The Vine of Desire (33 page)

“But during this visit—?”

“He’s different now. When he first got here, he wanted to try everything. Like America was a great big toy store, and he was a kid. He loved ice cream. We’d go to Baskin-Robbins every few days so he could try a new flavor. But, now, whatever I bring him—chocolate chip muffins, lemon-raspberry yogurt—he doesn’t even look. All he’ll say—in that painful stammer—is,
Send me home, Deepu.
But how can I?” He takes off his glasses and massages the bridge of his nose tiredly. “He’s not well enough to travel, and, anyway, there’s no one back there to look after him.”

They stand in awkward silence, nothing left to say for the moment. Behind them the Sub-Zero refrigerator, its doors paneled with wood to match the floor, purrs contentedly.

Sometimes, even when you know it’s useless, you can’t stop trying.

She says, “If you still want to hear the dream, I’ll tell you.”

He cannot help glancing at the clock on the dresser. He’s going to be late for work. The only other time he was late was the morning after she was rushed to the hospital.

Can we forgive him that glance, the way one forgives a nervous tic?

“Tell me,” he says.

“I was flying over the ocean. It took no effort, I was so light. There was a breeze. I floated on it, out and out—”

“And then?”

“Then nothing. That’s why it was so special. It wasn’t like life, where things have to keep happening, one new excitement after another, or else you feel like you’re suffocating.” She lowers her chin onto her knees, so the last words come out in a mumble.

“Anju,” Sunil says. He’s never spoken to her this gently. It makes her catch her breath. Strands of hair have fallen over her downturned face. He tucks them behind her ears as though she were a child, raises her chin so she must look at him. “We aren’t any good for each other anymore—you see that, don’t you?”

Myra’s note tells her to wait until the old man wakes and rings his bell. But it’s 11:00
A.M.
already, and he hasn’t made a sound. Sudha arranges a row of chairs to form a makeshift playpen, gives Dayita a set of spoons to play with, and knocks on his door. When there’s no reply, she peers in anxiously.

“Are you all right?” she asks. It’s dark in here, a musty lack of light accentuated by the sun-glass-wood sheen that characterizes the other rooms. It’s the only room with curtains—the old man must have asked for them. They cover the windows thickly, as anachronistic as medieval tapestries in this house. Sudha goes to open them.

“Leave it!”

The old man’s voice creaks like an unoiled hinge, making her jump. He registers this. His eyes glitter with malice, the only pleasure left to him.

“Good morning! Would you like some breakfast? Shall I help you wash up?” She makes her voice professional and hearty, like the voices of nurses she’s watched on TV.

“Go away.”

“You know I can’t do that.” Sudha switches on the room light, but turns it off when he grimaces and covers his face with his good arm. In the dim glow of the night bulb, she wheels in a cart equipped with basins, towels, a pitcher of warm water. “As soon as you’re clean and have fresh clothes, I’ll get you breakfast,” she says as she starts removing his clothes. “What would you like? Cereal? There’s at least three kinds that I saw. How about whole-wheat toast? With eggs maybe, lightly scrambled? Myra picked up some really nice honey yogurt at the health food store….”

She’s babbling, she knows it, but she’s too embarrassed to stop. Apart from her husband, she’s never seen a man naked. (No—there was Sunil, but that was a kind of delirium from which no images remain.) This man—old though he is—what makes it worse is that he so obviously hates her touching him. He shuts his eyes tightly and turns his face away as far as he can. Half of his face is blank and sagging because of the stroke. On the other half, there is a look of such frustration that her fingers falter as she removes the soiled, diaperlike undergarments and runs the washcloth over his flaccid, ruined flesh.

But certain actions, once begun, must be brought to completion. She knows this. She presses her lips together and forces herself to breathe normally, though the stench sickens her. Smell of body waste and despair. A muscle jumps above the uneven crag of his left eyebrow. She wipes and powders and tugs various articles of clothing over his tense limbs. Embarrassment makes her clumsy. But apologizing would only make things worse. He is a tall man, with heavy, uncooperative bones. Push, push. Raise and bend. Finally, she heaves him into a sitting position and wedges a pillow behind his back. Sweat beads her upper
lip, her breath is ragged, her hair has come undone, curls sprouting everywhere as though she’s been in a wind. But she smiles, pleased at her achievement.

“There, does that feel a little better?”

He says nothing.

“How about that breakfast now?” She recites the list of foods again. He doesn’t respond.

“I guess I’ll just get you some cereal, then.” She returns with a bed tray, which she places over his legs, and a blue ceramic bowl filled with Cocoa Krispies and milk.

“I was going to bring you Toasted Oats, but these looked like they would be more fun,” she says conspiratorially. “Your son must have bought them. Somehow I can’t imagine Myra crunching Cocoa Krispies, can you?”

The old man stares expressionlessly past her efforts at humor.

“Here, take the spoon.” She closes his left hand over it. “Come on! After last night, I
know
nothing’s wrong with that hand!”

He makes his fingers limp so the spoon falls and skitters under the bed.

“Oh, very well. I’ll feed you. Though I would think you’d prefer to do it yourself.” She cleans off the spoon, fills it, and brings it to his mouth. “Open, open.” She butts the spoon against his lips as she does with Dayita. Perhaps it’s the playfulness in her voice that makes the old man comply. Or maybe he’s ravenous after all these days of holding out. He lets her pour the milky cereal into his mouth, chews for a moment, and then, just as she nods encouragingly and lifts another spoonful, he spits at her with all his strength. Half-chewed gobs, dark brown, spatter her cheek, her hair. She touches her face, looks disbelievingly
at her soiled fingers. Her eyes are full of shock. He stares at her defiantly, his face twisted in a snarl that could be a grin. Her hands are shaking. She presses a knuckle against her lips. Then she snatches the tray from the bed and runs out.

It is the year of temporary compromises. On a continent halfway across the world, Russia signs an accord titled “Partnership for Peace.” On an island at the edge of the Atlantic, the IRA agree to cease hostilities. In the bedroom abandoned by the woman he is wild for, Sunil makes his voice toneless, the way one does when afraid of losing control. He moves his body toward Anju in cautious investigation, like someone swimming over sharp coral.

“For a long time now, we’ve just made each other unhappy.”

She shuts her eyes and holds her breath so that a sound like airplane engines fills the space between her ears. Still, she hears him.

“I can’t afford to do it anymore. Half my life is gone. I don’t want to waste the rest.”

She turns toward the dresser. There’s dust along its top, which surprises her. Sudha is always so neat. The fake wood grain swirls like gigantic thumbprints.

“The company is transferring me to Houston very soon. I want to start the divorce proceedings as quickly as possible.”

She slaps his fingers from her chin, lifts her arm as though warding off something evil. She’s understood nothing, she thinks, and no one. Not her will-o’-the-wisp cousin, not her traitor husband, not herself. After she lost her baby, she thought nothing would hurt her this much, ever. What is this sensation in her chest, then, like the ribs being sawed away? She wills her
mind to think of things that have nothing to do with this moment: jacarandas, saxophones, ginger tea. But everything is connected to him. She hadn’t realized they’d done so many things together. Even poetry—the only line that will come to her—betrays her.
My life closed twice before its close.

He’s saying, “I know you hate me for doing this, but one day you’ll see it was the right decision.”

She gestures with her hand:
Please go.
She must save this last bit of herself, the dregs of her dignity. Mustn’t let him see how much it hurts. She doesn’t begin to cry until he has left the room.

Four

S
udha

I hold my face under the kitchen tap and scrub until the water numbs my skin. I bend my head and rub at my wet scalp roughly until all the mush is washed away. Still, I feel dirty. When I stand up, I’m light-headed with bending over for so long. Cold water dribbles into the back of my shirt and down my spine. My teeth chatter. My insides are black ice.

So many violences done to me. My mother pounding my life into the shape of her desires. My mother-in-law wanting to cut from it whatever she considered unseemly. My husband backing away, with his narrow, apologetic shoulders. Sunil plunging into the center of my body, corrosive with need. Each time, I made myself pliant. I gave a bearable name to what they did. Duty. Family honor. Filial respect. Passion. But today … The old man’s spit on my face, so frank in its hate. I couldn’t pretend it meant something else.

Why didn’t I fling the cereal bowl at him?

Whore, he’d cried last night. His voice had crackled like
kindling. He’d looked straight at me, his stare flinty with recognition.

Inside the box of my chest, a rack of alphabets, rattling. When I put the letters together, they say,
This is your punishment.

I feel a tug on my pant leg. Somehow Dayita has pushed aside one of the chairs. She holds out her arms to be picked up. When I bend down, she pats my wet face with both hands, then tries to wipe off the water. I bury my face in her chest and hold her tight. We’ve been running from place to place, hoping for shelter, for such a long time. And finally I thought I’d found it here. Sanctuary, if only for a few months. Enough time to lick my wounds, catch my breath.