Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

  He returned home around five, and Mrs. Shaw called soon after. “If you want, you can come over now.”

  “All right,” Gopal answered. He was calm. He showered and put on a blue cotton shirt and khaki slacks. When he stepped outside, the sky was turning pink and the air smelled of wet earth. He felt young, as if he had just arrived in America and the huge scale of things had made him a giant as well.

  But when he rang Mrs. Shaw’s doorbell, Gopal became nervous. He turned around and looked at the white clouds against the enormous sky. He heard footsteps and then the door swishing open and Mrs. Shaw’s voice. “You look handsome,” she said. Gopal faced her, smiling and uncomfortable. She wore a different sweatshirt but still had on yesterday’s jogging pants. She was barefoot. A yellow light shone behind her.

  “Thank you,” Gopal said, and then nervously added “Helen,” to confirm their new relationship. “You look nice too.” She did look pretty to him. Mrs. Shaw stepped aside to let him in. They were in a large room. In the center were two pale couches forming an L, with a television in front of them. Off to the side was a kitchenette—a stove, a refrigerator, and some cabinets over a sink and counter.

  Seeing Gopal looking around, Mrs. Shaw said, “There are two bedrooms in the back, and a bathroom. Would you like anything to drink? I have juice, if you want.” She walked to the kitchen.

  “What are you going to have?” Gopal asked, following her. “If you have something, I’ll have something.” Then he felt embarrassed. Mrs. Shaw had not dressed up; obviously, “Not now” had been a polite rebuff.

  “I was going to have a gin and tonic,” she said, opening the refrigerator and standing before it with one hand on her hip.

  “I would like that too.” Gopal went close to her and with a dart kissed her on the lips. She did not resist, but neither did she respond. Her lips were chapped. Gopal pulled away and let her make the drinks. He had hoped the kiss would tell him something of what to expect.

  They sat side by side on a couch and sipped their drinks. A table lamp cast a diffused light over them.

  “Thank you for letting me borrow the lawn mower.”

  “It’s nothing.” There was a long pause. Gopal could not think of anything to say. Cosmopolitan had suggested trying to learn as much as possible about your lover, so he asked, “What’s your favorite color?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know everything about you.”

  “That’s sweet,” Mrs. Shaw said, and patted his hand. Gopal felt embarrassed and looked down. He did not know whether he should have spoken so frankly, but part of his intention had been to flatter her with his interest. “I don’t have one,” she said. She kept her hand on his.

  Gopal suddenly thought that they might make love tonight, and he felt his heart kick. “Tell me about yourself,” he said with a voice full of feeling. “Where were you born?”

  “I was born in Jersey City on May fifth, but I won’t tell you the year.” Gopal tried to grin gamely and memorize the date. A part of him was disturbed that she did not feel comfortable enough with him to reveal her age.

  “Did you grow up there?” he asked, taking a sip of the gin and tonic. Gopal drank slowly, because he knew that he could not hold his alcohol. He saw that Mrs. Shaw’s toes were painted bright red. Anita had never used nail polish, and Gopal wondered what a woman who would paint her toenails might do.

  “I moved to Newark when I was three. My parents ran a newspaper and candy shop. We sold greeting cards, stamps.” Mrs. Shaw had nearly finished her drink. “They opened at eight in the morning and closed at seven-thirty at night. Six days a week.” When she paused between swallows, she rested the glass on her knee.

  Gopal had never known anyone who worked in such a shop, and he became genuinely interested in what she was saying. He remembered his lack of interest at the Christmas party and wondered whether it was the possibility of sex that made him fascinated with Mrs. Shaw’s story. “Were you a happy child?” he asked, grinning broadly and then bringing the grin to a quick end, because he did not want to appear ironic. The half-glass that Gopal had drunk had already begun to make him feel light-headed and gray.

  “Oh, pretty happy,” she said, “although I liked to think of myself as serious. I would look at the evening sky and think that no one else had felt what I was feeling.” Mrs. Shaw’s understanding of her own feelings disconcerted Gopal and made him momentarily think that he wasn’t learning anything important, or that she was in some way independent of her past and thus incapable of the sentimental attachments through which he expected her love for him to grow.

  Cosmopolitan had recommended that both partners reveal themselves, so Gopal decided to tell a story about himself. He did not believe that being honest about himself would actually change him. Rather, he thought the deliberateness of telling the story would rob it of the power to make him vulnerable. He started to say something, but the words twisted in his mouth, and he said, “You know, I don’t really drink much.” Gopal felt embarrassed by the non sequitur. He thought he sounded foolish, though he had hoped that the story he would tell would make him appear sensitive.

  “I kind of guessed that from the juices,” she said, smiling. Gopal laughed.

  He tried to say what he had wanted to confess earlier. “I associate drinking with being American, and I haven’t been able to truly Americanize. On my daughter’s nineteenth birthday we took her to dinner and a movie, but we didn’t talk much, and the dinner finished earlier than we had expected it would. The restaurant was in a mall, and we had nothing to do until the movie started, so we wandered around Foodtown.” Gopal thought he sounded pathetic, so he tried to shift the story. “After all my years in America, I am still astonished by those huge grocery stores and enjoy walking in them. But my daughter is an American, so our wandering around in Foodtown must have been very strange for her. She doesn’t know Hindi, and her parents must seem very strange.” Gopal noticed that his heart was racing. He wondered if he was sadder than he knew.

  “That’s sweet,” Mrs. Shaw said. The brevity of her response made Gopal nervous.

  Mrs. Shaw kissed his cheek. Her lips were dry, Gopal noticed. He turned slightly so that their lips could touch. They kissed again. Mrs. Shaw opened her lips and closed her eyes. They kissed for a long time. When they pulled apart, they continued their conversation calmly, as if they were accustomed to each other. “I didn’t go into a big grocery store until I was in college,” she said. “We always went to the small shops around us. When I first saw those long aisles, I wondered what happens to the food if no one buys it. I was living then with a man who was seven or eight years older than I, and when I told him, he laughed at me, and I felt so young.” She stopped and then added, “I ended up leaving him because he always made me feel young.” Her face was only an inch or two from Gopal’s. “Now I’d marry someone who could make me feel that way.” Gopal felt his romantic feelings drain away at the idea of how many men she had slept with. But the fact that Mrs. Shaw and he had experienced something removed some of the loneliness he was feeling, and Mrs. Shaw had large breasts. They began kissing again: Soon they were tussling and groping on the floor.

  Her bed was large and low to the ground. Behind it was a window, and although the shade was drawn, the lights of passing cars cast patterns on the opposing wall. Gopal lay next to Mrs. Shaw and watched the shadows change. He felt his head and found that his hair was standing up on either side like horns. The shock of seeing a new naked body, so different in its amplitude from his wife’s, had been exciting. A part of him was giddy with this, as if he had checked his bank balance and discovered that he had thousands more than he expected. “You are very beautiful,” he said, for Cosmopolitan had advised saying this after making love. Mrs. Shaw rolled over and kissed his shoulder.

  “No, I’m not! I’m kind of fat, and my nose is strange. But thank you,” she said. Gopal looked at her and saw that even when her mouth was slack, the lines around it were deep. “You look like yo
u’ve been rolled around in a dryer,” she said, and laughed. Her laughter was sudden and confident. He had not noticed it before, and it made him laugh as well.

  They became silent and lay quietly for several minutes, and when Gopal began feeling self-conscious, he said, “Describe the first house you lived in.”

  Mrs. Shaw sat up. Her stomach bulged, and her breasts drooped. She saw him looking and pulled her knees to her chest. “You’re very thoughtful,” she said.

  Gopal felt flattered. “Oh, it’s not thoughtfulness.”

  “I guess if it weren’t for your accent, the questions would sound artificial,” she said. Gopal felt his stomach clench. “I lived in a block of small houses that the army built for returning GIs. They were all drab, and the lawns ran into each other. They were near Newark airport. I liked to sit at my window and watch the planes land. That was when Newark was a local airport.”

  “Your house was two stories?”

  “Yes. And my room was on the second floor. Tell me about yourself.”

  “I am the third of five brothers. We grew up in a small, poor village. I got my first pair of shoes when I left high school.” As Gopal was telling her the story, he remembered how he used to make Gitu feel lazy with stories of his childhood, and his voice fell. “Everybody was like us, so I never thought of myself as poor.”

  They talked this way for half an hour, with Gopal asking most of the questions and trying to discover where Mrs. Shaw was vulnerable and how this vulnerability made him attractive to her. Although she answered his questions candidly, Gopal could not find the unhappy childhood or the trauma of an abandoned wife that might explain the urgency of this moment in bed. “I was planning to leave my husband,” she explained casually. “He was crazy. Almost literally. He thought he was going to be a captain of industry or a senator. He wasn’t registered to vote. He knew nothing about business. Once, he invested almost everything we had in a hydroponic farm in Southampton. With him I was always scared of being poor. He used to spend two hundred dollars a week on lottery tickets, and he would save the old tickets in shoeboxes in the garage.” Gopal did not personally know any Indian who was divorced, and he had never been intimate enough with an American to learn what a divorce was like, but he had expected something more painful—tears and recriminations. The details she gave made the story sound practiced, and he began to think that he would never have a hold over Mrs. Shaw.

  Around eight Mrs. Shaw said, “I am going to do my bills tonight.” Gopal had been wondering whether she wanted him to have dinner with her and spend the night. He would have liked to, but he did not protest.

  As she closed the door behind him, Mrs. Shaw said, “The lawn mower’s in the back. If you want it.” Night had come, and the stars were out. As Gopal pushed the lawn mower down the road, he wished that he loved Mrs. Shaw and that she loved him.

  He had left the kitchen light on by mistake, and its glow was comforting. “Come, come, cheer up,” he said aloud, pacing in the kitchen. “You have a lover.” He tried to smile and grimaced instead. “You can make love as often as you want. Be happy.” He started preparing dinner. He fried okra and steam-cooked lentils. He made both rice and bread.

  As he ate, Gopal watched a television movie about a woman who had been in a coma for twenty years and suddenly woke up one day; adding to her confusion, she was pregnant. After washing the dishes he finished the article in Cosmopolitan that he had begun reading in the mall. The article was the second of two parts, and it mentioned that when leaving after making love for the first time, one should always arrange the next meeting. Gopal had not done this, and he phoned Mrs. Shaw.

  He used the phone in the kitchen, and as he waited for her to pick up, he wondered whether he should introduce himself or assume that she would recognize his voice. “Hi, Helen,” he blurted out as soon as she said “Hello.” “I was just thinking of you and thought I’d call.” He felt more nervous now than he had while he was with her.

  “That’s sweet,” she said, with what Gopal thought was tenderness. “How are you?”

  “I just had dinner. Did you eat?” He imagined her sitting on the floor between the couches with a pile of receipts before her. She would have a small pencil in her hand.

  “I’m not hungry. I normally make myself an omelet for dinner, but I didn’t want to tonight. I’m having another drink.” Then, self-conscious, she added, “Otherwise I grind my teeth. I started after my divorce and I didn’t have health insurance or enough money to go to a dentist.” Gopal wanted to ask if she still ground her teeth, but he did not want to imply anything.

  “Would you like to have dinner tomorrow? I’ll cook.” They agreed to meet at six. The conversation continued for a few minutes longer, and when Gopal hung up, he was pleased at how well he had handled things.

  While lying in bed, waiting for sleep, Gopal read another article in Cosmopolitan, about job pressure’s effects on one’s sex life. He had enjoyed both articles and was happy with himself for his efforts at understanding Mrs. Shaw. He fell asleep smiling.

  The next day, after reading the papers, Gopal went to the library to read the first part of the Cosmopolitan article. He ended up reading articles from Elle, Redbook, Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Family Circle, and one from Reader’s Digest—“How to Tell If Your Marriage Is on the Rocks.” He tried to memorize jokes from the “Laughter Is the Best Medicine” section, so that he would never be at a loss for conversation.

  Gopal arrived at home by four and began cooking. Dinner was pleasant, though they ate in the kitchen, which was lit with buzzing fluorescent tubes. Gopal worried that yesterday’s lovemaking might have been a fluke. Soon after they finished the meal, however, they were on the couch, struggling with each other’s clothing.

  Gopal wanted Mrs. Shaw to spend the night, but she refused, saying that she had not slept a full night with anyone since her divorce. At first Gopal was touched by this. They lay on his bed in the dark. The alarm clock on the lampstand said 9:12 in big red figures. “Why?” Gopal asked, rolling over and resting his cheek on her cool shoulder. He wanted to reassure her that he was eager to listen.

  “I think I’m a serial monogamist and I don’t want to make things too complicated.” She twisted a lock of his hair around her middle finger. “It isn’t because of you, sweetie. It’s with every man.”

  “Oh,” Gopal said, hurt by the idea of other men and disillusioned about her motives. He continued believing, however, that now that they were lovers, the power of his concern would make her love him back. One of the articles he had read that day had suggested that people become dependent in spite of themselves when they are constantly cared for. So he made himself relax and act understanding.

  Gopal went to bed an hour after Mrs. Shaw left. Before going to sleep he called her and wished her good night. He began calling her frequently after that, two or three times a day. Over the next few weeks Gopal found himself becoming coy and playful with her. When Mrs. Shaw picked up the phone, he made panting noises, and she laughed at him. She liked his being childlike with her. Sometimes she would point to a spot on his chest, and he would look down, even though he knew nothing was there, so that she could tap his nose. When they made love, she was thoughtful about asking what pleased him, and Gopal learned from this and began asking her the same. They saw each other nearly every day, though sometimes only briefly, for a few minutes in the evening or at night. But Gopal continued to feel nervous around her, as if he were somehow imposing. If she phoned him and invited him over, he was always flattered. As Gopal learned more about Mrs. Shaw, he began thinking she was very smart. She read constantly, primarily history and economics. He was always surprised, therefore, when she became moody and sentimental and talked about how loneliness is incurable. Gopal liked Mrs. Shaw in this mood, because it made him feel needed, but he felt ashamed that he was so insecure. When she did not laugh at a joke, Gopal doubted that she would ever love him. When they were in bed together and he thought she might be looking at him, he kept
his stomach sucked in.

  This sense of precariousness made Gopal try developing other supports for himself. One morning early in his involvement with Mrs. Shaw he phoned an Indian engineer with whom he had worked on a project about corrosion of copper wires and who had also taken early retirement from AT&T. They had met briefly several times since then and had agreed each time to get together again, but neither had made the effort. Gopal waited until eleven before calling, because he felt that any earlier would make him sound needy. A woman picked up the phone. She told him to wait a minute as she called for Rishi. Gopal felt vaguely deceitful, as if he were trying to pass himself off as just like everyone else, although his wife and child had left him.