I pressed: “So, Anita was in that shop . . . for work?”
“Probably. She’s doing, of all things, a bridal expo right now. One of those big desi affairs.” Seeing my confusion, she elaborated: “All the vendors—mehendi and caterers and tailors and photographers and everyone else you need for a wedding—come to hawk themselves. Tamasha. I’m sure Prachi will go to one. Anyway. That must’ve been why Ani was there.”
Two more runners, coming from the other direction, swished by. Anjali Auntie teetered. She lifted one arm as though she was going to fall over, and I stretched mine out so she could catch on to me. Her hand was almost trembling. If she weren’t still young, I might have called the quiver Parkinsonian. For there was something recasting her—not just grief or fading beauty. Nothing about her seemed well. How had time stolen up on us—on her? Did I only notice her age because it had been ten years? Or would anyone notice the spots speckling her fair skin, the gathering slackness around her elbows, the dulling of her once-bright eyes?
“I haven’t talked to her,” I said. “Not for a long time.”
“Yes,” Anjali Auntie said simply. “I know.”
She was still gripping my forearm. Her shakes beat an awkward tattoo on my skin.
“What are you up to these days?” I asked.
She squinted and withdrew her hand. “I was working on a project with this friend of mine, the one who passed,” she said. “Some work on old Hindu traditions.”
“Like, amateur scholarship?”
“Yes, sure. But, well. I’ll have to find something else to keep me occupied, won’t I? Some of us give our whole lives to other people, and without them, we have to start all over.”
“If you need any help, I mean, as academic writing goes . . .” I checked my watch. It was four, and the librarian I had to meet would be gone by five. “Speaking of which,” I said apologetically, “I’ve got to get to the stacks.”
“Go on,” Anjali Auntie said in that still tone. “It was very nice to see you again, Neil.”
I had the sense that by walking away, I’d be shutting some door that had never fully closed. I hugged her, then continued down the redwood-lined path. On my way home, I stepped off the trail at the spot where Anjali Auntie had entered, to see where she’d come from. Outside a brick Unitarian Universalist church was a sign announcing a celebration of life for Professor Lyall Pratt. The steps and the lawn were emptied of mourners. Just a single gardener remained, plucking weeds from the overgrowth beneath the dead man’s name.
* * *
? ? ?
Anita and I hadn’t spoken since her final night in Hammond Creek. I spent that summer in East Lansing as planned, despite the turmoil I’d caused by admitting to drinking. Quitting debate, it was judged, would sabotage my college chances, so my parents reluctantly released me into the nonsense-filled outside world. And how nonsensical that summer was! Wendi Zhao wrangled a job at the camp, teaching admiring ninth graders. At night, she’d creep into my dorm room bearing beer and drugs and soon dispensing with my virginity. Afterward, I’d write to Anita, woozy with weed and Wendi’s smells. I’d tell her how painful the dull ache of moving from day to day was, how Shruti came to me in the darkness, how I felt tugged sometimes to follow her into the Land of the Dead, not to try to bring her back, but to live down there with her, too. Anita never replied, not even to my most dramatic declarations.
During the intervening years, I’d googled Anita here and there, usually stopping before going too deep. But that evening, after seeing Anjali Auntie, I wound my way through the tornado spiral of the internet. I clicked and scrolled. Neither Anita nor I was on social media. She was always private—having a secret at a young age perhaps does that to you. But I located a blurry image of her playing tennis on the Stanford club team, and another shot of her at a techie event next to a tall Indian guy with a sharp jawline and gelled hair; the caption identified him as Jimmy Bansal, investor at Galadriel Ventures. I wondered if Anita leaving the firm had meant leaving him. I found a site from the year prior featuring her annoyingly impressive half marathon time. I went on, as though pressing harder on the internet would puncture it, send guts oozing onto my fingertips, delivering a visceral reality of present-day Anita.
It took about twenty minutes to stumble upon a YouTube clip I’d never before seen. It was labeled “guest spkr @ 2014 miss india teen new jersy.” I gathered from the text below the video that a twenty-three-year-old Anita had been invited to address the MTI finalists. Someone commented, “this video had gotten taken down few years back thank you for riposting.” Someone below that replied, “she is 1 ungrateful girl.”