Atul was waiting in the arrivals lounge. He was tall, lean and wiry, with a grey-speckled beard. A mole adorned his lower lip, and he was totally bald. Lauren surveyed him for physical similarities to herself. She found nothing.
‘Lauren,’ he said, smiling.
Should she hug him? Shake hands? How exactly did you greet the father you’d never seen before?
‘I’ll take that,’ he said, reaching over to pick up Lauren’s bag. The effort seemed to unbalance him, and for a moment he teetered. Lauren stuck her arm out.
‘I’m fine,’ he said.
‘I can carry it,’ said Lauren. ‘Honestly.’
‘I’m fine,’ he repeated, but Lauren noticed his shallow panting as they made their way to the carpark.
***
His message had arrived two weeks ago. Hello, Lauren, this is Atul Kapoor. I’m calling to invite you to Wellington. Perhaps you’d like to visit me this summer…
‘He’s a selfish bastard,’ her mother had said. ‘It’s a ploy.’
‘A ploy for what?’ Lauren had asked.
Later, she would look back and realize that she’d accepted Atul’s invitation mainly out of loneliness. She’d grown sick of the banal pattern of her life—the nights spent in front of the television; the long, protracted silences. With the arrival of Atul’s message, some part of Lauren had begun to entertain a hope that she might move in with him; that she might, at sixteen, finally feel part of a real family.
‘He’s a philanderer,’ her mother had said, in parting. ‘You wait and watch. He’s probably got illegitimate children stuffed up his kitchen cupboards.’
***
In the car, Atul played Cyndi Lauper. He told Lauren that he lived in Miramar, on the peninsula. On the way there Lauren closed her eyes, relishing the sound of the sea.
‘What’s it like?’ she asked him.
He glanced at her. ‘What?’
‘Living next to all this water.’
‘A-ma-zing,’ he said.
Inside Atul’s flat, the walls were a seaweed green. The place was small, the furniture all pressed together. The strobe lights in the living room were the only sign of extravagance. Atul spent most of the day upstairs, but in the evening he cooked for her: lamb biryani and microwaved poppadum. There was something about having a meal with another person—the intimacy of it—that Lauren loved. Her mother rarely cooked. Most of the time Lauren ate microwaved dinners alone. Her mother, who came home after eleven, would eat the leftovers while reading case briefs.
Atul was different. He was animated, attentive to everything Lauren said. When he laughed his whole body curved in on itself, his head dipping so low that it almost touched the plate.
‘Why’d you shave off your hair?’ asked Lauren.
He smiled at her. ‘Hair is annoying.’
***
The next morning, Atul made her two burritos for breakfast.
‘Eat quickly,’ he said. ‘I want to show you the art room.’
As Lauren ate, he swallowed two coloured pills from a bottle.
‘What sort of stuff do you paint?’ asked Lauren.
‘I used to be really into surrealist stuff,’ he said. ‘At art school they called me the brown Magritte.’
Lauren had no idea who Magritte was.
‘Quickly, quickly!’ sang Atul, pointing to the food.
Lauren stuffed the remaining burrito into her mouth, startled by the urgency in his voice.
He led her up a short, cramped flight of stairs. By the time they reached the top he was panting again. This time the sound startled Lauren, unsettled her.
He said: ‘Close your eyes.’
She did. Shutting her eyes reminded her of Christmases at her grandparents’ home in Bucklands Beach. She remembered the somnolent purring of the cat, the early morning light filtering into the living room, the syrupy Christmas films that they’d watch together afterwards.
Her mother was never present in these memories. Her mother took on clients right through the holiday period, and if she wasn’t working on Christmas day, she was usually asleep.
‘Open your eyes,’ said Atul softly.
Lauren did, and saw that they were standing in a room full of canvases. There were some paintings of the sea, of the winding road that they had travelled across to reach Atul’s flat. Mostly there were just paintings of people. In one corner there was an oil painting of a girl. With a start, Lauren recognized her own blunt features.
‘Is that me?’ she asked in wonder.
Atul smiled. ‘It’s not finished yet,’ he said.
***
That night, he asked if she’d ever done weed. She looked at him to see whether he was joking. His face was completely serious.
He went over to the kitchen cabinet, pulled upon a cupboard, and produced a plastic box of brownies.
‘My stash,’ he said, grinning. ‘Care to join me?’
Nervousness pooled in Lauren’s stomach and then, hot on the heels of that, a feeling of rebelliousness. She imagined her mother’s shocked face. In the end, it was the deliciousness of that vision which impelled her to agree.
Atul led the way back to the art room. Dusk was falling, but he didn’t turn on the lights. The two of them sat side by side on the floor. Lauren took a brownie and bit into it.
‘I wonder what your mother would say about this,’ said Atul, after a while. Lauren could hear the smile in his voice.
‘She’d ask rhetorical questions,’ said Lauren. ‘Lauren Young, are you aware that you are breaching the Misuse of Drugs Act?’
Atul burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Lorraine. Oh God, she was delightful. I think she was the smartest woman I ever slept with.’
The absurdity of the comment set Lauren off. Soon they were both in paroxysms, falling against one another in the darkness.
‘But no, seriously,’ said Atul, gasping for breath. ‘A Shortland Street lawyer. Your mother has done well for herself, hasn’t she?’
‘Sure,’ said Lauren. ‘So well that I never see her bloody face.’
The bitterness in her own voice surprised her. Wasn’t it because of her mother that she was able to live the life that she did? There were plenty of fatherless kids at Lauren’s high school, and she’d seen enough of them to picture the route her own life might have taken. Still, she resented her mother; resented the many nights, growing up, that she’d spent at her grandparents’ home.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Atul. ‘I’ve said something I shouldn’t have.’
Lauren didn’t know if it was the cannabis, but she felt, suddenly, a strange kinship with Atul. She felt a giddy delight. It did not matter that she did not know who Magritte was. It did not matter that she did not have Atul’s lovely dark skin, his black hair.
‘Can I live here with you?’ she asked abruptly. She had not planned to ask him so soon, but the words seemed to burst from her, almost against her will.
There was a long pause. Then Atul turned to look at her, his face inscrutable.
‘Lauren,’ he said, ‘there’s something you should know.’
He told her that he had lung cancer. He told her that he’d refused treatment. He told her all of this in a soft, matter-of-fact voice, as if he was announcing the next day’s lunch menu.
Lauren stared at the wall. She felt numbness and then, overwhelmingly, anger. He had invited her into his life only to announce its end. The neatness of the operation—the finality of it—incensed her.
‘How long?’ she asked, finally.
Atul shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It could be three months, a year.’
She got to her feet.
‘Wait,’ he said. He went over to the far wall and picked up the painting of Lauren. ‘I finished it last night. I want you to have it.’
Lauren hefted the canvas. Yesterday it had looked small, deceptively slight. It was only now, when she held it, that she realized how heavy it really was.
‘Atul’ is previously unpublished.
Nithya Narayanan is pursuing a BA/LLB (Hons) at the University of Auckland, where she is also Co-Editor-in-Chief for Interesting journal. She has completed two creative writing courses with distinction at the New Zealand Writers’ College. Her poetry and essays have previously appeared in Starling, Mayhem, Minarets, NZ Poetry Shelf and Best New Zealand Poems 2019. She was one of the Epigraph Project’s featured writers in 2020.