Nights Like This (30 page)

 

 

Since my emigration to New York, my parents had bought a bungalow on the outskirts of Kolkata. As we drove home, the driver in the front seat and my mother and me in the back, I couldn't help but notice how much India had changed in the ten years that I hadn't been back. Just when it seemed that the city of Kolkata would burst at the seams with people and billboards, everyone and everything found a place to spill into and life went on again.

“So, how are you, Beta?” my mother asked. “Sab theek?”

“I'm fine,” I said. “Everything is okay.”

She placed her hand over mine and squeezed slightly. Her eyes were glittering with a happiness I didn't know I could induce. I felt guilty once again. Was this another woman I had failed to love the way she needed to be loved? Was I incapable of loving anyone completely and without selfishness?

“What's wrong, Beta?” my mother asked.

“Nothing. I'm just tired. Long flight.”

“That is a long flight. Where was your stop over?”

“Heathrow.”

“You can go home and relax,” my mother said.

Home was now a place I had never seen. I had never been back to India since my parents bought the house and I was anxious. As I looked out the window at traffic and a stray cow, I realized I had no home anywhere that was known to me. I didn't have a place of memory. It made me very sad and I focused on yet another cow chewing cud at the side of the road.

When we arrived at a set of elaborate iron gates, the driver honked and one of the house servants ran to open the gates for us. We drove in towards a brick façade and large windows. The bungalow was beautiful.

“Ma, this is really nice.”

“See why you should come home more often?”

When we entered the house, a pot-bellied servant took my suitcase. My father was standing there, elated. He held me to him and I smelled cigarette smoke, his brand of cigarettes, a smell that made me reminiscence to a childhood where things were simple and the heart hadn't yet learned to love deceptively.

“Beta, I am so happy to see you. How I've missed my Jesse.”

“Papa, I've missed you very much.”

He looked at me as if studying the ways in which I had grown.

“Beta, why didn't you come then? We could have sent you the funds.”

“Busy, Papa.”

“Go rest now. You look exhausted. We'll talk in the evening.”

He motioned to the pot-bellied servant and I was led to my room. Apparently, they had kept a room for me. It was elaborate, more elaborate than I would ever have thought. I went into the bathroom, the green marble gleaming. I took my clothes off and took a shower. I wrapped myself in the towel and went into the bedroom. It was a cool and comfortable Kolkata afternoon. I searched in my suitcase for some pajamas, found them, put them on and sunk into a sleep that I hadn't known for months.

 

 

 

January and February came and went. I did nothing most of the day except visit relatives here and there and work on the manuscript that was now beginning to take shape. I became acquainted with the house, with having a car at my beck and call, at servants and never having to place a dish in the sink. I averted conversations about marriage and said little about studying. As the questions became more frequent, I decided that I would talk about the medical profession and my decision to abandon it. I thought it would be an easier conversation than any other that we might have entertained.

I planned how I would approach this. I decided that since finances spoke louder than anything else I could think of, I would convince my parents of how lucrative a novelist's career could be. I started leaving award-winning books around the house, all written by Indian women. On the coffee table in my father's study I left
The
Interpreter of Maladies
. I had made sure to buy the copy that proclaimed it the winner of the Pulitzer. My mother's tea table in the garden where she had her morning tea was home to
The God of Small Things
with a circle announcing its Booker Prize winning status.

I had books everywhere. I even had lesser-known titles that looked pretty and promised to be great reads. But mostly, I stuck to literary giants. In the bathroom, I had placed Vikram Seth's
A Suitable Boy,
Vikram Seth's
An Equal Music
and Rohinton Mistry's
A Fine Balance
. I knew my father read in the bathroom and my mother didn't. I guessed that he would be more likely to pick up a male author than a female one although where I got this notion I don't know. If my parents believed that writing was indeed a career and not a hobby, then they would allow it and at least on one front they would not disapprove of what I was doing.

I decided I would wait for them to ask me about the books. I waited patiently and then anxiously. They didn't seem to take note. One evening after dinner, I decided to talk to my mother. I couldn't handle the tension of waiting for her to approach me. I waited until she was settled in her makeshift office of no profession and casually walked in.

“Jesse,” she said, “come, sit, Beta.”

I sat on the couch next to her.

“So this is your office?” I asked.

“I call it my office. It's a place for me to relax. Do you like it?”

“I do like it,” I said.

My mother had decorated the room tastefully. The walls had photos in ornate frames. Some of the photos were so old they had turned pale and yellowed but the frames around them were so beautiful that it was forgivable. The floor was covered with a Persian rug that had a detailed maroon pattern. The sofa and desk were simple, allowing the walls and floor to be noticed instead of the furniture.

“I really do like it,” I said.

I looked at my mother and took a deep breath. I didn't know what I was scared of. I just knew that I was uneasy and felt as if I were confessing a great transgression.

“Ma, I wanted to talk to you.”

Worry wrote itself across her face.

“Jasbir? Sab theek hai na, beta? Everything okay, no?”

“Yes, everything's fine,” I said not feeling that anything in my life was fine. “Just…just wanted to talk.”

She smiled at me and then sighed.

“You worry me when you ‘want to talk,'” she said. “Let me fix myself a drink. This promises to be a heavy conversation.”

She got up and walked to the other side of the room. There, she poured herself some Scotch and hand picked tiny ice cubes from a bucket. She dropped the cubes in one by one, six in all, and made small splashes in the glass.

“Scotch, Jess?”

“Sure,” I said having never tasted Scotch.

She made another Scotch on the rocks. Then she turned and walked back towards me. For the first time since I had seen her, I realized how much older she was than the image I had of her in my mind. When I had thought of her, my mind had neglected to notice the strands of red in her hair, her attempt to conceal grey with henna. I also hadn't noticed the small ripples that formed at the corners of her mouth and eyes when she smiled. My eye caught her sari, the fabric moving gracefully to complement her movements, the fabric starched but supple enough to seem elegant and delicate. As she sat next to me, her fragrance took me back to when I used to be her daughter, before she shipped me away to Queens to have a better life with strangers. I always felt as if she had talked me into it, telling me it would be wonderful. And although I was grateful, I felt at that moment as if I had missed so much of her life that she was at best an old acquaintance to me now.

“What seems to be the matter?” she asked as she sipped her Scotch. “Sab theek hai na?”

“Everything's fine,” I said. “It's just the medical school thing.”

I took a sip of Scotch and swallowed. I felt warmth inside. Her eyes met mine and I looked away, uncomfortable that she might be able to see inside me. She had always been good at that.

“You don't go to medical school, do you?” she asked as if I were transparent.

“No,” I said and waited, as if flinching before an anticipated blow.

I knew she sipped her Scotch again because I heard the ice tinkling against the glass as she placed the glass to her mouth.

“So what do you do?”

“I actually used to sell eyeglasses.”

“Bhai wah! Wonderful! And you see a future in this?” she asked.

I looked at her expecting her to say more. When she didn't, I thought I should answer honestly.

“Not a future exactly but a present. But I quit my job a few months ago.”

“So now,” she said, her voice rising, “you do nothing?” She made nothing into two separate words, accented each. It made everything sound so much worse than it really was.

“I will,” I said. “I want to write books.”

She sighed deeply.

“Jasbir, Jasbir, Jasbir.
When
are you going to grow up, Beta? When will you realize life is not a game?”

Her arms rose at the word “Beta,” fell at the word “game.” The ice in her glass tinkled as it moved, the Scotch a soft amber in the light.

I looked at the floor. I had nothing else to say. Or I had a lot to say but I wasn't sure how to say it. I mean, how do you transition from “I have no job” to “I love two women?” But that too would come.

“If you're there doing absolutely nothing then for God's sake at least get married,” she said.

I looked up at her and met her gaze. Her eyes were tired.

“I'm not getting married,” I said wishing I could pause all the questions to come.

“All girls say that, but then you settle into it.”

I didn't know if I wanted this conversation to go any further. I pondered it in my mind, played over the many scenarios none of which seemed appealing. I remained quiet. Why did I have to have this conversation, anyway? I lived miles away in a different country. Would who I slept with or woke up next to affect my mother's life in any way? But I knew the conversation was overdue and necessary. I knew I had to, as Vanessa had said, “come clean.”

“So why aren't you getting married? What's wrong with marriage? This shaadi-vaadi is a part of life, bachchay,” she said and I felt safe when she called me “bachchay,” as if I were five once again and I had scraped myself and she were cleaning the wound with mercurochrome. “Bachchay, you are so careless,” she would say then. Now the word was the same, the conversation so different, and yet I was still her child.

“Just don't want to.”

She took a gulp of her Scotch and then set her glass on the ground. She looked at me and our eyes met again. I averted my gaze. I concentrated on the pattern of frames on the wall.

“Jesse, look at me,” she said as she touched my chin with her fingers. I turned and looked at her because I had no choice.

“Haan-ji?”

I breathed hard. I didn't know what to say. She spoke first.

“Beta, if you are not honest with the world, how honest are you with yourself?”

Her hand was still on my chin and I moved back slightly. Her fingers fell to her lap.

“What do you mean?” I asked, wondering if she would ask the right questions.

“There are two reasons people declined the topic of marriage. One is they want to stay single. The other is they don't like the opposite sex. Which is it?”

“I don't want to stay single,” I said.

“Bhai wah!” she exclaimed as she got up to fix herself another drink.

I stayed quiet, waiting for the storm to come.

“So you are basically unemployed and walking around New York City picking up random women—not men—not suitors but women to go home with. Lovely,” she said, her voice rising on “love” and falling on “ly.”

“Love-ly,” she repeated.

“It's not like that,” I said.

She made a spectacle of undoing the safety pin that fastened her sari to her blouse. As the pin opened, the fabric of her sari moved and slipped from her shoulder. She caught it, of course, and then, meticulously went about the work of fastening the pin again. She walked back to the sofa without catching my gaze, looking the entire time at the folds of her sari, holding her drink carefully as if it were fragile.

“Ma?”

“What ‘Ma?” Again the arms went up, the ice tinkled. This time a small splash of Scotch escaped the glass.

“We sent you to become a doctor, Jasbir. To get married. To be happy. And you're no better than a bum.”

“But I'm happy,” I protested.

“So you're a happy bum. Well that, Jasbir Banerjee, makes me feel so much better.”

She sat away from me this time, as if I were contagious. We looked at each other, intermittently sipping Scotch. I felt like I was holding onto my life with a closed fist but I was losing my grasp. First with Vanessa. Then with Anjali. And now with my mother.

“Jasbir, your life is your life. I drink Scotch and sleep late. Not very ladylike, I know. But it is what I choose to do in my home, my husband's home. I live a normal life.”

“So do I.”

“Running after women is not normal nor is it the point of life.”

I sipped from my drink. I wondered if my mother had known all along. I wondered if that was why she had talked me into leaving Kolkata. I wondered how long she had known. But at the end of all my pondering, I was relieved that I had no more to say.

She rose from the sofa. She paced the floor. She stopped. She paced again.

“What you do in your life, your home should you have one, is up to you. But if you think for a minute I'll condone it or that you can flaunt it in my home, you're very wrong.”

“I'm not flaunting anything. I'm telling you that I am here and I want us to get along.”

She turned abruptly.

“Get along? Get along? Do you know what my image would be if this ever got out? I have a reputation here, Jasbir, and neither you nor anyone else will take that away from me. If you want to wander aimlessly and lead a disgusting filthy life, do not, do not bring it here.”

I felt myself shaking in an attempt not to cry. I missed Anjali's hugs. She turned to face me and I had some hope.

“And I'll tell your father. No point in you doing that,” she said. “He's happy and he seldom asks what you do. He loves you very much, no doubt, but Papa lives somewhat in his own space. He's happy. Let him be.”

“Okay,” I said, partially relieved, partially disappointed. It was easier not having to tell my father but I also wanted to know his reaction, hear his words whatever they may be. But I didn't want to argue. And I didn't want to make things more complicated than they were already becoming.

“Jesse, do you know why I sent you to New York when you were 17?”

‘No.”

“Do you understand now?”

“No.”

“I wanted you to be somebody, have a career, a family. You come here after ten years and throw all that in my face. ‘Here Ma, nothing, nothing that you wanted for me is mine.' Why? ‘Because I'm lost and confused and difficult.'”

“I'm not lost or confused.”

“Well then be happy, damn it. Be happy and leave us alone.”

I thought she would storm out of the room but she reseated herself on the sofa.

“You know,” she finally said, “they told me Jasbir was a boy's name. I should have listened. Now look what's happened to you.”

A part of me wanted to laugh, to make a joke of her words. Another part of me wanted to cry as I realized that she thought of me now as corrupt, broken, defective, and perhaps full of wrongdoing. Logically I could have belabored the point, argued, and fought. But this wasn't a couple from Austin at the next table. This was my mother. The rules, I was sure, were different.

“Maybe if you meet a suitable boy,” she said, breaking suitable into three distinct words.

I watched as she leaned back, her gaze looking past me, through the wall it seemed to an unknown horizon where suit-a-ble boys solved the problems of disappointed mothers. I didn't answer her. I didn't disturb her gaze.

“So what's next?” she asked, her eyes still searching imaginary horizons for answers.

I realized it was an honest question.

“There is no next,” I said.

“The future, Beta. Have you given thought to your lonely future?”

I had been so caught up in my lonely present, I, in fact, hadn't given thought to my lonely future. But would any amount of thinking determine either?

“For now I'm happy being here with you.” I said, “That's enough.”

“For you, that is enough, Beta. For me it is not so. How can I put you on a plane back to a life of…?”

“Of what?” I challenged.

She shifted, smoothed out non-existent creases on her lap.

“It is pointless talking to you,” she finally concluded.
“Tu pagal hai. You're crazy.
No amount of talking can fix you.”