by Sonya Lalli
“What made you come out?” He shook his head. “You hid it this long—and now—explain it to me.”
“Explain what exactly?”
“You knew it would cause a scene with everyone, our whole community, and still—”
“Listen, I really don’t have time for a lecture.”
“Raina, please just explain it to me, okay?” His voice came out softer. Pleading. “I need you to explain because”—he paused—“I am, too.”
“Come again?”
“I’m gay, Raina. Just like you.” He slumped forward in his chest, and his head fell into his hands. “And I have no idea what to do.”
* * *
We waited in the cocktail bar on the ground floor of my office building, and I sat there playing with my hands, watching Depesh drink his second whiskey and Coke in ten minutes. He’d slurped down the first in three clean sips and noisily chewed on the ice cubes until a waiter came back and asked if he wanted another. At first, I was surprised they hadn’t asked for his ID—Depo, a kid in Converse sneakers and a T-shirt on Bay Street; a kid who, to me, still looked like the ten-year-old I used to babysit; who I’d seen cry after I let him watch a horror movie. Whose eyes lit up whenever I’d suggested ice cream.
But then I looked again. He had stubble on his chin and above the lip, and the baby fat had been sucked from his cheeks, exposing a chiseled jaw and brow bone, a beaky nose. He wasn’t the kid I knew anymore. He was eighteen—nineteen, now—and I struggled with what to say. I could feel my heart pounding in my stomach, and I checked my watch. Zoey was on her way. Thank goodness Zoey was on her way.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the bar was empty except for us; all the waitstaff were cluttered behind the bar unloading glasses and chatting about whether this year—finally—the Leafs would make it into the playoffs.
“They’re not going to make it,” I murmured.
“Pardon?”
“The Leafs,” I said, gesturing at the waitstaff. “They’re not going to make the playoffs.”
“Of course not. But neither are the Devils.”
“I have a New Jersey fan sitting next to me?” I scoffed. “And here I thought we could be friends.”
“As long as you’re not a Canucks fan . . .”
“I don’t think the Canucks have fans. Just suckers.”
He laughed, and just then, I saw Zoey waft through the entrance.
“There she is.”
We were at a booth by the window, and she pulled up a chair to the end. She looked at Depo curiously, and then extended her hand toward him.
“I’m Zoey.”
“Depesh,” he said. He shook her hand, and then set his own back on his lap.
“Hi, Depesh.” She glanced between us, and her eyes landed on me. “You texted this was some sort of emergency?”
“Not quite . . .” I looked at Depesh. “You’re sure?”
He nodded, and I looked back at Zoey.
“Zoey, my friend Depesh wants to talk to us about something.” I swallowed. “He is . . . gay.”
“Also,” he said, his eyes flicking between us, “Raina says you guys are, too.”
“Also gay,” repeated Zoey, her eyes still on me. I saw her press her lips together, and I could feel my cheeks flush.
What was I doing? This boy who’d been like a little brother to me was gay, and I was going to lie to him?
For a few seconds—what seemed like an eternity—nobody spoke. Depesh stared at his hands, Zoey stared at me, and all I could hear was the bartender’s ignorant position on which Leafs players deserved to be in the Hall of Fame, the elevator jazz drifting from a distant speaker.
“Sorry,” I heard Depesh mumble, and I looked up at him.
“What on earth are you sorry about?” I asked.
Looking as if he might cry, he shrugged his shoulders.
“No, we’re sorry”—Zoey flicked her eyes at me, and then back him—“just a little stunned, is all.” Smiling, she pulled her chair closer to him. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to talk about?”
He shrugged.
“Raina, do you want a drink or something?”
“I’m good.”
She flagged down the waiter and ordered a small glass of chardonnay. While he walked away, lingered chattily behind the bar, and then sauntered back with the wine, none of us said a word. Zoey then lifted the glass to her lips and took a slow sip.
“Perfect.” She set it back down, wiped off her lip print with her thumb. “What are you studying, Depesh?”
“Biochemistry.” He shrugged. “I’m going to apply to medicine.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“Not really. Like, everyone wants to be a doctor.”
“Well, why do you?”
He looked at me like he was expecting me to answer for him, and when I didn’t, he glanced back at the table. “My mom is sick.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be.” He chewed another ice cube. “You didn’t give her MS.”
Zoey nodded her head slowly.
“We’re close, you know? I’m the only son. The only child, and I gotta help out a lot. My dad has to work a lot more now, too—” He glanced at me again, like he was surprised I wasn’t interrupting, offering my own version of events. “We used to live in Jersey, but her treatment got too expensive. Gotta love American health care.”
“No kidding.” Zoey chuckled. “How long have you been back?”
“Six months or so.”
She nodded again.
“And there’s treatments here, too, but”—he shrugged—“there’s just not a lot anyone can do. It’s secondary progressive, and sometimes between attacks, she’s back to normal—almost—but it’s a waiting game. Like, you never know who or what the trigger is going to be.” His voiced quieted. “Whether I would be the trigger.”
Zoey nodded, and as I sensed what was happening, what she was doing, I fought the urge to leap over the table and hug her. She was patient. Empathetic. She knew people, how to read them, and what they needed, and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude for her being there for me; being there for Depesh.
“Did Raina tell you my coming-out story, Depesh?” she said after a moment.
He shook his head.
“Well. It’s a pretty standard story. I was about your age, and I’d known for a while.” Zoey stared intently at her wineglass. “And because I’d figured myself out so easily, I just assumed everyone else would, too, and”—she paused—“that my parents would someday just figure it out.”
He nodded.
“So I just didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about the fact I was always hiding, or lying, or making excuses for why I never had a boyfriend. Of course my best friends knew, and I dated—well, I slept with women. And then one day I met a girl, a girl who turned out to be pretty special to me. This girl was gorgeous, intelligent, sassy as hell. And of course she went on to break my heart, but in retrospect I swear to you, Depesh, it was still worth it.”
He nodded, his eyes still down on the table.
“I told my parents about her. And they screamed and they cried—and they threw shit—”
“Did they forgive you?”
“Depesh, there was nothing to forgive. I am who I am—and they simply can’t or won’t accept that. Don’t get me wrong, I sacrificed my relationship with them for a new relationship, but those feelings are part of who I am. They’re a part of all of us. Love and heartbreak—it’s everywhere, it’s universal, and there’s no shame in any of it.”
I thought of Dev, and how my whole mess had started because I was ashamed.
As if she knew what I was thinking, Zoey reached for my hand beneath the table. I grabbed it, and it gave me strength.
“And”—I sai
d, looking Depo in the eye—“if there’s anything Zoey and I can impress upon you . . . it’s that you have absolutely nothing to feel ashamed about.”
EIGHTEEN
A young Rani Mukerji danced in a train station wearing a blue tube top, shaking her hips, lip-synching to a voice likely a full octave higher than her own. An actor I didn’t recognize—wearing aviators, dressed like a sailor—appeared behind her, sang to her as he did push-ups and made the street children laugh.
I looked over at Nani. She had her feet on the coffee table, one toe bouncing along with the beat, but her eyes were glued to her tablet, her finger winding in long, slim lines across the surface.
“If you’re not watching, can I put something else on?” I grabbed a pillow from the floor, and wedged it behind my back. “Anything else?”
Nani didn’t reply. She pushed her glasses up her nose with the back of her hand, and then resumed her finger positioning at the tablet.
“What are you doing?”
“Candy Crash.”
“Candy Crush?”
She smiled at the screen, and a moment later, let out a mild shriek. “I von! I beat the level.” Turning to me, she winked. “Pretty good for old woman, nah?”
I laughed. “Good job.”
“While you are here,” she said shuffling over to me, “can you teach me how to download new game?”
I grabbed her tablet and clicked on the app store. “Sure, what’s your password?” She didn’t answer, and I looked over. “You wrote it down, right?”
“Raina, there are so many, nah? I don’t know.” She clucked her tongue. “Banking. Restaurant banking. U-teel-ity bill. Security code—”
“Don’t you have a password manager?”
“Don’t I have a granddaughter?” She winked at me, and I burst out laughing. It took about twenty minutes to find all her passwords and organize them in a way she’d remember, and by that time, the Rani Mukerji movie had ended, and a Madhuri Dixit one had begun. As Nani settled in to watch, I looked over at her face. She was smiling, her neck bobbing slightly to the melody.
Was she really watching? What was she thinking? Why was her granddaughter—supposedly successful, in the prime of her life—home with her watching Hindi movies on a Friday night?
And then I shuddered. Because as long as I could remember, Nani had never been home on a Friday night, either. She had dinner parties, temple gatherings, and pujas; was helping with festivals and volunteering.
“Why are you staring, beta?”
I sat up, and leaned in closer to her. “Have you spoken to Auntie Sarla recently?”
She pressed her lips together, and then after a moment, looked back at the screen.
I wanted to say something, to come clean. It felt like a wall had been built between us, and I’d never been so far away. And I knew that no matter how many evenings per week I came home to visit, no matter how many new subjis I learned to cook, I couldn’t fix the fact that I’d ousted her from the community she’d helped build without telling her the truth.
And now Depesh thought I was gay, too. What the hell had I done? Why hadn’t I realized such a lie would never be harmless?
This had all started because of Dev: I didn’t want to take Nani’s matchmaking seriously, because I thought he was the man of my dreams. The man I had to lie for. The man who was working half a world away, but still called once in a while, still e-mailed. Still wouldn’t leave me alone.
I loved him, didn’t I? And I knew he loved me, even if he didn’t say it. But Dev coming back wouldn’t fix anything anymore. I had to fix it on my own. I’d been selfish—thought only of myself—and now it was my turn to face the consequences.
I looked back at Nani, and watched the TV glow flicker across her face. “Hey, Nani?”
“Hah?” She didn’t look up, and I took a deep breath. How was I even supposed to start this conversation? There’d be no good time to tell her the truth—not now. This was as good a time as any, wasn’t it?
“I . . . uh—”
The phone rang, and my stomach dropped with relief, even though I knew I needed to fix things between us. Nani reached for the cordless phone and then pressed the answer button as she held the receiver to her face.
“This is Mrs. Ah-Nund. Hello, who is speaking?” She made a face into the phone, and then looked at me. “Raina, for you.”
I reached for it. “Hello?”
“Raina, it’s Julien.”
“How did you get this number?”
“From Shaylee’s phone—when she wasn’t looking.”
I looked over at Nani, staring at me curiously. “Work,” I mouthed to her, hopping off the couch.
“You didn’t try my cell phone?”
“If you saw my number, I wasn’t sure you’d pick up.” He paused. “And I saw your car there when I was driving home from Sarla’s tonight.”
“Ah.” I walked into the kitchen, and the door swung closed behind me. “How was that?”
“All right.” I heard the faint whir of a coffee machine, a few echoing voices, and I could tell he was in the doctors’ lounge Shay used to call me from. “I was over there for dinner.”
“I see.”
“You know we went to India?”
“I heard.”
“We’ve been home for weeks already,” he said. “I was hoping you guys would have made up by now.”
“Yeah, well . . . I wouldn’t hold my breath.” I sat down at the table, slumped my body onto its hard, cold surface. I could hear him breathing into the phone, and as I waited for him to say something, anger surged through me. She was getting her fiancé to call for her?
“Raina, listen . . .”
A moment passed. “I’m listening.”
“Okay, here it goes.” He sighed hard. “I wasn’t going to say anything about this—but—to hell with it. Listen, Raina. I’m Catholic, so I guess I understand why some people reacted the way they did—”
“Are you really calling me to defend your mother-in-law?”
“No, of course not—that isn’t even why I called.”
“Why did you call?”
“Let me start over.” He sighed again. “Something has happened with you and Shaylee—and I’m not even going to pretend to know what that is—or what’s even going on with you, for that matter. You haven’t exactly been there for her.”
“Helping plan the wedding, organizing the trip to New York—that wasn’t being there for her?”
“You know what I mean, Raina. Things have been off with you and Shaylee for a while. Well before New York . . .”
I could almost picture Julien, brow furrowed, chewing his lip, sitting there on those hideous orange couches Shay had described to me a thousand times, her hand buried beneath the cushion while she guessed how much change she would find, what gadgets she might excavate.
“Whatever happened between you two, she won’t talk to me about it. She won’t say a word. But I know her—and she feels terrible.”
“Good. She should.”
“Whosever fault it is, whatever it was that caused this—don’t you think it’s time to make up?” He laughed. “For Christ’s sake. She still brought you home a bridesmaid outfit.”
I didn’t respond. In the other room, I heard the cuckoo clock start to chime, and a shiver crept down my spine.
“I don’t know if I can forgive her, Julien.”
“Don’t you want to try? Don’t tell me that you of all people haven’t said anything in the heat of the moment. There’s nothing you wish you could take back—something you took too far?”
I bit my lip.
“You have been best friends—you’ve been sisters—for over twenty years. You know her better than anyone in the entire world. Whatever you fought about, ask yourself, is it really worth it?”
“I’ll talk t
o her,” I said slowly. “But she has to apologize first.”
“Funny. That’s exactly what she said.”
“Well”—I rolled my eyes—“we were best friends.”
“You are best friends. And Shaylee needs you right now—what with the wedding coming up. And I know that Sarla is driving her crazier than usual because of—”
“All the drama I’ve caused?”
“You said it, not me.”
I smiled, and I realized that even though they’d been together for nearly five years, this was the first time Julien and I had ever spoken on the phone. Indeed, it was the longest conversation we’d ever had.
“Will you think about talking to her?”
I nodded. “I’ll think about it.”
“Good. And just so you know, Raina, you may be Shaylee’s best friend—but she’s my best friend. And I know everything about her. Everything.” He paused. “And I love her just the same.”
* * *
I thought about it. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized how much I missed Shay, and how the last few months had felt empty without her. I wanted to know if she’d liked India this time around, and what it was like visiting her family now that she was finally getting married. I wanted to be filled in on the wedding plans, on her favorite patients at the hospital; find out if she ever bought that phallic-shaped figurine—of what, exactly, we never figured out—that we once saw at Urban Barn.
I wanted to know if she missed me, too.
And so the next weekend when Julien asked me to meet him, Shay, and Asher at the diner, I reluctantly agreed.
I only had an hour’s notice. I showered and changed, and tried to style my hair—curled, jutting out at the back—the way Shay had once said suited me. I found my makeup bag beneath the sink, and outlined my eyes. Curled my lashes.
It was only a quick walk to the diner. On the way, I tried not to think about the fact that Asher would be there, and remained focused on Shay. What I would say. What she might say. And with each step, I grew more nervous, and less confident about what the hell I was doing, or what the right thing to do was. Why should I be nervous? It was Shay who owed me the apology, wasn’t it?
