A Change of Heart (11 page)

14

 

—Dr. Jen Joshi

 

 

T
he water had been running cold for what felt like hours. She pushed herself off the tub floor and stepped out of the shower. Trying to remove the soaking sweatshirt felt like moving a passed-out body. God knows she'd dragged Sweetie to his bed enough number of times. And Nikhil. When he'd fallen face-first on the cruise-ship carpet.

She wrung out the soaking fabric. Water gushed onto her feet. She kept twisting and squeezing until her wrinkled palms felt like they were being skinned, then tossed the sweatshirt aside and did the same thing with the rest of her clothes. All the black fabric landed in a heap, leaving her inexplicably exhausted. She never felt physical exhaustion. It was her special gift. The only thing her aunt had loved about her.
Strong like a man!

Even when she had found her way to the Sisters of Mercy in Calcutta after running away, Sister Mary had marveled at how she could carry full buckets of water in both hands and walk up four flights of stairs. Even when Sister Mary had found her that first Junior Artist role where the dancing had involved jumping up and down for hours. Instead of exhaustion she had found exhilaration. Found dance—the only thing that ever exploded through that shut-inside-a-hard-shell feeling.

She slid the bar of soap out of its wrapping, got back under the water, and started to rub her skin with it. On and on and on, until the embossed letters disappeared, until layer by layer the soap itself shrank to a sliver. She washed it all off with ice-cold water, then started over. Going until the soap was gone. Still she didn't feel clean.

Filth sat like a layer on her skin. It had been years since she'd felt like this. Those panic attacks had exposed all she'd buried away, ripped off her scabs. Her hard-earned scabs. No, it wasn't the panic attacks, it was even before that. It was learning what had happened to Jen. The mess in her mind was thanks to what those men had done to Jen, and thanks to the man who had had to watch.

She grabbed a white towel off the rack and started rubbing her skin. Her scar slashed angry red across her chest. So dark it was almost tinged in black. She ran her finger over it. A tight little bump extruded down her chest like a piece of wire embedded in her skin.

We are copper,
kanchi.

She tucked the towel around her breasts and stepped out of the bathroom, just as the door to the motel room flew open. Before the scream could escape her lips, Nikhil tripped over her shoes and went flying face-first into the floor.

The shock froze her in place. She stood there staring at him sprawled across the carpet, motionless as a corpse, his hands splayed out over his head, a key card clutched loosely in one fist.

“Nikhil?”

Nothing.

Behind him the door gaped wide-open into the night.

A frog croaked. She heard voices approaching and ran to the door. She lifted his feet out of the way and slammed it shut just before the sound of footsteps passed by.

He lifted his head. “Baby?” His voice was almost a sob.

She walked around his body. Somehow it seemed wrong to be standing upright when he was sprawled at her feet. She went down on her knees next to him.

“Nikhil. It's me—”

“Jen.”

“No, it's Jess. What happened to you?”

He laughed and made it sound exactly like another sob. “Jess. Of course. Jess Koirala.” He stretched out the two words, using her accent, placing emphasis on the notes the way she did instead of the way he usually did, in his American way.

“I had a question for you.” He lifted his face off the carpet again. His face was wet, his words a slurry mess. His bloodshot eyes sought her but couldn't focus. “I just . . . I can't remember what it was.” He blinked and it made him look so lost, it reminded her of Joy.

“Can we get you up first?”

He pulled his elbows off the floor and pushed himself up a few inches with his hands. His elbow was bleeding. There was blood on his white shirt. He winced, gave up, and his body slammed back down.

“What happened?” she asked, reaching out and slipping her hands under his shoulders. His body was a sack of bones. Sharp, hard, and not heavy enough for his wide frame.

Again, just that sob-like laugh. She lifted him up to his knees and then up to standing. He stumbled, trying to find purchase with his feet, grabbing on to her arms. The towel loosened around her. As if in slow motion, she felt the tuck she had secured it with come apart and lose its grip around her breasts.

She tried to pull away, torn between grabbing the fabric around herself and letting Nikhil fall back down.

He found his footing and his eyes met hers, scattering her thoughts.

His hands clamped around her arms.

She struggled to push him away. But he wouldn't let her go. His fingers dug into her skin and pressed her arms into her body. Panic welled up inside her, water filling her lungs. No, please, not this.

Some of the fog cleared from his eyes.
Look at me. I'm not going to hurt you.

His hands weren't ripping her apart. All they were doing was using her arms to hold the towel in place. His eyes locked on hers, as she struggled to calm her heartbeat. Once she had clenched her upper arms against the rough fabric, he let her arms go, grabbed the front of the towel, and tucked it back in place.

The backs of his hands brushed her breasts. A horrible shaking started in her body again. But his mouth wasn't on hers, pushing her screams back down her throat. His eyes weren't crazed, putrid with lust.

They were just sad. Sadder than anything she had ever seen. They anchored her in place, pushing her panic down her throat, not her screams. His eyes. Bloodshot and grief-stricken, and kinder than anything she'd ever seen. They brought her down from the heart of panic and set her back on her feet.

Then tipped her off-balance again, darkening and flickering with something entirely new.

The backs of his fingers pressed against her scar and stroked up and down. The pain in his eyes grew unbearable. His lids came together, his head tilted back, as he traced the raised skin as though absorbing the feel of it and soaking it into his being. There was such agony on his face, she raised her hand to stroke it away.

A moan rose from his lips. If he said his wife's name, the ringing in her ears drowned it out. Her fingers froze inches from his skin. He dropped his head into her shoulder, his own shoulders quaking. The wetness hit her shoulders, streamed down her back, her breasts. Sobs racked him, harsh and relentless. Every part of him shook as shuddering breaths tore from him and slammed against her.

She wrapped her arms around him, but instead of calming him down, it only made him shake more, as though she had added insult to injury by attempting to soothe him. Still she stroked his arms. Just the barest of movements. Knowing in her heart that anything more would be too much.

When his sobs slowed, she pushed him into the bed and sat down next to him, one arm still around him, his face still pressed into the crook of her neck. For long moments she held him like that, his sobs mapping his grief as it ebbed and flowed and set itself free.

“Tell me what to do with him?” she whispered soundlessly to Jen.
Tell me.

He lifted his head and slid his face into his palms, not meeting her eyes. The wound on his elbow was bleeding again. “You're bleeding. Stay here.”

He made no move to acknowledge he had heard her. But it wasn't like he was going anywhere.

She went to the bathroom and noticed that she was still wrapped in a towel. Mortified, she grabbed a pair of yoga pants and another black sweatshirt out of her bag and pulled them on. Then she quickly slid a hand towel off the rack and soaked it with hot water.

When she came back to him, he was sprawled across her bed, eyes closed, body twisted at awkward angles. Every piece askew, as if someone had forced a jigsaw puzzle together even though the pieces didn't fit the way they were supposed to.

Her heart twisted in her chest, mimicking the angles of his body. His feet hung off the bed, two shoes pointing in different directions, one knee going off on one tangent, the other one bent in on itself, his spine caught in the middle of a twist as he'd fallen backward. His face, that heartbreaking, sunken mirror of his soul, was half pressed into the mattress.

She didn't know what to put right first, but leaving him in this mangled mess would mean aching limbs tomorrow. If the alcohol on his breath and his bloodshot eyes were any indication, there was going to be enough pain.

She pulled his elbow out from under his body. The skin had been gouged off. Blood coagulated around gravel and dirt. She pressed the wet towel into the wound as gently as she could and cleaned it out. He didn't even stir. She went back to the sink, washing out the blood and dirt, then coming back and wiping away more. Back and forth she went until finally the wound looked clean. She wished she had some antiseptic, or gauze and tape, but she had nothing. She unzipped her bag and dug through it, looking for something, anything, to wrap around the nasty-looking wound. Back home she always kept Dettol cream and Band-Aids with her.

Joy wasn't a boisterous child by any means, but he still managed to get a scraped knee or elbow every time they went to the park. The clothes in her bag were a sea of black. Pants, jeans, T-shirts, and sweatshirts, neatly ironed and crisply folded, like the layers in a slab of black slate. She dug into the bottom of the bag and found her dance bandanna. She'd worn it to every rehearsal for the past five years. It had been worn and washed so much that it was muslin soft. She folded it diagonally and then rolled it a few times to form a bandage, then bound it around his elbow. Still not a sound, not a movement.

The wet towel sat on the nightstand. Without thinking about it, she reached for it. His face was streaked with dirt. How had he fallen? How had he become such a mess? It was an absurd question. She knew exactly what had happened. And it hadn't been today.

She wiped the wet towel across his cheeks. The grime wiped away easily. Under all that dirt she unearthed surprisingly lovely skin, bronze and gold tones and not a single spot or pore. Even his stubble followed a neat line across his jaw. There were deep creases in his cheeks, where both a smile and a frown brought on dimples. Suddenly, she had an overwhelming urge to know what his smile looked like. Not just the hints he'd thrown her way, but his real smile.

She wiped across his jaw. She hadn't realized how fine boned he was. That sharply angled jaw, the high, wide forehead, those long-lashed eyes of chocolate, every feature was perfectly etched. But somehow she was sure that even if all that wretched grief and anger lifted, it would still be hard to comprehend the beauty of his face, because he wouldn't let you. He would draw you instead with that sharp intelligence and that gentle kindness that had fallen on her unexpectedly and in fleeting bursts like passing showers at the start of a monsoon, but that continued to drench her like raindrops that had soaked too deep.

Having cleaned one side of his face, she pushed at his shoulder to turn him. He went over easily, a shuddering breath his only complaint.

For another long moment his half-clean face captivated her, two faces spliced together. One dirty, one clean. One dark, one bright. Both tinged with pain, but one brought to some semblance of life. She started wiping at the dirty half of his face. This half was grimier, harder to get clean, but in the end she managed to make it halfway decent.

Next came his shoes. The second she slipped them off his feet, he groaned as if he'd been eased out from under a great burden and pulled his knees up, folding himself into a fetal position.

This was how her Joy slept. Elbows to knees, everything pulled in tight.

She'd done enough, more than enough. As a favor to Jen she had taken care of her husband. But to face the task ahead she needed sleep. She tried to push off the bed, but something tugged at her sleeve. Nikhil's hand clutched her sweatshirt. She tried to pry it out of his grip, but he pulled it closer to his chest with such need she could not bring herself to put any kind of force into it.

She slid off the bed, her knees landing on the carpet, and sank back to the floor, her torso leaning against the bed, her head resting on her outstretched arm held in place by her sleeve fisted in his fingers. He took a deep breath, and for a moment the frown between his brows eased. That was the last thing she remembered before she fell into the abyss of exhaustion that had been calling her name.

* * *

Nikhil woke to find his wife's hair splayed against his pillow, his face pressed into the heavy silk. He inhaled, breathing her in. She had changed her shampoo. He liked it. A little softer, more floral than her usual, but nice. He stroked his cheek against it and lifted his hand to pull her closer. He clutched air and then cold sheets. There was no body next to him.

He lifted his face and found only her head on the bed. He sprang upright, his heart beating like a drum. He was about to scream, but he saw an arm stretched out next to her head. He followed it and found the rest of her. Life rushed back into his limbs.

She was on the floor, her arm reaching for him. Her face was pressed into the mattress. The familiar aching tenderness rose in his heart but stuttered. Something didn't feel right. It felt like a dream that had lingered into wakefulness.