The Hungry Ghosts (54 page)

I got up, shut the door and came back to my desk.

“Son, the Immigration Appeal Division has passed my mother. Her papers will arrive in Colombo by April, then I’m hoping to go wrap things up and bring Amma back.”

I leaned forward, my elbow on the table, hand pressed to forehead, waiting to feel some reaction. Instead, as always, a hollowness opened within me.

“Son, are you still there?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Did you think she wouldn’t pass?” my mother asked gently. “Were you hoping she wouldn’t?”

“I … I don’t know what I was hoping.” Burdened as I was with my other problems, I had avoided thinking of this eventuality.

“Why don’t you mull on it a while and we can talk further, if you need to. I’m always here for you, son.” This was the tender way she spoke to me since her trip to Vancouver, believing I still kept my past hidden from Michael and pitying me.

After I put down the receiver, I swivelled my chair around and stared out at the leafless trees. I went back to work, a taut tiredness draining me, the light seeming too bright.

After some time, I glanced out the window at the Ladner Clock Tower in the distance and wondered if I should ask Michael to meet me for a coffee. I decided against it, unable to deal with whatever reaction he might have.

Rather than get a coffee in the office kitchen, I went down to the street and made my way to the Student Union Building, needing the coldness to pick me up. As I walked along, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind, I kept saying to myself, “She is coming to Toronto,” but this reality would not sink in.

Once I had got my coffee and was strolling back, I found I was thinking of that rainy afternoon in Toronto soon after I heard about my grandmother’s first stroke—how I’d stood at the bookstore counter barely able to swallow for the hardness in my throat, understanding I might never again hear her voice calling me “Puthey” in that loving tone, or feel her touch on my arm. I was filled now with that same hard ache of sadness, not for my grandmother, but for my own innocence about what lay ahead that summer in Sri Lanka. I stopped for a moment on the university’s main mall amid the chaos of students, recalling the smell of the country when I had got off the plane in Sri Lanka; recalling also how small and frail my grandmother had looked sitting in the airport lounge. I found I was also sad for her. She had waited for me with such hope.

This memory and others followed me throughout the day, and by the end of work I realized I had come to a decision; or rather, it felt like the decision had been with me for some time without my knowing and had gradually sharpened into focus, like those children’s paint books where you ran a wet
brush over a blank page and the hidden picture slowly came into view. I would go to Sri Lanka with my mother, close up our house and bring my grandmother back.

That evening, I went to join Michael at a party thrown by his instructor in fourth-year Japanese, a Ph.D. student named Satomi Tanaka. They had become good friends over the last semester. She often hosted parties for the master’s and Ph.D. students in Asian studies, and he always went early to help prepare food, grateful to be included. I resented and feared this new world Michael had created outside our relationship and generally arrived late, telling myself the parties were dull and that I was always got stuck making stilted conversation with other spouses.

Satomi lived off East Hastings, in a poorer end of town. Her three-storey, red-brick walk-up had a dark maw of a garage on the ground floor. The building’s occupants were mostly Filipino and they spent their social time in this garage. Even though it was January, the women, bundled up in old coats, were busy around a barbeque while the men tinkered away at their cars. Their cheap white plastic chairs and table had that ingrained dirtiness of furniture exposed to the winter weather. An odour of car grease and oily fishiness followed me up the stairwell. When I reached the first floor, the corridor reverberated with music from Satomi’s apartment and the boom of many voices.

She opened the door and, seeing it was me, pouted teasingly, “Shivan, why you are always so late for my parties?”

I mumbled some excuse and she shook her head, tutting as if I were a favourite wayward nephew. “Michael,” she yelled towards the kitchen, taking hold of my arm as if afraid I might bolt.

“What?” he shouted back in the faux-rude manner they used with each other, like a cantankerous married couple.

Satomi’s pout grew more pronounced. She shook her head at me to say he was being a naughty boy, then pulled me after her to the kitchen. On the way, various people stopped me to shake hands or pat my back. Michael was leaning over a pot of noodle soup, checking its taste. “Your Shivan is here,” Satomi said reprovingly.

“Oh, hi, honey,” Michael cried brightly. He kissed me effusively, which always made Satomi beam and was, I felt, the reason he was so affectionate.
I could not figure out what he had told her, because she betrayed nothing. Nonetheless, I resented her for what she might know.

Michael returned to his cooking and waved for me to make myself at home. I went to join the other students in the living room, some cross-legged on rush mats, others on the futon couch and Salvation Army chairs. Their lives were insular, and at parties they mashed over the same tedious subjects. Tonight they were discussing one of the department’s secretaries, how she had grown even more erratic now that she was in the middle of a divorce. They had come upon her yelling on the phone at her ex-husband, her lawyer, even a credit agency.

I had heard all this gossip a few times and dropped wearily into a faded armchair by a half-open window.

Their discussion about the secretary grew more animated, and now Michael came out to add his story, also told many times before, of how he had continued to believe the various excuses she gave for her black eyes and bruises. His narration was over-animated, his nerdy laugh more pronounced. It dismayed me to see him so eager to fit in, as did his friendship with Satomi, whose fake, kittenish manner made her, in my estimation, unworthy of him. Their faux-rude manner was, I felt, more an indication of superficiality than any real intimacy. As I watched Michael, I thought how the decision I’d made would save not just me but also him. “Oh, Michael,” the students yelled as he finished his story, “so naive and gullible, so sweet.”

A breeze from the Pacific Ocean was coming in through the window. In the past I had loved that odour, which reminded me of cool wet seaweed, but now I was impatient with it, eager not to smell it again for a while.

Once we were finally walking to catch our bus on East Hastings, I told Michael the news from my mother but left out my decision to return, as I dreaded his reaction. He gave me a quick glance but said nothing, exhausted and glum as always from his act of good humour.

Later, when we were watching television, which we often did to wind down after a party, he said, gazing at the screen, “Well, I suppose you will be going to Toronto at some point to see your grandmother.”

“Yes, I … I guess I will. It’s a chance to make up with her. I need to do that, Michael. It will be good for me—for us, too.”

He rolled his eyes, dismissing its benefits to him.

“My poor mother. I pity her having to close up my grandmother’s life over there. Sunil Maama is getting older and anyway isn’t very competent. She doesn’t know about contracts and repairs the way I do. Then I worry about her Tamil surname. Renu told me she’s had frequent difficulties with soldiers at checkpoints. She has no male escort as she goes about the city.”

He was scrutinizing my face, and I continued, picking at the cushion in my lap. “My grandmother has already sold our house, but she’s kept what is called a life interest. It’s hers for as long as she lives in it. Once she goes, it will be destroyed and flats built there. So the furniture has to be sold, an auctioneer hired, Rosalind pensioned off, the—”

“You’re thinking of going back.”

“I … yes, I’m considering it.” I shoved the cushion away, realizing I had pulled a long thread out of its embroidery.

Michael switched off the television. After a moment, he rubbed his eyes fiercely, then was still. “Why do you have to go back? All that is past. Put it behind you and move on.”

“But you can’t just put things like that behind you, Michael. I must come to terms with her, with everything that happened, otherwise I, we, will never move on.”

Michael sat back on the sofa, his mouth slightly agape, as if exhausted. “What if she doesn’t forgive you?”

“She must, she will.”

Yet he saw I had not allowed myself to consider the alternative. “Don’t be too sure. She wouldn’t even pose for a photograph.”

“No, no, she will forgive me.”

“But what if she doesn’t?” He stood up, strode towards the balcony as if intending to go out, then changed his mind and came to stand behind a wing chair, elbows resting on top. “I am issuing you an ultimatum. If you go and she doesn’t forgive you, don’t come back to me.”

I laughed in disbelief.

“No, I mean it. You take that risk if you go.”

“So you really don’t want me to visit Sri Lanka?”

“Do whatever you like. But that is my condition. I am sick of taking the consequences of your actions. I don’t want you coming back a wreck and burdening me anymore.”

“Michael …” I got up and went towards him, but he backed away.

“And what does your mother, your sister, think of all this?”

“I haven’t told them yet.”

“Yes, because they will also tell you this is a foolish idea. To think you can make up with your grandmother and solve everything in three weeks, it’s ridiculous. A waste of time and money.”

He stormed off to the bedroom, but I did not follow. His doubts and challenges had destabilized me.

The next time I was alone, I telephoned my mother and told her my decision, anxious to know her thoughts. She was silent.

“Aren’t you happy I want to go back? Isn’t this what you’ve wanted for me?”

“Yes, yes, of course, son.”

“You don’t sound glad.”

“It’s just a bit of a shock, as you can imagine. Anyway,” she added, “you’ve called at a slightly bad time. David has just arrived to take me out for dinner.”

I wasn’t sure I believed this, but I let her off the phone. I lay on the sofa, arms folded tightly to my chest, my unease like the tremor from a distant explosion. “I am trying, trying so hard, and she can’t even stand by me,” I muttered, angry now at my mother.

Renu called me at the office the next day to find out if the news was true. “Why are you suddenly wanting to go back, Shivan?” she demanded. “What has happened?”

“Nothing.”

“You told Michael!” When I didn’t respond, she said gently, “Oh, Shivan, I’m so sorry. We had hoped telling him would be the right thing to do. Why hasn’t it helped?”

“I don’t know, Renu,” I replied plaintively, “I don’t know.”

I shut my office door, then told her everything that had happened and how Michael barely spoke to me since I had suggested returning to Sri Lanka. “Promise you won’t tell Amma,” I begged. “I don’t want her to know.”

“No, no,” Renu said kindly, “I’ll keep your secret.”

“But don’t you see. This is why I have to go back and set all that right. So things can be good for Michael and me.”

“Yes … I suppose so.”

“Ah, Renu, can’t you back me on this? Do you think I want to return? To face her? But I’m trying, I’m trying everything, and no one will support me. Not you, not Amma, not Michael.”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, Shivan. I do support you, I really do.” But I could hear the lack of conviction in her voice.

When I got off the phone, I looked out my window at the students passing below. My sister’s skepticism had heightened that tremor of unease. I wanted to be angry at her but couldn’t, given her sympathy. “It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks,” I told myself. “I know what I’m doing is right.”

I had expected my mother would call back that day to discuss my plan further, but there was no word from her. Instead, I got to work the next morning to find she had left a message with the number for Suvara Travels in Scarborough and her travel agent’s name. “He is expecting you might get in touch, Shivan,” she said, then added, “Son, I don’t know what is going on in your life and Renu will not tell me. But I suspect all is not well. Anyway, you must decide what is best. I will not interfere and will support whatever decision you make.”

Her backing should have quieted that tremor, but it didn’t. Instead I felt grim as I telephoned Suvara Travels, as if forcing myself to do an unpleasant task.

When I informed Michael about the ticket, he picked at his fingernails for a moment, then said, “I’m serious about my condition. If you don’t reconcile, I don’t want you back here.”

“I’m trying, Michael,” I cried, no longer caring to placate him. “It’s not my fault if she rejects me. It’s not my fault for trying.”

He shrugged, lips pressed together tightly.

“My mother supports me, my sister too. Why can’t you? What are you so scared of anyway? You surely don’t think I’ll end up moving to Toronto to be with her, do you?”

He gave me a troubled look, and I laughed. “You think I’m going to give up all this,” I waved my hand to encompass our apartment and English Bay, “for my mother’s shitty basement?” I pressed his arm. “And mostly, how could I give you up?” Yet this tenderness did not touch him, and he moved his arm away.

In the weeks that passed, I began to make little preparations towards my trip, buying some shorts and T-shirts at a pre–March break sale, going down to
our storage locker to bring up my old suitcases and check their condition. I made sure to inform Michael of all this, to show him my purchases, explain my plans while over there. He reacted stonily, but I told myself he needed to know, ignoring the undertone of aggression in my forcing him to listen to these preparations. He found many excuses to be angry at me, but I did not rise to his goading. I was doing the right thing; this was the way to save us.

During my lunch break now, or sometimes after work, I visited the university library, where I’d discovered they got the Sri Lankan
Daily News
. I knew already that a new government had been elected under Chandrika Kumaratunga, the widow of the assassinated actor turned politician Vijaya Kumaratunga, and that there had been a ceasefire accord between the government and the Tigers. Now I learnt that the accord was already under threat, each side accusing the other of bad faith. With the beginning of a new era, a new government, the papers were full of reflections on the recent bloody past. The JVP, who seemed so indomitable during my summer in Sri Lanka seven years ago, had been obliterated by the government forces. They had lost the sympathy of the poorer classes, who bore the brunt of their killings, curfews and other edicts. They had also made the fatal error of targeting families of policemen and soldiers, thus galvanizing the forces against them. By the time the JVP were destroyed, forty thousand people had been killed, a generation of young men and women decimated by both sides.