Before We Visit the Goddess (30 page)

Life is lines of dominoes falling.

One thing leads to another, and then another, just like you'd planned. But suddenly a domino gets skewed, events change direction, people dig in their heels, and you're faced with a situation that you didn't see coming, you who thought you were so clever.

The first falling piece is etched in his memory.

It was a few months after Bishu's divorce. Sanjay and Bela hadn't moved to Texas yet. They were still living in that dingy apartment in the Bay Area, and Tara was a baby. Sanjay had come home in a good mood that evening, though he has forgotten why. He'd opened the door, whistling, and seen them together on the couch, his wife and his best friend. For a moment, it made him happy.

It had always troubled him that Bela never liked Bishu. Things became worse one year back, after the incident with the tenant. Bloody redneck. Wouldn't pay rent. Wouldn't move out of their house. The house that was Bishu and Sanjay's one-and-only, in which they'd sunk all their savings. Things got hairy. They couldn't make the mortgage. The bank sent them a warning. It looked like they were going to lose the house. Finally, Bishu poisoned the tenant's dog and everything worked out.

When Bela discovered what had happened, she threw a fit. She wanted nothing to do with Bishu, never see him again. Of course, Sanjay couldn't give in to a ridiculous demand like that, not after all that Bishu had done for them both. They had a fight, a big one. Bela didn't talk to Sanjay for days. She would lock herself in the bathroom when Bishu came, leaving Sanjay to stammer out excuses.

But now they were sitting close to each other, Bishu's arm around Bela's shoulder, talking in low voices. Baby Tara—she was maybe eight months old then—was balanced on Bishu's knee.

When she noticed Sanjay, Bela jerked away with a start.

“My mother's sick.” She pointed to an open aerogram on the table.

Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe Bishu had only been comforting her because he found her crying. Maybe he, Sanjay-Shonu-Shona-Sheno, was overreacting. There were crumpled balls of Kleenex strewn on the floor.

Bull
, said the voice in his head. The way she'd pulled away, the way she'd raised her startled eyes to him, Sanjay, standing in the doorway, then glanced down: That wasn't sorrow. It was guilt.

The next week, he came home from work one evening to find that Bela was gone. But her car was in the parking lot. Where could she be? He paced the balcony for an hour, worrying, wondering if he should call the police. Then he saw Bishu's car drive up. Bela spilled out, laughing in a green silk sari. Sanjay hadn't realized how pretty she'd grown in the last few months, having shed all her pregnancy weight. Bishu leaned into the back and picked Tara up from her car seat. She patted his face with her palms, babbling baby talk. Bishu smiled and nuzzled her neck. It made Sanjay furious. Ashamed, too, in a strange way. He stepped away from the balcony before they could see him. Went into the bathroom. Only after he heard them enter the apartment did he come out, flushing the toilet needlessly.

Bela looked at him with wide eyes. “Sorry we're late. We got caught in traffic.”

“Where were you?”

“I went to the temple in Livermore. It's my father's death anniversary today. I didn't feel comfortable driving alone all that way, and I know you don't like to go. So I asked Bishu-da.”

He stared at Bishu, who had insisted, all through college, that religion was the opium of the people. Who had never set foot in a temple in India.

Bishu gave a shamefaced shrug.

“I couldn't let her drive all that way with Tara all by herself,” he said. “Could I?”

Yes, you could
, Sanjay wanted to shout. Instead he said, “Would you like some tea? I picked up that chai masala that you liked so much last time.”

Later, when they were alone, he said to Bela, “You never visited the temple on your father's death-day before this.”

“People change,” Bela said, shooting him a cool, unreadable glance from beneath her lashes.

What did she mean? Was she hinting at something? Now she lifted her chin, as though daring him to hit her. He didn't know what to do, so he grabbed the baby, who was in her lap. Tara, startled, started to cry. A look flashed across Bela's face, clear enough this time: fear.

This
, he thought.
This would be the way to punish her.

He swung Tara up, turning around and around and making airplane noises until she gurgled with laughter. He changed her diaper, which he usually shied away from. When it was bedtime, he said, “I'll take her.” He stood at the crib, making little finger-circles on Tara's back until she fell asleep.

Bela watched him warily from the door of the bedroom, a frown gouging her forehead.

He did this every day, for a week, two weeks, until Tara refused to go to sleep without him. Until she became his. And—though he hadn't quite thought through this part—he became hers.

Over the next month, it seemed like he saw them together, Bela-Bishu, all the time. Sometimes Bishu would already be at their apartment when Sanjay returned from the office, claiming that his shift at the Indian motel where he worked as a manager was over early. That was a lie. Sanjay knew that Bishu worked the night shift because it paid more. He must have left the desk in charge of the cleaning lady, bribed her a few dollars and slipped out.

He said nothing about this to Bishu. He was always cordial to him, more polite than ever. But he avoided all conversations that leaned toward intimacy. Sometimes Bishu would look at him with a perplexed frown. But Sanjay deflected this successfully with an innocuous smile.

The days he couldn't come over, Bishu called. If Sanjay picked up the phone, Bishu would ask a few cursory questions; then there would be an awkward silence because he had nothing more to say to him. Bishu, his best friend, his brother. “Can I talk to Bela?” he would ask. They would be on the phone for half an hour, Bela laughing as she described Tara's antics in unnecessary detail. Sanjay sat nearby, staring at his copy of
Business Week
, turning the pages as though the words he read made sense.

The worst was when Bishu rang the doorbell late at night, bearing gifts. Hotel candies or soaps for Bela—cheap stuff that she exclaimed over fatuously—or a balloon for Tara that she'd bat at over and over.
Biku-Biku
. That's what she called him, short for Bishu Kaka. She'd put her small fat arms around his neck when he picked her up, while Bela smiled indulgently. It destroyed Sanjay to watch the three of them together like that.

Can you blame him for writing the anonymous letter to the owners of the motel that led to a sudden night-check when Bishu wasn't there, that resulted in him losing his job? Bishu looked for other positions, but word had sped along the motel owners' grapevine in California. He tried for other kinds of work, minimum-wage clerking at stores, night watchman jobs. He listed Sanjay's name as a reference. Strange, no one would hire him.

Desperate, his savings dwindling, he was forced to start looking out-of-state. Finally, with Sanjay's help, he managed to land a manager's job in a motel in a small town in Utah. He hated the place. He would call them each week and complain bitterly about the terrible winters, the weirdos who came through, the crippling loneliness. “I miss you folks,” he'd say to Sanjay, who made sure he was the one to pick up the phone. “Is Bela doing okay? Can I talk to her?” When Sanjay made excuses—Bela was out, or asleep, or in the shower—he'd say, sadly, “How's my Tara-baby? She must be getting so big. Being away from you-all is killing me.”

Perhaps it wasn't an exaggeration. In two years, Bishu would be dead. When he received the phone call from the motel management, because Bishu had listed him as next of kin and beneficiary on his life insurance, Sanjay was torn between relief and shame.

The first weeks after Bishu left the Bay Area, Sanjay watched Bela for signs. But she went about her daily chores cheerfully, humming as she vacuumed or folded clothes. If anything, she seemed happier, even, than she had been before. He would come home at unexpected times, trying to catch her out. Would she be in tears? Would she be talking to Bishu on the phone? But all he ever found was her taking a nap or watching
Sesame Street
with Tara. Sometimes the Indian woman who had moved into the apartment below would be there. She had a baby, too. Sanjay would come home to find the babies crawling around on a bedsheet while the two women drank tea and munched on chanachur. They would look at him curiously and a little disapprovingly, as though wondering what he was doing home in the middle of the day.

Months passed. Bela remained serene, glowing, Madonna-like. When Bishu phoned, she did not ask to speak to him. When Tara turned one, she went back to her job at the child-care center, taking her daughter with her. Work suited her. Gave her confidence. At dinnertime, she served, without apology, boiled rice and dal, prepared quickly in the pressure cooker. She interrupted Sanjay's news-watching with anecdotes of things that had happened at Tiny Treasures.

It bewildered Sanjay, how well she hid her sorrow at Bishu's absence, and, later, at his death.

One night, several months after Bishu's death, Sanjay lay in bed unable to sleep. Childhood memories of Bishu pressed against his skull until his head hurt. Beside him, Bela's breathing was rhythmic and untroubled.

That was when the truth struck him. Bela had never been attracted to Bishu. She had only pretended, in order to make Sanjay jealous, to create a rift between them, to make sure that Sanjay drove his best friend away. She'd even used Tara as a weapon. She must have planned this for a while, perhaps since the dead dog incident. He'd thought she'd forgotten it, but she'd never forgiven either of the men.

Rage seared Sanjay's veins like poison. He couldn't breathe. This was a greater betrayal than if she'd actually cheated on him. He jerked upright, his body at once hot and cold and shaking, like the time when he'd had malaria. How dare she manipulate him this way? He was going to choke the lying life out of her, never mind what happened to him after that. He looked down at his hands. They were flexed and ready.

He was this close to doing it.

Then he heard Tara in the crib, murmuring as she shifted, snuffling in her sleep.

He forced himself to breathe. For her sake, he forced himself to lie down.

A better punishment: he would divorce Bela, leave her to flounder in loneliness, the way Bishu had, in snow-choked Utah. But not now, not until his daughter was grown up. He wouldn't jeopardize Tara's future, take the chance of losing even a little bit of her. No messy joint custody for him. He would wait, patient as a heron by the water, waiting to swoop ruthless upon the right moment, when Bela had grown too dependent to manage without him. Meanwhile, he would love Tara fully and fiercely. He would make himself indispensable in Bela's life, would make her believe that he adored her. Then when he left her, Bela's life would be shattered.

He didn't know then that the long interim would be studded with moments when the light would be of a certain quality, dust motes dancing in it as when they had been in Kolkata, and Bela, smiling at him contentedly as she pasted photos into an album or concocted a special dish for his dinner, would look so like the girl he had loved in college that his truant heart would twist, murmuring,
Maybe you're wrong
. Or,
Stop, it's not too late.
But of course it was.

It is dark in the car inside the parking garage, and strangely cold, far too cold for Oakland in July. No matter. He zips up his jacket and rests his forehead on the steering wheel. A few minutes to recharge; then he'll start for home. The dominoes are falling in beautiful sweeps of black and white, as they did that night when he lay next to his lovely, unaware wife. Watching them, he sleeps.

I
stand in this unfamiliar kitchen, wrestling with a stubborn acorn squash, because my mother has decided that as her last meal before she's jailed she would like Bengali pumpkin curry.

My mother is given to exaggeration. It's not really her last meal. We'll have several meals together through the weekend while I pack her things. And it isn't jail but Sunny Hills, a decent, if not lavish, senior facility in Austin. After her second fall, the one that fractured her leg two weeks ago, her doctor called me and said she couldn't live alone anymore. I took a week's emergency leave and flew down from San Jose to persuade her to move to a facility. I would have preferred one closer to me, where I could have kept an eye on her more easily. But she told me right away she wasn't leaving Texas. Bela Stubborn Dewan, that's my mother.

I'd been nervous about coming out here. I'd never spent an entire week alone with my mother since the divorce. The few times we'd met, on occasions of family importance, my husband and son had acted as buffers. Otherwise it was emails or duty calls, brief, pragmatic exchanges of information, mostly to prove to each other that we were doing just fine.