The Hungry Ghosts

by Shyam Selvadurai

  Just last year, in the summer of 1994, only weeks after Michael and I celebrated our second anniversary together, my mother called to announce that she and Renu were coming to Vancouver. Simon Fraser University was having a conference on gender, race and migration in late July, and at the last minute Renu had decided to attend. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, Shivan,” my mother said briskly into my stunned silence. “Nearly six years, can you imagine? I feel responsible, I should have come and visited a long time ago. Michael is so important to you, and I have never even met him. Yes, yes, it’s good we come.” When my silence continued, she gave me the dates of their arrival and departure. They would be staying a week. There was a defensive, injured tone in her vigour, as if she was aware she was imposing but determined to do so anyway. “Are you writing down what I’m saying?” she demanded.

  I reached obediently for a pad and pen. “What was your flight again?”

  She repeated the information, then said, “Can you accommodate us? If not, we can get a room on campus. Renu has looked into it. But we’re quite happy to sleep on a pull-out couch, or even the floor if you have sleeping bags.”

  There was another significant pause. She was waiting for my invitation. “Of course,” I blurted, “yes, you can stay with us.”

  “Thank you, son,” she said, her voice softening.

  She moved on, tone brisk again, to tell me about a recent retreat she and David had attended in Northern Ontario. As she prattled on about all they had done, the people she had met, the stunning vistas of lake and forest, I could feel my suspicion growing. This visit was prompted by something else; the symposium was merely an excuse.

  After she finished telling me about the retreat, my mother hurried on to the latest news about Renu. She was in the process of completing her Ph.D. and would soon be applying for academic jobs. My mother had been to see her the previous week and complained that Renu was “in a constant snit,” stressed by having to finish her doctorate. “And she eats rubbish, Shivan, utter rubbish. You should see her refrigerator, not a vegetable or salad leaf in it. If I didn’t visit and cook up meals and freeze them, she would vanish into thin air or get scurvy.

  “But, aiyo, where did the time get to?” my mother finally cried, as if I had kept her. “David will be around in a couple of hours, and I still haven’t baked the cookies for today’s meditation class. Goodbye, goodbye.”

  Once I put down the phone, I went to stand on our balcony, still stunned by the news. Elbows resting on the railing, I gazed out unseeing. After a few minutes, I returned to the living room and began to walk among its furniture, picking up objects and putting them down. It was impossible to imagine my mother and sister here, seated on the sofa, eating at the dining table with our plates and cutlery; impossible to imagine taking them around Vancouver, past the familiar markers of my new life.

  I was still wandering the apartment when Michael got back.

  “Hello,” I called out, stopping abruptly by the coffee table, arms by my sides as if caught doing something illicit. He gave me a curious look, put his grocery bags on the floor and went to remove his light summer jacket and shoes. I followed.

  “My mother and sister are coming to visit.”

  He turned around startled. Frowning at me, he continued to slip off his jacket. “When?”

  “Late July. My sister wants to attend a conference at Simon Fraser’s downtown campus. She decided at the last minute. They will be staying here. Is that okay?”

  He nodded, then asked again, “When do they arrive?”

  “Late July,” I repeated. “So, is it really okay I invited them to stay, Michael? I sort of couldn’t avoid it. My mother asked.”

  “Of course, Shivan.” He kissed me briefly on the lips. “Why are you even asking permission? This is your home too. I’ll look forward to having them.”

  I trailed after him as he went to the kitchen with the groceries.

  As we put things away, Michael glanced at me a few times, but I would not meet his eye. I knew I was being ungracious, given his generous response, so after a while I said, with a long sigh, “It’s so typical of Renu to decide like this at the last minute. Anyway, it’s time they came, I guess. I haven’t seen them in nearly six years, for goodness sake.”

  “Well,” he said carefully, “I did suggest you go to Ithaca for your sister’s graduation when she got her master’s, and then to Toronto.”

  “Yes, yes, I know.” I grinned at him. “You are so wise. I should call you Mahadana Muttha.”

  He did not respond to my attempt at humour. “I think my parents have an air mattress. We must get it.”

  “Great! That will do fine for them.”

  He gave me a mildly amused look. “Not for them, idiot, for us. You can’t ask your mother and sister to sleep on the living room floor.” Then, as the thought struck him, “Jesus, we must get new sheets, and some guest towels too.”

  “Michael,” I laughed, “take it easy. They don’t get here for a month.”

  As he made dinner later that evening, I could tell from the gentle clicks of spoons in pans that Michael was not himself. I went to check on him under the pretext of getting some water. He gave me a perplexed, beseeching look to say he wanted to know what I was thinking, how I was feeling about this reunion. But I just opened the fridge and leaned inside to get the water jug, frowning as if preoccupied.

  Even though I tried hard to conceal my growing disquiet, it was obvious to Michael. We knew each other too well by now.

  One evening, on the bus ride back from work, when it was our custom to catch up on the day, he took out a book of crosswords he carried around and began to fill in a puzzle.

  After a moment of surprise, I realized he was sulking. I peered over his shoulder, anxious to get him out of his mood. “Groom. Hmm.” I counted the boxes. “Five letters. Ah, yes, preen.” He folded his lips with martyred patience, but wrote the word down.

  “Wrath.” I thought for a moment and then declared, “Ire,” nudging him playfully to say I knew he was irritable.

  “Shivan,” he said quietly, and moved the book so I could not see the page.

  “Fine,” I muttered, took out a novel and pretended to be absorbed, glancing over occasionally to see if he was still sulking.

  By the time we were preparing dinner, Michael was willing himself out of his bad mood, straining to be in good humour. I was desperate to please him and so took over most of the cooking, even doing the washing up, which I hated.

  My anxiety finally drove me to call Renu.

  After we greeted each other, we were silent. Then she said, “So, you’ve heard about us coming.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was last-minute. My supervisor pressured me. I’m almost done this wretched Ph.D. and I need to build my resumé and schmooze. It improves my chances in the cattle fair of academic employment.”

  I believed Renu, yet her slightly hangdog tone confirmed for me that the conference was also a convenient pretext for their visit. She must have sensed this, because she added sheepishly, “Amma was also keen we seize the moment. A good excuse to come. Though,” she added hastily, “of course, we don’t need an excuse to see you.”

  “Of course.”

  I could tell she was waiting for my prompt, and I knew that if I asked, she would tell me the real reason for this visit. But now that the opportunity was there, I could not bring myself to take it. Six years of not talking about anything intimate had created an impossible distance between us. Our mutual dismay at this separation was palpable in the silence.

  Finally, she blurted out, “I’m not sure if you know, Shivan, but Aachi had another stroke a few months ago. That is why Amma went to visit so suddenly in May.”

  “I … I didn’t know.”

  “It’s just one of many. The doctors say this is the way it’s going to be from now on, until a massive stroke ends it all.”

  “I didn’t know,” I repeated and sat down on the bed.

/>   “You never ask,” my sister said gently. “If you asked, we would tell you.”

  “Yes, I understand. Thank you,” I replied formally, then changed the subject.

  Once I got off the phone, I leaned forward, hands clasped, unable to move under the weight of desolation. When Michael came home, he found me still sitting there. “Bad news?” he asked anxiously.

  I shook my head. “Just chatted with my sister.” I gave him a wry look. “I wish they weren’t coming, I really do. Why do they have to come now, after all these years?”

  “I know.” He sat beside me and squeezed my hand to acknowledge that he, too, was nervous. After a moment, he gently pushed me back on the bed, and there we lay, chests rising and falling against each other, listening to the poignant chug of a motorboat out in the bay.

  In the days that followed, my apprehension grew, fuelled by the certainty that my family’s visit had everything to do with my grandmother. I could not figure out what else besides the stroke they were coming to tell me, but clearly the news was so important they had to convey it in person. Sometimes, on the commute to or from work, I would catch my reflection in the bus window and realize my tongue was pressed against the inside of my cheek as if I were trying not to cry.

  Michael became increasingly tense because of my distance, and our mutual anxiety reached a peak the weekend before my family came.

  That Sunday morning, when we went to get the air mattress from Michael’s parents, we arrived to find a note on their hall table saying they had gone shopping. They would return, no doubt, with great amounts of cheese, pâtés, pickles, olives and expensive bread, which they always declared impossible to finish and sent home with us. As I removed my shoes, I could smell saffron bread, a recipe from Robert’s Cornish ancestors, which he knew I liked and baked often for me.

  Michael went to the basement for the mattress and sent me upstairs to borrow guest towels and sheets, having lost interest in shopping for new ones. They were kept in his old room, and when I entered, I was stopped for a moment by the sight of the sun slanting across the bed where Michael and I had first made love. I took out the linens from a drawer, put them on a chair and went to stand at the window, looking out at the mountains. Despite all the good that had happened in my life during the last two years, I found I was comparing that first time here to the first weekend Mili and I spent at Sriyani’s beach house. I had been so uncomplicatedly happy then, without the shadow of tragedy that trailed me now.

  Michael had come to stand silently in the doorway, and when I turned to pick up the linen, he saw my wretchedness.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  “Our first weekend here,” I blurted.

  His face froze, then he turned and left. “Michael,” I called, and went after him. He paused on the staircase, not looking back. “What’s wrong? I didn’t say anything wrong. It was a lovely memory.”

  Before he could respond, we heard a key in the door and his parents’ voices. They came in and found us like that.

  “Ah, boys,” Hilda said, with a quick glance at her husband. She slipped off her shoes.

  “Look, kids!” Robert held up two grocery bags. “Food, tons of food.” Michael bounded down the stairs, brushed past his parents and went to the kitchen.

  When I reached the hall, I said, “The house smells amazing, Robert. Thanks for making your saffron bread.”

  “Oh, you’re welcome, you’re welcome.” He gave me one of the grocery bags to alleviate my awkwardness.

  When we entered the kitchen, Michael was kneeling on the floor, pumping up the mattress to check for leaks. By the time it had been inspected, he had recovered enough to put on a show of good humour and join in talk about my family’s visit and our plans for them.

  I had expected Michael to bring up the incident later, that we would have one of our cathartic fights, following each about the apartment, bringing up past grievances, flinging around the word “always” even as we prepared dinner. But he did not refer to it at all and instead, like me, maintained a distracted air as we went about fixing dinner. I could sense he wanted the catharsis as much as I did, but could not bring himself to fight and was bewildered by this new barrier between us.

  In those last days before my mother’s and sister’s arrival, this separation between us remained so that by the time we stood in the airport lounge, waiting for my family, we were strained with each other.

  Soon, my mother and sister came through the sliding doors.

  “Amma, Renu,” I called, and moved forward to meet them.

  They saw me, nodded, and started to come down the ramp. We walked parallel to each other but separated by the ramp bars, the two of them paying close attention to their trolleys, not looking at me. My mother’s face had filled out and her hips were rounder. She had grown her hair and styled it in waves to her shoulders. The increasing greyness contrasted well with her caramel complexion, giving both hair and skin a glow. Though Renu was still skinny, her face too had filled out, softening her severity and giving her a curiously dreamy, bemused look. She had cut her hair into a puffy bob that bounced as she walked along.

  When we met at the bottom of the ramp, we stood, looking at each other, nervous and unsure. But then all the years of our life together gathered and took on weight so that, when my mother leaned forward to kiss my cheeks, it felt as if a much shorter time of separation had passed. She held me for a long moment before she pulled back. Her eyes were luminous. “Ah, son, it is good to see you.”

  Renu gave me her usual angular embrace, patted my back and declared, “Seems like the Vancouver air agrees with you. You’re looking very well. Do I see the beginning of love handles?”

  I laughed and pulled my shirt tight around my waist. “Only very small ones.”

  Michael had joined us, and I made the introductions. He shook my mother’s hand. “It’s nice to thank you in person for your tea. I can never get anything as good here. My parents are envious.” His tone was formal, the words prepared in advance.

  “But I wish I’d known! I would have sent you more, Michael,” my mother cried. “Honestly, Shivan, why didn’t you tell me Michael’s parents liked our tea? I would have got them some, too.”

  This admonishment established her role as my mother and eased her shyness with Michael. I grinned sheepishly, playing the recalcitrant son.

  As Renu shook Michael’s hand, she said, “I see you’re the gentleman responsible for my brother’s love handles. Good going.”

  Michael nodded, amused.

  “It’s nice to finally put a face to the voice,” my mother said, and Renu added, “Yes, and a very pretty face, too, if I may say so. What are you doing with a train wreck like my brother?”

  Michael blushed and laughed. He took one of the trolleys and I grabbed the other, and we led the way out of the building. As we walked along, I noticed a large cooler under the suitcase on my cart.

  “What on earth is this?” I asked.

  My mother and sister chuckled.

  “It was Amma’s idea.”

  “No it wasn’t,” my mother retorted with mock crossness. “You’re an equal partner in crime.”

  “Sri Lankan food,” Renu announced to Michael. “We went a bit overboard, as you can tell.”

  “You should have seen the look our ticketing agent gave us when she checked the luggage,” my mother added with a laugh.

  I laughed too. “You both are incorrigible.”

  “Great,” Michael enthused, “I love spicy food.”

  “And I’m a lousy cook. Poor Michael.”

  “Yes, you are lousy,” he replied fondly, then nodded to my family. “Thank you, it’s very kind and generous of you.”

  By the time we got to his parents’ car, borrowed for the occasion, we were all slightly exhausted from the conviviality.

  To keep the silence at bay on our drive, my sister complained about her bus ride from Ithaca to Toronto. “Oh, it was intolerable,” she said. “An obese American sat nex
t to me, and I got squished against the window. But, so, what’s new? It’s impossible to escape them on any bus journey. And then there are those agents of Canadian imperialism at the border. They’re so blond. Always treating me as if I’m illegal.”

  “They have to be vigilant,” my mother said, giving Michael and me a nod as if we were on her side. “Otherwise Canada would be flooded with migrants from Mexico and everywhere else.”

  “So?” My sister spread her arms. “Let this place be flooded. It’s the price we must pay for exploiting the rest of the world.”

  “Anyway, it’s your fault,” my mother said, tapping me on the shoulder. “Look at her shoes, will you?” I turned and took in Renu’s scuffed footwear. “Doesn’t she look like a real refugee, Michael?” my mother said, drawing him in. Michael tried to subtly observe Renu in the rear-view mirror. He smiled noncommittally, unsure if she was trying to put him at ease or a real quarrel was brewing. “I’ve told her and told her to get Canadian citizenship and a passport.”

  “Never, never.” Renu shook her head vigorously.

  “Then you must suffer the consequences,” my mother declared.

  Unlike Michael, I could clearly see that no real rancour existed between them. There was also a new wryness in my sister’s declarations, an acceptance that her political positions were radical and she no longer expected everyone to adopt them.

  That evening, we decided that for dinner we would have the lamprais my mother had brought. Michael showed her around the kitchen then kept a discreet distance, staying nearby if she needed him. While my mother steamed the four rice and curry portions, each wrapped in its banana leaf, Renu and I caught up on the balcony. Michael came out to join us between laying the table and helping my mother put away the rest of the food she’d brought in the fridge and freezer.

  Two extra people in our small apartment demanded an alertness that kept Michael and me occupied. After we had settled them in and eaten dinner, we took our guests for a late-evening stroll along the beach, made sure they had everything for the night, then inflated our mattress, glad to be so busy. At last, my mother and sister were in bed and the apartment grew quiet. There were a few last creaks from the bed in our room, the sound of someone switching off a light. Michael lay on our air mattress with his hands under his head, gazing up at the ceiling. His silence and the dark now pressed in on me. I propped myself up on an elbow and looked down at him.