Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir (33 page)

There was so much tactile pleasure in pickle making, and little she couldn’t participate in. It gave her a deep sense of pride to display the bottles on our counter, which was right opposite the front door. Whenever a new person entered the house, she would indicate that she had made them herself by running over to where they were and pointing upward, saying, “Look my pickles! I made pickles!” She kept asking when they would be ready, the glowing red orbs in ever amber-colored water. That they were most likely too hot and she would never be able to eat them herself did not curtail her suspense and anticipation. I kept telling her they wouldn’t be ready for months, because at first she would look at them every day, shaking them at the base with both hands in such a way I feared they would slide off and come crashing down over her head. “When, Momma, when?” “When it gets really cold, and you wear the heavy coat for the snow,” I said. It occurred to me then that by the time I took my first bite of these pickles, so lovingly made and impatiently waited for by Krishna, Teddy might not be around. I wanted the next days to go slowly as much as Krishna wanted them to speed up. Outside our window, I saw the first leaf fall from the maple tree, turning and swirling hopelessly toward its death on the ground below.

It was almost Halloween. Krishna was a lion. She had a costume that looked exactly like a child-sized replica of the Cowardly Lion in
The Wizard of Oz.
It was the perfect costume, furry and soft and warm. Her rosy cheeks and dimpled chin smiled from ear to ear with self-satisfaction. Teddy had been sleeping a lot that weekend since we got to the house on Meadow Lane.
He hadn’t been up at all since going to bed early the evening before, but he could feel me in the bed with him. He held and squeezed my hand when I slipped it into his. He interlaced his fingers with mine. He was pretty weak then. He had to use the wheelchair at all times, and he hated it. And he was thin. So very thin. When I turned to hug him, pressing my body up against his back, I could feel his ribs on my breasts, the bones of his arm and shoulder, even his tailbone and pelvis against my front.

Krishna and I had gone apple picking with Maggie down Route 27, and I was making applesauce for her and Teddy, with lots and lots of cinnamon and butter. Teddy loved cinnamon; he had it in his coffee every day. But he no longer drank coffee. When the thrush and chemo made his throat sore, it became hard for him to swallow. He began to choke on simple soft roast chicken. He just couldn’t be bothered to chew, either. But I knew he loved my applesauce. It was warm and wet, and sweet. It would go down, if anything could. Krishna loved it, too. It was her favorite, neck and neck with Tha-Tha’s banana
payasam.
The house smelled of brown butter and cinnamon and stewed apples. There was enough so that Maggie and I put some in containers to cool on the counter. And even a portion for us to take back to the city. There was a definite chill already and the autumn leaves were rustling in the wind from the sea. None of us had walked on the beach for quite a while. It was too cold. I hoped what had been bubbling on the stove would keep us all warm.

Judy was there, too. Judy doted on Krishna, and Krishna loved her. They even shared the same birthday. And they had similar dispositions. Judy had brought Krishna a set of fairy wings that were delicate, gauzy, and pink, with a wand and crown, and they delighted Krishna. I also got her a mail-order white tiger costume, which was for indoors. We had just seen a live white tiger at the Ringling Bros. circus also named Krishna, while I was filming the show in Texas that summer, so she had wanted to be that for Halloween. But I couldn’t resist getting the lion. It would keep
her warm on its own if she went trick-or-treating outdoors. She looked fantastic in all of them.

The late-afternoon sun was getting low. Krishna wanted to show her poppy her Halloween getup, and she wouldn’t accept that he could not be awakened to look at it. The bed was almost as tall as she was, but she had recently learned to wedge her toes deep into the crevice between the box spring and the mattress to hoist herself up. She sometimes pulled on a sheet for leverage, though at times she pulled on Teddy. I walked in and saw this small brown animal creep up and startle poor Teddy, who let out a low groan. “Poppy, wake up. Wake
up
now, Poppy!” She had been waiting patiently way past lunch and now she couldn’t stand it any longer. I was afraid she would hurt him or herself. I came up from behind and carried her up into the bed. I told her to be very careful because Poppy wasn’t feeling strong. Teddy had some random purplish bruises on his forearm from all the treatments and I pointed them out to Krishna, to always be careful where she grabbed Poppy. She was so used to being rough with him, to just climbing all over him at will. I put her carefully on my side of the bed next to him. He happened to be turned inward toward where I would sleep. She was as careful as it’s possible for a toddler under two to be. I was moved by how her little hand rubbed his forearm. She put her face right up close to his, as much as the woolly mane would allow her to. “Poppy, wake up! Look, I’m a lion.”

I lay down on the other side of Krishna to make sure I could buffer any sudden movements she made. The remaining hair that was not shaved off on the side of Teddy’s head had been shorn to a very short quarter-inch of salt-and-pepper stubble. And it made him look strangely like a little boy sleeping with his hands under his stubbled chin. He did not open his eyes. “Mmm,” he moaned, clearly disturbed. “Poppy, I’m a scary lion,
arrg
!” Her poppy was not getting up. “Poppy, Poppy, get up!” She squealed right into his face. “Let him sleep,
kanna.
” I tried to gently pull her away by the waist. “Just open your eyes,” she cajoled. “Open.
Poppy
. See?”

I didn’t know then that it would be the last exchange between Krishna and her poppy, but what I saw scared me. “Hey, if you can hear us, Teddy, blink,” I said quietly. He did not blink. But then the corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. And then he slowly opened his eyes and shut them again rapidly, as if to say, “Not there yet, Junior.” Without opening them again, he said, “Hey, kiddo.” Now Krishna became emboldened and lunged her face back closer to his. “Look! I’m a lion.” “You are a lion.” “You’re not looking,” she accused. Teddy with great effort opened his eyes again. They stared at each other for what seemed like a long time. All I could hear was Teddy’s breathing, slow and heavy. Krishna couldn’t stand the silence. “I love you, Poppy. Oh yes. I. Do.” Teddy closed his eyes. “I love you, too, kiddo. Have fun.”

Before he could finish, she was already scrambling down to the wooden bench at the foot of the bed. From there she could make it to the ground easily. She scampered off to find Judy or Maggie. I stayed there for a few minutes. I moved closer to Teddy and tried to put my arm around his waist, but after a few seconds felt the weight of my arm was too much on his torso. “You okay?” I asked him. “Yeah, just tired. She’s a lion.” That night would be the last night Teddy and I would sleep in that house together. Or share any bed again.

It was very early in the morning of November 20 when the call came. So early that it was still dark in the bedroom, with not even a sliver of light peeking through the space between wall and window shade. Krishna shifted slightly at the first ring, but the soft rumble of her nostrils did not break the sleepy rhythm of light snoring. She had woken up a few hours before, crying out. I managed to pat her back to sleep. I thought then that she’d had a bad dream. By the second ring, I was out of bed. When I got to the phone, charging in the kitchen, the ringing had stopped. Bleary-eyed but awake, somehow I knew. He was no more.

The night had been uneasy from the start. After a supper of peas, carrots, shrimp, and rice noodles, Krishna and I got into the bath later than usual. I could feel her bum bouncing on my thigh as I soaped her neck and shoulders. Along with the yellow duckies and other tub toys, a few noodles and peas bobbed in the soapy water, stowaways in the many folds of her belly. I washed her hair with one hand as I fished for the stray pea, the odd noodle, with the other. I ladled water over her head with a plastic mug. As I washed her, an alarm began to ring in my head, faint at first, then louder and louder.

I felt fingers scratch at my torso. I looked down to see my heartbeat pulsing visibly, wildly, and her open mouth reaching for a nipple. I parried her attempt, guiding her lips away. “I want . . . ,” she whimpered. I had already weaned her, but she still wanted her way. I needed to find my phone. “No more Mommy’s milk,
kanna,
” I said, spinning her slippery frame to face forward, then pulling the drain. I got out of the bath and reached for my phone. My hand dripping and now shaking, I dialed his home. Cursorily wrapped in a towel, I stood in the doorway, watching her in the tub.

“Hi, Padma.” His housekeeper, Sandy, answered before I’d spoken. My throat tight, I asked if everything was okay, if I should just bundle the baby up and come over. A cab, the FDR, I could be there in ten minutes. Something was wrong. I could feel it. “They’re up there with him,” she said, referring to his siblings, who had by then come in and taken over his care in the last stages of his illness. “Let me check.” I had dressed by the time I heard Sandy’s voice again. Water from my hair dripped down my spine beneath my sweater. I kept my eye trained on Krishna’s glistening back as she sat in the now-empty tub with her toys strewn around her, humming softly and coloring with bath crayons on her newly enlarged canvas. Two ducks, run aground, were nestled against her lower back, beak to beak as if kissing.
How strange this looks,
I thought,
how arranged.

“They said to tell you there’s no change.” I had known Sandy for more than four years by then and could tell how tired she was by the strain in
her Bosnian accent. The next time Sandy and I would speak would be at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home.

Early that next morning, after I’d felt my way in the dark to the phone, I saw who had called. I took the phone to the living room and sat down on the green velvet couch. I dialed his sister’s number for confirmation, though I needed none. She wouldn’t tell me the exact time of death. But I knew when in the middle of the night he had chosen to go. Even the baby had; it seemed she had woken up to say good-bye. I couldn’t go back into the bedroom. I couldn’t bear to lie down next to her, my body now filled with this irrevocable information. I wanted her to continue sleeping in a world that still contained her poppy, for as long as she could.

For months I had known this day would come. From the moment seven and a half months prior when the surgeon, still in his scrubs, had told me and Teddy’s children of the large, voracious tumor in his brain. Throughout the sweet heartbreak of watching Krishna learn the names of his nurses, seeing her gradually grasp the purpose of the IV they tended, which, as she put it, was meant to cure “the big boo-boo in Poppy’s head.” Still, despite my almost daily rehearsal of the inevitable, the event itself, the blow to the gut, was no less startling than if his plane had fallen out of the sky. When I heard the news, for a moment I saw my life without him, the many lonely years ahead of me. I sat motionless until a wave of grief toppled me sideways and my tears soaked the couch. Sometime later, dawn broke over the East River, and the living room glowed with gentle light. My heaving sobs and tears had stopped. I lay there, very still, until the bedroom door clicked open. Krishna shuffled out and stopped, blinking. “Mommy, I’m scared,” she said, the first time she had ever used that word. I stood up, took her in my arms, and held her, thinking but never saying,
me too.

I ached for him now, for his “dashing man” smell, for his booming voice as he called out to me as I primped in front of the mirror: “Hurry up now, Junior, we haven’t got all day.” Indeed, we hadn’t had enough time at all.

T
he world had changed.
It had
dimmed. It was as if my eyes had been traded for some other lenses, ones with a darker filter through which less light got through. I was fine with this. I wrapped my grief around me like a cloak. I took comfort in it. I went out into the sunlight of the outside world only when my work or Krishna required it. I focused on just three things: Krishna, work, and Teddy’s being gone. He had entered my life and in so doing had altered it completely and ineradicably, and now his death, his exit, altered it anew. My cocoon of grief became so familiar to me, so safe, so cozy, that I did not
want
to venture out. This is how life will be, I thought.

In January 2012, less than two months after Teddy’s death, I would enter the Supreme Court of the State of New York for the first day of the custody trial. I was on autopilot. There were opening statements. A couple of observers sat in the back of the courtroom listening. And then I took the stand. I remember thinking how shiny Adam’s shoes looked, how big his feet appeared under the table he sat at with his lawyers. My attorneys had prepared me by instructing me to be concise in my answers and to tell the truth.
Answer only the question asked of you
.
Do not get rattled by the other side,
they had warned. I felt as if nothing could rattle me again. After two hours of questioning, we broke for lunch. The Dell lawyers had done their best to find some fault with my parenting in their opening statement and realized they could not after I took the stand. And so Adam’s side asked for a recess over the weekend to negotiate out of court. I was never cross-examined. And Adam would not take the stand. By that Monday, we reached a settlement. I walked away numb but with no significant change to what was in place before the litigation. In the end, Krishna’s last name would be hyphenated to include Adam’s surname. She would now be called Krishna Thea Lakshmi-Dell, a small price to pay for an end to the meaningless and expensive anguish.

That March, Krishna and I went to the Hamptons house for the last time to say good-bye to the place the three of us had been happiest and to bring home what tangible memories we could. I bent down in the driveway and filled a ziplock bag with the pebbles he drove over by the tennis courts. I wanted anything he had touched: the cracked wood canister by his bedside that held his pens and pencils, the clay bowl in our dressing room he threw his golf gloves and extra tees into when he came home. I had coveted his comb, and the Guerlain cologne and deodorant that Maggie had rescued for me from his medicine cabinet right after his death. I could not stop the voracious appetite I had for my lover’s things and they somehow had magnified meaning now, because I could not find meaning in his being gone.

The year or so that followed Teddy’s passing I spent in a walking daze, focusing on Krishna and her ever-changing needs. My friends and family came together around us and did their best to comfort me and keep me busy. But mostly I was engulfed in my own private universe, going to work when required, and otherwise just being with Krishna. She was great company, and succor to my grief. She also slept with me, just as I had slept with Neela back in India. This gave me an enormous sense of physical
well-being. I didn’t date, couldn’t imagine or consider it really. I didn’t feel like I was single, just that my lover happened to be dead. Two years on, I still felt like Teddy was with me.

Krishna was my sole source of bodily contact, and that was more than fine. I couldn’t fathom having any man close to me, and I returned to an almost childlike, prepubescent state. My sexuality was nonexistent, and that was actually liberating. On the weekends when Krishna went to Adam’s, I relished being alone, rattling around the house talking out loud to Teddy like some crazy old lady, and luxuriating in the peace and quiet. So much had happened that I was psychically exhausted. I couldn’t reenter life as others knew it, but I was trying.

When Neela told me her younger daughter, Akshara, was getting married, I knew I had to find the wherewithal to push through my self-imposed hermitism. The wedding would be on Valentine’s Day 2013. February 14 has always been a special day in our family. It was Neela’s birthday. This year she would turn fifty. It was also the day after Teddy’s birthday, so it had become dark for me after he died. I was happy that it would now represent another joyous occasion, a new beginning for Akshara and Ravi, her husband-to-be. In our family, we call each other not only on birthdays, but also on anniversaries. I was happy to add the date to my calendar, knowing that from then on, I’d have yet another reason to express my love to the people who meant the most to me.

India was the perfect salve to my wounds. Krishna was a great traveler. Over the few short years of her life, she had clocked more miles than most adults. Her disposition was easy and pleasant, and she had the uncanny ability to amuse herself on planes while I dozed and read. It was astonishing. She had been to Chennai before, but this would be the first time she’d actually remember it.

We arrived from New York after a daylong slog through airports and planes and traffic. It was 10:00 p.m. local time, but my body had
no idea if it was night or day. Krishna was hungry, so I found some leftover
dosa
batter in the kitchen and started making one for her. Next thing I knew, my grandmother was by my side, commandeering the griddle. “Let me do it,” she said. “You don’t know where anything is.” I insisted, but she won, even though by then she cooked with only one arm, the other still paralyzed from the stroke. Then my aunt Papu came in and yelped, “You’re making your grandma cook?” She was appalled. “It’s ten at night!” Papu took over, my grandmother wouldn’t leave, and my uncle Ravi entered the fray. “Look at you,” he said. “You’re supposed to be this famous food person and you’re making these women cook at ten o’clock!” I quickly remembered how it felt to live with so many people. Every move you make is scrutinized. You get up and it’s “Where are you going?” You come back and it’s “Why are you wearing that blouse? I like the other one better.” You walk outside and someone calls from the veranda, “Don’t go
that
way, there’s too much sun!” It was exasperating and suffocating and God, I had
missed
it.

The year before, my success had allowed me to move Neela and my grandmother out of our childhood home to a larger, newer place. By my calculations, I still owed them much more. This larger three-bedroom apartment, still in Besant Nagar but on a quieter, tree-lined street, had a night watchman at the entrance of the complex. Not only did I want to be more comfortable whenever I visited, but the old flat in Besant Nagar, which was to become the site of Neela’s sari-and-blouse-making operation, needed repairs. The plumbing, electrical wiring, kitchen, and bathrooms in that house were much the same as when I was in third grade.

The city of Chennai itself, however, was much different from what it was when I had built sand temples in the courtyard. The city that had felt in many ways like a sleepy town had become a frenetic metropolis. Much of the sand was now asphalt. St. Michael’s Academy had expanded into a large compound with tall buildings and fields for soccer and cricket. The
Milk Bar that was once a leafy oasis was now a seedy, dilapidated place to be avoided.

Neela and I visited the old flat. All around our old building, urban development now made the area feel very congested. We could no longer see the ocean from my grandfather’s bedroom window. Taller buildings had been erected all around. Everyone wanted to live near the sea. The courtyard below had been asphalted, too. Children no longer made temples in the sand. I couldn’t believe how small the flat looked. It had always felt huge to me. I visited each room, could still see the lizards where the cracked walls met the ceiling. The place was empty save for some sewing machines and tailors, employees of Neela’s business. So many of us had grown up here, fought as children here, cried as teenagers, and often run back to this place as adults. Several sewing machines hummed as I walked barefoot on the old green marble from room to room. Underneath the hum, I could still hear echoes of Rajni tattling on me to Bhanu, the screech of my grandfather’s metal desk chair as he rose to say good-bye to a student. The house had never been beautiful, but it was beautiful to me, even in its dilapidated and empty state.

Yet for all the changes, much felt the same in the new apartment. There were still buckets of hot water for bathing, in spite of showerheads being installed in these new bathrooms. There were still far too many of us, old and young, from my grandmother to Krishna. We would crowd onto the floor, draping ourselves on pillows, grooming and feeding like a troop of monkeys, me scratching my nephew Sidhanth’s back, Neela braiding my hair, kids climbing among our bodies. Aunt Bhanu kneeling on the floor, peeling potatoes or mangoes. My grandmother haggling with every vendor she came across on the porch below.

And we still talked, a lot. Our conversations were a blur of languages. Everyone in the household was tri- or even quadrilingual. I grew up speaking Tamil, the language of my ethnicity; Hindi, the national language but
also the language of Delhi; and English. Others in my family added Malayalam, the language of Kerala, my ancestral home, to that list. “Please” and “okay” were in English and bookended many bursts of speech. “Please”—someone might begin, then switch to Hindi—“could you make some chai for me?” Then, without skipping a beat, she might continue in Tamil, “I’m really craving it”—then back to English—“Okay?” Certain words were just better in one language than another.

And still, just as soon as the plates from lunch were cleared, we talked about what we might have for dinner. When tiffin time came, my grandmother and Neela still disappeared into the kitchen to short-order-cook
dosa,
bringing them to us as they were ready, our greed and impatience scorching our fingers as we tore apart the crepes. We still walked on Elliot’s Beach, and as we turned back toward home, we still had to make the old heart-wrenching decision whether to stay in for dinner or go out for
chaat.

The new place had cool marble floors, too, though not speckled green but glossy beige. Each bedroom had its own veranda and bathroom: one for my grandma, one for Neela, and one for Krishna and me when we came. Still, because of the wedding, we managed to fill every square inch of floor with out-of-town relatives. As lovely as Krishna had been on the plane, she was now in as foul a mood. At home in the East Village, it was usually just the two of us. My mother and Peter came to visit once every other month. Here, it seemed to her, people were pouring in from every corner. She was a novelty to most of our extended relatives, many of whom hadn’t met her yet. The idea of personal space in India does not extend to children. Total strangers would come up to her and pinch her cheeks or squeeze her nose. Her pale-white skin was too tempting not to touch, as was her soft light-brown hair, which fell in short ringlets around her face like Shirley Temple’s. “You are so cute, Krishna
kutti,
” they wailed in their thick accents as they tried to engage her. “Stop touching me!” Krishna wailed back. Krishna was
pissed.
She struggled to find an unpopulated cor
ner of the house. I had to speak to her about respecting her elders, but at three, the cultural differences were hard for her to adapt to.

I wondered then if Krishna would have the same connection to family that I did, with all of us cousins functioning more like siblings. It was the love and support of all these people that had seen me through the various tumults of my life. Suddenly, in the middle of my family, who practically knew me better than I knew myself, I began to miss Teddy terribly. Coming here had been good. It had woken me up from my grief-stricken stupor, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. It was Teddy. Teddy should have been there with me in that place I considered home. Teddy had shown me so much. Teddy had taught me about unconditional love and forgiveness. I could hear his voice in my head as I looked at the floor trying to find a place to sit. “This is the only game in town, Junior. Big tribe. Everyone should be so lucky.”

So when I received a letter from Adam the following Christmas, at the end of 2013, it was Teddy I thought of, of the forgiveness he had shown me, and of the way he had loved Krishna, how he had placed her and my well-being above his own hurt or pain. It had been almost two years since I had taken the stand in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, since Adam and I had reached our custody settlement. Since then he had been a consistent, present, and loving father to Krishna. He had hardly missed a day of his time with her, and I could see how much Krishna had blossomed under the warmth of his love. He took great and enthusiastic care with anything related to her. I didn’t spend much time in his company, but I knew my child enough to see that her well-being was also due to him. I tried to focus on that. It was what counted now.

Adam’s letter was long: five pages handwritten in his minuscule chicken scrawl, about eight pages in human penmanship. In it he covered many topics. He spoke of his love for Krishna, thanked me for being a good mother, apologized for the lawsuit and for hurting me. And he wrote
of how much he enjoyed being a father. I wasn’t sure if I believed everything in there, but I didn’t doubt for a moment his love for Krishna. The letter softened me. I could appreciate the courage it must have taken to write it.

For two years Adam had tried to get various messages to me through mutual friends. Every once in a while, he invited me for a drink or dinner via text or e-mail. I always declined. In those days, my housekeeper or I would bring Krishna down to the lobby rather than allow Adam up the elevator to come to our front door. His main sources of information about me were Tara’s husband, Matt, who knew him well from before, and my mother, who kept in occasional telephonic contact with him. Matt tried to lobby for Adam, feeling that he had changed a lot after becoming a dad. I told Matt that if Adam had anything to say, he should write me a letter, not pass messages as if he were in high school. And so I had received his magnum opus of a letter.