A Deconstructed Heart Read Online Free Page A

be a moment’s disappointment in his eyes when he saw her.
     
    He would shamble into the house, and she heard the sound of a toilet flushing indoors as he emerged. He was self-conscious about these small forays inside. Amal knew it was not because they were usually connected with his bodily functions. Once he came in to get a book while she was eating her cereal and he would not look at her. He moved quickly through the house, head down, and only looked up as he stepped outside again.
    As the day brightened and the last car doors slammed as neighbors left for work,  Mirza read his poetry books, or marked essays from his students and Amal would move dust around nonchalantly with a torn vest she had found under the kitchen sink, watching reruns of sitcoms. At lunch, she would stick her head inside the fridge and make a variation on toast and omelets. “Domestically challenged,” her father used to say proudly of her, enjoying how this would provoke her mother. On the second day, her uncle gave her money to pay for take-away fare delivered by local restaurants, but after a week, just the sight of a polystyrene box could make her feel sick.
    She asked for directions to the local grocery. “Take a right outside the house and a left at the second traffic light. About fifteen minutes down the road, there’s a Safeway. And before you go, bring me my checkbook that’s on my office desk, some envelopes and the bed tray which you’ll find in the drawer underneath the stove.” He then set about settling his bills al fresco. As she slung a canvas shopping bag over her shoulder, she watched him through the kitchen window, bending over his accounts, a steel pen flashing beneath his busy hand. It was like a detail from a miniature of a Mughal courtyard that she had seen on a school trip to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
    When she returned from the supermarket, she made a quiche with a ready-made crust and sliced open a bag of pre-tossed salad. “Gourmet,” said Mirza approvingly. They sat on the blanket, dusk smudging away form so that their hands seemed to make brushstrokes through the air. A few crickets chirped, one close, one further, and she imagined the millions of pairs of eyes glittering in this patch of overgrown grass. Several birds were making low dives, fussy about their choice of roosting perch. Their bodies were stark against the last light of the sky, disappearing into a rush of glistening feathers as they swooped, rising to become cut-outs once more on branches silhouetted against the clouds.
    Mirza Uncle was asking her questions about her coursework and her friends. “It’s fine… I see Anjum, sometimes, and Maria, and some people she knows. I’ve usually got so much work, I just like to get it finished straightaway before it piles up. It’s just fine,” she said, embarrassed by the sour smell of loneliness that was surely rising off her like body odor. He patted her hand gently, “I’m glad you came, beti, it’s good to have family around,” and she nodded, looking at the fork in her hands.
    The next morning, she turned over the gold-rimmed teacups that had been draining on the countertop since the evening before, afraid that their delicate china handles would snap off in her hand before she could break the suction. Her uncle was still asleep. She watched as a strong wind was flicking through the pages of the book he had been reading and a plastic bag skittered past the tent, flattening itself against the fence. Above, gray clouds were herding in the sky. A storm was coming.

Chapter 5
     
     
    When they lost their first child, he hadn’t understood. When the wail began that made the neighbors pound on their door, he had stared uncomprehendingly at her, an ocean roaring in his ears that blocked out all other sound. Afterwards, when he had left her sleeping at the hospital, he drove home and pulled the sheets off the bed, wadding them up and pushing them down the apartment rubbish chute. He