by Sonali Dev
But Jen had helped her as much as she could. It was all up to her now. Watching Nikhil go through the remnants of his marriage had made her feel like someone had peeled off her scabs and left her perennially ripe wounds exposed. Despite her lecturing Nikhil about moving on and getting through the pain one step at a time, all she wanted was to shove past it for him.
And no, it wasn’t because she couldn’t bear to see him in pain, but because running out of time meant losing everything.
For all the relief of having dragged Nikhil away from the absolute darkness he’d been trapped inside, she was here to steal from him. She wasn’t a complete idiot. She knew exactly why she’d been able to get this far. He sensed her brokenness, recognized it, unlike everyone else who never saw beyond the frozen exterior. At first she’d thought that was the reason he leaned on her, because her brokenness made his own less daunting. It was why he focused on her pain every time he needed to deal with his own. But that wasn’t all it was. Truth was, he was someone who couldn’t walk away from broken things without trying to fix them.
Luck had been on Naag’s side when he had picked her out on set because of her Nepalese features and then found out that she was a single mother. Such an easy target.
The fact that she came with the horrors of her past was entirely coincidental. Without those she would never have been able to get through to Nikhil. Who would have thought a time would come when she would have to be grateful for what had happened to her?
In the kitchen, Ria Parkar was still talking to Nikhil’s mother in hushed tones, and there was no way to get out of the basement without passing through the kitchen. Those two were the last people on earth she wanted to face right now. The looks they had thrown her when they’d heard she was going to be with Nikhil when he went through Jen’s things still stabbed at her skin like needles.
Not that she blamed them. They had good instincts to know that she was after something. Only, contrary to what they believed, it wasn’t Nikhil.
“We have to cancel, Uma Atya,” Ria Parkar said. “Nikhil can’t handle it. There is no way I’m having a baby shower with Nikhil in the house. You know what that baby meant to him.”
“We can’t not have the ceremony,” Nikhil’s mother’s voice said after a long pause. She sounded like she was crying. “We have to do the aarti blessings and I have to make the cravings feast. This baby is a miracle, beta. We can’t let her come into the world with no celebration. It’s inauspicious. It’s not what Jen would have wanted.”
“Do you know his plans? Maybe we can wait.”
“He’s spoken all of two lines to me.” Nikhil’s mother sounded so sad, Jess’s heart did that horrible squeeze again. “But I hope he’s not leaving soon. I don’t know what I would do if he took off again.”
“Viky can talk to him and find out. If he’s going back to the ship, can’t we do it then? I don’t want him to leave either, Uma Atya, but I can’t do that to him. As it is, this feels wrong.”
Uma gasped. “Don’t say that. How can it be wrong that you have this gift?”
“Nikhil and Jen.” Now Ria seemed to be struggling with tears. “They were the ones who should have been here. We should have planned Jen’s dohal jevan, not mine.” For a moment the resentment Jess felt toward the woman eased.
“But we can’t wait. It’s the ninth month.”
“What are you doing?” Nikhil’s voice floated up the stairs behind Jess.
She spun around and ran down the steps before he made it all the way up. “I was coming back to see how you were.”
“I’m fine,” he said, only one step below her, his eyes level with hers. The red-rimmed exhaustion in them made a strange restlessness churn inside her.
A normal person would be able to say something, maybe stroke his cheek, do something to soothe him. She just stood there looking in his pain-ripe eyes.
He was the one who reached up and touched her face, flipping the world on its head by soothing her. “I couldn’t have done this without you. Thanks.”
She took two steps up. “You thanked me already.”
“I’m sorry, that was horrible of me.” His lips quirked the slightest bit, but the pain in his eyes didn’t budge.
She should smile back, say something to lighten the moment, to acknowledge how brave he was. She backed up another step, trying to get away from all that gratitude and courage.
The door above them flew open, and she spun around and lost her balance, fumbling for the railing as she fell backward. Her back slammed against Nikhil. His arms wrapped around her. His body kept them both from toppling over and landing on their bums. A shock of heat flushed through her, the push of his thighs registering against her bottom, the press of his forearms finding the undersides of her breasts.
Nikhil’s mother and Ria Parker gaped at them as though they’d been caught holding each other naked. Behind her Nikhil started to shake, his shoulders vibrating against hers. She spun around in his arms to find him laughing. Of all things.
“You should have seen your face when the door opened,” he told her. “Aie, one of these days you’ll learn to knock.”
She turned to Nikhil’s mother’s half-frowning, half-smiling face. “Are you all right?” she asked Jess and then shook her head at Nikhil. “Nikhil has this horrible habit of laughing at the most inappropriate times.”
For one second, the three of them smiled at one another as if it were just another day.
“She’s right,” he said through the laughter that wiped him clean. “It’s a horrible habit.” But his arms were still around her, gentler than any touch she’d ever experienced, and she couldn’t respond to his smile.
She pushed him away and he set her straight, his hands slipping off her waist carefully. Completely clinical. He didn’t even seem to suspect the fire that burned where his thigh had touched hers, where her back had molded into his chest.
In a flash the heat was gone. Shame and panic doused everything that had just bubbled up inside her, and it left the feel of other hands in its wake.
Hands that tore at her. No. Don’t fall into that darkness. Not now. She tried to step away, but was trapped between Nikhil’s body and his mother’s. Don’t start shaking. Don’t dare start shaking.
Nikhil’s mother stepped back quickly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you, beta.”
The gentleness in her voice made Jess want to start shaking even more. “No. Please, it’s not your fault. I just lost my balance.”
She knew Nikhil was watching her, but she couldn’t look at him. The stairway was too narrow, and the walls started to close around her. She would not faint. God, please don’t let her faint.
“Aie, let’s go up. You two look pretty scary glowering down at us like that. It’s a good thing I was standing right here, because she could have hurt herself if she’d fallen.” All the levity was gone from him now.
“Nikhil, please. I’m fine.”
Ria pushed through the door and Nikhil’s mother followed her into the kitchen. “I was just going to bring down some coffee. Unless, Jess, you prefer chai?” she said, the bright kitchen lighting her up from behind.
Jess was about to say no when Nikhil walked past her. “She prefers chai. But she doesn’t like ginger in hers. I’ll just make her a cup.” He picked up a stainless-steel kettle and held it under the faucet.
“You don’t like ginger in your chai? What kind of person doesn’t like ginger in their chai?” his mother asked, placing the softest hand on her shoulder, that touch taking away all the panic from before.
“Don’t let her scare you,” Nikhil said, when the kettle was on the stove. “Admonishing you is how she shows affection.”
Ria Parkar and Nikhil exchanged commiserating glances as Ria arranged some biscuits on a plate. “Nikhil, I think you should sit down, because guess what Uma Atya made?”
Nikhil stuck his nose up and sniffed the air like a dog. His hand reached for the lid on a pot sitting on the countertop.
His mother smacked his hand. “It’s not a guess if you look!”
“Oh, you think I can’t smell your carrot halwa now?” He lifted the lid off the pot, stuck a finger into the bright orange dessert, and popped a fingerful into his mouth. His eyes fluttered shut. “Wow, Aie!” He was about to stick those fingers, which had just come out of his mouth, back in when Ria Parkar shook a spoon in his face and jabbed it into the halwa. The woman did have some redeeming qualities after all.
He used it to scoop a heaped spoonful of it into his mouth.
Before he could dunk his spoon back in the halwa, Ria slid a plate at him and used a different spoon to serve him some. A smile played around Nikhil’s mouth.
His mother put some on another plate and handed it to Jess. “How about you at least offer it to your friend first? I would ask where your manners are, but you just stuck your fingers in a serving bowl.” She patted Jess’s cheek. “Eat, beta. Do you like sweets?”
She had loved sweets as a child. Hungered for them even, but she’d rarely had any. Now she just felt strange eating them.
Nikhil held her gaze. “Seriously, I think wars might be fought if someone discovered Aie’s carrot halwa.” He pointed to her plate with his spoon and put another spoonful in his mouth.
She followed his unspoken advice and tried some.
Holy. Lord. Above!
Nikhil threw her a smug grin. Ria grabbed a spoon and dug into Nikhil’s plate. Nikhil’s aie sank into a chair with a satisfied smile.
For a few moments they just ate. There could be nothing else when there was this, this crazy assault of sweet, buttery flavor on your tongue. No wonder Jen had loved it so much.
Everyone around her froze.
Please, God, don’t let her have spoken that out loud.
“How did you know Je—did you know her well?” Ria’s voice was strained, and her eyes darted to Nikhil, who had stopped eating. “Did you work with her?”
“Jess has Jen’s—” Nikhil’s flat words never had the chance to make it out of his mouth.
She cut him off. “Yes, I knew her well. It was for a very short time, but I did know her well.” She looked at Nikhil, silently pleading with him to not tell them about the heart. They absolutely could not find out.
“Did you work at the clinic with her?” Ria said, studying her. “Actually, you look familiar. Have we met?”
Fantastic. Perfect timing for the star’s memory to kick in.
Nikhil raised an eyebrow at her, every trace of laughter gone from his eyes. His quicksilver mood swinging all the way back to the darkest dark. Fortunately, he held his silence, taking his time to chew the dessert he suddenly didn’t seem to want anymore. It was clear he wasn’t going to say anything about the heart. But he wasn’t about to help her either.
It was a good thing she had enough practice doing just fine without help. “I never had a chance to meet any of you because we knew each other for too short a time.”
“Really? Jen usually took so long to make friends,” Ria said, still watching her like a hawk.
“It surprised me too. It was really unusual how we connected.”
Nikhil narrowed his eyes at her. It was the slightest move, but of course his cousin caught it. Weren’t pregnant women supposed to get all fuzzy in the head? This one was as sharp as a crow’s beak.
She used it to peck some more. “How did you meet Nikhil? Did Jen introduce the two of you?” Well, at least she was no longer having trouble saying Jen’s name in Nikhil’s presence.
“You’re full of questions today, Ria.” So he did decide to help her out after all. “Jess found me on the cruise ship.” Or to throw her under a speeding cruise ship.
“Found you? She just happened to be on the same cruise ship as you?”
Nikhil didn’t look like he was going to answer, so she did. “Actually, I went there looking for him. I wanted to make sure he was okay. It’s what Jen wanted.”
“Jen asked you to take care of him?” Ria’s eyes went all wide with hurt, but the way she said the word you, as though no one in their right mind could possibly put someone like her above The Ice Princess, made it impossible for Jess to conjure up any sympathy for the star.
So she wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her perfectly etched mouth, but she was the one who had dragged Nikhil off the ship. He’s been on that cruise ship for two years. I didn’t see anyone else boarding the ship to bring him home. She wanted to say the words so badly she had to clench her jaw to keep from saying them.
Nikhil’s suddenly furious gaze was filled with warning.
Not that she needed the warning. She couldn’t go up against Princess Ria and win. She knew that.
“I’d still be on the cruise ship if Jess hadn’t shown up,” he said, jabbing the carrot halwa with his spoon.
“You asked us not to come,” Ria Parkar said, throwing another loaded glare at Jess. But when she looked at Nikhil her eyes were sad again.
He pushed away the bowl of halwa. “So I did,” he said in a tone so sad, there was no way to respond to it. And just like that they were back to where they had started.
26
What happens if one of us dies? It’s possible. Look how we live. I wonder which one of us would handle it better. Actually, I don’t. Nic would be a disaster.
—Dr. Jen Joshi
She slipped out of the kitchen and headed for the stairs, leaving the family to the sadness she had no place in. It marked her indelibly as the outsider she was.
But she couldn’t go back to that room that was every little boy’s dream and which reminded her too much of her little boy and the fact that she had failed to protect him. She let herself out the front door. Almost all the snow was gone, leaving behind endless wetness. Instead of the sharp bite of cold, there was a gentle chill in the air that smelled like winter but felt like spring, and it brought back a million memories from her childhood.
The scrape of wool against chapped skin, the slap of icy wind on her cheeks. It had been a million years since she’d felt anything but the Mumbai heat, sticky as a blanket of steam that wrapped around you and didn’t ease up for anything. This cold scraped at her and soothed her all at once.
She spread out her arms and embraced it, wanting to spin and spin in it until time turned back. She wanted to scream at the sky. Wanted to go back in there and shout into Nikhil’s face, into his smug cousin’s face. Wanted to tell them to just stop it and hold each other. To be the family they were. But she couldn’t remember the last time she’d let anything inside her loose or said what she wanted to say.
There was this tree at the edge of the river in her village that she had loved jumping off. What she loved most about it was that moment when she threw herself into the air. She would squeeze her eyes shut and imagine that the river had suddenly dried up. That false moment of terror had sent a heady flare of adrenaline through her. But that deep knowing that the water would be there to keep her from breaking her bones was what she had really loved most. That welcome slap of water so dependable it reinforced her own existence. She no longer knew what that felt like.
The carpet of grass beneath her feet was waterlogged. It sloshed around her ankles, making her glad that she had left her shoes in the house. She had walked through snow in handmade shoes as a child. Her feet ate up the wet cold, hungrily consuming the sense memories as she put distance between herself and new memories she knew she shouldn’t be making.
No matter how much she hid from it, her mind kept reaching for how necessary Nikhil had made her feel in that basement. The warmth of his arms around her sat heavy on her skin. She rubbed her arms to erase it, to embrace it. But it had felt so good. He had felt so good. His trust had felt so good. Then there was that other feeling. The one that had made her belly clench as his body pressed against hers and his arms wrapped around her to keep her from falling.
She waited for the panic to follow, for her memories to rip away the warm, safe haven of that fleeting feeling.
Th
ere was no panic.
Knowing it was Nikhil took away the panic.
That’s what made him dangerous. She didn’t want these feelings. Not knowing was so much better than being handed this list of everything your life was missing.
One: This is how it feels to have someone make you tea without even thinking about it.
Two: This is what it’s like to have someone leave food out for you, even if you’re an afterthought.
It made you start wondering what it would be like to feel those things for real, for life.
A pang of longing for her mother sliced through her. She spun around and looked at the huge house. Big enough for ten families, and her aama had died in a seven-foot-by-seven-foot room with a crumbling cement floor and peeling walls, the lime dust from the whitewash hurrying up the degeneration of her malignant lungs.
She wanted to pick up a rock and hurl it at the house. Its solid serenity against the bright sky an abomination of the memory of the house that had chewed up her mother and then spit her out like the red katha-stained tobacco her uncle had loved to squirt into walls after it had served its purpose. Its warm coziness an abomination of the house that had raped her childhood out of her.
If you let me touch those, I’ll give you my wife’s old wool coat. The shopkeeper who owned the shanty grocer’s shop at the end of her lane had begun eying her chest long before her breasts had started to bud. He’d repeated some form of that offer every time she passed by shivering in the cold. His eyes doing the job when there were other customers present and his mouth couldn’t.
The memory of him stroking his thing through his pants every time her aunt sent her to pick up eggs and bread still made her sick to her stomach. Even as far back as eight years old, she remembered it tenting his pants as he tried to stroke her hand while slipping her the bags. She had learned to stop crying before she got home. The only thing more shameful than ignored tears was exposing your sick mother to more pain.
When she turned fourteen and her breasts became impossible to squish into the cotton inners her mother sewed for her, he had become more and more insistent. Until one day he’d come around the display of orange candies and biscuits and tried to push her into the corrugated iron sheets that held up the rusted roof of his shanty store.
