Before We Visit the Goddess (28 page)

When she came out of the bedroom, she was wearing her dance outfit. The gold threads caught the light as she walked toward me. There was something otherworldly in the way she moved, the way she lifted her arms and spun around, the red-and-white silk blurring like an undulation of fire.

“You can fit into it!” I said.

She laughed, her face mischievous, merry like a girl's. “Surprised you, didn't I? I cheated and let out the sides. I figured it'll never fit me otherwise. I didn't want to waste any more of my life waiting.”

How had I imagined I could be Pygmalion to a woman like this?

She put on some music. Drum and flute, I think. She played it soft, because it was dreadfully late, a time when all good men and women, or at least the practical ones, had gone to bed. Then she danced for me.

Patient's Name

Sanjay Kumar Dewan

It was his grandmother who gave him the name (which meant victory), holding him wrapped in red malmal cloth for luck. There was a celebration feast in Ranchi, where his father was a teacher in the city's best school. A hundred guests were invited because he was the first son.

He's not sure how he knows this. An old photo maybe, or a story, or merely a craving inside, because his grandmother died within the year, and his parents in a train crash when he was five. So much for the luck of red malmal. He was brought to Kolkata to live in the reluctant household of his uncle, where he became Sheno, the name usually coupled with an invective, son-of-a-dog-Sheno, burnt-face-Sheno, brainless-ape-Sheno, haramzada-Sheno, and followed by a clout to the ears. But he survived it, so perhaps there was luck after all, tucked like a stolen rupee note into the waistband of a ragged pajama. More luck came with Bishu, his friend who softened his name to Shonu and saved his life. In college he dived into the danger of Communist politics, became a hero, you might say. Carried a Nepali kukri, bought secondhand in Chora Bazaar—not that he ever used it. On its blade was a dull stain that he liked to think was blood. Sanjay-da, his juniors called him, their eyes lowered in respect. He was Shona to his sweetheart Bela, who flew to him from India, straight as an arrow. He would have done anything for her then. But he lost her somewhere in Texas—or was it the love that went missing? To his daughter Tara, he was once the world. Now he's a blocked number, an erased name, a swiveling away of the shoulders should they chance to meet. Ah, enough of that. To his professional contacts he's Jay; to his bar buddies he's J.D. On the carpet in front of their fireplace, his current girlfriend grabs fistfuls of his hair and screams, bucking as she comes,
Jayman! Jayman!
Like he's some kind of superhero. From Sanjay Kumar in Ranchi, India, to Jayman here in Oakland, California, it's been—pardon the pun—quite the ride.

But today Sanjay is stuck in the doctor's office—a new doctor, since he goes through them quickly—filling out this idiot form, because last night he had a breathing episode.

The office is generic, nothing to write home about. (But even if it was, where is the home he would write to?) Pukey pastel colors, the mandatory mid-sized aquarium, carpet chosen to camouflage accidents of various natures, an odor like resignation, patients at various stages of decrepitude slumped in their chairs, careful not to make eye contact, as though you could catch something that way.

Today's Date

July 13, 2015

Something about this day nags at him like an ache in a phantom limb. It's not just how old he's become, sixty-plus, though that astonishes him from time to time, as though he were the victim of some trick, the pages of the calendar flipping fast, then faster, like in TV cartoons. This morning, for instance, he'd looked in his bathroom mirror and was shocked by the baggy-eyed apparition confronting him. His girlfriend didn't make things any better, emerging from the shower right at that moment, all perky breasts and cacophonous concern.
Oooh, honey bear, you look like death warmed up. Do you feel okay? I'm going to call the doctor's office right now. No, don't even try to talk me out of it.

He'd glared at her, recognizing anew their age difference. A younger Sanjay would have decimated her with sarcasm. But today his brain was working at glacial speed. The best retort he could come up with was,
Don't call me honey bear.
His only victory: he refused to let her drive him here.

Now he remembers. It's the fifteenth anniversary of his divorce.

It was a day he had waited for with fierce eagerness, though it is hard to remember what exactly he had hoped would happen. That he would float into the sky, untethered and shiny as a helium balloon? That he would shed his polite, discolored smile and emerge more dangerous and attractive than he'd ever been? That he would take off for a sunset on a tropical island with a special someone? It hadn't worked out like that, though there had been a woman. (Her name? Nope, it's gone AWOL.) They'd flown to Vegas for a weekend where they drank too much and won an indecent amount at blackjack and then lost it and more elsewhere. Somehow they ended up at a police station, an inch away from being slammed in the locker, except he'd been able to talk his way out of it. He was good at that.

But the resentment he'd longed to escape settled back on his shoulders all too soon, like ash on the overcoat of a man watching in fascination a building going up in flames. Later, he brushes and brushes it, but the coat is ruined.

And the revenge he had hoped to exact? That he got, yes. But it cost him.

Date of Birth

October 7, 1950

Funny to think that for years he didn't know when his birthday was. They didn't celebrate it in his uncle's house, and even as a six-year-old he knew not to ask. There were parties for his uncle's two daughters, giggly round-faced girls whose features he has forgotten. But the food he remembers. Sugary twists of jalebis from the street-side shop. Singaras stuffed with spicy potatoes. And rice pudding with raisins and almonds as a once-a-year treat because his uncle wasn't a rich man. One time his aunt gave him some, after the girls' friends were done eating. Sitting here in the doctor's office, he can still taste those delicious, grudging spoonfuls. He got them because she was superstitious and believed it would bring her daughter bad luck otherwise.
Have you seen how he watches them eat?
she had hissed to her husband.
Have you seen his eyes?
His uncle told her not to be ridiculous.
He's just a kid
. But he was too tired, after a long workday at the post office, to argue further with her.

That night, the dream was born. He, Sanjay Kumar, would grow up and make a mountain of money and throw an enormous party for himself on every birthday. Lying on his lumpy mattress in the dank room he shared with Gopal the servant, he imagined it: mutton pastries from New Market, shrimp cutlets from Bhabanipur, three kinds of ice cream from Magnolia's, a Flury's fruitcake big as a table. Foods that he'd only heard of. Places of myth festooned with stars. There would be an acrobat, a clown, even a dancing bear, why not. He would invite his uncle and his cousins and especially his aunt and force them to eat until they got sick from it, the too-rich food and his too-much success.

As you might imagine, that never happened.

Other things happened, though, almost as impossible.

In America he found out he had a nose for sniffing out the best deals. He became scandalously successful, though sometimes this meant he wandered into less-than-legal alleyways. He bought the bigger house on the hill, the sports car, the tailored suits, the club memberships. His life would have been a cliché, if it hadn't been for baby Tara. She wanted her father, only him. He was the one who crooned her to sleep, off-key, though Bela was the better singer. When she was restless with the colic, he walked her up and down for hours. One night she had the stomach flu and threw up on his only designer jacket. Bela was horrified—
Oh, God, it's the Valentino
—but he didn't care. When Tara pushed her mother away and clung to him instead, it made his chest swell with secret victory.

But back to his birthday. Once, early in their marriage, he had mentioned to Bela his cake-less childhood. He had regretted it immediately, hating the way pity had clouded her eyes. But it was too late.

From then on, his birthday became their family's biggest celebration. Bela made him cakes from scratch, layered with fresh strawberries and buttercream, embellished decadently with coconut-almond frosting. She cooked dinners over which their guests sighed in envious pleasure: an Italian feast, all the way from antipasti to gelato; a Hawaiian luau, complete with roasted pig and leis. Oceans of wine and vodka and gin and scotch to toast him with, and for his fortieth birthday, a chorus girl dressed only in colored feathers. As good as any dancing bear, wouldn't you say?

Only, it wasn't.

It's hot in this room; he's sweating into his collar. He considers telling the plump blonde behind the glass-walled counter to turn up the air conditioner. But just as he pushes himself to his feet, she gets up and disappears into a hidden corridor, as though she knew what he was about to ask.

Which of the following conditions are you currently being treated for or have been treated for in the past?

Heart disease/murmur/angina

He pauses at this one.
You don't have a heart, you bastard
, Bela had screamed at him when he moved out of the house. Would that qualify as a disease? Over the years other women have accused him of similar things. Even Bishu had stared at him toward the end, his brows scrunched up.
You've changed, Shonu. What's happened to you?
But Sanjay-Shonu-Shona, well on his way to emancipation by then, had smiled like he didn't know what Bishu was talking about.

Sometimes his heart murmurs to him.
Tara
, it says.
Tara-Tara-Tara
. He's generally dexterous at ignoring things he doesn't want to pay attention to, but his heart, it knows how to get beneath his skin.

Puns. They'll be the death of him.

Shortness of breath

Yes, this is the one he's here for, the way it comes upon him unexpectedly when he's playing blackjack, or talking to his broker, or messing around with his girlfriend, or paying her bills (younger women are expensive), or giving in to rage. Yesterday, after he received the call about Tara from the private investigator, he had to lie down. The breathlessness pounced upon him, worse than ever before. He's not scared of much. But that desperate hunger for air, that feeling of spiraling into blackness: okay, he admits it, it was terrifying.

He knows what the doctor will say. He's heard it before.
Quit
. All those cigarettes, especially the nonfiltered ones in India Bishu and he shared because that's all they could afford, they've ruined his lungs. He's damned if he'll give them up, though. He's not sure he can. Faithful, uncomplaining, they've been with him longer than any human in his life.

There's got to be another solution. There always is. That's the motto he's lived by, and except in one thing, it's served him well.

He looks around the room with some satisfaction. Even with all his troubles, he's better off than most of the sad sacks sitting in this room waiting to die. He'd bet his last dollar on it.

Describe any current or past medical treatment not listed above.

Malaria

He remembers the torn mosquito net, dug up from some rag pile by his aunt. She smiled as she handed it to him, relieved because now she wouldn't have to buy a new one.
Be sure to use it. We don't want you to get sick.
By now he was good at hearing the unspoken words:
And cause us even more trouble and expense than you have already.

Obediently, he attached strings to the loops at the corners and hung it up each night in the downstairs room. There were already nails in the wall for tying the strings to, put up by the servant, Gopal. Gopal, who resented him because he'd had to give up his spot on the wooden taktaposh for Sheno-the-usurper, and now Gopal was forced to make his bed on the damp concrete floor. That first night Sanjay heard him grunting and breathing hard, straining, then crying out in a way that made Sanjay pull his covers up over his frightened head. In the morning Gopal looked at him with narrowed eyes and made a slicing motion across his throat. But he need not have worried. There was no one in that household to whom Sanjay could have told anything.

That's why he didn't complain when the mosquitoes (particularly prolific that year because of the rains) made their merry way in through the rents in the net and raised swollen bite-bumps all over his legs. Or when the fever came upon him one evening and his teeth chattered so loudly that Gopal complained that the noise kept him up at night. Sanjay didn't mind the fever too much. It transported him back to their garden in Ranchi, his mother snipping marigolds for their altar. He could smell the wild acrid flowers. In the morning he felt like a wrung-out mop rag, too exhausted to get ready for school, or even to climb up the stairs for breakfast. His aunt sent down barley water and aspirin via Gopal, along with instructions to rest. Translation:
Don't get near my girls and make them sick, too.
No one came to see him.

Except Bishu, the neighbor boy with whom he played street football, who shook his shoulder and called his name. Shonu, Shonu. Or did he fever-dream that, too? In that dream other people appeared, leaning over his bed, people he barely knew, like his history teacher Lal Ratan Babu, and a strange man with spectacles and a stethoscope. And next to them his tired-eyed uncle, first blustering, then meek and dwindled. Sanjay's head was steadied; he was forced to swallow pills that left bitterness etched on his tongue; a needle poked his arm; a thermometer was thrust into his mouth; he smelled, one last time, the marigold smell of his mother. Then Gopal, sobered by this brush with death, was holding up his head not ungently, making sure he drank his barley water. The bottom line: he survived.