Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry Page A

the glass from him, she went to the bathroom, gritting her teeth. She poured out the water, taking care that his teeth did not tip out, and threw in a few flakes of laundry soap, filled fresh water, swirled. She rinsed twice and returned, pleased to have managed without touching.
    Nariman slipped the dentures gratefully into his mouth. Then his face turned bitter as he tasted the detergent.
    “What’s wrong?” asked Jal.
    “Nothing. Thank you for cleaning them. By the way, does Roxana know about me yet?”
    “What do you think?” said Coomy. “Have I had one free moment since you went and broke your bones? I apologize if your lordship is not happy with the service.”
    “Please don’t be upset, Coomy,” he pleaded. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”
    Sleep was yet to come and salve his pain, but he let silence answer the “Good night, Pappa” that ventured from the hallway. A hand snaked around the door frame, groping for the switch, and the light went off.
    Nariman blessed the darkness. He squirmed, feeling sticky all over, and tried to scratch his back, starving for a rub of talcum powder. Since his return from the hospital, neither Jal nor Coomy had thought about changing his clothes. Or offered him a wet towel, never mind a sponge bath. They would, if he asked, but he did not want to risk their clumsy hands.
    Raising his right shoulder off the bed allowed the ceiling fan’s slow breath upon his sweaty back. He gazed at the window, its glass luminous in the street light. The bars, standing stark, were oddly comforting. Old friends, he knew them well, keeping him company in the hours he had spent holding them while looking out the window, waiting for Lucy. And the flaking paint, which sometimes he flicked off the bars with his fingernail … like the flakes of dandruff that he flicked, when he was younger, when he had hair. His floc-flicking fingernail … flicking the floc … and the frock Lucy wore … the clarinet frock he called it, because, he told her, it made her look slim as a clarinet … when they were young …
    “ ‘One day when we were young,’ ” he half-hummed, half-imagined the words of the song, “ ‘one wonderful morning in May. You told me, you love me, when we were young one day …’ ”
    Their song, his and Lucy’s, ever since they had seen the The Great Waltz. He remembered the Sunday-evening show at Metro cinema. The day he had named the yellow dress … and after the film he said she was as gorgeous as Miliza Korjus. They strolled to the Cooperage maidaan, found a bench, far from the crowds gathered around the military band playing energetic marches. He and Lucy were sheltered from the bandstand by trees and bushes.
    He walked his fingers along the row of large yellow buttons, up and down the front, gently pushing each one – playing the clarinet, he said. She laughed, teasing, that he wasn’t depressing the proper keys. He thought the remark a challenge. They kissed, his fingers undid the buttons and stroked her cleavage, slid inside the brassière to her nipples. She sighed with pleasure, and he murmured in her ear that he had found the right keys. But fingers were not enough, a clarinet needed a mouth to play it, he said, let me demonstrate my embouchure, and tried to undo the brassière by reaching behind. No, not here, she said. So his mouth nuzzled what it could reach, they would leave the full clarinet concerto for another time …
    An ambulance howled past the building, its flashing beacon throwing a chaotic brilliance across the window. For an instant, the bars seemed bathed in daylight. Then the window glass regained the soft street lamp radiance that he was used to staring at.
    There was a breeze outside, he could hear it rustle in the branches of the tree. Shadows played on the pane. Leaves, moving like the claws of a nocturnal beast.
    Suddenly he was shivering. He wished the fan were off, but dared not call for help. He pulled the sheet