The Vine of Desire (16 page)

“I bet Gossen’s going to have a hernia when she finds out! But, wait, that’s not the best part! After the class a couple of women come up to me and say that they think my writing’s really strong—all this time they had no idea because of course Gossen would rather shit bricks than praise my work.”

Shit bricks!
I try to keep the consternation off my face. But underneath I’m thinking how little I have in common anymore with this new Anju.

“—And then they ask me to join their writers’ group,” she finishes in triumph.

“Writers’ group,” I say, trying hard to understand. But I can’t. My head feels stuffy, as though I’m coming down with a cold. A writers’ group? What’s the use of that?

“They meet every Tuesday,” Anju says, “for a couple of hours after class, and each one reads a piece and gets a response from the others—”

I want to interrupt. Does she like her unsweetened tea? Is she too tired to go for a walk? Did she answer her mother’s letter? These are things I understand. I’ve made ghugni with chickpeas and flaked coconut, does she want some? When she talks of writing, I see once again Ramesh’s signature on the divorce papers. The letters had been sharp and feral. The blue ink held a glitter in it, like something secreted by a venomous insect. I’d never seen his signature before that because he’d never written to me.

What will become of me on Tuesdays?

“You won’t mind, will you, Sudha, dear?” Anju says. She’s pleading, which is rare for her. “It’ll be a long day alone for you—but this is so exciting! Nothing like this has happened to me, ever. I really liked this woman—she’s so passionate about things. So sure. So different from anyone I know.”

Different from me, she means. A wave of jealous hurt scalds my insides.

“She’s from Iran,” Anju says, not noticing. Does she notice anything about me nowadays? “Her family fled the country during Khomeini’s rule. She’s writing an essay about that time, particularly what happened to the women. I can’t imagine being able to write something like that! She said I had real talent and owed it to myself to develop it.”

Owed it to myself. It was not an idea we’d grown up with in Calcutta. Owed it to my parents, yes. My ancestors. My in-laws.
My children. Teachers, society, God. But
owed it to myself?
Yet how easily Anju says it today.

What is it that I owe myself?

“Do you think that’s true, Sudha?” Anju leans forward and grips my wrists. “Do you think I could really be a writer?”

Her fingers are strong, still warm from the teacup. When we were girls, she’d grab me just like this, and I’d feel her excitement speeding up my heartbeat. Even when we became wives, she in San Jose and I bricked up in Bardhaman, we’d sense each other’s needs without having to talk. If one of us had a secret, the other would taste it, grainy and bitter like pomegranate seeds bitten into by accident.

Today, nothing but heaviness.

I’ve done that which I shouldn’t have
, I tell her in my mind, willing her to hear.
I’ve kissed your husband and liked it.

“What do you think, Sudha? Shall I join the group?”

Don’t leave me alone with him.

“Sudha! Are you listening!”

“How can I tell you what to do?” I say. Disappointment sharpens my tone. “I’ve never been to college.”

“Don’t be like that!” Anju says. “You’re the one closest to me, the one who understands me best. The one I trust most of all.”

There’s a muted hissing in my ears. I pretend to pick something up from the carpet so I can remove my hands from hers.

“Try it, then,” I say. “You never know what’s right for you unless you try.” As soon as I’ve said them, the words feel ominous, loaded with a meaning I didn’t intend. A meaning that applies to my life as well.

Anju leans forward and gives me a hug. “Thanks for encouraging me.”

Oh, Anju! But even my grief is separate and muted. She will not guess it.

“Need any help with dinner?” she asks. “Oh, I forgot, are there any letters?”

I hand her the cream envelope.

“Sunil Majumdar and Family!” she says. “How delightfully chauvinistic!” She flips the envelope over, looks at the name embossed on the back. Shrugs. “Don’t know them.” She leaves it on the coffee table for Sunil to open.

Only now, in its loss, I know the value of what the two of us had. A metallic fog has wound itself around me. Is this how other people go through their lives? Hearing dimly, feeling even less? They hold out their arms, hoping to connect, but the metal glints, brutal as a mirror. All they can see is their own face. They—we—open our mouth to call out, and fog fills it like cotton candy. Loneliness candy, which melts into nothing, leaving a taste so sweet you cannot distinguish it from bitterness.

“Did you hear the news?” Sunil says as he hurries into the apartment. “Nicole Brown, O. J. Simpson’s wife, has been murdered!”

Another person for me to add to my list of not-knowns. But Anju asks, “You mean O. J. the athlete?”

“Yes, him,” he shouts over his shoulder from the bedroom. Why is he so agitated? He carries the TV out and sets it up on the counter so that we can watch while we eat dinner.

A young newscaster in a blue suit and pale brown hair looks out at us. His face is blankly handsome. “The body of Nicole Brown has been discovered in her house on Bundy Drive in Brentwood, along with that of an unidentified male companion,”
he recites. “The police are trying to locate her ex-husband, football hero and actor O. J. Simpson, for questioning.”

I ladle dal and brinjal curry onto our plates and bring out the fried fish, which I’ve kept crisp in the oven.

“Crunchy fish, yum!” Anju says. “Oh, Sudha, you’re spoiling me!”

Sunil gives her a reprimanding look, then goes back to staring at the TV. His cheeks are the dusty red of burnt bricks. He hasn’t touched his food, though he, too, is fond of fried fish. Pictures of a vaguely European-looking house, cordoned off with yellow police tape, flash on the screen. Then the photo of a blonde woman, beautiful in a chilly, film-star way. The camera zooms in on the dark stains on the steps. Thankfully, the bodies have been removed. “Arnelle Simpson, O. J.’s daughter, told the police that her father took a flight to Chicago some time late last night,” intones the newscaster gloomily. “Brian Kaelin, a friend of O. J.’s staying at his estate on Rockingham Drive, claims …” The picture goes fuzzy—it’s an old TV—and his words are drowned in static. Sunil jumps up to adjust the antenna, but by then the young man is describing the outbreak of yet another fire in the Oakland hills.

“Damn!”

I’m taken aback by the hard, pelleted word, the way his lips, tight as new elastic, choke it off. A murder is a terrible thing, true, but murders happen every day. Why is this one so important to him?

We eat silently. The TV gives us a reason not to talk. There’s something unreal and orchestrated about news reports. Something I can’t quite believe. Why is it that so many people find events which are occurring to people they don’t know, in cities they’ll never set foot in, more compelling than their own problems?
Even Anju. Growing up, she’d fiddle for hours with the knobs of the transistor radio she’d begged Gouri Ma to get her. She’d sit on the window seat of our bedroom, entranced by the faint, crackly sounds of All India Radio, or Akashbani Kalikata. Late at night, the BBC. All those lives so far from ours, so different. Beyond understanding, beyond helping. What was the point of filling our heads with their troubles?

You can’t ever really know people that way, I once said to Anju.

What fascinated me were the stories I’d hear the aunties whispering during their tea sessions. Forbidden stories about people who lived on our street. Stories of secrets that I, looking at their faces, would never have guessed at. People like Mangala, the Rai Bahadur’s maidservant. Though by the time I came to know her story, she, too, was beyond our helping.

That’s whose face flashed through my mind as I watched the dead Nicole’s face on the screen. Mangala.

I should be more like Anju, I know that. I need to learn about this country. The TV, in spite of all its faults, can offer me images. Names. The clues of accents. But I get confused. There’s a plane crash, all 262 passengers killed, for one minute on the screen. Then the story of a woman who had quintuplets, or a dog who saved a child. Also one minute. Is everything equally important in America? Or nothing important enough? I suspect codes embedded in the folds of the stories, in the curve of the anchorwoman’s eyebrow. Sara would have known how to decipher them.

But why am I thinking of her in a wishful past tense, as though I won’t see her again?

We eat. Nicole’s murder flashes on the screen intermittently, between discussions of a rise in the stock market and chances of rain. Sunil has recovered enough to compliment me on the brinjal curry. His second sentence. Each evening he allows himself to speak three sentences to me. The first, a question about my day. The second, about food. The third, Dayita. Each requires no more than a one-word answer.

At some point in my life I will look back at these evenings and laugh. I must believe this. I must believe this.

Anju springs up from her chair. “Just remembered—this came in the mail today.” She hands Sunil the envelope. “Who’s it from?”

“Chopra? He’s one of my clients. His company went public last year. Made a bunch of money, built a huge house up in Los Altos Hills.” Sunil fingers the heavy parchment appreciatively. Or is it envy in that lingering touch? He opens the card. “It’s an invitation to his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.”

“When is it?” Anju asks.

“Next weekend. We were obviously an afterthought.” For a moment his expression veers toward anger.

“Then maybe we shouldn’t go. Besides, we’d have to buy a gift—”

Anju breaks off. She doesn’t want to talk finances in front of me. Doesn’t want me to feel uncomfortable. But I know already.

I heard them once, while nursing Dayita in the back room. Furious whispers.

She: There’s only a hundred and fifty dollars left in our checking account.

He: You’ll have to make do with it until I get my paycheck on the fifteenth.

She: I don’t know how I can. I have to get groceries, diapers,
baby vitamins. Why can’t you send a little less each month to your folks in India?

He: That’s not possible.

She: Why not? It’s not like your dad’s hurting for money. Doesn’t he own—what is it?—two rental properties? And here we are, living in this dump of an apartment….

He: We’ve talked about this a hundred times. I’m not going to discuss it again. You knew money was tight. You should have thought about it before you invited your cousin to stay with us.

She: How can you compare your dad’s situation to Sudha’s? She really needed to get away, start over. And I needed her with me. How can you grudge us this one thing? What else have I ever asked you for? What else have you ever given me?

He:
(Silence)

She:
(Silence).

Sunil looks down, examining the invitation. Is he thinking of his own wedding, the years it has lasted, the years it might not last?