Myra and Tom fanned their faces with wadded newspapers as they made their way through Jaipur’s City Palace. The tour guide aggressively ushered them through the palace, saying “Take picture take picture take picture,” seizing their camera and asking them to “Cheeseburger smile” in front of the marble elephants, Diwan-I-Khas, huge silver water jugs one of the old Kings traveled with. Their sunglasses were useless against the unforgiving sun. Older Indian women waded around them slowly, clutching their saris to their body protectively as if this would make the sun less hot. Children ran around them in circles. Myra told herself not to look at them.
Their hands were smudgy and black from holding the newspapers for so long. The tour guide led them through to the Pitam Niwas Chowk, proudly displaying the four gates representative of each season as if he had painted them himself. Myra stared at the Autumn Gate, one of the peacocks staring back motionlessly. The colors—blues, greens, ambers—caused her heart to sigh and sit down. When the guide motioned for them to stand in front of the gate for another picture, Myra sighed again, this time out loud.
“Nahin dhanyavaad.” Tom was proud of his dusty Hindi and asked for the camera back. The tour guide was persistent but thrust it back, motioning for them to follow him yet again. Tom strung his arm around Mrya as they followed, the unspoken lying between them. Myra knew framing any of these photos would feel like a betrayal but wasn’t so sure Tom agreed.
They were to be in India for two weeks. Delhi was their intended city of travel, but they were taking their time to get there.
***
Myra watched Tom as he moved back and forth across their hotel room, gradually adding layers of clothing as he adjusted to the air-conditioning. They had had drinks at the hotel bar before walking back, the heat thick around them. A wedding procession had been starting up, the bells and drums and voices becoming the night’s symphony. Myra thought if she listened hard enough now, she could still hear them. But she knew that could be in her imagination.
She felt guilty being joyful over anything.
“We could ride those elephants tomorrow.”
“Hmm?” Myra asked. Tom plopped down in bed beside her, his blonde hair falling in his eyes momentarily.
“You know, at Amber Fort. If you go in the morning, you can ride the elephants to the fort.”
“Instead of what?”
“Instead of walking.” Tom’s voice was clipped, as if the answer had been obvious. Myra looked away.
“I don’t know.” She pushed her body down further in the bed until she was completely on her side, her back facing Tom. Silence fell between them. A few moments later, Tom placed his hand on her side, gently.
“Graham loved elephants.”
“I know that.” Myra spat out her words; she couldn’t help it. “You don’t think I know that?” She moved her head slightly, Tom able to see the edges of her left eye. His hand remained on her side, but it felt heavy, like a weight that he couldn’t move.
“I just thought—”
“I know what my son liked.” Her eyes didn’t move as she said this, her body stiff. She moved her head back to the full resting position, biting her tongue so she wouldn’t cry, a trick her sister had taught her in primary school.
All the lights were still on in their room. After some time, Tom got out of bed to turn them off and brush his teeth. When he returned, he knew his wife wasn’t asleep, even though her body was deathly motionless. He gingerly wrapped his arm around her side and pulled himself close to her. Myra let go of her tongue.
***
When Myra looked back on her life, she saw it like this: before, during, and after. Now was the after. Her first trip to India had marked the start of the during. Before, she had drifted through college (Oxford, on her parents’ insistence) like someone drifts through an unfamiliar city, aimlessly drinking in coffee shops and pubs. Being away from her parents for the first time gave her space to breathe and make decisions on her own. Of all the family traditions she eschewed, the only one that stuck was her desire to be a mother. Sometimes, she felt in burning inside of her, a dream she couldn’t shake.
After graduation, Myra withdrew part of inheritance and bought a plane ticket to India with two of her girlfriends. She had never been outside of Europe. She was 21, the age when almost everyone else in her family had done the “respectable” thing, like get married or start working a job that supplied reliable income, time off for holiday. To Myra, this kind of existence sounded joyless.
India had changed the way she felt and thought about everything. They had traveled in the summer and the hazy heat seemed to follow them wherever they went. In England, she felt as if she was permanently living inside of a cold, rank fish; in contrast, India exposed itself like a lotus, spreading its fingers far and wide anywhere she went, revealing colors and spices she had never noticed before. And people, so many people. The constant voices forced on her an awareness of every single moment. Never in her life had she felt more awake.
A man—Tom Schlafly, she would later learn—approached her on the steps of Jama Masjid to ask for directions to the Old Delhi train station. She was sweltering under the long-sleeved clothes required to enter the mosque. He said he was due to catch a train to Udaipur but had broken away from his group because he had wanted to visit the mosque as many times as possible. He was American, a graduate student in architecture. He was particularly interested in Mughal design.
Her two friends smirked as they eavesdropped on Myra’s interaction with Tom. The sun approached the middle of the sky. In hindsight, she knew he really hadn’t needed directions anywhere, as he was two months into his six-month study in India and spoke almost perfect Hindi. But she found she couldn’t stop smiling while talking to him, the rest of the mosque fading away until it was just the two of them.
She extended her stay in India and four months later, flew to America with him. He became her during.
***
Myra and Tom traveled by taxi from Jaipur to Chand Baori. Outside, the scenery alternated between endless patches of dust and scrubby greenery, villages appearing at random. The intense decrease in people left Myra feeling exposed, and the sudden ring of her phone made her jump. It was her sister. The driver had the windows rolled down and it was hard to hear at first. She rolled her window up until she could hear her sister practically yelling.
“You’re still alive, right?”
“You know that joke’s not funny.”
Myra could picture Elizabeth shrugging her shoulders. Even when they were kids, Elizabeth believed in hiding emotions. “You know what I mean. How’s the trip going?”
“Oh, you know.” Myra pictured herself in a locked room, thousands of feet underground. “It’s just as beautiful as I remembered.” She looked out the window to the white sky, the sun so bright it threatened to disappear the landscape. In the areas absent of city fog, this almost seemed possible. She wondered what would happen if the end of the world started here, if anyone would notice the disappearance of these little pocket towns, everything turning to dust.
“Have you made it to Delhi yet?” Her sister’s tone suggested she was repeating the question.
Myra swallowed hard. “We’re…getting there. Chand Baori is supposed to be really amazing, though. We’re in a car there right now.” Tom turned around momentarily from the front seat to smile. He had books spread out over his lap and had been carrying on a conversation with the driver in Hindi. “Tom says hi.”
“Tell him I want an ancient relic from an ancient place.” Someone was yelling on her end. Elizabeth shuffled the phone and Myra could hear her voice, muffled, and a child crying. Myra knew it was probably her youngest niece, so she closed her eyes until Elizabeth’s voice became normal again. “Okay, sorry I’ve got to run so fast, but major pigtails catastrophe. Call me later?”
“Wait—” The word choked out before Myra even registered it and now that it was here she had to do something with it. “How’s it going?” Her voice was thick. “You know, the case.”
“Oh!” Elizabeth coughed. “Well, the case is over, darling.”
“Please stop trying to be funny.”
“You know…the usual. The kid was finally moved to his permanent detention center a couple of days ago. Warranted a small blurb in the newspaper.” Elizabeth’s voice had sobered up considerably.
“Oh, ok. Good.” She opened her eyes just enough to see Tom looking back at her, his face worried. She could make out his facial features easily even in the all-consuming sun. “And has anyone asked questions?”
“If anyone asks questions, they know what to expect.” Elizabeth was eager to pull out her My husband is a lawyer card when necessary.
Myra nodded slowly. “Good. Good.” She certainly didn’t feel good. “Well, call you later.”
Myra held the phone to her ear long after the call ended. She knew Tom would have questions, so she closed her eyes and let her head fall back. A few moments later, she felt his hand on her knee.
***
Graham had rushed home from school one day, excited to show Myra something in one of his textbooks. It had been India week in his Social Studies class and he had taken a different souvenir from his parents’ collection to class every day. They’d made a game of it: Graham would win the challenge when a site or monument was discussed in class that his parents had never visited.
“I’ve found it.” Graham announced, sitting down across from his mom at the kitchen table with his backpack and coat still on, using his gloved fingers to turn the pages until he found the earmarked one. “Chand Baori.” He pronounced the words awkwardly. He shoved the book across the table to Myra.
“Well, will you look at that.” She vaguely recognized the stepwell in the photo, she and her friends having considered visiting it when in Jaipur. She ran her fingers over the steps in the picture, as if expecting to feel tiny ridges under her fingertips.
“Right?” Graham asked, his eyebrows arched excitedly. He slid his backpack off him and let it drop to the floor.
Myra smirked. Tom hadn’t made the visit out there either, meaning Graham had won the challenge. His award would be a puppy. He’d been begging for one for months. They were using the challenge as a way to consent.
“Well, you know we’ll have to wait until Dad gets home.” Myra hid her smile.
That had been in November. By May of the next year, he was gone, his bedroom forever frozen in time.
Myra tried not to think about this as she shielded her eyes and looked at the green water pooled at the stepwell’s bottom. The intricately designed stepwell climbed up into the sky around her. What would happen if a giant lid was pushed over the top of them, she wondered. Could they climb the steps fast enough to get out?
A child screeched for his mother across the pond and Myra snapped back to the present. Tom was a few feet away from her, discretely taking pictures of a family shadowed by the steps behind them. Their driver was smoking at the car, she knew.
Graham’s smile when he realized he had won the challenge flashed through her mind. He had been so excited to win that he hung a printed-out picture of Chand Baori on his bedroom wall.
“I feel guilty for coming here.”
“Hmm?” Tom asked, momentarily glancing at her before turning his full focus to his wife, switching his mind from stair designs to Myra’s slumped shoulders. The trip to India had been Elizabeth’s idea, and it wasn’t until they were on the flight that Tom had questioned if Myra was really ready for an immersive international trip. But now that they were here, Tom found himself distracted by the architecture, his mind called back to why he had originally visited India all those years ago. He often had to forcibly switch that part of his brain off, and only then did he see Myra clearly. The horrible truth was that he often found himself at a loss for how to comfort her, when he was still unsure how to comfort himself. Something, of course, he knew he would never tell her.
“Graham wanted to come here, I—I don’t know if we should have come here.”
Tom let his camera swing around his neck, pulling Myra to him. “We don’t have to stay any longer.”
They climbed the steps together, but Myra couldn’t help feeling something was pulling her back down, like a child’s fingers wrapped around her forearm, pulling hard.
***
Tom had never really considered being a father. He started a master’s program because he wanted to compete in the job market with all the other aspiring architects in the large cities to which he was drawn. He had grown up in Wyoming, accustomed to his parents’ complaints when they ventured into a big city to go shopping, tssking over the sizes of the buildings, the clutter, the abundance of small windows glittering like diamonds. But he instead saw design, an intricate interweaving of concrete and brick structured perfectly to fit together just right.
He chose the India program from a list of campus connections around the globe. His plan was to study there for half a year, and return a budding expert on the architecture of one of the oldest places on Earth. This was the upper hand he needed. But after knowing Myra for just a month, he knew he wanted her in his life for all the months to come. He was willing to change his plans for hers.
But Myra just wanted to be a mother. She moved with him to Boston for his first big job, and they were pregnant soon after.
Graham loved his dad’s passion even at five years of age, begging to come along with him on new building sites. At the groundbreaking ceremony for a new building, Graham convinced his mother to dress him in a three-piece suit, like his Dad. In his wallet Tom carried a picture of the pair, donning their suits, its edges crinkled from being forced to fit alongside business cards and loose change.
They had a game they played together—Graham would be the architect and Tom would be the contractor and together they planned a building. The challenge was making sure it would not only fit in with its surroundings, but that it wasn’t identical to another building in the area.
They later learned during the court case in England that this was the game Graham and the other boy had been playing before his death. Before the other boy suggested a new game.
Like most other sensational news stories, the boy’s name was printed right alongside Graham’s, as if the two were interchangeable, the newsprint not seeming to care that one was the victim and one was the perpetrator. For weeks now, he had heard that boy’s name over and over, threatening to drown out the name of his own son. But Tom refused to call that boy by name.
***
When Tom and Myra reached Agra, their trip’s halfway point, they were too exhausted to deal with the rush of cab drivers that greeted them when they exited the train station, so they simply accepted the first reasonably priced offer. The man ushered them to his cab, a small orange car, two young girls in dirty saris following them. Myra only gave them coins because they were persistent in their poking and begging, muttering half-alive words. She refused to look at them but heard them arguing over who got the most coins.
“God, I don’t remember it being like this last time,” Tom commented wearily once they were in the car, taking in the overwhelming crowd of cabs and autos cluttered around the train station like chickens at a feeding station. Myra nodded in agreement, thinking it was easier to see the sky last time. This time all she saw were people, trees, dust, people. A small hole at the top that provided breathing space.
It wasn’t fair that so many survived here, when the person she cared about most in the world had not made it ten years.
“Do you?” Tom looked at Myra, expectantly.
Myra shook her head again. She leaned her head against the hot window, watching welcoming signs to “The City of the Taj Mahal” as the cab passed underneath. All around them, the city was moving, sluggishly, yet she felt still, immobile, and not in a calming way. Like in the way when you’re the only one seated at a busy airport.
Tom nodded, his mind racing. “I think our hotel has a view.”
Myra wanted to care, wanted to be excited, but she wasn’t. She found it hard to believe that among all this traffic, sky foggy from pollution, cable wires hung from building to building, dust and trash on the street, people moving in every direction like ants fighting to reach the mound first, that one of the Wonders of the World lay hidden. Graham had loved things like that, finding treasures in in the most unlikely, incongruent places. Opening Matryoshka dolls hoping to find something other than air inside. Opening all the boxes in the house yearning to find something, anything, even if it was just tissue paper from an old present. One summer, he dug holes all over the backyard hoping to find more arrowheads to match the one he had stumbled upon in a stroke of luck. Tom had been furious over the pockets in their yard, but he was too amused at the same time to let it show. They never lost anything because Graham always found it. Myra was terrified of losing anything in the future because she knew it would be gone forever.
***
Graham and Myra had decided in December the year prior that enough time had passed between their last England trip and that it was time to visit again. Graham would turn eight in March, and they figured this meant he was old enough to actually remember the trip this time. They cleared their schedules at the end of May and flew out of Boston two days after Graham finished the second grade.
Myra’s family lived in London and prepared Myra’s old bedroom for her and Tom to stay in while they were there. After much debating, the couple agreed to let Graham stay at Elizabeth’s, where he would share the bunk bed with her middle child. The boys were the same age with almost identical faces.
Sometimes Myra tried to justify the way her son died by how closely he resembled Jonathan, Elizabeth’s son. That maybe the other boy had actually been after Jonathan and had just made a mistake. But she always felt horrible for thinking this and never told anyone.
The boys quickly bonded, Graham following Jonathan to the nearest parks, playing the games he played, practicing each other’s accents. Things would have been fine if they had been able to stay together the whole trip. But halfway through, Elizabeth took her kids to visit their father, who was working on location on Edinburgh, and Graham came to stay with Myra, Tom, and his grandparents. They were gone for just two days.
Graham was obedient, often taping classroom rules on the refrigerator before Myra even got the chance to read the list. When he didn’t return from the park near Myra’s parents when he promised he would, she immediately began to worry. She lingered by the kitchen window as her mother told a story from her bridge club, unable to keep her eyes from looking outside constantly. It was unusually bright, the plants in the front garden reaching eagerly up to the sun.
“Let’s just go to the park,” Tom finally suggested, opening the front door as he spoke. “He probably just lost track of time.”
“But he wears a watch,” Myra said, as if this made all the difference. The windowpanes were imprinted on her eyes. Later, she remembered how irritated her words must have sounded.
“But he’s also an 8-year-old outside on a nice day.” Myra remembered Tom chuckling when he said this. Laughing, as if they would eventually take the whole situation lightly. The laughter of innocence, of not knowing. “Come on, let’s go.”
The only reason they caught the boy was because he lingered by Graham’s body, like some museumgoer admiring a painting. The park was unusually empty that day and when they found the two boys, there was no one else around. One boy alive and one dead. No one to interfere with Myra’s path as she broke out into a run toward Graham’s body, skidding as she landed beside him. She remembered how floppy his head felt, how much already gone he was.
The other boy backed away but didn’t flee. It was as if he was in a trance. Myra didn’t give him any mind until she noticed blood on his hands, the same color of blood that was pooling around Graham’s head and sticking to his blonde hair. Later, Myra remembered how Tom didn’t have to notice the blood to understand something had gone horribly wrong. How he grabbed the other boy’s upper arms and squeezed, so tightly Myra expected his arms to pop out, like a doll’s if you yanked too hard.
They later found out that a few others had passed the two boys as it was happening, but no one stopped. No one bothered to interfere as the boy beat Graham with a rock. Repeatedly. “I just wanted to see what would happen,” the boy kept saying, his voice soft, unclear if it was purposely affected or truly distraught.
He entered an insanity plea. Something about a sociopathic disorder; words like dissociative, antisocial, emotionally stunted littered the psychiatric reports. When Myra focused in on the name of the words themselves, her mind started spinning, unable to rectify something so logical sounding with her son dying in a way that would never make sense.
Right after it happened, Myra wanted to hate this boy. Wanted to hate Elizabeth for leaving for the weekend. Wanted to hate Tom for suggesting too late that they go find Graham. But instead she hated herself, and she wasn’t sure the feeling would ever go away.
***
Elizabeth called constantly after Myra and Tom returned to Boston, three suitcases in tow for two people. “She’s doing okay,” Tom said their first week home, the house empty and huge around him. “She put his suitcase in his room and closed the door. I think it’s—too hard for her right now.”
“I can come, you know. Within 24 hours, I’ll be at your front door.”
“No—it’s okay.” Tom appreciated Elizabeth’s sympathy, especially since it was so rare. “I just think time…time will help, I think.”
He wasn’t sure. But someone had to be, so he elected himself.
After he got off the phone, he stood in the doorway of their bedroom. Myra had the covers pulled over her head, the room dark save for the light streaming in from the window. Graham’s Labrador, less than half a year old, was curled up at the end of the bed, his head resting on his front paws. Tom considered joining her and experiencing for himself the allure of the enclosed darkness. Instead, he walked to Graham’s room and perched on his twin bed until it was time for dinner.
A few months had passed when Elizabeth suggested they make the trip to India. Visit the place they talked about so much and so fondly. Return to the steps where they met. It wasn’t that she saw any need to rekindle a fire in their relationship, she said. She just didn’t want them to become prisoners of their house, where they had all the time in the world to relive the death. At least a vacation would allow time for movement, a change of pace, things to distract them. Tom had agreed eagerly, at a loss himself on how to both move forward without drowning and also help his grieving wife. He usually felt ill-equipped to take on just one of those tasks; two felt impossible. Myra agreed with little hesitation, but he wasn’t convinced it was because she was eager to go. Even when he tried his hardest to share her grief, his body switched back into survival mode.
***
As Myra listened to the street moving outside, smelled the hot, musty, all-consuming air, literally felt the world moving around her, she was stuck. Like a car that couldn’t shift gears.
“Oh, there’s a vegetable vendor right outside.” Tom was excited, sticking his nose out of the window that faced the street outside the hotel gates. The other window had a small view of the Taj Mahal. A miniature version, one that you could pluck in your thumb and forefinger and pocket forever.
Something Graham would have loved.
“Hmm?”
The vendor’s voice rang out, aloo, gobi, tamatar, gajar. Tom didn’t repeat, just remained in place with his head sticking out the window, letting in the outside world. Myra placed her hands over her ears until the noise stopped.
She felt trapped.
“Why are we here?”
“What?” Tom shifted to face her, the sun collecting in beams around him.
“Why did we come here?” Myra had expected her voice to be angry, but instead it was just sad.
Tom shrugged his shoulders. “You know, to get away and everything. To visit the place we love so much—”
“I know that’s what Elizabeth said. But why did we come?”
Tom slowly sat down on the edge of the bed, his mouth twitching as if he was afraid to answer.
“I mean, I know why Elizabeth wanted us to come. But I never stopped to consider whether I wanted to do this, I just listened.” For a moment, Myra imagined the room opening up, revealing the light outside, but the feeling quickly passed.
Tom moved closer to her in the bed, until they were facing each other, both cross-legged, like kids sharing secrets in kindergarten. He reached forward and cupped her cheek in his palm. She was thinner than she had been before they met, her bones sticking out at awkward angles. Any time he held her, he felt like he was holding a pile of tinker toys wrapped in clothes. His heart ached. He had spent months ruminating on the right things to say, but now his brain was blank, frantic. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“You know we haven’t said I love you to each other the whole time we’ve been here?”
Myra tried to wrap her head around the statement, understand why Tom thought it was important in the moment.
“I mean,” he laughed softly, “It’s a lot different from our first trip here.” Even as the words came out, Tom heard how slimy they were, and averted his eyes so he wouldn’t have to witness Myra’s response, her recognition of her husband’s failure at comforting.
But instead, Myra’s thoughts went to their first visit together, the weeks spent staying together in inexpensive guesthouses and Tom’s small apartment in Delhi, how morning and night were marked by the movement of the sun on their bed sheets, finding it hard even when in public to not do things that made Indian women pull their saris over their mouths.
She noticed a sliver of sunlight snaking up the right side of their bed, the curtains closed partially over the open window.
It was so hot she could barely breathe.
“Why would you bring that up?”
Tom stuttered. “You know I love you.”
“That’s not the point here though. Tom, I asked why we came here?” She paused. A melody of car horns floating through the window. “Why did we come here?”
He focused on the wall behind Myra. He realized his hand was still cupping her cheek, so he dropped it, let it rest on her thin leg. “To see the country.”
“We’ve already seen the country.”
“To save ourselves.”
“Don’t say that.”
Tom leaned forward, hoping to coax Myra’s eyes to look away from her lap. What if they grew old here? In a country so crowded even family members sometimes couldn’t find one another? Would anyone miss them? Would anyone notice? Surely no one would ever be able to find them. They could do it. Disappear, slip into this hot lifestyle that only demanded you be able to survive through the beating sun every day.
But she would never do that. She would never live somewhere where Graham hadn’t existed, not wanting to assume a lifestyle that ignored their son.
He regretted ever starting down this road. He hadn’t planned on having this discussion until they were well back in America, in Graham’s time zone, in Graham’s house, with Graham’s dog. But now they were in the midst of it, and Myra had never been someone to change topics in the middle of a conversation.
“I know you blame yourself.” Tom’s hand grazed her chin, trying to coax her face. “That if we had gone looking for him just a little bit earlier, maybe he would have—”
“No. No. Don’t say that.” Myra instinctively pulled back, her hand pointing, aggressively, shaking.
“Would have lived.”
Myra remained motionless for a few moments, her finger slowly moving toward his chest until it crashed into it. Then, it was as if her finger was the impetus holding together a trigger-release bomb: tears flowed down her face like a sudden summer rainfall.
Tom knew he should say something, apologize for the blatancy of his last statement, admit that he really blamed himself. That if he hadn’t brushed off her worries than they would have made it to the park on time. Before the rock. Before the blood.
But instead, he cried too. Created their own monsoon in a place that was still covered in dust.
***
Graham had pretended not to be impressed by the Taj Mahal when he learned about it in Social Studies class. He didn’t want to like the monument because everyone liked the monument. He had been tasked to create a miniature Taj Mahal for class, rolling his eyes as they picked out the materials at the crafts store. White Styrofoam for the columns and domes. Blue felt for the water.
“I bet aliens really did make it,” he commented while in the fake greenery aisle.
“What are you talking about?” Myra picked up two different fake grass patches, one darker than the other, and held them up for Graham’s inspection. He picked the lighter one, leaning half-heartedly against the other side of the aisle. But Myra noticed he continued to keep an attentive eye on the fake grass as she placed it in the shopping cart.
“That’s what this kid in my class said, Johnny Mascowitz. He said that the Taj Mahal was too perfect to have been built by humans. That God sent aliens down here to do it who disintegrated after its completion.” Graham stumbled over disintegrated. Myra couldn’t help but laugh, Graham’s serious expression making it all the funnier. “What?” He asked.
“Well, I think you should tell Johnny that aliens probably have more interest in weapons and destroying our energy sources.” She moved out of the aisle and Graham followed her. “Besides, how would you explain Jama Masjid then?”
“What?”
“You know, where your dad and I met.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Graham loved this story, finding it fascinating that his parents, both from different countries, had met in a foreign place, by chance. The story was almost too perfect. “What about it?”
They stopped their cart when they reached the check-out line, the windows revealing the sun that had started to slip into the earth. Myra looked directly at her son, who was fingering the items in the cart. “Well, the same Emperor executed the design of both of those places.”
“Really?” Graham’s head shot up, his eyes meeting hers. They were sparkling with excitement. “Which was built first?”
Myra considered this. “Hmm…the Taj, I believe.”
Graham’s forehead was scrunched up, as if he was mentally viewing pictures of both structures in his mind. “They do look alike. Was that on purpose?”
Myra laughed, again. “I’m not sure, honey.” Ever since he was young enough to put together full sentences, he had questioned everything. Tom had joked that it was for people like Graham that Wikipedia was invented in the first place. “We can look it up when we get home.”
“Okay.” He suddenly couldn’t take his eyes off the materials for the miniature Taj Mahal.
Over the next few days, he insisted on talking about the subject any time the three of them were together, quizzing them on what they remembered about visiting both places. Jama Masjid again performed miracles in their lives, turning the story of the Taj Mahal into something magical. Something that existed outside of India, outside of textbooks. Something that was real.
On their first visit to the Taj Mahal, Myra remembered standing in awe for hours, taking in the structure from every angle. They moved from bench to bench on the grounds, staring at the sparkling white that was nearly blinding in the morning sun. The green grass, the majestically blue pools. She couldn’t believe that this was it, the structure that caused hearts to skip a beat, that drew in millions of visitors a year. But there She was, shimmering and silent, as if waiting for someone to uncover her secrets. Find the secret tomb within the mausoleum and expose the world’s stories.
This time, Myra found all she could concentrate on was the other stuff. The tour guide that followed them until Tom told him firmly, Nahi, Nahi. How the teenage boys with their cell phones pushed you out of the way to take pictures if you lingered too long, purposefully including you in their photos if you didn’t move fast enough. She felt herself being pushed along in the group of people systematically moving through the grounds. The sun was hotter than it had ever been, threatening to turn them all into a melted pool of skin, expose their secrets to the known universe. Reveal to everyone that they had one dead child and had never been able to have another.
Graham had been buried in the family plot in London. Gravestone. No white marble palace to protect him. Just dirt and grass. And that, eventually, rains away into mud. Then to nothingness.
She was about to ask to leave, return to the security guards that had snatched up electronics at the entrance like they were collecting toys for a Christmas drive, risk the pickpockets disguised as tour guides that tricked money out of unknowing tourists, when Tom handed his camera to another white tourist, and motioned for Myra to take a picture with him. Even though they put their arms around each other, she didn’t feel him. She almost expected to see Graham in between them when they looked at the picture in the camera.
But, instead, it was just the two of them, dwarfed by the massive white. Their smiles disgusted her.
***
She told herself that Graham would have found something he hated about India. Complained about the heat. Found the beggars annoying. Asked to eat at McDonald’s. That they would have traveled to India without him anyway, so it was okay to be here now. They would have talked on the phone every night, sharing kisses before going to bed just as he started another day.
But she knew none of this was true.
They had flown into Delhi nine days earlier and now returned there, Myra watching wearily as their auto maneuvered through the congested city streets, the morning sky hazy with pollution, the sun more an idea than an actual thing. Motorbikes slipped by the cab, ten to one, zipping off in a flurry of noise. Any time a car paused more than a second, people started crossing the street, not bothered by the impressive amount of metal that thrusted eagerly forward.
Myra found it nearly unbelievable that so many millions lived in this city. She watched people cross the street, looking for Graham’s face in every single one of them.
***
They had decided on their morning train from Agra to Delhi that there was no point in pretending visiting Jama Masjid hadn’t been the purpose of the entire trip, and so they headed there almost immediately after arriving. The streets of Old Delhi were unbelievably crowded, people pressing up against their auto as the driver pushed through, like squeezing a marble out of straw. She noticed the driver wasn’t wearing any shoes, his sandals placed neatly beside his feet. Everything seemed to be making noise, conversations whizzing by, tunes from car horns and storefronts, the screech of tires. At one point, Myra looked to her left to find a man less than six inches away staring back at her. She could have reached out and pushed him off his rickshaw if she had wanted to.
She didn’t see Jama Masjid until they were right on top of it, the minarets and marble domes appearing in the sky like apparitions. The sky hung lazily behind the mosque. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Last time, she had been the most excited among her friends to visit the mosque, already mesmerized by the enormous domes, the countless archways. They all donned long sleeves and skirts and packed themselves tightly into autos.
She looked down at her body now, the auto shaking them both back and forth. She was wearing short sleeves.
Looking over at Tom, she noticed his eyes and his camera facing out, the street turning into watercolors around them as their speed increased. Ever since their Agra hotel conversation, Tom had stopped ignoring the reality of their lives when around her, as if before she had been protected by a wall of glass that had now shattered. Even though he continued to place his hands on her knees or back or face protectively, his skin felt all the more real.
The driver stopped directly in front of the steps, in a tangle of autos and people pushing through, shoulder to shoulder, to continue walking. Some entered the mosque, ascending the wide stairs, which were dull in the afternoon sun. Most walked right by it, not even turning their heads to look, accustomed to passing the largest mosque in India on a regular basis. Myra got out of the auto, her eyes on the steps, as Tom handed the driver a few crumpled rupees. For years after they married, Myra daydreamed about the steps fondly, idealized them even. She fantasized revisiting, she and Tom reliving their first encounter with the impressive red gate looming over them. She had expected her heart to stop like it did last time, thinking of all the times she had shared this story with Graham, painting the mosque as a magical place every time.
“Like Disney World?” he had asked once, when he was four. She had said yes, like Disney World. Like Cinderella’s palace.
Thinking of this, her heart jolted forward, as if something was calling her from inside. She had never been a religious person, finding religion more overwhelming than helpful. Faith had always perplexed her; she was bothered by how something she considered private was always turned into a family matter among certain groups. She had never felt God tugging at her heart, like so many people described when having a religious experience, no matter their particular faith. The only times she had ever had such a feeling were when it came to her own family.
She quickly eyed the spot where she and Tom had first spoken. An Indian family was sitting there, the young children sharing an ice cream cone. Almost immediately, the youngest dropped the cone, as if Myra’s eyes had been the trigger that released this action. Surely the ice cream would immediately melt on the warm stone. The mother scolded the child, rapping her lightly on the back of her head. Myra looked away. She began to deliberately ascend the steps on the opposite side, following the thing that attached itself around her heart and was pulling hard.
Men in white and women covered in long saris were streaming down the steps, a group of people cluttered by the front entrance as they readjusted their shoes, re-wrapped shawls around their necks. Hearing the bells, Myra realized afternoon prayer had just ended. Those who had been praying inside now descended the steps. They disappeared into the tangle of store awnings, dangling electric wires, and water stands. The travelers began to stand, slowly disappearing through the entrance, guarded by a few men wearing white, their arms crossed and their faces sour, and into the vast emptiness beyond. She remembered learning last time that 25,000 people could fit inside if they wanted to. Even just the number made Myra feel suffocated.
She took a breath.
“Wait—should we get a picture on the steps?” Tom asked just as they reached the line at the entrance, a few girls picking through the long tunics required to don if your clothing wasn’t sufficiently modest. Myra shaded her eyes as she looked at her husband, shrugged her shoulders. She felt on the verge of tears but didn’t know why. She didn’t really feel like crying. She didn’t feel like standing still either. He passed his camera to another traveler, who captured the two of them, arms around each other, the mosque disappearing into the sky behind them. She was very aware of their sweaty skin sticking to each other.
“I don’t feel like—”
“I know.” Tom strung the camera back around his neck and placed his hand on her back, turning toward the entrance.
“Three hundred rupee,” one of the men, sitting, a gut poking out of his tunic, barked at them, another younger man holding out his hand aggressively.
“Lekin yaha per likha hai ki entry free hai.” Tom said, pointing to the sign that read NO ENTRY FEE. The older man waved his hand demurely, while the younger man pointed at Tom’s camera before holding out his hand again. Tom glanced at Myra before digging the money out of his pocket. He knew what she wanted. Last time they hadn’t actually visited the inside together, just the steps.
This time she wanted it to be different.
After Tom had paid, the younger man pointed at Myra and then at the long tunics, colors piled on top of each other. She was putting on a blue tunic when she noticed a sign advertising a look-out point from the minaret currently towering directly over them.
She pointed at the sign. “Let’s do this first.” The words choked themselves out, as if spoken by a different being. Before he fully registered what was happening, she had disappeared behind the entrance to the minaret.
The steps were steep and winding, constantly turning inside the thin structure. She placed her hands on both sides of the wall, stumbling over the cloth as she made her way to the top. She felt as if something was pulling her higher and higher, a force she couldn’t detect, an all-consuming power that only allowed her to go up.
Or a child’s fingers wrapped around her forearm, pulling hard.
Halfway, they emerged on a flat platform that provided a perfect view of the mosque. She stopped to take in the structure, spread out wide, tiny people in bright colors spreading themselves over every inch. The far gate, nearly identical to the Taj Mahal’s South Gate, stood impressively. As if it was smiling at her, waiting to share something. She felt Tom’s presence on her left and looked to find him taking pictures of all the others below them.
“Wow.” The wind whipped momentarily around them before falling deathly still again, as it had been all day. Sluggish. “Makes you feel powerful, huh?”
Myra’s eyes on the gate, she suddenly felt as if it was shaking its head, telling her to continue going up. “Let’s keep going.” They re-entered the minaret, the cool stone wrapping around them, disappearing all the street sounds from below, the hundreds of conversations and endless noise. Silent, even when they reached the line of travelers pushing to make their way to the top, eliminating any notion of private space.
A silence that was actually silent, as opposed to all her recent silences that had been threateningly loud.
As if pushed by some force from behind, Myra and Tom finally broke through the crowd to the landing. But unlike the motion of the crowds at the Taj Mahal, this was different. A persistent force that was also gentle, patient, that let her go just as she reached the far windows, facing back onto the steps they had just come from.
From above, she noticed how the thrash of autos started just as the steps ended. Like the edge of land meeting water, or two forces colliding.
At first, she didn’t understand what had led her here, just to look back on the place where she had come from. She was about to turn away when she stopped. Her heart paused and sat down.
There was Graham, standing on the exact spot she and Tom had met, waving and smiling at her. The blood was gone and every hair was in place, the same clothes he had been wearing before his death. His smile was so big it was almost painful. He was waving and waving, and smiling, and waving, and she no longer noticed the chaos of Old Delhi, or the outside world that stopped just at the base of the mosque, as if some invisible force was rejecting it. She only noticed him, who looked so much like Tom she started crying, tears crashing down on her tunic and disappearing into the blue.
Something inside of her released and let go. Sun rays pushed through the clouds in great, jagged stripes, everything breathing around her.
Myra blinked. And like that, he was gone, their meeting space vacant, the remnants of their footsteps so many years ago covered with millions of others. She stared motionlessly at the spot, the mosque around her taking a breath before settling down again, as if it had been holding in the same air breathed on the last day they had been there together. When she had begun her during. Tom appeared, and she peripherally noticed his face change, his hands reaching up to wipe tears from her cheeks, but she kept her gaze on the steps.
Below, the streets continued moving, the horns continued honking, the children continued yelling. Maybe it was their high position in the sky, or the sun’s emergence through the haze, but Myra felt that they were above it all, the darkness receding.