Finding Arun (3 page)

The Rutherfords had always maintained that Aaron’s
real mother had passed away shortly after his birth. Entrusted into
Catherine’s care during her residency in India, the dying woman had
quickly developed a strong bond with the young doctor and, with no
trustworthy next of kin, begged her to take care of Aaron once she
was gone. The childless Catherine had been so touched by the
woman’s plight and resolute faith in her parenting abilities that
she had felt compelled to accept. Now it seemed that not only was
this story fabricated, but that his birth mother was very much
alive, had regularly corresponded with Catherine over the years and
even had other children.

With each letter that he read Aaron’s reality became
more and more twisted, until he was no longer certain of anything
that he had believed to be true about his life with the
Rutherfords. It was hard to take it all in at once, but something
inside was pushing him, daring him, to keep reading and he couldn’t
tear his eyes away from the page. He pressed on, desperate to fill
in the missing pieces of the puzzle, but the task was complicated
by the absence of Catherine’s responses to each letter, and by the
fact that his frenzied attack on the bookcase had disturbed any
chronological order that Kalpana’s letters might have been stored
in.

Straining to read the last lines of the umpteenth
letter, Aaron became aware that he was sitting in near darkness. He
glanced up at the window, surprised to find that the sun had
already set and that the faint glow by which he had been reading
was cast entirely by the lights that adorned the garden below. He
had been locked away for hours and so absorbed in his quest for the
truth that time had slipped by almost imperceptibly. He felt
drained, physically, mentally and most of all emotionally. His head
was swimming with everything that he had read; yet for all his
efforts he was no closer to understanding the true circumstances
surrounding his adoption. He desperately wanted to put the letters
back where he had found them, to close the door to the study and to
crawl back in to bed and pretend that the day had never happened,
but he knew that there could be no simple return to the life that
he had always known.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a low
growl originating from deep within his belly, as he registered the
feeling of hunger for the first time in over a week. Breakfast felt
like an age ago and though he usually wished to avoid the
awkwardness of their one-on-one exchanges, he knew that a second
mealtime conversation with Arthur was now an unavoidable necessity.
Arthur was the only one who might be able to explain the truth
about what he had found and, despite the evidence to the contrary,
he still clung to the hope that there was a perfectly logical and
rational explanation as to why his parents had lied to him.

Tucking a few of the letters into his tracksuit
bottom pocket, Aaron gently eased himself to a standing position
and surveyed the room once more. It was reminiscent of a city
street after a bomb blast and even the neat towers of books that he
wanted to keep had been toppled during his frenetic attack on the
bookcase. He edged carefully around the rubble and stepping out
into the hallway pulled the door shut firmly behind him, relieved
to be free of the suffocating confines of the room. His lungs were
immediately filled with the aromatic scent of roast chicken,
causing his stomach to gurgle appreciatively in anticipation. The
scent grew stronger as he made his way down the stairs, and
rounding the corner to the kitchen he found Aunt Ruby busily
preparing dinner at the counter, whilst his father remained hunched
over the newspaper as though he hadn’t moved all day. Hearing his
footsteps, they both looked up in unison and Aunt Ruby smiled
warmly in welcome.

‘Hello, dear. How are you?’

‘Hello, Aunt Ruby. I’m, um, I’m okay … okay, I
guess.’

‘Are you hungry? You must be hungry; Arthur told me
that you didn’t have any lunch. Dinner will be ready in just a
tick.’

Aaron smiled meekly at his aunt and moved to seat
himself opposite Arthur, who, making no attempt to acknowledge his
son’s presence at the table, had already turned his attention back
to the newspaper. Aaron cleared his throat loudly, causing Arthur
to look up at him somewhat irritably.

‘Is everything cleared in the study?’

‘No, not quite.’

‘Not quite? You’ve been up there all day,’ Arthur
shrieked.

‘I started … but then I found something,’ Aaron
retorted sharply, immediately annoyed by Arthur’s response. If
anyone was going to feel surprised or disappointed, it would be
him.

‘
I see. What was it then? This
thing
that you found,’ replied Arthur sarcastically, the
disinterest in his voice barely disguised as he returned to the
article he was reading.

‘Letters from Kalpana.’

Arthur visibly stiffened at Aaron’s words and slowly
raised his head until his eyes met his son’s. His face was pale and
strained, and his lips barely moved beyond a whisper when he
spoke.

‘What did you just say?’

Aaron remained mute, allowing the words to settle
over them whilst he searched Arthur’s face for signs of guilt or
regret. The men stared at each other intently, another one of their
silent exchanges, and it was only Aunt Ruby’s sudden presence
between them that broke their gaze. Both father and son had
momentarily forgotten that she was even in the room.

‘I think I’d better leave you both to it,’ she
murmured softly, slowly unfastening the apron strings from around
her sizeable waist. She placed the apron onto the table in a
crumpled heap and, casting Arthur a sympathetic look, politely
excused herself from the kitchen.

‘WELL?’ Aaron asked curtly, breaking the silence
between them once he was certain that Aunt Ruby was out of
earshot.

‘I don’t know what to tell you.’

‘How about the truth?’

‘I didn’t know that there were letters.’

‘But you knew that my birth mother was alive?’

‘No. I mean, yes, sort of … I only found out about a
week ago.’

‘How could you have only found out about a week ago?
She’s been writing letters to Mum for years,’ Aaron cried
incredulously.

He was doing his level best to remain calm, but he
could feel the anger bubbling away again just below the surface. He
stared at Arthur, silently imploring him to make sense of the whole
sorry situation. He had come to him expecting answers, but Arthur
was doing little to reassure him that the whole episode was simply
a big misunderstanding.

‘I told you, I didn’t know about the letters,’
Arthur protested feebly, mounting his only defence.

‘
What
do
you
know then?’

Arthur stared silently into his lap, nervously
twisting his fingers, unable to meet his son’s accusatory gaze.
There was an air of self-pity that hung about him like a bad smell
and the way in which the old man appeared to be wrestling with his
conscience made Aaron doubt the sincerity of his words. Aaron
waited for an answer and Arthur, seeming reluctant, quietly began
to explain.

‘Catherine … your mother … she wasn’t a well woman
towards the end. Her illness sort of … took over. There wasn’t
anything that we could do … to help her, I mean. She was in a lot
of pain; you know she didn’t get out of bed most days … too weak to
really.’

Aaron looked quizzically at his father, wondering
where he was going with his story, but Arthur paid him no mind as
he searched for the right words to describe the events that had
taken place.

‘There were a lot of pills: pink ones, white ones …
I still don’t know what half of them were for. Some of them made
her a bit … crazy, a bit loopy when she took them. She would see
things that weren’t really there and sometimes she would say
things, all these things that didn’t make any sense, not
really.’

‘Things like what?’

‘She talked about places that we’d been together,
only I’d never been to them before. And about people, all these
people that I’d never even heard of …’ Arthur answered, his voice
trailing off.

The memory of Catherine’s final weeks seemed almost
too much for him to bear and he gripped the table as a wave of
sadness appeared to sweep over him. By the end, the woman that he
had so loved and adored was barely recognisable and it obviously
pained him to remember her that way, yet Aaron’s eyes were still
firmly fixed on him, pregnant with expectation.

‘At night she had these awful fits; you should have
seen them. All feverish and sweaty like she was having a bad dream
or something. She called out names, but I couldn’t always make them
out. She talked about you … a lot … and then there was this
Kalpana. Every night she seemed to mention Kalpana, but I didn’t
even know if it was a man or a woman. Sometimes she would cry out
“Remember it’s for lucky”; I never understood what that meant
either. Her doctor said that it was nothing to worry about, that
the pills were causing her to experience vivid dreams, but Kalpana
was the only name I could consistently make out … so I asked her
about it one day.’

‘And?’ Aaron asked, exhaling audibly.

He had been listening to Arthur’s story so intently
that he had unconsciously been holding his breath. Now his chest
felt tight and his stomach churned with nerves while he waited for
Arthur’s response. Arthur drew in a deep breath and let out a long
sigh before answering.

‘She said that she would tell me when you got home …
that she would tell us both … together.’

Aaron felt his emotions stir involuntarily inside,
painfully reminded once more that he hadn’t made it home before his
mother had died. He forced his eyes shut in a desperate bid to
prevent the tears from overflowing and broke his gaze with Arthur
for the first time since their conversation had begun. The world
seemed to be mocking him; not content with robbing him of a final
chance to see his mother, it had simultaneously deprived her of a
last opportunity to tell him the truth. Worse still, it had left
him to contend with Arthur instead.

Uncharacteristically, Arthur reached across the
table and tenderly patted his son’s forearm in a gesture of
comfort. Stunned, but nonetheless appreciative of Arthur’s action,
Aaron reopened his eyes and nodded silently, signalling for him to
continue with his story.

‘On the day that she … died … I was sitting with her
in our bedroom. She was in and out of sleep and the words that she
was calling out made even less sense than usual. She kept asking
for you and I kept telling her that you would be here soon, but I
don’t think she believed me. She was insistent that God was
deliberately keeping you away, that he was punishing her because
she had punished Kalpana. It didn’t make any sense to me, of
course. I asked her about it again and I wasn’t expecting her to
tell me, but then … well then she told me that Kalpana was the name
of your birth mother. Silly, I know, but I had never thought to ask
before.’

‘Okay,’ said Aaron slowly, finally finding his
voice, ‘but that still doesn’t explain why you both told me that
she died after I was born?’

Arthur shifted uncomfortably in his seat, seeming
unsure exactly how to proceed.

‘I thought she had died after you were born too,’ he
began quietly, ‘that’s what Catherine told me. I never met your
birth mother, Aaron; Catherine was the one that knew her. I didn’t
even meet you until she brought you home from India.’

Arthur paused, as though trying to gauge his son’s
reaction, but Aaron tried to refrain from passing judgement until
Arthur had finished his story.

‘I thought it was the pills talking again, so I just
tried to comfort her, to calm her down a little bit so she wouldn’t
get quite so worked up … but she wouldn’t let it go. We went on
like that for a few hours until finally she looked me dead in the
eye and said, “You don’t understand, Kalpana wants to see Aaron and
I won’t let her”. Well of course then I thought that she had really
lost it. I mean, how can a dead woman want to see you? It just
doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Didn’t she tell you about the letters?’ Aaron
enquired sceptically, fishing a fistful from his pocket and placing
them ceremoniously on the table. Arthur’s mouth fell open in
surprise and it was enough to answer Aaron’s question.

‘I … no … I … I thought that maybe she was confusing
the past with the present. You know, remembering when you were
born. She became very close to your birth mother and I know that
she always felt bad that she couldn’t do more to save her … well,
at least that’s how it had always seemed. I assumed it was just …
guilt. The more I tried to reason with her, the more irrational she
became. She started shouting at me and at Aunt Ruby too.’

‘Aunt Ruby was there too?’

‘Yes, she came upstairs when she heard the shouting.
We both tried to explain that Kalpana was gone and that she wasn’t
being punished for anything, but even with two of us there she
wouldn’t listen. So we left her for a while, you know, to calm
down. It was horrible seeing her get herself into such a state and
she was already so sick. I was worried that any more stress would
push her over the edge.’

Arthur whispered the last sentence and it hung
inescapably in the air between them. There was a brief silence
while Aaron struggled to digest the details of the tale, but Arthur
drew in a deep breath and continued, seeming determined to
finish.

‘About an hour or so before she died, I went back
upstairs to check on her. She wouldn’t look at me at first and we
sat in silence for a while, but eventually she started to talk. She
was convinced that you weren’t coming home. I told her that you
weren’t far away, but she looked … defeated. She started to squeeze
my hand, gently you understand because she was quite weak, and then
she began to apologise. She apologised to me and to you, for lying
to us and for not being the person that we thought she was. She
said that she just wanted us to be happy.’