Far From Home

by Lorelie Brown

  “I have a really small family.”

  “How many siblings do you have?”

  I glance at Pari. “None.”

  Maybe we should have gone over this earlier. I should have been briefed on the probable interrogation that was coming my way. Because no matter what kind expression Niharika has arranged her smile into, I know what this really is.

  “How surprising,” she says before sipping her chai. “And your mother? How many siblings does she have?”

  “None. My dad had a brother.” I lean toward Pari because at least I know her. She holds straight and steady, my rock. She pats my knee. “Their families took part in the post–World War II WASP diaspora. We’re not very connected to our other family.”

  “The wasp diaspora?” Niharika’s brows knit together. “I’m sorry, I do not know this event.”

  My first impulse is to scrunch smaller into the back of the couch. I pick up a red accent pillow and hold it in my lap instead. “Stupid joke. Sorry. My grandparents moved out to California in the fifties, after World War II. They settled in Pasadena and Wilshire. That’s all I meant.”

  “And do they still live there?” Niharika is calculating. Upping my percentage of the guest count, I guess.

  I shake my head. “No. They’re gone now. It’s just me and my mom and my uncle.”

  “And your uncle’s family?” she prompts.

  Except I have nothing to give her there either. Terry is as gay as can be and moved to San Francisco about thirty years ago. I love staying in his Castro District Victorian when I visit. “He’s single.”

  “I see.”

  There goes my percentage of the invitations, crashing again. I almost feel like I should go find her a notebook and a set of colored pens so that she can make detailed notes. Maybe she needs one of those big flat maps that generals use to move mechanized units around on. We could set it up in the dining room. Instead of miniature tanks, we’d get her banquet tables and floral displays.

  That isn’t such a bad idea. I bet my buddy Tom could make it. He does a lot of stuff with his hands, including shaping surfboards. He might think it’s funny.

  “I have a lot of friends,” I offer, feeling a little bit like that girl who doesn’t have a date to homecoming and has to go with five girlfriends. Even if we’re going to have fun, we all know it’s not the same.

  “Will your mother come to dinner soon?”

  I look at Pari, who just shrugs. “There’s a lot of ceremony that involves both sides of the families in a Tamil wedding. It might be a good idea to decide which parts we want to do.”

  I am such a fucking idiot. Why did I get any kind of excited over the idea? I know Mom won’t show. She’ll be busy. Plans that can’t be broken. And then I’ll get disappointed over her failure to show up for arrangements for a wedding that’s fake, for Christ’s sake. I wish Pari hadn’t thrown this at me in front of her mother. “Can we talk about this later?”

  Pari immediately nods. Her hand finds mine. Her bones are delicate across my knuckles. “Sure, no problem.”

  I smile at her. I flip my hand over so we’re palm to palm. I want her to feel my relief, my appreciation. I can’t seem to say anything, but that’s fine. She knows. It’s there in the way she’s looking at me.

  “I would like In-N-Out,” Niharika announces. She stands and puts her teacup on a side table before brushing imaginary bits of nothing off the pink silk of her tunic.

  “No, Amma. What?” Pari’s completely taken aback and laughing at the same time.

  Niharika lifts both hands. “Not for a burger. I want french fries and I want them ‘animal style.’”

  “How do you even know about that?” Pari is laughing, but she’s also getting up and doing exactly what her mom wants. She’s effortlessly put together as soon as she slips on Ferragamo flats with a grosgrain ribbon bow across the toes.

  “The internet exists in India, young lady. We’re not savages.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” She scoops up her purse and drags her thick hair back into a ponytail that lies down between her shoulder blades. “I meant what are you doing spending your time looking up fast food on the internet?”

  “I can use my time however I like.” Niharika looks at me, and I can’t read her expression. It’s pleasant. She’s smiling, and her eyes aren’t pinched. But there are depths in her eyes that I don’t understand the same way that I feel like I understand Pari’s. “Would you like to come with us?”

  Can I say no? I can’t tell. I look at Pari, but she mostly looks happy. I feel just the tiniest bit tossed to the wolves. I don’t know how to interpret happy when it comes to what I should do. “No, thanks?”

  Neither Niharika nor Pari look surprised or hurt or wounded by me declining, so my shoulders untighten a fraction.

  “We’ll be home in a little bit.” Pari gives me a kiss on the cheek, and I don’t flinch. “I may take her down to see the ocean.”

  “I don’t know why,” Niharika replies as she rolls her eyes. “She drags me there every time I visit. It’s only water and sand that gets stuck beneath my clothes. I can see the ocean through the windows when I like!”

  “It’s a law. If you visit San Sebastian, you have to touch sand, or you’re not allowed to come back next time,” I say, and then I wish I could cram a fist in my jaw. Because seriously?

  Except, thank God, Niharika laughs. “Maybe this explains it.”

  They leave in another bustle of rapid activity. The door shuts behind them. I stand in the foyer, breathing. Just breathing deep. My ears feel peeled from my skull, and I appreciate the sudden quiet.

  Until the door pops open again. It’s just Pari this time. She whirls in on a cloud of expensive perfume and envelops me in a tight hug.

  “Thank you,” she whispers against my ear. “You’re being fantastic about this all.”

  I can’t hold back the shiver. “You’re welcome.”

  And then she’s gone again, except I feel … warm all over. A smile curls around my mouth. I put the thumbs of loosely curled fists against my bottom lip.

  Maybe … maybe this isn’t going to be so bad.

  Bedtime comes sooner than I expect. Niharika is tired when she gets back from In-N-Out and says good-bye for the night. It’s early, but she’s still on India time. I wonder when she’s going to wake up. Probably before dawn. I hope she has a plan to deal with that.

  Except duh, she probably does. She’s been back and forth between here and her home more than once.

  I spend the evening messing around on my laptop. I waste a lot of time on Tumblr and a little time on Facebook, and in the background I always have open a certain document. One I don’t like to think about too much. It’s Richard’s, after all, not mine. He’s a pretty decent guy considering most of the dude bros I meet in Hollywood, but he’s just this close to self-imploding at any moment. Maybe every moment. Twenty years ago, he was a god of the movies. I even remember Courtney, the nanny who lived in our mother-in-law suite for my kindergarten year, having a massive, obsessive crush on him. That was when Richard was the kind of fresh-faced star who unironically graced wall-sized posters. Now he’s a silver fox with substance abuse problems and a script that needs a whole metric fuck-ton of work before it’s enough of a vehicle to drag him back from obscurity.

  I only add a couple words to it at a time, because if I do it that way, I’m not actually working. It doesn’t mean anything real.

  Pari curls up on the other couch with her laptop. I don’t ask, but I’m pretty sure she’s working, trying to shove in what she can. Whatever the topic is, she’s completely absorbed in it. She’s changed into linen pajamas. The pants are loose, and the top is a button-down. She’s left the top buttons undone, and I try not to watch the arch of her neck. Her brown skin looks especially warm and touchable against the pale-yellow pajamas.

  I look at my keyboard and try to keep my gaze stuck there. Mostly, I succeed. It’s awkward when I start getting tired. I flick over my touch scre
en slowly, as if each new image needs a half hour of inspection. I’m like a toddler who doesn’t want to go to bed. At least I never rub my eyes with my fists.

  I just stare at my screen until Pari claps her computer shut. I jump, but only on the inside. Outside, I think I keep cool.

  “I need to go to sleep,” she says. “Amma will be up early.”

  I nod. I keep nodding. I’m a stupid bobblehead doll, complete with big head and too small a body. “Sure. Sure.”

  “Will you … Are you coming later?”

  “I don’t plan to.” I clap my hand over my mouth. It doesn’t help. I squeak with laughter anyway. “Sorry. Probably bad timing.”

  Pari wrinkles her nose and sticks her tongue out at me.

  “Is that an offer?” I tease, because apparently I like compounding bad taste with more bad taste.

  That’s enough to make her laugh though. I like the way it loosens her up. “If I’m ever offering to lick your pussy, trust me, you’ll know. You’ll know when I’m done too, when you’ve come so many times that your legs won’t hold you up.”

  Not funny anymore. My head spins. I’ve never been talked to like that. I had a boyfriend when I was still in full-blown anorexia status who’d thought he was a dirty talker. Mostly that meant he liked to call me a slut. I’d let him because it made him happy and because I didn’t really care. There was nothing he could say to me that was worse than what I already said to myself.

  It hadn’t been like this. I want to tell Pari to stop because I can’t handle it, and I want to tell her to go on too. What else would she do to me? Is it actually about me, or is this something she’d say to any woman she flirts with?

  I’m dying of excitement and embarrassment at the same time. Laughing it off is my only option. “So many promises over the years.” I shake my head with mock sorrow as I get up. “So sad that no one ever manages to back up bragging like that.”

  “Never?” She tips her head to the side. Her feet are on the couch, and I’m standing above her, looking down. I can see a shadowy hint of cleavage beneath her pajama top, but that’s it. She’s still one of the most sensual people I’ve ever met. It breathes out of her. “You poor, neglected thing.”

  “I’m not neglected. I’ve gotten around.” Maybe I’m warning her? I’m a more terrible person than you think. Beware of me.

  “You could sleep with a hundred people, and it’s not the same thing as sleeping with one who’ll really spend the time messing you up.” She stands, stretching her arms over her head, and I can’t understand how these groundbreaking words are coming out of her mouth while she’s just acting like it’s no big deal at all.

  I give the “heh” of a cranky retiree who wants to pretend they’re still hip. I act as if it takes concentration to fold the lap blanket I’ve been using, and stack my phone on my laptop. I even wrap my power cord up. Because I’m obviously an idiot.

  I follow Pari to the bedroom silently. If we were really a couple, this would be a thing we did all the time. A thing we’d do with laughter or kisses or with our fingers intertwined.

  Have I slept with too many men? Was there really such a thing as too many? I wouldn’t want to tell my number to anyone, so that was probably a bad sign to most people. I’d need a pen and paper to make sure I got them all. That was a bad sign even to me.

  Most of them were in the great gray before. When I was a mess. When I wasn’t healthy. Men liked my too-skinny body a lot. They liked the way my makeup was flawless every day then, and they didn’t question whether I was okay when I felt compelled to get up from bed after sex to reline my lipstick. Or they liked it for a while, and then they didn’t and were done with me. Or they didn’t like it, and they said something, and then I was done with them. Because I needed to be flawless. I craved being flawless.

  I’ve given up on perfection. I don’t quite believe that no one could have it, because there are certain people … Ones I tried not to look at too closely. I didn’t know what color of crazy the inside of their world is painted with. Sometimes I’m almost relieved when Pari is cool, when she makes those slightly cutting comments. At least I know what’s up with her.

  But I still took those cocks. I held them and let them in and fucked them.

  None of them had made me really give a shit. No one had made me come except when my own fingers were on my clit. I figured it was just the way I was built. Anorexia nervosa and anxiety and a low-grade case of the frigids.

  No big deal.

  When Pari closes the door to her room behind us, it feels like a very big deal. I want to know what she’d do with her mouth.

  This is so unfair of me. Pari isn’t a step in my therapy. She’s a human being who has a problem, and we’re trying to solve our problems together. She’s being incredibly generous as it is, lightening the burden of my student loans.

  But thoughts are swirling in my head. Maybe it’s time to step outside of my comfortable, safe space. Maybe I need to start knowing what really makes me tick. What turns me on.

  Obviously, we can put dirty talk pretty high up on that list.

  “Do you sleep on the left side or the right?” Pari’s standing at the end of the bed, busying her hands with folding a shirt she left tossed over the end.

  I shrug, but she’s not looking at me. “Honestly? I’m kind of a sprawler. I’ll try to contain myself, but I don’t care which side.”

  The bed’s a king, so I hadn’t thought this would be so difficult. But it’s not the same thing, standing in a room where it’s the main feature, knowing you’ll lie down on that mattress in moments with another person in arm’s reach.

  “Then I’d like to be on the right, because that’s where I have my phone plugged in.”

  “Works for me.”

  I grab a pair of pajama shorts from my top drawer and go into the attached bathroom to change. I hate the way pants get wrapped around my legs and the sheets while I sleep. But even while I’m switching out my lounge pants for the shorts, I wonder if that’s necessary. It’s not like I’m panty-free, and it’s not like Pari hasn’t seen half-dressed women before. We’re teasing like friends, but last night’s kiss isn’t any reason to be wired up or nervous around her.

  I paw through my thoughts and feelings, trying to figure out why I’d hopped in here to change. I cringe when I finally find the reason: it’s more about me than her. I’m still not comfortable being undressed around anyone.

  Hi, my name is Rachel, and I’m one hundred percent messed up in the head.

  Pari is in bed by the time I come out. She’s turned off the overheads, and the nightstand lamps give the room a soft trickle of light. I hustle to the bed and slide in. The sheets are cool and smooth against my bare legs. I wiggle until I have the blanket tucked up over my shoulders. It’s lightweight and the perfect counter to the slight chill of the air conditioning.

  “So. Good night, I guess.” I look up at the ceiling because I know without trying that rolling to my side and seeing Pari that close will be too much to handle.

  “Thanks for doing this, Rachel.”

  I have to look, because I want to see the warmth that I hear in her voice. She’s lying on her side, knees slightly tucked up. She makes a rounded mound under the blankets and sheets. Her hair is in a braid that curves over her throat.

  I almost say, It’s nothing, but that’s an old habit trying to rear its head. “You’re welcome.”

  “I’ll make it up to you. I’ll be the best wife you never meant to have.” She grins. “Without all the emotional hard stuff.”

  She has no idea how much hard emotional stuff I wade through on a daily basis, but that’s fine. “You already are.”

  We click off the lights. Silver moonlight spills in from the window near the study area, but it doesn’t reach as far as the bed. We’re swathed in darkness. I’m trapped between nervous giggles and the tense feeling of not wanting to move because it would shake the bed.

  “Is this the part where we tell ghost stories?” Par
i asks.

  “What?” I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “American sleepovers. When girls have them in movies, there are usually ghost stories.”

  I laugh, and it’s definitely in the nervous-giggles category. I roll onto my side to face Pari and fold one hand under my pillow. “There’re only ghost stories if some guy is standing outside with a knife.”

  “We’re too many floors up. If anyone’s outside the window with a knife, it’s Spider-Man.”

  “I’ve always suspected Peter Parker was a creeper. I never understood that whole Mary Jane/Gwen Stacy thing.”

  “Don’t forget Betty Brant too.”

  “Who?” I push up on an elbow. I think my eyes are adjusting, because I can at least see the outline of Pari’s jaw and shoulder.

  “Betty Brant. She worked at the Daily Bugle.”

  “And behold, a nerd appears.”

  “A nerd was always here. You just weren’t looking.”

  The air between us thickens and catches in my throat. I hear something different in what could have been a joke. I’m not sure if she meant for it to be there. My response slips out before I have the chance to think twice about it.

  “I’m looking now.”

  I wake up warm and cozy. The blankets are wrapped around me. I’m lying on my side, one hand curled under my pillow and the other on a curve that’s soft and firm at the same time. I keep my eyes closed and nestle closer into the niceness. I smell coconut. Somewhere far away, I hear the distant thump of a helicopter’s blades, but it’s nothing to be worried about. A news copter or something.

  Except, shit, it’s not. It’s knocking at the door.

  Gasping, I sit straight up. Should I answer? It’s Pari I’ve been nestled up against. We’ve both made our way toward the center of the bed—miles from the edge I started the night out clinging to.

  I wiggle back to my side. The knocking comes again, but Pari doesn’t hear it—or doesn’t want to. She makes a grumpy noise and pulls the pillow over her head.

  I poke her. “Hey. That’s your mom.”

  “Nuh-uh.”

  “Yeah-huh.” I shake her shoulder. She’s glowing with the warmth of sleep. Part of me is tempted to pretend I don’t hear anything and snuggle back under the blanket to join her.