by Anita Nair
‘What are you doing here?’ she blurts out. And then stiffens in embarrassment.
‘Hello, Meera,’ he says slowly.
She looks at his hands. Where is the token bunch of flowers or box of chocolates, or even a bar of handmade soap? She clearly is way behind the times. Don’t they feel the need any more to make even a token gesture, observe the niceties of flirtatious behaviour? Instead, he stands there, supremely smug in his: I bring thee myself. What more could you want?
And Vinnie, who seems to have taken permanent residence in her head, especially in her dealings with men, drawls, ‘You ought to be thankful he came to see you without a carry bag of dirty laundry. Expecting you to launder and iron them into sweet smelling piles. I have had that happen to me as well!’
She takes a deep breath and says slowly, ‘Hello, Soman!’
‘I thought I would take a chance and come over. We could go from here to the restaurant, I thought…’
‘Oh,’ Meera says. And an ‘oh-oh’ follows in her head as he, surmising that they are alone in the room, slips his fingers through hers and murmurs, ‘It is wonderful to see you again. You are looking gorgeous!’
A softness engulfs her. She feels herself sway towards him. ‘Let me get the keys and we can leave right away,’ she says, torn between wanting to prolong the moment and extricating herself from it. This hunger, this hunger would be her undoing.
‘Why don’t we stay here?’ he says, dropping into a chair, his hand still clinging to hers. ‘I am not particular about what we eat. Leftovers are fine too. And we could just hang out! Be together…’
Meera stands there, uncertain.
‘That’s settled then,’ he says, lifting her fingers to his mouth. The liquid warmth of his mouth makes Meera want to offer him her lips. What is happening here?
‘I’ll make lunch… it won’t take very long,’ she says. ‘There are some magazines. Or I could switch on the TV.’ She thrusts a sheaf of magazines into his lap and the TV remote into his hand, hoping to hide in the kitchen till she can collect her thoughts.
Outraged, are we? Vinnie snickers. Ask him to leave then. But you don’t want him to, do you?
What am I going to do now? Meera asks aloud as she tries to wrap herself in a cocoon of aromas, flavours, steam and smoke. In the mirror that hangs in the hallway passage, she sees an expression that she recognizes from her visits to the dentist. A sense of impending doom as he gathers his bits and pieces and lulls her into a state of false calm. An even, unhappy look that says, what have I let myself in for?
Meera squares her shoulders. I will just stay here and cook up a storm and he can watch. Hopefully, he will leave once we’ve eaten, replete and satiated.
Only, he wouldn’t budge from the kitchen either. Opening the fridge and filling a glass of water with ice cubes. Stealing a finger of carrot to chew on. Suddenly wrapping his arms around her waist as she chops onions. ‘Don’t cry, little girl. Daddy’s here!’
Little girl. Daddy. Meera blanches like the almonds sitting in a bowl of warm water. The idiot is living out some pet fantasy. Big Man. Little Woman. Sit on my knee while I dandle you. The absurdity of the scene hits her and Meera turns in his arms, takes a long, deep sniff of the cologne he has splashed himself with and murmurs, ‘Will Daddy chop the onions then?’
In a few minutes Daddy dissolves into sobs. He growls, ‘Why the fuck do you need so many onion rings? I’m going to smell of these things for a week now…’
Meera can’t stop laughing. Suddenly, she isn’t confounded any more.
I can handle him, she thinks. When in doubt, a stew. But when lightness lifts your soul, time to whip up a batch of meringues.
When Soman comes back into the kitchen with his fingers scrubbed clean of the reek of onions and his eyes bathed in cold water, he sees Meera raising little clouds of white foam in a mixing bowl. She senses him appraise her as she spoons dollops of the foam onto a baking sheet. When she bends to place the tray in the oven, he comes to stand at her side.
‘Why are you all flushed?’ he asks in that low, sexy voice he favours.
‘Hot oven!’ Meera tries flippancy, but he isn’t so easily rebuffed.
‘Hot oven. Not so hot Meera, is it?’
A giggle starts in her: Adonis of the Cryptograms.
‘Baby, Daddy here will get you hot!’
Oh, my god, this is turning into a bad movie. Meera cringes. Yet, as she feels his hand in the small of her back gathering her close to him, her insides turn into liquid. No matter how much her brains may shriek and protest, there is no escaping the call of the flesh, the song of the nerve ends serenading her.
Meera wipes her face clean of all feeling. ‘We should eat,’ she says, trying to wriggle out of his arms. ‘I am hungry!’
He smiles at her. ‘Me too, Meera, me too!’
Vinnie in her head sniggers.
Meera wriggles harder. ‘I mean, the food will get cold!’
In response Soman lowers his head and licks at her mouth. Meera gasps. She wants to push him away; she wants to nuzzle his neck. She tautens at the desperation that tugs at her.
Satisfied that she knows what he wishes of her, Soman pats her rump with a careless flick of his wrist and says, ‘Go woman, go!’
And like all good cooks, Meera goes.
What do they talk about as they eat? All Meera can hear is her own hammering heart. And the sight of his rapacious appetite only makes it hammer harder. He is going to pounce on her the moment he is done. If he doesn’t, she will be crushed. And if he does, what next?
The oven alarm pings. Her meringues are cooked.
‘Try one,’ Meera urges. Soman takes two. Meera watches the rise of wonder in his eyes. Her meringues do have that effect. Light, chewy, and utterly satisfying. But men are seldom content with the notion of forever meringues in their lives, Meera knows. She had seen such incredulity in Giri’s eyes: Meera’s house, Meera’s meringues, Meera… Only, it hadn’t lasted. For, as all pastry cooks will tell you, meringues are merely a chimera. A cloud conjured of egg white, castor sugar and a movement of the wrist. It has no substance, no aftertaste. Hence, neither the clutch of memory nor the power of enduring value.
In the end, that is what settles it. The spill of loss that makes Meera throw all her apprehensions over her shoulder. She needs this: a pinch of salt to safeguard herself from years of desolation. Meera lets Soman lead her into a room. Not the children’s or hers, Saro’s or Lily’s, but the guest room where no ghosts live. Where the walls have absorbed the secret lives of all those who paused within them. The bare, clean room, the cool white sheets, the windows that open onto the part of the garden with a high wall. The anonymity of it will wipe clean all traces of guilt and remorse. She lets him undress her and caress her.
As he ate at her table, so he feasts on her. His mouth following an arch, a curve, the inside of her elbow, the dimples in the small of her back, the space between her toes. His lips on hers. Meera gasps. Such hunger. Where does it spring from? The softness of his lips, the smoothness of his chin… Her fingers on his back, drawing him closer and closer. Such is her need. Such is the greed of that avaricious mouth to devour. This isn’t her, Meera, she tells herself. This is the false Meera. Like there once was the false Hera.
When Ixion the ingrate planned to seduce Hera, to pay Zeus back for his perfidies, Zeus created a Hera from a cloud. It was this Hera whom Ixion pleasured and sought pleasure from, while the real Hera lay untouched elsewhere.
I am the false Hera. None of this is really happening to me. It is happening to another woman, the woman he thinks I am. Meera arches her back as his hand unleashes a storm of sensations. And then on its heel, another thought: What of the real Hera? Didn’t she ache for such gratification too?
The real Hera must have whimpered, crushed at being forgotten. What woman, whether she was Hera or Meera, could remain unmoved when a mouth trailed a line of wet kisses down her spine? The real Hera must have cursed the false Hera. As I
curse the Meera I have become.
Cowardly Meera, seeking escape in clouds and other false gods of hope. When all she needs is this, this, this…
She feels on his back a ridge. Her fingers pause in their caress. ‘What is this?’ she asks, tracing the raised tube of flesh. ‘What caused this?’
He flinches. ‘A bad accident!’
‘Is it still sensitive then?’
‘Not really. But the thought of it…’ He speaks against her mouth. ‘I got involved in something I should have stayed out of and they, the men, held me down and one of them sliced my back. He said if I didn’t leave by the following morning, it would be my face and in twenty different places…’ He shudders.
‘Drugs?’ Meera feels her heart fall.
‘No, Meera, I don’t do drugs. Never did. This was something else… can we not talk about it?’
As if to silence her, his mouth descends on hers. Under his persistent lips, hers flower. The wet sulkiness of the inner lip, the darting tongue, pleasure uncoils in long spirals… has she been foolish to deny herself this?
Giri has his own life now, she understood from the children. Daddy, Daddy, you bastard, I am through. Meera recited Plath in her head.
A month after he left, Nayantara had started talking about Daddy’s lady friend. She was with him when he took Nayantara out. Meera had ached to probe, but Nayantara was dismissive. ‘Oh, youngish, Mom. Dresses nicely. Smart. Drives a Swift. Like one of those girls in Daddy’s office, I think!’
Nayantara had been more enthusiastic about the apartment. ‘It is on the tenth floor and he has a great view. And it’s all so minimal, with clean lines. It’s really chic, Mom.’ Not like this shabby dump, Meera heard a reproof somewhere. ‘You should see the kitchen. It’s a fitted one with sliding draws and he’s got new pots and pans. The cutlery…’
Nikhil flung himself on Nayantara then. ‘Stop it, stop it, I don’t want to know. Mummy doesn’t want to hear this nonsense either,’ he cried, his fingers covering her mouth.
Nayantara stopped. Shamefaced. Guilty. ‘I am sorry, Mom.’ She went to put her arm around Meera. ‘I wasn’t thinking. ’
Meera feels her spiralling pleasure halt. What is she doing with this boy?
As if sensing her flagging interest, he pauses. ‘What is it?’ he murmurs.
‘Nothing,’ she says in a small voice.
His caresses are mechanical and lifeless. She aches to slap his hand away.
‘Go down on me,’ he urges.
‘No,’ she says. ‘No,’ she adds again, quite sternly, in a voice she reserves for her children’s unreasonable demands.
He grunts against her neck. ‘Hold me,’ he whispers. ‘There, no, not there…’
Meera feels detached from her hand as it rolls and pulls. Uncannily, it reminds her of kneading dough. Patting, squeezing, rolling, pulling. The making of pliant dough so it would rise and rise… As she lies there fondling one man whose warmth and cologne engulf her, Meera’s mind walks with another.
Should I feel guilty about this, Giri? she asks him. Should I feel remorse that I lie in a bed in what was once our house, almost smothered by the weight and need of this man? But we never talked about what we meant by guilt; what made us cringe and cower. Actually, we never discussed anything significant, did we?
What is it we did with our lives? All those years of mundane details. Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Shopping. Spats. Vacations when we could. Hours and hours enmeshed, without our ever speaking a true word to each other. We played out our lives without ever knowing each other.
This absence of feeling I have now, is this what you felt when you left?
Do you remember the time when your father died? I wanted to go with you but you were adamant. You said your father and you were estranged. And you were going there to merely settle the loose ends, you felt no grief.
I was frightened that night. I thought, how could you sever your ties with your past so easily?
But the night you came back from your village, you couldn’t sleep. I heard you toss and shift. I saw your eyes glitter. When I touched you, you turned away and pretended to sleep.
I wanted to comfort you, but mostly I felt relief. You were not as impervious as you pretended to be. Your father’s death had unsettled you. Was it guilt you knew, Giri? Or did I read too much into the moment?
You left me. Why should I feel guilty? Do you know what Vinnie says? Vinnie, my new friend. She says, in the beginning, each man seems different – his skin, his odour, the texture of his hands, the shape of his fingers, even the contour of his shoulder: hard, fleshy, bony – but in that final moment when you hold him against you, there is a sameness to it. In the dark, all men are the same. That is perhaps why Vinnie feels the absence of guilt.
It is what the man means to a woman that makes him unique, irreplaceable. So what of this boy?
He means nothing to me, he is nothing but a conduit for a need.
And I don’t particularly feel the need for sex. So what am I doing?
Meera’s arm aches from the angle she is holding it at. She extricates her hand slowly. Soman stills. Their meringue moment of lightness has dissipated. What’s left are a few crumbs of cleaning up.
‘I don’t know, it’s never happened before,’ he says against her breast, ashamed at the unwillingness of his flesh to acquiesce with his hopes for it. ‘I can get really hard, really big… perhaps if you would…’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Meera pats his cheek and moves away, trying not to reveal her hurry to be out of his embrace.
In the shadowed room, they dress quietly and quickly. Meera looks at herself in the hallway mirror again.
He joins her reflection and Meera looks away. ‘Would you like some tea?’ she asks.
‘No, I should be going,’ he says. As they walk to the door, the bell rings. And she hears Nikhil hammer on the door. ‘Open up, Mummy, open up! Where are you?’
VIII
Where are you going? What were you doing? Why are you looking away? What are you thinking?
In the days after the funeral, she feels her children’s eyes dog her every step, every thought. It is unnerving, this constant scrutiny. Meera has felt near invisible all these years; an apparition who glided through the house and their lives, cooking, cleaning, sorting laundry and helping with the children’s home projects. She, who in her head told herself off for being such a doormat, there and not there, doesn’t enjoy the consciousness they now endow her with.
Questions. Puzzlement. Reproof. Curiosity. Fear. Meera is stung by the forked tongue of each glance. When she leaves home, it asks, where are you going? When she returns, she is greeted with, where were you? When the phone rings, it demands, what is it about? When she smiles, it queries, why are you smiling? When she lets her features settle into a mask, it nags, what are you thinking of? They, she notices, never use the word ‘who’!
To accept the possibility of a who in her life would be closing the door on their father, they think. And it is this they fear.
Meera wants to gather her children in her arms and quell their fears. But how can she? For they sense the presence of a man. Nikhil has seen his mother chew on what looked like a smashed lip and murmur, ‘This is my friend. He was just leaving… say hello, Nikhil.’
Nikhil had ignored the outstretched hand and rushed back to open the gates wide. That was when Meera saw the ambulance with its blue revolving siren and knew her heart drop once again.
Saro was still in the hospital, they said. Lily had needed a few stitches and her bruises had been dressed. But Saro had borne the brunt of the water tanker that had smashed into the car they were in. Saro and the driver, Saro’s friend had wept.
‘It was instant, the police said; she wouldn’t have known any pain.’ The woman touched Meera’s elbow.
Meera looked around her helplessly. ‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said, not knowing what she was saying and wishing the woman would go away.
She needed a few moments alone to comp
ose herself. Her mother lay in a morgue somewhere. She had to bring her home. Then there was the funeral. She had to inform everyone… Meera slumped in a chair.
It was Nikhil who called Nayantara. It was Nikhil who insisted on speaking to his father even though he was in a presentation and couldn’t be disturbed, his secretary said.
‘What is it, Nikhil?’ Giri didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. ‘What now? I told you that you can’t ask me permission for anything your mother has said no to.’
‘It’s Grandma. Saro. She died. And Grandma Lily is still in hospital. Their taxi was hit. The driver died too!’
Giri was silent then, Nikhil told Meera later.
‘Your mother. How is she?’
‘Mummy is alone, Daddy. You have to come now. She needs you.’
‘Son, I’ll handle everything. Don’t worry. Give the phone to Meera.’
From a long way away, Meera heard Giri tell her that he wouldn’t be able to come that day. But he was going to ask someone from the Bangalore office to help her with the police, getting the body out, organizing the hearse and the crematorium, etc.
‘Don’t you want to see her?’ Meera’s voice trembled.
The silence again.
‘You know that we were…’ Giri began and then shaped his reasons differently. ‘I am in the middle of a presentation, Meera. We have another round of meetings tomorrow. I’ll come as soon as I am done. Don’t wait for me.’
‘Giri, it’s my mother!’
‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. How is Lily?’
