Free The Lilac House by Anita Nair Page B

this is all a joke. He will finish with his explanations and we will go home together.
    ‘And I watched the young men so full of ambition and dreams and I thought, what have I done with my life? I felt as if I was being strangled, slowly but surely. I had to move on,’ Giri murmurs.
     
    He waits for Meera to speak. To interject, to question, to merely react. But Meera, done with the cutlery, is rearranging the stack of sweeteners in their silver dish. Later she will ask herself, if she had spoken then, would the ebb of conversation have receded in another direction? Was it her silence that goaded
Giri to finish on the note of ‘there-is-no-room-for-negotiation-here’?
    ‘So I left. I didn’t understand or even realize why I was doing what I was doing. I didn’t think you would understand how I felt either.’
    ‘What?’ Meera asks. ‘I thought you said I was the one person who would understand. And now it seems I don’t understand you. Is that what you are bringing this down to? This middle-age caper of yours… Is that what this is about?’
    Giri shakes his head. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? How I feel, what I am going through. How do I make you understand?’
    That is when something snaps in Meera and she rises, her teeth baring into fangs and her eyes daring him to speak further. ‘What about us? The kids, I… What are we to do while you find yourself?’
    ‘Sit down, Meera. Sit down. Everyone’s looking at us!’ Giri hisses.
    Meera looks around her wildly. Then she drops into the chair. What is the use anyway?
     
    She hears him speak. Nuts and bolts of how they would separate and what would need to be done. Their lives, their children, their joint account and what they had shared once. How simple it is to unravel a skein if one wants to.
    Long ago, Giri told her, ‘Patience, Meera, patience. That is all you need to work any knot open. Keep teasing it and you’ll find a knot with a bit of slack and once you do, you are home.’
    Giri, Houdini of matrimony. Where did he find that slack bit?
    ‘Then there is the house. I asked you, begged and pleaded with you to sell the house. With the money, I would never have had to work for someone else. I could have pursued my dream, my chance at happiness… but you wouldn’t listen. You kept brushing the thought away. You indulged me with a “not now, we’ll do it later”, as if I were a child hankering for the moon. I have to move
on, Meera. I don’t know what it is I want to do. I know it is too much to expect you to understand what I am going through. Or for you to look at this objectively. But I want you to know that I didn’t intend to hurt you or the children.
    ‘You may have to seriously consider selling the house now. I won’t be able to contribute much till I have sorted things out. The kids’ education and their essentials – that is my responsibility.’ He pauses and looks away. Then, in a firm voice, as if to beat down any protests she may have, he says, ‘I have other responsibilities, too, now.’
    Meera searches his face. Is that what it’s all about?
    All those times when he was working weekends, the late evening meetings… how did I not see it? Mummy is wrong. I am not a good wife. Or, wouldn’t I have sensed it? The presence of another woman in your life. How did I go so wrong? Who is she? Where did you meet? How long has it been going on? But I won’t ask you who she is. I won’t give you the chance to unburden your guilt. I will not sit here and listen to you say, ‘Meera, you are the only one I can say this to… you are the only one I could ever say anything to.’
    From somewhere in the back of her mind a thought rises: if you love your life, you are lovable. If you hate your life, you become hate worthy. Did she read it somewhere? Or is it one of those Lily – Saro aphorisms that after a while became a part of her system, swimming to the surface with unfailing accuracy of time and circumstance? Making her mouth