The Red Carpet by Lavanya Sankaran Read Free Book Online Page B

What, after all, were closed curtains? It could be nothing.
    He had to ring the bell three times before it was answered. And then, immediately, he knew his impulses had been correct.
    The door swung open to reveal a darkened, unkempt house. Rohini looked devastated. In fact, she
was
devastated. Something dreadful had happened in her life, causing her eyes to redden and swell, her skin to blotch, her T-shirt to crumple and stain, and leaving her hair greasy, uncombed, and in tangled disarray.
    Mr. D’Costa’s mind darted about in horror. What could have caused this? An erring husband? An upset with her mother-in-law? A problem with her baby? His grandchildren? Why had his son’s letters made no mention of this?
    A thousand questions bubbled up inside him, but they all died before they found speech, quelled by the unexpected, implacable impatience in her eyes. The eyes of his daughter-in-law, repulsing him. He felt himself falter. What did he really know of the alien being who stood before him?
    “Mrs. Kapur,” Mr. D’Costa finally found refuge in formality. “Please excuse, but. . . . Your house . . . everything, is it okay?”
    What happened? Where are your servants? Your baby?
What
happened to you?
    The ghost of a smile on Rohini’s face was not echoed in her voice, as she answered the questions he could not voice. “The baby is at my mother’s house in Delhi, and the servants are on leave.”
    And your husband?
    But there was no further explanation.
    It appeared she was waiting for him to leave.
    Mr. D’Costa wandered back into the street, tightly clutching his plastic shopping bag. The gleaming white apartment building reared up behind him, and he kept his back to it, resolutely facing the pastel pink house from which he came. His gaze rested on the dark trails that edged the top of the walls. Every monsoon lengthened these trails, the rain dragging the dirt of the roof down with it, in filthy fat tears that coated the house in relentless, ever-narrowing stains until it looked like blackened fungal icing on pink cake. A long time ago, Mr. D’Costa had asked his son for a few extra dollars to repaint the house. If the money arrived soon, perhaps he would paint the house white this time. Or perhaps he wouldn’t repaint at all, for, pink or white, the rain would surely strike again and again.
    Mr. D’Costa felt a dismay creep through his body, but before he could dwell on it, he sighted a familiar neighborhood figure turning the corner.
    “Oh, Mrs. Gnanakan,” he called, and walked briskly over to inquire about her husband’s state of health.

TWO FOUR SIX EIGHT
    Mary and Mrs. Rafter died within a week of each other. I learned about Mrs. Rafter’s demise from the
Old Girls’ Newsletter.
“May she rest in pece,” it said beneath her photograph, quaintly and hurriedly, or perhaps simply in wry acknowledgment that she would never rest in peace. The blurb went on to mention her forty years of devoted service; the scar tissue resulting thereby still evident, no doubt, in two generations of old school girls.
    Mary had no such obituary. The news of her death was brought to us by her daughter, Rosamma, a few days after it happened, along with an unstated hope that her former employers might wish to do something for Mary’s family.
    “Give this woman something,” said my brother Ramu, “and get rid of her.”
    “Poor thing,” said my mother. “She was not so old to die. Not well, is it? You are a naughty sweetie baby.”
    Rosamma dutifully crooned to the child on my mother’s lap. “Baby-amma,” she said. “Baby-ammu-kutty. Yes, Ma,” she said. “She was very sick. So we took her to the government hospital, they gave some injection, she died, Ma.”
    “Terrible . . . See, what plump legs she has.”
    Rosamma plucked at the baby’s thigh with her fingers and kissed them. She held her hands out, but I got there before she could take the child from my mother.
    Rosamma was the spitting image of Mary.