IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK
Breakthrough
A short story
The cactus that Parul got me for Christmas is dead. Sometimes, I think of chucking it out, but I don’t do it for no reason. I had hoped to return it along with her stuff that I gathered in big and small corrugated boxes, complete with labels listing the contents inside. I did all that because, as weird as it may sound, organizing made me feel calm.
Parul didn’t thank me for it but insisted I keep the cactus. I got it for you, she said, it isn’t mine to take. Right here was the reason for our break-up. Who needs a half-dead totem by the window sill to be reminded of their ex?
I checked on the cactus because I ran into Parul the other day. Well, actually, I saw her at the mart, across the aisle. Without losing a breath, I pulled up the cap of my hoodie, shielded my face and watched her from a distance like a total creep.
Parul stood by the crate of tangerines, gently massaging them in her moisturized palms before adding the firm ones to her cart. The tangerines were the same shade of fiery orange as the satin and lace underwear I had bought her. It was an impulsive, out-of-character buy — my lone attempt at gifting her. The Palash trees were in full bloom, setting the blue sky on fire like a thing of wild beauty. I had wanted to do something a person bursting with passion would do…
I bought the orange panty, thinking the satin would smoothly slide off her caramel skin and that it would pair well with the blue crochet top she wore to bed sometimes. Parul had rubbed the lace-rimmed satin panty between her slender fingers for a long time as if doing so could change or reveal something about its character.
I had waited for her reaction, wetting my lips. “Not bad,” Parul had said after a while, “for the records, black, nude, even white works better.” She smiled and left the room. I sat alone for a while, remembering my fifth-grade arithmetic tutor. She had a similar smile that said — keep at it, sweetie! Someday, you will get it right!
The orange panty is in my apartment, buried deep in a drawer beneath a pile of socks that have lost their pair. I didn’t pack it with Parul’s stuff because she never wore it. Not once. I figured it was a disappointment we shared, just like the chores. Parul and I had nothing in common except the desire to play house-house, the adult edition, with monthly bills and occasional vacations.
These days, when I get back from work, I notice how loud the dripping faucet is and how everything is exactly the way I left it. It drives me wild. I am not into TV, but I have tried leaving it on to kill the quiet. It didn’t work. I guess I am not the kind of person who is okay with the television watching him.
The supper I eat is cold, always. Cooking seems like too much of an effort. Sometimes, I eat vegetables raw. I feel the crunch my teeth make against the firm flesh of cucumbers.
A week after Parul left, I plucked the last of the tomatoes she had grown in a pot on our balcony. It was tiny and perfectly round. Parul would have washed and halved it, arranged it on top of her potato-egg salad bowl with chaat masala dressing, and then clicked a close shot in portrait mode using her iPhone, focusing on the tomato halves. That picture would be her Instagram highlight of the week, captioned #LaborOfLove or something cheesy like that.
I put the tomato in my mouth and almost immediately took it out before my saliva could settle on its taut skin. What I was about to do to the tomato suddenly felt cruel, too animalistic. I thought of Parul’s feathery touch, how her caress made my skin come alive. I thought for a long time but couldn’t be sure if Parul had missed anything about me.
It neither started nor ended. We had no disagreement. We weren’t even talking. Of course, we weren’t making love. We slept, ate and watched TV like two goldfish swirling within the same bowl.
“I can’t see where this is headed,” I said as Parul watched back-to-back episodes of a K-drama. “Maybe because it isn’t,” she replied without blinking. The next day, she moved out. I’m not sure why, and I was too ashamed to ask. A part of me said I had done nothing; another part of me just shook its head in agreement, utterly disappointed.
The stray tabby Parul used to feed stopped showing up once she left. I haven’t seen that furry freeloader since, and how the cat knew is beyond me! It has been months since we split like a toenail, and I cannot help but wonder if I had walked straight into a trap that night.
Was Parul patiently waiting for me to say something stupid so she could go on without me? I had seen her get upset over chipping her manicured nails, but it seemed our break-up had stirred nothing.
When we broke up, Parul was neither working nor earning, yet she had a ready place to go to and money to pay for food and other stuff like the Pilates class she took. Maybe her friends bailed her out, maybe she had a lot of money stashed somewhere or maybe there was a Sugar daddy I didn’t know of. I know this changes nothing, but it is one of the things I wonder about when I can’t fall asleep.
After picking tangerines, Parul had walked out of the mart, her kitten heels clop-clopping against the wooden floorboard. Her skin glowed under the filtered sunlight coming through the awning. She crossed the street without a sideways glance as if nobody could possibly be in her way and vice versa. She got into an SUV that looked new and whirled out of sight in no time.
I came home, restless like a rabid dog, and re-activated my social media to look her up. Boy, she looked better! Was she really doing so well? I burned to know. I couldn’t instantly find Parul’s Instagram, Facebook or Twitter profile.
The voice in my head said: you weren’t as inconspicuous as you thought, you piece of shit! Parul must have caught you snooping around and blocked you for good. You had this coming, you creep!
I ignored that voice and combed through profiles of mutual friends. Finally, I chanced upon a few Instagram posts tagging Parul. She had changed her profile name since I unfollowed and unfriended her on social media. She and some pals were hugging and posing with a fish pout. One of the pictures was a close shot of a cake.
Hard to guess what these folks were celebrating with no candles or squiggly frosting scribbled across that cake’s face. The post was private, had ninety-three likes and a single comment, ‘You go, girl!’ It could refer to any of the five girls huddled together in the pictures like sticky pollens.
I stared at pictures of Parul until dawn. It was indeed her, but she looked so different! Her eyes were not vacant. Her smile was full. Back at the Supermart, Parul had looked so content picking tangerines like she had nowhere else to be and there was nothing she would rather do.
This was not the Parul I knew; the melancholy girl who moved in with me, read poetry by moonlight and let me fill out the cracks in her life until the cracks got so big that I slipped right through them. Slowly, it dawned on me that I had been looking at this all wrong.
This is not about the stupid orange panty or how I could have made this work. This is about Parul breaking up with who she had become.
Thank you for reading!
© 8th February 2024. All Rights Reserved. Anushree Bose
