Anup had texted me earlier that he wanted to cook me dinner, but when I arrived at his place, he wasn’t even there yet. He’d had to work late. We got takeout. It wasn’t terribly good, but we were both hungry enough and worn out enough that it didn’t much matter.
I had a splitting headache again, and couldn’t find any Tylenol in my bag. I asked Anup for some. “It’s your concussion,” he said, “and the earthquake was like three weeks ago. I keep telling you, you have got to go back to the doctor, get a scan—”
“It’s been too long to blame this headache on that. I have a headache because...well, because lawyers.”
“Because lawyers?”
“Lawyers and John Does.”
I told him all about my search for John Doe #15’s identity, about chasing down the orthopedic surgeon with the bad attitude, and then all about Natalie Haring and her attorney ambush that turned into a catastrophe of shouted accusations, unhinged violence, and forcible restraint.
“Ugh. Every lawyer I know has had a nightmare client like your architect’s wife,” Anup said. “I guarantee she’s told them that she’s paying the bills, so she runs the show. She won’t listen to reason and they can’t say no to her. Douglas Berwick, in the flesh, on short notice...? You know how much that meeting must have cost?”
“Don’t tell me.”
Anup got that thousand-yard prosecutor’s stare I’d seen before. “They really want to see this guy go down for it. If he’s acquitted, then the insurance company—companies—might find grounds to refuse payment on the policies. If that happens, and the architecture firm goes belly-up, then the lawyers will never see a red cent of their fees. If, on the other hand, the policies pay out, then the lawyers get paid, too.”
“You think they might’ve been getting ready to offer me a bribe, before Oskar barged in?”
“No way.”
“That’s too bad. I could do with a nice juicy bribe.”
Anup’s expression turned grim. “Oskar sounds dangerous.”
“Yeah, well. All three of them are more than a little off.”
“You should’ve got out of there the minute he showed up. You put yourself in these hazardous situations—”
“Oskar is not a psychopath, Anup. He’s bipolar. People with bipolar disorder are not any more dangerous than any of the rest of us.”
“Tell that to the people with ice packs on their bruises. Why’d you even agree to show up at that meeting—?”
“I wanted to get the body out of my morgue.”
“And did you?”
He was getting under my skin. “What do you care?”
Anup stood, exasperated, and started collecting the takeout boxes. “Jessie, seriously. Your job is to do autopsies. Go do them, then do your paperwork and come home.”
I got up, too, and banged some dishes around, clearing them. “Don’t you tell me how to do my job, okay? It means a lot to me.”
“Apparently.”
“Yours doesn’t?”
“Mine isn’t dangerous. And yours shouldn’t be! How many concussions has Ted Nguyen had from climbing around a collapsed bridge till a piece of it landed on his head?”
“That again...? Give it up, will you. And, for the record, you couldn’t pick a worse example of a happy professional living his best life than Sunshine Ted.”
“You have to set boundaries in your work life. Do you want me getting a call from Dr. Howe one day, telling me that you’re dead because you—”
“Anup—!”
“I’m serious! You go out and pull these stunts, and you get hurt. No job is worth that.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Yes, it is! I apply my skills and training in the law to the job that fits the situation in life I find myself in, whatever that is. If the situation changes, I find a new job. But you...? Your job is a crusade. It’s messing with your life.”
“Thanks for your concern. I can take care of myself.”
“Yeah? How’s your headache?”
I was tired of arguing. I rifled through his kitchen utensil drawer and found a way to change the subject.
“Where do you keep the turkey baster?”
“Why?”
“For the turkey, Anup. I want to make sure we have all the tools we need, and that they’re lined up properly when we start the Thanksgiving cooking. Which we’d better do soon. We can get all the pies and most of the side dishes done and into the fridge, and then we only need to heat them up while the bird is in the oven...”
Something was wrong. He wasn’t tuning in. At all.
“Anup?”
“I’ve told you—I don’t want to talk about Thanksgiving, okay?”
“It’s a week away! We have to get started with—”
“Not right now.”
“Then when? What is going on, Anup?”
He sat down again. Anup Banerjee, in his crisp lavender shirt, conservative sky blue tie gently loosened, his lightweight wool blazer hanging neatly across the chair. Not a crease on him. Not on his clothes, anyhow.
“It’s my parents,” he said.
“What about them?”
“They aren’t coming.”
“What...? Why not?”
“I haven’t invited them.”
I was floored.
“You... But, it’s a week from this Thursday. You know that. So why haven’t you...?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“This is just like Diwali. You’re...ashamed of me.”
Anup whipped around, all false surprise and feigned assurance. “No! No, of course not, Jessie. I love you.”
“Then why are you... Why don’t you want me to cook a meal for your parents, sit down, and get to know them?”
“It’s not you. I just don’t think my parents...”
“What?”
“My parents aren’t big on Thanksgiving.”
“Bullshit.”
Anup had told me before that his family always had a relaxed, stress-free Thanksgiving, enjoying the turkey and stuffing in front of the television, watching the parades. His mother called it “the American holiday.” I remembered that distinctly—because my mamusia called it the same thing, and approached the day with the same attitude. We had joked about it, both of us wondering if it was in the Immigrant Handbook or something.
I moved around to sit beside him. “I’ve already ordered the turkey. It’s off a free-range farm in Sonoma, never been frozen. It has a name, Anup.”
He was shifting his gaze off. I wanted to grab him by the ears and force him to face me.
“We’ve been working on this together for weeks. I thought we were working on it together, anyway.”
Anup looked miserable. He still said nothing.
“You really are ashamed of me.”
Finally he met my eyes. “I’m not,” he said.
After that, I was the one who had to look away. I didn’t want him to see how much he had hurt me. He was lying.
“Look, my parents are...conservative. There are things about the way I live my life that they disapprove of. I don’t want to get you mixed up in the issues I have with them.”
“I’m one of the things they disapprove of. That’s what you’re telling me.”
“That’s not it, Jessie! It’s not about you—it’s about them.”
“It’s because I’m not Indian.”
His big dark eyes went wide. It shocked him that I would say it out loud. Jesus—after eight months of the deepest intimacy, Anup Banerjee didn’t know me at all.
“How could you say that?”
“How could I...? Am I wrong? It’s because I’m not Indian, and you don’t even want to admit that to yourself.”
“For once it’s not about you, okay?”
“Then what is it? I’m a doctor. Your parents are doctors. I’m not married. Neither are you. I love you and you love me. So what is so shameful about this woman you love, that you don’t want to bring her home to the folks?”
“You really want to know?” He wasn’t trying to shift his eyes anymore, and a fire had come to them. “It’s questions like that! No filter. You just open your damn mouth and let whatever’s in there pop out, without thinking about the consequences—the collateral damage to people around you when you drop those bombs.”
“I drop bombs? When were you planning to drop yours on me? When were you going to tell me you’ve been lying to your parents about us, that you aren’t ever going to let them meet me. Either you’re stone blind or a fucking coward, take your pick!”
“Go ahead, make my point for me! You’re right—I don’t want my parents exposed to your temper tantrums. They wouldn’t be understanding about it, let me tell you.”
“You don’t like the way I talk, huh...? Tough shit. And that’s rich, coming from a guy who never says the hard things.”
“Untrue.”
“Look where we are right now! You always have to control the narrative, like you’re still in court. Always put together, always on guard, like someone is watching you, even when it’s just the two of us. At least now I know why—your parents are watching you, from inside your own goddamn skull! And here you’ve been, lying by omission all this time, to all of us. You want to protect your poor, impressionable parents from me? Then what kind of woman do you want, Anup?”
“Not this kind, I know that much!”
“Good for you.”
Part of me, the spiteful, whole-truth part, wanted to throw Denis Monaghan in his face. I didn’t, though. I wouldn’t. There was no point. I had slept with Monaghan because another part of me, the buried part that knows the truth before the rest does, had seen on the night of the Lakshmi puja that my life with Anup Banerjee was already over. Anup was never going to choose me over his family if his family was telling him that his love for me was wrong.
But he hadn’t even made that choice! If he was telling me the truth, then he was working off a set of assumptions about his parents—that they would reject me because I wasn’t the right kind of girl for their son.
“Anup—have your parents told you they don’t approve of me?”
“They don’t have to. I know them. You don’t.”
“Not for lack of trying! You’ve kept me away from them, and them from me. You’re trying to protect us from each other, right? That’s so fucking stupid—”
“There you go again—”
“Fuck you, I’m angry. I deserve to be! You’re putting your family—or your idea of your family—ahead of you and me. Why can’t you be a little selfish, just once? Just for shits and giggles, Anup, give it a try. Stop shielding your parents from me, with my foul mouth, warts and all. Stop trying to take care of all of us. Let’s see what happens!”
He was furious. So furious that, for once, it showed. He spoke in a strangled snarl. “That’s so easy for you to say, isn’t it. Like you would know what it’s like to walk in my shoes. How can I even begin to...? You don’t know them, and it’s clear you don’t know me, either. You don’t know what it’s like.”
“Go ahead, pick a fight with me. Has it not occurred to you that maybe they’d be happy to hear you aren’t as lonely as they probably think you are?”
I gave up. It wasn’t my job to tell a grown man how to talk to his goddamn parents.
Anup said nothing. That was enough for me. He had pulled on the prosecutor’s inscrutable mask. Before we were lovers, back when he was an assistant district attorney, Anup had cross-examined me in court. At that moment, I felt like I was back on the witness stand, the only one in the room who was sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.
I went to the bathroom and took my toothbrush out of the glass on the sink, then to the front hall and grabbed a shopping bag. I went to the bedroom and collected the clothing I’d left there for the mornings when I’d spent the night and wanted to go right to work. There wasn’t much.
Anup hadn’t moved from the kitchen table. “The wok,” he said, when I came back, bag in hand.
“What?”
He nodded to the pot rack hanging over the kitchen island. “The brass wok. It belongs to you. You bought it at that place on Grant Street, remember...?”
“You can keep the fucking wok,” I said.
His laugh made my hair stand up. It was short—but boy, was it nasty. “You think you can just waltz into my family and be your own authentic self, right? Well, you can’t. You won’t fit in—and you and I both know you won’t change, either. This won’t work. I don’t see how it can work.”
He rose and took the wok down off the pot rack. “I don’t want anything from you,” he said, and handed it to me.
Anup and I spent a long moment separately scanning the apartment for my other stray belongings. I found a couple of small things—house slippers, a half-read novel—and added them to the plastic shopping bag. He pointed out an expensive candle I’d bought at the Berkeley farmers market, and handed me that, too. As a reflex I thanked him, and a bitter taste came to my mouth.
“I’m sorry, Jessie,” he said. “I have to—”
“You don’t mean that.”
“What?”
“Sorry. You don’t mean that. You’re never sorry about anything.”
“Fine. Whatever. It doesn’t matter anymore. I have to think about my family. I’m the only son they have. We can’t make this work.”
I nodded. “We aren’t trying to. Good for you, though, finally having the guts to tell me the truth.”
Anup Banerjee opened his mouth to get the last word in, like he always does, but then just shut it and shook his head. I dropped my key to his apartment on the kitchen table. Then I walked out. He closed the door behind me. Neither of us said goodbye.