The Not So Liberating Art of Sussing Out A Fraud by Rajiv Ramkhalawan

On the morning of Rosie’s thirty-fifth birthday, Suresh conceded that his wife was an imposter. He suspected that his Rosie must have only recently been replaced by this Rosie, since up to a few weeks ago his wife continued to conclude their kisses with her signature whisk of the tongue along Suresh’s upper lip. But last week, definitely, and the week before, quite probably, the kisses were vapid and dry, quite pathetic as far as kisses went. 

His Rosie was a natural lover. This simply could not be her.

It was not just the kisses that gave her away, though the kisses kindled Suresh’s suspicions. The slip up, as always, lies in the minutiae. 

Suresh had asked Rosie one afternoon, whether he should wear a blue shirt or a grey shirt to Wendy’s engagement party that night. Suresh was testing her. You see, Rosie bitterly despised the colour grey for reasons unbeknownst to Suresh. As such, she, and by extension, Suresh, did not possess any article of grey clothing in their wardrobe. No grey trousers. No grey dresses. No grey socks. And especially, no grey shirts.

So, from the onset of the conversation, the subject of the grey shirt was a complete fiction. One that his Rosie would have easily figured out. But this Rosie sat on the edge of their bed and coolly informed Suresh that the grey shirt would make him look rather “distinguished” among a patchwork of meandering shades of blue worn by half the other men at the party. Cerulean, powder, turquoise, navy were all offshoots of the same thing, she had said: an unoriginal colour that men wore all the time, whether in the form of bath trunks or tuxedos. But Suresh countered: blue works with a bath trunk, doesn’t it…water and all? And a blue tuxedo is making a statement…the conventional would be black, of course. His Rosie would not have missed the opportunity to roar back with rhetoric of equal parts disdain and sagacity.  Enough to make him dip his head like a flamingo and heave in marital defeat. This Rosie did nothing of the sort. In fact, she just informed Suresh that “he had a good point.”

Even without testing this Rosie, there were chinks in her armour. If you follow a marriage long and far enough, really study the slight shifts, the hairline cracks, you might well discover “things” you wished you’d never see. Betrayal. Illness. Lies. Or, the funny but serious fact that your wife may not even be your wife. 

A few days prior to the shirt incident, Rosie began to massage the back of Suresh’s head while they watched a re-run of I Love Lucy on a springy loveseat, the only piece of furniture in the living room, unless you counted the two floor lamps that stood like tired guards on either side of it. A portion of Suresh’s long legs were draped over the loveseat and his head nestled between the doughy confines of Rosie’s thighs. While circling a thicket of transitioning grey hair, Rosie came across a marble-sized bump just below Suresh’s lambda, but did not pet and kiss the slight protrusion as his Rosie would do. Rather, this Rosie suddenly stopped massaging the area and enquired how he’d gotten the bump in the first place. Initially, Suresh thought she was joking, but upon realizing that she was not, his hands began to shake. Not ready to proceed down a rabbit hole right then and there, he successfully changed the subject of conversation, all while his hands trembled. 

The revelation that this imposter resembled and imitated Rosie terrified Suresh. Just yesterday evening he resisted the urge to confront her as he did not want them to get into a silent war on the eve of Rosie’s birthday. 

As a married man, he had picked up little tricks here and there regarding the ever so fluctuating temperament of a woman. He knew very well that this was not the time to go about accusing one’s wife of not being one’s wife. Further, this conversation could not be had at the end of a long day. You’d never be able to sleep, and certainly not before her big day. No, that would spell disaster. 

Part of him chalked up his nonconfrontational nature towards what clearly should have been a “discussion” about fear of the unknown. A characteristic that Rosie once stated was evident throughout his lineage upon observation at their wedding. In typical Suresh style, he countered with: an immaculately dressed white woman, with a Yankee accent, among my simple Trinidadian family…what do you expect? In true Rosie style she quipped: People should not question love based solely on skin colour, you know that. Plus, it’s not my fault if your family doesn’t know how to dress for a wedding…they had seven months to prepare. Jeans are not going to cut it, mister!

He woke at half past four on her birthday and proceeded to do the exact things as he had done on each of her last seven birthdays. Beauty in a marriage is often not about the pledge as it is about consistency. Consistency is doing; it is love, too. 

Suresh committed himself to making Rosie’s favourite breakfast ever year on this day. 

Smoked salmon eggs benedict. He made this on no other day of the year. Suresh prepared it the way Rosie’s grandmother used to, with mascarpone and shavings of black and white truffles worked into the hollandaise. Rich and delightful, the way birthdays were meant to be.

Suresh would set the table with fresh linens, silverware and a single rose which he held captive for far too long in the vegetable chiller, beneath a bed of celery, lettuce, and broccoli. By the time he was finished, usually at around six, Rosie would appear from their room, always feigning drowsiness but boiling with excitement. She would kiss him three or four times, their moniker kiss, no less, and they would eat breakfast, before retiring to bed to perform indulgent acts which, if you saw, you would only think could be performed by stage acrobats of the highest order. 

In the afternoon, Suresh would pull out of bed and coax Rosie into the kitchen in order to reveal the most beautiful four-inch sponge cake. Orange pineapple. Chocolate ganache. A hint of ginger. 

Always the same cake, always the same size: his gift to her. Once, Suresh told Rosie that he could make her a much more sophisticated cake but realized that simplicity had its own joy that grandeur could never understand.

Rosie would spill a tear or two when she tasted the cake, and Suresh would ask her whether the sponge was too dry. Rosie would always say that it was perfect, the way Suresh was perfect, the way their lives were perfect.

When this Rosie walked out of the darkness today, Suresh hugged her and wished her a happy birthday. 

“De eggs gettin cold, have a bite, Rose.”

He offered her a fork and stared as she sliced into the leaky eggs, pistachio crusted spinach (his twist), and soft butter-biscuit before drawing the fork to her mouth.

“They’re fantastic, baby. I can taste the truffles in there.”

“So, juss de way yuh fadder makes them?”

Another test. 

“Yes, of course. Just like my father.”

*

A few weeks after imposter Rosie’s thirty-fifth birthday, Suresh thought, if this Rosie was indeed an imposter, then maybe she might have killed his Rosie. Petrified by the mere thought, he tried not to ponder much on this possibility as he hoped that his Rosie would return to him somehow, and that they would be left to go about with their lives.

But what if his Rosie was out there somewhere, he thought one night, while sleeping next to imposter Rosie. What if Rosie was out there waiting on him to come rescue her? His Rosie would know, she would know that he would figure this stranger out. 

He looked at imposter Rosie with escalating disgust. She slept quietly on her side, hands and legs crunched in a fetal position. His Rosie was a chronic snorer and always slept on her back, with hands splayed outwards, much like Christ on a crucifix. 

“Rose, Rose, wake up!”

“What. What is it?” she stirred. “I’m sleeping, babe.”

“Juss answer, meh. If yuh kill somebody and hide de body, where yuh would put it?”

Imposter Rosie sighed and turned to the other side.

“Go back to bed. You’re crazy. It’s two in the morning.”

“No. No. Please, juss answer de question.”

“I don’t know. What kind of question is that, Suresh? Probably at the bottom of the deep freezer in our restaurant. I don’t know. Can we go back to bed now, crazy?”

The next day Suresh emptied the contents of the deep freezer at the restaurant while Rosie was out sourcing produce at the market.

 He found no body.

*

Days after the freezer incident, imposter Rosie ran into the kitchen screaming so loudly that Suresh almost burnt himself with a newly christened frying pan. She had somehow managed to get the Prime Minister to agree to dine at the restaurant with the rest of his cabinet. 

“Wait, de Prime Minister?” Suresh repeated.

“Yes, the Prime Minister!”

A lot had changed since Rosie and Suresh squashed their life into two medium-sized suitcases and left New York for good, three years ago. Suresh had been struggling as a sous-chef at a hole in the wall diner on Canal Street despite having attained a diploma from one of New York’s top culinary institutes. With over twenty thousand restaurants in the city and more than enough chefs to go around twice, you had little choice but to take whatever came your way until better came along.

Better came along in the form of a dead uncle from Trinidad who left Suresh a wilting two-storey building in the middle of Port of Spain. It was a dilapidated monster of brick and mortar, but it was still prime property. The two mulled it over for months and finally decided to take the plunge when Rosie’s mother died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving her with no real ties to the United States.

In later years, they would often joke that it took them two deaths to make it to the island. Three if you counted Suresh’s failure to move up the ranks as a chef in Manhattan. 

At first Rosie hated Trinidad. She would complain to Suresh about the island’s perpetual stickiness. She would beg him to accompany her to the market every weekend to mitigate against the unkind faces of the locals; faces which bore curious stares and phony smiles, enough to almost burn into her pale skin. 

But in a strange twist, it was Rosie who provided Suresh with the courage to keep going despite dwindling savings and a building that required more restoration than first anticipated. And it was Rosie who said to Suresh one Saturday morning that she was fine going to the market all by herself now; that she had come to know the produce vendors on a first name basis and that Trinidad, for all its fiendish mosquitoes and never-ending heat, was not so bad after all. 

So, when imposter Rosie seemed strangely enthusiastic about the Prime Minister dining at the restaurant, Suresh knew that she had upped her game. This was certainly something that his Rosie would have done.

Deciding to wait until after the dinner to confront Rosie, for fear that a longwinded argument would seep into the bones of their otherwise dutiful staff, Suresh obsessed in isolation for days about creating the perfect menu while imposter Rosie arranged with a local newspaper to carry a piece about the visit.

On the morning of the dinner, he and imposter Rosie got to the restaurant at 5:30, two hours before any of the other employees would start to filter in. Besides the amuse bouche, Suresh had been having trouble settling on a menu and decided to leave everything for the day itself. It was unlike him, but he figured if carbons could form diamonds under extreme pressures, he could produce culinary magic in similar circumstances. 

He called imposter Rosie from the kitchen to seek out her opinion on a cod dish he had in mind for one of the starters. When she did not answer, he yelled her name, but she still did not respond.

Somewhat agitated, Suresh walked into the dining room, only to observe imposter Rosie on a step ladder changing the satin drapes, oblivious to his presence, humming that ballad from Journey. Not “Don’t Stop Believin,” but the other, more sentimental one, “Faithfully.” Their wedding song.

“What going on? What’s with de drapes?” 

“Oh, hi. Wendy told me that Ruby told her that the Prime Minister likes the colour grey. So voila, grey drapes instead of the olive-green ones. Like ‘em?” 

 “You hate grey! You would never buy anything grey, even for de fuckin’ Prime Minister.” Suresh yelled. “Who de hell are you? Where Rosie?”

 “What! I know that you are on your absolute ends with this dinner—”

“No, I am not. You-you’re a fraud. You tink I don’t know? You not my fuckin’ wife!”

“Suresh, what are you talking about? Goddamit. I am right here!”

“No, no, no.”

Annoyed and grated by her lies, Suresh raced up to the imposter and kicked the step ladder. In the moment, he didn’t know if he acted out of frustration, or anger, or whether it was just one of those things where one acted without really thinking of one’s actions. But none of that mattered, as Rosie, his or otherwise, fell off the step ladder and landed rather clumsily on the porcelain tiles.

*

Out of sheer embarrassment for his actions, Suresh told the staff that Rosie was ill the day she fell off the step ladder. He cancelled the dinner and never rebooked a date. He closed the restaurant until further notice and told the staff that he could not operate it until Rosie felt better.

A few weeks after the incident, Rosie, who was now staying in a bed and breakfast outside of Port of Spain, called Suresh and implored him to see a doctor as his behaviour did not add up. 

Contrite and apologetic, Suresh agreed.  

The doctor informed Suresh that he wanted an opinion from a colleague—a specialist, a psychiatrist. 

“So, yuh saying that I mad? Is dat what yuh saying, doc? Let me tell you, eh, I ain’t no mad.”

“No, Suresh. I’m not saying that. It’s just an evaluation at this time, that’s all.”

Suresh contemplated asking Rosie to accompany him to the consultation with the psychiatrist, but ultimately decided against it, fearing something might really be wrong with him.

Dr. Bertrand, a pleasant enough old man, started off by asking Suresh an assortment of questions ranging from the quality of his sex life, to details of his family histories with mental illnesses, to instances of drug and/or alcohol abuse, and to finally, whether he had been treated for any head trauma in his life.

“Nah, doc,” Suresh said. “Well…wait, when I was in my teens, way before I went to New York, I used to work in a kitchen in Barataria. There was ah time I climb onto an old bench, trying to pull down ah pot that was packed away high on a shelf. We had a big order coming up, and we needed a big pot, yuh see. I spot de pot, and as I went to grab it, de bench break, and I fell and hit my head. I still have a bump from all that. Yuh want to feel it? Go ahead, but I eh no mad, doc.”

Dr. Bertrand felt the bump, swished his lips around, and ordered an MRI. 

Suresh decided to reach out to Rosie as he circled his plain wedding band around his finger one night, watching another re-run of I Love Lucy on the loveseat by himself.  There were long passages of silence on the phone as they navigated the events of the recent past. Suresh cried at times, especially those when Rosie’s voice broke and she did not utter a word for what felt like minutes. 

They spoke about happier times: a Valentine’s date on a three-dollar budget, walking hand in hand through a pumpkin field in Connecticut, window shopping on Fifth Avenue while eating warm pretzels.

On the day of the results, Rosie showed up, despite having stated that she did not think it was a good idea. She squeezed Suresh’s hand and hugged him before they went into Dr. Bertrand’s office. 

Whoever leaves you in life will leave, and there is nothing you can do about it. Whoever stays with you in life will stay, and there is also nothing you can do about it.

Dr. Bertrand started off by telling them to listen carefully to what he had to say and that both Suresh and Rosie were free to ask him anything after. Suresh gripped Rosie’s hands and nodded for the doctor to continue.

The doctor said that Suresh had several cerebral lesions to the back of the right hemisphere of his brain, likely caused by the fall. He went on to add this likely contributed to Suresh’s belief that Rosie was an imposter. He concluded that nothing was definitive, and that further tests and assessments were required before he could properly diagnose Suresh, but this was his hunch so far.

“Yuh saying, I really crazy?”

“No Suresh, I’m saying you definitely require medical treatment.”

Rosie reached over and hugged Suresh and did not stop.

*

A month later, Rosie came over to their apartment in West Moorings. They sat in the kitchen. The same kitchen he made the eggs benedict and sponge cake. Though they spoke on the phone daily, they sat in eerie silence. They were strangers.

“How are you?” Suresh whispered.

“I’m okay,” Rosie said. “Are you taking your medication?”

“I trying to,” Suresh said, pointing to several translucent cylindrical containers on the microwave. 

“Look Suresh, I’m going back to New York. I can’t stay here any longer. Let’s get you checked out there, please. I spoke to Marty’s cousin, the one who’s a doctor. She says that, this thing they are saying it is, Capgras Syndrome. It’s very poorly studied. I mean if they haven’t studied it much up there…I’m doubtful they have here.”

“I’m ashamed, Rose. I really thought you were not you. I eh going. I can’t risk…hurting you again.”

“She said that once you are on your meds, there is a better chance you will be okay. But they need to see you. Call me soon, and we can start sorting this through. Everything will be fine.”

Rosie stood to leave. She picked up her grey purse from the table and threw it over her shoulder. 

“But, what about…de restaurant? I can’t start over again. I can’t do that…not after all dis. I’m no one in New York City. Juss a loser immigrant like de other three million.”

“You’ve done spectacular here, babe. But we both know that New York is where you’re gonna get the care you need. Trust me. I can organize an agent to put the building up for sale, and we can use the money to buy something in—”

“Listen to me, listen to me. I hearing from well-respected sources that de people from Michelin coming. They coming. First in de Caribbean. We just need to wait a little longer. If I can get a star under my belt, I can go back and actually be somebody.”

In the moment, a kernel, resting at the base of his brain, ruptured, sending millions of tiny, cautionary messengers scuttling across his body. Suresh knew this was not as a consequence of the bump or the medication. He knew a dark seed which housed a telling secret had broken free: that someone in the market had swallowed Rosie whole and vomited a version of her that was no longer his. A version that spat on biblical vows and shaved the thick, ropy marital cord that once tethered them—fattened with all sorts of inner jokes and sugary memories—to a feeble string. A version of her that threatened to hack at the delicate linings of their union. Or rather, had severed it without any sign of contrition.

“You’re not thinking straight! What is more important, staying here for another minute and being consumed by this…this…madness or starting again with me?”

“Rose, it’s not like that. We need to be honest with each other before we can figure this fuckin’ thing out.”

“All I know is that we need to get the hell out of this damn country.”

She crossed her arms, pressing her purse between her arm and her body. Suresh squinted and felt this morning’s turkey bacon slide back up his oesophagus. The purse was familiar and not. It had a large brass buckle that must have been uncomfortable against her skin. She asked him what he was thinking, but he could only see the purse, a leather fabric. Maybe faux. But no matter how long he continued to stare at it, its colour did not change.  

Still grey.

[End]

Rajiv Ramkhalawan is an Attorney-at-Law and writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Rajiv is the winner of The Caribbean Writer’s 2020 Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize. He is a past recipient of a regional award from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. His short fiction has been longlisted for the 2021 Fish Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 Perito Prize. His most recent works of short fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in Litro Magazine, The Sunlight Press, STORGY Magazine and Rebel Women Lit.

20 August 2021