carly, his girlfriend, and Amal had decided immediately that she liked her. She was quiet and wore glasses and had a devastatingly sarcastic sense of humor that Jason seemed to enjoy.

Mi Piace was bright and airy with polished burgundy flooring and tiny vases of white flowers on each table. The windows were tall, almost from floor to ceiling and music, the requisite sauce for Italian dining, floated beneath their conversation. She did not want to go home. Sven took out his lighter and lit one end of the macaroon paper and it immediately floated up, almost to the ceiling, before burning to an ember, returning down as black specks of ash.

“That’s dangerous,” said Amal, and the others looked at her with smiles.

“You are such a goody-goody,” Vanessa said warmly, and she took Sven’s lighter and lit another, “that’s why I adore you.” Amal looked around for the manager, but she could not see him.

“Not so good,” she said and reached over for the lighter. They each took turns setting their papers on fire, and for a moment, there were several in the air, dancing upwards as they burned themselves out.

“It’s kind of sad,” said Kiran, his face tipped up, pointing at the last paper smoldering in the air. “Like life in microcosm.”

There were groans from the table. “Oh my God,” said Sven, “Way to ruin a perfectly lovely evening. Thank you.” Amal laughed.

Rehan said, “Kiran is always thinking about the big questions in life.”

“That’s why he’s such a drag,” said Sven, turning to Vanessa, “remind me to never invite him to anything again.”

“No, I think it’s beautiful. Thank you,” she nodded at Kiran, “for raising the tone. It’s sorely needed, after all the time I spend with Mountain Man over here.”

Kiran shrugged.

“There are two kinds of people,” said Rehan, “those that see the signs and stop and think, and those that don’t see anything, or do and choose not to.”

“So that makes three kinds of people?” said Carly.

“Five,” said Sven, “let’s not forget those that can do math and those that can’t.”

“So I guess we know what kind you are?” said Amal. She felt, rather than saw Vanessa and Sven exchange glances.

“Rehan got boring and middle-aged really fast,” said Sven affectionately. “This boy knew how to party. I turn up to uni, fresh-faced first year and all, and this guy is already sneaking one girl out of his room while another is trying to get in, and I have to run interference.” Rehan was looking down at his empty coffee cup. “I had a whole stock of creative excuses to save his neck when another pretty girl showed up at the wrong time.”

“I thought he was a big player,” said Vanessa, pointing at Sven. “I always saw him talking to some crying girl, calming her down, and I hated him until I realized they weren’t his girlfriends, he was letting them down gently for Rehan. Then I hated
him
.”

“Yeah, his love life was doing serious damage to mine. I was going to cut him loose, but then he sobered up and became a monk. I would get rid of you now, ‘cause you’re so boring, but I need a designated driver.”

“Hey, you can’t tie your shoelaces without my help,” said Rehan. “I’m just babysitting you until you finally wear Vanessa down enough and she adopts your sorry arse. I’ve been telling her to run.”

The night air was cold when they spilled out onto the pavement. Sven and Vanessa looked away when Rehan took off his sweater and gave it to Amal. They said goodbye at the tube station, a fast train whistling through on the platform and forcing them to pantomime their goodbyes. “I’ll take you home,” Rehan said quietly as their friends walked to the other platform. They did not speak on the tube ride, and then had to run up the escalator to catch the next train back to Trenton, laughing as they collapsed in seats across the aisle from one another, just a moment before the last whistle blew and the train pulled heavily away from the station.

“Listen, don’t mind what Sven says. All that stuff he said at dinner, that was a different time.”

“Hey, I’m not saying anything,” she said with a smile, but she saw a tick in the corner of his mouth, and a spot of pink in his cheeks.

“Really, I mean it. That was not who I am now.” He looked out of his window for the rest of the train journey, only turning back to smile quickly at her as they reached their destination.

When they got off the train at Trenton, he jammed his hands into his pockets and walked briskly, and she had to quicken her pace to keep up with him. He stood at the top of the driveway as she reached the door. When she turned around, he waved. “Your sweater,” she remembered, beginning to tug it off.

“Give it to me tomorrow. See you at seven,” he said.

“Yes, see you.”

She closed the door, feeling tightness in her throat. She pulled off the sweater and kicked off her shoes. She walked straight upstairs to the bathroom where she slowly and thoroughly moved every spot of make-up.

Chapter 9

As the train picked up speed, Amal watched the white picket fence of Trenton’s train station become a blur, like a line of falling dominoes. The trees that lined the avenue below swept past in a curtsey of branches. Rehan was sitting opposite her, reading a copy of yesterday’s paper that had been left behind when they took their seats. Amal could see that a few of the crossword answers had been filled in decisive handwriting, the corresponding clues crossed out with neat lines. He had greeted her with a big smile this morning, and he was talkative now, reading out lines from his paper and asking her about Darlington.

The carriage was half-full. The rush hour crowd had already taken their coffee and briefcases and spilled into the streets like an army of ants, leaving the carriages like empty shells on the platform. She had always loved traveling at this hour. She could hear a small child talking precociously to a woman who was asking questions in a warm, polite voice. There was a second, matter-of-fact voice that must belong to the mother, Amal realized. Across the aisle from Amal and Rehan, there was a thin, bearded man and a dark-haired woman sitting opposite one another, signing furiously to each other and laughing deeply, without a sound. Amal watched them and smiled, but they did not notice her.  When they rose to get off at the next stop, the woman swayed with the lurch of the braking train carriage, and the young man steadied her with his arms around her belly, and Amal was just able to see the tips of his fingers slipping inside the front of her jeans. She looked away.

“How long since you’ve been back?” Rehan had put the paper aside and was looking at her. The previous evening, after the slideshow, Mirza Uncle had asked Rehan to accompany Amal back to her parents’ home. There had been no question in Mirza Uncle’s mind that his niece would not return to Trenton directly, and Amal had been surprised to realize that she had not considered this idea either. She did need some more of her clothes and a decent hairdryer.

“Nearly two months. I never knew I would be gone so long. Sometimes I’m surprised when I think ‘It’s only been two months’ and other times it’s more like everything about my life has changed, and it seems like I don’t remember it being otherwise.”

“Is it a good change, or would you undo it all if you could?” He was watching her intently, but she just smiled.

“The jury’s out on that one. Let’s wait and see.”

He turned to look out of the window, but she could see a twitch in the muscles of his jaw, and realized that he was smiling. His leg was bouncing slightly, and he was working the tendons of his knuckles absent-mindedly. ‘He’s never still,’ she thought, and she imagined a motor humming.

When the train pulled up at her home station, Rehan picked up her bag and nodded away her remonstrances. The platform was familiar and strange at the same time, like a childhood art project dug out of a dusty folder after many years.

The house was dark and cool, and for a moment, they both hesitated at the doorsill. “Tell you what,” said Rehan, “you go up and get your things. I’ll be down here. Give me a yell when you’re ready.”

She nodded, and he opened the door to the living room and sank into an armchair. He smiled at her, holding up the crystal swan family that had been on their coffee table as long as she could remember.

“Nice,” he said.

“Shut up.”

Her bedroom curtains were closed, and the room smelled like an attic. She did not open them. Instead, she opened her closet and pulled out a few items of clothing, found her hairdryer in the bathroom cabinet under the sink and closed all the doors gently. She was rushing, she knew, but she would not examine why.  She put her hand on the door to the living room and called, “Would you like some tea before we leave?”

Rehan was looking at her family’s photographs on the mantelpiece. “Yes, thanks. Your parents?” he asked, holding up a black and white photo taken at her father’s company event at the racetrack. Amal had always wondered at the oddity of seeing her parents standing demurely in a crowd of cheerful, beer-drinking colleagues, her mother holding the bordered edge of her sari, pulling it over her shoulder for comfort. Her father’s smile was broad, but there was stiffness in his posture. “You look like your mother,” he said and she nodded. “Pretty,” he said absentmindedly, and she blushed and mumbled something about ‘that tea’.

When she returned with a tray, he was still looking at the photos. There was something different about the set of his shoulders and she put the tray down a little loudly to get his attention. He turned in a moment and smiled thinly. “You think that there’s nothing you want to do more than open the door and keep walking, but years later, you find that you just walked in a huge circle and are back where you started.”

“Will you try to find him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to, but, then again, I do. Bet that makes no sense to you.”

“No, I get it. I felt that way, when I was told to go “fix” Uncle Mirza. But I can’t leave now. Not sure who needs whom most right now. I can’t see myself living here again. By myself.”

“Nobody should be alone for too long. It’s like you’ve been ripped out of context. Advertisers make a lot of money selling us on the idea that we’re unique, but we’ve overlooked the fact that it’s the bonds we have with other people that keep us whole.”

“You’re thinking of Mirza Uncle?”

“No, well, yes, him too. What or who has he got? Where are his friends? He’s been living like a nomad for two months, a nomad who doesn’t know where he’s going, and I don’t see anyone looking out for him.”

“He has us—and the neighbors,” Amal replied defensively. “That’s not nothing.”

“But now he has to start from scratch. He is lucky you turned up, though.” He was silent, and she did not know what to say. “Are you ready?” he asked, and she was confused for a moment.

“Oh yes, I packed what I needed. It wasn’t much.”

He helped her carry her duffel bag out of the house, and she felt him watching her as she locked the front door. He was smiling when she turned around. “I’m glad I saw where you live. Lived. I can imagine you as a kid now.”

“And what do you think about that?”

“I think… I talk too much,” he smiled. “I’m just going to shut up now.”

They sat down at the train station café to eat something before catching the 7 o’ clock train back to Trenton.  The table was small and Amal had to turn her body to the side to avoid Rehan’s knees. He was tearing into a cheese and cucumber sandwich, and she was mesmerized by the worst table manners she had ever seen in an adult. When she looked under the table to see how much of his sandwich was reaching the floor, he caught her look and brought his napkin over his mouth, laughing heartily.

“Sorry, I’m famished. I’m sure I’m disgusting you.”

“No, please, go ahead. This is eye-opening. You’re always so… careful about everything. It’s nice to see you let loose, I suppose.”

“Don’t lie. You’re thinking, get me out of here.” He wiped his mouth and screwed up the cellophane wrapper into a ball. “Sorry, no manners, none at all. But you can’t blame my mother, she tried.”

“Do you live with her?”

“No, I moved out after college, but I’m not far. I see her every other weekend, and we talk a lot.”

“She must be proud of you,” Amal said, not knowing why such a thing should come out of her mouth, but he was not embarrassed.

“I’ve always felt like something should go right for her. I want it to be me, if I can. It’s
tough, though, when she has no one else. It feels like a lot sometimes, and then I hate myself for feeling that way. And I know that I can’t be everything for her, just as she tried to, but can’t be, everything for me. Something like my dad, you know, leaving. It’s always there, somehow, like how you feel when you know there’s something you should remember, but you don’t remember what it is. Tense and yet empty at the same time.” He looked at her.

“Can that even be possible?” she said, with a chuckle she regretted.

“We don’t have the words for most things, I think,” he replied. “It’s as if we think we’re dealing in solids, when there are only liquids and gases, ideas that leak into other ideas, run through our fingers. Things are always in a state of flux, changing into something else before we even know it.

“And so everyone gets on Facebook, now, and tries to control that slippage. Defines themselves to wrangle the message in a way that makes them feel good.
Like those relationship ads,” —here, Amal arched an eyebrow—“No, hear me out. How you could choose exactly what you want to say about yourself, editing out the extra half a stone you’re carrying around, making yourself sound witty and delightful in a limited number of characters.”

“So… like Twitter, then?”

He shrugged. “More premeditation. Like script writing. Or an obituary you write for yourself when you’re still alive. But, yes, even when you are in the moment, there’s a whole bunch of meaning lost between two people in the same conversation.”

“I get that, especially when someone else’s expectations run over you. Sometimes, I don’t even know what I feel or why I feel what I do, and yet, I’m aware that people are looking at me, expecting a set reaction from me. Like, say, when I have to be the center of attention at an event, which I hate by the way,” she reached over and took a sip of his coffee without thinking, and he smiled and raised an eyebrow.

“Say it’s my birthday, and everyone’s looking at me after I cut the cake, and they want a speech, and I’m never in the moment, always watching it, thinking, OK, now I have to be the birthday girl and I should look happy until they stop looking. Does that sound crazy?”

“Of course it does. But that’s what we all live with to some extent. You’re just a classic introvert. The birthday party doesn’t have meaning until you’re all alone in your room when it’s all over, and you can decide—after examining all the evidence—whether or not you had a good time. Until then, you’re stuck playing a role.”

“And I hate it. I’d love to just be all zen and not even think about what I’m feeling. Just act.”

“Maybe that’s why you’re doing such a good job with Mirza Uncle. There’s no time for your own identity crisis when you’re dealing with someone else’s.”

“Is that what you think it is? About Uncle, I mean?”

“I think it’s what I said. There are no solids in Uncle’s life. You know the magic trick when a magician takes a glass of water and pours it into a newspaper, making the water disappear? It’s like someone made the glass disappear this time, and the water is falling left and right.”

When they returned to Trenton, it was past sundown. Amal opened the front door and thought immediately that the house had been robbed. The hallway was littered with shreds of paper, photo paper she realized, bending down and picking up a scrap that held an elbow and a small slice of fence somewhere. The umbrella stand was knocked over and she thought of the child’s game, Jack Straws, the tiny cutlasses and canes sliding over one another in a pile. All the doors were open as if a hurricane had blustered through the house, throwing paper confetti in every direction. They peered into rooms, Amal holding the back of Rehan’s shirt in her fist, afraid to let go. Through the patio doors, she could see that there was no light on in the tent, the canvas door flapping open and closed in the evening breeze. Mirza was in the house, sitting at the table in the dining room. A small sheaf of papers was placed in front of him. There was a torn manila envelope on the floor; it looked as if a dog had chewed it open. Mirza was silent when they entered the room. Amal knew that Rehan had been planning to catch the next train back to his home, but he pulled out a chair next to Mirza and sat down.

Mirza pushed the stack of papers towards him. They were official documents from a solicitor in the city. Amal glanced over and saw the names Mirza and Naida, but she was distracted by the photos strewn across the table, old polaroids from shoeboxes and large albums with floral covers. One album was open to a page where several photos had been ripped out from under the yellowed cellophane.

“It is finished,” Mirza said, looking from one to another of them. His voice was flat and soft, but Amal noticed large sweat stains on his shirt. His hair was standing up at strange angles, reminding her of a rooster, and there were tiny scraps of glossy paper on his sweater, that she realized were from the photos.

“Uncle, are you going to sign?” asked Rehan, looking at the paperwork. “You know you don’t have to make that decision yet.”

“She has made it for me.”

Amal made them all some tea, dropping an extra sugar and lots of milk in her uncle’s cup. The house was largely the way it had been that morning before she had left for Darlington, but cupboards were open everywhere, and she could see that their contents had been rifled through. Different colored ties were laid
 out with shirts and suits, like empty bodied people, in various poses on sofas and chairs.

“Call her,” suggested Amal, but he waved the notion away with his hand.

“I am hungry,” he announced suddenly and pushed himself up from the table.

“Oh,” began Amal, balancing her uncle’s cup of tea as she followed him into the kitchen, but he did not see her as he began pulling out packets of cereal and jam jars. He lined up the jars, labels facing towards him, and nodded as if he were arr
anging the line-up of a soccer team. He chose a strawberry jam and layered a thick dollop on a piece of bread, eating it standing up at the counter.