Page 26 of All Our Evenings

It had been Ruhee’s. But that didn’t make me feel any better. And what did it matter? They had both kept it a secret from me. Excluded me. And the manner in which I found out made everything so much worse. Ruhee still had the condom I’d stolen from my parents’ almirah, I knew. That had been the thing that made them both sure they wanted to do it.

It was the last week of the summer holidays. An end to these days of grace, before the return to school, the absence of my father from it, all the unhappy things. I went to the gymkhana, Ganesh was there. After the game ended and everyone else went home, we sat in the stands. The evenings weren’t murderously hot anymore, the monsoon was coming. The sun was brilliantly red, quickly turning blue. Flocks of birds, like panes in the sky, were heading home. The habitual evening silence was falling on the neighborhood.

“How’s your brother?” I asked Ganesh, looking his way.

Ganesh shrugged.

“How’s the cottage coming along?”

He didn’t answer immediately. “It is done, Arjun.”

It was curious how good that made me feel. Hearing him say my name, hearing where his home, the rest of his life, was going to be. I might’ve even smiled involuntarily.

When Ruhee arrived, my heart leapt in my throat the way it always did when I saw her. The three of us sat in the stands without talking for a little while.

Then Ruhee said, “Let’s go to the Red House.”

I shrugged. Why not? I could stay out as late as I wanted, who was there to ask after me?

She and Ganesh looked at each other for the briefest moment, but I didn’t pay that exchange any special attention. I picked up my bat and led the way―this, I was used to doing: trailing them, or leading them, because nowadays Ruhee and Ganesh always walked side by side.

“Give me the bat,” Ruhee said, when we arrived. It was sweet, seeing her hold my bat. It was as if she was wearing my clothes. I tried not to smile too much.

We went up to the roof, sat near the overhead tank like we always did. We spent a few minutes throwing pebbles off the roof, until it got too dark to see where they landed in the overgrown woods behind. “Oh!” Ruhee said.

“What is it?” I said.

“I think I left your bat downstairs, near the gate. Shall I go and get it?”

“I’ll get it, don’t worry,” I said, standing up.

Downstairs, I spotted the bat leaning against the gate. “Is it there?” I heard Ruhee call from the roof. I looked up, Ruhee was kneeling over the parapet wall, holding the iron stakes that jutted out of the exposed pillars. “It’s here,” I called back.

“Good,” she said. But when I made to walk toward the stairs she called my name again.

I looked up. “You go home now,” she said. “We will see you tomorrow.”

Then she said, “Bye.”

She said it meaningfully, as if I understood. I must have looked puzzled, because she smiled and waved and said Bye in that same meaningful tone again. I realized that Ruhee wanted me to leave, and she was going to keep waving until I left.

It did not occur to me to defy Ruhee. To tell her what a bad idea it was. That Ganesh wasn’t who she thought he was. I lied to her when I brought him into her life. Or that this―what was going to happen on the roof of the Red House―it had been Ganesh’s plan all along. Remember? He asked me if I’d been with a girl before. Why else would he ask me that?

I left. Kept walking towards home but I couldn’t go inside. I sat on the pavement for a little while, then came all the way back. I don’t know, I might have cried.

Sometime later, perhaps an hour later, I watched Ruhee leave the Red House. I remember each and every gesture she made, the way she pulled her hair out of her hairband, gathered the strands and tied them up again. She walked past me sitting there in the darkness. She did not even notice me.

What was my plan? I only remember the ringing, burning silence in my ears. And one word: family. Family, family―I kept thinking. And there was that white hot hatred in the pit of my stomach, in the pit of what felt like my very soul. The ringing silence in both ears. I couldn’t bear that hatred, the ringing, it wanted me to do something, anything. Family, family― I kept thinking. Ganesh, Ruhee and I. We were a family. All I wanted to do was to protect my family. I had to, because it was my responsibility.

It was all so terrible.

I had my bat with me. I went up. I threatened to tell Ruhee’s parents. What do you think is going to happen to you? You think you can keep up this pretense? They will skin you alive, I said. They will put you in jail, I said. It won’t matter that it was Ruhee’s idea. No one would listen to her.

Does she know about the cottage? I yelled.

What about the cottage?

That you are going to marry that servant girl and live in it!