Several times even before we’d reached the luggage belt, Abhay insisted that he regretted his decision to fly back immediately to Wellington after seeing off Ashim and Tulti, just so his ticket wouldn’t be wasted. He shouldn’t have cared, he remonstrated with himself, and instead should have hired another car; the extra time driving back would have been exactly what he needed. On the same walk from the gate with Mira on his shoulders he also told me without preamble or detail that Aranya had died back in 2012.
When I pointed out (and this was insensitive, I agree, I don’t know what prompted me to say it: perhaps it was that Mira had been greatly looking forward to seeing her Baba and he’d hardly paid her any attention) that he might have just been drawn to the romantic image of himself driving and grieving and actually wasn’t this a time to draw closer to one’s family, he snapped and said the driving wasn’t the point; he could just as well have spent an extra day in Auckland. What he needed was time alone.
‘I had — no, make that have — just found out my sister’s dead, Lena. Maybe I need a period to absorb that before I plunge back into chasing after Mira on her bike around Karori Park.’ This was the plan Mira had announced to welcome Baba home as soon as they were reunited — let’s have a bike ride around the park and go for ice blocks afterwards.
Abhay had put Mira down and she was standing by the carousel looking out for Baba’s dark-green bag. She overheard Baba’s reluctance and turned around to confirm that we were still going ahead with her plan. I said maybe we’ll drop Baba home because he’s had a busy five days and an early start this morning. Mira was not happy with this suggestion, at which point — apparently oblivious not just to his four-year-old child but to the other passengers standing around as well — Abhay knelt down and angrily informed Mira that her aunt had died in India and he’d just heard the news which was why he wasn’t in the mood for running after her or ice blocks.
I confess I wasn’t reacting well to Abhay either. I picked Mira up and suggested that he take a taxi home. Mira and I would go to the park directly from the airport. This way Abhay could have a bit more time by himself, and maybe find a better way to tell Mira that a relative of hers had died.
With that we headed off, and I also admit that my actions confused Mira even more, because she didn’t want to leave her father alone at the airport. Hadn’t the whole point been to meet him and then all go to the park together to have fun?
‘Baba’s a bit upset, sweetheart, because he’s just found out that his sister died a few years ago. He didn’t know, and Ashim Jethu just told him.’ And that’s when the deeper reason for my irritability hit me (the exact opposite, of course, of what I would have expected of myself as a response to Abhay’s grief ) — I was enraged at Ashim! He’d waited for the very end, and when Abhay was alone, to slap him with this news. You thought your plate could hold no more guilt or shame? Clear that away, mate, you’re going to need the entire table for this one. You didn’t even care to find out, and you weren’t important enough to me to be told, that your sister died three years ago. That is what I think of you, and of course you know it’s all your fault.
(Why do I feel slightly ashamed of the vehemence of these reactions as I write them down? Elaborated this way, they seem like my own immediate deflection strategy — face away from the enormity of what you’ve just learnt by being annoyed at Abhay for not looking happy to see us, for being short and insensitive with Mira, and above all by being absolutely enraged at the messenger, who is after all only reminding his brother that he never once wrote or called his siblings in a decade and a half, otherwise he would certainly have found out about his sister much earlier. He needn’t even have kept in touch with Ashim if that made him uncomfortable — Abhay had known Aranya was missing, and could have called Praveen or his nephew and niece directly at any point during these past six years. They would have kept him informed throughout.
And you, Lena, you too are guilty of just getting on with the life in front of you, and never truly insisting to Abhay that he should try to heal this rift in his family. This is also an implication you’re angry about.)
Even though I wasn’t in the right shoes, keeping up with Mira around the park did me good. It helped me refocus on Abhay and everything he’d been put through the previous four weeks, the head-fucking and the mind-games. And most of it — this manipulation, I mean — I wouldn’t even have witnessed, I reminded myself, sitting beside Mira and her dripping bubble-gum ice block on the park bench. Not only the bullshit of these previous five days but also when I would have been at work, when it was just the brothers and the girls out and about. I was sure no part of Ashim had held back then, or been scrupled in any way about needling Abhay. All this he would already have been reeling from after having seen them off, but Ashim had saved the cruellest thrust for last.
I suppose there’s another small confession to get out of the way in the interests of full disclosure, despite the embarrassment involved. I had prepared a little welcome-home present for Abhay myself, to celebrate finally having him back to ourselves, and I’d planned to whisper about it at the airport, so that more than any ice block it would have been at the front of his mind on all the laps around the park, and for the rest of the evening until after Mira’s bedtime. I had shaved exactly as he liked it, and was wearing some of his favourite tiny underwear, and that’s the other shallow reason for my ill-judged response: I had wanted to tease him and welcome him and also apologise for not coming along to the Coromandel and Auckland (even though Ashim had become genuinely unbearable for me), and wasn’t at all prepared for the mood in which Abhay had landed, where he seemed almost annoyed with himself for being back with Mira and me.
Anyhow, I was in a much better frame of mind when we got home from the park, ready for a second take at welcoming him, except we were greeted by his dark-green bag which he’d deposited on the bedroom carpet before apparently taking off without a note or text or any concern that Mira had missed him these past five days and wanted to play with him, as well as ask about Tulti. And by the time it was 10.30, which is when he eventually returned — after having had his phone off the entire evening even though I called him three times, the last message letting him know that Mira was staying up an extra half-hour just to have story-time with him — shaven pussies, tiny g-strings or even apologies for having pulled out of the trip had all receded to distant corners of my mind. I wasn’t even especially mindful of Aranya’s death just then, I’m ashamed to admit; all I was thinking was what a pathetic thing to pull on the people who love you most: a cheap stunt copied from the very prick who just a few days ago used it on you! This piece-of-crap disappearing act! Really, Abhay? Are we going to have this sort of shit around here now as a legacy of that asshole’s visit?
Turned out I hadn’t imagined the half of it. At eleven that night, after having a shower and pouring us both a whisky, Abhay announced that he had decided to look for a flat just for himself.