Polar Vortex

by Shani Mootoo

  But I hadn’t, of course. Some months after the wedding — I hadn’t yet met his wife — he and I met for tea — well, he for tea and I for coffee — and he showed me a photograph he kept in his wallet. I asked if I could keep it and he obliged. His wife had been in it, obviously, but I don’t recall what she looked like then. After cutting him neatly out of the photo — I discarded the rest — I pasted him on one of the beer bottles for my installation. I invited him to the opening of the exhibition that included the piece, and he came, alone. I remember him stooping low, looking at the cutout of himself in his wedding attire standing next to the pasted-in image of me in a wedding sari. He stared at this for a long time. I worried he was upset that I’d used his photograph this way. He moved to the second part of the installation, another beer bottle on which there was a label made to look like a classified ad in which a lesbian seeks a gay man to marry, and then to the third staged photo of me and a woman who resembles me, French kissing.

  When he stood, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I would have let you do whatever you wanted, you know.”

  I twisted my mouth even as I smiled broadly in that room full of people, and said, “Don’t be ridiculous,” as I walked off to speak with other attendees.

  * * *

  Alex’s voice outside the shower stall jolts me. It’s as if I’ve been caught. I wipe steam from the glass door, and she waves at me. She’s holding up her phone. It’s our friend Skye, one half of the couple with the cottage to which she goes to write. Skye wants to walk from her house in Macaulay to ours in Crescent Bay. She’ll do it if I agree to give her a ride back. I calculate and imagine Skye would get to our house by ten. If she visits for an hour or so, I could drive her back to her house and return before Prakash’s arrival. I am finding it difficult to feel warm toward Alex; she’s making unnecessary waves — or rather, the timing of whatever waves are cresting in her is causing us an inopportune problem. Skye would be a good distraction. I tell her, sure, I’ll drive Skye back.

  I turn off the shower and dry myself. I bend down and aim the blow-dryer at my upside-down head. I recall the telephone conversation I’d had with Prakash before he left Canada for a visit to India. I knew he would be away for some weeks; he’d told me he and his parents were going in order to visit an aged and ailing family member, and because it was such a costly and time-consuming venture for the three of them to fly all the way to India, they’d stay a few weeks extra and do some touring. Then, days before their departure, he telephoned, and I could at once hear uncertainty in his voice. His parents, he slowly revealed, had arranged a marriage for him in Jaipur. I misunderstood and said, with humour and a tinge of ridicule in my voice, that finding a wife who would put up with him would be an impossible task. He said, feebly, no, a woman had actually been found. I was shocked. I felt as if I’d been hit on the jaw with a fist, but I did everything I could to not express any consternation. “How long have you known about this,” I asked, thinking of all the times we’d spent together over the last year, the last months, the weeks before, of his attentions to me that had been sometimes confusingly tender, of the trip to San Francisco we’d taken just about a year before. Not even a year ago, actually.

  He found out on his thirty-third birthday. His parents had asked him to return to New Brunswick for his birthday, he explained, and so he went for a few days.

  I had forgotten his birthday. I didn’t know he had gone to New Brunswick and hadn’t noticed his absence.

  At a party held for him, in front of family and friends from Uganda, they announced that a woman from a very nice family had been found. He thought they were playing a prank on him, but when everyone began to congratulate him, he realized it was not a joke.

  I quickly calculated and was relieved that our trip to San Francisco had taken place almost six months before his birthday. “Don’t you have any choice?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know if I had other options. I mean, I don’t know.”

  He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. When I didn’t, he said that over the previous weeks plans had been solidified with the family in India, mostly without his involvement. There was some urgency to the arrangement, he explained, because the woman’s father was ill, and they wanted the ceremony to take place while he was still able to attend. He said he was calling to ask me if he should go ahead with this arranged marriage. I shocked myself by how flustered and deeply saddened this strange turn made me. I asked him to hang on a second while I turned off the stove, which was only a way of taking time to compose myself, to regain strength in my voice, for there was nothing on the stove, and when I returned after some long seconds I told him as dispassionately as possible that I couldn’t tell him what to do.

  “So you won’t tell me not to go ahead. And you can’t say I should either? I am to leave soon. Six weeks from now, when I return, I will be married. Please tell me. Should I do this? Does it mean anything to you?” he asked. He spoke so softly, his voice flat — almost without emotion, it seemed — that a few beats passed before the sounds would take the shape of words in my brain.

  “You’ve not spoken of her before. I know nothing of her,” I eventually responded, ignoring his last question. “I don’t know what you feel about her, what she feels for you.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m asking you.” There was a murky silence. I didn’t fill it, and finally he said, as if resigned, “I’ve only seen photos of her. We’ve spoken on the phone.”

  “So you’re going to marry someone you’ve never met. You’ll marry someone because you’ve been told to do so.”

  It was a statement rather than a question, and the critique in it was loud and clear. Oddly, I felt, he defended the situation: “It’s tradition.”

  My impulse was to remind him that he was living in Canada, and this was the place where we could question traditions and the blind following of old ways. I felt myself, too, on the verge of dissuading him from leaving Canada. But as much as I did not want him to marry, I also knew it would have been wrong of me to discourage him.

  He carried on. “She’s young, Priya. She’s twenty-four, but she doesn’t know anything about the world. She’s been sheltered — you know what it’s like for women like her — she’s never left the subcontinent, nor has she ever had a boyfriend. She’s had crushes on movie stars.” I wanted to say to him he was in trouble if he was already complaining about her, but I kept my mouth shut. He spoke again, and this time a little more directly. “But I’m not asking you about my feelings. Those you should know. What I want to know is about yours. I want to know what my options are.” Even though I would surely have said no, I felt ridicule toward him for what I thought was a lack of courage for not coming straight out and asking me to marry him. With as clear a voice as I could muster, I said it was best for both of us if he married this woman.

  No beat was then skipped when he said, almost as if we’d been having an entirely different conversation, that he’d bought a house. I hadn’t known he’d been house-hunting. Huge changes in his life were taking place and clearly had been for some time, and I felt betrayed that they’d been put in motion without my knowledge.

  My feelings confused me. I certainly could not have expressed them to him. To what end? I was not about to say, Stop! I’ll do it. I’ll marry you.

  I at once attempted to lighten our moods, and I gave an edge of excitement to my voice when I asked him about the house. As if his mouth were filled with cotton, he answered that there was nothing to tell. I persisted, “What kind of house? Where is it?”

  It was in a new development, a new suburb that was being built, half an hour outside of Toronto, he said, sounding as if he were confessing. The house was almost finished being built, one of the first in the development, but there weren’t even paved roads yet. By the time he returned from India, his section would be finished, he’d been promised. I didn’t respond right away, and he said, “It doesn�
�t look like anything much at this stage; it’s in the middle of nowhere, but not for long.”

  When I did speak, I asked why on earth he’d chosen to live so far away — why hadn’t he bought something in the city, an old house, something with a bit of character and stories in its walls, in a neighbourhood with old trees with fat trunks, overhanging branches.

  He said, with frustration in his voice and disappointment at my response, “I’m an immigrant, Priya. And Aruna, she will be one, too. We like our homes new.” I reminded him that I was an immigrant, too, and to that he answered, “Yes, but you’re different. Everything about you is different. You’re not like us.”

  I continued to try to make things light. “Well, see? That should answer all your questions. That should warn you off.” He was quiet. We were both quiet.

  Then he said, under his breath, “It’s what I like about you, Priya. That’s exactly what I’ve always liked.” He abruptly said goodbye, his voice papery, choked, and he hung up.

  There was no part of me that wished to dissuade him, but from somewhere tears filled my eyes and rolled down my face. I felt ill. He would not now, I knew, step off this train he, his family, she and hers, had embarked on, and that I had not known about even as it was being arranged. That had been my last chance. But I felt relief, too. Tears of sadness and relief, at once. Next I heard from him, the marriage had taken place, and he’d brought Aruna to Canada. We met without her, and I took the photograph of them from him. This odd, amorphous thing between us would, I had thought back then, stop.

  * * *

  Stepping out of the suffocating heat of the shower, I dry myself and choose my clothing for the day, imagining myself as Prakash will soon see me: deep blue jeans, a navy V-neck cashmere sweater over a white T-shirt, and brown leather shoes. My style of dress hasn’t changed much since the early days when we were inseparable at university. The shoes are different; they used to be simple runners.

  Alex returns and dresses. She wears a black turtleneck and black jeans, and a chunky silver Moroccan necklace. She looks particularly good. Is she, too, dressing to make an impression? I have to smile. She slides a matching bracelet up her arm. She once told me that jewellery is armour. I guess she thinks she needs this today.

  I say, “You’re dressing up.”

  She says, “Skye will be here soon.” She leaves the room without having looked at me once.

  * * *

  In truth, why is Prakash coming here alone? Has his marriage ended? Knowing I’m settled with a partner, why isn’t he bringing Aruna, or at least his children? He wouldn’t stay with us if they were also coming, but we would have had them over for dinner or lunch, or maybe just tea. We would all have been perfectly awkward with each other, and more than likely she’d be uncomfortable with us — two women living together, sleeping in the same bed in the house in which they sat sipping tea, eating cookies — but perhaps I misjudge her. I don’t really know her, only what he has told me about her, and should I trust this? But after — what, twenty-five years? — living in this country, surely people like Alex and me would not be novelties to her. Being with us could be a lesson to their children in acceptance, open-mindedness, new kinds of difference and of love. They’d go off on their own to the beaches, to the tourist shops, the food vendors, a winery or two, speaking about us the instant they got in the car, deciding that in the end, as kind as we were to them, we weren’t really their type of people — not because of our sexuality, but our vastly different interests, and we wouldn’t have to worry about any sort of ongoing relationship with him and his family. And he and I could then put all that had happened between us truly in the distant past. Yes, just like that. Like magic.

  But the fact is, he’s coming on his own.

  * * *

  I check myself one last time in the mirror. I want him, when he gets here, to take one look at me and think, Yes, she is no longer the person I once knew. I wouldn’t have made her happy. And if he thinks, too, that I wouldn’t have made him happy, that will be fine.

  Open the bedroom door boldly, Priya, head out confidently. The day is yours.

  · · ·

  * * *

  Alex is removing dishes from the dishwasher and shelving them. “It stinks in here,” I say before I can censor myself. My tone is accusing, as if the smell has been caused by some sort of neglect for which she is to blame. I don’t mean to come across like this, of course, but I know I do. Over the clatter of stacking plates, she answers, “Yeah. Too bad. Especially when we have people coming by.” I can’t fathom her. Is she accepting of the fact now?

  Remember, tenderness begets tenderness.

  But I don’t want to catch her eye. It seems like I don’t have to worry, for as calm as she appears, as accepting as she sounds, I can see she won’t look this way either.

  What and how much has she intuited, I wonder, and yet chooses to remain quiet about? This unease is painful. At the very least, it is an indication that this thing with Prakash and me must be sorted out this weekend, once and for all. Obviously, not in her presence.

  She looks, even so beautifully attired, as if she is drowning. I want to reach out and calm her. All I have to do is take two steps closer to her, put my arms around her. Draw her toward me. Press my cheek to hers and say into her ear, “There’s nothing to worry about. I love you.” But I can’t move. My heart doesn’t even feel as if it’s beating. This may all seem like stoniness, callousness, but rather, I feel like the visceral mass of a mollusc stripped of its shell. If I reach out to touch her, it is my flesh that will wither or tear.

  Skye mustn’t arrive and see such static between us. We need to shift this mood fast; I suppose I should say or do something to break the iciness.

  * * *

  I go by the fridge — we avoid each other — and sniff the air. She lifts the dishwasher door and shuts it. The effort makes it seem heavier than usual. She is about to walk away but notices a cupboard door left open, and she reaches back and flicks it shut. Unusual for her, and therefore noticeable. Such a small place, yet she sidles past me, managing not to brush against me. I want to laugh out loud. I turn my head to hide the strange spread across my face that resembles a grin. So odd, this heightened tickle in my cheeks — yet, if I were to let out the thing that corresponds to the spreading, thinning out of lips, the resultant bulge of cheek muscles and slitting of eyes, rather than a laugh its sound would be that of a fierce and terrifying growl.

  If I betray Alex’s trust, there will be no second chance. That thought strips the contortion of grin off my face. As if it needs underlining, this tension makes crystal clear the impossibility of a continued friendship with Prakash, and that I must use this weekend to end the expectation that it would continue. The paradox in trying to orchestrate such a severing is wicked — the gamut that will inevitably be run of memories, the multifaceted emotions that will be wrought, the stirring up of explanations for then and convictions about now, about how things must presently be.

  I stoop and sniff the floor in front of the fridge. Where is the hell from which this smell emanates?

  It’s plausible, of course, that Prakash simply wants nothing more than to reconnect and say hi and see how I’m doing. But I know that I took and took and took from him. How could someone not want a little bit returned, or at least explanations for why I went into a sort of hiding? Not sort of. Plain old hiding, really. Explanations, apologies. Is this how I will forever live my life, owing explanations and apologies? When did this manner of making my way through the world start?

  Someone who doesn’t know or understand the circumstances that once glued us together might say I led him on, but I didn’t. I guess, though, it could be said I did little to deter his attentions — until shortly after Alex and I got together. A couple days before my birthday, while I was shopping with her at Kensington Market for the special meal we planned, he telephoned. She had gone to the deli for buffalo mozzarella, and I was
next door at the butcher’s waiting for a rack of lamb to be frenched for me. My cellphone rang, and I swiped the answer bar before I looked to see who it was.

  “Priya! Finally!” the voice I knew so well shouted excitedly. I positioned myself quickly so I could see through the large glass window to the shop next door. Determining I had privacy, I spoke with him for a couple minutes, promising to call him when I had a free moment, which, I told him, I didn’t then have. He said, “What are you doing for your birthday?”

  “I can’t talk, I told you. Let me call you back.”

  “Just tell me, do you have plans for your birthday?”

  My eyes had been glued to the door of the deli. Alex was approaching. “Yes, I’ve got plans, but let me call you later.” I didn’t hear his response as I shoved the phone in my pocket and turned it off in there.

  I put off calling him and, when I was with Alex, simply kept the phone off. Eventually, about a week after my birthday, feeling guilty, I called him back. He had had tickets to a play put on by the Desi Entertainment Society and had wanted to invite me, he said, but it was too late, the show had come and gone. I asked why he didn’t go with Aruna. It was, he said, not the kind of thing she would have enjoyed. He hadn’t even bothered to tell her about it, he explained, but thought it was something I would appreciate and he wanted to share the experience with me. I told him I was seeing someone but didn’t reveal that I’d actually already moved out of my apartment and into her house.