—Maya!
Raj shifted. Rohan pushed the door fully open.
—Maya, I’ll do this. Can you finish the flour?
Maya froze in place. She could feel the tiled floor tilting beneath her, sliding her toward the kitchen’s swinging door. All of her feelings were consumed by fear as Joey’s gaze shifted from his mother to this man, this burly stranger his mom must have loved.
Across the shop, Raj set down his newspaper. From his booth he would’ve been able to see the back of the scrawny young man at the counter, and his father walking over and leaning into his face.
—Out.
Maya hovered before the door. She could have stepped forward and said something. She could have acknowledged her younger son. But instead she disappeared into the kitchen. She told herself she was remaining silent in order to protect Raj, but choosing him over his baby brother only made her feel worse. When the door closed behind her, it felt as if it had closed upon her life.
Ever since Joey’s birth, if she shut her eyes and concentrated she could smell him, like he was still that infant in her arms, and that was what she did right then, all alone in the kitchen. Even from there, she could hear the squeaky spin of the counter stool as Joey stood and ran toward the exit. The bell rang against the glass as the door shut behind him.
—He’s a thief, Rohan said to Raj.
Maya leaned against the tiled wall for a long time after Joey was gone, forcing herself to recall every detail of his face, his hair, his clothing, his gait, and after a time she heard Raj gathering his things, zipping his knapsack, and heading out as well.
—Tell Mom I’ll call, he said.
The bell rang against the glass, and her other son was gone.
Rohan turned over the Closed sign and came into the kitchen. He’d clearly known who Joey was the moment he saw him, or maybe the moment he saw Maya looking at him. He even seemed to have expected him, which made her wonder if he’d intercepted one of their letters or phone calls. She didn’t dare ask.
—How long have you two been in touch? he said.
Rohan was so calm, standing there, that Maya thought the years had maybe changed him, that maybe he would allow Joey to have a place in their lives. She must have seemed happy when she told him that she and Joey had been writing letters for a few years, but that this was really the first time they’d seen each other in person.
Rohan nodded along until she was finished.
—If I see him again, here or anywhere, I will kill him, and then I will kill you.
—Rohan. He needs a family, that’s all. We could provide that.
—You act like you don’t believe me.
His calm was reassuring, so she tried to plead with him.
—Rohan. He’s my child.
—Okay.
—He’s my son.
—Okay already.
He nodded with what seemed to be understanding, then held out his hand to her, open palmed. She was nervous but she took his hand and allowed him to walk her gently over to the stainless steel mixing station, with its vats of sugar and flour, its deep fryer and cooling racks and industrial mixer. He stopped there, then held her bicep with one hand, her forearm with the other, almost as if he were leading her onto a dance floor—except then he tightened his grip and plunged her hand into the bubbling oil of the deep fryer. Her eyes opened so wide that she felt like her lids had peeled back over the top of her head. She watched her fingers loosen as he pulled her hand, dripping and glistening, out of the golden oil. Stars stirred in her vision. Skin slid off of her hand like an unfurled glove.
—Do you believe me now? he said.
Now she could feel it, her entire hand blaring an unfathomable noise. She was unable to breathe, let alone respond.
He let go and walked toward the shop’s rear door, just as he had that night twenty years ago.
—Please don’t hurt him!
—Get that hand fixed before we open tomorrow.
In the shop with Lydia, Mrs. Patel fiddled with her gray gauzy mitten.
“Please don’t hurt him,” she said. “That was all I could offer my son. That was the extent of my motherhood. Four words. Please don’t hurt him.”
After Rohan left the shop Maya made two phone calls: one to get the taxi that would take her to the emergency room because her husband had just driven off in his Monte Carlo, and the other to Joey, who had just arrived at his group-home apartment and picked up his ringing phone. He was silent as Mrs. Patel spoke the last words she would ever say to him.
—I never want to see you again. I never want to hear from you. I never want to read your letters. Am I making myself clear?
—Mom?
—Don’t call me that. It’s not your fault, but some people are just not meant to be born. If I could undo you, I would. I promise you, I would.
As she set down the receiver she could hear him saying, Mom?
“That hurt far more than my hand ever could,” Mrs. Patel said to Lydia. “But I didn’t know how else I might protect him. Rohan would be glad to kill him.”
Lydia imagined Joey hanging up the phone, then sitting in his empty apartment with his pile of books, ignoring Lyle’s calls and his landlady’s knocks. His whole life he had turned to books as his only solace, so it made sense that in preparing to undo himself he would do the same: fall into their pages, disappear into their windows, expose his soul on his way out of life.
She could have asked Mrs. Patel for more details, but she knew enough. After that final phone call, Joey had spent two or three days carving his messages, and each piece of a page he sliced inched him ever closer to death.
io
We
U.M.
or
eth
ant ???his,
L.
dia
but?? I’d
On
tha
vet
hew
or
ds
. Any
mo
reth.
ey
have been
tak
in
. A long
with
my l
If,
Mrs. Patel looked drained and scared on her upturned bucket. She seemed to be asking Lydia for forgiveness, or at least for understanding. But it wasn’t Lydia’s to give.
“You don’t even know why I’m here,” Lydia said.
“Because you and Raj found out about Joey,” Mrs. Patel said, but there was a lilt of doubt in her voice. “I will make it up to him, Lydia. Maybe now that Raj knows, we can find a way. I will make it up to him.”
“You can’t,” Lydia said.
“I can, Lydia. I just don’t know how yet.”
Lydia had been so caught up in this knot of secrets that she’d nearly forgotten why she’d stepped foot into the Vital Records office last week in the first place: to track down Joey’s mother in order to share the news of his suicide. She deserved to know, Lydia had told herself then. After all, his mother had been seeking him out.
“You can’t make it up to him,” she said, “because Joey is dead. He hanged himself in the bookstore where I work.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Check the newspaper. Joey hanged himself. That’s why I’m here, Mrs. Patel. I came to tell you that your boy is dead.”