They had just finished a tour of the house, Armaiti doing her best to hide her shudders at the gaudy furnishings, when Richard turned a critical eye upon her. “You look awful,” he said. “Why don’t we order in tonight? And maybe you can take a short nap until the food arrives?”
A wave of irritation rose in her, unbeckoned. “Thanks,” she said. “You have such a wonderful way with words.”
To her chagrin, Richard laughed. And slapped her playfully on her rump. “Go take a nap,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”
She was about to argue when she saw that Diane was nodding her head in agreement, and all the fight went out of her. Besides, the thought of shutting her eyes for a few minutes suddenly felt welcome.
But once she slipped under the top sheet and stretched out on the soft bed, she became even more aware of how deeply, inconceivably tired she truly was. The realization made her heart pound. It was a new kind of fatigue, this. Not the wet-noodle fatigue she would feel after swimming nine laps in the pool. Not the tiredness she used to feel in grad school after pulling an all-nighter, or the limp, hungover feeling after returning home from a party at four in the morning. Not even the exhaustion she’d felt when Diane was young and she would collapse in bed at the end of the day and fall asleep before Richard could turn off his night light. There had been something life-affirming and joyous about that kind of tiredness. What she felt now was different—a darkness shading the edges of her fatigue, a feeling that was almost pain, not the muscle-burning fatigue of yore but something that seeped from her very bones. Despite the air conditioning in the room, a film of perspiration formed on Armaiti’s face. She knew that the two people she loved most in the world were in the next room, only a yell away, that they would burst in at the slightest cry for help. But still, she felt irreducibly alone. For the first time since the diagnosis, she had an intimation of what death would be like. She would die alone. And not in twenty or thirty years, either. She would die alone, and soon. Even if Richard and Diane were by her bedside, as they undoubtedly would be, she would die alone. She felt dizzy with panic at the thought and kicked off the top sheet, not wanting to be by herself for another second. But it required energy to leap out of bed, to drive her toes into her slippers, and hurry out of the room and rejoin the living. And Armaiti found that she didn’t have it in her. A sob expanded like a balloon in the back of her throat.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to start the radiation. Richard and Diane had been right all along—she had been a stupid, stubborn fool for refusing treatment. No wonder her daughter sometimes looked at her like she was some kind of a monster. Because only monsters chose death. Giving in to death without a fight was unnatural, irresponsible, an abdication of sorts. The desire to live was cross-stitched into every living thing. Why had she thought she was any different? Every organism on earth, every bug and plant, scuttled, strained, grew, or flew toward life. Maybe that was what the soul that dear Mamma used to talk about really was—that hollow cup of fire, that straining toward the sun, that instinct that was buried deep inside every breathing thing. How clear this seemed to her right now, in this silent room.
Inviting Laleh and the others to join her had been another mistake, Armaiti thought. What the hell were they coming all this distance for? To see her corpse? Because that’s what her body felt like, heavy, weighed down with sandbags. Planning for their visit had been a great diversion, but it had also prevented her from taking her daughter’s entreaties seriously. How easily she had pivoted from the graveness of her diagnosis to the excitement about their coming. As if she were planning a regular college reunion, for God’s sake. When the truth was, she could barely lift her head from the pillow.
“I can’t. I can’t lift my head from the pillow,” she heard herself say groggily when Richard shook her awake a half hour later.
“Sorry. You can sleep again after you eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten all day. Come on, now.”
“First you force me to sleep. Then you force me to wake up,” she grumbled, even as she rolled out of bed.
“Sorry,” he said again.
She smiled thinly. “I’ll be there in a sec. Let me tidy up a bit.”
In the bathroom, she studied herself in a mirror whose edges were studded with seashells. How thrilled Richard and Diane would be if she announced that she would start the radiation as soon as they returned, that she had come to her senses, that they had been right all along. But could she give them this? “Mummy,” Armaiti whispered. “Help me. What should I do?” As if in response, she saw her mother’s gaunt, haggard face as she lay dying. Her mother, Jerbanu, a timid, diffident woman, had always done the right thing, had always played by the rules, had treated her doctors as if they were gods and their advice as if it were gospel, and still she had died a slow, miserable death. This is what you didn’t factor in earlier, Armaiti told herself, when you were thinking of immortal souls and unnatural behavior. The fact that the math doesn’t add up, that the odds are awful, regardless. If only it were a choice between living and dying. If only. But it isn’t. It’s between dying on your own terms and dying on someone else’s.
She stared at her reflection for another second, then turned away, eager to rejoin her family. Her mind was made up. She would exit on her own terms.
As always, Richard had ordered too much food. Armaiti’s stomach turned as she saw the row of take-out containers on the kitchen counter. “We’re having a party?” she muttered and missed the flame that leapt into Richard’s eye.
“We’re hungry, even if you’re not,” he snapped abruptly.
Armaiti startled at his tone and glanced over to where Diane sat hunched over her plate at the kitchen table. Richard always got pissy when he was hungry, she reminded herself. “Go ahead and eat, then,” she said, but Richard shook his head and handed her an empty plate. She eyed the contents of the containers, her stomach heaving as she saw the various meats swimming in a sea of brown sauce. She took two tablespoons of fried rice, a pinch of noodles, and spooned some kung pao chicken onto her rice.
“That’s all you’re gonna eat?” Diane demanded as she took her place at the table and Armaiti chafed against her proprietary tone. “For now,” she said mildly. She would be lucky if she could get two teaspoons of this meal down. How could she have ever loved Chinese food? How could Diane and Richard sit beside her and wolf down this gruel? Didn’t they know how sick the smells were making her?
As she ate, she tried to ignore the anxious looks Richard was casting her way, the way his eyes followed the movement of her fork from the plate to her mouth. She knew her hand was trembling, and hated that he had noticed. Those sky-blue eyes that she had always loved now seemed like the eyes of some bird of prey, watchful, attentive, shiny, not missing a thing. A dull feeling slowly built inside Armaiti’s chest, and it took her a few minutes to realize that it was anger.
Richard finished the last of his meal and rose to get seconds. “I’ll get you some more while I’m up,” he said, reaching for Armaiti’s plate.
She put her hand across her plate to prevent him from picking it up. It was a white plate with a navy-blue border and a blue star in the center. “I’m not done with this,” she said.
Richard sighed. “You need to keep your strength up, Armaiti,” he said patiently. “You know what the doctor said about . . .”
Armaiti loosened her grip on the plate for a second and then knocked it off the table with the back of her hand. Richard jerked back as the plate shattered by his feet on the tile floor. “What the—?”
She was half-aware that Diane was watching them with her mouth open, looking from one to the other. But the feeling in her chest was sharper now, and the plate had smashed with such a satisfying sound that her hand moved involuntarily toward Richard’s empty plate, and before he could stop her it joined its companion on the floor. He leapt back. “Armaiti!” he thundered. “Are you nuts? What do you think you’re doing?”
> “Mom—”
The fatigue that had almost turned her bones to ash earlier now made her eyes burn with anger. “What I’m doing is, I’m asking you to leave me alone. To stop watching me. Stop monitoring everything I eat or do or say. The two of you will put me in my grave sooner than necessary if you keep this up.” She heard her voice, thick with anger, unrecognizable, and she knew she was frightening them, but she didn’t care. The anger was bringing her back to life, pulling her away from that dark, tomblike room where an hour ago she had first seen the cold, clammy outline of death.
“I’d stop watching you if you’d take care of yourself,” Richard snapped.
She shook her head. “You’re not getting it, Richard. I have a friggin’ brain tumor. You think fried rice is gonna cure that?”
Richard blinked rapidly. “That’s low, Armaiti. Really low.” He turned away from her, his Adam’s apple moving compulsively.
“No. What’s low is you patronizing me. Treating me like an imbecile. Telling me when to sleep and what—”
“Mom, please.” Diane’s voice was appeasing. “We’re only trying to help.”
“Don’t. Don’t help me. You can’t help me. Don’t you see?” And now the tears came, pouring down her cheeks. “I’m dying,” she whispered. “And you can’t help me.”
“Mom. Don’t.”
“And I don’t want to. I don’t want to die.” There. She was saying the words. But why did the fact that she was saying them surprise her so? Why hadn’t she said them earlier? Had she been so deluded, had she really tried to be so brave for Diane’s sake that she had actually convinced herself that dying wasn’t a big deal? Who had she fooled? No one except perhaps herself.
But apparently she wasn’t done. Because she heard herself say, “I want to live. To see my only child marry. To hold my grandchildren.” She turned toward Richard, whose blue eyes were bloodshot. “To live to a ripe old age. A ripe, old age.”
The fatigue was blinding her now, and she rested her head on the cherry table, feeling the cool of it against her flushed cheek. Diane got up and stood over her and stroked her hair. “Mom. C’mon, now. It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
But Richard, she noticed, didn’t console her. Instead, while she sobbed quietly into the wood of the table, he found the broom and swept up the pieces of broken china. “I’m sorry,” she began, but he shook his head dismissively.
“Don’t worry about it.” And then, as if he couldn’t help himself, “Maybe you should go back to bed.”
She sighed and rose slowly to her feet. She stood on her toes to give him a kiss on the cheek but his eyes were opaque. She had hurt Richard. But even more than that, she had scared him, Armaiti realized, by revealing the full extent of her anguish. She would not even allow herself to think of what her little scene had cost her daughter. But the look on Diane’s pale face as she walked her to the bedroom was her answer.
“Stay up with your dad for a bit,” she whispered to Diane just before closing her eyes.
She fell into a deep sleep until two a.m. and then was wide awake, her mind replaying what had transpired in the kitchen. Not a good way to start your vacation, she scolded herself. As for smashing those expensive plates in a house that they were guests in, her mother would have been appalled. But, God, Richard had pissed her off.
But the next minute, her lifelong loyalty to Richard rose to the surface and made her defend his actions. He meant well, Richard. He had always protected her, and the fact that she now had cancer was no reason for him to stop, or for her to get sensitive about it, was it?
She tossed back her covers and got out of bed. She waited until her eyes adjusted to the dark and then made her way out of her room and across the hallway to where Richard slept. She stood in the doorway of his room for a second and then moved to the edge of his bed. “You asleep?” she asked in a low voice.
“I’m awake,” he answered immediately, although she could hear the grogginess in his voice. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” she whispered. “Is it okay if I spend the night with you?”
There was the slightest of pauses before Richard shifted in bed to make room for her and said, “Sure.” His voice was neutral, but she knew he had heard and accepted her apology.
They had never slept in the same bed since the divorce. No matter where they traveled, Armaiti had insisted on having her own bedroom. Her insistence had hurt Richard deeply, she knew, and now she had no more desire to hurt him. Now I lay down my sword and shield. She got under the covers and rolled onto her left side, resting her body against his. He spooned her, and she took his hand and held it against her chest. She felt his breath in her ear, and it sounded exactly like the breathing of the ocean outside their window. She had not slept in the same bed as Richard for five years and yet it felt like it had been only yesterday, like sleeping under an old quilt. “This is nice,” she murmured and felt him nodding behind her. “It is,” he replied.
Richard left early the next morning for a meeting, promising to call her when they broke for lunch. Armaiti stayed in bed for another half hour and then rose and wandered into the kitchen. Richard had already started the coffee and she poured herself a cup. She stared out of the glass doors to the ocean. The fatigue from last evening had thankfully left her and she felt a whimpering gratitude. She felt like she was once again occupying her own body, that the woman who had had a meltdown in this kitchen yesterday was a stranger she was happy not to get to know.
Armaiti poured herself another cup of coffee as she pondered whether to wake Diane up or go for a walk alone. This house was giving her the heebie-jeebies. Too rich for my blood, she thought. The cost of the chandelier that hung in the foyer alone could have kept a family of eight in India alive for years. Not that she, too, had not gotten used to the finer things in life. Richard, after all, came from money, the only son of a prosperous Boston businessman who had made his fortune in real estate. And Richard had not done too poorly in his own export business. The cottage in Nantucket, which now belonged to him and his sister, was worth several million dollars. But this house felt different. The Nantucket house was a scruffy, comfortable place, where sand and dog hair and wet swim trunks and yellowing paperbacks and brutally competitive Scrabble games all merged into one happy, messy stew. The tea kettle that had a permanent place on the old kitchen stove was dented and looked as if it hadn’t been cleaned properly since Richard’s parents had bought the house in 1954. The beautiful hardwood floors were polished but scratched, and nobody would ever dream of shooing Daisy, Jordon’s beloved basset hound, off the old leather couch. By contrast, the Ponte Vedra house was a monument, something that one felt like buying admission tickets to before entering.
She was just slipping on her sandals when Diane entered the kitchen, her curly hair a crazy mess on her head. Armaiti grimaced as she caught the wary, guarded look her daughter flashed her way. Poor Diane. What a fright she’d given her last night. “Good morning, sweetheart,” she said in her most energetic voice.
Diane immediately looked relieved. “Good morning,” she said. “What’s with all the noise?”
“Oh, sorry. I thought I was being quiet.”
Diane smiled. “It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep, anyway. For once.” She noticed the sandals. “You going for a walk? Dad’s left?”
“Yes and yes. Want to come?”
“If you give me a couple of minutes to change.”
“Don’t change too much.” It was an old joke between them and Diane rolled her eyes before she left the room.
The sun was a red bindi dot on the forehead of the sky as they started their walk. The sea was calm this morning and the powdered-sugar sand stretched for miles in either direction. Ahead of them, a little girl in a red swimsuit turned cartwheels on the sand as her grandparents walked a few paces behind her. An old Asian woman stopped every few seconds to pick up seashells, which she placed inside a cloth bag. Armaiti swerved as a large black dog chasing a Frisbee almost knocked
her over. She brushed away the apologetic “Sorry” that the young man throwing the Frisbee mouthed toward her.
“So. I need to apologize for last night,” Armaiti began, but Diane shook her head.
“Mom. It’s okay. You were just having a bad night, is all. It’s okay. Honest. Dad’s fine, too.”
Armaiti smiled. I wish Mamma was alive to see Diane, she thought. She would’ve been so proud of her granddaughter.
They walked along the edge of the ocean in peaceful silence, Armaiti struggling occasionally to keep up with her daughter’s stride, but determined not to slow her down. But after a few minutes a thin film of sweat covered her body, and despite the warm breeze, she shivered. Her breathing must’ve grown more jagged, too, because Diane stopped suddenly and pointed to the hard, tamped sand. “Let’s sit for a few minutes,” she said, and Armaiti nodded gratefully.
Growing up in Bombay, she had always felt the sea to be as familiar as the sidewalk outside her home. But today it felt strange and foreboding to her, an undiscovered, undulating continent, mysterious and unchartered, harboring secrets and hidden things, home to creatures and life forms she knew nothing about. All her life she had believed she knew the ocean, but now she realized that its workings had been kept from her as surely as if it were from a different planet—the ridges and valleys of the ocean floor, the continual bloodbath where bigger creatures preyed on smaller ones, the millions of human and animal bones and the debris from shipwrecks and plane crashes that lay at its bottom.
The clarifying principle. The phrase came into her head so clearly and fully formed, she thought for a moment that someone had said it out loud. But it was just Diane and herself, sitting on the warm sand, and her daughter was staring straight ahead. Besides, the phrase wasn’t new. She had heard it before—but where? And then she remembered. Of course. During her student activist days it was a phrase they bandied about all the time. Every time they planned a strike or each time they planned a protest outside a college or a factory gate, someone would ask, “Okay, so why are we doing this? What’s the clarifying principle here? What’s our rationale for this?”
The World We Found Page 17
