Unaccustomed Earth Read online

  “What’s not possible about it?” Rahul asked. He still had an arm around Elena, his index finger stroking the side of her neck.

  “You are only a boy. You have no career, no goal, no path in life. You are in no position to be getting married. And this woman,” their father said, registering Elena’s presence only for an instant before turning away, “is practically old enough to be your mother.”

  They were even, equilibrium, if it could be called that, restored to the room. But Sudha knew that it was the furthest thing from equilibrium, that in fact it was war.

  “You’re a snob,” Rahul said. “You’re nothing but a pathetic old snob.” There was no rage in his voice, none of the violence Sudha had expected. He stood up in a fluid motion, seeming to lift Elena to her feet as well, as if his arm were a magnet for her form, and then the two of them left the house. Sudha and her parents waited until they heard the sound of Elena’s car backing out of the driveway, and then her mother began to pour the tea.

  “I have been thinking,” her father said, turning to Sudha, breaking the silence for the second time. “The restaurant where we will have the wedding reception. There is a bar?”

  “All restaurants have bars, Baba.”

  “I am concerned about Rahul. He has no control when it comes to—” He paused, searching for the word he wished to use. “When it comes to that.”

  Sudha shut her eyes, thinking she might cry. All this time she had been waiting for her parents to acknowledge Rahul’s drinking, but hearing her father say it now, after what had just happened, was too much.

  “Maybe we should hold it somewhere else,” her mother suggested. “Somewhere without drinks.”

  “It’s too late for that. And it’s not fair,” Sudha said. Sudha and Roger expected to be able to drink at their own wedding reception, she maintained. Why should everyone be punished because of Rahul?

  “Can’t you ask him not to drink too much that day?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Sudha said, pushing back her chair and standing up. She had been fiddling all this time with her teaspoon, and she flung it now, ineffectually, on the carpeted floor of the dining room, where it fell without sound. “I can’t talk to him anymore. I can’t fix him. I can’t keep fixing what’s wrong with this family,” she said, and like her brother only a little while earlier, she stormed out of the room.

  During the reception Rahul made a toast. It was a tribute to Sudha and Roger, but Sudha held her breath as he spoke, wanting him only to sit down. He was without Elena. The day after walking out with her he’d returned abject, alone. Sudha wondered if Elena had broken up with him, but she didn’t ask. She wondered if Rahul would not attend the reception, but he was at the restaurant an hour early, maintaining his rightful place in the family, greeting people as they arrived, showing them to the sign-in book. They were almost all friends of Sudha’s parents, almost all Bengali. No one from Roger’s side had come.

  The toast went on, the words becoming slurred. Before the reception, her father had spoken with the bartender, paying him extra to monitor Rahul’s drinks; Sudha did not have the heart to tell her father that Rahul was beyond such measures, that alcohol dwelled in his pockets where most men’s wallets were, that the two glasses of champagne he’d had openly were just for show. Rahul began telling a story about Sudha’s childhood, dredging up an anecdote about going on a vacation long ago in Bar Harbor, Sudha needing to use the bathroom and there not being a gas station for miles. Then their father got up, stood next to Rahul, and whispered something in his ear, motioning for him to sit down.

  “Excuse me, I’m not finished.” People laughed, not realizing Rahul had not meant to be funny, that it wasn’t some sort of comic routine. The microphone made a screeching sound.

  Their father took him by the elbow then, and Rahul flinched, giving a shove. “You—don’t—touch me,” Rahul hissed, the words amplified by the microphone.

  One of Sudha’s parents’ friends got up to make another toast, but Sudha didn’t hear it. She was aware of guests talking among themselves in front of their plates of pink tandoori and her brother heading toward the bar. When she got up to look for him, he was no longer there, his car missing from the parking lot. She alerted her parents, prepared herself for another call from the police. But no one was in the position to search for him in the middle of the reception, and without him there, perversely, her parents began to relax. Only Sudha couldn’t relax. Roger, who had had a little too much champagne himself, told her not to worry. “He’s been going through a rough time,” he observed dispassionately as he led her on the dance floor. “He’s young.”

  She stared at her husband, wanting to scream at him for believing in Rahul in a way she no longer could. She had never told Roger about the old game of hiding beer cans, a fact that now tortured her. But once again she chose not to tell Roger, fearing that he would blame her, that he would judge Rahul. It was like the painting they’d first looked at together in London, the small mirror at the back revealing more than the room at first appeared to contain. And what was the point of making Roger lean in close, to see what she was already forced to?

  It turned out Rahul hadn’t gone far, only back to their parents’ house, where they found him, at the end of the night, in his bedroom asleep. The following morning Roger and Sudha flew off for their honeymoon. She felt neutralized in the air, sealed off in the cabin, the unnaturally strong sunlight bleaching out the events of the night before, but as soon as they touched down in St. Thomas she felt tainted all over again, hearing Rahul hissing into the microphone, insulting her father and pushing him in front of all their friends. Life went on. Sudha and Roger returned to London, settling into their new house, writing cards to thank their guests for helping to make it such a special day. But Sudha could not forgive Rahul for what had happened, those dreadful minutes he stood at the microphone the only thing she remembered when she looked at the photographs of her reception, all the posed portraits on the grass in which they were smiling, leading up to that.

  And then he disappeared for good. There was no note, no explanation. He simply left one night, her parents said, and had not returned. By then his comings and goings were so erratic that their parents had not fully absorbed the fact of his absence until a few days had passed. Then they realized that his toothbrush was not in the bathroom, and that one of the big suitcases normally used for trips to India was not in the basement. He must have decided to visit a friend, her parents said, but they knew none of Rahul’s new friends and were unable to make calls. They reported that the car was missing, and it was located the next day, abandoned at the bus station in Framingham. Roger, trying to be helpful, suggested they contact Elena, but they had never known Elena’s last name.

  After a week a letter came, with a postmark from Columbus, Ohio. It was not addressed to anyone; he had not even put their family surname on the envelope. “Don’t bother looking for me here,” he’d written, “I’m only spending the night. I don’t want to hear from any of you. Please leave me alone.” They wondered how he got to Ohio, since he had no money, wondered if he’d hitched rides. A week passed before her mother noticed that the small zippered pouches she kept hidden at the backs of her drawers, behind her jumble of British brassieres, containing all the gold jewels she’d acquired over her lifetime, all the pieces representative of her husband’s success in America, much of which was intended to go to whatever woman Rahul eventually married, were missing.

  He had been gone two months when Sudha discovered that she was pregnant; one night during her miserable honeymoon, her body had begun to make a life. Suddenly alongside the terrible there was now the wonderful, the good news reviving her parents. Sudha thought of Rahul often during her pregnancy, invaded by memories and dreams of their childhood, recalling the existence that had produced them both, an experience that was both within her and behind her and that Roger would never understand. In her first trimester her emotions dipped and soared without warning. On good days she believed
that Rahul needed to get away in order to put his life back together. On bad days she feared that the police would call her parents saying his body had been found in a ditch. He was absent the following Christmas, which Sudha and Roger spent in Wayland, absent at the hospital in London the night she gave birth to Neel. And she got used to it, used to having a brother she never saw.

  Wrapped up with Neel, her parents got used to it, too, coming to London now at every opportunity, their tiny grandson plugging up the monstrous hole Rahul left in his wake. For hours they stared into the bassinet, at the stern downy creature with Roger’s pale skin and Sudha’s dark hair and a destiny all his own. After a few months Sudha returned to work, first three days a week, then five, leaving the house at eight thirty and returning at six, taking Neel from the nanny and spending just two hours with him, first in the bath and then nursing him to sleep in the rocker. She felt awful, always, that it was for such a brief piece of her day that she actually cared for Neel, but she reminded herself that he was too young to resent her for it, his face lighting up at the sight of her, leaping into her arms as if she were the most wonderful being on earth.

  It was then, at a time when her life was at its most demanding and also gratifying, that she returned home one cold Saturday from grocery shopping and found, on the other side of the door slot, an envelope from America addressed in Rahul’s hand.

  She stood in the entryway of the house, with the brown-and-gold wallpaper she and Roger kept meaning to tear down, staring at that simple but certain proof of Rahul’s existence. She wondered how he’d gotten her new address, but then she remembered, when she was home for her wedding reception, writing it on a piece of paper and taping it to her parents’ refrigerator. Neel napped in his stroller, not knowing the existence of his uncle, not knowing the shock that filled his mother’s eyes with tears. There was a faded postmark from New York, and on the back of the envelope, a post office box somewhere upstate. Before opening the envelope she pulled out an atlas. The town was north of Ithaca. She was stunned—she had assumed he’d gone as far as possible, to Oregon or California. She never thought he’d want to return anywhere near the place where he’d so spectacularly failed. Inside was a single sheet of paper that he’d stuck into a typewriter.

  Dear Didi,

  I hope this is you. First, I want to say that I’m sorry. For everything. I know I screwed up, but things are better now. I have a job at a restaurant, as a line cook. I discovered that I really like cooking. Nothing fancy, but I’ve gotten really good at omelettes. Also, I’m writing another play. I showed it to someone I met here, a guy who’s directed some things at Syracuse, and he said it still needs work but that I should stick with it! I’m living with Elena—remember her? We got back together and I convinced her to come up here. Crystal’s in fifth grade and Elena got a job doing human resources at the university. Think what you will about Elena, but she got me to start rehab. So like I said, things are better. Anyway, I’m sorry for everything and I hope you (and Roger) can forgive me for being a jerk at your wedding. I really am happy for you guys. And I’d like to come to London and see you, if that’s okay. I’ve saved up some money and I’ll have a little time off from the restaurant this summer. I’m assuming you won’t mention any of this to our parents.

  Rahul

  She replied immediately, without rereading the letter or bothering to ask Roger if it was all right for Rahul to stay with them. She tore a sheet of paper out of the notebook they kept by the phone, for messages, and wrote:

  Dear Rahul,

  Yes, it’s me. I’ve had a baby, a boy named Neel. He’s ten months old, and I want you to meet him.

  She stopped, then signed the letter. She had nothing more to say.

  She had not seen Rahul since her wedding night, a fact that was incredible to her. “Hi, Didi,” he said when she opened the door, still using the traditional term of respect their parents had taught him. She felt no awkwardness, the sight of him after over a year and a half standing under the portico of the house, completing a part of her that had been missing, like the clothes she could wear again now that the weight of her pregnancy was gone.

  “Here he is,” she said to Rahul, adjusting Neel in her arms. Neel stuck out a hand, his fingers gripping a digestive biscuit. He babbled softly, taking in the new person in front of him.

  “That’s right,” Rahul said, stroking Neel’s cheek with the back of his index finger. “It’s your screwup uncle finally here to see you.” He shook his head in disbelief, acquainting himself with the details of Neel’s face, the nose and eyes and mouth and wisps of hair that Sudha felt she’d known all her life. It was Rahul who’d changed. He’d put on weight, enough so that his once refined features appeared common, his neck and waistline thick. He had acquired the stoop of an older, uncertain man. His hair was combed back from his head, receding above the temples, the sideburns long. His jeans had lost their stiffness, frayed at the hems. The pin-striped blazer looked like it had come from a thrift store and was a little short in the sleeves.

  “I can’t believe you were born and I didn’t know it. You’re absolutely perfect,” he said to Neel. He looked at Sudha, then Neel, then back at Sudha. “He’s got your face, totally.”

  “You think? I see Roger’s.”

  Rahul shook his head. “No way, Didi. This boy is a Mukherjee through and through.”

  She gave him a tour of the house: the kitchen and a small toilet in the basement, the parlor above, two bedrooms and a bathroom above that, Roger’s study under the eaves. In spite of all the stories the house was diminutive, and they were constantly going up and down the staircase, which these days Neel was also attempting to climb. The steps were too much for Sudha’s father, who had recently developed bursitis in his knee, and when her parents last visited London they’d stayed with friends in the suburbs. But Roger had agreed to let Rahul sleep on the daybed normally covered with papers in the study.

  “Feel free to take a nap,” she told Rahul, but he declined, coaxing Neel into his arms and not letting go as Sudha peeled potatoes and prepared to roast a chicken. He took in the lowceilinged space, with its black-and-white checkerboard floor, a perpetually cluttered dining table, Spode plates and copper molds hung on yellow walls. Roger had painted the walls himself, the final layer applied with a sponge. Rahul stopped in front of some shelves where the cookbooks were, along with photographs in frames. Most of the photos were of Neel: in the hours after his birth, in the arms of Sudha’s parents, sitting in his stroller outside of the house. There were no pictures of Rahul. “When was this taken?” he asked.

  “Which?”

  “It looks like an annaprasan.”

  “Oh that,” she said, pricking a fork into a lemon, thinking back to the day Neel was fed his first meal a few months before, her parents flying to London for the occasion. “It was just a tiny thing at home,” she told him, as if that would explain away Rahul’s absence. It was the maternal uncle who traditionally fed the child. In Neel’s case it had been Sudha’s father.

  He crossed the floor to where she stood at the butcher block and removed his wallet from his back pocket. With one hand he shook it so that it displayed a school portait of a smiling young girl with freckles and two long brown ponytails. “This is Crystal,” he said proudly, explaining that he arranged to be home every day when Crystal got home from school, making her a snack and then cooking her dinner before Elena returned and he went off to his shift at the restaurant. He didn’t pull out a picture of Elena but Sudha remembered her clearly from that one time she’d come to lunch. Sudha didn’t ask Rahul if he and Elena had gotten married, if they were going to have a child of their own. Sudha had tried to help her brother but it was Elena who had succeeded. “She’s a great kid,” he said, before putting away Crystal’s picture. “I thought I’d get her a little tea set, you know, something really English? She’d love that.”

  He lifted Neel into the air, shaking him playfully, rubbing his face against Neel’s belly, Neel cackling
hysterically.

  “Careful,” Sudha warned.

  Rahul obliged, stopping the game and hugging Neel tightly, then beginning to tickle him so that the cackles started up again. “Relax, Didi. I’m a parent too, now.”

  Sudha and Roger had white wine with dinner, but Rahul had asked only for club soda mixed with some orange juice. They ate outside, at a small table on the garden patio, overlooking the rosebushes that thrived in spite of Sudha and Roger’s neglect. She had wondered about the wine, whether or not to drink it in front of Rahul. There were a few bottles of Scotch and vodka in their kitchen cabinets left over from a housewarming party she and Roger had thrown, and she stuffed them into the back of her closet and into the sweater chest at the foot of their bed, telling herself that Roger would never notice. Neel sat in Rahul’s lap, eating small dollops of mashed potato from Roger’s extended finger.

  “First time in London, is it?” Roger asked Rahul.

  “Apart from sitting in Heathrow dozens of times on the way to Calcutta,” Rahul said, and Sudha was reminded of all those trips they’d taken together in childhood to see their relatives, trips that would never take place again. They had slept beside one another on the same bed, often bathed together, taken everything in with one pair of eyes.

  Rahul mentioned things he wanted to see in the course of the week—the British Museum, Freud’s house, the V&A—asking if it was possible to go to Stratford-upon-Avon for the day. He seemed suddenly desperate to interact with the world, after all those years of sitting up in his room. Roger told him when the museums were open, what was currently on exhibit, and it struck Sudha how little her husband and her brother were acquainted, that they remained all but strangers. “Mainly I want to spend time with Neel,” Rahul said. “I can take him out to a park or a zoo, whatever.”