Before We Visit the Goddess (25 page)

Gloomily, I thanked him and turned to leave. I was already thinking about other places where Mrs. Dewan might work. A hardware store? A restaurant? I was at the door when Lance said, “I ran into David last night at Harry's.”

Had David been with someone else? Harry's was a dance club, so I guessed yes. Had he said anything to Lance about breaking up with me? From the curious sympathy in Lance's eyes, I guessed yes again.

“I have to go,” I said.

The world never ceases to surprise. How had I forgotten that?

A couple of days later, Mrs. Dewan came by my apartment to tell me that Lance had hired her as a shelf-stocker. To show her appreciation, she invited me over for an Indian dinner.

This presented me with a dilemma.

I was familiar with Indian food, introduced to it by friends in college. I did not care for it. The curries I encountered in restaurants were too hot. The heavy sauces gave me heartburn. Even David had not been able to cure me of this culinary timidity. When we went out for Indian, I made my meal out of rice and raita, resentfully picking green chilies out of the yogurt. Leaving me, David had said, “Kenneth, you never want to try anything new.” This was blatantly unfair. I had made my loyal way through any number of his concoctions, from cotija-and-chili-stuffed enchiladas to pear bok-choy soup. “Living with you,” he added sadly, “is like slowly sinking into mud.”

Now I decided to prove him wrong. I informed Mrs. Dewan that I would be happy to come, though I did mention that I preferred my food mild and recognizable.

The evening began well. Mrs. Dewan had risen to the challenge posed by my finicky stomach. She named the dishes in Bengali, her language, writing them down for me on a paper napkin. The triangular appetizers were singaras. They were stuffed with cauliflower. Dessert was a light caramelized yogurt, mishti doi. The chicken simmering in a mild yogurt gravy was murgir jhol. The yellow lentils were muger dal, seasoned with whole cumin. Cumin was a digestive, Mrs. Dewan informed me. “My daughter Tara—she, too, has a fussy stomach,” she said. “That's how I learned to cook this way.”

I wondered where Tara-of-the-fussy-stomach was at this time, when her mother could have done with some family support. I knew not to ask.

Over dinner, Mrs. Dewan opened a large bottle of wine and told me about Kolkata, the city where she had lived before marriage. Life in Kolkata seemed dangerous and exhilarating. Kolkatans loved desserts; they thought nothing of traveling across the traffic-choked city to the famous sweet shop Mrs. Dewan's mother owned to sample her Durga Mohan. Streets flooded during the monsoons, so that as a girl Mrs. Dewan had to ride a pull-rickshaw to school. During her college years, when the Naxals were in power, she had once come across the body of a young man in an alley, the word
traitor
cut into his forehead.

In reciprocation, I offered her tidbits from my youth in Waco. I went to church with my parents twice a week, listening with fascination as our pastor eloquently described the devil and the myriad snares with which he pulled us to hell. I got drunk with high school friends in the back of the Target parking lot. In my senior year, I took long, solitary walks along the rain-drenched Brazos River, tortured by the suspicion that I didn't belong. Mrs. Dewan listened, her brows creased in fascination, as though my stories were as exotic as hers. Perhaps, to her, they were.

By the end of the evening, we were pleasantly inebriated. When I was leaving, she asked if we could do this again next week.

The David-voice inside me whispered,
Careful, Ken. I'm telling you this for your own good. Leave her alone. She clearly has problems
.

To the voice I said,
Who doesn't?

To Mrs. Dewan I said, “Love to.”

I was surprised by how much I looked forward to our dinners. We met at my place one week and hers the next. It gave me a reason to clean up. I suspect it was the same for her. She still hadn't unpacked most of her boxes, but when I came over, they would be lined up neatly against the wall and shrouded with colorful saris.

After a couple of disastrous culinary episodes, we decided that she should be responsible for the food. I brought the libations. The trick was to provide enough alcohol to put her at ease without getting her drunk. I managed this by mixing her numerous weak, fruity drinks. Sometimes she gave me a glance indicating that she was on to my strategy, but she did not complain. It seemed that she was drinking less than before. Perhaps it was my imagination. These evenings, we stayed up too late. Next day I would wake bleary-eyed and require twice my usual dose of caffeine in order to make it to the bookstore. It must have been harder on Mrs. Dewan since she worked the morning shift. But I never heard Lance complain, so clearly, somehow, she managed.

I was unsure as to how to classify our relationship. We were friends, but also something else. Sometimes we played video games. (I played while Mrs. Dewan applauded.) Sometimes we watched Indian movies. (She paused them to translate; the subtitles were cryptic and mystifying.) Mostly we talked. I found myself speaking to Mrs. Dewan the way I might have to an older sister or a favorite aunt. In reality I had no siblings, and my aunt was a harridan with whom I communicated as infrequently as possible.

Often we chatted about inconsequential things. Mrs. Dewan liked to hear about the quirks of the authors who did readings at our store. I invited her to attend the events, but she refused. Crowds made her nervous. She also liked hearing about the store's latest acquisitions, though she never bought any of them. Best of all, she liked me to recount the plots of novels I had read. Her favorite genre was domestic noir. If the boyfriend or husband was revealed to be the killer, she would suck in her breath, delighted.

“I knew it,” she'd say. “I just knew it!”

In return she would tell me stories she had heard in childhood, gruesome Bengali folktales filled with foolish kings who got their noses chopped off and unlucky criminals who were buried alive in holes filled with thorns.

Sometimes, as the night progressed, we would get personal. She told me more about Tara, who had dropped out of school, then cut herself off from Mrs. Dewan soon after the divorce. “She acted like the whole thing was my fault,” she said, sounding astonished. I told her about Tufts, our black Labrador, and how I would come home from school and whisper into his ear the humiliations of the day. They were many, because I was a boy who attracted bullies the way garbage attracts flies.

Mrs. Dewan hadn't been able to reach Tara for years, though she had left her contact information at every address she could find for her daughter. Through the Indian grapevine, Mrs. Dewan heard that Tara had become involved with drugs. “I called her cell phone,” she said, “but she wouldn't pick up. I even went to the university and talked to her classmates in case they knew anything. I was so frantic, for days I drove around the Montrose area. I never did find her. Finally, the dorm people packed up Tara's stuff and mailed it to me. That's what's in the big box in the corner, in case Tara ever comes by.”

My happiest childhood memories were of taking Tufts for his daily walk, just him and me. Walking behind him, holding his leash, I believed myself to be useful. I didn't even mind cleaning up after him. Then Tufts developed cancer. The vet said he would have to be put down. I wanted to go with him to the clinic, but my parents would not let me. I was too young, they said. Later they told me he had passed away peacefully. I did not believe this.

“I sometimes dream about Tufts,” I told Mrs. Dewan. “His eyes are wide, his body spasming. He swings his head from side to side, looking for me.” It was something I had never discussed with anyone.

Mrs. Dewan said, “Oh, my. I have dreams like that.” I waited for details, but all she said was, “My husband once poisoned a dog.”

Sometimes, lying in bed sleepless, I thought about Mrs. Dewan. She appeared so ordinary. Yet she had lived a life filled with violence and mystery. Once, when she was a child, a magician—or perhaps it was a hypnotist—had tried to kidnap her. It amazed me that I had become friends with such a woman.

There were things we did not speak of at our dinners. Mrs. Dewan did not bring up her drinking problem. Or the details of her divorce. Or why she had not returned to India, where her dollars would surely have ensured her an easier life. I did not mention David's defection, or how often I found myself thinking of him. I did not describe how I had come home from college during my second semester and told my parents that I was gay. My parents had not condemned or disowned me. They had turned to me faces stricken with an incomprehension that was worse.

Something was wrong.

David would have caught it sooner. He was a more perceptive man than I. But even I could see that our dinners were dwindling—just a lentil dish and egg curry, the rice not basmati but generic long-grain. Mrs. Dewan spoke with her usual animation, inscribing hieroglyphs in the air with her hands. But she hardly ate anything. She said she was dieting. She wanted to lose the twenty pounds she had gained since the divorce. But one night when she was in the bathroom I checked her kitchen. The cabinets were bare except for a box of cornflakes and a few cans of beans. In the fridge were a reduced-price bag of mini-donuts and a half bottle of wine. Once when I stopped by unannounced, the apartment was sweltering; the air conditioner was turned off.

“Heat doesn't bother me,” Mrs. Dewan said, surreptitiously wiping her sweaty forehead on her arm.

She was running out of money.

This surprised me. I had guessed that the grocery job would not pay for all her expenses, but I had thought she would have a sizable alimony. She had been married for over twenty years. I hesitated to ask—she had tried hard to keep her financial problems a secret from me—but finally I had to know.

“I'm not getting any alimony right now,” she said. “Mr. Dewan filed for bankruptcy last year.”

The situation sounded suspicious. I advised her to get a lawyer. But she shook her head vehemently and changed the topic.

I stopped by Lance's office again and asked if he could find Mrs. Dewan additional work. She was a good cook. Might his clientele be interested in a Saturday cooking demonstration?

“This woman really means a lot to you, doesn't she?” he said. What he meant was,
Why?

I shrugged. I was not sure of the answer.

“We can try it out next weekend,” he said. “I'll ask her to make something Indian, something popular. If sales go up enough, she can continue.” He stared at a spot on his desk. “Do you want to go out sometime?”

My chest felt like it was too small to contain all the things knocking around inside it. Heart, lungs, excitement, a surge of blood like sorrow. The backwash of memories. Finally I said, “I'm sorry. It's too soon.”

It was. I spent most of my free time at home, surfing the Net. I had a hard time sleeping. Late at night, I would go down to the gym on the ground floor and run on the treadmill until I was soaked with sweat. I tried to go out a couple of times, but it was too stressful, even when I hung with a group of friends. Their silent glances weighed on me. I wanted to denounce David. I wanted to defend his defection. Each time the door to the bar opened, my throat clenched. I feared it would be him. When it was not, I was pierced by disappointment.