Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [93]
To Hema this was so absurd, so unexpected, a reminder of an innocent time from so long ago, that she burst out laughing. Ghosh's consternation made it even funnier, and the safety pin that held the top of her blouse together flew into the air and landed in his plate. That was too much for her, and she clutched her breast and rose from her chair, doubled over.
Since her return from India and the tragedy of Sister's death, there had been few occasions for side-splitting humor. When she caught her breath she said, “That's what I like about you, Ghosh. I'd forgotten. You can make me laugh like no one else on earth.” She sat back in her chair.
Ghosh had stopped eating. He pushed the plate away. He was clearly upset and she didn't know why. He wiped his lips with the napkin, his movements precise and deliberate. There was a quaver in his voice.
“What joke?” he said again. “My wanting to marry you all these years was a joke?”
She found it difficult to meet his gaze. She'd never told him what had gone through her mind when she thought her plane was crashing, and how her last earthly thought was about him. The smile on her face felt false and she couldn't sustain it. She looked away, but her eye caught the menacing mask nailed up over the bedroom door.
Ghosh dropped his head into his hands. His mood had turned from ebullient to despairing; she had pushed him past a breaking point. And all because she had laughed? Once again she felt uncertain around him, as she had that day at Sister Mary Joseph Praise's grave.
“It's time I moved back to my quarters,” he said.
“No!” Hema said, so forcefully that they were both startled.
She pulled her chair closer to his. She peeled his hands from his head and held them. She studied the strange profile of her colleague, her unhandsome but beautiful friend of so many years who had allowed his fate to become so inextricably tangled with hers. He seemed intent on leaving. He wasn't looking to her for guidance.
She kissed his hand. He resisted. She moved even closer. She pulled his head to her bosom, which, without the safety pin, was more exposed than it had ever been in front of a man. She held him the way he had held her when he came running the night Shiva stopped breathing.
After a while she turned his face to hers. And before she could think about what she was doing, or why, and how this had happened, she kissed him, finding pleasure in the way his lips felt on hers. She saw now and was ashamed to see how selfishly she had dealt with him, made use of him all these years. Shed not done it consciously. Nevertheless, shed treated him as if he existed for her pleasure.
It was her turn to sigh, and she led the stunned Ghosh to the second bedroom, which was used to iron clothes and as storage, a bedroom she should have given him long ago instead of leaving him on the sofa. They undressed in the dark, cleared the bed of the mountain of diapers, towels, saris, and other garments. They resumed their embrace under the covers. “Hema, what if you get pregnant?” he asked. “Ah, you don't understand,” she said. “I'm thirty. I may have left it too late already.”
To his shame, now that those magnificent orbs he had fantasized about were unfettered and in his hands, now that she was his from the fleshy chin pad to the dimples above her buttocks, the transformation of his member from floppy flesh to stiff bamboo did not happen. When Hema realized what was amiss, she said nothing. Her silence only increased his distress. Ghosh didn't know that Hema blamed herself, that she thought she had been overeager and that she had misread the signs and misunderstood the man. A hyena's coughing in the distance seemed to mock them both.
She stayed perfectly still, as if lying on a land mine. At some point she fell asleep. She awoke to a sensation of rising from underwater to be resurrected and reclaimed. And it was because Ghosh's mouth was around her left breast, trying to swallow it. He directed her movements, pushing her this way and that, and it made her think