A Change of Heart

by Sonali Dev

  “You know him, he didn’t want to let me know he was missing you, so he must’ve called. He’s doing fine. You have to trust me.”

  She waited until she could speak without choking up. “Of course I trust you.”

  Joy would never throw a tantrum or ask about her, because he wouldn’t want to upset Sweetie. That he felt the need to be so careful was a stain on her heart, her greatest failure.

  “I’ll have your baby call you as soon as he wakes up, okay?”

  “Thanks, Sweetie. I can never repay you. You know that, right?” There was so much she could never repay him for. This was just a drop in the ocean. If he hadn’t offered to rent her a room in his flat when she had first come to Mumbai, she didn’t know what would have happened to her.

  “Oy, what’s this? I’m getting emotion out of you? Next thing I know, you’re going to be sobbing on the phone.”

  No joking. She was this close to just that.

  “How have you been? How’s Armaan?”

  “Don’t mention that jerk to me. I don’t want to talk about him, or talk to him ever again.” This didn’t surprise her at all. Sweetie and his boyfriend were perpetually on the off-again-on-again roller coaster. They’d been together for ten years, but Armaan, who fancied himself TV’s biggest star, was still firmly inside the closet. Given that he had a wife and three kids who were the very poster of the wholesome Indian family, he was never, ever coming out of it. That was never going to change.

  Sweetie didn’t expect it to either. Mumbai could handle an openly transsexual person who mocked himself on screen to give them a good laugh, but bringing a public homosexual relationship with a married man into the mix was asking for far too much. To Armaan’s credit, when he wasn’t being a jerk, he made Sweetie happy. For that alone, Jess would forgive him all his obnoxiousness.

  “This has to do with you needing all this time for Joy, doesn’t it?”

  “See, baby, you should go out with him, you get him so well.”

  “I’m sorry, Sweetie. It won’t be much longer, I promise.”

  “Shut up. I really don’t need you getting all senti with me. I would do anything for Joy, and it hurts me when you act like I’m doing you some big favor. I love Joy. So don’t insult me, please. I get enough of that shit from that man. He has been driving me half insane with his bull. I mean, excuse me, but if I’m okay with sharing him with his family then why can’t he be okay with me taking care of my family? I mean, the man is fifty years old, he needs to grow up, for God’s sake.”

  She let him vent for a while longer before letting him go. Focusing on Sweetie’s problems was relaxing and she indulged for a bit, not missing the irony she was living. All the distraction in the world wasn’t going to save her from going down and facing the frosty awkwardness of Nikhil’s family. In the end, your demons were more loyal than any friend. They were always there waiting with open arms.

  She made her way down the stairs, the carpet sinking like pillows beneath her feet, the polished banister sliding smooth beneath her fingers. The house was so large she wouldn’t have known where to go if it weren’t for Nikhil’s voice echoing from the kitchen. His tone was like dry tarp around wet pain, jarringly detached.

  That tone made her grind to a halt outside the room.

  “I met her on the ship, Aie. What more do you want to know?”

  “Arrey, what kind of question is that? You just bring someone home—no call, no nothing, and I’m not even supposed to ask who she is? How are we supposed to behave with her?”

  “The way you behave with all my friends.”

  “So she’s a friend?” This was from Ria Parkar.

  “Of course she’s a friend. Ria, why don’t you start, I’m sure Jess won’t mind.” This had to be Vikram, given the worshipful note in his voice.

  “Yes, Ria, beta, I think it’s time you ate and got some rest.” Nikhil’s mother sounded nothing like she had a minute ago. Ms. Film Star seemed to be everyone’s pet around here.

  “I ate an hour ago. I swear if you two don’t get off my back, I’m not eating at all.” A spoiled pet, apparently.

  Jess forced herself into the kitchen “Sorry, I didn’t mean to keep everyone waiting.”

  The family turned to her as one, assessing her across the table piled with food that smelled so good she prayed her starving belly didn’t decide to make itself heard.

  Nikhil pulled out the chair next to him. All those gazes switched their focus to him. She wished he’d stop doing things like that, wished she didn’t know why he was doing it.

  “Thanks.” The quickest way to get everyone to look away was to sit down.

  Nikhil picked up her plate and started spooning rice onto it, watching her for a “when.” She nodded before the mound grew embarrassingly high. Now that she could smell food, her stomach was all but crawling up her gullet for it.

  Nikhil’s mother fussed over Ria Parkar’s plate, eliciting a long-suffering sigh. The star caught Jess staring and a detached mask descended across her face. No wonder they called her The Ice Princess in Bollywood. Not even a flicker of recognition crossed her eyes. Jess had nothing to worry about. Since when did stars like Ria Parkar start noticing chorus dancers like her, no matter how many films they’d danced in together?

  “Please start, Jess,” Nikhil’s father said kindly. No marks for guessing whose personality Nikhil had inherited.

  Nikhil’s hand hovered over his plate like an airplane struggling to land in turbulent weather. He stared at the food, seeing neither the roti, nor the dal, nor the red-gravied chicken that was making Jess dizzy with wanting.

  This was exactly how he had been with the muffins. He hadn’t been able to touch them until she had thrust them into his hand.

  “Nikhil, could you pass me a roti, please?” she said before anyone noticed.

  He looked up at her, lost. It took him a second to process what she had said and reach for the rotis.

  “I need only half, if that’s okay.”

  He tore one round roti in half and handed it to her.

  Now that he was holding one half of it, he broke off a piece, dipped it in the dal, and put it in his mouth.

  She exhaled the breath she’d been holding and mirrored his actions.

  They ate in silence. Their silence intertwining with the silence at the table, but not merging with it. He kept it apart, his eyes straying to her every now and again and avoiding everyone else he should’ve been looking at. After the welcome they’d given him earlier, the quiet felt malignant.

  “I hope the food is all right.” His mother’s voice was such a relief, Jess almost choked in her hurry to answer.

  “It’s delicious.” It really was. Even if this hadn’t been their first real meal in two days, it would have been some of the best food she’d ever tasted.

  A hint of a smile lifted his mother’s lips, transforming her face, transforming the room, even as her brows drew together. “Really? It’s not too bland?”

  It’s exactly what Aama would’ve asked. “Not at all, it’s perfect.”

  She slid a quick glance at her son. “Thanks. Nikhil likes his food spicy. But I had no idea . . . I wasn’t . . . Nikhil, beta, do you want some chutney?”

  “No, Aie. Really. It’s great.”

  “Actually, spicy food bothers Ria these days, so . . .” She blinked as if she’d made another wrong turn down another forbidden path.

  It was so heartbreaking, Jess turned to Ria Parkar. “How far along are you?”

  The silence in the room turned positively explosive. How had she forgotten that Ms. Parkar’s pregnancy was the live bomb not to be touched?

  Everyone shifted. Then froze. No one seemed able to breathe. Each individual awkwardness mixed in the air like a discordant orchestra.

  Instead of an answer she got a look of utter loathing from the star.

  “Yes, Ria, how far along are you? Or can’t you tell me because I won’t be able to handle it?” Nic said.

  His mothe
r groaned.

  “Nic, come on,” Vikram said.

  Nikhil narrowed his eyes at Jess in response to the look she threw him.

  All those gazes loaded with anger and hurt ricocheted around the room like little torpedoes. If she’d known her question would tip the dominos of all the things Nikhil was feeling, naturally, she wouldn’t have asked it. Entitled princesses like Ria Parkar could take their guilt trips somewhere else. Her quota was full, thank you very much.

  “When was I supposed to tell you, Nikhil?” Ria said, turning to Nikhil, her voice quiet and hurt and entirely devoid of the anger she had just flashed at Jess. “It’s not like you answered my calls. I haven’t had a real conversation with you in two years.”

  “Is there any yogurt in the fridge?” Vikram asked. “This okra is a little spicy.”

  “I’ll get it.” Nikhil stood. “I think I’m done.”

  “Sit down, Nic, and finish the food your mother cooked.” Nikhil’s father didn’t raise his voice, but Jess would have been shocked if anyone had dared to argue with him.

  Nikhil sat back down. “By the way, you know how you were asking me how I know Jess? Well, she—”

  “I knew Jen. In Mumbai.” Jess cut him off, her heartbeat suddenly haywire.

  His eyes narrowed again, but he didn’t contradict her. There was no question of letting him tell his family about the heart. With The Great Wall of Family staring down at her, she had no doubt they’d strip down every word of her story, maybe even knife her in the night if they thought they could take Jen’s heart back.

  “You’re her friend?” his mother asked just as Ria said, “She never mentioned you.”

  Nikhil stood again. “Seriously, I’m not hungry. I just drove twenty hours. All I need is a little sleep. We can catch up with the inquisition tomorrow.” With that he was gone.

  And she was still here.

  She felt her cheeks heat, but she was too embarrassed to touch them. Her hands turned cold over her still-full plate. Suspended animation. That’s what this was. With her heartbeat as the background score.

  “Jess.”

  She spun around at the sound of Nikhil’s voice.

  “You’re done too, aren’t you?” Once again he held out his hand.

  No one suspected how badly he did not want her to take it.

  She didn’t.

  But she did follow him out. Right after she had thanked his mother for the meal and seen a mother’s pain in her eyes.

  20

  People think secrets are about lies, or shame. But what secrets are really about is fear.

  —Dr. Jen Joshi

  Nikhil had been sitting on the floor of his childhood bedroom for over an hour now, but he could not bring himself to climb the ladder to his bed. If he didn’t leave the room right now, he was going to go down to his father’s bar and empty a bottle of Jack down his throat.

  He slid open the door to the Jack and Jill bath he had shared with Ria and stepped inside. Now it was Jess on the other side of the door in Ria’s room. Probably fast asleep.

  The door to her side slid open.

  She froze in place, her eyes wide with horror. Her arms went around herself, struggling to hide not her usual humongous sweatshirt but a fitted tank top that came down to her underwear and skimmed the most spectacular pair of legs he had ever laid eyes on.

  She cleared her throat. His head snapped up and he caught the flaming blush on her cheeks before he spun around and looked away.

  Idiot. Idiot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the image of her knees pushing self-consciously together burning a hole in his head.

  He heard the door slide shut behind him and then some quick muffled movements he was far too aware of.

  When the door slid back open he didn’t turn around. “I had no idea you were still up.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said from behind him, then added more softly, “You can turn around now.”

  When he did she was exactly the way he had always seen her. Huge black sweatshirt, loose sweatpants. All that ridiculously beautiful skin over ridiculously beautiful muscle he should never have witnessed, put away. He really should never have set eyes on it, because now he couldn’t un-see it.

  The Goddess of Darkness without her darkness.

  Her hair was tucked into her sweatshirt, a sign of how quickly she’d pulled her clothes back on. He wanted to flip it out, set her straight. Now that her hair was brown he couldn’t seem to remember how it had looked red.

  “I couldn’t sleep either,” he said, sounding every bit like the pathetic bastard he was.

  Her eyes remained undisturbed, no accusation, no judgment, no sympathy. Just a whole lot of knowing. Someday this girl would tell him how she knew pain so well. How she handled it with so much grace when it turned every other person he knew into cringing strangers.

  He walked up to her. She looked startled, her flush going crazy and painting itself into two streaks across her cheeks the way it had a habit of doing. He reached around her. “Both our rooms open into this bathroom.” He slid the door in place and flipped and then undid the lock. “Remember to lock both the doors when you’re in here, okay?”

  He stepped back and she exhaled. “I’ve never seen a bathroom like this.” She turned her flaming face away and looked around the marble-and-travertine room with the Jacuzzi in one corner that probably had never, ever been used and the huge Ficus tree that reached for the skylight. He still remembered it as a tiny sapling his dad had let him pick up at Home Depot when they’d gone out to buy a lightbulb.

  The space was so familiar he had stopped noticing the details. Now he saw them through her eyes. The huge skylight, the heavy wood-framed mirror. He had no idea if she meant the two doors or the decadence of the bathroom itself.

  “Why would a bathroom have two doors like this?” she asked.

  “It’s called Jack and Jill.”

  “Jack and Jill? Like the nursery rhyme?” She smiled a confused smile that turned her young and full of wonder. His heart did the tiniest little stutter.

  Before he could stop it, that image of her in her underwear flashed in his mind. He backed up all the way to the other end of the room. “I have no idea where that name came from. But it allows two bedrooms in the house to have attached bathrooms.”

  She slid the door open a crack and left it like that. The smile on her face widened the slightest bit. “What is it with us and bathroom doors?”

  He had to smile in response.

  “So you and Ria Parkar shared this bathroom growing up?” She seemed to have connected his family’s reaction to him announcing that she would be staying in Ria’s room to the adjoining doors.

  He nodded and looked back at Ria’s door. “I smashed Ria’s fingers in there once.”

  “Ouch.” She pressed her own fingers together.

  “Yup. Slammed the door shut without realizing her hand was in there. She always puts the ‘without realizing’ in air quotes when she tells the story. We spent a lot of time in here talking and torturing each other.”

  “I can’t imagine you torturing anyone,” she said, and then looked away, embarrassed, her fingers twisting together.

  He walked over to the Jacuzzi and sat down on the marble steps and patted the stone next to him, inviting her to sit down. Neither one of them seemed sleepy. She didn’t move.

  “It was easy to torture Ria. She’s very proper, and she had to have everything in its place. So I used to move all her stuff around. I thought I was just teasing. But of course I was acting out. I just didn’t realize it until much later. Ria kind of took over my parents’ attention when she came down for the summers. Then when she was gone, I missed her terribly. You know, your typical sibling shit.”

  He liked that she got that Ria wasn’t just his cousin. It wasn’t usually this simple to explain it.

  “You didn’t tell me your cousin was Ria Parkar.” She said Ria’s name with a mix of bitterness and awe.

  “You know h
er?”

  “You know someone who doesn’t know her?”

  He found himself smiling again. She was in quite a mood today.

  “So the two of them, Ria Parkar and her husband, they’re both your cousins? So they’ve known each other a long time.”

  “Pretty much their whole life. They were separated for a good ten years. They got back together at our wedding.” He slid her a glance, but the mention of his wedding didn’t throw her into a panic, like it did everyone else.

  “That sounds very film-y.” She gave him a small smile. One that had everything to do with what they were talking about and nothing to do with the fact that he had dared to mention his past.

  He got up and reached out. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her down next to him.

  She sat, but she tugged her arm back and folded her hands in her lap before giving him a curious look. “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  She blinked up at him. “For?”

  “For being so cool with me talking about Jen. Everyone else freaks out every time I mention her name. It’s not like just because she’s gone, she’s disappeared, you know?” Because she hadn’t. She was still with him. Inside him. He would never, could never, let her go.

  “I think.” She stopped and studied him in that way she had, as if she were dipping a toe in unpredictable waters.

  “What?”

  “Maybe everyone’s just being sensitive to your feelings.”

  “But I need to talk about her.”

  “I know.”

  How? How did she know exactly what he needed? How was he here? Sitting in his childhood bathroom, off the ship, sober, having a conversation. Things that had seemed impossible just a week ago.

  “Have you? Has Jen, you know, spoken to you since—”

  The softness in her eyes hardened just a tiny bit. “No. It hasn’t happened since I met you.” Her intertwined fingers clasped and released. “I’m sorry,” she said, meeting his eyes.

  He looked away and took in the details of the bathroom he’d stopped noticing decades ago. Fresh towels, a glass with a full tube of toothpaste, candles. How his mother managed to keep the bathroom from looking as if it had not been used for years he didn’t know. But there was still life in it. It felt warm and lived in.