Incense and Sensibility

by Sonali Dev

  “I know it hurts. I know you’re not used to hurting like this. I know you always keep your emotions in perspective, yet somehow he always slips past all your defenses. But don’t worry, you will figure out what to do with the hurt. You’re a strong girl. The strongest.”

  “She might be the strongest, but can she survive you smothering her like that?” China said, coming into the room and making Chutney thump the couch with her tail.

  “She needed hugs.” India let go of Chutney, and she turned to lick India’s face.

  “She is a needy slut like that.” China sank into the couch and Chutney transferred her worshipful kisses to her. “She hides it well. But maybe she’s just like everyone else and does need the occasional cuddling.”

  India ignored China’s loaded glance and pulled her knees to her chest. Her stubborn heart had taken to feeling heavy and achy, and no amount of breathing was making it go away.

  “You doing okay? You’ve been working around the clock,” China said.

  India let her knees go and crossed her legs and took a long ujjayi breath. “You know I love my work, and it’ll settle down soon enough.” Her clients wanted to make up for the time they’d missed when she’d taken time off, and Tomas had his CPA exams and had asked for a few weeks to study for those. “Someone has to teach Mom’s and Tomas’s classes.” India was incredibly grateful for the workload.

  “Mom thinks she can get back to it soon.”

  They both smiled. That was Tara.

  Her treatment had just started. Trisha had stopped by last week. When she’d seen Tara, and studied the liver scans, she had referred her to a hepatologist friend whom Dr. Kumar endorsed wholeheartedly.

  It turned out that Dr. Ung had gone to middle school with Sid, and Dr. Ung’s father had been the surgeon who’d performed the cleft lip surgeries on all three of them. Mom had taken this as a sign from the universe and instead of resisting it was now fully on board with Dr. Ung’s treatment plan. They had started with a hepatitis C drug regimen. It was going to be a long road, but with Tara’s heart in it, India felt like they were halfway there.

  This morning Tara had declared that the bovine injury from thirty years back might have sparked the chain of events that led to her getting sick, but her lifestyle had kept it from killing her years ago, and that meant something.

  India agreed that the universe had a plan for them. Until that plan showed itself, India had emptied out her accounts to make the first payment. The next one was due soon with no possible way in sight to make it.

  This studio is prime real estate.

  Why had she said those words to Yash? Words that had shaken him. Words she should never have spoken out loud because the studio was part of their family. How could anyone separate from something that was their identity?

  “I think Mom’s right. She’ll be teaching again soon enough. Everything going well with the show?”

  Even though China and Song were still spending all their free time holed up in China’s room, this was the first time in weeks that India was bringing up China’s work. Her sister was an adult and India had decided to treat her as such. She might even have avoided China, because, one, she was in pain, constantly, and she didn’t want China to see it. Two, respecting Tara’s wishes and not telling China and Sid about the insurance situation was becoming harder as India grew more and more desperate.

  Do you ever ask for help?

  Why had Yash asking her that bothered her so much?

  Maybe it was time to ask China for help. But China already covered part of the mortgage.

  China cleared her throat and Chutney stretched between the sisters, offering her head to India and her belly to China for a rubdown. Both sisters complied.

  “Remember how you said you were proud of me?” China said, her voice suspiciously small.

  “Cee, I’m more proud of you than I am of anything else in this world.”

  “Even so, I guess it’s a good thing that you’re sitting down for this.”

  Okay, that was not at all what India wanted to hear.

  Her sister opened her mouth, then closed it, which was so not a China move.

  “You’re scaring me,” India said.

  China reached over and took India’s hand. “You know how I’ve always wanted to travel the world?”

  Since when? China was famous for the words, “Is there a world outside Northern California?” She had refused to take a job on her favorite talk show because it was shot in Chicago. Her only explanation for refusing the job had been, “But it’s not in California.” She didn’t even like to go to L.A.

  “Okay, that was a joke. But you know how you’ve always said I should expand my world? How I should take some time to travel?”

  “I said that because I wanted you to come with me to Costa Rica last year for the yoga retreat.”

  “How does it matter where I travel to? So long as I travel.”

  “China, to repeat myself, you are scaring me.”

  “I’m moving to Seoul.”

  “To where?”

  “Seoul, it’s the capital of South Korea.”

  “China!”

  “Okay, fine. I’ll stop being an idiot. But I’m only being like this because you’re intimidating me with your disapproval.”

  “No one has ever intimidated you a day in your life.”

  China smiled such a wide happy smile that India’s heart did a little skip. “Are you . . . are you and Song getting married?” Her eyes slipped to China’s finger. There was nothing there.

  Could a smile turn dreamy and pained in the same breath? The yearning on China’s face made every one of India’s big-sister instincts bristle.

  “Not yet. I mean, we haven’t talked about that yet. But she has this amazing role she’s been offered. A dystopian time-travel fantasy love story. They’re paying her twice as much as she made for the last one. I think this break really helped her.”

  “So Song is taking on a new project, and she wants you to go with her?”

  Discomfort flitted across China’s face, then excitement ran riot over it again. “How can I not go with her? The hours I spend away from her here, when we’re in the same city, are hell. I know you’re going to think this sounds impulsive and dramatic, but I feel like I’ll die if I don’t see her even for a day, let alone for weeks.”

  It did sound impulsive and dramatic and it was downright false. You couldn’t die from missing someone. Even if the pain gripped you like a chronic burning you pushed away and pushed away and pushed away without relief.

  “Has Song asked you to go with her?”

  “Of course she wants me to go.” China scratched her forearm. Her skin always itched when she was hiding something. It was her built-in lie detector.

  “Oh, Cee.”

  “Don’t. Fine. She hasn’t asked in so many words. But I know she wants me to be there. Isn’t love knowing what the other person needs without being told?”

  The great white elephant in the room trumpeted for attention. There was a reason Song and China only hung out in Song’s hotel room and here. Song had been very clear with China that they couldn’t be seen in public romantically. China had signed a nondisclosure agreement. Song was quite firmly in the closet.

  China herself had justified the nondisclosure agreement as something Song’s PR team had insisted on. Since Song played heterosexual romantic leads in her shows, they believed that her audience wouldn’t be open to her having a lesbian relationship.

  “Her culture may not be quite as openly accepting of same-sex relationships as ours is now. Let alone interracial ones,” India said.

  China jumped off the couch and stomped to the kitchen. She extracted a carton of coconut water from the fridge. “Don’t I know that? Do we have anything stronger than this?” It was a rhetorical question. India only drank the odd glass of wine when she went out with China and their girlfriends. They only had alcohol if China bought it.

  India didn’t understand how China had eve
n considered signing that NDA, given how strong and proud she was about owning her identity. Nonetheless, India had kept her lips sealed on the matter and focused on being happy for her sister. It wasn’t easy, because as far as India knew, Song had never expressed any interest in coming out, and that meant China was hurtling straight into heartbreak.

  China downed the coconut water. “I know what you want to ask me, so go ahead and ask.”

  “If you know what I’m going to ask, why don’t you go ahead and answer?”

  “It’s easy to judge someone from a place of privilege.” China waited for India to respond to that, but she wasn’t getting an argument on that from India.

  China grunted, crushing the carton and tossing it in the garbage with a little too much force. “I wish you knew how I felt about Song. If you’d ever experienced feelings like this you would understand. I feel like I’m on fire from the inside out, India!” She looked at India the way one would look at a robot, with equal parts sympathy and envy. “Sometimes all your principles become meaningless in the wake of the sheer force of your feelings.”

  Letting China see the unrelenting icy burn tearing at her was not an option. Thinking about how seeing Yash’s hand in his fiancée’s on television had felt was most certainly not an option.

  “Principles can never become meaningless. If they do, they aren’t principles in the first place.” You were the beliefs you held dear. If you gave those up, who were you?

  Anger sparked in China’s eyes. “How can you think it’s that simple? God, I wish I could be like you. Song loves me. She has the ability to love with such intensity, such vulnerability. She gives everything. It’s almost scary. It’s such a huge risk for her, but she still does it. And you want me to think about principles?”

  No matter how cold China thought she was, India wasn’t cold enough to point out that Song was giving everything within the protection of these closed walls and a nondisclosure agreement drafted by some of the highest-paid entertainment lawyers in the world. China, on the other hand, was giving everything unconditionally and without any caution.

  Nonetheless, Song did have the right to love and be loved like everyone else. “I don’t doubt that Song loves you. It’s obvious in the way she looks at you. Who could not love you? If bigoted social structures are keeping her from showing it publicly, then absolutely she has the right to keep herself safe, but you have to protect yourself too.”

  “Protect myself from what? Why, when I want to leap, do you always want to pull me back?”

  How could she not, when China was leaping into an abyss of pain? Pain she knew too well.

  “You might be going up against something far larger than yourself. You might even have the strength to fight it. But like you said yourself, you would be coming at this fight from a place of privilege. Everyone in your life cherishes you, always has. Your family, your friends, your colleagues, your whole world already celebrates you. That’s not true of Song.”

  China dropped onto the floor at India’s feet and looked up at her, luminous eyes glistening with tears, mass of curls spilling from her high ponytail. “She stands to lose so much by being with me and she doesn’t care. How can I return that with choosing my job over her? My wanting to stay here, wanting my life to be exactly as it was before her, before us—how can I be that selfish?”

  China had worked harder than anyone India knew to get where she was in her career. The anxiety of giving anything but one hundred percent and achieving anything less than perfection used to keep her up nights even when they were little girls. India had sat by her sister through many a night as she worked tirelessly on anything she took on.

  “You’ve never left California.”

  “I’m not yet thirty. I’m growing up. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted for me?” She laid her head on India’s lap.

  India stroked her hair. “You’re being very brave, and I’m very proud of you.”

  “Well, hold that thought until you hear the rest.”

  India waited.

  “I quit the show.”

  That show was her sister’s baby, and India’s heart broke a little bit. She kept stroking.

  “The season is about to begin. Sharon wanted me to stay until the end of this season.”

  “Sharon has been kind and patient these past few months.” China had missed work on crucial days and her boss had done nothing more than lecture her about how important she was to the show and how much they needed her work ethic. Sharon probably suspected that China was going through some sort of personal crisis, but a boss could only make so many allowances for an employee who had suddenly decided not to show up.

  “Actually, Sharon turned out to be a piece of work. She’s taking this as a personal affront. She thinks I’m going to a competitor and she threatened to sue me if I did.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told her that I hadn’t planned to, but now that she’d shown her true ungrateful colors I was tempted to. Don’t look so disappointed. I’ve worked harder than anyone else there. My show is the first of the channel’s shows that’s licensed to stream in every country that has streaming services. Granted, Rico and Ashna helped with making the show a phenomenon, but I was the one who got Ashna in, which got Rico in. I was the one who made sure that we took the audience interest and mined ratings gold from it.”

  “You probably took her by surprise, and this is just her knee-jerk reaction to get you to stay until the end of the season.”

  “She threatened to end my career, India. She told me that I wouldn’t work in the industry again if I quit the show now.”

  “Oh, sweetheart. You deserve more respect than that. How dare she?”

  That made China smile for the first time today.

  “But you know she has a temper, she says things when she feels threatened. You usually do such a great job managing her. Go back and tell her you’ll finish up the season. Then find someone who can replace you. Do this responsibly.”

  “I can’t. I told you I can’t be separated from Song for even a day. Nothing else matters.” There was fire in China’s eyes. She was consumed by her feelings. “I wish you knew how I feel. This beautiful painful joy. This desperate need for someone. I’d give up my career twenty times for it. I’d give up everything. You’ll never understand. It’s not who you are. You have no idea how lucky you are that you don’t feel things this way.”

  India’s laugh felt bitter in her mouth. On the TV behind China, the news played on mute, showing the clip of Yash speaking to reporters, again. She was lucky indeed. So lucky that there was no respite from his smiling face and tortured eyes that sought her out relentlessly. She kept turning the TV off, then turning it back on because at least that much of him she could have.

  He’d been resplendent in the debate. Brilliant with facts, decent in the face of his opponent’s attacks, fiercely empathetic, fearlessly vulnerable with showing his heart and purpose.

  Why had she watched? How could she not have?

  China turned around and followed her eyes to the TV. “I can’t believe Yash is going to be our governor. Can you believe it? Someone I’ve known almost all my life. He looks good, doesn’t he? Not the way he looked when he was hanging around here all the time.”

  “It was three days.”

  China cocked her head at her.

  “He wasn’t here all the time.” Just three days.

  “And that’s all it took for you to set him straight. You’re a genius. If you weren’t so laid-back, you’d be a millionaire.”

  India laughed again. “So I’m not just a feelingless robot, I’m also unmotivated and lazy.” She got up and went to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Mom insisted on working in the incense workshop, even though the medication made her nauseated and weak. She needed to eat something. Maybe some avocado cocoa cookies with tea.

  “India!” China followed her. “That’s not what I said and you know it.”

  “You’re right. I do know that’s not w
hat you said.” But it’s what she had meant.

  China took her hands this time. “Are you really angry with me? You know I admire you more than anyone else. You’re my role model. I wish I could be as solid, as dependable as you, no matter how bad the storm. That’s what I meant. Please don’t be angry with me. I can’t have you be angry with me right now.”

  “I’m not angry with you. I could never be angry with you. I just want you to be careful. Please. I can’t watch you get hurt.” China might think India didn’t feel as much as she did, but India knew that China could not survive what this felt like. Not being able to have the one person who was created for you. Knowing that with every fiber of your being and not having it.

  “I won’t. Song loves me. She’s waiting to be able to show that to the world. She’s just figuring out how to do it.” She slipped her hands around India and India held her tight.

  “What are you planning to do when you get there?”

  “Maybe I’ll find a job in Seoul. They have a huge TV industry. I shouldn’t have trouble finding a job there, right?”

  “Anyone would be lucky to hire you. Only a brainless person wouldn’t see that as soon as they meet you.”

  China laughed in her arms and the world felt bearable again.

  On the television screen Yash was back, his hand in his girlfriend’s as she gazed at him adoringly. India squeezed her sister tighter.

  “Hey, don’t worry so much. I’m going to be fine.” China pulled away and peered at India’s face. “India? I’m going to be okay. Don’t be like this.”

  India nodded. “I know,” she said, every breath burning her lungs. “I know.” She could do nothing to help herself, but China had a chance at happiness, and she’d be damned if she didn’t put all her faith behind it.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Yash had hoped for a quiet visit with his grandmother and Esha. Even so, he should not have been surprised by the fact that his parents, Nisha, and Ashna were parked on the white couch in the living room of Aji and Esha’s suite, his grandmother’s tea service on a trolley between them.