At the Bottom of Everything(50)

We were meeting with Dr. Lennard one day, Richard and I were, and he was explaining to us why he’d prescribed Thomas the medicines that he had, and how he thought a job could be a very good thing. And just before we stood up to leave, I found myself asking, just almost wriggling with hopefulness, “Do you suppose we might really be out of the woods?”





What a fool. I knew it as soon as it was out of my mouth. The look he gave me was a look he must have so much practice in giving. Just one parent who doesn’t get it after another. I’ll never forget what he said to me. His tone wasn’t cruel—he was actually a very lovely man—but you could see that he wanted to be sure that there was no mistaking him either. “Mrs. Pell,” he said, “with patients like Thomas, what we hope for is to manage the symptoms. Thinking in terms of cures is only, I’m afraid, going to lead to heartbreak. In other words, there are only woods—and we’ll have to do the best in them we can.”





So it turned out I’d get to spend a night at the Noida Radisson after all.

I led Thomas, without either of us saying another word, away from the Batras’ street and down to a taxi stand where a line of auto-rickshaws sat waiting. We were like a couple walking away from a party at which they’d had a terrible fight; I had my hand between his shoulder blades, to make sure I didn’t lose him, but there were quantities of shame and fury I needed to digest before I could interact with him any more directly than that.

We were in an auto-rickshaw speeding along the left lane of the empty highway when he started to talk. “Did you come here on your own? Where are my parents? They know everything. They’re trying to make me say it first. Have you talked to them?”

He sat perfectly upright, but he didn’t sound agitated; his voice was like someone reading off street signs. “Are you still having girl problems? Where do you live? I know you told me but I forget things. I forget everything I don’t write down. I shouldn’t have said you’re a coward. I don’t know if you really are. You might just be deluded.”

I hadn’t said a word to him yet, and at that point I didn’t know if I’d speak to him at all. My feelings, my thoughts: I figured I could keep them all on hold until Thomas and I were strapped into our seats on a direct flight to Dulles. At that moment I was trying to think just about getting us from the auto-rickshaw to the hotel, from the hotel to the Delhi airport, and from the airport to D.C. Maybe he’d put up a fight, maybe he’d shout to everyone we met that I was a coward and a traitor, but I was going to get Thomas home safe and more or less sound if it meant stuffing him in a burlap sack. I could fail in every conceivable way but not in this.

The auto-rickshaw let us out under a massive glass hotel awning (there were palm trees next to the driveway), and even though it was half past one in the morning, and even though we looked like we’d just crawled out from a pile of construction rubble, a bellhop in a red uniform raced out to meet us and to carry our backpacks into the lobby (“Please, sir, good evening, good evening”). I hadn’t felt actual goose bump–causing air-conditioning since leaving D.C. There were two-foot vases with flowers the size of umbrellas. There was, for some reason, a Montblanc store and a giant framed picture of Bill Clinton.

You can’t believe how normal an interaction it’s possible to have at even the least normal moments of your life. The woman behind the front desk (she was younger than me, wearing a dark blue blazer and a neck scarf) smiled and tapped at her computer. We’d like a room, please. Yes, I’ll be paying with a MasterCard. No, we don’t need an executive suite. Thank you, that would be wonderful. Oh, breakfast is included? OK, excellent, thank you so much.

And up we went.

I think now, in retrospect, that something in Thomas’s manner, his detachment, the way he seemed not really to notice where he was, should have tipped me off. He didn’t ask why we were checking in to a hotel, or where we were going next. I’d heard somewhere that murderers get like that, after they’ve committed their crimes; the terrible thing is done and now everything else is epilogue. Maybe that’s what I imagined was happening with Thomas. He’d confessed, he’d done the thing he’d come all the way to India to do, and now he didn’t mind being treated as a piece of human luggage.

“What’s your mom doing?” he said. “Does she still yell at Frank? She loved you. I’m not sure if my parents did. Love me, I mean. They definitely loved you. I think you were a much more natural fit.”