“You can almost hear the clinking of the rotating wheels of the clock if you squint your ears.” “Squint your ears? I thought the eyes did the squinting.”
“Yeah, but you know how you strain your ears comically when the sound you are trying to capture is faint, but the promise of it is too enticing for you to let it drown in the sea of noises you will never hold or comprehend? That’s nothing more than the squinting of your ears.”
The raspiness of the laugh she lets out blends with the clinking of the clock and the thunderous rain outside. I dig my nails into my palm to stop myself from comparing the sound to what her laughter would have sounded like ten years ago in this very room.
The mahogany of the grandfather clock looks far more aged than the last time I saw it. The crevices in the wood seem deeper, mirroring the loose stretches of skin on my hands. I touch the tips of my fingers to the purplish bruises beneath my eyes, taken aback by the similarity I see reflected in the undertones of the wood.
“I almost didn’t recognise you when I walked in,” she says, a smile tugging at the edges of her lips, still the same shade of mauve that colours the collars of my old kameezes. But I am distracted by her nails. They are red now, sharper than they used to be, with one rimming the lip of the glass she’s holding and trying to dislodge the salt decorating it. The nails match the crimson of the drink in her glass, unsipped, untouched, unperturbed.
“I wouldn’t have expected you to.”
I turn away from the clock and her to face the empty room. Everything is where it used to be. The burgundy sofas against the far wall, facing the arched windows looking out into the rain-soaked street, look just as worn as before. The ceiling-high cabinets on either side of the room are still lined with the hundreds of expensive pieces of china that no one ever dares to
touch. Even the dinner table, in all its marble austerity, seems to be covered with the same dishes I saw the last time I ran out of this place—the glistening lamb roast waiting to be carved, the disturbingly sweet kheer that Amma insists on making, the saffron-infused pulao shaped into a heap. The only thing different about the room is the pitcher of red in the corner, and it has perplexed me since the moment I walked in some thirty minutes ago.
“When did you start drinking?”
Moving towards the table with a relaxed gait, she pulls out a plush chair close to the pitcher, and, arranging her kameez so that it lies in a circle around her, sits down. I can’t help but notice that the shade of her dress resembles the one she was wearing the day I left. I wonder if she picked it out on purpose, if she remembers, if it matters at all to her. Is that why she’s the only person here?
“About a month into the marriage, I would say,” her voice steels as she sets down her glass next to the pitcher and looks out the window.
“Why haven’t you touched your cocktail?” I ask as I move towards her, pushing my yellowed fingers deep into the pockets of my cardigan, a cardigan that she had made in this very room at a time when this place was little more than our quiet sanctuary on rainy afternoons. Why are we the only people here? Why are we here?
“You know how when you meet someone from your past and you feel the desire to let go of all the instances of when they wronged you and you wronged them and want only to remember the parts where you felt like you were something more than just your worst self, and you find yourself inhabiting the body you called your own back then and every one of your contemporary desires and wants and needs dissolves into a murky nothingness?” Now standing in front of her rigidly seated frame, I can see the foggy glaze over her hazel eyes as she looks at the storm outside. It lifts a little when she looks back at me to whisper, “That’s how I feel right now. I am afraid of disappointing you, I suppose.”
I don’t really know what to say. I just look at her and the tenseness in her body, wondering the stupidity of my being back here after all this time, questioning the absence of the other bodies that should be populating this godforsaken place, puzzled by the sudden urge I feel to take her
Bloody Mary and throw it against the wall of windows and against myself so that I can just crumble apart into a million pieces and become one with this house.
Why is this room so still?
Why am I here? Thirty minutes is far too long for me to be here. I am far too old for this, Neesha. My skin is too saggy; I am an addict; I don’t know why I stopped you from being what you wanted to be, what you needed to be. Is that what you want to know? Because
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I am sorry.
I am sorry for everything.
I don’t say it. I don’t say anything. Because I don’t know why I am here and I am afraid of finding out.
I just turn away from her once again and run.
Writer | Adrita Zaima Islam ’29 | aislam29@amherst.edu
Editor | Wasifa Orthy ’26 | worthy26@amherst.edu