Everything Was Good-Bye (16 page)

Money was the ultimate equalizer and Sunny had been brought up with all the advantages, connections and favours it could buy. Life seemed to hinge on his presence; his arrival started parties and his departure ended them. Everyone loved him and at times I wondered if I did too, or if I just loved being part of the show. When I was with him people knew me. I was someone even if at times I was unrecognizable to myself. I hated those moments when we were alone and there was nothing to say, the silence a reminder that I might have condensed myself to make room for him. Once I caught our reflection in a shop window as we walked by, my stride half a step behind his, my hand in his hand as he hurried me along. I walked beside myself for a half a block, staring at my vacant expression the way a child might search the ancestral faces in family photographs, desperate for similarity, recognition and belonging. “Surinder,” I’d reminded myself, and crossed the street—leaving my other self behind, looking at her from a safe distance.

Inside the sweaty club I narrowed my eyes, looking for familiar faces in the hopping darkness. I wove past the usual party princesses, the circle of pretty suburban girls who clutched their purses under their arms as they did the barely dancing dance—a shuffle, a hip sway, an ass twitch.

“Meena!” Aman emerged from the crowd and put her arm around me. The weight of her slight body lurched onto my shoulder and her drink splashed about in its plastic tumbler. “You’re late. Where were you? Everyone’s here already,” she slurred into her straw, snorting when the fizzy drink splashed into her face. “This is some party!” she said. “And you, you are so lucky to be marrying him. He is
soooo
great.” I nodded and helped her to a bar stool. She was weepy with envy and drunkenness.

“Have you seen Sunny?” I asked.

Aman motioned to the corner where members of the desi crowd were playing billiards, double-fisting and toasting the air, spilling their intentions on the floor as they clanked glasses. Sunny was talking to a petite girl with long, straight brown hair that spilled over her shoulders. She was what one would consider cute: barely five feet tall, less than a hundred pounds, small hips and all boobs. I imagined that she probably had a high-pitched voice that made everything she said sound like a surprise. She took the pool cue from Sunny, chalked the end and leaned into a shot, leaving him with a perfect shot of ass and stick.

“It’s his ex, Jasmine,” Aman clarified. “She’s such a bitch.”

I nodded, my mouth suddenly too dry to speak. I wondered why she was here and wanted to ask but didn’t for fear of the answer. One night, when Sunny had been drinking, he’d told me that his parents wanted him to marry me to keep him from her. I pretended that I didn’t know about her attempted suicide and that his admission of caring for her still did not shock me. He was quiet about it, skipping the cruel details, but I felt his ache in the silence and recognized it as my own, matching his wounds to mine word for word.

“Will you be okay?” I propped Aman back onto the stool she kept sliding from. “Can you call her a cab?” I asked the bartender.

“No, no.” Aman waved her hands in the air. “I’m fine, I’m good—see?” she said, and teetered in an attempt to stand.

“Just take the cab home and call me tomorrow,” I said, my words trail-ing behind me as I made my way to Sunny.

“Happy birthday.” I kissed him, trying not to take in any of the whisky on his breath.

I introduced myself to Jasmine, enunciating the word “fiancée” as I extended my hand, quietly examining her wrists for a scar, some sign of her near love and death. I nestled into Sunny’s arms, closing the space between them. I couldn’t help but wonder what I’d interrupted; there was an enslaved look between them that resembled the intersection of lust and addiction, making me wonder if they were together still or if what haunted them was simply the memory of it. Jasmine noticed me eyeing her scar tissue and pulled her hand away. She folded her arms across her chest before walking away. Sunny reached for his glass, and downed what was left of his drink.

I stared through the shifting crowd. “Is Kal here yet?” I asked.

Sunny pulled me closer. “Why are you always asking about him? I’m not good enough for you or something?” The bite of whisky hit the back of his throat, clipping his words to ultimatums.

“I’m not always asking. I just asked once.” Sunny’s friends were looking at the floor, trying to listen and not listen to our conversation. I could tell by their downturned stares that they were the ones behind his growing paranoia about my friendship with Kal. Sunny pointed to the bar. “He’s right over there, talking to the blonde.” He paused at the end of the sentence as if he were making a point or waiting for me to respond. I said nothing, pretending I didn’t care.

Sunny smiled, relaxing the hold he had on me when I twisted in his grip, his mood switching from possessive to dismissive in an undefined instant—alcohol intensifying his contradictions. He called one of his friends over and for a time they talked investment speculation while I nodded on the periphery. Sunny never introduced me to his friends. I knew their names and stories only because Kal told me, and they knew me because I was with Sunny and for them that seemed to be enough. None of them engaged
me in conversation and any time I asserted an opinion or a thought, Sunny would smile and look at me with a silence in his eyes that was part plea, part reprimand—a chastising and condescending quiet that changed the tone and course of entire evenings. I quickly learned how to disappear and reappear, drifting in and out of conversations on cue, speaking of only those things that mattered to Sunny, surprised that I found some pleasure whenever he was pleased.

When I mentioned some misgivings to Serena, she told me that I just wasn’t used to the “give and take” of relationship. “I give and he takes?” I asked thoughtfully. And though I was wary of being his silent partner, it was in my own distillation, my own vanishing act, that I won the approval of everyone I knew. The women at my office salivated over his picture on my desk, reminding me how lucky I was to be with someone like him. Even my mother didn’t mind my going out with him anymore. When I was with him, I was almost free.

The rest of the evening passed through a cigarette-smoke haze that cloaked the patrons in a gauzy shroud, obscuring their intoxicated im-pulses. It reminded me of when Kal and I were first together. He’d think up a way to sneak me out of my house to find the garage-band dives that no other Indians would go to. We’d sit in the darkest corner, listen to music, get drunk enough to talk and not remember later what we’d talked about, and then sit in his truck until sex or the silence after sobered us up. When we sat there, I’d think of Liam, and wonder where he was and who he was with—just like I was doing now. It had been so long that I could hardly remember his face, but occasionally I would see it in the parentheses of a stranger’s smile, the blue of their eyes.

“Looks like you need a drink.” Kal pulled his bar stool up to mine. “Can’t—I’m driving.”

He nodded. “Not so fun being the only sober one at the party, huh?” “No.” I watched a crowd of wannabe-me girls flock around Sunny, singing happy birthday. “No, not so fun.” I looked away when I saw Sunny
buying yet another round of shots for his friends. He had his arm around Jasmine, his hand dangerously close to her ass.

“Well, if it makes you feel better, I’m pseudo-sober.”

“Oh, is that the technical term for it?” I asked.

“Yes, it is. In layman’s terms it means that although I’ll have a headache in the morning, I’ll still remember our conversation.”

I laughed. “I’ll have to test the theory tomorrow.”

“I always remember the things you say, and the things you won’t say.”

“Pseudo-sober, hmmm?” I squinted. “I don’t know about that… you may just be indiscernibly drunk.”

“That the technical term for it?” I nodded. “And what do you think is the technical term for that?” he asked, pointing to Sunny, who had just bumped into a waitress, tipping her tray of shots all over her tight T-shirt.

“Last-call liability,” he said, as we both rushed over.

Sunny stumbled to the car in a swagger that took up the entire sidewalk. He grabbed my keys and tried the lock, accidentally keying the door and scraping the paint. “Look what you made me do.” He ran his finger over the scratch.

“Sunny, just give me the keys.”

He turned around and held the keys above his head, beyond my reach.

“No. I want to drive. I already told you, I’m okay.”

“Sunny, no… remember the last time.”

“I said I’m good.” His glare quieted my attempts momentarily.

“Please,” I said, reaching across him. “Don’t be like this.”

He pushed me away. “Fuck, would you just stop. I said I’m fine.” He walked along the raised curb, touching his finger to his nose. “See, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not and neither am I,” Kal said, running to catch up with us. “Meena, can you drive us both home?”

Sunny collapsed into the back seat, his whisky madness softening into a sentimental haze. “I’m sorry, babe. Did you hear me, I said I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.” He leaned forward, his head wagging stumbling affections between the two front seats.

“She heard you,” Kal said. “Now put your seat belt back on and relax.” “My mom is right about you, Meena…she said that you’re a good girl…

that you’ll be a good wife.”

“No one is arguing with you, buddy. She is great, now just put your seat belt on.”

I glanced into the rear-view mirror, unable to see Sunny at all if not for the headlights of the occasional oncoming cars. He leaned forward, and ran his finger along the side of my neck, twirling a piece of my hair around his finger with gentle tension. Frightened and intrigued, I sat up, my posture pushing his hand away. He sat back in a hearty sigh, and though I didn’t look back again, I felt his eyes and his hand’s imprint, his silence hover and shroud. I never knew what to say when he was drunk. Sometimes alcohol induced openness and all his secrets came tumbling out, and at other times he locked himself inside his own mind as if he were protecting me from something dense and angry. I’d seen it in the occasional flicker of his jaw and the flared intersection of veins in his forehead, and always took this as a sign that I should leave him alone.

I was content to drive in silence, the night passing us in dark sheets, streetlights washing over us in waves, but Sunny couldn’t sit still, and fiddled with the automatic windows, opening and closing them in short bursts. He leaned out the open window, sang a few lines from “Close to You,” and ended with his own line: “I feel love for you, Meena.” Then he closed the window, as if he were taking a bow before a curtain call.

“I love you, too.”

“You do?” Kal turned towards me. “You love him?”

I bit down on my lip.

“Of course she loves me… Everybody loves me,” Sunny said, his head bobbing as his eyes closed. “What’s not to love?”

Kal and I helped Sunny into the house, his legs dangling at the knees as we shuffled to his bedroom suite, where Sunny crashed, laughing as he pulled me onto the bed with him. Kal left the room while I diverted Sunny’s ill-timed advances, telling him “No, not now” in the moments before he passed out. He only ever touched me when he was drunk, but even then I refused to sleep with him; the idea of being with him before
our marriage seemed wrong, as if it didn’t fit his version of me. The only real intimacy we had shared was a botched hand job in the back of his bmw. He’d stared straight ahead for a time, his hand pumping mine, setting the pace he could lose himself in. Eyes closed, mouth parted, he didn’t make a sound except for the occasional grunt as he groped for my breasts in the dark. After fifteen minutes of dissatisfaction, he shoved me away. “Fuck, you’re not even doing it right,” he’d said, zipping his pants up. We sat in the pitch dark, hidden by tinted windows, our frustrations mounting.

Now, as I rose to leave, Sunny woke, pulling me closer, telling me not to leave him until he was asleep. I lay beside him with the lights out. His body was hot, almost feverish against mine, and as he spoke, I imagined the small words lingering around his lips like smoke, something to be devoured by.

When he was asleep, I lifted his arm offme and slipped away, carrying my shoes in my hand. Kal was waiting in the living room, standing next to one of the overstuffed couches that flanked each end of the room. All the furniture was pushed against the walls and floating between them was a glass coffee table topped with an obscure sculpture that made the room look like a museum, something for show. “You think he’ll be okay?” I slipped my high heels back on.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine,” Kal said. “He’ll have a wicked headache, but he’ll be fine.”

I put on my jacket. “Do you want a ride home?”

“No, I’m just gonna crash here.”

“All right then,” I said, digging through my purse for my keys. “I should get going. I don’t want to wake anyone.”

We stood in the grand foyer, both of us listening to the upstairs sounds of Sunny’s mother snoring in her bedroom. Apart from sleeping, she spent several hours of each day there perched on a La-Z-Boy chair, watching
Mahabharat
over and over.

“Wait… Stay, have a drink with me. She sleeps through everything,” Kal said.

“I should go.” I lowered my voice. “You know how Sunny is.”

“What, he’s still mad about last week?”

I nodded.

“But he was the one who told us to go to the movie without him.”

“We shouldn’t have gone together.”

“Is that what you believe or is that what he told you?” Kal walked into the adjacent kitchen and opened and closed cupboards.

When Sunny had confronted me about going to the movies without him, I’d reminded him that Kal was his cousin. He’d nodded and smiled, “That’s right, he’s my cousin not yours, and you—you’re with me not him.” I didn’t know what to do but agree.

I followed Kal into the kitchen. “Was he always jealous like that?”

“Yeah, pretty much. He’s used to getting his way, used to getting what he wants. And right now, you happen to be it.” He pulled out a bottle of wine. “Jackpot.”