Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [90]
“Damn it,” she said.
“Now what are you looking for?”
“The number. I remember ripping out that page for some reason. I think I threw it away.” She began to put the newspapers and magazines back into the bin. “Damn it,” she said again. She stood up, kicking the bin lightly with her foot. “I don’t even remember her last name. Do you?”
He inhaled, as if to seal the information inside himself, but then he shook his head, relieved at the opportunity, at last, to be honest with her. He, too, had forgotten Deirdre’s last name. It was a name of one syllable, but apart from that detail it had vanished from his brain.
“Hey, Paul,” Sang said after a moment. “I’m sorry if I sounded harsh back then.”
He walked across the kitchen, opened the oven. “Don’t worry about it.”
Her stomach growled, loudly enough for Paul to hear. “God, I just realized I haven’t eaten a thing today. I think I’ll have some of that cassoulet, after all. Should I make a salad?” This would be their first dinner together, alone, without Heather. He used to yearn for such an occasion. He used to feel clumsy and tongue-tied when Sang was in the room. Now he felt dread.
“I guess she was a little weird,” he said slowly, gazing at the back of Sang’s head, bent forward over the sink where she was ripping lettuce. She turned around.
“How? How did she seem weird to you?”
He was so nervous that for a terrible instant he worried that he might laugh out loud. Sang was regarding him steadily. The faucet was still running. She reached back to turn it off, and now the room was silent.
“She was crying,” he said.
“Crying?”
“Um—yeah.”
“Crying how?”
“Just—crying. Like she was upset about something.”
Sang opened her mouth, as if to speak, but for a while it simply hung open. “So let me get this straight. This woman Deirdre called and asked for me.”
Paul nodded. “Right.”
“And you said I wasn’t there.”
“Right.”
“And then she asked you to have me call her back.”
“Right.”
“And then she started crying?”
“Yeah.”
“And then what happened?”
“That was it. Then she hung up.”
For a moment, Sang seemed satisfied with the information, nodding slowly. Then she shook her head abruptly, as if to flick it away. “Why didn’t you tell me this?”
He regretted having offered her the cassoulet. He regretted ever having picked up the phone that day. He regretted that Sang and not another person had moved into the room, into his house, into his life. “I did,” he said calmly, drawing a line between them in his mind. “I told you she called.”
“But you didn’t tell me this.”
“No.”
She opened her eyes wide, incredulous. “Didn’t it occur to you I might want to know?”
He curled his lips together, looking away.
“Well?” she demanded, shouting at him now. “Didn’t it?”
When he still did not reply, she marched up to him, her hands clenched in fists, and he braced himself for a blow, twisting his face to one side. But she didn’t strike him. Instead she gripped the sides of her own head, as if to steady herself. “My God, Paul.” Her voice was so shrill it was nearly inaudible. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Now it was she who began to avoid him. For a few nights, she was not at home. Paul saw her getting into Charles’s truck with a weekend bag. Because Heather had by then all but officially moved in with Kevin, once again Paul found himself alone in the house. A week passed before he saw Sang again. Thinking himself alone, he hadn’t bothered to shut his door. She came up to his room, wearing a pretty dress he’d never seen, a white cotton short-sleeved dress, fitted at the waist. The neck was square, showing off her collarbones.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” He had not missed her at all.
“Look. I just wanted to tell you that it’s all a huge confusion. Deirdre really is an old friend of Farouk’s, from way back. From college.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” Paul said.
“She lives in Canada.” Sang continued. “In Vancouver.”