“I haven’t been doing much,” he confessed immediately to Rishi. “I read a lot.” When Rishi asked what, Gopal answered, “Magazines,” with embarrassment. They were silent then. Gopal did not want to ask Rishi immediately if he would like to meet for dinner, so he hunted desperately for a conversational opening. He was sitting in the kitchen. He looked at the sunlight on the newspaper before him and remembered that he could ask Rishi questions. “How are you doing?”
“It isn’t like India,” Rishi responded, complaining. “In India, the older you are, the closer you are to the center of attention. Here, you have to keep going. Your children are away and you have nothing to do. I would go back, but Ratha doesn’t want to. America is much better for women.”
Gopal felt a rush of relief that Rishi had spoken so much. “Are you just at home or are you doing something part-time?”
“I am the president of the Indian Cultural Association,” Rishi said boastfully.
“That’s wonderful,” Gopal said, and with a leap added, “I want to get involved in that more, now that I have time.”
“We always need help. We are going to have a fair,” Rishi said. “It’s on the twenty-fourth, next month. We need help coordinating things, arranging food, putting up flyers.”
“I can help,” Gopal said. They decided that he should go to Rishi’s house on Wednesday, two days later.
Gopal was about to hang up when Rishi added, “I heard about your family.” Gopal felt as if he had been caught in a lie. “I am sorry,” Rishi said.
Gopal was quiet for a moment and then said, “Thank you.” He did not know whether he should pretend to be sad. “It takes some getting used to,” he said, “but you can go on from nearly anything.”
Gopal went to see Rishi that Wednesday, and on Sunday he attended a board meeting to plan for the fair. He told jokes about a nearsighted snake and a water hose, and about a golf instructor and God. One of the men he met there invited him to dinner.
Mrs. Shaw, however, continued to dominate his thoughts. The more they made love, the more absorbed Gopal became in the texture of her nipples in his mouth and the heft of her hips in his hands. He thought of this in the shower, while driving, while stirring his cereal. Two or three times over the next month Gopal picked her up during her lunch hour and they hurried home to make love. They would make love and then talk. Mrs. Shaw had once worked at a dry cleaner’s, and Gopal found this fascinating. He had met only one person in his life before Mrs. Shaw who had worked in a dry-cleaning business and that was different, because it was in India, where dry-cleaning still had the glamour of advancing technology. Being the lover of someone who had worked in a dry-cleaning business made Gopal feel strange. It made him think that the world was huge beyond comprehension, and to spend his time trying to control his own small world was inefficient. Gopal began thinking that he loved Mrs. Shaw. He started listening to the golden-oldies station in the car, so that he could hear what she had heard in her youth.
Mrs. Shaw would ask about his life, and Gopal tried to tell her everything she wanted to know in as much detail as possible. Once he told her of how he had begun worrying when his daughter was finishing high school that she was going to slip from his life. To show that he loved her, he had arbitrarily forbidden her to ski, claiming that skiing was dangerous. He had hoped that she would find this quaintly immigrant, but she was just angry. At first the words twisted in his mouth, and he spoke to Mrs. Shaw about skiing in general. Only with an effort could he tell her about his fight with Gitu. Mrs. Shaw did not say anything at first. Then she said, “It’s all right if you were that way once, as long as you aren’t that way now.” Listening to her, Gopal suddenly felt angry.
“Why do you talk like this?” he asked.
“What?”
“When you talk about how your breasts fall or how your behind is too wide, I always say that’s not true. I always see you with eyes that make you beautiful.”
“Because I want the truth,” she said, also angry.
Gopal became quiet. Her desire for honesty appeared to refute all his delicate and constant manipulations. Was he actually in love with her, he wondered, or was this love just a way to avoid loneliness? And did it matter that so much of what he did was conscious?
He questioned his love more and more as the day of the Indian festival approached and Gopal realized that he was delaying asking Mrs. Shaw to go with him. She knew about the fair but had not mentioned her feelings. Gopal told himself that she would feel uncomfortable among so many Indians, but he knew that he hadn’t asked her because taking her would make him feel awkward. For some reason he was nervous that word of Mrs. Shaw might get to his wife and daughter. He was also anxious about what the Indians with whom he had recently become friendly would think. He had met mixed couples at Indian parties before, and they were always treated with the deference usually reserved for cripples. If Mrs. Shaw had been of any sort of marginalized ethnic group—a first-generation immigrant, for instance—then things might have been easier.
The festival was held in the Edison First Aid Squad’s square blue-and-white building. A children’s dance troupe performed in red dresses so stiff with gold thread that the girls appeared to hobble as they moved about the center of the concrete floor. A balding comedian in oxblood shoes and a white suit performed. Light folding tables along one wall were precariously laden with large pots, pans, and trays of food. Gopal stood in a corner with several men who had retired from AT&T and, slightly drunk, improvised on jokes he had read in 1,001 Polish Jokes. The Poles became Sikhs, but he kept most of the rest. He was laughing and feeling proud that he could so easily become the center of attention, but he felt lonely at the thought that when the food was served, the men at his side would drift away to join their families and he would stand alone in line. After listening to talk of someone’s marriage, he began thinking about Mrs. Shaw. The men were clustered together, and the women conversed separately. They will go home and make love and not talk, Gopal thought. Then he felt sad and frightened. To make amends for his guilt at not bringing Mrs. Shaw along, he told a bearded man with yellow teeth, “These Sikhs aren’t so bad. They are the smartest ones in India, and no one can match a Sikh for courage.” Then Gopal felt dazed and ready to leave.
When Gopal pulled into his driveway, it was late afternoon. His head felt odd still, as it always did when alcohol started wearing off, but Gopal knew that he was drunk enough to do something foolish. He parked and walked down the road to Mrs. Shaw’s. He wondered if she would be in. Pale tulips bloomed in a thin, uneven row in front of her house. The sight of them made him hopeful.
Mrs. Shaw opened the door before he could knock. For a moment Gopal did not say anything. She was wearing a denim skirt and a sleeveless white shirt. She smiled at him. Gopal spoke solemnly and from far off. “I love you,” he said to her for the first time. “I am sorry I didn’t invite you to the fair.” He waited a moment for his statement to sink in and for her to respond with a similar endearment. When she did not, he repeated, “I love you.”
Then she said, “Thank you,” and told him not to worry about the fair. She invited him in. Gopal was confused and flustered by her reticence. He began feeling awkward about his confession. They kissed briefly, and then Gopal went home.
The next night, as they sat together watching TV in his living room, Mrs. Shaw suddenly turned to Gopal and said, “You really do love me, don’t you?” Although Gopal had expected the question, he was momentarily disconcerted by it, because it made him wonder what love was and whether he was capable of it. But he did not think that this was the time to quibble over semantics. After being silent long enough to suggest that he was struggling with his vulnerability, Gopal said yes and waited for Mrs. Shaw’s response. Again she did not confess her love. She kissed his forehead tenderly. This show of sentiment made Gopal angry, but he said nothing. He was glad, though, when Mrs. Shaw left that night.
The next day Gopal waited for Mrs. Shaw to return home from work.
He had decided that the time had come for the next step in their relationship. As soon as he saw her struggle through her doorway, hugging sacks of groceries, Gopal phoned. He stood on the steps to his house, with the extension cord trailing over one shoulder, and looked at her house and at her rusted and exhausted-looking station wagon, which he had begun to associate strongly and warmly with the broad sweep of Mrs. Shaw’s life. Gopal nearly said, “I missed you” when she picked up the phone, but he became embarrassed and asked, “How was your day?”
“Fine,” she said, and Gopal imagined her moving about the kitchen, putting away whatever she had bought, placing the teakettle on the stove, and sorting her mail on the kitchen table. This image of domesticity and independence moved him deeply. “There’s a guidance counselor who is dying of cancer,” she said, “and his friends are having a party for him, and they put up a sign saying ‘RSVP with your money now! Henry can’t wait for the party!’ ” Gopal and Mrs. Shaw laughed.
“Let’s do something,” he said.
“What?”
Gopal had not thought this part out. He wanted to do something romantic that would last until bedtime, so that he could pressure her to spend the night. “Would you like to have dinner?”
“Sure,” she said. Gopal was pleased. He had gone to a liquor store a few days earlier and bought wine, just in case he had an opportunity to get Mrs. Shaw drunk and get her to fall asleep beside him.
Gopal plied Mrs. Shaw with wine as they ate the linguine he had cooked. They sat in the kitchen, but he had turned off the fluorescent lights and lit a candle. By the third glass Gopal was feeling very brave; he placed his hand on her inner thigh.
“My mother and father,” Mrs. Shaw said halfway through the meal, pointing at him with her fork and speaking with the deliberateness of the drunk, “convinced me that people are not meant to live together for long periods of time.” She was speaking in response to Gopal’s hint earlier that only over time and through living together could people get to know each other properly. “If you know someone that well, you are bound to be disappointed.”
“Maybe that’s because you haven’t met the right person,” Gopal answered, feeling awkward for saying something that could be considered arrogant when he was trying to appear vulnerable.
“I don’t think there is a right person. Not for me. To fall in love I think you need a certain suspension of disbelief, which I don’t think I am capable of.”
Gopal wondered whether Mrs. Shaw believed what she was saying or was trying not to hurt his feelings by revealing that she couldn’t love him. He stopped eating.
Mrs. Shaw stared at him. She put her fork down and said, “I love you. I love how you care for me and how gentle you are.”
Gopal smiled. Perhaps, he thought, the first part of her statement had been a preface to a confession that he mattered so much that she was willing to make an exception for him. “I love you too,” Gopal said. “I love how funny and smart and honest you are. You are very beautiful.” He leaned over slightly to suggest that he wanted to kiss her, but Mrs. Shaw did not respond.
Her face was stiff. “I love you,” she said again, and Gopal became nervous. “But I am not in love with you.” She stopped and stared at Gopal.
Gopal felt confused. “What’s the difference?”
“When you are in love, you never think about yourself, because you love the other person so completely. I’ve lived too long to think anyone is that perfect.” Gopal still didn’t understand the distinction, but he was too embarrassed to ask more. It was only fair, a part of him thought, that God would punish him this way for driving away his wife and child. How could anyone love him?
Mrs. Shaw took his hands in hers. “I think we should take a little break from each other, so we don’t get confused. Being with you, I’m getting confused too. We should see other people.”
“Oh.” Gopal’s chest hurt despite his understanding of the justice of what was happening.
“I don’t want to hide anything. I love you. I truly love you. You are the kindest lover I’ve ever had.”
“Oh.”
For a week after this Gopal observed that Mrs. Shaw did not bring another man to her house. He went to the Sunday board meeting of the cultural association, where he regaled the members with jokes from Reader’s Digest. He taught his first Hindi class to children at the temple. He took his car to be serviced. Gopal did all these things. He ate. He slept. He even made love to Mrs. Shaw once, and until she asked him to leave, he thought everything was all right again.
Then one night Gopal was awakened at a little after three by a car pulling out of Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. It is just a friend, he thought, standing by his bedroom window and watching the Toyota move down the road. Gopal tried falling asleep again, but he could not, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. His mind was blank, but sleep did not come.
I will not call her, Gopal thought in the morning. And as he was dialing her, he thought he would hang up before all the numbers had been pressed. He heard the receiver being lifted on the other side and Mrs. Shaw saying “Hello.” He did not say anything. “Don’t do this, Gopal,” she said softly. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Hi,” Gopal whispered, wanting very much to hurt her. He leaned his head against the kitchen wall. His face twitched as he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be that way. I love you. I didn’t want to hurt you. That’s why I told you.”
“I know.”
“All right?”
“Yes.” They were silent for a long time. Then Gopal hung up. He wondered if she would call back. He waited, and when she didn’t, he began jumping up and down in place.
For the next few weeks Gopal tried to spend as little time as possible in his house. He read the morning papers in the library and then had lunch at a diner and then went back to the library. On Sundays he spent all day at the mall. His anger at Mrs. Shaw soon disappeared, because he thought that the blame for her leaving lay with him. Gopal continued, however, to avoid home, because he did not want to experience the jealousy that would keep him awake all night. Only if he arrived late enough and tired enough could he fall asleep. In the evening Gopal either went to the temple and helped at the seven o’clock service or visited one of his new acquaintances. But over the weeks he exhausted the kindheartedness of his acquaintances and had a disagreement with one man’s wife, and he was forced to return home.
The first few evenings he spent at home Gopal thought he would have to flee his house in despair. He slept awkwardly, waking at the barest rustle outside his window, thinking that a car was pulling out of Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. The days were easier than the nights, especially when Mrs. Shaw was away at work. Gopal would sleep a few hours at night and then nap during the day, but this left him exhausted and dizzy. In the afternoon he liked to sit on the steps and read the paper, pausing occasionally to look at her house. He liked the sun sliding up its walls. Sometimes he was sitting outside when she drove home from work. Mrs. Shaw waved to him once or twice, but he did not respond, not because he was angry but because he felt himself become so still at the sight of her that he could neither wave nor smile.
A month and a half after they separated, Gopal still could not sleep at night if he thought there were two cars in Mrs. Shaw’s driveway. Once, after a series of sleepless nights, he was up until three watching a dark shape behind Mrs. Shaw’s station wagon. He waited by his bedroom window, paralyzed with fear and hope, for a car to pass in front of her house and strike the shape with its head-lights. After a long time in which no car went by, Gopal decided to check for himself.
He started across his lawn crouched over and running. The air was warm and smelled of jasmine, and Gopal was so tired that he thought he might spill to the ground. After a few steps he stopped and straightened up. The sky was clear, and there were so many stars that Gopal felt as if he were in his village in India. The houses along the street were dark and drawn in on themselves. Even in India, he thought, late at
night the houses look like sleeping faces. He remembered how surprised he had been by the pitched roofs of American houses when he had first come here, and how this had made him yearn to return to India, where he could sleep on the roof. He started across the lawn again. Gopal walked slowly, and he felt as if he were crossing a great distance.
The station wagon stood battered and alone, smelling faintly of gasoline and the day’s heat. Gopal leaned against its hood. The station wagon was so old that the odometer had gone all the way around. Like me, he thought, and like Helen, too. This is who we are, he thought—dusty, corroded, and dented from our voyages, with our unflagging hearts rattling on inside. We are made who we are by the dust and corrosion and dents and unflagging hearts. Why should we need anything else to fall in love? he wondered. We learn and change and get better. He leaned against the car for a minute or two. Fireflies swung flickering in the breeze. Then he walked home.
Gopal woke early and showered and shaved and made breakfast. He brushed his teeth after eating and felt his cheeks to see whether he should shave again, this time against the grain. At nine he crossed his lawn and rang Mrs. Shaw’s doorbell. He had to ring it several times before he heard her footsteps. When she opened the door and saw him, Mrs. Shaw drew back as if she were afraid. Gopal felt sad that she could think he might hurt her. “May I come in?” he asked. She stared at him. He saw mascara stains beneath her eyes and silver strands mingled with her red hair. He thought he had never seen a woman as beautiful or as gallant.
Irish Girl
Tim Johnston
The way it began, the way he’d remember it many years later, was a kick to the leg.
He was under the kitchen table playing with army men and somebody kicked him. Not too hard but not too soft, either.