* * *
Mancher Mama told me once that a romantic relationship is never just between two people. There’s the girl, the guy, and what he called the ghosts of people in between. These ghosts could be exes or even celebrities. Everyone has an ideal person in mind. Someone we’re always measuring the people we’re dating up against, my uncle said.
Mancher Mama, however, never talked about other variables. Like parents, who, in Susan’s case, hover over us like two shadows. Always watching.
Except when I’m kissing her. The way I am now, my hands brushing the soft skin of her waist. Pulling her close, until I realize what’s happening in my jeans and then I’m pushing her away slightly. Her lips are swollen; a deep pink. I angle my head another way and kiss her again, harder. It’s been five months since I kissed another girl, but the way I’m kissing Susan now, you’d think it had been forever. When we break apart to catch our breath, I bury my face in her neck.
She laughs.
“What?”
“That tickles.”
I grin. I haven’t shaved for a couple of days, and the evidence is there on her chin and her cheek, light scrapes that will leave no bruises on her skin.
I dip my head again, but she draws back. “I need to get home.”
“Are you grounded?” Guilt creeps in. If I hadn’t thrown that fit, Susan would have never gone to that party. Would never have gotten into trouble with her mother.
“No.” She brushes a bit of hair off my forehead. “But Amma has been angry with me all weekend and for most of this week. I don’t want to get her angrier. Or make her worry.”
I reluctantly slip my hand out from under her shirt, even though I get the feeling she isn’t telling me everything. She gives me a sheepish smile. I can’t help but smile back. In a goofy way that would have Ahmed and Steve ribbing me for years if they ever saw.
I scratch the back of my head. “So.”
“So.”
“Want to take the bus home with me?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” With a sigh, she finally says, “My father is flying in from Jeddah this afternoon. He’s probably already here.”
Overhead clouds gather, as if mocking me, blocking out what’s left of the sun.
Susan clears her throat. “I might not be able to see you as often.”
There it is. Finally out in the open.
I force myself to smile. “We’ll work around that. Like we do now.”
She stares at me for a long moment.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She wraps her arms around my neck and nestles her head right under my chin. It feels nice. Comfortable. “I’ve never done this before. This dating stuff. It feels weird.”
“It always does.” I think back to the first time I went out with a girl. Dahlia Lim, with her luminous brown eyes and silky black hair with bangs. How nervous I felt even holding her hand, especially in front of her grandmother who said something to her in Korean before turning around to secretly give me a wink.
“It’s like you’re trusting a special part of yourself to another person,” I tell Susan. “That’s scary.”
Across from the bus stop, a pair of guys are setting up drop cloths and paint cans. “They’re going to paint now?” Susan says, sounding incredulous. “That’s pointless.”
I shrug. “Maybe they’re hopeful. The weather here can be pretty unpredictable. Those clouds could pass right over us and rain somewhere else.”
“That’s too much to hope for. I wouldn’t be out there painting if my work could wash away.”
“You need to take chances in life sometimes.”
I think this is probably going to be the end of the conversation, but Susan goes on talking. “Yeah, but why waste your time doing something entirely futile?”
“Um…”
“I mean, is there a point?”
“Susan…”
“Surely they could do it in the summer when—”
“Susan,” I cut in. “Are we still talking about a painting?”
Susan’s skin is stretched taut over her cheekbones, her knuckles pale on fisted hands.
“You like painting, don’t you?” I ask after a pause. After our previous blowup, I’ve been hesitant to talk to Susan about anything related to school or the future. “And art?”
“It’s a hobby.”
“I see.”
“It’s not practical.”
“Is that what you think?” I ask her gently. “Or what your parents think?
Susan closes her eyes for a second. “Do your parents monitor your grades?”
Mom used to. Tehmtun Vakil still does, but I don’t pay any attention to him.
“I guess. Yeah, they do. But I’m assuming not as much as yours.”
“My parents have lots of expectations for me,” Susan’s voice is soft. “They get angry even if I get a 95 on a test because they want to know where and how I lost the other 5 percent.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Even my old man isn’t that finicky about grades. “Why would they care about 5 percent?”
“It’s different in India. More competitive. Before our permanent resident visas got approved, my mother had planned to have me apply to every reputable engineering college in India once I graduated from Qala Academy. She told me it was better than medicine. That I would still be able to marry on time.” Her laugh is tinged with bitterness.
“Well, you have a lot more options here with your grades.” I try to cheer her up. “Right?”
A small frown appears between her brows before disappearing again. “Yeah. Sure. Lots of options.”
“Didn’t you get a hundred on the English midterm? Who does that?”
“Happy I beat Afrin?”
I grin. “Beyond words.”
She smiles. “Mr. Zuric is a lenient marker. He probably curves every exam or essay.”
“For dummies like me,” I add. Maybe a little bit on purpose, to see her reaction.
“Are you still holding that against me?” She scowls and then sighs. “You’re smart. You’re just … uninterested.”
My laughter is full, belly-deep.
“It’s true!” Susan raises her voice to be heard over the clouds thundering overhead. “There’s a difference between being bad at something and not being interested in it. You need to find something you love doing—that doesn’t bore you to death.”
Like art? I want to challenge. But then I look into her big, brown, far-too-earnest eyes and the fight goes out of me.
“Like kissing?”
She rolls her eyes, but smiles at me. “Be serious.”
“Kissing is serious business.”
She’s about to retort when her gaze falls on something or someone behind me. And for the first time in all the time that I’ve known her, Susan Thomas swears out loud.
Susan
It’s Amma in her deep red fall coat, talking to Mr. Zuric. But they’re not the only reason I swore. There’s also someone else. A familiar someone, his silver hair darkened to gray by the light rain, his face both dear and terrifying in this instant.
A marquee of questions scrolls through my brain: What are they doing at school? Why are they talking to Mr. Zuric? Did they talk to Mr. Franklin, too? Did he tell them about my grade on the physics midterm?
The grade, a B, wasn’t as bad as I’d expected—realistically it wasn’t bad at all, considering the highest midterm grade (awarded to Heather Dupuis) was an A-minus. Telling Amma about it was a different story, though, and the first thing I did after Mr. Franklin returned the paper was hide it at the very back of my school binder. I couldn’t stand the thought of Amma going through each question and grilling me about my mistakes—or worse, demanding to see Mr. Franklin herself to fight over any missing marks. It was easy to forget about my grades when they were out of sight, with Amma being more distracted than normal last week and Appa safely in Jeddah. Now, though, with my parents in clear view, the grade and the paper swim before my eyes like
a bad vision, spinning in circles before sinking into an invisible vortex.
“… she’s an excellent student. I’m so pleased to have her in my class.” Mr. Zuric is talking about me. I can tell from the look on my parents’ faces: that satisfied expression I’ve only seen when I’ve met their expectations without surpassing them.
“Oh, there she is!” Mr. Zuric spots me seconds before I can hide behind a tree.
I smile weakly and wave, instantly feeling foolish for doing so. “Hi, Amma. Appa, how was your flight?”
I expect Malcolm to flee the way I would have. But he doesn’t. He pastes a smile on his lips, even though I’m sure he must be terrified, and turns around to face them.
The beam on Mr. Zuric’s face dims when he sees who I’m with. Amma’s face is blotchy, furious, her shoulders nearly up to the hood around her ears. Appa, on the other hand, is frowning, which could mean anything from confusion to disapproval.
“That’s your dad, isn’t it?” Malcolm murmurs, so softly that I barely hear him.
I must have nodded or made some sound of assent because Malcolm groans.
“Time to face the music, then.”
I am not sure if he’s talking to me or to himself, but by the time we’re standing in front of my parents and Mr. Zuric, Malcolm’s frozen smile has thawed to something warm and bright, his eyes sparkling even though the sun has been blotted out by the clouds.
“Hi, Mrs. Thomas. Mr. Thomas.” He gives Mr. Zuric a nod, which is a miracle in itself because he usually does his best to ignore the teacher. Mr. Zuric nods back stiffly and then returns to his conversation with Amma.
“I’m a friend of Susan’s,” Malcolm says. “Malcolm Vakil.”
“Malcolm Lawyer?” Appa asks, raising his brows. I’m about to explain the joke—that vakil means lawyer in Hindi—when Malcolm laughs.
“Yeah, Malcolm Lawyer. I get that a lot from my Indian friends.”
“Ah, I see.” To the untrained ear, Appa’s voice sounds pleasant, even friendly. But I’ve heard that tone enough times by now to know that the questions that Malcolm answers now will have my father judging everything: from Malcolm’s family background to his intelligence and character. “Where in India are you from, my boy?”
“Oh, I’m not from India, sir. I was born here,” Malcolm says. “My folks are from Mumbai, though. We’re Parsis.”
It’s the wrong answer. I can already see the way my father’s smile drops a little, the way my mother’s frown deepens. I hear the hollow voices of relatives traveling all the way from India and right into their ears: Be careful she doesn’t forget where she comes from like those children in the West.
Even though “those children” were born in the West in the first place. Yvonne took a great deal of flak for it—a black sheep our relatives in India call her for her accent and her supposed disdain for Indian culture and traditions. I wonder what they would say if they saw Yvonne here the way I did. Wearing a traditional white-and-gold Kerala sari at her birthday party this August, teaching her non-Indian friends to pronounce jhumka while pointing at the gold, bell-shaped earrings that dangled from her lobes.
I’m ready to snap if my parents say anything that might make Malcolm uncomfortable. But Appa simply responds with: “I knew some Parsis back in Jeddah. Rustom and Khorshed Wadia. Do you know them by any chance?”
“No, sir,” Malcolm replies. “But maybe they’re related somehow to a couple of Wadias I know at the Zoroastrian Community Centre. I could ask for you, if you like.”
I release my breath, bit by bit, watching my father shift from his interrogator pose to something more relaxed, and soon he and Malcolm are casually chatting about Canada and Arthur Eldridge, and other mundane topics. I try to focus on the conversation. With Mr. Zuric now gone, I can feel the laser beam of my mother’s gaze burning the side of my face. When I chance a look her way, she tilts her head to the side. It means I am in deep trouble, though I’m not sure if she has already told my father about the party and how I got drunk.
In the past, my parents would never have hidden something so significant from each other, especially when it came to me. I expected Amma to insist that Appa come here at once—or even call us back to Jeddah.
But now that I think of it, Amma no longer kept vigil by the computer everyday, even during the times my father was expected to Skype. There were days when she went off to the library by herself, returning with a bagful of romance novels, which she devoured within a couple of days. “I used to read these in college, you know,” she told me with a laugh. “I used to have a crush on this handsome boy in my bio lab. I wonder what happened to him.”
The whole conversation made me uncomfortable—as if we were betraying my father in some way. Amma laughed at me then, but I know there’s a growing gap between my parents that geographical distance itself can’t be entirely blamed for. There are days, like today, when I wonder if I am the only glue holding them together.
“Rensil,” she says now in a voice that’s chillier than the November wind. “Shall we get going?”
As if punctuating her words, a spray of rain hits the tree we’re standing under. Screams ring out from the distance as a pair of girls race to the bus from the gym doors, trying to cover their heads with textbooks. I feel my hood being edged over my hair. Malcolm grins at me. Without meaning to, I smile back.
“Susan,” Appa says.
Susan, not Suzy. The slightest shift of a syllable with which my father could change a name into a reprimand. I turn to face Appa, telling myself there is nothing to worry about. That I only smiled at a friend. But then I catch a glimpse of my reflection in his rain-speckled glasses. The girl I see there glows, her happiness unhidden from the rest of the world.
* * *
“I thought you weren’t going to see that boy anymore,” Amma says, the moment we’re in our car.
So much for hoping Amma would keep her mouth shut.
“I’m not seeing him,” I lie from the back passenger seat. “He’s in my English class with Mr. Zuric. He was asking me about homework.”
“Was he asking about homework that night, too?”
I feel the blood drain from my face. My gaze darts between Amma’s angry eyes and the back of my father’s gray head.
“Aruna, please,” Appa says impatiently, and I wonder if he even heard her. “Let’s not fight today.”
I register the smell inside the car; the musty odor of sweat sticking to my father’s wrinkled clothes after being cloistered for over thirteen hours in an airplane. He must have come directly from the airport. To my surprise, Amma does not launch into her usual counterarguments: I am her mother. Or: You’re never on my side. Or: I am disciplining her.
Instead she looks at him for a long moment, her mouth drawn back into a grimace.
“Are you going to tell her or am I?”
“Aruna, don’t do this.”
“Let me make it easy for you, Rensil.” Amma is still watching Appa. “Susan, your father is here to tell you that we are separating.”
“Aruna!”
I have never heard Appa sound this furious. But he does not deny what my mother said. The brakes slam and the car jerks to a stop at the red light.
Amma’s words seep in, prick my insides.
“How could you do this?” Appa’s voice is soft, yet unbearably loud in the silence. “We agreed we’d wait until the weekend. Until I had a little more time.”
I do not need to see Amma to know what her face looks like right now—hard eyes welling, her lips pressed thin. The slightest touch of cruelty breaking through the pain.
Malcolm
On the first day of December, I wake up to a fine dusting of snow over the driveway and the hoods of the old man’s and Freny’s cars. Though the sun comes out by the time I get to school, the air remains freezing as if studded with microscopic bits of ice.
It’s funny watching Susan shiver when we step out for pizza during lunch, wrapping her scarf tightly around her nose. “
Planning to rob a bank?” I ask her.
She mumbles something that sounds like “Very funny,” but I can’t be too sure. She has been in a bad mood since I saw her this morning, refusing to tell me what is wrong. It doesn’t take much to figure out it has something to do with her parents and the separation they announced a couple of weeks ago, but that’s a can of worms I have no intention of opening now.
Right now, back at school, I want to distract Susan as much as I can—by cracking several of Steve’s slapstick jokes, and failing that, kissing away her frown in the quiet of a corner on the first floor, sandwiched between the wall and a locker facing a window. I think I’m doing a decent job—if her sighs are any indication—but then, all of a sudden, she pushes me away, pressing a finger to her lips.
“I can’t wait to leave this place.” The girl whose locker we’re standing next to has a loud, nasally voice. “It’s like living in a prison with my parents always around, hovering over me, asking if I’m okay, if I need this or that … God.”
Susan’s brows nearly touch her hairline. I roll my eyes. Susan presses her lips together, a sure sign that she’s going to laugh out loud. I muffle the sound with a kiss.
“I dunno,” another voice says from a distance, a boy. “I mean, I still need to look into scholarships and stuff.”
“I’m applying to the St. George campus.” The girl’s voice penetrates my happy place, grating on my eardrums. “And every other university in Toronto. You should apply as well, Leonard. Leave crappy Sauga behind.”
I pull back from Susan, no longer able to resist.
“Toronto, where the lights are bright and the rents are high!” I call out. “Downtown on Daddy’s dime! Is he gonna pay for Leonard’s tuition, too? Or is it Mommy who’s footing the bill?”
“Malcolm!” Susan says. She looks so alarmed that it’s funny.
“Whatever.” The girl sounds bored. She doesn’t even bother looking at me. “Let’s go, Leonard, and leave these losers to their make-out session. We’ll see who’s talking when acceptances start rolling in next semester.”
The Beauty of the Moment Page 18
