Never Again

I draw strength from my fluidity: a capacity to adapt to the moment’s demands, a tendency to flee rather than fight when I find myself in a tough spot. The advice to master your circumstances, lest they control you, has not resonated with me. If an imposing SUV muscles its way into the parking spot I’ve been waiting patiently for, I don’t stomp out to argue my case with the bully; instead, I look for another space likely to be vacated soon. Over the years, when my son’s teachers have called me to share their concerns about his daydreaming during classes, I reassure each one that it is a passing phase. He will change as he makes more friends in school. He is an only child, I tell them, used to amusing himself, and he carries this habit into the classroom. I resist their advice to seek professional therapy for him, without taking offense at their intrusiveness.
When customers call for brightly colored bouquets, “Yellows, orange, and reds only, Naina,” I don’t persuade them to try the citrine, salmon, and russet flowers waiting in the buckets, forlornly, until I sell them at a heavy discount.
My two friends in this city salute my complaisance, literally. They get up to salute me, while saying, “Hail the Patient Pacific!” when we meet for our weekly round of coffee and cake at various charming cafes across the city. They think I am a saint because I have not told them yet about how I became a widow.
My former husband, a jealous man, used to stalk me. He would take time off from work to keep track of my whereabouts. I was a stay-at-home mother then, with a predictable routine, but my husband suspected a flirtation every time I went out to the grocery store or the stationery shop. He would shake me by the shoulders when I returned home, rattling my bones. One day, he put our seven-year-old son through the rattling procedure for not providing him with the details of my illicit outings, “You are getting fat on the sweets she buys you, that’s why you keep her secrets. But the money comes from me, you hear.”
I looked at the rum bottle he would soon open and recalled the floracetin I had stored in a kitchen drawer from my days working at a florist’s, where we used it to slow down blooming. Miss Chamunda, a regular client who taught chemistry at school, had walked in while I was shaking crystals into a vase arrangement to make it last longer. She smiled and said, “Mrs. Menon, I hope you never get it into your head to murder someone. It would be easy with this stuff. It causes instantaneous lung collapse, virtually untraceable when ingested with alcohol.” I slid a few sachets into my jacket’s pocket. Nobody missed them, and I quit soon after because of the way things were at home. After I had soothed my shivering son and tucked him into bed, I tapped some crystals of floracetin into the rum bottle. I lost my patience that day, and while I dialled for the ambulance, I swore that I would not let it happen again.