No Other World

by Rahul Mehta

  He knew Nishit Kaka must think he was stupid.

  “Your instructor said he’s offered his help again and again. You don’t go to his office?”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “How could that be? You’re failing. If you don’t understand the material . . .”

  “I understand the material. I got As in India.”

  “This isn’t India.”

  No, Bharat thought. This is a third-rate community college in a fourth-rate town. But he didn’t say that. He also didn’t say, I attended all the same schools in India you did.

  His body was a desert being dive-bombed, hives exploding on every hill and every valley. He thought how strange it was that this war could be waged in his body, on his body, and yet his uncle, sitting next to him on the couch, could be oblivious. His uncle’s idea of what was happening as they were sitting together was so very different from what was really happening, at least for Bharat. It made Bharat wonder how often this happened in life, how little we really knew about what the person next to us was experiencing, how that person could be feeling intense pain invisible to everyone else.

  “Why are you here if you’re not even going to try?” Nishit asked. They were sitting in the subterranean family room, looking at each other, but in that moment neither of them was thinking about Bharat’s grades or community college. They were both thinking of Prabhu.

  Nishit was remembering his brother sitting there a decade earlier, how helpless he looked in the smudged eyeglasses Nishit had bought him, how Nishit had had to remove them and wipe the lenses for him.

  Bharat was also thinking of his father, how Bharat and his stepmother afterward had been so hopeful when Prabhu first returned from America, how they had prayed that the visit would have energized him, shaken up old patterns, provided new perspective. But if anything, America had had the opposite effect. Prabhu had sunk even deeper into whatever darkness it was he dwelled in. Bharat could see it even as his father descended the stairs from the plane onto the tarmac, and as much as he’d hoped it was weariness from travel that dragged him down, Bharat knew it was not. Though Bharat recognized it wasn’t reasonable or logical, it was hard not to blame America at least a little, hard not to include his uncle a little in that blame.

  Bharat sat blinking at Nishit. There was no answer to his question, at least none that Bharat was willing to give, or that Nishit would be willing to hear.

  “There’s no reason not to go,” Shanti said. She had just come home, and Bharat was helping her put away groceries. Plastic bags rustled on the counter and floor. Shanti shelved a packet of dinner napkins in an oak cabinet, new from a recent remodeling, and she admired the soft, smooth way the door tapped shut. It was a silly thing to care about, she realized, but she had always hated how much noise the old cabinets made.

  Bharat was explaining that Maria had asked him to be her date to a semiformal at her sorority in Rochester. Maria was on leave, but knowing she’d eventually return, her sisters had invited her anyway.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” Shanti said. “It’s very common to go to these kinds of things as friends. Both Preeti and Kiran went to their proms with classmates who were just friends.”

  But were they “just friends”? Bharat wasn’t sure. He hadn’t told Shanti about how close he and Maria had sat on the couch in her basement, their thighs practically touching, or how their hands brushed against each other’s when they reached into the shared bowl of popcorn, or the way Bharat had felt himself blushing when Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey danced on-screen, or how Maria, during one of those moments, had flashed him a smile he could only characterize as mischievous.

  Shanti, assuming Bharat was worried about Ameera, his intended, awaiting his return, said, “I assure you, there is absolutely nothing improper about it. In India, maybe. Here: no. It is all very innocent.” Shanti handed Bharat two boxes of Lorna Doones and asked him to put them in the pantry, though she didn’t need to tell him; he had learned so quickly where everything belonged. She tossed him a carton of Marlboro Reds. “Don’t get the wrong idea,” she said. “I don’t approve.” Bharat was touched. He hadn’t even asked.

  “Are you sure it’s the right thing to do?”

  “Listen, you’re only here a few more weeks. Might as well do everything you can. You came to experience America, didn’t you?” But he hadn’t come to America for the experience. He’d come because his stepmother, having traumatic flashbacks of losing her own father in an accident that wasn’t an accident, had given in to superstition, to fear of losing, yet again, someone she loved more than her own life. Superstition and fear—that’s why he’d come, those were the reasons.

  Shanti was sensing what Bharat was thinking, but she was remembering something else: the kiss she’d shared with Chris beneath the bleachers. Despite the complications it had created in her life, she had never regretted that moment, not once. She loved Nishit—truly she did—but the passion she felt with Chris beneath the bleachers was something she had never experienced before or since. In the years to come, the memory of that afternoon would carry her through some difficult times, reminding her that for a few moments she had lived not for her children or for her husband, and not in accordance with what was expected of her by her culture or by her extended family back in India, but gloriously and selfishly and intoxicatingly just for herself.

  “You’re here now,” she said to Bharat. “Be here. Stop being there.”

  Chapter 14

  No matter the years that go by, the apartments Kiran lives in, cities he moves to then flees, the men he loves, the ones he fucks, the ones who love him, the jobs he drifts in and out of, the identities he dons and sheds, the lives he survives; no matter the distance he travels, the time zones he crosses, the hair on his head that grows and grays and thins, the following is always in the present tense.

  They are drunk.

  They are drunk and high.

  They are drunk and high, having spent the better part of the day smoking pot and drinking Jack and playing Risk on Jeffrey’s PC.

  The lights are all out.

  The lights are all out but one, a side lamp, not standard dorm-issued, but rather something some past student, long graduated, dragged from home and left, a family castoff, a brass floor lamp with a shell-shaped shade.

  The lights are all out but one, and the television, on mute, is flickering Baywatch. The long couches are arranged in an L-shape. Kiran is on one, lying ramrod straight, everything in a line, arms at his side, legs together. Jeffrey’s lank frame is splayed on the other, appendages fanned out like tools of a Swiss Army knife: bottle opener, corkscrew, long blade, file. The heating vent groans. Jeffrey sighs. David Hasselhoff dashes across the sand and dives into a wave.

  Their sofas are lifeboats, the carpet the sea.

  “Hot lava,” Kiran says.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Jeffrey says. “Hot lava would melt our boats. It’s a sea.”

  “A sea of hot lava,” Kiran says.

  Their eyes closed, their boats spin.

  “Don’t tip over,” Jeffrey says.

  Kiran feels waves. They crest and crash. He closes his eyes tight, trying not to hurl. Time passes. His mind wanders. He is adrift.

  Moments later, he has climbed across the coffee table aboard Jeffrey’s lifeboat. If asked he’d say, “Mine sprung a leak,” but Jeffrey doesn’t ask. Jeffrey is passed out, mumbling something under his breath. Kiran slides under Jeffrey’s arm, his face to Jeffrey’s chest: plaid polyester and plastic buttons. Kiran breathes against him, smelling his own breath mixed with Jeffrey’s body, his sour shirt. His mouth closes around a button. He sucks as though it is a hard candy, a Life Saver.

  Jeffrey pops up. He is a mummy rising from the tomb, a monster reawakening. “Whoa!” He shoves Kiran hard. Kiran goes tumbling into the sea.

  He doesn’t know which is worse: the unbearable burn of the hot lava or the sense that he is drowning.

  It had been years since she
looked at any of the letters. It was because Kiran was now in college and she, consequently, had been thinking about her own college days and about Reshma that Shanti was revisiting them, or so she told herself. She found them where she had left them, tucked in the back of the top dresser drawer, tied with blue string. She removed the string and scattered the letters and accompanying photographs on the taut Rajasthani block print spread of the bed she and Nishit shared. She hadn’t heard from Reshma in more than a decade; the phone calls, which had never been frequent to begin with, had stopped not long after the letters. Recently, a mutual friend mentioned that Reshma and Ketan had split some years ago. They’d waited until the children were teenagers and off in boarding school in Switzerland, and then they did it quietly and without much fuss.

  Shanti picked up a letter at random, skimmed it, put it down, then picked up another. She glanced from photo to photo, the smiling family on safari in Kenya, at the Colosseum in Rome.

  They’d been so close in college. Shanti had been there when Reshma and Ketan were matched, had whispered with Reshma at night in their dorm room. Maybe I will grow to love him, maybe I won’t. It doesn’t really matter. Now she and Reshma were strangers. Divorce, even if amicable, couldn’t have been easy on Reshma, yet she hadn’t written or called.

  From the mutual friend, Shanti heard Reshma was living now in London. Remembering Reshma’s affinity for modern design—the place settings she’d had commissioned for Shanti and Nishit and which they’d never used—Shanti imagined her in the penthouse of a glass tower, all windows floor to ceiling, 360-degree views. White leather couches and sculptural lamps.

  Many years ago, Shanti searched these photos for clues about Reshma and Ketan—their love, their life—but what had she thought she’d find? Could the external, frozen in a photograph, ever reveal what was going on inside? What relation did a body or a face have to the inner contents of a human heart?

  When she’d first entered the bedroom, Shanti hadn’t noticed that the door to the master bathroom was shut, so she was surprised when Bharat emerged, damp but fully dressed, steam rising from his skin. Bharat was surprised, too. He was surprised to find his aunt lying like that on her perfectly made bed, surrounded by old envelopes, wrinkled letters, greeting cards, fading photographs—artifacts from someone else’s life.

  “Oops, sorry.”

  Shanti quickly wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, trying to conceal that she’d been crying. She looked up at him. “It’s fine, beta.”

  Noticing his aunt’s tears, Bharat stammered, “Is there something I can do?”

  “Really, it’s nothing. I’m just reading old letters from a friend I once loved, but somehow we drifted apart. Don’t mind your sentimental aunt.”

  As Bharat was leaving, he heard his aunt’s voice. “Even if you love your life, it’s hard not to wish sometimes that it had turned out differently.” But Shanti was no longer thinking of Reshma. She was thinking of seeing Chris in line at the grocery store six years earlier, the question he had asked her—“Got everything?”—the pain of knowing that the answer would never be yes.

  Maria arrived at the Shahs’ front door in strappy gold sandals and a magenta sari, a sharp contrast to the gray snow on the lawn behind her. “Surprise!” she said. She hadn’t told Bharat she’d be wearing a sari. She’d borrowed it from an international student at the U of R. The girl had shown her how to wrap it, but alone that afternoon, trying to replicate the technique, she’d done something wrong. Bharat could see this clearly; something was not quite right, though he couldn’t place what it was. Everything seemed slightly askew.

  Bharat was wearing his own trousers and dress shirt and a suit jacket his aunt had borrowed from Kiran’s closet, a jacket Bharat recognized from Kiran’s senior photos. There had been a flurry of activity just before Maria arrived. Days earlier, when Bharat tried on Kiran’s jacket, Shanti had admitted it probably hadn’t been dry-cleaned, but they both agreed it seemed OK. But wearing it this afternoon, Bharat was dogged by a musty smell he couldn’t shake. He’d tried spritzing the jacket with the dregs of an all-but-empty Polo by Ralph Lauren bottle he found in the medicine cabinet, but it only seemed to make things worse. His uncle and aunt had assured him he smelled fine, but he suspected otherwise.

  Shanti wanted a photo and asked them to stand in the living room in front of an arrangement of large potted plants. Bharat was familiar with this backdrop from so many of the photos Nishit and Shanti had mailed to India over the years. He’d tracked Preeti and Kiran growing up before these very plants. There had even been a photograph of his own father in this spot—Nishit and Shanti flanking him, Preeti and Kiran in front. As Shanti called, “Say cheese!” Bharat wondered and worried where this photo might travel. He didn’t want anyone in India seeing it.

  “You look beautiful,” Shanti said to Maria. “Yes,” Bharat said, “you do: beautiful.” But even if the statement was true, it wasn’t quite what he was thinking.

  “It’ll be a blast, I promise,” Maria said as she started the engine of her hatchback. But Bharat knew better. He could already feel dark clouds moving in.

  It was something students sometimes said in Kiran’s fiction writing workshop, a class he didn’t much like, but for which he had reluctantly allowed his adviser to register him because it fit his schedule and fulfilled a requirement. It wasn’t uncommon for a student to stutter, when criticized for a particular scene being unbelievable or for a detail ringing false, “But . . . but . . . but . . . it really happened that way,” as if, in fiction, truth mattered. While Jeffrey wasn’t exactly questioning the believability of Kiran’s story, he certainly was accusing Kiran of something.

  It had been a week since Jeffrey had pushed Kiran into the sea of hot lava. They hadn’t spoken of the incident, not even in the moments immediately afterward. Kiran had lain on the filthy carpet of the dorm lounge, pretending to be passed out, until he heard the couch springs squeak and the door to the lounge creak open and shut. The past few days, when Kiran poked his head into the lounge, Jeffrey had been nowhere to be found. A new group—taking advantage of the original trio having loosened their grip on the common room—had set up camp, staked their claim: two goth girls and boy with a leg brace. They’d draped sheer black fabric over the shell shade of the brass lamp.

  Then, one afternoon, Jeffrey was there again, leaning on the arm of the couch, a textbook open in front of him, a highlighter in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Kiran had just come from the computer lab, where he’d printed a story for his fiction class.

  “Will you help me proofread this?” Kiran asked, tossing the stapled pages into Jeffrey’s lap. He had not intended to ask Jeffrey to read the story, but, seeing him, he’d panicked. There was so much else he couldn’t say or ask. But this he could. “It’s due tomorrow.” (Much later Kiran would wonder: conscious or not, hadn’t he wanted, in some buried part of him, Jeffrey to read it?)

  Jeffrey sighed. It was easier not to argue. He shoved his textbook aside and went to work on the story.

  “This is disgusting,” he said when he finished, tossing the pages aside, his nose wrinkling as if he’d stepped in dog shit. “Why would you write this?”

  “Because it happened.”

  They were both silent. Kiran searched Jeffrey’s face for clues. Jeffrey, collecting his textbook, his highlighter, his half-empty pack of cigarettes, said only one word to Kiran as he exited the lounge. It would be the last word he ever said to Kiran. Winter break was just around the corner, and the chill that had entered their relationship in the last week would crystallize and freeze solid. At the start of the new semester, Jeffrey would have all but disappeared, and Kiran would know better than to seek him out. The dorm lounge would be fully appropriated by the goth girls and the boy in the brace, their black fabrics now covering couches, side tables, windows.

  The word: “Dude.”

  Afterward Kiran would interrogate this utterance, unpacking layers of sorrow and censure, pity and disg
ust. He would marvel at the worlds contained within this monosyllable. It would pinball around his head.

  The story: An eight-year-old boy is molested by a fourteen-year-old boy. But in the story it’s not an assault, it’s a seduction. The eight-year-old is complicit, willing. In the story, he wants it. After the initial incident, he pursues the older boy, he goes to him again and again, stealing moments to slink into the older boy’s bedroom when he is over playing with the older boy’s younger brother. They meet in the bathroom, the basement, the part of the woods called the Cathedral, lying naked together among pine needles, the older boy’s baseball jersey their blanket.

  That Jeffrey responded the way that he did, Kiran considered his own failing, not a moral failing or a failing of personal character, but rather a failing of literary ability (to which Kiran had never made any claim to begin with; he was a photographer, not a writer). Kiran believed that if he’d had the words to describe, in his short story, the situation properly—if he knew the words to describe the constellation of water drops on Shawn’s chest, broad and wondrous as the night sky, proof of other worlds, other galaxies; or the taste of his lips, sweet like salted caramel; or his hands, the hands of a baseball star, All-American, hands that knew how to pitch and bat and catch; if Kiran knew the words for the pleasure (not pleasure, more than pleasure: ecstasy) he felt when he traced his finger along the vinyl number eight on Shawn’s baseball jersey, its own infinity loop, Kiran’s finger circling round and round and round; or when he laid his ear on Shawn’s chest, thinking of what his father had once told him about the sound inside a seashell (“It’s the sound of the ocean; the whole ocean is inside”), wondering at the ocean inside Shawn; if he knew the words to capture the tender way Shawn would brush the hair out of Kiran’s eyes, the feel of Shawn’s fingers on his forehead; the wisps of hair on Shawn’s neck and jaw, and more hair down below, soft curls that suddenly turned coarse against Kiran’s hand and cheek; a sour smell, of hormones, of adolescence, a smell that intoxicated Kiran, the scent of a body in transformation—if he had known how to do this, then surely Jeffrey, and anyone else who might ask, would understand.