34
Closure
STRATEGIES FOR SURVIVING A GOODBYE WITH EX-GIRLFRIEND:
The “it was your fault for not just accepting the snow globe” route.
The “Godspeed, I hear Ian has genital warts” route.
The “I’m leaving so you can’t be mad at me” route.
The “kick me once in the shin with whatever boot you want” route.
When the door opened, Norris smiled as best as he could.
“Hi, Mr. Puri. Is Aarti home?”
“Norris?” Aarti’s father seemed genuinely surprised to find him at their door. “Come in, come in!”
Norris knew he needed to make things right with Aarti but hadn’t been quite ready to ask Judith to drive him around on his Make Amends Tour. He and his mother were somewhere between silent treatment and tense détente. So Norris had thought it best to simply bus it to Aarti’s house, which had taken two transfers and a hike through the suburbs. His T-shirt’s wet pits were definitely showing the trek, which in turn greatly limited his motions as he awkwardly shook Mr. Puri’s hand. It was one of those no-big-deal-but-I’ve-seen-your-daughter-seminaked handshakes that avoided any direct eye contact, and for an excruciating second, Norris thought the man could smell it on him.
“We haven’t seen you in a while. Keeping busy, I assume?” Mr. Puri asked, closing the door behind him.
“Yes, you know . . . sleep, homework, eating vegetables, community service. Lather, rinse, repeat,” Norris stumbled as best as he could.
“Well, that’s good,” Mr. Puri chuckled. “Aarti is already at the exhibit, I’m afraid. Were you supposed to meet her here?”
“Exhibit?”
“Her photo exhibit,” Mr. Puri said, frowning at a clock on the wall. “I’m very glad you stopped by, actually. I was just dozing off. Her mother would never forgive me for missing it.”
“Yeah, it was a stretch. I thought I might be able to catch her before she headed out,” Norris lied as he pretended to check his watch. That he had no idea what Mr. Puri was talking about was an understatement.
“I’ll give you a ride if you want,” Mr. Puri said. “Her mother is already there, helping her set up.”
“Oh no, that’s okay! Really.”
“Oh, come on.” Mr. Puri smiled in an unnerving way that showed a glimmer of teeth. “You’re a friend of the family.”
Before Norris could make a coherent argument as to why him crashing Aarti’s exhibit could only be disastrous for all parties involved, Mr. Puri had stepped out of his slippers and grabbed a set of keys from a nearby bowl.
Of all the passenger seats Norris had ridden in since moving to Texas, Mr. Puri’s was by far the most nerve-racking one yet. The man had the kind of mustache that led Norris to believe that, slim as it may be, there was still a definite chance that he was being driven into the desert to dig up his own grave for defiling the man’s daughter. . . . Like, an 8 percent chance.
“So, how are the finals treating your mother?” Mr. Puri asked as they cruised along the small residential streets of Cedar Park. There was apparently no curtailing the awkward-small-talk portion of this show. “I bet she’s got her fair share of grading.”
And a spectacular disappointment of a son.
“Good.” Norris shrugged. “She’s always been a fast grader.”
“Any summer plans?”
“Nothing concrete yet. Maybe some traveling home to Montreal.”
Norris didn’t want to get into it. His daughter could tell him once he was gone if she was so inclined.
“Same for us.” Mr. Puri smiled. “Aarti’s mother and I are going back to India for a few weeks; Rohan, Aarti’s brother, has an internship in New York and we’ve arranged for her to stay with her cousins in Boston.”
Norris couldn’t contain his snort at this ongoing battle of wills between father and daughter.
“And I’m guessing she’ll be getting a tour of a certain prestigious college nearby in Cambridge while she’s there?”
Mr. Puri gave him a quick furtive glance as they pulled into the downtown area. Norris could tell he was wondering if he was in the presence of a spy or an ally.
“Is it that obvious?”
“A little.”
“Well, whether she wants to admit it or not, she’s on her way to making for a really strong application,” Mr. Puri said with the smile of exactly what he was in the moment: a proud parent born an ocean away. “I looked it up,” he continued without prompting. “And this photography business is actually a unique interest. Everyone plays an instrument these days. But our Aarti? Our Aarti, she does photos!”
The gallery was a small space, located on the second floor of a branch of the public library. The first floor was deserted and clearly an all-ages space with pastel book racks, large teddy bears that doubled as chairs, and low tables with round edges. On the walls were talking vegetables advocating for children to consume them. Norris and Mr. Puri shared an apprehensive look that, mercifully, was quickly proven unnecessary as they reached the second floor: a tall space with concrete floors, pummeled with sharply defined beams of light from a row of diamond-shaped skylights. It was as though they had been designed to hit a few specific white walls where framed photos and a few paintings were currently displayed.
“It’s like the first floor is a decoy,” Mr. Puri whispered as they joined the sharply dressed crowd, and Norris couldn’t help but agree. The space wasn’t quite packed, but there were more people than Norris had expected.
They found Mrs. Puri by a table of hors d’oeuvres chatting with a small, frizzy-haired woman who did a strange double take when she saw Norris. If Mrs. Puri was surprised to see Norris, her smile did not break as she gave him a lingering look that eventually turned into a warmer smile of recognition. She was wearing a sari that glimmered in the light and seemed perfectly at home in this sophisticated and posh gallery atmosphere.
“Mr. Puri!” the small woman exclaimed. “I was just telling your wife what an extraordinary talent your daughter is!”
Norris assumed her to be Aarti’s mentor, Alayna Kerr.
“And would you be open to writing her a recommendation letter to that effect?” Mr. Puri immediately asked without missing a beat. “With those exact words, if you will? Extraordinary talent?”
Aarti’s photos only made up a third of the exhibit, which was dedicated to “New Eyes,” talent that Mrs. Kerr had been “lucky enough to be able to nurture.” Something about it felt self-congratulatory to Norris. He wondered if Ms. Kerr knew Mrs. Kolb, Anderson High’s adviser, who still made a point of waving to him in the hallways, almost six months into this soon-to-be aborted Austin adventure. He would probably have to tell her he was leaving too. The goodbye tour was getting longer.
It took a couple of laps of the space, but Norris finally spotted Aarti along with the other two young artists who were being showcased that afternoon; a tall Asian man with a well-trimmed goatee and a middle-aged woman who Norris might place on the spectrum between Kolb-level enthusiasm and just plain drunk. The three stars of the afternoon were currently holding court in a small circle of artists, or people who at least dressed the part. Aarti was wearing a black dress and her hair was up in a bun, a strategic move to make her appear older, no doubt.
Aarti clocked him from across the room, and his awkward wave was evidently not enough, as she seamlessly returned to her conversation. Norris took the hint and continued to stroll through the premises, hoping to catch her again later.
Norris stopped at a large photo of a black guy he did not recognize. He knew nothing about photography, light, and angles, but he had to agree with her father: Aarti Puri did photos.
“I like this one,” someone commented behind him, a plastic cup of red wine in hand.
“She’s very young,” their friend said of Aarti as criticism, or maybe praise, before both moved on to another photo. Though, one of them did give him a second look that confused Norris until he turned back to the photo.
Oh.
Dangling high enough that Norris had to tilt back to fully take it in was Norris himself, frozen in time and talking animatedly, arm dangling out of what he recognized as Aarti’s car door. He didn’t remember what he had been talking about when she’d snapped that particular image, presumably at a red light, but Norris’s face was caught in a half grin, half smirk, that Webster’s dictionary might define as shit-eating.
“Guy Talking,” Aarti answered his unasked question, sidling up to him, her heels clacking under her. “That’s the title. It seemed appropriate.”
“Hi,” Norris said. Clever repartee didn’t seem right, somehow.
“Hello.”
They both spent a quiet moment facing the image of Guy Talking rather than each other. Up close, Norris could make out streaks of navy blue dye in the black of her hair, which matched her nail polish and the highlights of her dress. He suddenly realized that his own jeans and black T-shirt ensemble, day in, day out, must have been incredibly disappointing to someone this fashionable.
“Um, congratulations,” he eventually said. “This is all . . . insanely cool. There are so many people here. Actual human beings too; not Anderson students.”
“What are you doing here, Norris?”
“Right. That. Um, I stopped by your house, but you weren’t there. Your dad told me to tag along. . . . It kind of just happened. Is it weird? Should I not be here?”
“You have an invitation in your inbox.”
“I do?”
She nodded, but she still hadn’t turned to face him. This seemed to be a conversation she preferred to have with Guy Talking.
“You’ve had it for weeks. I just didn’t expect to see you.”
Norris was touched. The fact that she actually wanted him here was opening enough for him. “Can we talk? Um, just really quickly?”
She finally turned his way, looking torn. She rolled her eyes and motioned for him to follow her toward the fire escape. A door marked Exit seemed like the right place for this conversation.
“Look, I’m really sorry,” Norris immediately launched in the second the door closed behind them. “I know you were just jealous that I went to prom with Maddie and that’s why you showed up at the after-party with Ian. And you’re right, it was hypocritical of me to get angry because you were right to be jealous—I really did kind of have a crush on Maddie, but to be fair I didn’t realize it at the time, and anyway I did ask you to prom and you turned me down. Regardless: I should have pulled you aside and talked to you, instead of causing a scene.”
“That’s not . . .”
“The good news is that I’m going back to Canada. Also, I have a record now, maybe? Well, a citation, whatever that is. The point is, there is some genuine street cred going on back there,” he said, pointing back toward the exhibit and the photo of the hardened criminal she had unknowingly captured.
“You’re going back to Canada?” she repeated, weighing the words as though she hadn’t heard anything that had followed. “Like, for good?”
“Pretty much.”
“Is that why you came here, then? To say goodbye?”
“Sort of.” Norris smiled sheepishly.
The response of being shoved against the door was not what he had expected.
“Why are you upset?! That was a good apology!”
“Oh yes, because why would my first exhibit ever be about me when you could crash it and make it about yourself and your need to be absolved of any guilt before you up and leave the country?”
She seemed like she still had something to say, so Norris thought it best to remain quiet.
“You seemed so normal when we first met,” Aarti noted. She picked at the tag that had slipped out of her sleeve and slipped it back up with a glare, daring him to bring it up. “Funny and cute, sure—”
“Thank y—”
“Shut the hell up,” she cut him off, getting louder. “But normal was really the primary appeal here. And after all my shit with Ian, I thought I needed that. A nice immigrant—not Indian, but still immigrant—guy who my parents would swoon over. Someone who really likes me, and what’s wrong with that? Just let yourself be wooed and dated, Aarti. . . .”
Her voice lowered again. “The point is . . . you’re not normal, dude! You are as exhausting as every other red-foreheaded American guy with a faux-hawk, I swear.”
The door swung open behind Norris, hitting him in the back. Clearly, Austin was ready for him to leave.
“Oops. Sorry about that,” a man in his late twenties said as he pushed past Norris, phone in hand.
“Great photos.” He distractedly smiled to Aarti before tumbling down the narrow stairs, enthralled by his own phone.
“Thank you so much!”
Aarti was now staring at him with crossed arms.
“Um, Liam says that no one is normal,” Norris ventured now that it was clearly his turn again. “He says we’re all just different flavors of fucked-up, hiding it as best as we can. I’m starting to think that maybe he was right.”
“That sounds like an intense conversation.”
“Actually, it was prompted by him finding a jalapeño in his cafeteria mac and cheese.”
Aarti snorted.
“You weren’t . . . actually in love with me, right?” she then asked.
Norris thought about it for a moment. There was the answer he wanted to give, the answer he should give, and in a third distinct column, some objective truth he might look back on one day, years from now and be able to perfectly articulate.
He thought back to the day they first met. It felt like so long ago now: Aarti waltzing into his life with her quick wit and her camera lens, facing off with a gaggle of cheerleaders, Maddie McElwees included.
“I liked the idea that I was interesting enough to hold your attention, maybe,” he finally admitted. “You seemed different from everyone else here, in a good way, obviously. Also, you’re ridiculously hot. Draws the eye.”
But Aarti was more than a simple compliment away from letting this go.
“Why couldn’t you just admit that you liked Maddie?” she admonished. “Instead of making me simultaneously feel like I was in a shadow competition with the entire cheerleading squad, and feel like I was crazy for feeling that way? Fuck, Norris. That really sucked.”
She was right; Norris had never taken the time to imagine what it might have all looked like from her perspective. How Maddie had grown from cheerleading drone to one of his closest/only friends in Texas. He’d spectacularly messed that one up.
“I honestly didn’t know. I’m sorry,” he said, drumming his fingers along the staircase railing. Those two words were all he seemed to have right. “I’m not . . . I’m not always superaware of the whole ‘feelings’ thing. My own or other people’s. Watching you pine for Ian wasn’t superfun either, if we’re being honest.”
The two of them had always been circling other people’s orbits.
“God,” she eventually groaned, finding a seat on the stairs. “We would have been a disaster if we’d actually gotten to be boyfriend and girlfriend, huh?”
Norris was exhausted at the mere thought of how they might chip at each other’s insecurities for months to come. And how the only thing that had prevented their lives from becoming irreparably linked had been luck and a thin layer of polyurethane.
“Fucking nuclear,” he concluded, joining her on the stairs, though staying a couple of steps higher to avoid close proximity.
“So, what’s going to happen with you and Madison McElwees?”
Aarti had a way of saying Maddie’s full name that, while not resentful, dripped with an intonation of “ooh la la.” Anthropological interest, Judith would call it.
“I don’t think much can be done there,” Norris said, feeling sad all over again. “I’m leaving soon. Once a girl tells you that you’re profoundly basic, it’s time to take the hint, right?”
“She actually said that?” Aarti asked, a small smirk creeping onto her lips. “I have to admit that I do like her style.”
“What about us? Can we be friends?” Norris asked after a moment.
“You’re moving back to Canada.”
Right. That.
“So, what am I going to say, Norris? No?”
“Actual friends, who write emails, talk about their lives, and all that crap?” he followed. Because whatever else could be said, Aarti Puri was heading for a really interesting life and Norris inexplicably kind of wanted to be part of it. Even if it was only at a distance.
“Sure. Friends.” Aarti shrugged with a smile. “Permanent pause on the benefits, though.”
“Now see, I strongly feel like that’s the irrational part of your brain talking,” Norris said. “I’m not leaving for another few days, and in the meantime, I will sacrifice my body if you need that emotional closu—”
Fourth hit in four minutes. Okay, fine: that one Norris had coming.
The two of them hugged, awkward as it was.
“I like your photos. Even though I’m sure my opinion isn’t worth much right now.”
“It’s Canadian currency.” Aarti smiled. “Less, but not worthless.” She rejoined the exhibit.
On his way out, Norris caught a last glimpse of Aarti, chatting with a woman who kept animatedly shaking her forearm as if to pass on her enthusiasm. Norris almost wanted to track down Mr. Puri by the hors d’oeuvres and tell him that he and his wife had nothing to worry about. Their daughter would rule whatever corner of the world she set her mind to. She’d travel, write novels, film documentaries, hold exhibits, or just make more money than God on Wall Street. And Norris would always feel this weird, inexplicable pride that she had ever looked twice at him.
There was only one person left on his goodbye tour that he really needed to see.
Norris texted Maddie one more time.
Norris: Hey Maddie. Good news! I’m going back to Montreal. Can I please see you one last time to apologize? Love, Canada.
The reply came swiftly.
Maddie: No.