The Bandit Queens (26)
“Sorry,” he said, hands returning to his pockets after passing Geeta the dog. “It was fun pretending, and I got carried away. I didn’t mean to let him assume I could afford it.”
There were times in one’s life, Geeta knew, where one was confronted with one’s own assholery. After his terrible day—brought about largely by her own actions—she hadn’t even been able to allow him a small flight of fancy. Sometimes she could be the worst fucking version of herself. Usually, with no one around to suffer the consequences, it went unnoticed. But when she was allowed near people…well, she could sabotage like it was a well-paying job.
“No, no,” she said with such uncharacteristic intensity that she felt Karem believing her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how expensive it would be,” she lied. “I took my disappointment out on you.”
He smiled for peace, and she offered it back. “Okay, so maybe it takes a bit longer, but it’s still going to happen.”
Détente in place, they continued walking. Karem, not Geeta, realized it was time to turn back to meet the truck. While they waited near the highway, the fantastic weight of her failure found her and settled. This day—Karem, the dog, shopping—had all been a diversion from the life and duties that awaited her, namely a solution to the Samir problem. As Karem had phrased it: It was fun pretending, and I got carried away. Though she appreciated the anonymity of Kohra, she wasn’t built for the city and usually suffered a mild anxiety until she neared home. But today, she found the inverse true. It was like bunking school; consequences were suspended until it was time to come home and face the gavel.
Perhaps Karem felt similarly because he sighed. “Was a nice day.”
She observed him from across the truck bed. The sun was leaving them, staining the sky a confection pink. “Even with Bada-Bhai?” And my brattiness? she wondered.
He shrugged at her doubt. “I dunno. I just feel like everything’s going to turn out okay, can’t tell you how or why, but I like it. It can’t last, so I’ll just go with it.”
“Why wouldn’t it last?”
“Most feelings don’t last.”
“That’s sad.”
His half smile was quizzical. “Is it? I always thought it was reassuring. Like, knowing it’s all temporary lowers the stakes. You can let yourself go to the limits of it all, because it will pass.”
“So love doesn’t stay? What about your kids?”
“Love can stay. But that’s because it’s not a feeling.”
She already disagreed with him but asked anyway, “What is it, then?”
“It’s a commitment.”
“Like an obligation?”
“No, not in a bad way. I just mean it’s a choice you renew every day.”
Geeta thought about the orcas on her radio program. And Lakha, stuck in Bada-Bhai’s awful house for her illegitimate son’s sake. “I don’t know. I don’t think you choose to love your kids. I think you just sort of…do? Like, you’re compelled to. It’s biology or nature or whatever.”
“Yeah, sure, parental love is primitive, but the love that commits to the sacrifices, that puts their happiness and needs over mine, that does it daily on repeat—that’s a choice.” He squinted in the way Geeta now knew he did while thinking. Words came faster to him when he closed his eyes. “It’s a choice I make. It’s important, for me at least, to recognize that, because when you don’t, resentment creeps in.”
“Are you lonely?” A dumb question that highlighted her own state.
But, eyes still closed, he only said, “At times, very.”
“It’s harder for you than others, isn’t it? It’s all on you. There’s no help.”
“Oh, they take care of each other. My eldest is like a second parent. He even reminds me to eat.”
“That’s nice.”
“Not really,” Karem said. “It’s not a childhood.”
Geeta again felt inadequate; she was no good at comforting people, that was a muscle she’d long allowed to atrophy. Once, with Saloni, she had been. Because you love me. You see me in a way no one else does. And because you’re a duffer.
If Karem was to be believed, she and Saloni had chosen each other, chosen to love each other—until they hadn’t. (It was odd, how her thoughts these days returned to Saloni like a homing pigeon.)
Had Geeta chosen to love Ramesh? She supposed she had. What if he’d stayed? Would she have continued to choose to love him? Would she have forgiven him his fists and slurs, and renewed her commitment to sacrificing slivers of herself for his needs: food, sex, venting, validation?
It was not a road worth traveling. She and Karem disembarked the truck, the sherbet sunset turning to ash, and said their goodbyes.
Karem gestured to the dog. “Think of a good name for him.”
“A name?” She looked down at her arms. So accustomed was she to his weight and warmth, she’d forgotten she was holding him. “I’m not really an animal lover.”
“That’s okay. They do most of the loving anyway.”
She hadn’t yet decided what she’d say to Farah, how she’d explain her failure; she assumed she had some time. But when Geeta walked to her house, there was Farah sitting on the step, folded into herself: chin stacked on arms stacked on knees. When she saw Geeta, she stood, unfurling like a slow cloud. Stubborn light lingered through the dusk. And as Geeta registered Farah’s fresh bruising, the swollen lip and cut cheekbone, it occurred to her that her dereliction, her bunking class for a day, had consequences well beyond herself.