A Deconstructed Heart Read Online Free

up any finals papers for him, and he could mark them here. I just don’t know if he’ll be ready to teach for a while… maybe we can arrange a sabbatical or something.”
     
    “He’s lucky he’s got you,” said Frank. “You take care of your own, I know how it is.” Amal wondered exactly whom he meant by ‘you’. “But if it gets too much, we’re just next door, ok?” Ella patted her shoulder as they left.
    As she closed the door behind them, the phone rang.  It was her father, and as she stood at the kitchen bay window with the phone pressed to her ear, she saw Mirza Uncle arranging some cushions he had clearly taken from the living room sofa. For a moment, she felt as if she were watching a silent movie with the wrong soundtrack. Her father’s voice was urgent and tense, while Mirza Uncle was settling comfortably into his new outdoor furniture. He was bent over a book, his scalp shining brightly where his hair was thin. She saw him look up as Frank approached, and they were talking. “I might be at Uncle’s for a while, Baba,” she said although, until this moment, she had not given this idea much thought.
     
     
    Amal soon found that moving into another person’s life was like sliding a sheet of paper into an envelope. With force, the corners of the paper caught on the sides of the envelope, and the paper crumpled. The only way was to ease first one corner and then another into its sheath, gently shaking to align paper and envelope until gravity did the rest.
    At first she was all business, rising early to wash dishes and vacuum the house, cleaning out the bare fridge, plumping sofa cushions that were not being used and straightening piles of correspondence that meant nothing to her. She moved Naida Aunty’s special occasion shalwars out of the guest room closet, bagging them clumsily, hangers and all and dragging the heavy bolsters down the stairs by the plastic ties, rolling them into the garage where Naida Aunty’s car had once been parked. She hung up her own clothes and emptied her toilette bag onto the bathroom countertop.
    She ate standing up at the kitchen sink, watching her uncle as she finished a packet of Hob Nobs or a fried egg out of a pan. In the evenings, she made halting progress over her essay, scrunching up a few first attempts and tossing them angrily into the dustbin. When it was finally ready, she faxed it from a shop that sold photocopiers, taking a few wrong turns down familiar-seeming side streets before she made it back.
    The phone kept ringing. Her uncle spoke to the Dean, standing with a gray-brown blanket wrapped around him like a Sherpa. Amal heard the words, “irregular”, and “tenure” and “official warning”, but her uncle seemed quite cheerful, so she decided that everything must have been arranged. There were a few awkward telephone conversations with Mirza’s colleagues and acquaintances, so she pulled the jack out of the wall, only reconnecting in the mornings to give her parents an update—No, no word yet. He’s OK, really, but, he hasn’t come in, he’s in a tent now, a TENT, yes, there’s food, I’m cooking, ha ha… There were no calls from her aunt.
    After the first few days  had passed, she found herself slowing down, moving to the quiet rhythms of the empty house, a furry tail passing under her nose her signal to rise. She would move first to the window, her forehead pressed against the glass in silent prayer until she saw the tent bulge for a moment as her uncle moved in his sleep. The grass outlining the one-sleeper tent from the Mintons was bright green, the dew brushed off the morning silver-gray of lawn. Sometimes she could almost imagine that the tent was shrinking as if it were being reclaimed by creeping grass blades, swallowed by the soil.
    She would head down to the kitchen, followed by Moriarty, to start the kettle and lay out a plate of cat food. She did not like waking him —after that first start of consciousness there would