Where the Heart Is

Did you know India looks nothing like the city in Aladdin? I discovered that just now, a minute ago, as the wheels of the plane clapped the tarmac and the pilot's staticky voice rumbled above our heads like God himself, welcoming us to Delhi. When I finally summoned the courage to raise the window shade and look outside, there was no bazaar waiting to greet me, no kleptomaniacal monkeys in fezzes running amok. Just disillusionment.

In my defense, my family emigrated from New Delhi to the United States when I was three, leaving me with nothing more than patchy afterimages of this country: the spicy scent of chicken tikka masala, the flowing fabric of a silk sari. Growing up, the only connection I had to this place was Aladdin—which I only now realize has nothing to do with India at all, despite my father's claims—and the Bollywood VHS tapes my mother kept stashed in her closet.

Grabbing my carry-on and preparing to disembark, I steal one last glance out the window, but it's just one never-ending strip of runway. Nothing more. On the way out, a flight attendant flashes a perfect smile and tells me to enjoy my stay.

The airport is teeming with people, some running to catch a flight, others gossiping over samosas. I glean only bits and pieces of conversations, most of which are spoken in Hindi, all of which are spoken too quickly. It occurs to me that maybe I shouldn't have waited until a few days ago to sign up for Duolingo.

Stationed at the terminal entrance, my father is impossible to miss, a collage of pastel colors and American clothes. His Hawaiian shirt is a size too big and his blue NYC Mets cap is tilted too far up, revealing his bald scalp. In his hands rests a fat rectangular sign with my name printed in black Sharpie: Hunar Patel. I wave meekly and he waves back, his face aglow, his arm moving so fast it looks like it might dislocate.

"Welcome home," he says in English, for my sake. His accent is thick, natural. I'm amazed at how easily he's been able to sand down the rough edges of his American pronunciation, the rise and fall of his vowels. When we embrace and he pats my back, I can feel the absence of his wedding band.

At the baggage claim, we watch strangers' luggage spin in circles like a merry-go-round, black duffel bags and blue suitcases. A blood-red valise is about to pass us for the fourth time when my father clears his throat. "I'm glad you came, son."

I'm not sure how to respond to that, given the circumstances, given my reason for being here. "You're welcome" is the answer my mouth settles on. I know it's the wrong thing to say.

He stares at me like maybe he's sizing me up, and I do a quick assessment of my own, noting the disappearance of his trademark mustache and his belly. His body is gaunt and his skin is cracked like sandpaper.

Finally, he nods his approval. "You've changed," he declares. "You look like a man now."

How he came to that conclusion is beyond me. I still have the same acne and peach fuzz that plagued me five years ago, back when we were all still living together in New York.

Before I can respond, my suitcase appears, overloaded with enough clothes and toiletries to make it through this week-long visit. "I got it," I say, but my father waves away my offer. He leans over the carousel, dangerously close to falling over, and reaches for my luggage. His underarm bears a sweat stain despite the air-conditioning pumping through the building.

Seeing him like that reminds me of the phone call that brought me here. I was in my dorm room, sitting on the edge of the bed with my girlfriend Megan, the two of us passing a joint back and forth like a love letter, when his call came. I put him on speakerphone, took the joint from Megan, toked. Not one to mince words, my father offered no hello. Instead, he immediately filled the quiet room with jagged phrases: 'heart tumor' and 'cardial sarcoma.' "They're not sure how much longer I have," he confessed, as the joint slipped from my grasp and I struggled to stop coughing.

With great effort, my father now hefts my suitcase from the conveyor and drops it unceremoniously at my feet. He claps his hands at a job well done.

"See? Your father's still capable of doing things," he says. And he laughs like it's funny. Like he's still young. Like he has all the time in the world.

***

Back home, everyone at the university calls me Hunter. Even Megan.

It started as an accident, a mispronunciation, a slip of the tongue. One day my stoner roommate introduced me to a group of his friends as "Hunter." I didn't bother to correct him, and the name stuck.

In fact, I prefer it.

Hunar is someone who spent his whole life ostracized, a rule-follower, going to college and joining the pre-med track in the hopes to be a cardiologist like his parents wanted.

Hunter is different. The name says it all.

He's someone who acts first and thinks later, hence the newfound penchant for weed. Hence Megan. Hence the trip home I took two Thanksgivings ago without telling my parents, only to find out that they separated without telling me.

Over dumplings my mother recounted the fight she and my father had, how he'd threatened to move back to India, how she had threatened to buy the plane ticket for him that night. In the end, they both kept up their halves of the bargain.

Distraught, my mother decided to sell our house altogether. She had a family friend in the next borough over who offered her a place to stay, a beautiful woman her age and build who I knew as Aunty Shyla growing up. I loved her as though she were my own biological aunt, and Aunty Shyla always lavished me with the best gifts on holidays and my birthday, hence the love. It was a cycle.

Maybe it was because of this, because I only heard things from my mother's perspective, that I decided not to talk to my father. And I hadn't, until he called last month and said what he said and I agreed to spend my Spring Break with him.

***

The days pass by in a blur. My father is constantly on the move. "Doctor's appointment today," he tells me every morning at the table over roti and mango juice. We haven't acknowledged his medical status beyond those three words. He shakes his head whenever I offer to accompany him. "No point in us both being miserable," he says with a weak smile. He encourages me to find something to do to occupy my time.

Mostly, I spend the week texting Megan in my father's flat. It's modest, sparsely-furnished. He doesn't even own a TV. There's a faux cashmere rug and a few old oil lamps and a coffee table with a cross-legged statuette of Shiva. Tacked on the wall is the needlepoint canvas that I declined taking with me to college, the one that has "Home Is Where the Heart Is" stitched in blue yarn.

Toward the end of the week, he offers to cook vindaloo for dinner. When I tell him I'm not particularly fond of vindaloo, he scoffs. "That's because you've only ever tried the American kind. You've never had the real deal."

It strikes me as ironic, my father denouncing the Americans while using one of their idioms, but I hold my tongue as he hands me a grocery list of ingredients. I'm amazed by the neatness of his letters, how his age has not ravaged his penmanship. "The market down the street opens in an hour," he tells me, and then he's off to another doctor's appointment.

That's how I find myself strolling through the rows of spices and chili peppers and vegetables at eight in the morning. The store is poorly-lit and smells suspiciously of flatbread. I'm standing there debating between two packages of chicken thighs when someone calls my name.

"Hunar? Is that you?"

It takes me a second to turn around, to remember that here, in this country, I'm not Hunter.

The woman staring back at me is older, probably close to my father's age, dressed in a cobalt kurti. Her hair, black with flecks of gray, flows past her shoulders. She's smiling as though she expects me to greet her just as enthusiastically.

I'm still trying to place her when she says, "You don't remember me, do you?" Like my father, she speaks in English, and it makes me wonder if there's something about me, about the way I look or dress, that makes the people here doubt my ability to carry on a conversation in Hindi.

But there's no malice in her voice, no hurt at not being recognized. Before I can respond, she adds, "It's okay. You were three the last time I saw you."

She introduces herself as Deepika Goel, tells me she's an old friend of my father's. I nod at the appropriate intervals. The packages of chicken chill my fingers, make my blood run cold.

"How did you know it was me?" I ask, a little embarrassed that my father told someone all about me but never revealed anything about his friends to help prepare me for an encounter like this.

Deepika smiles like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Your father had to tell me over lunch on Wednesday. He showed me some of your pictures." She laughs, pats me on the arm. "My memory isn't so good anymore."

The store swells with noise—bags crinkling and items scanning and registers opening, so many sounds at once that it's hard to concentrate. I flip through the mental Rolodex of my father's doctor visits, their dates and times. Wednesday, lunchtime: chemotherapy, four-hour session. Something isn't adding up.

"Wednesday?" I repeat, because maybe the problem really is just Deepika's poor memory. "But he had an appointment."

She tilts her head, confusion knitting her brows together. "Appointment for what?"

It doesn't take long to realize that Deepika is being serious. And then I realize something else.

"My mistake," I tell her, dropping one of the chicken packages back in the freezer. "I must be confused." And I excuse myself to stand in line at the register. She seems taken aback when I walk away.

But as luck would have it, Deepika is one customer behind me in the checkout line, and when he goes to return a jar of fennel seeds, she advances a space.

"Oh, your father tells me you're leaving in two days," she says as the cashier scans my items. "The two of you simply must come to dinner tomorrow. It would be my honor. Prisha will be there, too." She says this like I'm supposed to know who Prisha is.

And maybe she knows I have no clue what she's talking about—if she does, she's doing a hell of a job not showing it. Either way, she retrieves her phone and shows me pictures of Prisha, her daughter. She's a year younger than me, with flawless mocha skin and wavy hair.

"She'd be happy to meet you, I'm sure," Deepika says in a way that makes me think they've already broached the subject. Maybe even with my father present.

I tell her we'll discuss it, then grab my things and leave. "It was nice seeing you again," she calls, but I'm already halfway out the store.

The sun roasts my skin on the way back to the flat. Children chase each other down the sidewalk. Someone waves in my direction, but I don't wave back. The street is alive with auto-rickshaws. This isn't Aladdin; there are no magic carpets here to whisk me away from this city, to take me back home. Just disillusionment.

After stuffing the spices in the kitchen rack and tucking the chicken thighs in the fridge, I grab my phone and slip back out the door, stepping into the sunlight and spending the rest of the day messaging Megan under the shade of a mahogany tree in the nearby park. There's a time zone gap, but she says she doesn't mind, that she misses me. We stay like that for a while, sending each other sweet nothings until the sun starts to fizzle and the moon takes its place and I'm pretty sure Megan has fallen asleep because my last "I Love You" was read twenty minutes ago but she still hasn't texted back.

***

The smell of vindaloo greets me when I return. The living room is dark, ensconced in the shroud of night, but a pale glow envelops the kitchen. My father is hunched over the stovetop. He smiles when he sees me standing there.

"Smell that, son?" he says, indicating the steam-covered pot on the stove. "Now that is how you make vindaloo."

He doesn't ask where I've been or why I'm just now coming home. But maybe it'd be easier if he did interrogate me, if we fought right now and put everything out in the open instead of ignoring it. I take a deep breath and cross the point of no return.

"You know, I saw someone today at the market," I say, trying to keep my voice as even as possible. "She said she was an old friend of yours. Said she knew me when I was a baby." I make him wait a few seconds before offering the name.

"Dee-pi-ka." That's how it comes out, as three separate words, as though my father is traveling through the annals of space and time in search of a face to match the name. Then, in a sudden moment of clarity, "Oh, yes, Deepika! I think I know who you mean."

When my father was still living in New York, he had a group of men come over to the house every month for poker night. He was the best player among them, unparalleled in the art of bluffing. You never knew what he was thinking until he slapped that royal flush on the table.

It's a lot like that now, trying to decipher whether or not he's picked up on where this conversation is headed. Even in his old age, his poker face is sublime.

"She said," I continue, because I'm only getting started, "that we should go over to their house for dinner before I leave. She insisted."

My father lifts the lid on the pot of vindaloo, releasing an inferno of steam. "Maybe we should," he says, nodding. "She has a daughter about your age now, you know. And come to think of it, I haven't seen Deepika Goel in quite some time."

I make a fist with my hand, just to feel something. "Quite some time? You mean like two days ago?" I say, and wait until he's looking at me to add, "Wednesday? Lunchtime? During chemo?"

His face is inscrutable. He says nothing. It seems like he's looking my way, but maybe he's staring at something behind me. I can't be sure.

"You're not really sick, are you?" I ask. It's a long shot, calling his bluff like that, but that's what I'm banking on.

Something flashes across his face, a look I've never seen before, something pitiable. A pinching of the eyes, a pursing of the lips. His poker face collapses like a house of cards. When he turns to the stove, I have my answer.

"Is that what this is about?" I say, embracing the heat of the kitchen. It's goading me, challenging me to rival its intensity. "Did you bring me here just so you could arrange my meeting with Prisha?"

"I just want you to be happy," my father says to the vindaloo, his voice a whisper. "To have a nice family of your own."

"I have a girlfriend already, you know. I don't need your help."

He cuts off the stove. "What's her name?" he asks, and when I tell him, he shakes his head. The motion is lightning fast, so imperceptible that if I hadn't seen it for myself, I wouldn't have known. Then he says, "That's not an Indian name."

"Because that whole arranged marriage thing turned out so well for you, right?" And now I can't stop myself. The dam has broken and everything is pouring out of me, twenty-two years of emotion. "You're living here alone and Mom is staying with a friend."

My father looks up, meets my gaze. His expression has changed. There's this faraway gleam in his eye, like he's somewhere else right now. In a low voice, he says, "You don't know what you're talking about, Hunar. You don't know anything."

It is the first time all week he's called me by my name and not "son." That's when I know something is wrong. My heart skips a beat. Then another. It feels like it's drifting away in search of a new home. I hit the light switch so we don't have to look at each other.

My father, bathed in shadow, says, "Do you really believe Aunty Shyla is just a friend to your mother?"

The words hang between us in the inky kitchen, heavy with meaning. A sliver of soft moonlight shines through the window above the sink, backlighting my father and the vindaloo and the oil lamp on the table. And maybe, if I rubbed that lamp hard enough, I could conjure up a genie. He'd offer me three wishes, and I'd use the first one to go back to my dorm, and the second to erase this godawful trip from my memory. Then, and only then, I'd use the third wish on whatever I wanted most in my heart.