Grief Is a Hungry Business & Other Short Stories Read online

  My grandparents had put on a show for Harita’s family. In the dining room, the brass-studded teak table had been set with crisp, fine linen, and silver spoons and forks gleamed from elbow grease. The meal was delicious, the scents mouth-watering. Succulent lamb had been roasted in tomatoes and coriander and served with saffron rice. There was chicken tikka, mustard fish curry, biryani, saag daal, roti, and naan—enough to feed the whole village. Conversation buzzed around the table, and once or twice, polite bursts of laughter punctuated the meal. We ate at the acceptable measured pace, and finally my grandmother, the last to finish her meal, pushed back her plate. The servants appeared quietly and cleared the table. Then the older generations withdrew diplomatically, leaving Harita and me alone.

  She looked nervous when I cleared my throat and addressed her directly. “Would you like to take a walk in the garden, Harita? I must speak with you privately.”

  She blushed and looked at me from under thick lashes. “That would be nice, Devendra.” She rose gracefully from the table, and I took her small, smooth hand in my work-calloused one and led her to the terrace, where the cool air came as a relief. Although my heart was heavy, I smiled at her encouragingly. She was the other victim of this sham our families wanted so badly.

  “Harita, you know I’ve come back to India because our parents want us to marry,” I told her. She nodded, her head down. “My life in New Zealand is very different from what you’re used to here.”

  A tear slid down her cheek, and my heart ached for her. I could tell she didn’t want this any more than I did.

  “Yes, I understand that.”

  “I hate the thought of pulling you away from everything you’ve known,” I said. “From your parents and your sisters.”

  Her liquid brown eyes met mine, and for the first time, I saw they were filled with molten steel. “Devendra, I can’t marry you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m in love with someone else, and I’ve promised myself to him.”

  I sank onto a garden bench and fingered the small box in my pocket. Harita’s eyes drilled into me beseechingly, but I couldn’t speak. Instead I threw back my head and roared with laughter. I didn’t need to hurt this sweet girl after all. The gods had answered my prayers, and now I could save face with my family.

  Later that evening, after packing, I took the ring from its box. The sapphire glinted at me, its midnight, velvet hue reminding me of Stephanie’s eyes. Miles across the sea, she would be wondering if our love had ever been real. I rubbed my finger across the band, which I’d had inscribed just the day before.

  Steph, I’ll always love you. —Dev

  I pulled the envelope out of my pocket and checked the tickets inside one last time. My flight back to Auckland was early the next morning. I put the ring back in my pocket and smiled, relieved that soon I’d be home, back with my one true love.

  Not Quite Perfect

  Sarah shuffled along the hospital corridor, her face pinched and drawn. Pulling her cardigan around her stooped shoulders, she pushed through the worn wooden door into the ward. Silently she moved over the linoleum and sat down next to the baby. With her peachy skin and pale-blond, downy hair, the child looked angelic and peaceful. Her finely arched eyebrows framed closed eyes, and her tiny hand fisted against her smooth cheek.

  Sarah smiled momentarily, remembering the day she was born. The labour had started quietly enough, but as the afternoon light faded, the pains accelerated to an intensity that suggested her fifteen year old body would cleave in two. She felt a moment of silence, and relief, as her daughter was born. Then the baby’s face crumpled, and she shrieked in staccato cries. It was as if she were aware of the trouble she had already caused and wanted to defiantly trumpet to the world, “Here I am. You can’t pretend now. You have to accept me.”

  Sarah was only eleven when she met Johnny, a towheaded newcomer to her school. “I’ll let you see what I have in this jar if you let me kiss you,” he’d said to her as they’d left the school gates.

  “I don’t want to see what’s in your jar, and I certainly don’t want to kiss you,” she replied. “But you can walk me home if you want.” She was itching to know what was in the jar.

  They walked home talking nonstop, and as they neared Sarah’s road, Johnny said, “Have a look inside.” He held the jar towards her, keeping his hands around it until the last moment. “It’s a monarch butterfly. Pretty, isn’t she?”

  Sarah scrunched up her nose. “I feel sad for her, stuck in that little jar. She’d be happier flying around free. I know I would if I was a butterfly. Can’t you let her go?”

  Johnny shrugged. He carefully tipped the butterfly onto the grass. It lay still for a moment. Then it quivered, raised its delicate wings, and fluttered off.

  “Thanks, Johnny. See you tomorrow.” Sarah ran down the road, excited to tell her parents about her new friend.

  The wooden door of the ward creaked open, breaking Sarah’s reverie. It was one of the ward nurses, a middle-aged woman who reminded her of her favourite teacher at primary school.

  “I’m going home now, love,” the nurse said. “Let me hug you before I go.” As she wrapped her plump arms around her, Sarah sagged against her, relieved that for a moment she was allowed to be the youngster she still was. “I know this is hard for you, Sarah. You’re not much more than a child yourself.” The nurse stopped for a moment, as if trying to decide whether to continue. “Your parents are hurting too.”

  Sarah pulled away from her. “I hate my parents. They could have stopped this.”

  The older woman left, and Sarah turned to look out the window. The garden was ablaze with flowers: red, orange, and yellow roses, a riot of summer colour. It was late morning; the air was hot and humid; and the breeze barely stirred. Cicadas sang, and a lawnmower roared in the distance. It had been a day like this that had led her to where she was now.

  The phone had shrilled early in the morning, and she knew it would be Johnny. “Sarah, a crowd of us are going to the beach for the day,” he’d said. “There’ll be a barbecue later on. I’ll pick you up at eleven. Let your folks know we might be back late.” Her parents hadn’t demurred. They knew Johnny and trusted him, and they knew he’d look after her.

  It was a blisteringly hot day at the beach, and Sarah and Johnny spent it laughing, joking, and bodysurfing with their friends. Hours later, sunburnt, happy, and replete from the sausages they’d barbecued, they piled into Johnny’s Ford Prefect, an old green jalopy that had cost him five hundred dollars and was his pride and joy. When Johnny pulled up outside Sarah’s house, she leant over to gather her things from the floor of the car.

  “Thanks for a fun day,” she said, as she straightened up. There was silence in the car. “Are you okay, Johnny?” His gaze was intent, his eyes hooded. “Johnny?” she asked again. He nodded and pulled her to him. His lips brushed across hers gently, questioningly. Sarah’s heart raced, and her arms tingled. When she opened her mouth in response, his tongue found hers hungrily.

  Everything changed with that first kiss. Four months later she realised she was pregnant, and from that moment, the rest of the pregnancy was filled with arguments and reproaches. Sarah’s parents and Johnny’s parents had met to discuss the situation, and she had been told their decision. Johnny was to be sent away to boarding school at the other end of the country, and she wasn’t to see him before he went. She would finish her studies at home. Her parents didn’t want her at school, where she would be subjected to stares and gossip throughout her pregnancy. Worse still, her parents weren’t sure keeping the baby would be in her best interests.

  Johnny rapped on her bedroom window one Saturday morning when the air was fresh and the sun hadn’t yet risen in the sky. “Sarah, I’m leaving today,” he said. “You know I don’t want to go, but my parents won’t let me stay. I’ll write to you and try to phone sometimes. I’m sorry about all this. I love you and want to be with you and our baby.”

  That night, cocooned i
n bed, Sarah cried. Finally, spent, she curled into the foetal position, shielding her growing belly. “At least I have you, darling,” she crooned to her unborn child. “It’s just you and me now. I won’t let them take you away. We’ll never be apart.”

  On the April morning when Anna was born, Sarah knew she’d prevailed. Her parents had come round to her way of thinking. “We’ve thought about it long and hard,” said Dad, his eyes crinkling with pleasure as he gazed at his tiny granddaughter. “Maybe we’re being hasty, but we’re going to let you keep the baby, as long as you agree to continue with your studies next year.” Her mother nodded as she touched Anna in wonder.

  That day had been only a month before, but seemed like a snapshot from a lifetime ago; things had changed so dramatically. She leaned over and gently traced the outline of Anna’s face. Her daughter was like Johnny, with her golden hair and fair skin, but Johnny wasn’t here to see the wonder of his small, perfect daughter.

  But Anna wasn’t quite perfect, as the doctor had explained. “Sarah, there’s no easy way to say this,” he’d said. “Anna has biliary atresia, a congenital liver disease. It’s very rare, and her only hope is a transplant.”

  Hearing the words as if they were coming from another galaxy, she’d tried to focus on the doctor’s starched white jacket. He seemed too young to be a doctor, not much older than her really. Perhaps this was a dream. She turned to her mother, but her expression confirmed this was happening. “Since she’s so tiny, just a small section would be enough from an adult liver,” the doctor continued. “Because of your blood type, we think you’ll be a match. However, there is a risk of death associated with donating a piece of liver. It’s about one in five hundred people. Usually we don’t transplant from anyone under the age of eighteen, and as you’re only fifteen, we’ll need your parents’ consent.”

  Sarah and her parents talked endlessly after the doctor had gone. Talked and talked and talked. Argued and cried. But irrespective of the dialogue, of her impassioned pleas, she couldn’t sway them.

  “Of course we love Anna,” her mother said. “But we love you more. If your father or I could be the donor, we would, but our blood types don’t match hers. We won’t let you risk your life, Sarah. We can’t bear the thought of losing you both.”

  When the sound of footsteps rang out in the corridor behind her, Sarah knew it was her parents. She bent down towards her daughter, and a tear fell onto Anna’s face. She wiped it away tenderly and straightened herself before turning to look at her parents with cold, flat eyes. She was no longer a child. Her youth had gone, and so had her love for her parents. As irrevocably as the coming autumn chill would dissipate the summer warmth, and leaves would fall onto soon-barren ground, her relationship with her parents had died. It died on that late-summer afternoon, as Anna’s last resigned sigh escaped her small, struggling body.

  Beneath the Silver Birch

  It’s strange the things you remember, even after half a lifetime. Like the white clapboard house, with its stern slate roof, black shuttered windows, and firmly closed front door. Surrounded by manicured lawns interwoven with shell paths, the house stood proudly on a corner site, shaded by chestnut trees. It was a fine house, but when I was a young girl, that didn’t occur to me. I was scared of it, and so were the other kids who ran past it on their way to and from school.

  I was ten the first time I went inside the house. It was a summer evening, and the air was redolent with lilac. Holding my father’s hand as we walked through the front door, I tried not to think of the horrors in that house. Although my father’s touch comforted me, I still was frightened. Sensing my fear, he leant down and kissed me, transferring his hot, salty tears from his cheek to mine. I was scared, because my young world had changed considerably. It must have changed, as I’d never seen my father cry before.

  He cried again the next day as we stood by the birch tree while the body of his baby son was committed to the earth. I still remember the parchment-like bark of that tree—silver, grey, and black—curling away from its trunk, as if it too were being separated from its parent. The monochromatic tones were a welcome respite from the rowdy colours of the summer morning that seemed to mock the sombre occasion. I focused on that bark and bit back my tears, my small hand in my father’s strong one. His sorrowful expression told me what his mouth wouldn’t, and I felt the lifeblood seep from his body into the grave, in his forlorn hope it would awaken his sleeping son. I knew my father needed my strength, so I was determined not to cry.

  Even more tears fell the next day, when he found the poem I’d written as a tribute to my infant brother. This time his grief melded into the edges of anger. His voice cracked when he told me he didn’t want my mother to see my poem, didn’t want her to hurt any more than she already was. He tore the poem into tiny pieces and threw it away, and I felt hurt too. Only much later did I understand his anger wasn’t directed at me.

  Two days later my mother came home from hospital without having held the son to whom she’d given birth. She was the same loving, nurturing mother she’d always been, but her smile didn’t reach her dull eyes. Even at my innocent age, I understood part of her had died with her baby.

  As I grew, I imagined what my younger brother might have been. Dark haired, with playful hazel eyes, he’d be fun loving and gregarious. I pictured him smiling cheekily into the sun, relishing his latest adventures. I loved him, and in turn he adored me, his big sister and protector.

  As the years passed, I thought of him less, but finally, when I was an adult, I felt I needed to return to the only place I’d communed with my brother. But with both parents now gone, how could I hope to find that plot of earth, shaded by a silver birch, in a country I’d left as a child?

  Memory is a sharp instrument, and I still clearly recalled the white clapboard house, the one I had walked past each day on my way home from school; the one in which my father had planned his son’s funeral. I had travelled halfway across the world to retrace the steps I’d taken each day as a youngster.

  I stood outside the gates of my old school, hoping I’d remember which way I’d walked home. Nothing looked familiar, but after several hesitant steps, the child within me moved with certainty. Turn left. Walk two blocks, two very long blocks. Was I close? Unsure, I paused at an intersection, where I heard running footsteps and the laughter of boys. I turned, but the sounds were figments of my imagination, echoing from the past. Sighing, I turned back, and my eyes settled on the white clapboard house on the opposite corner. My heart pounded in my rib cage, and my tongue thickened in my dry mouth, but it wasn’t fear. It was jubilation. Relief.

  Taking in the house, I crossed the road slowly. It had the remnants of the house in my imagination but had subtly changed. It wasn’t oppressive, but imposing. The change, I knew, wasn’t in the house but in me. This time, as I walked through the glossy front door, I wasn’t afraid. The house enfolded me in its dignified silence before giving up its secret: the place where my brother had been buried all those years ago.

  Standing here now in the fading afternoon light, I close my eyes and take in the smells of a dying summer. Maple leaves, fragile and dusty, gather in drifts on the cracked, untended earth. Their pungent aroma carries in the cool air, hinting at the bite of the coming autumn.

  I open my eyes, and they alight on the peeling bark of the silver birch. I consider the tree carefully, as I did as a child. It’s taller and older, as am I, but still graceful as it leans to whisper in the light breeze.

  It whispers that this time I can cry.

  As I kneel on my brother’s grave, reverently scattering my parents’ ashes above him, crying’s exactly what I do.

  Grief Is a Hungry Business

  Delia slipped into the back of the church, looking for an empty pew. She wasn’t late enough to draw attention to herself. Nor was she early, which may have invited pleasantries she wouldn’t welcome.

  “Hello. We haven’t met before,” someone might say. “I’m an
old workmate of Allan’s. How did you know him?” That was precisely the sort of question she wanted to avoid and why she had so meticulously timed her arrival.

  She settled onto the hard wood and looked around the crowded church discreetly but with interest. Men, women, children, their heads forming uneven rows. Black hair, blond hair, red hair. Lots of grey hair. The occasional hat, pulled out of the wardrobe for such occasions. People whispered to each other and nodded, as they were wont to do at funerals. “Have you seen Betty Inglefield?” asked one. “Over there, in the monstrous hat with the large feather,” replied the lady next to her. “That must be her husband sitting with her. I heard he had cancer, but he looks quite well, considering.” Funerals were an opportunity for people to catch up with friends and acquaintances they hadn’t seen for years and of course to gossip.

  A hush descended on the church, and two hundred bodies turned collectively to watch the procession make its way through the nave. The priest led the way, followed by six pallbearers struggling under the weight of an oak casket covered with red roses. Allan had been a giant of a man.

  “We’re gathered here to celebrate the life of Allan Boyd and to remind ourselves that this life is but the beginning. In the afterlife we will sit at our Father’s table and receive our eternal blessing from Him,” said the priest solemnly before pausing for effect. He was a pompous man, short and rotund, with a shiny pink face that looked as if it had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life.

  Long, drawn out, and full of religious platitudes, this was the sort of funeral Delia hated. Religion hadn’t been a topic of conversation in the house where she’d grown up. Not in the conventional sense anyway. Sometimes when her dad came home drunk, he’d wave his arms around and rant about the “bloody holy rollers.” For years she’d imagined the mystique and romance of this group of worshippers, but they lost their glamour when she realised that they were Catholics and that snotty-nosed Mary Brennan in her class at school numbered one of them.