A Deconstructed Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

seminar breaks, but he soon suspected that she found him rather sexless, and the thought was comforting. He felt the same way about her.
    “She’s different now,” he said, drawing furrows in the brown leather with his thumbnail.
    Stacy was moving around the office, stopping to collect several textbooks with brightly colored tabs quivering between the pages. With her pure white hair and heavy limbs, Mirza was reminded of a polar bear moving across ice. She stood in front of him.
    “When I was young and used to give a shit, I used to attend all those seminars from cutting-edge movers and shakers in the field, you know the kind: “On the Edge of the Chasm: Construction on the San Andreas Fault”, you name it. I’d pack my bags and leave Phillip for a week with a pan of lasagna and a couple of Pot Noodles. Wherever I was that week, I knew that six o’ clock British time, he’d be sitting down to eat his dinner. And there’d be a place set for me, knife, fork, plate, glass. And at six thirty, he’d wash his dishes and put away mine, untouched. Knife, fork, plate, glass. Every day. Until I came home. And now, I don’t go anywhere, I sit next to him at dinner, right next to him, and it’s like we’re strangers at different tables in a restaurant.” She dropped the stack of textbooks on her desk.  “It was always going to be different, you just didn’t want to believe it until now.”
    Mirza nodded. The furrows on the armchair looked like fresh plough lines in a field. In a few days from now, the scars in the leather would darken. She was picking up her purse, and Mirza knew it was time to leave for the first lectures, but before he could stop himself, he heard himself say “She’s leaving me behind,” and he was annoyed at the plaintive childishness of his voice.
    “Then, you have only one choice,” said Stacy, gently pushing him out of the door in front of her with a copy of Structure and Symmetry, “You have to start running.”
     
     
    Looking back, now, he realized that a young marriage is defined by action: conversations, even heated arguments, touches shared, decisions made. After the years file by, he thought, they are defined by stasis: the things left unsaid, the empty bed.
    She had pulled away a long time ago, he realized, and in his fear of losing her, he had only wanted her more. He had filled the house with people and crammed activities into their spare hours as if he were sowing the ground with jewels for her. He invited members of his department over for dinner parties where Naida served lamb roasted in Indian spices and kheer for dessert. He reached for her at these parties, the only time he could touch her. “You’ve met my wife.” A hand on her elbow. “Let me introduce you.” A squeeze of her shoulder. “After you, ladies.” His fingers brushing the small of her back as she walked away from him.
    There were Indian parties, too, at first. An image from New Year’s Eve came back to him and he shook his head, not inviting that memory. He thought of the Hyderabadi Society picnics at the park, Hindi movie screenings, Ramadan iftars. Some events were segregated, and he enjoyed seeing her as she emerged from their bathroom, fully dressed and made-up. As they drove to the event, her perfume and the clink of her bracelets made him want to drive more slowly. He watched her as she disappeared into a separate room, and sometimes heard her laugh with the other women, waiting for the evening to be over, for the moment when she would stand at his side again. If the event was in their home, he would be ardently helpful, like a boy scout, lifting down heavy serving dishes and polishing the silver, glancing at her from the corner of his eye as she checked the seasoning or floated flower petals in crystal bowls.
    Afterward, at night, her face washed, she slid into bed noiselessly and he closed his eyes, not even  daring to scratch his nose until he heard the deep, slow breaths that told him