FLAWLESS

by Leena Varghese

  Her ragged breath caught in her throat at the memory of her mother’s heart-breaking shrieks on seeing Michael’s swollen face, brutally altered, under the blood-stained sheet in the morgue. Sick and terrified, Giana had thrown up the whole day afterwards. The bloody image could not be erased from her mind ever. So much had been lost that day.

  “Giana?” prompted Max.

  Her face had paled to paper-white. “They...beat him up and threw him on the highway. There was an enquiry and investigation. But no one could prove that he was killed and that it was not a road accident.” Giana shuddered as tears poured down her face. “He was so bright and loving. My guardian angel! He needn’t have died. My parents were shattered. My father died a week later from a massive cardiac arrest. Mamma never ever forgave me. Michael was the apple of her eye. She had great dreams for him. He was everything that one could wish for. A good son, a loving brother, intelligent, charming and a beautiful human being. It will be the heaviest burden that I carry...all my life.” She dashed away the tears and looked down at her trembling hands. “When I received the divorce papers from the Bartholomews, I signed it without regrets. I should have been the one filing for divorce on grounds of desertion and infidelity! Ricky never came, even when he was informed about the baby’s birth.”

  Oh, yes, she had waited for Ricky to come and see the baby. But hope had dwindled soon. She remembered sitting up at night with Toby in her lap, utterly helpless, not knowing what to do with the tiny, wailing bit of flesh in her arms, his miniature hand curled around her finger. He had tugged her heartstrings since then and she had sworn to protect him with or without the support of a husband.

  Max didn’t know how to console her. Her brother had been brutally killed. Her father had died of shock. No wonder Carol was so bitter.

  “So what was Ricky doing sidling up to you today?” growled Max, amazed that he could still talk without getting overwhelmed with rage.

  “He wants me back! Apparently, his father has disinherited him. He has come up with some grand business arrangement in Goa where he needs a party planner, who would work free for him. So, he wants me to join his business.”

  “Excellent! He knows that you are doing well now. I should have broken his arm for touching you!” spat out Max.

  He exhaled purely because that possessive statement rocked his senses. As though she was his...

  “Do you still love him?” he was compelled to ask.

  “I never did! I only thought that I did!” she said emphatically.

  “But he was your first...”

  “First and the most ghastly mistake of my life which cost me my reputation and peace, and the loss of two people I adored. I can never love a man who couldn’t stand by his promise. He abandoned me and our child. Agreed, that he was young and misguided. But so was I. I refused to abort Toby as his parents suggested. And by the looks of it he hasn’t changed much even now. He told me that he only married me because he wanted me to...Because...I had refused to sleep with him without getting married. I feel ashamed that I was so blind that I could not see the shallow, spoilt, selfish brat that he was.”

  “Undoubtedly, he is!” hissed Max between his teeth.

  “But I was at fault too! I should never have eloped with him! It put me in a vulnerable position without a support system in place in a strange city.”

  “Giana...” he cajoled, soothingly.

  “Getting drunk was the worst mistake ever. It fills me with such disgust!” she cried out, stiff with self-recrimination and abhorrence at the memory of laughing through a crowded beach wearing a mini-skirt for the first time, a champagne bottle in her hand, running around screaming with the band members. She shut her eyes unable to bear the image. “And then...” she paused on a shuddering breath of revulsion, “...falling in bed with a man who was just as drunk as I was. It was a meaningless copulation that was over in a few minutes leaving me disappointed and wondering what the fuss had been all about!” She gave a harsh laugh.

  “You were only reacting to a rigid upbringing! You loved him.”

  “No! It was not love. Love is kind, and compassionate. It takes responsibility for one’s own actions and is caring towards the other’s feelings. You don’t abandon someone when the going gets tough.”

  “Now you know what it should be. That’s good hindsight,” said Max, encouragingly.

  “I am glad that I met him today. I realized how much anger I had bottled up inside me since he betrayed my trust.” She sighed and looked at the floor in deep rumination. “I let it all go today. All the hatred and rage. It’s time to move on.”

  “Is it so easy for you to forgive him?” Max asked in awe.

  “No...But I can’t keep that kind of garbage in my head. It would only fester and make me bitter. It would affect the way I bring up Toby.”

  He gazed at her with renewed respect. He would never have been able to forgive infidelity or betrayal from his spouse. But Giana could do that. She was above the petty machinations of the human race that bayed for vengeance at the slightest pretext of insult.

  “I guess it was rebellion, as you put it, against a rigid upbringing. I had felt momentarily blinded by the sense of freedom I felt in eloping with Ricky.” The tears slid down, as she laid her head against the sofa headrest. “But it destroyed my life in many ways, changed the course of it, narrowing it down to work and Toby. It was like swimming against the tide in the beginning. It was shocking when we heard of Michael’s death. I never wanted to face the world. I still remember Mamma at his funeral service. She refused to budge from his grave. When my father died after that, it felt like the whole world was blaming me. Two deaths in a week. One act of reckless behaviour on my part that caused so much damage that it ricocheted in all directions without control. I don’t blame Mamma for hating me. That’s the reason I don’t...” she stopped abruptly to take deep gulps of breath.

  Max knew what she meant. “That’s the reason you don’t retaliate when she throws accusations at you, right?”

  “She is right, isn’t she?” Giana raised hopeless eyes to his.

  “The point is do you blame yourself?”

  She was silent as tears fell again. “Yes!”

  “You were young! It is too big a burden to take on, my love.” But he understood and empathized, and the pain was reflected somewhere in him. However, his action had been direct even though his intention was not to cause damage.

  “I cannot live down the shame it caused my family,” whispered Giana, dully.

  “So you toned down your behaviour to become this sedate, placid creature who doesn’t react to her mother’s outrageous taunts.”

  “I don’t want Toby to grow up thinking that his mother is a tramp!”

  “Oh, Giana! Toby would love you anyway because you have been courageous enough to bring him up with love and care. And the most important thing is that you didn’t abandon him or abort him when you had your entire life in front of you...when you could have chosen to be a free bird. You have shown that ultimate, loving gesture! You learned from your mistakes and forged ahead. You have grown and matured into a very beautiful person. You are a very special woman!”

  Her stricken eyes darted to him in disbelief. She burst into silent sobs in earnest. No one had ever said something so kind to her until now. She let him pull her close into the haven of his arms. She cried against his chest while he ran his hands on her back and hair soothingly, muttering words of encouragement. After a while, she moved away, wiping her tears, becoming aware of her body pressed close to him.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she probed softly, looking at him with those huge pools of brimming eyes that he loved to gaze into. “Why were you drinking yourself to death around the time we met?”

  It was his turn to look away. He rose in a fluid motion, his body, taut as whipcord, to stand near the window. His tall figure, silhouetted against the rain darkened sky, looked formidable.

  “Max? You never talk about it.”

  “I
don’t remember having signed any agreement for sharing lousy experiences!” he muttered broodingly.

  “No, we didn’t. I could have remained silent too,” she countered quietly.

  He paced the floor, furious and uncertain. His fingers ploughed through his hair, sweeping them away from his forehead right down to his nape. Abruptly, he turned to face her as if confronting his worst nightmare.

  “I lost my wife and one-year-old son in a building collapse three years ago.”

  Her eyes shone with sudden tears for his loss. “You must have been devastated!”

  “Yes...because unlike you, I was the cause for that! So don’t spare your compassion on me. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Oh, Max...”

  “Yes, Giana! I was the cause for their death! I dream of them every time I close my eyes. I hear their cries of agony and accusation. That night when you came to help me, I had decided to drink myself into oblivion like all the other nights.”

  “Why do you blame yourself?”

  “The accident was a direct result of my neglect!” he exclaimed raggedly, pacing the floor again.

  Giana’s mute gaze on his harsh face was compassionate. Of course he knew that, because she was the kind of woman who would always find a reason to be forgiving.

  The deep breath he took to steady himself was akin to someone bracing himself at the edge of a precipice, which he had no hope of avoiding. “We had an arranged marriage at the age of twenty-five. She was an intelligent, ambitious woman, focused on her career. I didn’t want to get married at such an early age. But my parents were insistent. Since, I liked her very much, there seemed to be no point in waiting. We had a steady relationship for the first four years of marriage where we focused on our respective careers. I have always loved and wanted children. Our decision to become parents by the time we turned thirty was also unanimous. Everything was smoothly charted out with precise dates. When the time came, I reminded Eva of our plan to have a baby. She refused. That was the beginning of the endless fights we had on the subject. When she finally agreed to have a baby, I was overjoyed. But it wasn’t something Eva had done wholeheartedly. She was on the cusp of a big break at work as a banker and the resentment at having to let go of that opportunity and to tone down her career around a baby’s arrival was eating into her. My work took off rather unexpectedly at that point, making me busier than ever. Eva began to complain about my long hours at work. I just couldn’t help it! I wish she had told me how tired, lonely and frustrated she had become in the final trimester of her pregnancy.”

  He turned away to look out of the window again. “When the baby came, I was thrilled beyond words, to have him in my arms the first time. But I couldn’t fathom why Eva would want to leave her one month old baby to start work again even though she had enough maternity leave. We fought, made up, fought again over trivial things that became more complicated. Until there was nothing more to keep us together except Joey. The underlying problems had become so insurmountable that they became like a rock wall between us, so that we couldn’t see each other over it.”

  He was in the grip of those memories, peering into a dark closet that he had kept closed for a long time.

  “Joey was one-year old when we started planning for a new house in the suburbs of Bangalore. We had gone to see the progress of the construction. It was entirely Eva’s idea that she wanted a spacious double-storeyed house for us and we agreed on one of my designs. I was, by then, ready to listen to anything she wanted, just to avoid another fight. The foundation had just been laid and the iron rods had been erected with wet cement. We were having a quarrel over some minor alteration that she didn’t approve of. I can’t even remember what it was about. It was silly of course. It was only one of the superficial catalysts for the deeper issues that lay buried.”

  Max did not turn around. But Giana could see his broad shoulders flex and his chest heaving to control the reaction to what he was describing.

  “As usual I dismissed her arguments, afraid that it would go on unremitting, with many other unaddressed issues, which we were both avoiding. Joey began to cry. I asked Eva to follow me out. She refused to come with me saying that she was tired of ‘following’ me. The usual accusations poured out. I yelled at her for being stubborn. She yelled back at me, refusing to budge. Joey was crying very loudly by then and we were both at the end of our tether. I tried to take Joey out of her hold but she snatched him away. I told her to go to hell and left her standing there with the baby wriggling to get down. She screamed at me and took the opposite direction. I was too angry to stop her and turned away, not seeing that she was walking towards the unsteady, freshly cemented area.”

  He went silent for long moments.

  “Max?”

  “That was my biggest mistake!” he burst out in raw agony. “That one turning point in our lives that I would regret till my dying day! She slipped on the wet cement, with the baby in her arms and the scaffolding caved in. She fell...headlong into the cavity beneath. Christ! The shriek of pain still rings in my ears!”

  Max braced his hands on the window sill that framed the black, overcast sky, his knuckles growing white. He stood ramrod straight, his silhouette, grim against the flash of lightning. “The entire edifice fell on top of them. I could see their half-buried bodies. Joey...was dead and Eva was slowly bleeding to death, because the lower half of her body was pinned beneath the debris. I couldn’t reach them! She begged me to help her out and all I could do was scream and shout for help. She accused me that I could not even save her. I tried hard...clawing at the debris with my bare hands, trying to drag her out...but it was useless as everything was falling on top of her steadily. The workers had an off that day so no one was around to help!”

  Max stood motionless with his forehead against the cold glass pane. “When the rescuers pulled them out, my family was dead. All I could do was clutch her mangled body to me and weep. Joey was...unrecognizable. He was so...icy cold. His tender little body turned blue where he had been hurt and broken. How could something so full of life, turn cold so quickly?” Max heaved a great breath to steady himself before he cracked up. “A life defined and sealed into a box and we are left with the practicalities of a funeral arrangement.” His hand rose in mid-air as though trying to hold on to a memory that was slipping into a fog.

  Giana crumpled into tears. What could she say? What consolation can you give a man who had lost his family right in front of his eyes...dying slowly while he watched helplessly.

  “Both our families blamed me for her death, especially her father. I should never have taken her there when the scaffolding was not fixed properly. I should never have allowed her to walk away from me. I should never have fought with her. I should have...” He gave a groan of agony that caught in his chest as if it was ripping him asunder. “I should have never insisted on having a baby when she wasn’t ready for it! That was the beginning of all our problems. And I am left empty-handed to mourn each day. My son... He was so little. I can still remember the touch of his baby skin and hear his laughter in my head. All gone within seconds…”

  Max gave out a guttural cry, slamming his fist into the nearby wall unmindful of the impact on his knuckles.

  “Oh, Max!” Giana whispered, horrified that he had been carrying such a heavy cross for so long.

  She rushed to him and hugged him close from behind, caressing his chest that was choking with unshed tears. He clapped his hands over hers in a ferocious grip and whipped around to face her.

  “Yes, it is terrible, isn’t it?” he gritted, hands clamped on her shoulders, as if she was the lifeline he needed to prevent himself from shattering into pieces. “Terrible...that I should be still alive and healthy? Terrible, that I didn’t do anything before our relationship became so fraught with problems that it couldn’t be sorted out. I should have taken care of her when she was pregnant. It was my baby too and she was my life-partner. Instead I was too busy at work to share her grievances that became too many by the end
of it.”

  “It was not your fault!”

  “Yes, it was! Why didn’t I see, that being an independent, ambitious woman, Eva was frustrated and angry that opportunities were slipping away? Why couldn’t I have been supportive so that she could have borne the time of her pregnancy in a healthier state of mind without feeling neglected? Why couldn’t I save Joey? It was not his fault! He was the innocent little life that was snuffed out because of my ignorance and carelessness.” He let out a hiss of breath that was constricting his chest. “I miss them. And it is just punishment because I couldn’t appreciate what I had, when I had it.”

  “No! Max!” Giana whispered with her face turned up to his. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” She caressed him, palms on his cheeks to erase the lines of bitterness. “You were like any normal couple facing problems! Everyone faces issues at different times of their lives.”

  “I was callous towards her feelings! I shut her out. There were times that I refused to listen to her problems.”

  “It was normal. People feel free to disagree with each other in complex, loving relationships and hence the boundaries of niceties are breached. The building collapse was an accident you didn’t foresee! You would never have taken them there if you did.”

  “I should have foreseen it! I have been around construction sites all my professional life. What was the use of all that knowledge when it didn’t do a thing to save my family in the nick of time? Her parents were inconsolable. I took away from them their only child.”

  His fatalistic comment brought tears down her cheeks. “It was your loss too! You loved Eva! And that was enough! We are all fragile and imperfect in many ways,” Giana whispered into the taut silence.

  Max had stopped breathing. The thought that had been at the back of his mind coming to the fore now, ripping away his last bit of armour. Suddenly the unpalatable truth about his feelings for Eva sprang out like a Jack-in-the-box with a vile leer on its face.

  “Maybe I did not love her truly!” he whispered hoarsely, tightening his hold on her waist.