The Hungry Ghosts (50 page)

27
 

M
Y SISTER’S ROOM, WHICH
I
HAVE FINISHED
dusting and tidying, has its old furniture still in place. Many of her books are on the shelves, her white duvet, with its whimsical pattern of rainbows and sunbursts, still on her bed. In the closet she has left some summer clothes. A new robe and pyjamas hang from a hook, new Bata slippers sit by her bed, a jar filled with American coins waits on the desk. When I leave, I stop to gaze across the landing at what will be my grandmother’s bedroom, recalling how my mother, the first time she took me around the house to show off the renovations, hurried ahead and closed that door.

As I start downstairs to continue my cleaning, a line from the blind monk Chakkupala’s tale is with me:
Like a leopard stalking its prey through tall grass, a man’s past life pursues him, waiting for the right moment to pounce
.

Just last year, in the summer of 1994, only weeks after Michael and I celebrated our second anniversary together, my mother called to announce that she and Renu were coming to Vancouver. Simon Fraser University was having a conference on gender, race and migration in late July, and at the last minute Renu had decided to attend. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen each other, Shivan,” my mother said briskly into my stunned silence. “Nearly six years, can you imagine? I feel responsible, I should have come and visited a long time ago. Michael is so important to you, and I have never even met him. Yes, yes, it’s good we come.” When my silence continued, she gave me the dates of their arrival and departure. They would be staying a week. There was a defensive, injured tone in her vigour, as if she was aware she was imposing
but determined to do so anyway. “Are you writing down what I’m saying?” she demanded.

I reached obediently for a pad and pen. “What was your flight again?”

She repeated the information, then said, “Can you accommodate us? If not, we can get a room on campus. Renu has looked into it. But we’re quite happy to sleep on a pull-out couch, or even the floor if you have sleeping bags.”

There was another significant pause. She was waiting for my invitation. “Of course,” I blurted, “yes, you can stay with us.”

“Thank you, son,” she said, her voice softening.

She moved on, tone brisk again, to tell me about a recent retreat she and David had attended in Northern Ontario. As she prattled on about all they had done, the people she had met, the stunning vistas of lake and forest, I could feel my suspicion growing. This visit was prompted by something else; the symposium was merely an excuse.

After she finished telling me about the retreat, my mother hurried on to the latest news about Renu. She was in the process of completing her Ph.D. and would soon be applying for academic jobs. My mother had been to see her the previous week and complained that Renu was “in a constant snit,” stressed by having to finish her doctorate. “And she eats rubbish, Shivan, utter rubbish. You should see her refrigerator, not a vegetable or salad leaf in it. If I didn’t visit and cook up meals and freeze them, she would vanish into thin air or get scurvy.

“But, aiyo, where did the time get to?” my mother finally cried, as if I had kept her. “David will be around in a couple of hours, and I still haven’t baked the cookies for today’s meditation class. Goodbye, goodbye.”

Once I put down the phone, I went to stand on our balcony, still stunned by the news. Elbows resting on the railing, I gazed out unseeing. After a few minutes, I returned to the living room and began to walk among its furniture, picking up objects and putting them down. It was impossible to imagine my mother and sister here, seated on the sofa, eating at the dining table with our plates and cutlery; impossible to imagine taking them around Vancouver, past the familiar markers of my new life.

I was still wandering the apartment when Michael got back.

“Hello,” I called out, stopping abruptly by the coffee table, arms by my sides as if caught doing something illicit. He gave me a curious look, put his
grocery bags on the floor and went to remove his light summer jacket and shoes. I followed.

“My mother and sister are coming to visit.”

He turned around startled. Frowning at me, he continued to slip off his jacket. “When?”

“Late July. My sister wants to attend a conference at Simon Fraser’s downtown campus. She decided at the last minute. They will be staying here. Is that okay?”

He nodded, then asked again, “When do they arrive?”

“Late July,” I repeated. “So, is it really okay I invited them to stay, Michael? I sort of couldn’t avoid it. My mother asked.”

“Of course, Shivan.” He kissed me briefly on the lips. “Why are you even asking permission? This is your home too. I’ll look forward to having them.”

I trailed after him as he went to the kitchen with the groceries.

As we put things away, Michael glanced at me a few times, but I would not meet his eye. I knew I was being ungracious, given his generous response, so after a while I said, with a long sigh, “It’s so typical of Renu to decide like this at the last minute. Anyway, it’s time they came, I guess. I haven’t seen them in nearly six years, for goodness sake.”

“Well,” he said carefully, “I did suggest you go to Ithaca for your sister’s graduation when she got her master’s, and then to Toronto.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” I grinned at him. “You are so wise. I should call
you
Mahadana Muttha.”

He did not respond to my attempt at humour. “I think my parents have an air mattress. We must get it.”

“Great! That will do fine for them.”

He gave me a mildly amused look. “Not for them, idiot, for us. You can’t ask your mother and sister to sleep on the living room floor.” Then, as the thought struck him, “Jesus, we must get new sheets, and some guest towels too.”

“Michael,” I laughed, “take it easy. They don’t get here for a month.”

As he made dinner later that evening, I could tell from the gentle clicks of spoons in pans that Michael was not himself. I went to check on him under the pretext of getting some water. He gave me a perplexed, beseeching look to say he wanted to know what I was thinking, how I was feeling about this
reunion. But I just opened the fridge and leaned inside to get the water jug, frowning as if preoccupied.

Even though I tried hard to conceal my growing disquiet, it was obvious to Michael. We knew each other too well by now.

One evening, on the bus ride back from work, when it was our custom to catch up on the day, he took out a book of crosswords he carried around and began to fill in a puzzle.

After a moment of surprise, I realized he was sulking. I peered over his shoulder, anxious to get him out of his mood. “
Groom
. Hmm.” I counted the boxes. “Five letters. Ah, yes,
preen
.” He folded his lips with martyred patience, but wrote the word down.

“
Wrath
.” I thought for a moment and then declared, “
Ire
,” nudging him playfully to say I knew he was irritable.

“Shivan,” he said quietly, and moved the book so I could not see the page.

“Fine,” I muttered, took out a novel and pretended to be absorbed, glancing over occasionally to see if he was still sulking.

By the time we were preparing dinner, Michael was willing himself out of his bad mood, straining to be in good humour. I was desperate to please him and so took over most of the cooking, even doing the washing up, which I hated.

My anxiety finally drove me to call Renu.

After we greeted each other, we were silent. Then she said, “So, you’ve heard about us coming.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it was last-minute. My supervisor pressured me. I’m almost done this wretched Ph.D. and I need to build my resumé and schmooze. It improves my chances in the cattle fair of academic employment.”

I believed Renu, yet her slightly hangdog tone confirmed for me that the conference was also a convenient pretext for their visit. She must have sensed this, because she added sheepishly, “Amma was also keen we seize the moment. A good excuse to come. Though,” she added hastily, “of course, we don’t need an excuse to see you.”

“Of course.”

I could tell she was waiting for my prompt, and I knew that if I asked, she would tell me the real reason for this visit. But now that the opportunity was
there, I could not bring myself to take it. Six years of not talking about anything intimate had created an impossible distance between us. Our mutual dismay at this separation was palpable in the silence.

Finally, she blurted out, “I’m not sure if you know, Shivan, but Aachi had another stroke a few months ago. That is why Amma went to visit so suddenly in May.”

“I … I didn’t know.”

“It’s just one of many. The doctors say this is the way it’s going to be from now on, until a massive stroke ends it all.”

“I didn’t know,” I repeated and sat down on the bed.

“You never ask,” my sister said gently. “If you asked, we would tell you.”

“Yes, I understand. Thank you,” I replied formally, then changed the subject.

Once I got off the phone, I leaned forward, hands clasped, unable to move under the weight of desolation. When Michael came home, he found me still sitting there. “Bad news?” he asked anxiously.

I shook my head. “Just chatted with my sister.” I gave him a wry look. “I wish they weren’t coming, I really do. Why do they have to come now, after all these years?”

“I know.” He sat beside me and squeezed my hand to acknowledge that he, too, was nervous. After a moment, he gently pushed me back on the bed, and there we lay, chests rising and falling against each other, listening to the poignant chug of a motorboat out in the bay.

In the days that followed, my apprehension grew, fuelled by the certainty that my family’s visit had everything to do with my grandmother. I could not figure out what else besides the stroke they were coming to tell me, but clearly the news was so important they had to convey it in person. Sometimes, on the commute to or from work, I would catch my reflection in the bus window and realize my tongue was pressed against the inside of my cheek as if I were trying not to cry.

Michael became increasingly tense because of my distance, and our mutual anxiety reached a peak the weekend before my family came.

That Sunday morning, when we went to get the air mattress from Michael’s parents, we arrived to find a note on their hall table saying they had gone
shopping. They would return, no doubt, with great amounts of cheese, pâtés, pickles, olives and expensive bread, which they always declared impossible to finish and sent home with us. As I removed my shoes, I could smell saffron bread, a recipe from Robert’s Cornish ancestors, which he knew I liked and baked often for me.

Michael went to the basement for the mattress and sent me upstairs to borrow guest towels and sheets, having lost interest in shopping for new ones. They were kept in his old room, and when I entered, I was stopped for a moment by the sight of the sun slanting across the bed where Michael and I had first made love. I took out the linens from a drawer, put them on a chair and went to stand at the window, looking out at the mountains. Despite all the good that had happened in my life during the last two years, I found I was comparing that first time here to the first weekend Mili and I spent at Sriyani’s beach house. I had been so uncomplicatedly happy then, without the shadow of tragedy that trailed me now.

Michael had come to stand silently in the doorway, and when I turned to pick up the linen, he saw my wretchedness.

“What were you thinking about?”

“Our first weekend here,” I blurted.

His face froze, then he turned and left. “Michael,” I called, and went after him. He paused on the staircase, not looking back. “What’s wrong? I didn’t say anything wrong. It was a lovely memory.”

Before he could respond, we heard a key in the door and his parents’ voices. They came in and found us like that.

“Ah, boys,” Hilda said, with a quick glance at her husband. She slipped off her shoes.

“Look, kids!” Robert held up two grocery bags. “Food, tons of food.” Michael bounded down the stairs, brushed past his parents and went to the kitchen.