by Ami Rao
She felt a tiny, terrifying twinge of fear. Not just for herself, but for the two of them, because – and she truly believed this – without relationships, you have no stories.
And so Ameena, being Ameena, picked up her phone and called him. ‘Hey,’ she said when he answered.
‘Hey you!’ David said, and she brightened immediately because she could hear it in his voice, how it pleased him to hear from her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Nothing at all. What can you do in this weather... it’s like Armageddon!’
‘Shall we do something?’
‘Like?’
‘Shall we go for brunch and eat pancakes filled with lots of fat American blueberries?’
‘Ameena, it’s pouring!’
‘I know! And it’s making me restless. I thought I’d work on a painting that I started the other day – I’ve got to texturise it with salt and Peggy’s rice and stuff,’ she sighed, ‘but it’s all too much faff for a day like this.’
‘Faff?’
‘Ohhh. Let’s see. Drama?’
‘Faff.’
‘Yeah. Faff. And I’m not feeling faffy. I’m feeling blueberry pancakes. With you!’
He laughed, and she felt the familiar shudder in her body at the sound of him, she pictured the small round of his Adam’s apple moving in his throat as he spoke, she wondered if he had shaved yet that morning or if his cheeks carried the rough, rugged prickle of a day-old stubble. ‘Do you want to wait a bit for the rain to stop?’ he was saying, and she found herself shaking her head, feeling her own impatience stamping its tiny feet inside her. No, she didn’t want to wait. She didn’t want the rain to stop. She just wanted to see him. But she didn’t want to tell him that.
So, she said what came easiest to her, the thing that was most familiar, because it is easy sometimes, to confuse what’s familiar with what is normal. ‘In Manchester,’ she said, ‘if we waited for the rain to stop, we’d be waiting our whole lives. We’re not going to melt, let’s go.’
Ten minutes later, in raincoats and umbrellas, they met at the diner round the corner from David’s building, its 1950s-style neon light flashing cheerfully, despite the gloom of the day.
They laughed when they saw each other, their raincoats stuck to their clothes, the rain dripping from their hair despite all their gear, and the bell above the diner’s door chimed ding-dong as David held the door open for her.
Inside there were only a smattering of people, determined to brave the weather, and they looked up and nodded purposefully at David and Ameena as they entered, as if they were all comrades in arms, who kept each other going when things were hard.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Ameena said, once they’d sat down. ‘I’m sorry I dragged you out in this.’
‘Anything to see you,’ he said, and she averted her gaze.
For a few minutes they sat like that in silence, considering each other, and Ameena noticed that he hadn’t, in fact, shaved, and that his face looked handsome and masculine, and she wondered, once again, how anyone could possibly be so beautiful, and she wondered also how she should respond, if she should respond at all, if she should tell him that she felt the same way too, that he had taken the words out of her mouth. Or if she should say something else. Or nothing at all.
‘Oooh, coffee,’ she exclaimed gratefully as the pot arrived. ‘Hot and unlimited. Only in America.’ She took a long, deep breath, inhaling the warm, rich aroma. ‘Worth dragging you out for, no?’
‘You do know,’ he said nonchalantly, pouring coffee into her mug, ‘that I’m in love with you, don’t you?’
And as the stack of pancakes appeared before them, steam coming off the top in long lazy swirls, and as David and Ameena picked up their forks and started to eat from the same plate and Ameena felt the burst of sweetness inside her mouth as she bit into a fat American blueberry, and outside the rain came down in torrents, she found a happiness that felt almost dizzying, for if there is a more foolishly intoxicating feeling in the world than loving, it is in being loved.
And in that way the various strangenesses of the morning melted – like ice – into nothingness.
2.2
Later that same evening, David stood on the roof terrace of his building, he stood there alone, resisting the pull of a smoke. Just one drag. One long, single, tantalising drag. But this is the thing – our experiences shape us; they either give us faith or they take it away. He had vowed not to touch the stuff and he hasn’t, and he won’t start now.
The rain had let up, but the sky was still grey and there was no moon yet and no stars, but there was a breeze that blew up there on the top of the roof, and the breeze was cold, but still he stood there, in the open where there was nothing to shield him from the breeze. Or his own thoughts. He thought of the happiness that Ameena brought to his life. He thought of her impulsiveness, and the sudden force of her laughter, and how she reached for him, sometimes, at night, and enveloped him with her body. He thought of these things with fondness and tenderness. And then he thought of other times, different times, times that had gone by. And he contrasted these two times, this present time when he feels the need for Ameena… her companionship, her physical presence, her curiosity, her conversation… and those other times, when he had felt the threat of human connection and moved away, distanced himself from the people in his life, from closeness and feeling and touch. And words… even from words, from language, for as much as David respected the language of words, he knew that there are times when language fails us, when words are not enough, and that in each of our lives, there come these times…
Sometimes.
*
1. There’s this time when the brothers are walking home from school.
‘Let’s go the long way,’ Abe says, taking out a cigarette from his pocket.
‘When did you start smoking?’ David asks, adjusting the guitar on his back.
‘This morning. C’mon.’
They walk through the woods, weaving their way in between the tall, dark green pines, sunlight streaming through the whorls of horizontal branches, shadows dancing on the floor, the air smelling fresh and new and righteously clean. It is so peaceful here, David thinks.
‘Did you steal one of Mom’s?’ David asks, kicking a stone with his foot, then watching it roll forward and stop, before kicking it again.
When Abe doesn’t reply, he says, ‘She’s gonna kill you.’
‘What, before they kill her?’ his brother quips with the cocky invincibility of a young person.
It is then that they hear it. It’s a strange sound, long and plaintive, a cry, not human. It cuts through the trees and into the still air. They look at each other, then they start to sprint in the direction of the sound, the crunch of the gravel under their feet echoing around them. They come upon it suddenly, because it is silent now, but there it is, they see it, the little white rabbit, its belly stuck in the wire fence that is laid out separating the woods from someone’s backyard. There is a child’s playhouse, bright yellow and blue, on the other side of the fence, an empty paddling pool, a plastic bucket and spade, a couple of baseball bats. No one seems to be about.
Abe drops his cigarette stub on the ground and squashes it with the ball of his foot. He has only just learned how to do that. Gingerly, the brothers walk towards the animal. It raises its ears – bright pink velvet, pointed at the tips. But it isn’t the ears that first strike David, it is the eyes, he will never forget those eyes for as long as he lives, crazed eyes, wild with terror. They are close enough to touch it now and it bares its teeth suddenly, then whimpers, as if anger is too much effort in such a moment. The two boys set about the task of setting it free, David holding the wriggling animal between his hands, Abe cutting the wire loose with his fingers. It takes much longer than they expect, but eventually the hole is wide enough and the rabbit squeals, then
scampers away to freedom.
‘Why are you so late?’ their father asks, looking around at the clocks in the house, all perfectly synchronised, not one is even a second late. David shrugs his shoulders, Abe looks away, hiding his cut fingers in his pockets. They say nothing.
2. Another time, they are on a train home from Providence. There’s been a big ball game at McCoy Stadium. The train is packed full of fans. A group of boys at the other end of the compartment are in high spirits. David recognises one of them; he is a senior at their high school. He stares at David, trying to place him in his own mind, and then his eyes flicker with recognition. A couple of minutes later, the boys start singing songs about camps and camp fires. They sing loudly and boisterously; there is feet stamping and saluting. One song finishes and they start another. When they begin a third song, David shouts across the train, ‘Stop it,’ he says, ‘please. It’s offensive.’ A bespectacled man sitting across the aisle reading a newspaper looks up at David, and then looks away.
‘What are you going to do about it, Jewboy?’ one of the boys yells back. David looks at Abe standing beside him and he can see his face has gone all red and scrunchy, the muscles hard and tense. Hidden behind his big muscular thigh is a balled-up fist, knuckles clenched. When the doors open at the next stop, David tugs at Abe’s arm and they get out. They walk home, twenty miles. Abe says nothing the whole way.
3. Their mother has a cough that will not go away. The pharmacist, a gruff fellow with beady eyes and his mother’s rosary permanently peeping out of his trouser pocket, recommends some cough drops. They don’t work. He recommends a syrup, thick and brown and sweet. That doesn’t work either. If anything, it seems to make the cough worse. He recommends a course of antibiotics. ‘Finish the dose, now,’ he says with unwonted kindness, ‘even if the cough goes away, be sure you finish the full dose.’ But she finishes the dose and the cough doesn’t go away. ‘Didn’t work,’ she tells the pharmacist, shrugging her shoulders. ‘Keeping Benji up all night, he won’t say anything though, bless his sweet heart.’ When the outline of her ribs starts to show through her thin summer blouses, she goes to the doctor, a jolly-looking man with big hands and rosy cheeks and a slightly breathless air about him. He runs some tests and asks her to come back. His face is not so jolly the next time around and something about his manner, the little-too-detached formality of it, sends a chill through her bones. When he tells her with serious eyes that there isn’t any medicine that’s going to work, she doesn’t say a thing.
4. They are horsing around with their father’s tools in the garage. David is trying to make a model wooden piano with strings that can play when you strike the keys. He is looking down, rapt with concentration, so he smells it and maybe he even hears it, that telltale sizzle and pop, before he sees it. But he turns around in alarm, and sees Abe standing by the closed garage door, his face frozen in an expression of horror. By his feet is a crunched-up old newspaper from which is currently erupting a small ball of flames. Beside it lies a bright orange lighter. David pushes open the garage door and then shoves Abe out before he reaches for the fire extinguisher.
The memory of what happens next is patchy, blotted out, like a thick cloud, but when it is all over, he covers the ugly black burn mark on the concrete floor with an old coir mat that says ‘Home Sweet Home’ in colourful letters. Later he ices the raw blistered patch on his wrist and changes into a full-sleeve shirt even though it is August and the heat that year is stifling. The next morning, he notices that the mat has been removed and the garage smells of air freshener. But whoever has done that says nothing.
5. And then, David has a girlfriend. The pharmacist’s daughter. A slip of a girl with dark, curly hair and the wide blue eyes of a child. She sings and plays the piano. Very well, his mother, the piano teacher, admits begrudgingly. The girl’s family are devoutly Catholic; the father will not sell condoms in his shop. Nobody has ever seen the mother; people say she is a shut-in, totally nuts, gone crazy from guilt. ‘It’s hereditary,’ his own mother says knowingly, ‘madness is. It runs in families.’ But David sees a kindness in the girl he can’t ignore, a kindness and a vulnerability that fills him with tenderness, a need to protect her from the madness that is her ultimate fate. One day, David finds a picture of her, the pharmacist’s daughter, under the pillow of his brother’s bed. David says nothing.
6. Their mother dies. Their father falls down one day, planting daffodil bulbs in the back garden. One minute he is planting bulbs, the next minute he is on the ground, his face turned sideways in the mud, his body spreadeagled on the pansy bed, squashing the pretty pink and purple petals with its weight. A neighbour hanging her clothes out to dry in her own garden peers over the low brick wall and sees his boot in the flower bed. She screams and is hysterical with emotion when she calls for the ambulance; two deaths in such proximity to each other – and more significantly, to her – is too much to take. David comes up from New York, Abe is nowhere to be found. Their father sits in a wheelchair, blind and mute. ‘I’m so sorry,’ says the very young, strawberry-blonde nurse, dabbing her eyes, ‘I don’t know what to say.’ She says nothing. David says nothing. Their father says nothing and never will.
Sometimes in life, thought David the man, there is nothing to say.
Sometimes in life, thought David the musician, it needs to be played.
2.3
‘He’s gorgeous,’ Whitney said, slipping an oyster into her mouth.
Ameena scrunched up her face in distaste.
‘What?’
‘That,’ Ameena said, raising her chin.
‘You can never be a real New Yorker if you don’t like oysters, you know.’
‘Ugh. No thanks. They’re so slimy. Like eating slugs.’
Whitney waved her hand in the air. ‘Whatever. He’s gorgeous.’
Ameena turned around tentatively and looked over her shoulder at where David was standing, talking to Whitney’s boyfriend and a few other people she worked with. Even as she watched, she saw him throw his head back and laugh in that beguiling manner he had, then he caught her eye and she smiled.
They were at the party that Whitney held every month, in honour of everyone who worked at the magazine – and implicitly, spouses, partners, significant (or insignificant) others – a supposed essential ritual, she felt, for people to get to know each other’s ‘style’ outside the workplace.
Whitney’s boyfriend was a paediatric cardiologist at Mount Sinai, a charming, strikingly handsome man from Brazil, who Whitney had met on a plane back from São Paulo a few years ago, and who graciously allowed the party to take place on the private rooftop terrace of his penthouse on Fort Washington Avenue, a lovely, open space with trailing wisteria sprigs and arches bright with fairy lights.
‘Yeah,’ Ameena said, ‘he’s lovely.’
‘Lovely? Sweetie, I’m not talking about your grandma’s knitting. I’m talking about that boy you walked in with. He’s gorgeous.’
‘Okay, he’s gorgeous.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He works in advertising. And he’s a jazz pianist. A very good one. He’s kind of amazing with his fingers.’
‘Oh?’
‘I mean on the piano,’ she said quickly as she saw Whitney’s eyes start to twinkle.
‘Oh,’ Whitney replied with a look of exaggerated disappointment.
Ameena rolled her eyes.
‘You need to introduce us properly, not like that thirty-second thing you did earlier. I don’t even know his full name.’
‘Greenberg. David Greenberg.’
‘He’s Jewish?’
Ameena nodded. Whitney made big eyes.
‘Oh dear.’
‘I know.’
She touched Ameena’s arm lightly and they walked towards the brick wall at the end of the terrace where they would be some distance away from the other guests. Then she leaned forward an
d rested her arms on the cool wrought-iron railing, gazing across the Hudson at the dark outline of the Palisades on the other side. For a few moments, neither of them said anything.
Still looking straight ahead, Whitney said, ‘What tangled webs we weave.’ Then she turned to look at Ameena. ‘Who said that? Shakespeare?’
‘Walter Scott.’
‘How do you know everything? Quote a line from anywhere and you know it.’
‘Not really.’
‘Yes, really. How? As your boss I demand to know.’
Ameena smiled. ‘I guess it comes from reading everything I could when I was in school, a certain British canon if you will. I read everything, then I memorised it. All of it. I was so naive, I thought if I could recite Macbeth backwards, I’d fit in somehow, as if that would make me more British.’ She sighed. ‘I wanted to be more British than the British.’
Whitney nodded. ‘Ah yes, the old immigrant’s dilemma. Like the prisoner’s dilemma, except in this case, the only mind you’re fucking with is your own. Anyway,’ she looked in David’s direction, ‘so he’s Jewish?’
‘From head to toe.’
‘Have you been disowned?’
‘Haven’t told them.’
‘You haven’t told your family?’
‘It’s not like I’m eloping tomorrow. We’ve barely started dating!’
She winked. ‘Honey, you were just talking about his fingers…’
‘On a piano, Whitney,’ Ameena said, laughing.
‘Whatever.’ Whitney took a sip of her wine. ‘What religion will you raise your kids?’
‘Hmm, let’s see… I haven’t yet thought about what religion to raise my non-existent kids that haven’t yet been created, from a man I haven’t yet married. Gasp. Does that make me a bad mother?’
