The Unknown Errors of Our Lives Read Online Free PDF Page A

and leaving.” Shyamoli’s voice disappears into a sob.
    A shadow stumbles across the wall to her, and then another. Behind the weatherman’s nasal tones announcing a week of sunny days, Mrs. Dutta can hear a high, frightened weeping. The children, she thinks. It’s probably the first time they’ve seen their mother cry.
    “Don’t talk like that, sweetheart.” Sagar leans forward, his voice, too, miserable. All the shadows on the wall shiver and merge into a single dark silhouette.
    Mrs. Dutta stares at that silhouette, the solidarity of it. Sagar and Shyamoli’s murmurs are lost beneath a noise—is it in her veins, this dry humming, the way the taps in Calcutta used to hum when the municipality turned the water off? After a while she discovers that she has reached her room. In darkness she lowers herself on to her bed very gently, as though her body is made of the thinnest glass. Or perhaps ice, she is so cold. She sits for a long time with her eyes closed, while inside her head thoughts whirl faster and faster until they disappear in a gray dust storm.
    WHEN PRADEEP FINALLY comes to call her for dinner, Mrs. Dutta follows him to the kitchen where she fries luchis for everyone, the perfect circles of dough puffing up crisp and golden as always. Sagar and Shyamoli have reached a truce of some kind: she gives him a small smile, and he puts out a casual hand to massage the back of her neck. Mrs. Dutta demonstrates no embarrassment at this. She eats her dinner. She answers questions put to her. She smiles when someone makes a joke. If her face is stiff, as though she has been given a shot of Novocain, no one notices. When the table is cleared, she excuses herself, saying she has to finish her letter.
    Now Mrs. Dutta sits on her bed, reading over what she wrote in the innocent afternoon.
    Dear Roma,
    Although I miss you, I know you will be pleased to hear how happy I am in America. There is much here that needs getting used to, but we are no strangers to adjusting, we old women. After all, haven’t we been doing it all our lives?
    Today I’m cooking one of Sagar’s favorite dishes, alu-dum. . . . It gives me such pleasure to see my family gathered around the table, eating my food. The children are still a little shy of me, but I am hopeful that we’ll soon be friends. And Shyamoli, so confident and successful—you should see her when she’s all dressed for work. I can’t believe she’s the same timid bride I sent off to America just a few years ago. But, Sagar, most of all, is the joy of my old age. . . .
    With the edge of her sari Mrs. Dutta carefully wipes a tear that has fallen on the aerogram. She blows on the damp spot until it is completely dry, so the pen will not leave an incriminating smudge. Even though Roma would not tell a soul, she cannot risk it. She can already hear them, the avid relatives in India who have been waiting for something just like this to happen.
That Dutta-ginni, so set in her ways, we knew she’d never get along with her daughter-in-law
. Or worse,
Did you hear about poor Prameela, how her family treated her, yes, even her son, can you imagine?
    This much surely she owes to Sagar.
    And what does she owe herself, Mrs. Dutta, falling through black night with all the certainties she trusted in collapsed upon themselves like imploded stars, and only an image inside her eyelids for company? A silhouette—man, wife, children—joined on a wall, showing her how alone she is in this land of young people. And how unnecessary.
    She is not sure how long she sits under the glare of the overhead light, how long her hands clench themselves in her lap. When she opens them, nail marks line the soft flesh of her palms, red hieroglyphs—her body’s language, telling her what to do.
    Dear Roma,
Mrs. Dutta writes,
    I cannot answer your question about whether I am happy, for I am no longer sure I know what happiness is. All I know is that it isn’t what I thought it to be. It isn’t about being