by Anita Desai
Families have returned from their vacation trips, but still wear their shorts to show their summer tans. Yellow school buses and the blue and white college shuttle service begin to trundle up and down the country roads again. The town is filled with returning students, all indistinguishably young and bright and laden with all the equipment needed to make their school year happy and profitable. Beer cans fly out of car windows and clatter along dusty curbs; music pounds with tribal rhythms. Shops have strung up banners saying Welcome Back and are preparing for huge sales of stationery, table lamps, wastepaper baskets and posters.
Arun has packed his belongings into the blue leatherite suitcase in which he brought them. He is puzzling over what to do with the parcel that has arrived from India only this morning, with its innumerable wrappings of brown paper and string, each bearing the mark of his sister's clumsy and impatient care, providentially catching him at the Pattons' before he moves out and back to the campus and the new room he has been allotted in the dorm, on the same floor as the other Indian students this time. The parcel contains a large packet of tea and a brown wool shawl, both calculated to help him through the coming winter. What has not been calculated is that he has no extra space for them in his suitcase: he is taking back precisely the same number of shirts, books and underwear as he brought with him, he has used up and thrown away nothing. The summer that had moved so slowly and laboriously has passed, leaving no mark of its passage.
He picks up the box of tea in one hand, the folded shawl in the other. One is heavy, the other light. One is hard, the other soft. A lopsided gift. He holds them, trying to find the balance.
He glances across the landing. The door to Melanie's room stands open. He sees the white counterpane stretched neatly across the brass bed. He sees the bright mirror on the chest of drawers, a toy bear with a red ribbon propped against it. The room is empty. Melanie has left. She has been taken to an institution in the Berkshires where they know how to deal with the neuroses of adolescent girls: bulimia, anorexia, depression, withdrawal, compulsive behaviour, hysteria. (Mr Patton has taken on a night job to pay the bills.) They send in reports on her progress. She is playing tennis. She has helped bake cookies in the kitchen. She is making friends. She has gained weight. She can eat cereal, bread, butter, milk and boiled carrots without throwing up; she drinks hot chocolate at night. (Fortunately, Rod has won a football scholarship.) They find her compliant and obedient. With so much improvement, her family can expect her back soon. Not, unfortunately, in time for the new semester at school; that must wait a while.
Till then, the room stands empty, polished and cleaned, fresh and pleasant as it has never been while she occupied it. Mrs Patton has cleaned it herself, on her knees.
Arun goes downstairs to find her, the tea in one hand, the shawl in the other.
Mrs Patton no longer lies in the yard, sunbathing. The days are warm and still, with a silvery sheen, but she seems to have taken an aversion to the light, even to the outdoors. She no longer spends much time in the kitchen either. She has never offered to take Arun shopping, although the kitchen is drastically depleted, only remains left at the bottoms of jars and bottles. She dresses in skirts and long-sleeved blouses. She has voiced a tentative interest in traditional medicines; she talks of taking a course at the Leisure Activities Center in yoga, or astrology.
Once Arun heard Mr Patton growl, 'Here's another batch of catalogues come for you. What in God's name is numerology? Or gemology? Karmic lessons! What's that? Hell, what's this you're getting into?'
These catalogues, pamphlets and leaflets lie in drifts around her now as she sits on the porch, quite still, on an upright chair. She is holding an acupuncture chart on her lap but is staring over the top of it, through the wire screen, at the yard which is empty except for the cat carefully stalking a moth in a bed of dead and wilted flowers. Everything in that scene looks fatigued, spent or faded.
Arun goes quietly up to her. Too quietly because she gives a start and clutches her neck in fright.
'I'm sorry,' Arun apologises, clearing a frog in his throat. 'I—uh—brought you some presents. I'm leaving now, Mrs Patton.'
'Leaving now?' she repeats, bewildered.
'The semester starts tomorrow,' he reminds her. 'I've got to get back to the dorm. I'm packed.'
'Oh dear,' she says mildly.
'Please take these things—my parents sent them for you,' he lies, hoping they will never guess what happened to their gifts, and hands her the box of tea which she takes with a polite murmur of surprise. As she turns it over in her hands, studying the label with the habitual attention she gives to consumer products, she queries hopefully, 'Is it herbal?' Arun opens out the brown shawl. He shakes out the folds, then arranges it carefully about her shoulders. An aroma arises from it, of another land: muddy, grassy, smoky, ashen. It swamps him, like a river, or like a fire.
She looks at him, then at the wool stuff on her shoulders, in incomprehension. She picks at a fold of it, and sniffs. Slowly her face spreads into a flush of wonder. 'Why, Ahroon,' she stammers, 'this is just beautiful. Thank you, thank you,' she repeats, and puts her hands to her neck to hold the ends of the shawl together.
He withdraws quietly, going up to collect his suitcase and then finding his way out by the kitchen door, leaving her sitting on the porch with the box of tea on her knees and the shawl around her shoulders.
