The Beauty of the Moment

by Tanaz Bhathena

  “You got that out of something I said?” I’m pretty skeptical about this.

  She laughs. “Well, yes. At least it got me thinking.”

  There’s an awkward pause. I struggle to fill it with something. Anything.

  “Malcolm?” she says suddenly.

  “Yeah?”

  “You can call me. On the phone. We don’t have to text all the time.”

  When we hang up, my cheeks hurt from grinning. I look at the list of universities in my Notes. This week, when Zuric handed back our independent study essays, mine had a B-plus scrawled over it, along with Good. The grade surprised both of us. Zuric has also been keeping my nose to the grindstone during those Wednesday tutorials and King Lear has finally begun to make sense.

  It gets me thinking now. Hoping. If I can get a B-plus on my independent study, who’s to say I can’t get a decent final grade in English? Or even get into a university?

  * * *

  “Amazing,” Mahtab mutters when she finds me sprawled out on the living room floor one evening, papers and textbooks around me. “Freny says you’ve been studying for four hours straight. I mean you didn’t even hear me trying to tempt you with cookies!”

  “Shhhh.” I frown, but don’t look up from my accounting textbook. Why did I take this course? I wonder for the fifth time that day. It’s partly my own fault for having skipped those classes about corporations and partnerships—even though I don’t regret the time I spent with Susan during them. “I was trying to ignore you,” I tell my sister now. Though my stomach did grumble at the mention of shortbread.

  “Looks like Shakespeare was wrong. A leopard can change its spots!”

  I raise my head. “‘Nothing will come of nothing.’”

  “What?”

  “That’s Shakespeare, too. King Lear. Act 1. It means without flattery, you will get nothing. Now buzz off.”

  I see a grin spread across her face before I go back to reading the section on stock dividends.

  * * *

  When I was a kid, Mom often slipped me a cup of milk or a hot rotli, fresh from the stove, as a snack while I studied. Freny, still teetering on the edge of our newly civil relationship, does not assume such privileges, asking if I want something instead.

  “Vodka would be nice,” I tell her. “Or a cheeseburger.”

  Freny smiles. “Orange juice and cookies it is.”

  She’s starting to get my sense of humor, too.

  A day later, Mancher Mama sends me a photo of him and my aunt playing carrom with juice glasses raised to the camera. Good luck, he writes. P.S. These are screwdrivers, not orange juice. Freny must’ve told him.

  save one for me, I text back. i’ll need one after this accounting exam.

  I yawn and, instead of switching off the phone, load the Facebook app. From Susan’s timeline, I see that she hasn’t been on since yesterday, even though I know she had a calculus exam this morning.

  I text her: how’d it go?

  A few seconds later, a text bubble pops up: Not bad. I think I did okay.

  I roll my eyes. you mean you aced it.

  I don’t know that!

  please.

  Maybe it was better than okay. She follows it up with a giant smile emoji.

  there you go. i have accounting tomorrow. gotta run. x

  I stare at the last symbol. A kiss. Will she mind? Or even notice?

  I silence the phone and go back to memorizing financial ratios. I’m still in the living room at midnight, half asleep, my cheek pressed to the sofa, mouth drooling over the cotton slipcover, when a pair of hands tuck something warm around my shoulders. My eyes flutter open.

  “It’s okay.” The old man pats my head once. “Go back to sleep.”

  Only, after he leaves, I am wide awake again. I’m tempted to think I was dreaming, but my books, scattered across the floor an hour ago, are now arranged in neat piles on the coffee table, the old man’s briefcase beside them.

  * * *

  There are things you no longer expect from a parent when you’ve been fighting with them as long as I have been with my father. Being tucked in is one. A muttered Good luck, right before my accounting exam is another. The sudden attention confuses me, even pisses me off at one point.

  “Maybe he’s taking a cue from your stepmom,” Susan says when I tell her about it. “I mean, you both are talking now, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I say slowly. “But that’s different.” Freny wasn’t around when Mom got sick. The sight of her doesn’t still simultaneously weigh my heart down and make it burn with anger. “He never said goodbye,” I say finally. “Never told Mom it was over. She deserved better.”

  “Maybe you should tell him that. No sense keeping that bottled up inside.”

  On a Saturday in early February, I screw up the courage to talk to the old man. I find him sitting on the couch in the living room, a mug of coffee in one large hand.

  “Thanks,” I tell him. “For the blanket. Um, that day when…”

  He nods. “I used to do that for you when you were small. You weren’t studying then. You always wanted to play. I had to bribe you with cookies to get you to go to bed.”

  I blink, thrown back for a moment into a fading memory: leaping onto a man’s broad shoulders, a chocolate chip melting on my tongue.

  “You wore a yellow shirt. And a blue tie.”

  “Yes.” He looks surprised but pleased. Then, after a moment’s pause: “That shirt was your mother’s favorite.”

  Mom. Her death splintered something inside me, something that still begs to be fixed.

  “You broke her,” I tell him. “You broke us all.”

  His face, so hard and unyielding, sags. After a long moment, he says: “I know.”

  “Why?” I ask, years of anger encased in one word. “Why did you do it?”

  “I was being selfish.” The Asho Farohar pendant glints at the base of his neck. “I was trying to shield myself from the pain.”

  “We were all in pain! But what you did was beyond selfish. You ignored her. It was despicable. Mom deserved better. We all did.”

  He rubs a hand over his face. “You did. I was—still am—a horrible father.”

  I remain silent. There’s nothing untrue about what he said.

  “When I married your mother, it was good. Really good. Then she fell ill. I make no excuses for the way I behaved. I was young and stupid, angry with God and the universe for having taken away my wife’s health.” He sighs. “The first time she got diagnosed with the sarcoma, your mother was the one who said I should prepare to marry again. In case.”

  You’re lying, I want to say at once. But there’s a look on his face that gives me pause, a strange ring of truth to his words.

  “She set me up with a friend of hers. Remember Coomie Aunty? You were still very young then.”

  Another faded memory: “She used to come over to the house. She brought me those batasas.” I remember the buttery taste of the hard biscuits, the cumin infusing them. Coomie Aunty would sit on the couch, my father across from her. Mom would pull me into the kitchen, giving them time to talk. Back then, I never understood why.

  “Nothing happened,” he continues. “I was still very much in love with your mother.”

  “I don’t think I want to hear this.” Sickness swirls in the pit of my stomach.

  “Please, Malcolm. I am not asking you to forgive me. But you need to know the truth about what happened.” He closes his eyes for a moment. “I buried myself in work. I took every trip possible to keep my mind off things. I met a woman on one of these trips. A couple of years had passed since your mother had tried to set me up with Coomie. Your mother’s cancer had subsided, but she was still very weak. It’s ironic,” he says bitterly. “How I cheated on my wife when she wasn’t truly ill. But, during the course of that other relationship, I was close to your mother as well and she became pregnant with Mahtab. I broke things off immediately. I thought God had given me another chance.”
/>   I take a seat on the couch next to him.

  “But Daulat didn’t. She found out about what I’d done and she refused to let me touch her again. And then you were there. You weren’t like Mahtab, who looks past my flaws. You were your mother’s son, your uncle’s nephew. You always looked at me like I was doing something wrong. I did the worst possible thing by taking out my anger on you. Hitting you. It’s a wonder you didn’t call the cops on me.”

  “I nearly did. Mahtab stopped me.”

  We both fall silent for a long moment.

  “As I said before, I have no excuses.” He raises a hand as if to touch my shoulder and drops it. “I didn’t deserve your mother. I don’t deserve either you or Mahtab.”

  No, I think. He doesn’t.

  “But I want to fix things.” He’s gripping the coffee mug so hard that the skin on his knuckles turns yellow. “Is that possible, Malcolm? Can we try to fix things between us?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. “I don’t know if I can ever forget what you did to Mom. How you hurt me and Mahtab.”

  He hangs his head.

  “I need time.”

  It’s not until the words leave my mouth that I realize they are true. I do need time to think, to process everything he’s told me, to see if forgiveness is truly possible. It won’t be the same. I will never blindly love my father again, never forget the scars he marked my mind and body with. But I will try to be civil. Maybe someday, I will learn to accept him for who he is. If he’s lucky, I might even call him Dad again.

  SEVEN MONTHS LATER

  Susan

  The week before university begins, I get an email from Preeti titled FROSH WEEK!!! A giant poster opens up, featuring a group of smiling students in yellow-and-blue shirts. Join us for an experience that will define the rest of your student life!

  Right above the poster, a single line of text: OMG WE HAVE TO GO.

  I grin. Shouty caps are trademark Preeti when she’s excited; I have never seen anyone else as energetic. At least, not until I arrive on the green lawn beside the pond at the University of Toronto in Mississauga and five student leaders in bright yellow shirts wave to the first years scattered across the lawn, each one at least as energetic as my extra-caffeinated friend, if not more so.

  “Come on!” shouts a handsome boy with warm brown skin and long locs. “Let’s split into teams!”

  The next four hours pass in a barrage of activities, ranging from participating in cheers punctuated with pelvic thrusts to a water-gun battle, until a couple of kids get the bright idea to fill their guns with paint instead of water.

  “I’m exhausted,” I tell Preeti once the student leaders begin herding us to another part of campus, where a giant tent has been set up. As someone who avoided every Holi celebration and color fight in India, I never thought I’d be caught in one here. My shirt is splattered with purple and muddy green, and I am pretty sure the stuff got into my hair as well. So far, my university experience has included offers to hit a local nightclub, a pen with the UTM logo, a lollipop, a condom, and politely refusing a good time with an engineering sophomore who smelled like shaving foam.

  “Come on, Suze!” Preeti protests, and I wonder if Alisha has taken over her for a second. “A few more minutes!”

  Preeti’s shirt—if possible—is even muddier than mine. She’s wearing a necklace of beads and condoms and a painted smiley on her right cheek. Her face is bright with excitement, her cranberry lipstick worn off in the heat. It’s strange seeing Preeti on her own without Heather, who’s going to McMaster University in Hamilton. As much as I miss Heather, I know Preeti misses her even more.

  “Fine!” I say with a sigh. “But only five more minutes!”

  Half an hour later I wave at Preeti, who is flirting with one of the frosh leaders, and slip away from the crowd, narrowly avoiding a pair of Frosh leaders singing at the top of their voices.

  Frosh week. My very own version of hell.

  “I am never going back,” I mutter to myself.

  Well, not to another event like that anyway. I will go back for the classes. Fine Art History. Fine Art Studio. Thinking about spending days studying different artists and art techniques puts a skip in my step.

  “I’m not going back either.” A voice jars me out of my thoughts. “Too many condoms. What’s a celibate guy gonna do with them?”

  I turn around and there he is. Porcupine-headed. Smiling like the sun. I almost don’t recognize him through the mess of paint on his face and white T-shirt.

  Warmth unfurls under my ribs. “You go here?”

  “Got into the bachelor’s of commerce program last minute.” Malcolm shrugs. “I heard you go here, too.”

  “You heard? You’re on my Facebook,” I say pointedly. “We text and call each other almost every day.” In fact, every time I asked him about his university applications, he got cagey and went silent. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wasn’t sure if my student loans were going to come through. I only found out a couple of months ago. The old ma—my father offered to foot the bill, but I said no. I’m going to pay for my own tuition. Got promoted to manager at Michelle’s though, so at least the pay’s a little better.”

  I smile. “By the way, did I tell you I got a job?”

  His eyes widen. “No way. Where?”

  “Painter’s Box. It’s a small art supply store in Streetsville.” It hasn’t been too bad. The owner, Raul, is over seventy and one of the most talented painters I’ve ever seen. It’s what keeps me going even though the pay is terrible. My mother was initially annoyed by my decision.

  “How will you concentrate on your studies?” Amma wanted to know. My mother who now spends her mornings working part-time at a beauty counter in the mall and her nights poring over notes from online science courses.

  “I’ll manage,” I told her. “Like you.”

  The way I managed to get into the university on a full scholarship, thanks to the application Ms. Nguyen helped me put together for the visual arts program. There was no greater satisfaction than emailing my father the scholarship letter while Skyping with him and seeing the surprise on his face. Even though, seconds later, he suggested that I enroll in a few business courses as backup.

  A part of me understands my parents’ fear, longs to fall back into the security net they’re still offering. But another, larger part of me is more eager to prove to them—to myself even—that I can become independent and make a living, even with a degree in visual arts.

  “Have you moved out?” I ask Malcolm.

  “Nah, still living with him, Freny, and Mah.” Malcolm smirks. “Can’t afford to stay on my own.”

  “Same.” Not that I could ever leave Amma alone after the separation. I smile. “Can’t live with them, can’t live without them, eh?”

  He stares at me for a long moment. “You’re losing your accent.” He sounds a little disappointed.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever lose it completely.” I hear it seeping in now, bits and pieces of the old Susan tempering the new one, whose heart has a severe case of the flutters. “If I do, all you have to do is make me mad.”

  “I think I do that quite well, don’t I?”

  It’s a joke and I’m supposed to laugh, but I hesitate. We’ve been edging around the boundaries of our renewed friendship for quite a while now. Though never openly enough. “Yeah, but 80 percent of the time, you make me happy,” I tell him, finally taking the plunge. It’s now or never.

  “Eighty?” He steps closer and plucks something out of my hair: a glob of yellow paint. “Well, that’s not good enough. I need to get better if I ever intend to be more than a friend.”

  My mouth feels dry all of a sudden.

  “If you’ll let me.” He’s really quiet now and tentative. “Maybe it’s too soon for that, though?”

  I say nothing. It is too soon. A part of me wants nothing more than to go back to where we were right before the breakup: pressed together behind a loc
ker or against a tree, falling on our butts while trying to skate on ice without blades. But another more practical part wants to tread cautiously and take things slow.

  “How about a date instead?” he says. “There’s this shawarma place I heard of.”

  A smile pricks the corners of my lips. I crook my head to one side, pretending to study him until he shifts his weight from one foot to the other. It’s fun seeing Malcolm Vakil sweat a little.

  “Oh yeah?” I ask finally. “What place is this? The one on Dixie and Crestlawn?”

  His eyes brighten. “You remember. Yeah, it’s the same chain, but a different location. Closer to the university. A guy in my commerce program told me about it. Right after I declined his invitation to a party on campus.”

  Of course Malcolm was invited to a party. He probably also had fun doing those cheers today and spraying people with every color of the rainbow. It’s who he is, who he always will be: able to fit in anywhere, at any time. I still don’t know what he’s doing here, with me. But I know I don’t want him going anywhere else.

  “I’m a mess.” I point to my shirt and hair.

  “So am I.”

  He flashes me a smile that has me tumbling heart-first into something that feels both familiar and new.

  “Okay,” I tell him. “Let’s go.”

  Acknowledgments

  My utmost gratitude to the Ontario Arts Council for funding this manuscript.

  Thank you:

  Eleanor Jackson—For your superstar agenting and keeping me sane book after book.

  Janine O’Malley and Lynne Missen—For loving Susan and Malcolm as much as I do and helping me take this book to another level.

  Elizabeth Clark and Maggie Enterrios—For the brilliant, beautiful cover.

  Mandy Veloso, Melissa Warten, and Chandra Wohleber—For your thoughts, insights, and queries, and making The Beauty of the Moment better with each revision.