For months after Naina’s death, Mukesh hadn’t been able to sleep in his own bed, because being in there alone felt like being in someone else’s home entirely.
‘Papa, you take your time,’ Rohini had said to him at first, and Vritti had set up a bed in the living room for him.
‘He can’t sleep there for ever, he’ll do his back in,’ Deepali had whispered to her sisters after tucking him in. A strange role reversal that made him feel an immense sense of shame. How could he be whole again when his whole had gone for good?
‘He’ll be okay. He is grieving. I can’t bring myself to go in the bedroom at all, but we’re going to need to clear Mummy’s stuff away. She kept it so messy!’ Rohini whispered back.
Lying on the living-room sofa, Mukesh had shut his eyes, hoping to block out the sound of their laughter. Soft, comforting laughter. He was the father; he should be looking after his girls. But he couldn’t. He didn’t know how to without Naina.
Once a year had passed, and Mukesh Patel’s Time of Eternal Quiet had begun, that silent, lonely stage of grief, where everyone but you had moved on, Rohini, Deepali and Vritti had insisted on finally clearing out Naina’s room. ‘Papa, we’re not letting you put this off for any longer. It’s time for you to move forward with your life.’
So, they began sorting through the detail and debris of their mother’s life, reorganizing the organized chaos Naina thrived in. Deepali, who conveniently had dust allergies, opted to cook a lunch for them instead. For that one day, his house was full of life again – but for all the wrong reasons. As he listened to Deepali mixing batter in the kitchen, he stood in the doorway of his and Naina’s bedroom watching Vritti and Rohini. They didn’t know he was there. He was silent and invisible in his own home, a ghost of himself.
Rohini took the lead, shouting instructions to Vritti to root out the boxes under the bed, while she dashed around the room, returning a comb to its rightful place in a shoebox on the top of the wardrobe, folding up shawls and tidying them away into a big wheely suitcase, and packing away handfuls and handfuls of bangles. Mukesh watched as they dragged box after box out from under the bed. Vritti knelt to the floor, her cheek pressed against the carpet, and ran her hand to the left, and to the right.
All of a sudden, there was a clinking, clattering crash.
‘Oh, God! What have you done?’ Rohini groaned, staring down at her sister. Vritti pulled the box out, revealing a now half-emptied yoghurt pot of mismatched earrings. Next came the Clarks shoebox of photographs that had entertained them all for hours on end when the girls were little, sitting on Naina or Mukesh’s knees, asking about their paisley patterned clothes and garish flares. Mukesh had always thought they looked rather fashionable. The girls laughed at that.
Then followed several pieces of empty Tupperware. And finally, one lonely, dust-covered library book.
Vritti slowed her pace for a moment and held it in her hands, as Rohini knelt down beside her sister.
‘Papa,’ they called, loudly, still oblivious he was only a few feet away. Deepali trotted into the room then too.
‘Mummy’s book – well … library book,’ Rohini said. ‘I thought I’d returned them all, but I must have missed this one.’ She held it up to him and he walked forward, not quite believing it. As though this dusty, icky, sticky book was some kind of mirage. When he’d seen the other relics of her life, he’d barely felt a thing. But here, seeing this book, the grey dust sticking to the plastic cover in splotches, it was like Naina was here in the room with them. Here, with his three girls, and one of Naina’s beloved books, for a moment, just a moment, he didn’t feel so alone.
Once upon a time, a huge stack of library books sat on Naina’s bedside table. They’d kept her company in her last year. She’d read the same ones over and over again. Her ‘favourites’。 Mukesh wished now that he’d asked her what they were about, what she loved about them, why she’d felt the need to read the same ones again and again. He wished that he’d read them with her.
And now all he had left was this one library book: The Time Traveler’s Wife.
That night, with the room devoid of Naina’s mess, Mukesh cracked the spine, feeling like an intruder. This wasn’t his book, it was never chosen for him, and perhaps Naina would never have wanted him to read it either. He forced himself to read one page, but had to stop. The words weren’t making sense. He was trying to turn the black letters and yellowed pages into a letter from Naina to him. But no such message existed.