It wasn’t just Matthew I was grieving, but something deeper, some fatigue of the soul. We had an old dog at the time, a kind of hybrid shepherd that may have been part wolf. For sure, he looked lupine, is that the right word? Sometimes he would sleep near me, at the foot of the bed or on the floor next to the sofa. Bhedi was an ancient creature, lived a thousand lives, and he knew something was amiss. He’d uncurl his body and poke his muzzle into my hand or just plead with me with those big brown eyes to get up, Sita, get moving, and I would walk him round the block, slowly in respect to his arthritic hips, but I could barely make it back home. So, sorry, Bhedi, and he would whimper when I lay back down on the couch, completely worn-out. Twenty-four and going to pieces.
A month’s indulgence, that’s what my parents granted me, and come the middle of summer, they were encouraging me to get on my feet, to do something. How would you like to take up swimming? Or we could buy you a horse. Would you like to go out to Lake Michigan for a sail? But everything for me was still at half speed, quarter speed. I could not go when they proposed a vacation to Canada. I did not know the answer when they asked whether I would be going back to grad school in the fall. I hadn’t the energy to think about looking for even a part-time job. My mother eventually broached the idea of some professional help. “Not that we think there’s something wrong,” my mother said. “But just someone to talk to—”
“I’m not crazy.”
“No, not crazy. Hurt by that evil boy.”
Of course, it wasn’t the boy himself, but what he represented, some greater imbalance in the cosmos. The very idea that I, of all people, could not be trusted. What kind of world is this? The notion that someone would strike me because he believed his suspicions over my truth. What sort of life have I stumbled upon? I was not depressed, but in a state of despair. And I needed something other than a therapist, so I refused to go, despite the anguish in my mother’s eyes.
They were not looking at each other, Sam and Sita. Perhaps the moment was too raw and personal, and they were strangers to a degree that made her confession uncomfortable. During the time Sita and I were together, she and Sam probably met no more than a dozen times, so they knew each other primarily through me, and I am a poor vessel for understanding. I didn’t know half of Sita’s story, never knew the depths of her pain. She was framed by the window, the afternoon backlighting her features into obscurity, the sunshine through the silver leaves bestowing a kind of radiance. Sam sat quietly on the bed, studying his shoelaces. In the awkwardness of the conversation, I wished he could play the fool as he had before. Draw some tattoo upon her eyelids or entertain her with some trick hidden in the pocket of his bathrobe. But Sam had no magic to lighten the mood. And I could provide little comfort for her past. Her life before our life. The cat opened one eye and regarded me with some disdain. “A bit of curiosity wouldn’t have killed you,” he said. “For cripes’ sake, mate, you should have known before now.”
As August ceased, and it became clear that I was in no shape to go back to school, my parents grew more worried about me. My mother kept insisting upon a therapist, and I could hear their arguments filtered through my haze. My brothers and sister were worried, too, not just about me, but about our mother as well, who was drifting away, lost in confusion about what to do with me. One late summer night, with a hint of autumn in the night air, my father knocked on my door and asked if he might come in.
A cool breeze blew off the lake, and I was already under my covers, though the sun had not set. He motioned for me to give him some space to sit on the edge of the bed. He has a kind of old-world formality, a starchy politeness that endeared him to patients and colleagues, but as a fully Americanized daughter, I found his manners puzzling. Relax, Daddy. He was not like the American dads and their easy ways with their children, and as he sat there beside me, I would have given anything just to have him hug me and say everything would be all right. But that’s just not in his makeup, though still, I was grateful for the gesture, and it had been years since we had been alone together like this since I was a little girl and he a young man. I bunched my pillows into a cushion and sat up to ask, “Do you remember when you used to come tell me the old stories?” Searching for words, he looked lost in the thicket, unsure of the means to rescue his child just beyond.