The Hungry Ghosts (47 page)

He had assumed this was her full time job, and my mother let him go on, amused. He reminded her of that know-it-all Sri Lankan folk character Mahadana Muttha, who always got things wrong. The thought made her want to giggle like a schoolgirl, and she saw now that David was attractive, with a square jaw, fine sandy hair, strong forearms. There was something endearing about the earnest triangle of wrinkles between his brows as he “held forth.”

26
 

I
N THE DOORWAY OF MY MOTHER’S BEDROOM
I take a long sip from the glass of Scotch I have not been able to resist pouring myself, the basket of cleaning equipment by my feet. On a high semicircular table beside the door is a photograph of her “guru,” an emaciated Tibetan monk with a shaven head, seated cross-legged, one hand raised in benediction. To either side of him are statues of bodhisattvas from the Tibetan pantheon. There are flowers in a bowl before the shrine, a red, flame-shaped bulb in lieu of the traditional oil lamp.

My mother’s fervency about her new faith can be excessive, her self-righteous quoting from the
Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life
irritating, yet I am envious of her. This new spirituality has provided her a way to step beyond her history, to see her life clearly, with all its problems and mistakes.

I sit on my mother’s bed for a while, fingering the pages of one of her Buddhist books, then get up and begin to dust. As I gently lift things on the altar and place them back, I find myself thinking of my grandmother’s story of the hawk pursued by other hawks, how it finally lets go of the meat in its talons and flies away, bloodied and starving, but free of the thing that caused it so much suffering.

I moved to Vancouver in December 1988, and it was three and a half years later, in the summer of 1992, that I met Michael at a party in Kitsilano. The host, Bill, was a man in his fifties whom I had got to know when I was transferred to the President’s Office, a prestigious promotion, that marked me out as a rising star in the university’s bureaucracy. He often came by and
perched on my desk for a chat, eyeing me merrily with frank interest, or leant in close from behind when giving instructions on a document he’d placed before me, his smell of cologne mingling with the faint odour of clove cigarettes on his beard and moustache, his belly tight like a drum against my back. He adopted a girlfriend-ish manner when talking to me, his high silly laugh sounding like he was faking amusement. Though I was not attracted to him, I could see he might be appealing to other men his age. He had a nice boyish smile and, despite the belly, was well built. He “pumped out” (as he put it) at the gym.

I was aware he had a boyfriend through other workers in the office, though he never mentioned this to me. Then one day the woman at the desk next to mine told me she had run into them at the Granville Island Public Market and, much to her surprise, the lover was in his twenties and “gorgeous.” This surprised me, too, and suddenly Bill took on an aura of interest. I wondered if I was missing something about him, some quality of attractiveness that had escaped me. I became more tolerant of his advances, and when he asked me to a dinner party, I accepted, curious to meet the boyfriend and understand Bill’s allure.

He lived in an art deco apartment building just off West 4th Avenue. When I came up the cobbled path, I saw a man of about my age seated on a second-floor balcony reading a book, head bent over the pages, bare feet propped against the railing. As I passed under the balcony, I looked up, wondering if this was the lover, and glimpsed a tangle of black curls, silky tanned arms, thighs that turned a paler colour beneath his white shorts.

Bill welcomed me into the apartment with a crushing embrace, his smell of clove cigarettes now mixed with roasted garlic and tomato sauce. “Ah, my dear, you’re the final guest to arrive.”

There were two middle-aged men on the sofa who I surmised were a couple because they wore matching hoop earrings, jeans, and white T-shirts under leather vests. An obese woman in a lilac cotton peasant dress sat to one side of them in an armchair. She had greyish-blond hair down to her waist and copper bangles embellished with multicoloured beads.

Bill introduced these three as very old friends, telling me that the woman, Moon, and he had been in grade school together when she was just plain old
Mary (which made her shake silently with mirth). Their pleasant greeting gave me no indication whether Bill had spoken of me before.

All the while, I was aware of the boyfriend on the balcony, who appeared not to notice or care that the guests had arrived. Seeing my glances, Bill called out with a proprietary smirk, “Michael, visitors are here.”

Michael gave a little smile and raised his hand, but he kept his eyes on the page until he had read as far as he wanted. Then he snapped the book shut, slipped on his loafers and stood up. In his white, cuffed shorts and lavender dress shirt—its sleeves rolled up above the elbows, collar pushed back—he looked, I imagined, like someone on a yacht. As he strolled into the apartment, I tried not to stare at his rumple of curls, aquamarine eyes, angular features and lips whose colour spread beyond their borders, like a stain of pomegranate juice.

The others seemed to know him well, because they greeted him with lazy familiarity, not getting off their seats. He saluted them playfully, then turned to me. As we exchanged names and greetings, I was aware we were under scrutiny, as if Bill had arranged this meeting to entertain his friends.

I noted the book Michael was reading and said, stuttering, “Oh … um,
Clear Light of Day
, my sister has that. I’ve read it. I liked it.”

“She’s an author my mother loves,” he replied, turning the book over and looking at its cover. “So I thought I would give her a try.”

Anita Desai was not the sort of writer one might find easily in a bookstore. I knew this from working in one and browsing through many. I wanted to ask how Michael’s mother had discovered the writer, but instead nodded stiffly and accepted the glass of wine Bill was holding out to me with a smirk that said, Yes, you have undervalued my charms.

Now I was sure I had been invited to learn this lesson and that the other guests were in on the plan. I glanced at Michael, but his remote smile conveyed nothing. With a polite nod to me, he went to put his book away in the bedroom and emerged sometime later, curls slightly damp.

The evening progressed in the way these parties always did for me, with white people talking while I remained silent, my fixed smile gradually dissolving as I drank more, my laugh increasingly hectic. Michael moved with graceful ease among the guests, sitting for a time between the couple on the sofa then sprawling over the arm of the woman’s chair, hand resting on her
shoulder. They treated him with fondness, as they would a nephew, and he took their attention with what I felt was the entitlement of the beautiful.

At one point I went to get some wine from the galley kitchen, and Michael sauntered in and stood by the fridge, right foot perched on left like a stork, hands jammed in pockets, his neck strained back as if to look over a fence, something diffident in his posture. He said nothing for a moment, observing me with a restrained smile. Then we both spoke at once.

“Bill tells me you work—”

“How come your mother—”

We each gestured for the other to speak, and I said, “How does your mother know of Anita Desai?”

He shrugged and smiled. “Some small bookstore in Kitsilano … you know, for people who consider their tastes to be above the plebeian readers.” He said this fondly, as if he found his mother’s snobbishness endearing. “Besides, Desai isn’t nobody. She’s been nominated for the Booker a couple of times.”

“Indeed,” I said, nodding vigorously. After the silence came between us again, I asked, “What were you going to say?”

“Oh, just that I might be starting work at the university too. I’ve applied for a job.” Then, seeing what I was surmising, he added defensively, “And no, it’s not Bill’s influence. A completely different department.”

“Of course, of course,” I said quickly.

Then we were grinning at each other, as if our exchange had been funny.

“Well, if you do get this job, one of the perks is the long lunch break. Enough time to get down to Wreck Beach and ogle the nudists.”

“I don’t need the lunch break for that. I occasionally go down there anyway.” He waited for his meaning to sink in and caught the quick flit of my eyes as I mentally undressed him. Then he let out a throttled laugh, head thrown back as if struggling to release the mirth from his throat.

In an instant Bill was in the kitchen. He gave us both a sharp look. I blushed from being caught out and Michael smirked. “Young men,” Bill cried waspishly, “away with you. I must begin
le dîner
.”

After that, though Michael and I did not talk again that evening, I was aware some connection had formed between us, that we were oddly on the same side against the other guests.

About a month later, the phone rang one evening, and when I picked it up a man asked for Shivan Rassiah. His accent was Canadian, and yet, remarkably, he pronounced my name correctly.

“Who is this?” I demanded.

“It’s Michael,” he said, as if surprised I had not figured it out.

I was silent, then I blurted, “How did you …?”

“My contacts at the university.”

“Oh,” I said, and then “oh” again, puzzled that Bill had provided my phone number, given his apparent jealousy over our conversation in the kitchen.

“No, no,” he replied with a chortle. “The dean of arts. My mother. She’s had this secretary for years, Anjula Wickramatunga. Sri Lankan,” he added, not realizing I could figure this out from her surname. “I just asked her to inquire around. You’re the sole Sri Lankan guy working in the President’s Office. Then I looked you up in the directory. There is only one of you in Vancouver, by the way.”

“My goodness, I’m unique,” I quipped to hide my astonishment. “Well, you’re quite the detective,” I added, wanting confirmation of his interest. “That’s a lot of trouble to take.”

“It was worth the effort,” he said quietly. “How about dinner? Would you like to come on Friday?” There was a sheepish lilt to his voice.

“Yes, sure. Where?”

“Well, Madam Dean and Mr. Dean are away for a few days and I have their well-appointed home in Point Grey to housesit. Wanna come over?” He gave me the address. Before he got off the phone, he said, “By the way, Bill and I are no longer an item. That ended a couple of days after the party.”

“Ah,” I replied. Now I understood why Bill had seemed curiously subdued in the last month, not coming by my desk to chat and flirt in his old way.

Michael’s family home was so charming, I stood for a while on the pavement outside to admire it. A two-storey house with a broadness that hinted at spacious rooms, it nonetheless had a cottage-like charm because of its greyish-blue clapboard siding, multicoloured stained-glass windows and steeply sloping slate roof with wide eaves. The fence on both sides of the house was long, and like many fences in this moist city, its slats had the water-logged
blackness of driftwood. A green creeper spilled wildly over the top, pink flowers in the tangled tendrils.