Tania James - Aerogrammes - and Other Stories

When I caught sight of a Saab pulling into the parking lot, I thought I was hallucinating. I heard Amit go, “Shit.” Magically, Ivy emerged from the car and walked across the grass toward us, her hair pulled back from her eyes, looking exactly how she used to look, and I sat up, a familiar ache in my belly.

I realized it was the first time Ivy had seen Amit in the wheelchair. She fixed her gaze on his face, as if determined not to look elsewhere. “So you got my gift,” she said.

“Yeah,” Amit said. “Thanks.”

“Hey, Ivy.”

“Hi, Neel.” She barely glanced at me. “So what’s with you blowing me off all the time, Amit?” He picked something off the tip of his tongue. “I mean, shit, I’m not your groupie.”

“You’re not my girlfriend either.”

Ivy pressed her lips together. She looked like she wanted to punch him.

He gave her a lazy smile. “Peace pipe?”

I cupped my hand around the bowl while Ivy lit up. A sense of perfect bliss billowed through me as I stood there, close to her, watching the embers pulse and fade. Her hair gave off a minty sweetness. She stepped back and coughed, spat expertly.

Amit asked her how she’d known we were at the park. Ivy said that she’d called the house, and our dad had told her. “He’s been really nice to me,” she said, “which is weird.” Amit rolled his eyes at me, as if to say, See?

After a while, we went wandering into school through the gym doors, which were unlocked. The hallways were dim and smelled of kid sweat and sneakers. I stopped by a wall hung with group portraits from each year’s play production. “Nice,” Amit said, pointing at one of the frames. That was the year I played the title role in Aladdin , even though I did more yelling than singing. I stood with a huge white turban on my head, arms akimbo, in a credible portrayal of confidence. It was hard to remember being that compact. But I did remember the note our director, Miss Mott, had written me: You’re going places, kiddo .

Someone called down the hall, “School’s closed. How’d you all get in here?” We mumbled apologies and hurried back the way we came.

As I pushed Amit across the parking lot, Ivy asked me what was going on with the Prague thing.

I looked straight ahead, trying to think of another topic, but my thoughts moved like syrup. We came to a stop by Ivy’s car.

“What Prague thing?” Amit said.

Ivy looked at him, then me. “You didn’t tell him?”

“It’s just six months …”

“ What’s six months?” Amit said.

“This artists’ colony,” I said. “To hang out in Prague and write. It’s pretty prestigious.” Pretty prestigious came out a little slurry.

Amit paused, digesting the news. “You tell Dad?”

“Not yet. I will.”

“Colony,” Amit said, as if he’d just learned a strange word. “I thought those were for nudists. And lepers.”

“I was gonna tell you—”

“Whatever, hey. It’s fine.” Amit shrugged. “It’s good news.”

Ivy said she had to go. She paused, then kissed the top of Amit’s head, a gesture that he didn’t seem to enjoy, and waved at me before getting in her car. On our way home, Amit chose to wheel himself. He said he wasn’t tired, but toward the end, I could hear him faintly wheezing.

During the last week in July, the temperature languished at an unbearable 102 degrees. The AC was busted, blasting the rooms where no one went, like my dad’s study, and ignoring the living room entirely. My dad positioned a standing fan at Amit’s feet; it spent the whole day looking him up and down. Sitting outside the fan’s sweep, I crunched on cups of ice and tried to stay as still as possible.

Since that day in the park, I’d been careful around Amit. I kept him fed, made sure not to cross in front of the TV. He spoke to me only when he needed something and my dad wasn’t around to provide it. He never said my name.

One evening, my dad came into the living room, holding out his wrist so I could fasten the complicated clasp of his fancy watch. He was attending a wedding reception, his first time leaving us alone at night. Before he left, he asked Amit if he needed to peepee.

“Really, Dad? Peepee?”

“No?” My dad hovered over him, twisting his watch around his wrist. He plucked a pillow feather out of Amit’s hair, and for once, Amit didn’t duck away.

At the door, my dad gave me three different numbers to call in case of emergency. I told him not to worry.

“So, what are you doing tonight?” my dad asked. “Going to work on your novel?”

“Oh, that. That’s on hold for now.”

My dad nodded. “It’s good to take a break sometimes.”

“Good for who?”

My dad gave a sheepish smile. “If you weren’t here, he would eat me alive.” He looked like a little kid, his eyes beginning to fill.

I thumped him on the back and suggested he get going before he missed cocktail hour.

After my dad left, I brought us each a Guinness from the fridge. I’d gone shopping earlier in the day and stocked up on Amit’s favorite, along with more pork rinds. “You don’t have to babysit me,” he said, taking the bottle.

I put my feet on the coffee table. “I’m fine. I like”—I squinted at the screen, sighed inwardly—“ What Not to Wear .”

Amit shuffled through the next five channels, barely pausing long enough for an image to appear. He settled on a commercial narrated by a talking gecko.

“Why don’t we call Ivy?” I suggested.

“Do you have some kind of memory problem? I told you, we’re not together.”

“So, what’s the big deal? She could rent us a movie.”

Amit took a breath and let it out slowly. “The deal is, she’s gone.”

Apparently, Ivy had flown to San Francisco the day before. I didn’t ask how he’d known, or what happened, or why. Maybe she’d been waiting for him to let her off the hook. Maybe all it took was You’re not my girlfriend either . On TV, a woman was in a bathtub, drawing a loofah over her moisture-rich leg. Steam flowered up around her blissed-out smile. That day in the park seemed painfully far away.

“What about you?” Amit took a long swig, winced. “Bought your ticket yet?”

“I reserved a flight, yeah.”

He studied the Guinness label. “You should tell Dad. I don’t give a shit, but he will.”

Amit set the bottle on the floor and lay back against his pillows, closed his eyes.

I finished my beer, and his. The TV was still on, but mostly I was staring at Moses. I’d never paid much attention to the poster taped across the back of his tank, an ethereal landscape of gold-lit trees receding into the distance. Maybe, at one point, he’d leapt into it and had the hope knocked out of him. Maybe that was why he sat there now looking the dazed way he did.

Soon, Amit was snoring. Even in sleep, the little line between his brows remained. I wondered if it would still be there fifty years from now. I wondered if the chair cushions beneath me would mold to my shape. I imagined the two of us watching the same movies over and over, not because they were still funny but because they reminded us of who we used to be. I’d grow bitter, encumbered by the inventory of all I’d failed to do. Or worse, I wouldn’t care.

When the show was over, I trudged upstairs.

I thought maybe I’d soak in the bathtub for a while, like the loofah commercial, minus the loofah. I wanted something cleansing and cool and quiet. I wanted to come up with a way to tell my dad that I was leaving.

I poked around in the potpourri basket over the toilet and found a bottle of lavender bubble bath solution, probably my mom’s. Two capfuls turned the tub into a bed of sudsy white. The room filled with a dense, floral smell, steam mossing over the mirrors.