The Hungry Ghosts (48 page)

Michael had left the front door open, screen closed. I rang the bell and watched him come towards me down the gloom of a hallway, emerging into light on the other side of the door. As he let me in, he smiled, lips pressed together. “Ah,” I said and gestured at his Sri Lankan batik shirt, unmistakable in its gaudy colours and border of trumpeting elephants, “a gift from Anjula Wickramatunga, worn in my honour?”

He laughed in that nerdy way of his, and I was pleased my humour worked with him. His laugh made his beauty less intimidating.

Michael gestured for me to go past him into the hall, then turned on a light. As I offered him my bottle of wine, I took in the polished oak floors and the expensive-looking kilim beneath our feet. Beside the antique hallstand stood a tall wooden African carving of an antelope, graceful and stylized in the way a tourist trinket would not be. As we passed two doorways on our left, Michael waved his arm, saying, “living room, dining room,” drawling out the vowels to show he was being dismissive of the expensive Persian rugs, the comfortable sofas and armchairs, the Arts and Crafts dining set, the silver coffee and tea services, the walls lined with books that looked well read because of the way they were crammed in, spines faded and loose.

The hallway ended at an enormous kitchen with an island in the middle, expanses of quartersawn oak floor between it and the surrounding cabinets, which were of a light-coloured wood and made in the Shaker style. The countertops were black slate, the appliances stainless steel. At one end of the room, a bay window looked out over the extensive garden. Michael had been preparing dinner, and he went back to it. An Indian meal, I could tell from the smell and spice containers on the counter. Unlike my mother’s old jam and pickle bottles with their faded and peeling labels, Michael’s little glass jars had black lids with spice names stencilled on them. They had magnetic bottoms, and after he had used one, he would stick it back on a stainless steel panel so its name faced out front. I watched him for a short while as he pretended to be absorbed in his task, bending periodically over a cookbook, elbow on counter, hand cupping chin. He was trying to make me comfortable by keeping at his task. There was an assured grace in this gesture; it was how the family made guests feel at home. Taking my cue from him, I drifted
over to the bay window, knelt on a distressed red leather seat in the alcove and looked into the garden with its massive ferns and hostas, purple-flowered thyme growing in the gaps of the cobblestone patio.

I noticed the bookshelves on either side of the window and called back to Michael, “Someone in your family must really like poetry.”

“Mr. Dean’s,” he called back. “He’s a poet, a published one.” I turned to him in surprise, and he nodded as if confirming gossip about someone we both knew. “One of those West Coast types. The poetry’s all about driftwood logs, kelp and the sea. Oh, and of course the working man.” He grimaced. “Don’t be fooled by all this. Madam Dean and Mr. Dean are old hippies. Michael is my middle name, which fortunately my grandparents insisted on. Guess what my first name is.”

I drifted back, stood close to him and shrugged as one might with an intimate, a boyfriend.

“Breeze.” He started to laugh, but seeing I was looking at him solemnly, he stopped, mouth slightly open, then leaned in and kissed me dryly on the lips.

“I like that,” I said, reaching out to grip his bicep as he pulled away.

“What?” he asked, hoarsely.

“That you make all the first moves.”

“Others don’t?”

I shook my head slowly, not taking my eyes off his.

“Huh,” he said, as if surprised other admirers could have been so apathetic about trying to win me. He returned to chopping tomatoes. The rapping sound of knife on cutting board reverberated between us.

“Waiting …” I said, grinning.

He threw down the knife with a huff of amusement, washed and wiped his hands, then came to me.

“Ah-ah.” I gestured at his stained apron.

He shook his head to say I was incorrigible, shucked the apron off, then moved in again, his knees against mine. He took my face in his hands and looked at me solemnly, then kissed me, his hands sliding back to caress my ears.

We made love in Michael’s bedroom, which was the same blue as the house’s exterior, accented with darker blue baseboards. The bed had a coral duvet; the walls were covered with framed Japanese film posters. I’m not sure why I thought he would be an awkward lover, but he moved up and down my body
with fluidity and grace. He kissed without fully opening his mouth, taking my tongue between his teeth and biting on it gently, this refusal to grant me entry increasing my desire. There was a slight roughness to him, his hands and teeth leaving marks on my skin, which added a charge to our lovemaking.

And yet, aroused as I was, a familiar despair soon materialized, as it did whenever I made love now. It was not a particular memory of Mili, but rather an inner hollowness into which I sank, then surfaced, again and again; and in those moments of surfacing, the colour of Michael’s skin, the part of his body I was running my tongue or hand over, was crushingly alien.

When we were done, I lay on my back with Michael’s head against my chest and looked out the window, a great sob welling up in me. I kept it down by clenching my fists. “I am starving,” I finally said, after I had gained enough control of my voice. Michael raised his head to kiss me before getting out of bed. I wanted to keep lying there, to have some time to myself, and he must have sensed this, because he drew the duvet up to my chin and whispered, “No need to hurry down, hey?”

Once he was gone, I waited for my despair to propel me out of bed, make me scramble into my clothes, go downstairs and offer some brusque excuse about why I had to leave. Instead, to my surprise, the despair began to subside, becoming muted, it seemed, by the peaceful colours of this bedroom, the blue-haloed mountains through its window. When I went down to dinner, however, I saw it was really Michael who had subdued my desolation. There was a graceful ease in his relations with others, the same ease I had seen with the guests at Bill’s party. Loving or liking someone, thinking well of someone, came effortlessly to him. He felt no anxious need to amuse or entertain me or keep up the conversation, and this made me relax too. During my years in Vancouver, I had never stayed over at a lover’s place. Michael seemed to assume I was going to, and I found myself slipping into his assumption without protest.

This ease of being with Michael continued over the weekend. On our first morning together, after we had been out for a walk and returned, Michael picked up a translated Japanese novel called
Kitchen
, which he had left facedown on the hallstand, and became instantly absorbed, right foot balanced on left ankle, not ignoring me but somehow encompassing my presence in his absorption. I went to the washroom and came back to find him in the living room sprawled across an armchair, lost in the book. He finished his
paragraph, marked the page, looked up at me as I stood over him, and asked mildly, “What would you like to do?” as if we were an old married couple. We ended up reading for an hour, me pretending to be engrossed in a book but looking over at Michael from time to time, filled with wonder at this new tranquility I felt. For lunch, Michael dug around in the fridge and produced olives and cheese, then made a salad of tomato, basil and bocconcini drizzled with balsamic vinegar. I had not yet heard of cheeses like bocconcini, nor tasted balsamic vinegar, and was surprised at how much better these olives were compared to the brine-soaked ones I had eaten from a bottle.

That evening, after we had gone for a swim on Jericho Beach and were on our way home, Michael took me to an expensive grocery store nearby, on 4th Avenue. “What do you want to eat?” he asked.

I was taken aback, having assumed he’d come with a recipe in mind. “Mussels,” I declared to test him, smiling wickedly. He winked, nodded and moved quickly about the store, picking various items and holding them up with a grin to say he was meeting the challenge. That night, we had seafood pasta in a white wine sauce, and it was delicious.

The next day, we came back from an afternoon movie to find his parents’ car in the driveway. “Ah,” Michael said with satisfaction as he took my hand, “Madam Dean and Mr. Dean are home.” He quickened his pace as if he couldn’t wait to present me. His confidence lessened my nervousness.

Suitcases crowded the hall and we heard someone moving around upstairs.

“Michael?” A woman’s voice fluted down.

“Yes, Hilda, ‘tis I. Where’s Robert?” I gave him a sharp look, and he smiled, enjoying my surprise that he called his parents by their first names.

There was a flurry of footsteps across the floorboards above, then his mother came lightly down the stairs. Hilda was a tall, slim woman with greying hair cut in a bob, her light cotton dress showing off tanned limbs. With her narrow chest, small breasts, long neck and sinuous legs, she looked like an ex-ballerina, an effect enhanced by her flat satin slippers. She gave me a friendly nod and kissed Michael in a formal way, cheek brushing cheek.

“It’s very nice to meet you, Shivan.” She shook my hand without waiting for an introduction, seeming genuinely happy to meet me. Though soft spoken, there was a focus and confidence in her bearing and I imagined she
could be formidable without ever raising her voice. “Did you boys have a nice weekend here?”

I nodded, a little embarrassed that she presumed so blithely I’d slept over in their home.

“Ah, kiddo,” a man called out from the kitchen end of the hallway, and Robert came towards us. Michael had got his looks from his father, who, even in his late fifties, was handsome, his soft greying curls and round tortoiseshell glasses giving him a boyish look.

Michael’s parents had brought a chicken pie, and they invited me to join them for an early supper before going. By now I was at ease with them; like Michael, they made no extra fuss to please me and went about their tasks as if I were an old friend. While Robert tossed a salad and Hilda opened a bottle of wine, Michael set places at the kitchen island, where I was perched on a stool, telling Hilda about the goings-on in the President’s Office, pleased that she was so impressed at my rapid rise in the university. Michael kept smiling and nodding, and at first I thought he was trying to reassure me, but then I realized he wanted confirmation that his parents were splendid, that I admired them as much as he did. Earlier, I hadn’t known how to take his “Madam Dean and Mr. Dean,” unsure if it was boasting. But now I saw the nicknames were just an ironic way to hide his genuine admiration for Hilda’s achievements.

Once we were all seated, Robert asked me, “Now, how did the two of you meet?”

“At … at the home of someone I work with.” I glanced quickly towards Michael, unsure what his parents knew.

“Bill,” Michael added.

“Oh, goodness, Bill,” his mother murmured and shook her head. “I’m very glad that is over. I can’t believe I introduced the two of you.”

Michael grinned at me. “Bill used to work under Hilda in the dean’s office.”

This was the first time Bill had come up, and I held Michael’s gaze for a moment. He looked away easily, as if he had nothing more to communicate on the subject.

“I certainly would not have introduced you if I’d known what would happen,” Hilda continued.

“Don’t worry,
mother
,” Michael said with a laugh, and touched her wrist, “I am over my old-man phase.”

“You and your phases and passions, kiddo.” Robert aimed a fork at Michael as if it were a gun.

Michael’s parents elaborated on his “phases and passions,” how he had sported a white umbrella in all weathers when he was ten, attempted to master Sanskrit at sixteen, taken up Irish dancing because of a boyfriend, even going to university in Dublin for a year because of him. I also learnt that for the longest time Michael had been interested in Japanese culture and had studied the language at university. “A Japanophile,” his parents kept calling him.

Michael enjoyed his parents’ teasing, shaking his head at me as if disavowing what they said.

When we parted that evening, I proposed he come over to my apartment for dinner the next night. “After all,” I said, gesturing to my too-large T-shirt and rolled-up jeans, “I have to return these to you.”

He took me by the elbow, kissed me chastely on the cheek and whispered, “Thank you for a really nice time.” Then he added, “About Bill. I didn’t bring him up over the weekend because I didn’t want his ghost hanging around and spoiling our time together. You work with him, after all … and, well, he’s a nice guy. I genuinely liked him, but nothing more. I was clear with him about that. Not in love, you understand. Not bowled over.”

He looked hard at me to say that I, however, bowled him over.

As the bus took me home from Point Grey to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where I was subletting an apartment, the neighbourhoods grew treeless and shabby. I felt all the goodness of the weekend leaking out of me, and by the time I arrived at my apartment, the feelings of despair and grief and rage that periodically engulfed me had come back with renewed vigour. Driven by a familiar compulsion, I kicked off my shoes, went into the bedroom, knelt before the dresser and pulled open the bottom drawer. At the back was a faded biscuit tin in which I kept important documents. From a white envelope, whose aging paper had browned in concentric rings, as if successive teacups had been placed on it, I drew out the newspaper article that had appeared after Mili’s abduction, along with the obituary Sriyani had sent. Spreading them out on the carpet, I stared at the faded images: Mili holding aloft a cricket trophy, grinning in his easy, confident way; Mili dressed in our school blazer and tie, looking sombrely at the camera. I sat back on my haunches, eyes closed, wretched.

I didn’t sleep much that night. When Michael arrived at my apartment the next evening, I held him fiercely, then pushed him up against the hallway wall and kissed him, pulling at his shirt buttons. “Whoa,” he said, laughing but disconcerted, “doesn’t a person even get to take his shoes off?”