Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [74]
“Are they moving back for good?”
“Maybe.” She told him about their father’s knee trouble, that he was going to have surgery to have fluid drained. One day, she knew, it would be something more serious, and when it came, as long as Rahul stayed away, she would have to be an only child all over again.
After dinner Roger put away the leftovers while Sudha went upstairs to run Neel’s bath. Rahul came with her, sitting on the toilet and blowing some bubbles he’d brought for Neel as she crouched on the floor and soaped and rinsed him. Neel was ecstatic about the bubbles, waiting wide-eyed for each to emerge from the little plastic wand, reaching out and popping them and calling out for more.
“Okay, little guy, time for bed,” she said after a few minutes, lifting the rubber plug and letting the water drain out out of the claw-foot tub. She reached for Neel’s towel, throwing it over her shoulder and lifting him out. She wrapped him up, scrubbing his head. “Say goodnight to Mamu,” she said.
“What does he call them?” Rahul asked.
“Who?”
“Our parents.”
She hesitated, though the answer was not something she had to search for. “Dadu and Dadi.”
“Just like we did,” he said, his voice softening. “I bet they treat you like a king,” he said to Neel.
“You could say that. We still haven’t unwrapped some of his Christmas presents.”
“What about next Christmas? Do you guys have plans?”
“They’re supposed to come to London,” Sudha began, watching for a reaction. “Of course, you’re welcome,” she continued, knowing the idea was ludicrous. “All of you, Elena and Crystal. You guys could stay in a hotel.”
She stopped then, realizing that she was holding her breath, waiting for him to walk out of her life all over again. Instead he said, “I’ll think about it,” leaving her even more breathless, for she realized that without a formal truce the battle had ended, that he wanted to come back.
Rahul was already awake when she came downstairs the next morning, sitting at the table with Roger, a T-shirt sticking to his thickened body, sweaty hair plastered to his face. He was wearing shorts, the hair on his dark legs curlier than she remembered. Roger was drinking his tea, showing Rahul a Tube map, telling him which trains went where, pointing out parks in which he could run.
“Where did you go?” she asked Rahul. She prepared a pot of coffee, then warmed the milk for Neel’s Weetabix, knowing he would be up soon.
“No idea,” he said. “I just go for an hour. Running’s my new addiction.” It was the first time since he arrived that he’d alluded in any way to his drinking. “That and coffee.”
When it was ready she poured him a cup, watched him add three spoons of sugar, remembered the time he’d visited her in college and she’d handed him his first beer. “What will you do today?”
Rahul shrugged. “Maybe a museum. I just want to walk around.”
“Be ready in twenty minutes and I’ll drop you at the tube,” Roger offered.
While Sudha was at work she wondered what her brother was doing, wondered if one of the hundreds of pubs on the streets of London would tempt him. Part of her worried that something would set him off and that he would disappear again. But when she got back to the house that evening she found Rahul crawling up the staircase after Neel, pretending to be a hungry lion. That night they went out for curry and again he did not drink, covering the paper spread on the table with elaborate drawings. Again he sat with Sudha in the bathroom as she bathed Neel, and the following morning he went for his run. For the rest of the week he worked through his list of activities, always returning with a little gift for Neel. It felt strange to be at work for so much of the time that Rahul was visiting, but Sudha thought it was better, safer, that their time together was limited to mornings and evenings, times when Roger and Neel were around.
Saturday morning Rahul made omelettes, expertly chopping mushrooms and onions the way the chefs did on television, and then at Rahul’s suggestion they