CROSSROADS --  PART 4
 PREVIOUS PARTS APPEARED IN SEPT - OCT - NOV. 2014 
BY:  DOLA  DUTTA ROY
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

As days went by, Naomi started looking grey again in her drab and dowdy clothes. Her hair was no longer tied up in fancy ribbons or twirls. She moved about in a daze, talked less and played the violin more often. Mostly sad tunes. She struggled with her interlude with insanity every now and then. However, she grew cautious with threats from Helen and desperately tried to come to terms with what was doled out to her by fate.

Christmas had come and gone. Helen returned from another visit to her daughter in Irvine and immediately announced that she was going to get her bunions fixed. She called both Naomi and me and showed how ugly her feet looked with the bunions protruding menacingly from her shoes.

This hurt her vanity. However, there was a minor problem. A new boarder was coming in to fill Tim’s place.

Peter McCullough was to join Claremont McKenna and had responded to Helen’s ad in the Claremont Courier. He needed to be shown around. Both Naomi and I agreed to do the needful while she would be away and asked her to relax.

When Helen returned from Mt. Sinai after the surgery we put her in bed. But what worried her was that schools were getting ready for Registration and Peter hadn’t shown up yet.

Just the day before Registration at the Claremont Colleges, a Toyota truck rolled in through the gate, in the afternoon. I looked out. The truck had a load of cardboard boxes and a large suitcase. The guy who jumped out of the front seat was massive. Not less than six feet, two inches in height, he had a sun burnt face and floppy flaxen hair. I opened the door for him and noticed that he had pale grey eyes that made him look unmistakably Nordic.

In a flat, matter-of-fact voice he asked for Helen and forwarded a note that he had received from her.

It was Peter McCullough. Finally!

I showed Peter to his room and parroted what Helen had briefed me to say. He looked at the size of the room and grimaced. Then with a shrug he quietly handed me an envelope which obviously had cash in it. His first month’s rent and the deposit amount meant for Helen.

That was Peter McCullough – big, strong and silent.

Peter was quiet and mostly in his room when he was home. For a big man he moved around with quick and feline grace. It took Naomi a bit of time to catch his attention.

Helen was on her feet again; rather on her crutches and back to her shrewd self.

It was not even seven in the morning when we were startled to hear the lawn mower rolling in the backyard one Sunday. Zachary, the guy who raked and mowed the lawn, was still on leave. I got curious and put on my housecoat to check out what was going on.

I found Naomi staring out into the backyard with her cup of coffee in hand watching Peter doing the mowing, evidently at Helen’s behest. In his t-shirt and by the look in Naomi’s eyes – Peter looked definitely attractive. She turned to me and smiled a mysterious smile.

“Didn’t realize he was this handsome,” she whispered and winked. I gave her a look of mock concern and we both laughed. “Oh, no!” I mouthed. ”Don’t you start dreaming again!” But I was sure that another chapter in her life was going to unfold itself rapidly.

“Isn’t he a sweetheart?” Helen croaked over her cup of tea at the table. “Zach is still unavailable, so I asked Peter to do the lawns for me. Of course, I’ll pay him for that,” she said holding up her chin and the cup in her hand with a firm grip.

“Good for you,” I said.” You take it easy.”

Very soon, Naomi was back to her jubilant self. She was flying again, buoyant with confidence. Like an unanchored ship reaching out for the deep blue sea, she was bouncing and bobbing with joy.

Peter was a good listener who personally preferred monosyllables. It suited Naomi who usually became garrulous whenever she felt comfortable with a guy. However, no one was complaining.

When the spring clouds floated in, the flowers began to bloom in the backyard and the sun seemed a bit generous, Naomi would spread herself on the grass in feminine outfits and pore over a book looking pretty as a picture. And this she did when Peter would be around and Helen would be away either to the Community Centre or to do library work. Then the two of them would sip wine and fight for a piece of the same apple.

I was quite sure things would look up for Naomi eventually, but was certainly not prepared for the next big episode in her life.

* * *

9.

There was first a tap on my door and then a banging that woke me up. My first impression was – must be the rattling of the innumerable quakes California experienced intermittently. But it was fist pounding away on wood.

I had taken a sleeping pill to get some undisturbed rest but I shot up from bed when the banging got louder and more intense. At the other end of the door, Helen stood in her nightgown with soft curlers in her hair. She looked old and tired.

The moment I widened the door, she grabbed my hand and said,” A terrible, terrible thing has happened.” She covered her mouth and choked.”Come ‘n look for yourself,” she started panting.

I realized she was agitated beyond words. Before I knew it, she was  pulling me along and stopped  in front of Peter’s room. The door was ajar and there was a gaping wound on its body. Somebody had kicked it really hard to break it open. Standing at the door what I saw chilled my veins. Helen prodded me to look inside but I stood there mute and shaken.

Naomi was lying in a pool of blood oozing out of her left wrist and Peter was hovering over her holding his abdomen with his left hand. There was blood seeping through his fingers! Naomi had passed out. I looked at Helen and then at Peter. For once I saw some emotion playing on his otherwise imperceptible expression. What he said was not hard to believe.

Peter was confounded by Naomi’s irregular behavior, her theatrics and melodrama and had asked her to leave him alone and that’s when somewhere some cord had snapped. He looked up to point at a sharp knife next to Naomi’s inert body.

“Don’t you touch it,” screamed Helen and Peter recoiled.

By then we heard clicking of boots down the hallway and sirens cutting through the night air.

While Peter and Naomi were getting medical attention at the Police Hospital, we got grilled by  the officers.  When the truth came out, I was not surprised.

Evidently, Naomi had been busy casting her love spell on Peter with much sincerity. She expected an emotional commitment in return. However, Peter, with his inborn male genetic disorder, had a commitment phobia. He demanded that their relationship have no strings attached as he had a girlfriend back home in Phoenix whom he cared for enormously. She was going to join him soon in the Fall session at Pitzer College. Till then he was available. This was indeed a cultural phenomenon I couldn’t understand.

Naomi was shell shocked! She didn’t appreciate the deadline for her emotional involvement. It was not easy for her to accept duplicity of any kind anymore. She felt used and about to be dismissed one more time. With her pride hurt, she grew vengeful. This time she was going to take on the offender -- one who gave her pain.  With all the rage steaming inside over the years, she chose to engage in an unimaginable violation of human dignity, by emasculating him that would maim him for life.

Ben Goldberg came down and fought the court battles and so did Peter’s family. The media channels loved the ratings that were spiraling upwards in their favor.

To our relief, the story soon stopped making headlines and got replaced by newer and fresh crimes in the newspapers and TV. There were perhaps some unknown dealings behind the scene as well, but the community was aghast. 

Naomi was indifferent to all this commotion as she had slipped into a world of her own where she raged and talked to invisible friends and figures. Ben took her away to New York. Soon it became common knowledge that she was in the confines of an asylum. She was diagnosed with Manic Bipolar Disorder.

This certainly filled me with sadness. I was distressed for quite sometime thinking of her and often wondered if she was a victim of circumstances or the architect of her own fate! I found no answer to all those questions in my mind.

For years I thought of Naomi, complete with her tragic flaws, a whimsical and mixed up person, fighting invisible enemies. I wondered if she could ever be her normal self again and lead a happy life; within and without. I feared if she would fail to rise above her agonizing plight -- or succumb to it most ungraciously. But I had no access to that knowledge.

Some years later Naomi Goldberg made headlines again.  Her picture appeared with many others in tabloids and newspapers as one of those who took recourse to self-immolation to save a cult-camp from unreasonable investigation, humiliation and gross injustice meted out by the State of Wyoming.

I was certain that Naomi Goldberg left the planet, perhaps, mourned by no one.

************ THE END***********

Dola Dutta Roy

Calcutta, India

CROSSROADS -- PART  2

All rights reserved  * * *

November 13, 2014

3.

So finally Helen was gone and I was still dithering about my plans for the next few days when Naomi grew chatty at the breakfast table.

It was more of a soliloquy than a dialogue. I was the only one in the auditorium counting her sighs and hand movements getting the impression of a creature hovering over a cusp and in a dilemma that she was unable to shake off.

“All this is so meaningless,” she said quite out of the blue with a sour expression. The next moment in a trance-like state she stared at a blank spot on the wall for a while looking glum. Whether the affliction of depression or paranoia was self-inflicted or not -- was something that I couldn't gauge at that moment.

“What do you mean? Why meaningless?” I asked gingerly.

“You know, all this paraphernalia about celebrating togetherness of the family – doesn’t make sense to me at all,” Naomi said somberly. “When families are breaking up and there is truly no love shared by all, what’s the need for ceremonies and functions pretending to be happy?” She turned to me with a half mournful, half cynical look.

 “Just because it’s a special day in the calendar, doesn't mean a thing to me.” Suddenly she sounded quite furious. I saw flickers of insanity creeping into her grey-blue eyes and I shrank.

“But to some, perhaps, it has some meaning, “I mumbled, “to those who care for one another and to those who share a bonding.” I meant to give her hope but I was afraid to look at her face in case I saw something ominous again. I started to turn the coffee mug and admire the impression on it and take gulps from it to finish it as quickly as possible.

There was a momentary pause.

Somehow, accidentally I looked up and that’s when I noticed that there was a tinge of melancholy lurking in her eyes this time. She exhaled audibly and said rather softly, “Perhaps you’re right. It’s just that some of us like me don’t get to see that at all.” Her face contorted with anguish. I thought I suddenly got a glimpse of a wrung-out, tormented soul that I didn't know anything about. Naomi grew more and more enigmatic to me.

For a while she pondered and looked pensive. I realized that in her mind memories were surfacing from the depth of an abyss hitherto untapped. She talked of a myriad random moments when she was a child that sometimes left her numb with pain. She grew to dislike everybody around her and especially herself. I sat motionless and listened.

* * *
4.

Benjamin Goldberg was apparently a legal hot shot in New York. But when Naomi was almost eleven, he inflicted some unexpected and irreparable damages on the family’s legal firm with unjust monetary deals with a rival group. Needless to say, he was banished from the legal field altogether.

 “Nobody would touch him. He managed to escape being behind bars -- thanks to the strong connections with the right people Grandpa had,” Naomi lamented. “But all the same, Grandpa distanced himself from his son and vowed never to see him again. No one could pollute the name of the Goldberg family.” Ben was discarded as a piece of rag. They moved to a middle order neighborhood giving up on a fancy lifestyle.

 “Our family plunged into hard days.”

Arguments at home between her parents graduated to violence when Ben started coming home inebriated on a regular basis. Naomi felt that her mom was enraged not only with the loss of face, but also the pampering, the luxuries and the bright social life that her dad had given her earlier, but took away so grossly.

“I didn't blame Mom. Her favorite pastime was nothing but shopping at upscale exclusive stores and socializing with her wealthy friends.” Naomi curled up her lips in disgust.” I was never an option. She didn't have much time for me anyway.”

But she was ‘Dad’s little princess’ and was completely terrified as situations changed rapidly between her parents. Ben had no time for anything now. Not even for her. He was too busy remaking his life on shreds of goodwill. She felt uncared for, dismissed and abandoned. It was Loretta, the woman who came to cook and do the work around the house, who fed her and looked after her.

” I often locked myself up in my room when Dad returned at night and arguments catapulted to violence. I’d go to bed without dinner and stay awake staring at the ceiling, waiting for daybreak so I could escape to school.”

Her mother eventually declared that she wanted to put an end to ‘mental and physical torture’ and asked for a divorce. By then it was out in the open that she was going to ‘shack up’ with her gay partner, Amy, and offered no custody claims. Naomi grimaced. 

“Of course, this was to punish Dad to be saddled with my responsibility at a time like that. Soon Mom left for Florida with her partner and never looked back. The divorce came through without a battle.” Naomi sneered.” I only heard from her on my birthday and during Hanukkah! Soon I stopped taking her calls.”

But strangely enough God looked up.

* * *

5.

Finally with his marriage breaking down, Ben Goldberg accepted defeat and grew calmer and tender with his ‘little princess’ once again. She was the only thing he had in the whole world and soon Naomi could twirl him around her little finger with tantrums if she willed. In return she looked after him and kept the house in order. She thought she had somewhat got her old life back!

Ben was a suave and charming man with a gift of the gab. He had mastered the art of wheeling and dealing to perfection and money started pouring in again. From where, Naomi didn't know or care.

She admitted through chuckles, ”Sometimes I even managed to steal money from his coat pockets. He didn't even miss it.  It was better than asking him for some.” She laughed. I raised my eyebrows but said nothing. I knew better. It is dangerous to contradict a person who was mixed up inside.

On the flip side, there was a steady flow of women who Ben could still manage to cast a spell on. Some were attractive, some plain and some downright aggressive and pathetic. However, none of the women lasted for more than a week or so, but finally when Ben brought home Becky Schwartz as his wife, a legal assistant, half his age, Naomi didn't know whether she was relieved or more distraught.

“I felt cheated and cast aside one more time. Nobody actually cared for me!” she scowled. I saw anger flickering in her large blue-grey eyes. “I wanted to destroy everything.  Everything.” She banged hard on the table.

She dropped out of her school circle. Kevin, her regular boyfriend, was duly dismissed and she began missing her classes with a vengeance.

“I was important or special to nobody.  It was as though, I never existed!” She hissed and got up.

 “I spent time alone sitting in parks talking to pigeons all day. I took nothing to eat, not even an apple.” She wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms. “I gave a damn for school or my assignments.”  Needless to say her grades nosedived.

For a moment I thought she had lost all sense of time and space.

Naomi was now pacing the little dining area, her eyes moving in an erratic manner, seeing nothing. I grew apprehensive as she mumbled on.

Her inability to deal with her lot adequately and occasional outbursts of convoluted passion and ire, led to a series of counseling, both at school and outside, apparently causing Ben immeasurable humiliation and pain, or so he said. Naomi was dragged to a psychiatrist periodically to level with her own soul and, of course, money was flowing out making Ben irate and Becky miserable.

” What’s wrong with you? You are humiliating us.” Ben shouted at her one night.

“Don’t you like going to school? Making friends? Why don’t you get a new boyfriend?” Ben screamed. ”Aren't you normal?” Ben had thrown his hands up in the air. “I can’t even send you to your Mom and now I know why she abandoned you! Ah, the bitch knew what she was doing!” Filth came pouring out of his mouth like water from a bottle.

He called her mother names and addressed Naomi thereafter as an ‘airhead’ and a ‘bimbette’, while Becky looked away.

“She abandoned you too for what you did, remember?” Naomi had shot back. “Any guesses what that was for?” She screamed. “And ‘humiliation’? You talk about humiliation? Do you have any idea how you have turned my whole world upside down with what you did?” Tears trickled down her face. ”I am ashamed of you, Dad, ashamed of you.”

Ben stood stunned and mute. By then Naomi was banging on dad’s study desk, smashing the glass top.

* * *

6.

With increasing skirmishes at home, Naomi was drained of all self-confidence. She swung between emotions like a pendulum and grew mentally unstable. Ben took her for counseling with little improvement. She liked nothing -- and no one enjoyed her company either. She shunned people as she felt that the world had turned against her. But one thing she knew, if she hated school and had no passion for books and assignments, she loved music and - every note of it.

She plunged into the world of melody that ranged from hard rock, country, and jazz to even classical symphony. At last, she said, she tried to keep afloat in the beat and ring of the notes that lifted her spirits from the hostile grounds she was given to tread.

Finally, with fear in her belly and hope in her heart when she graduated from High School, Naomi took a break for a year.

“Basically, I wanted to find myself. I needed to breathe easy.” she said. “Then I realized I needed to make some money to be on my own.”

She worked, first, as a library assistant hauling up books from tables and carting them back to the shelves. She found it immensely boring and ‘un-lifting’. Later, when she got a job to be a floor assistant in a music shop, she was thrilled. She understood music well enough to guide people to what they were looking for but couldn't spell out. She educated them on various kinds of music from around the world, both vocal and instrumental. Soon she got two promotions and became one of the assistant managers at the store.

When she thought that she had arrived and had saved up enough money, Naomi applied to various Colleges across the country to educate herself with a view to majoring in Music. Her chief aim was to get as far away from home as possible. With regular visits to her ‘shrink’, she started applying to colleges in the West Coast and down south as well, to be far from New York City. When she heard from Pomona College in S. California which not only agreed to take her in but even offered her a part time job on campus, she was ecstatic. The Music Department there offered concerts throughout the academic year by student ensembles, faculty performers and guest artists. She needed to get a break and dreamt of being a solo performer some day or even write scores for TV or movies.

* * *

7.

To move from the East Coast to the West was a big decision not considering the miles that stretched in between.

Naomi begged her dad to help her out with admission. California was a rich state and it was not cheap living in S. California. She couldn't afford it with the money she had saved up.

To her surprise Ben relented with one condition that she took her medication seriously and sent him reports from her shrink every month. He also agreed to pay her college fees and medical bills only if she could meet him halfway by paying for her living expenses. Naomi was more than willing to do so.

“He waned to get rid of me just as much as I wanted to get away -- as far as I could from him and Becky. I could tell they really didn’t want me around.” Naomi whispered. She was happy to say ‘Goodbye’ to her family and didn’t even bother to write a note to her mother giving her the good news. She was already lost to her. “So here I am,” she chirped with a big smile on her sad face.

So to make the story short, Naomi visited her shrink, Dr Marianne Atwood regularly on Foothill Boulevard and was on prescribed drugs to keep her from getting any unsavory outbursts of emotions. Helen refused to take her back in, if she failed to pay Dr Atwood her regular visits.

She was told to keep her spirits high doing what she did best, which was music. She visited all the concerts in town and made friends with music lovers. She fell in and out of love with a few music buffs periodically and when they moved on she bellowed, agonizing over solitary confinement for the rest of her life. Going through such transitions, her intake of special medicines increased -- of course, with the help of Dr Atwood.

* *  *

8.

Tim was, however, unaware of all this drama as he was barely in.

In his early twenties, he was a handsome young man but a bit frail for an Anglo Saxon male. By her own admission, he was Naomi’s first ‘true love’, when she got to know him better. Her eyes lit up even when she found him doing a mundane job like cleaning the washroom which we three took turns to keep clean.

So when we were having breakfast at Helen’s table one Sunday and Tim walked into the kitchen for a drink of water, he gave her a big smile and I knew that another Act in Naomi’s life had just begun.

Tim could be charming, if he wanted to be, and was quite flattered by Naomi’s singular attention so it didn't take them long to be friends. We saw more of him now and Naomi was an angel with him around. She loved fixing him a snack when he felt a bit ‘grubby’. Often the two would attend the Friday concerts at the Memorial Park in Claremont, go orange picking at the Agriculture and Citrus Park in La Verne or drive off to Upland and Cucamonga in search of coyotes. They teased and laughed with Helen and even she started to look less intimidating. For a short spell there was laughter in the air in that house.

One of Helen’s several conditions was that no visitors be allowed to spend the night with the boarders. So when Tim and Naomi tiptoed in to their nests at midnight, instead of violin recitals, I could hear giggles seeping through the hollow walls that separated our rooms. I would stop reading in bed and cover my ears with pillows.

I realized that in this chapter of her life, Naomi felt wanted and seemed happy!  

We breathed a sigh of relief. 

However, at the end of the semester, when Tim graduated and broke the news that he was going back to Boulder, Colorado, where he came from, Naomi was livid. She scratched and clawed him, called him names and then banged the door on his face. But Tim didn't stay back to reconsider their budding relationship and take it up to the next level. He opted for the exit immediately but not without some ugly scars on his face and limbs.

Naomi’s abnormal behavior catapulted to new heights soon after Tim finally left for Boulder.

For days Naomi didn't talk to any one of us and made no eye contact. There was a cloud of gloom hovering over her at all times. If she spoke, she spat venom. Not just that, Helen grew worried as she was found in the kitchen uttering soliloquies of her own, cursing and banging things in sight. She urged her to visit Dr Atwood at once and threatened to call up her dad to take her away.

Over time Naomi appeared more aloof and grew  unimaginably irritable. It was getting difficult keeping pace with her plan of action even though she never grew that violent to attack anybody. She rather chose to stay withdrawn and live in isolation. Nevertheless, she grew steadily restless and unstable. From a childlike glee on her face one moment she would rapidly descend to a state of haunting despair at the next. 

 When she couldn’t contain her rage for some odd reason, she would charge out in her beat-up car leaving a trail of black smoke behind. It was her signature exit to take on and destroy the world. Later at night, she would come back home with a collection of citations - for violating traffic norms.

But all this didn't bother her, nor did she care when people around gasped in horror finding her behavior strange. Kids called her ‘loony’ and mimicked her walk behind her back.

 “I don’t give a damn for your big money, sweetheart,” Helen said one day. “I can’t handle all this. Be your dad’s pet -- and leave me in peace.”  She said quite emphatically. Her face bore an expression of strained anxiety.

With a jolt Naomi fell suddenly silent. Her enormous eyes seemed dilated with fear. It dawned on her that there was no place to go back to. She lifted her vacant eyes with a look where every emotion was wiped out and all sense of time and space had been removed. The only person she could turn to now was actually Dr. Atwood.

It took Naomi a few days to get back to her normal subdued self.

Her medication was finally right, we agreed.

She smiled more often and played the violin a lot. However, Helen started getting suspicious of this new image she was projecting. But Naomi glowed and was her angelic self again. The men in her life like Gustavo, a grad student from Venezuela, Rusty, a local musician, Houshang from Iran and Martin from England hung around and were mostly campus recruits from concert ensembles. They talked, wrote and made music. But unfortunately the euphoria didn't last. Soon Naomi grew tired of them and the guys flaked out. One day she ceremoniously announced that she had vowed celibacy for the rest of her life!

 “You know no one is important to me anymore,” she confessed.” These guys have no soul.” To me she looked utterly bewildered indeed.

* * *
to continue......
by: Dola Dutta Roy, Calcutta, India
November 13, 2014

CROSSROADS 

by Dola Dutta Roy

All rights reserved

Please check earlier stories by clicking on the month on the right 

For over a month, everyday, I had been fretting over this. Helen had given 

us enough notice and secretly, I did try looking for an excuse to get away 

somewhere when she was gone, but didn't quite succeed. My best friend, Mauricette, was also 

leaving for Jacksonville to be with her boyfriend’s family overThanksgiving; 

then the time came when Helen left too -- visiting her daughter in Irvine 

over the long weekend leaving me to share the cottage with Naomi.

This made me enormously nervous.

Naomi and I had been boarding with Helen Baker for some time. Neither 

Naomi nor I had any family out here in the valley. Me, coming all the 

way from India and Naomi from New York, a place she hated to be. 

Unfortunately, we didn't have any close friends to visit either for a 

hearty turkey meal over Thanksgiving.

For some reason, Naomi Goldstein was one of God’s many     

quirky creations. She was five feet nothing and slender, in my opinion -

just skin ‘n bones - Twiggy style. Her dish-water hair that

came down straight to her shoulder blades, was mostly unkempt and

straggly. It framed her perfectly contoured face where every feature was

fine except for the large blue eyes that had a moist, 

reminiscing look at all times. But when, and, if she smiled, they lit up her

face and made her look angelic. Well, almost. That is how I found Naomi,

the first time I set my eyes on her, as she walked in through the front

door with bag and baggage -- and her violin.

2.

We had woken up late that morning and chose to linger at the breakfast table before 

we embarked on the motions of our holiday routines -- of 

shopping and cleaning for the week. As for me, I was killing time trying to fuel myself 

for the day and making discreet plans to engage in activities that would 

give me time to spend alone, away from Naomi. But Thanksgiving being a 

family affair, I was at a loose end and thought it best to visit the Art 

Exhibition at the Griswold’s Inn mainly to soak in freedom away 

from monotony and, not to mention, some unsavory disquiet at home.

I looked furtively at Naomi, who at the best of times, hovered 

between sleeplessness and the twilight zone. She seemed to be still 

in a ‘nowhere’ state that she herself was unaware of.

But that was nothing new; not because she was unwilling to face 

the world -- but due to an overdose of prescribed sedatives the night

before. These were meant to keep her nerves calm and steady. 

There was no telling with her.But to my surprise Naomi seemed 

unusually relaxed.  If this was a sign for her being bored with life, I welcomed it.

Naomi emptied her box of Kellogg’s into a bowl with a faraway look in her eyes, and folded her legs on the chair. Helen would have vehemently objected to it, if she were to see that. Her eyes had a touch of vapid pensiveness, perhaps out of sheer loneliness and lack of anything exciting to embark upon. For some time she stared into space sipping coffee and spooning her cereal. Finally, jerking out of her somnambulistic trance, she felt the inclination to talk.

There is indeed some comfort in unburdening yourself to a stranger or alien who would move out of your orbit sooner or later. But I grew apprehensive.

Naomi grunted and whined at the same time about how meaningless these celebrations were for her and why she left her life behind in New York, never to return. She sounded a little wistful and nostalgic, no doubt, and even in my half-awake state, I realized that she had plunged into another of her abysmal “dark” days that swept over her at regular intervals. It was a bit disturbing for me especially with Helen and Tim, the third ex-boarder, nowhere in the scene. Somehow it made me nervous to be her focal point of at the breakfast table.

I avoided looking at her hoping she might decide to stop midway and spare me the unpardonable right to peek into her private life even by accident. I certainly did not wish get too involved in her personal state of affairs.

I watched her moves carefully and nodded appropriately while I bit into my toasts. I wasn’t sure when she would crack up without warning or what she would tell me could be the truth or half-truth or -- no truth at all.

We had known each other for some time now. We meant Naomi, Tim Sullivan and myself– all at different areas of academics -- pursuing our personal goals trying to equip ourselves to combat the tough world that lay ahead.

Timothy Sullivan from Boulder, Colorado, a Grad student at Claremont Graduate School nearby, had come in a few weeks before I became a boarder with Helen, and then it was Naomi, the following semester.

Timothy or Tim was rather elusive. He never had his meals at home and was out of the house most of the time. I wondered if that was a guy thing, to be out and grazing around at the slightest opportunity! We hardly ran into each other except in the hallway that led to the common washroom for boarders, which we took turns to keep clean every weekend. As it appeared, our conversations never progressed beyond exchanging greetings.

3.

Helen’s comfortable little cottage was on East Bonita in La Verne, a slumbering little town, nestled in the foothills of the San Gabriel - Pomona Valleys situated a few miles east of Los Angeles. For us it was very conveniently located in an area that was decent, quiet and peaceful, and more importantly, reasonably priced. 

Naomi was faltering through her undergraduate studies at Pomona College not too far away. She had found student housing on campus rather expensive, so opted for home-stay. Soon she got her second-hand red Honda Civic and wandered about La Verne, Pomona, Claremont and even Upland-- discovering every nook and corner in her orbit and making friends and --sometimes foes.

Little did Helen, Tim or me have any idea what we were in for making her a part of our tribe.

A widow in her mid- sixties with well-manicured hands, close-cropped hair and a high-pitched voice to match, Helen Baker unknowingly betrayed a muffled southern accent. She told me over a stray conversation one day, quite inconsequentially, sipping coffee out of monstrous cups in the backyard that the cottage was left to her by her late husband who passed away some years back. With her only daughter married off, she got lonesome and thought it was a good idea to have boarders for company on a temporary basis. 

Later, I realized that she had financial problems. She was, however, hard- working and in a way forced to let lodgings to generate some income that took care of her monthly expenses. I also understood that she was undoubtedly quite insecure to live by herself, especially when crazy psychopaths made it their passion to go on a rampage attacking elderly women who lived in quiet neighborhoods. 

Of many of the commandments that governed our stay at the cottage, Helen was very particular about how far we could tread in her territory.

The house had four bedrooms, three to let out and the Master-bedroom that Helen occupied at the far end of a passage that ran along the other bedrooms. The large -living room was stuffed with American oak furniture in fading upholstery, Navajo artifacts and some fake crystal. The dining area was attached to the living room, adjacent to a fairly large kitchen and the den. Every little space apart from the hallway, kitchen and the den was out of bounds for the boarders. The living room opened up to the backyard that was also accessible from the master-bedroom. The backyard enclosed a patch of green and flowering plants surrounding it. Helen loved to tend the garden. The big gardenia tree outside my window was my favorite, which is why I had decided to pick that room for a bit of nostalgia. Gardenia was my favorite flower and reminded me of rainy summer evenings in Calcutta, India.

On Sundays Helen generally woke up early to visit the Church nearby and came back after having a heavy brunch with her community friends. Needless to say, on those days we could stretch our legs at her dining-table which was a ‘no-no’ under normal circumstances. Of course, she had no knowledge of it.

Or perhaps she did.

However, Helen usually left us alone. She had her dinner early and disappeared into her room to watch her favorite soaps in the evening. She hardly came out of her confinement unless she had a community dinner or any other special events to attend. Basically, she gave us space and was quite fond of us, especially Naomi, even though she was neither an angel, nor a constellation of virtues.

But Naomi was not embarrassed or apologetic about her erratic manners.

On her ‘bright’ days , like the day she landed a job at the music store at The Village in Claremont, she’d stroll in the hallway with a box of croissants or pastries and hand it to Helen with a flourish. She would give a hug to anybody in sight. On her ‘dark’ days the front door bore the brunt of her displeasure and the kitchen shook with the music she created with the banging of utensils. This drove Helen out of her reverie in her room who charged out shrieking, reminding Naomi of the rules and regulations of boarding with her.

Needless to say, Naomi was deaf to all that. Nobody knew what irked her. At times she would fume in silence and at some other times she would nag and complain rolling her eyes in fury and then take her car out in a huff and return only after she had had a chat with her shrink.

The following few days would be peaceful until the next outburst. She hovered around like a solitary creature with a look of maligned madness -- indifferent to the world and played the violin in her room to comfort her aching soul till she got tired of it.

There was indeed a communication gap that kept us apart. Fortunately, she preferred to stay by herself most of the time. We got used to her mood swings and periodic reticence and learnt to give her space. But today she wanted to talk!

* * * 

to continue......

THE HOMECOMING

THE HOMECOMING

 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
Please check earlier stories by clicking on the month on the right 

There was a light rap on the front door. Ratna was putting the weekly groceries away when she first heard the knock. By the time she managed to get past the bulging grocery bags mounted on the floor, the rap grew desperate. "Coming," she said. She wiped her hands on the kitchen towel and went through the little passage that came between the kitchen and the drawing room to get to the main door. She was still not very sure of her bearings around the house they just moved in a couple of weeks back.

Shankar had managed to find the place through a broker before Ratna arrived from Delhi with Shuvam, their four-year-old son. She didn't much care for the neighborhood. It was in the outskirts of the main city in a deserted part of Calcutta’s new satellite town called Salt Lake which still had just a few small cottages on little patches of green. Some of them were coated with layers of cement waiting for a fresh coat of paint.

 "Couldn't you get your broker to find a better place for us?" Ratna had asked Shankar. "This place is so far from the main city that I feel scared to step out because I know I won't be able to find my way back again." She had pouted.
"That is precisely why I like this place," Shankar had said with a mischievous grin. "Maybe, I don't want you to step out and get lost. I certainly don't want to lose you."

"Can't you ever be serious? I am serious. This place gives me the creeps. I am sure I'll never be able to find my way back if I went out. And I want you to know that I am not one of those to sit around the house and just do nothing. Once Shuvam starts school, I would like to do a few things on my own. I want to move around, Ok, Mr?”

Ratna came close to run her fingers through his hair. “Now will you ask your broker to find us a place in a more civilised part of the world?"

Shankar looked pleased and pampered. He said nothing. He lit a cigarette and was aware that Ratna was truly displeased with the selection of their home in this new town. But he liked the small two-storied house he managed to get with great difficulty, with a terrace and also a bit of green at the back to grow flowers and vegetables. There was an aura about the place. It had a sense of history and mystery.

They said the owner of the house was a public servant and with his life’s savings he had built this house but couldn’t enjoy it because of his son’s tragic death. So the family moved out and rented out the place. Living in a big city like Calcutta had never been Shankar’s dream. He had grown up in suburbia with a lot of space around where there were trees to house koyels and mainas. Besides, practically speaking, rents around this area seemed more reasonable than in areas close to the city centre. They would have to pay triple the amount for a tiny hole in Ballygunge or Lake Gardens. But how does he make Ratna see that! He too hated commuting everyday through congested areas with revolting body odours and filth enveloping him. Which is why at the end of the day, he was happy to come back to a place that was quiet and stench free. It was like heaven to him.

But Ratna was different. Coming from a clean and buzzing area like Alaknanda in New Delhi, she complained about feeling insecure in a lonely place with no friends around.

The rap on the door grew more intense.

"Coming, baba, coming. What's the hurry?" Ratna was a little annoyed at the fact that Parvati, the maid had left to pick up Shuvam from the neighbor's playground leaving her to do the cleaning up in the kitchen and answering doorbells. The local grocer had delivered the package some time back and she was hoping Parvati would give her a hand in putting all the stuff away. Somehow the heat in the city drove her to madness to the point of being listless and lazy.

Ratna unconsciously ran her fingers through her hair to tidy it a bit and mopped her face with the end of her dupatta. It could be Shankar. He hated to wait outside the door for too long. She looked at her wristwatch. There was yet some time for Shankar to return home. He usually got back around seven and it was not yet six. She hoped that it wasn't any vendor ringing the bell to sell something. There always seemed to be an endless race of them moving from door to door to offer their fares to bored housewives.

She opened the door gingerly.

         

"Sorry to bother you, Ma'am," said a young man in his twenties. He looked tired and kind of anxious. Ratna tried to think if she had ever seen him. He wore a pair of blue jeans and a white shirt with thin checks on it. His hair was untidy and a night-old growth on his face gave him a scruffy look.  She was trying to get used to the way Bengalis looked and behaved in this part of the world. They were ever so polite and respectful towards women, she thought.

 "I am sorry to trouble you." The young man said. Ratna decided she had never set eyes on him.

The young man was very apologetic. "I didn't mean to disturb you, Ma'am. I was looking for Mr. Nair. I have some business with him."

"Oh, I see." Ratna was a little embarrassed...” But he is not back yet from work. Should be back soon. Would you like to wait for him?" Ratna said falteringly.

"If it's not too much trouble." The young man looked relieved. There was something about his eyes. They looked so mournful, Ratna thought. She hoped the man was not here for financial help from her husband. As it is Shankar was always running short of money for every little thing. She looked at the young man and wondered what to expect.

The man turned back to wave at the taxi that was parked at some distance from the house and Ratna followed his gaze.

"I'll just ask him to wait for me here. I'll be back in minute,Ma'am.“

The man gave an embarrassed smile and stepped down to go through the small gate that stood decoratively in front of the shabby old house with a new name plate hanging on the outside. He went and spoke to the cab driver and moved back to the house where Ratna still stood wondering if she had done the right thing by asking him to come in and wait. She had plenty to do in the kitchen and there was no sign of Parvati and the kid.

Ratna asked the young man to make himself comfortable and at home. "Don't worry, Ma'am. I'll be all right." He said with an embarrassed laugh."My name is Debdulal Ghosh. I am a reporter and I am covering a project taken up by the UNESCO that is doing some work on the spread of arsenic in West Bengal. That's why I wanted to have a talk with Mr. Nair. I didn't mean to give you trouble."

"No, it's no trouble at all," Ratna smiled. She was a little relieved to learn that Debdulal was not here to get money from her husband. She heard the taxi move up to the front of the gate and stop.

"It's so difficult to get cabs around here. I thought it best to ask him to wait." He bared his slightly uneven teeth.

"Yea, I think that's the best thing to do. Taxis are difficult to find here. Especially this side which is quite a way from the main road."  Ratna sat down at the edge of the sofa facing the young man. She had left the front door wide open to be able to look out for Shankar to return. The man seemed harmless but she had never seen him and wondered if Shankar was going to be happy about letting him in. "Would you like to have some tea?" Ratna was surprised to find herself offering him the age-old Indian brand of hospitality.

"No, thank you. If I can just get a glass of water......." the man left the sentence unfisnished.

"Certainly," Ratna was happy to be able to disappear from his sight for a while. This would give her an opportunity to think. She wished Parvati would return with the child and Shankar would also come back home soon. She found herself getting annoyed with him for not having told her about his appointment with some stranger. They were yet to get their phone connection.

"Thank you, Ma'am," the young man got up to take the glass of water from Ratna. He drank it all up rather fast. While he tried to put it back on the centre table, he tripped and the glass jumped out of his grip crashing to the ground with splintering bits of glass flying all over the floor. The man fell over the same and there was a trickle of blood oozing from his forehead and palms tht held him back from the fall. Ratna gave out a shriek and ran to help him get up. Debdulal was embarrassed and started stammering as he got up.

"Oh, no, that’s okay, Madam. I’m fine, I can manage,” He pushed himself up and sat carefully on the sofa.”I-I am really sorry, I broke your glass." He started picking up the broken pieces. He got the big pieces and heaped them on top of the small tray on the table. By then the blood from his forehead had traveled to the collar of his shirt and was threatening to pour out with a vengeance.

"Let me get some dettol for you," Ratna said looking a little worried.

"Oh, no. Please don't bother." Debdulal rubbed his wound with his shirtsleeves. Ratna was horrified. She insisted that he wash the wound with some dettol.

"That's alright, Ma'am. If you could show me the restroom, that'll be fine." Debdulal was apologetic. Ratna guided him through the passage to the restroom downstairs next to the kitchen.

She showed him the medicine cabinet on the wall where he could find the things he needed to treat his wound. Debdulal said a faint 'thank you' and locked the door behind him. Ratna stood there for a while with a puzzled look on her otherwise pleasant face. She went back to the drawing room to clear the mess on the floor. She was busy picking up the small pieces of broken glass when Parvati returned to say that the birthday party was not over yet at the neighbor’s and that Shuvam would return later.

"Who is going to bring him back?" Ratna sounded irritated.

"Aunty-ji said her son, Ajay, will drop him back when the party is over. There are so many children, Bhabi, and they are making such a racket." Parvati was filling in the details about the birthday party.  "They have a paper animal hanging from the ceiling. All the kids are poking at it with hockey sticks and, believe me, the animal was raining toys and sweets wrapped in silver-paper." Parvati's eyes were shining with glee and she hoped Bhabi would also share some of her excitement. She took the mop from Ratna and got busy cleaning the floor while she jabbered away.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. They always have something like that at children's birthday parties." Parvati was a little surprised to hear the tone of Ratna's voice and her disinterest in the whole matter.

It was not before a good twenty minutes that Ratna realised that Debdulal was still not back from the restroom. She asked Parvati to go see if the bathroom was still occupied. The man looked so vague. What if he couldn't find his way back to the drawing room and was loitering around the house! She frowned at the thought of it. What if he’s loaded with a gun or some weapon! She shuddered.

A few minutes later Parvati came back to say that the restroom door was slightly ajar and that there was no noise coming out of it. Ratna was stunned. Where was Debdulal? She grabbed Parvati's arm and took her in.

"What are you saying?" she whispered. "I let the man in and he went into the toilet. Where can he be?" She checked the bathroom door and the kitchen. But neither of them saw any sign of Debdulal anywhere downstairs.

Suddenly it struck Ratna that the man didn't seem stable after all and, possibly out of curiosity had perhaps taken the stairs to go up.

"Parvati, let's go upstairs to see if that gentleman is there?"
"What gentleman are you talking about, Bhabi? I don't know what he looks like." Parvati was a little puzzled. She was sure, Bhabi had lost her mind! She realised that there was fear in Bhabi's voice. What man had she let in at this time of the day, she wondered.

Ratna ran to the kitchen to look for something. She could only find the kitchen knife. She grabbed that hiding it under her pallu.

The two women hung on to each other and crept up the steps that led to the bedrooms upstairs. They stood at the end of the last step and waited for any uncanny sounds they might hear. What was even more disconcerting, was the fact that there was none. And when the front door suddenly shut with a bang, both of them almost jumped out of their skin.

"Where is everybody? Ratna!" Shankar was back. Ratna was relieved to hear his voice from downstairs. She ran down the stairs with Parvati following suit.

"Oh, you're back. Thank God!" She stopped to take a deep breath

"What's the matter? Why was the front door left open?" Shankar was busy loosening his tie when he realised that there was something truly wrong. He studied Ratna's partly frightened and partly confused expression and added, "Why is that taxi standing there in front of our house? Who is here?"

"Sh-sh," Ratna whispered. She looked frightened. "There is a man inside."

"A man? What man?" Shakar was really confused.

"Some guy called Debdulal Ghosh. He wanted to see you. He went inside........"

"Inside?" Before Ratna could finish her sentence Shankar hissed. "Went inside? Why? Who is this Debdulal?"

"How should I know? He said he wanted to see you regarding some UNESCO project."

 "And you let him in?" Shankar was really mad this time.

"Well, he said he knew you and would like to wait for you to come back."

"And?" Shankar questioned her looking angry.

"And then he broke a glass and cut himself. He wanted to go to the loo to wash the wound..." Ratna was almost in tears. She knew Shankar was not going to understand the rest of the story. "And now he is nowhere to be found." She mumbled.        

"I don't believe it!" Shankar threw up his arms. "Where is he?" He charged through the passage to the bathroom, kitchen and ran up to the bedrooms upstairs. Debdulal was nowhere. Not even in the bathroom.

Shankar grew increasingly worried and suspicious. He took the stairs that led to the terrace, which he had virtually turned into a terrace garden. What if the man was waiting there with a gun or a weapon to strike after midnight? He was getting really worked up. He had meant to put a grill-gate to the door that led to the terrace but was putting the project off. He pushed the terrace door carefully. The evening air was filled with the fragrance of the chamelis and juhis he had potted so lovingly once. The sky was already quite dark and the lights from neighboring houses didn't really help much. He stepped into the terrace and looked around. There was nobody.  He realized that there was no scope for anybody to hide behind the water tank as it was placed flush against the wall. Where could the man disappear? He couldn't have taken the back door that was kept locked at all times. Still he decided to go down to check it out.The back door was shut and sealed. No soul could step out that way. Ratna looked terrified and when the doorbell rang she shrieked.

Parvati went and opened the door. It was Shuvam. Ajay, the young man who brought him back from the neighbor's, greeted her. But there was another person standing outside.

"Bhabi, please come this side," Parvati called out. Shuvam had already run inside to greet his dad. He had his hands full with back- presents from the birthday party. He wanted to show them to his dad. They all moved to the front door. The man standing next to the neighbor's son Ajay was the taxi-driver in his shabby grey uniform.

"How long am I going to wait, Memsaab?" the cabbie said. "I have been waiting for more than an hour. Please call the young man visiting you to pay me my fare and let me go. It’s going to cost him double the amount he agreed to pay me." The arrogant frown on his face proved that he was cheesed off with the kind of waiting he had been doing.

Shankar moved in behind Ratna and frowned. The driver looked at Shankar and wondered if he had said something out of turn in his presence and lowered his voice. "Saab, you can take his things from the cab. I just need my fare and leave Can I get it?" His tone was different this time.

"Wait a minute," Shankar moved forward. "You brought the young man here?"

"Yes. Why?" The driver was a little taken aback.

"He hasn't left yet? I mean, you haven't seen him leave this house?"

"Why Saab, I have been waiting here since he told me to park the taxi out there," the taxi-driver pointed to the spot where the cab was parked in front of the house. "I couldn't miss anybody even if it was a small fly."

"Where did you pick him up from?" Shankar was curious.

"Why, from Shyambazaar. He seemed to be in a hurry. There was a big accident there and he told me to get out of there as fast as possible. I took the longer but clearer route and got here as fast as I could.” He looked puzzled.”Why, Saab, is anything wrong?"

"Well, no, nothing as such. You said he has left some things in the car. Could you bring them here?" Shankar was confused. He was getting more and more baffled by the minute with the turn of events.

"Sure, why not?" The cabbie stepped out and moved towards his cab. Ajay, the young man from the neighbor's, was getting curious. " I’ll go with him." He told Shankar who nodded.

              

They brought back a cotton carry bag and a plastic folder containing some yellowing newspaper cuttings. The carry bag had a plastic water bottle, half-empty, a folded newspaper and a notebook. There was nothing suspicious or unusual about anything. Shankar looked at Ratna who seemed quite terrified and was clutching on to Shuvam. Shankar opened the notebook. There were pages full of reports from various sources. The thing that he found a little unusual was the dates marked on them. They were all marked between September 1989 to August 1990. It was obviously an old notebook.

Shankar picked up the yellowing newspaper from the bag and turned the pages while others pored over it to see if any suspicious looking object was embedded in it. It was a Bengali daily. He couldn't tell the date on it. He asked Ajay to read it out to him. It was dated August 22^nd, 1991 exactly three years ago to the date. As he turned the pages, Ratna suddenly gave out a cry.
 "That's him. That's him. Debdulal Ghosh," she covered her mouth, almost happy to be able to give a face to the name of the guy they were all worrying about. “Your friend,” she looked hopefully up at Shankar.
“My friend! Are you out of your mind!” He grew exasperated.”This is an obituary.”

Ajay took a close look at the picture of the young man in the photograph and looked shocked. "Yeah. That's Debuda." He stared at Shankar and Ratna for a while who stood there with eyes dilated with horror creeping in. He took the paper from Shankar's hands and read out the piece of news. "That's Debuda," he said again his voice faltering. "They used to live in this house some years ago when we were young. But..." he stopped to take a deep breath.

"But what?" Shankar sounded impatient. Ratna gasped.

"But he can’t be here today.” He looked frightened.

“Why not?” Shankar’s face clouded.

“Because…..  he died in a road accident three / four years back…. from a head injury." Ajay handed back the newspaper to Shankar."The picture is with the obituary from the publishing house he worked for," he said, looking at all the stunned faces around him.

************************************* THE END *****************************

The story was seen in a dream and recounted for your reading. Is there some connection with past life regression?

Dola Dutta Roy

Calcutta; completed in January 2004

Word count: 3,582

Pages 13