I excuse myself from the table and walk very slowly to the mens’ room. There is a pay phone on the corner. I dial the number for Cooper Hospital, which I now know by heart, and ask to be connected to Mitali’s room.
“Hello?”
My heart leaps at the sound of Maya’s voice.
“Hi Maya, it’s me.”
“Hi, kiddo.”
She sounds utterly exhausted.
“How are you feeling?”
“Pretty good, pretty good,” she says. “Where are you?”
“At dinner with Charulata at the college campus,” I say.
“That’s nice. Say hello to her for me.”
I brace myself against the wall and close my eyes.
For as long as I can remember, Maya’s energies, at least regarding me, have been misdirected: intrusive at all the wrong moments, passive when she shouldn’t have been. She has been stunningly silent about the important things: my dropping out of class and taking up with Charu. When she had met her in Bombay, I could see she was impressed by her credentials, charmed by her smooth demeanor. At the end of the evening, as the three of us left her office, Maya turned to me as we were about to go through the revolving doors: She’s so cute, she whispered. And whatever small part of me that had held out some notion that my mentor might rescue me faded until it was gone.
“After you left, I had some company,” Maya is now saying. “The Sharmas stopped by to see Mitali and her parents. And they’re all asking about you, Z. They are all concerned about you.”
“What can I bring you tomorrow morning?” I ask. “I’ll be there first thing.”
“Nothing, darling. Just you.”
“You know we’re having a post funeral sitting in the evening,” I say. “I should probably talk to someone and order some snacks.”
“That’s fine.”
“So … you’re going to get a good night’s sleep, right?”
“Right.”
Even though there’s no place in her mother’s hospital room for me to sleep, I feel that I should be standing guard over her. I should station myself in the doorway of her room and watch her through the night.
I blow my nose, splash cold water on my face, and head back to the table. I can already tell from the look on Charu’s face halfway across the hall that something’s wrong. She’s holding my glass of lassi, and the curry I left is almost finished.
I slide into the banquette.
Charu glares at me, her nostrils flaring.
“Where the hell have you been?” she asks.
I stare at her.
“I called Maya,” I say.
“Do you realize,” she enunciates each word clearly, “that you’ve been gone fifteen minutes?”
“I — ”
“Your curry is getting cold.”
I feel as if someone has peeled back my eyelids. It is impossible to blink. And what I’m seeing is this: a dark skinned slender girl with a trace of lassi around her upper lip and a cotton napkin riding up over her thigh, her face flushed like an angry toddler’s.
“My curry is getting cold?”
“How dare you leave me sitting here like this?” she continues.
I start to laugh. It may well be the most awful sound I’ve ever made, this laugh. The guys at the next table both turn to look at me. I either have to laugh or take the dull steel butter knife still on the table and ram it into Charu’s heart. I grab my books and begin to slide out of the banquette, squeezing between tables.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Charu asks.
I smile and keep moving. There is a Buddhist word in my heart — Ami, which translates into the word compassion. I am at the beginning of the ten sacred days of mourning, and to generate even a single feeling of anger over Charulata Talkar seems like a sin.
“Where are you going?” I think I hear her call behind me, but stopping is out of the question. I walk through the dhaba , past the small tea shops, out onto the main walkway back to the men’s hostel. It isn’t until I am standing on the sidewalk in the drizzling downpour that I realize I don’t have a penny with me, that all my money is in my coat pocket, and I left my coat inside hanging behind the chair where I sat across from her. I stand still for a moment, raising my chin to the sky, the rain soaking through my thin shirt. It feels as if the world is crying.
Charu slams out of the restaurant, my coat under her arm. She is breathing heavily, and her eyes are wild.
“That’s the last time you ever walk out on me!” she screams.
I gaze at her calmly. There is nothing happening inside my body. No fear, no rage, no regret. I hold out my hand. At first, Charu must think I’m reaching out to her, but then she realizes it’s my coat I’m after.
“How dare you?” she bellows.
She hurls my coat at me.
I catch it, wrap it around myself, and walk away. I hear the melody of the priest’s prayer in my head with each step I take as I head for the men’s hostel, where the white on-duty tube light of watchman flashes gaudily outside. Without turning around, I know that Charu is right behind me. I can hear her breath. When I reach the entrance, I stop and wait until she catches up with me.
“I’m sitting in mourning for my friend Hetali, Charu ,” I say, looking deeply into her eyes, seeing nothing there.
“Yeah, I’m with you, babe,” she says. “Listen, I’m sorry, I — ”
“No, you’re not,” I interrupt her. “Yes I am, I’m sorry — ”
“No. I don’t care if you’re sorry. I don’t give a shit. That’s not what this is about, Charu .”
“What do you mean?”
“For the next ten days, I’m not going to see you, or talk to you. Don’t bother trying to call me at the hostel please,” I say.
“When it’s over, we’ll talk.”
She stands on the curb as I step into the hostel and double bag the stairs. I know she’s waiting for me to change my mind, to turn to her with a shrug and ask her to come with me. But I don’t look back. I think of Hetali’s face the night before she passed and the last threads of our conversation we had, standing right in the middle of the street.
“I don’t believe what you say anymore. Your words are all lies. Maybe there is no guy harassing you. Maybe it’s just all in your head”
“But don’t you see, Z?” she had uttered, her voice barely above a whisper, her eyes brimming with tears as she stared into the distance.
“Don’t you see ?”
If the way she felt about me the last few days of her life could be summed up in a single word, it would most likely be just one shred of emotion — Disappointment.
Days after, as she floats in ether, every fiber of my being yearns for one thing — All I want now is to honor her memory -
To find a way to make her proud.
