Destination Wedding

by Diksha Basu

  “I am,” Marianne said. “I’m going to go take a shower.”

  Tina watched her go inside and said to Rajesh, “Fine, give it to me.”

  “Are you liking Delhi?” Rajesh asked. He stood on the stairs leading up to Tina’s patio. Behind him, two men carried a large metal pole across the lawn. The sun was setting and Tina could see the tube lights on in the club offices across the lawn. Sparrows chirped loudly.

  “I’m from here,” Tina said. “Sort of. I mean I know the city. Are you from here?”

  “Born and raised,” Rajesh said. “And trapped. If I could afford it, I’d move to Pondicherry in a minute.”

  “I’ve never been,” Tina said.

  “You must go. Fresh air, seaside, streets named in French—it’s the best part of India, I think. But I also love the grime of Delhi, you know. If I could afford it, I would spend half the year in Pondicherry and half the year in Delhi.”

  Rajesh looked out at the lawns and asked, “Why has nobody turned the lights on yet? It’s getting late. I have to do everything around here and I have plans tonight. Would you like anything before I go?”

  “Wait,” Tina said. “Listen, what do you do after your shift ends? Can I come out with you?”

  “I would get fired in a minute if Colebrookes ever found out I had taken you out after dark, madam,” Rajesh said.

  “I’ll follow you. Just tell me when you’re leaving and I’ll follow along ten feet behind you.”

  “There you are!” Bubbles Trivedi shouted at Rajesh. “I have been looking all over for you. What? They pay you to just sit around and chitchat all day?”

  “I was working. I brought Tina madam a glass of beet juice,” Rajesh said.

  Bubbles looked over at Tina and said, “Yes, that’s a good idea. Drink it every day, Tina. You won’t look so tired then.”

  “I’m not tired, though!” Tina said but was ignored.

  “Look at my nails.” Bubbles came over and held her hands out to Rajesh and Tina. Each nail had a tiny, little red rose drawn on it. “Laila really knows what she’s doing. Next time we’re doing a Dubai theme. The thumbnail will be a tiny replica of the Burj Khalifa. And we’ll do the Palm Islands, of course, and we’re still brainstorming the other eight fingers.”

  She lifted one rose-painted nail to Tina’s face and said, “Darling, go see her at the salon and tell her to do your eyebrows. You won’t find a husband walking around with eyebrows like that.”

  Bubbles and Rajesh nodded at each other.

  “I’m not looking for a husband,” Tina said. “And I don’t like to have my eyebrows perfectly done. It’s become such an expectation for women.”

  “Oh ho, here we go,” Bubbles said. “Now it’s become societally acceptable for all of you to pretend you don’t want to thread your eyebrows. Your generation now puts as much opposing pressure on women as we did, telling them they aren’t supposed to want to have smooth arms and legs and wear high heels. Well, the high-heel thing is good, anyway. My sciatica pain gets so bad with high heels my whole bottom feels numb. My doctor says it’s because of my weight gain but what does she know?”

  Bubbles opened her purse and took out a box of motichur laddoos and offered one to Tina and Rajesh.

  “Have, have. My cook makes the best laddoos in town. Using only pure ghee and I even have my sugar brought in directly from the Triveni mills.”

  She placed the box on the table, pulled out four fake flowers, set them aside, and took out a packet of wet wipes and handed one to Tina and one to Rajesh. She put everything back in her purse and said, “I told the family fake flowers would look lovely and we can spray them to look real but they got so angry at the suggestion. I’m carrying these to show them how nicely it will work. We’ll only use them for the flowers that nobody can touch and inspect, of course. And in any case, fake flowers cost more than real flowers so it wouldn’t even be a bad thing if people knew. Rajesh, now, you come with me. I need to speak to you.”

  “I really should turn the lights on,” Rajesh said.

  Rajesh and Bubbles walked away from Tina’s cottage and Tina wished she had asked for one more laddoo from Bubbles’s purse. They were rich and dense and crumbly and delicious, and Tina was thinking about how wise Bubbles was for always carrying desserts in her purse when Radha pulled up in a taxi. She got out looking uncharacteristically harried, her hair frizzy, her clothes crumpled, holding several bags.

  “What happened to you?” Tina asked.

  “Where’s David? He was supposed to pick me up from the exhibition. I waited more than an hour but he didn’t show up. Was he with any of you? I’ve been trying to call him but his phone is off because he’s on roaming and he says it costs too much. I told him we got his roaming activated for emergencies so he should leave it on at all times, but of course it isn’t on. Where is he?”

  “I’m sure he’s fine. He’s a capable man.” Tina walked over to her mother and took the bags from her and brought her back to her patio. In the darkness, her mother looked old. Tina had never seen her mother looking old before. In fact, her mother’s refusal to age left Tina feeling forever like a child in her presence. Her mother had taken to divorced life with such ease, doing up an apartment in Manhattan tastefully, walking everywhere, and getting in terrific shape. It was her father who she always saw as old. She remembered the first day she visited him in his new apartment in New Jersey. He had brought tea out to the balcony overlooking the Manhattan skyline, and although the apartment was modern and new and beautiful and surprisingly tastefully done, Tina felt so sad for him that she had to rush away.

  A car pulled into the driveway and they all looked up. Radha got up and stood on the edge of the patio. The car stopped and Mr. Das stepped out, whistling.

  “Why so glum?”

  “David is missing,” Tina said.

  “He’ll be back. Probably just some mild sunstroke,” Mr. Das said with a laugh. “I need to go take a shower; I haven’t thrown a Frisbee around in years. I feel young again. Cheer up, Radha. Nobody ever goes missing when you want them to.”

  Mr. Das walked off and Tina shifted in her chair. She thought she’d say she was going in for a shower too but she didn’t.

  “I’m losing you while trying to find other things. God knows what things. I know you’re itching to get up right now. You hate being alone with me,” Radha said to her.

  Radha walked to the edge of the porch. She put one hand against the wooden railing and looked out. Tina looked at the moonlight and artificial light from the driveway hitting her mother’s face. She knew she looked just like her mother.

  “Where on earth could he be?”

  Radha sat down on the step leading down to the driveway, her back facing Tina.

  “You don’t seem to resent your father for the same things. You met Mrs. Sethi today?”

  “Ma, Papa’s been talking to her for months. I met David after you had known him for only a few weeks.”

  * * *

  —

  ACTUALLY, TINA HAD FIRST seen David with her mother at the Whole Foods at Columbus Circle. She had never admitted this to her mother.

  After the divorce, Radha had moved into a one-bedroom apartment in a doorman building on Fifty-Eighth Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues, close to where her new office was, and Tina often stopped in if she was in the neighborhood. That day, she had a meeting with Rachel and a producer from Montreal at Caselulla on Fifty-Second Street and she decided to see if her mother was around for a quick hello. She knew she had been unfair to her mother ever since the divorce but she didn’t know how else to be. She didn’t know details of the divorce but she assumed it was her mother who was behind it because her mother had always seemed more beautiful, more successful, more worldly, and more intelligent than her father. It had been easier to blame her mother but Tina felt bad about that and tried to reach o
ut to her. It was raining when Tina stepped out of Caselulla, full on an endive salad followed by a duck confit and a shared pistachio-and-ricotta cheesecake, all washed down with one-third of a bottle of white wine. Rachel and the producer got into a taxi headed to Tribeca for their next meeting while Tina stood under the awning of Caselulla trying to stay dry and called her mother.

  “Ma, are you home?”

  “I’m at Whole Foods right now, darling,” Radha said. “And then I have to rush back for a Skype consultation with one of my clients who is in Taipei for work this week.”

  “I’ll come say hi at Whole Foods,” Tina said.

  “No, Tina!” her mother started but Tina had hung up and then rushed, head bowed against the rain, up toward the Whole Foods.

  On the escalator down to the Whole Foods main floor, Tina shook off the raindrops from her shoulders and her hair. As the escalator descended, she looked to see if she could spot her mother and she did, suddenly, in line for the cashier, standing next to a tall white man who had his hand on her mother’s upper arm. Between them, they had only one shopping cart and Tina could see her mother’s eyes darting around toward the escalator. Tina ducked behind two young women wearing brightly colored backpacks and squatted down as the escalator reached the bottom. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her head and quickly got back on the up escalator and looked the other way, scared to see her mother standing there with a strange man’s hand on her arm, scared to let her mother see her. Tina called her mother as she entered the train stop. Radha answered after one ring and said, “Tina, I was just saying today isn’t—” But Tina interrupted her and said, “Today isn’t a good day. The rain is getting heavy, I better get back to Brooklyn.”

  And they both put the phones down and Tina got on the downtown A train, a crowded A train with nowhere to sit. So she stood holding a pole and cried for the first time on a train. She didn’t even quite know why she was crying; she rarely cried. She had sworn she would never be that person crying on a train, yet here she was. Seeing her mother have her own life, a personal life, made Tina feel like an abandoned child even though she was an adult. Was it possible it also made her feel jealous? She pushed that thought away and dug her fingernails into the palm of her other hand, the way she had always done to stop herself from crying.

  At the Fourteenth Street station, as Tina moved toward the train doors with most of the crowd, a young black woman with pink-lacquered nails handed her a piece of paper that had the name of a church in Harlem and said, “I’m Angie. Join us sometime, let Jesus dry your tears.”

  The act of kindness made Tina cry harder at first and then she crumpled the piece of paper and threw it into a large trash can on the platform and walked toward the L train.

  * * *

  —

  “ARE YOU ALWAYS GOING to be angry with me?” Radha asked now, still sitting on the step leading down and looking out. “Do you even know what you’re angry about?”

  Tina wondered if she should ask the question she had avoided asking until now. Why? Why did you leave Papa? Why did you meet David? Why are you trying on a new life so late in life? And more importantly, how? How can I make decisions as boldly as you? But she said nothing instead.

  “Don’t be angry with me for trying to be happy, Tina,” her mother continued. “Sometimes we end up making decisions that become other decisions that become a life we didn’t want. It’s nobody’s fault. And that fear shouldn’t stop you from making decisions of your own. And, in an ideal world, that shouldn’t make you angry at me either.”

  “Sometimes it’s like you can read my mind,” Tina said.

  “Between having given birth to you and my profession, I should certainly hope so.”

  “What else am I thinking?” Tina asked.

  “This is a risky game,” Radha said with a smile. “You’re…you’re thinking how we should really spend more time together and how wonderful it is to have a happy and fulfilled mother who wants all of the same for you.”

  “Close,” Tina said. “But I was actually wondering if I can start wearing clothes from Eileen Fisher even though I’m not even forty yet.”

  “No,” Radha said. “Absolutely not. Maybe every so often but don’t start draping fabrics all over yourself yet. You’ll only realize when you look back five years from now.”

  “That’s probably true. I already get shocked when I look at pictures of myself from college when I thought I had gained weight.”

  “And you know me, I always think a bit of extra weight looks good.”

  “It’s my elbows I’m worried about,” Tina said.

  “That’s genetic!” Radha said. “See? We have things in common. I’ve always hated my elbows.”

  “Wait here,” Tina said. She went into the cottage and found the vial of coconut oil that Rajesh had given her. Marianne was sitting on the edge of the bed in a towel, looking at her laptop. She barely looked up at Tina.

  Tina handed the vial to her mother and said, “Rub this on your elbows for fifteen minutes before you shower.”

  “Coconut oil?” her mother asked. “How I wish it were that simple.”

  “You’re happy with David?” Tina asked, still standing. “Truly happy?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I’m making decisions to try and find what makes me happy and you need to do the same.”

  “So you aren’t happy with him?”

  Radha stood up and turned to face Tina. The light was behind her now so Tina could only see her silhouetted.

  “Why did you leave us?” Tina said.

  “Tina, don’t be absurd. You haven’t lived at home since you were eighteen. I did not leave you. I did not even leave your father. Stop seeing only what you want to see. You have to stop living this narrow life in which you’re the victim, the unrecognized star. That isn’t reality. That isn’t even one of your semi-scripted reality shows.”

  “You don’t approve of my career?” Tina asked.

  Radha dropped her head and shook it in frustration.

  “You would be a challenging client, Tina,” Radha said. “I better go have a shower.”

  * * *

  —

  THE DAY SHE MET DAVID, eight years after getting divorced from Mr. Das, Radha felt like she had finally found her rhythm. She lived in a spacious apartment in Hell’s Kitchen with high ceilings and had an equally spacious, all-white office for her psychiatry practice in a building just off Columbus Circle. Her home was expensively furnished from Restoration Hardware and her closet was filled with Eileen Fisher. It turned out that being single in New York was wonderful, no matter what your age.

  She worked long hours and went to museums by herself, sometimes with her daughter, sometimes with her ex-husband. She went to plays and book launches and dance performances. She used her (large, open-plan) kitchen only to get cereal and make tea and coffee and she didn’t feel guilty about it. She had lunch out nearly every day, trying new restaurants on her lunch break, and in the evenings, she picked up food from Whole Foods and ate on the couch while watching the BBC World News.

  The day she met David was a Wednesday in late March, she remembered clearly. It was just starting to get warm in New York City and her 2 P.M. had canceled, sending a message saying he knew he ought not to cancel but he wanted to take a bike ride through Central Park instead of talking to his psychiatrist and he felt that was acceptable for his mental health. He would pay anyway, of course, and he would see her next week. A wise man, Radha thought, and she decided to reschedule the other two appointments she had that day—for an emergency, she said, and she did not feel guilty because she never canceled appointments, not even the day she had had an abnormal mammogram at lunch that turned out to be a calcium deposit—to take the rest of the afternoon off to enjoy the weather.

  She locked her office door a little after 1 P.M., left her beige cardigan draped on her
ergonomic chair, and stepped out into the sunshine in her brown slacks and white tunic. It felt like the rest of city all had the same plan. Radha loved the crowds in New York City. She loved seeing all the families, the couples, the lovers, and the friends and then she loved going home by herself. She knew that her daughter, even though she wouldn’t admit it, felt alone in the crowds of New York but Radha felt exactly the opposite. New York made her realize that everyone ultimately died alone, even if they were surrounded by family and friends, and that realization brought her great peace. Near the southwest entrance to Central Park, a group of dancers performed to a Michael Jackson medley. Radha stood and watched their break-dancing version of “Thriller,” dropped two dollar bills into the black hat at the edge of the crowd, and continued on. Horse carriages lined the street, waiting for passengers. New York City sparkled.

  Radha made her way to Fifty-First Street where India Fare had opened two months ago. She had been reading rave reviews about their contemporary take on Indian food. It was run by a chef from Bombay who also ran an Indian restaurant near the Tate Modern in London. Radha didn’t often eat Indian food in America because she found all the gravy the same and too heavy for her tastes but India Fare was supposed to be different.

  A handsome white man in dark jeans and a black button-down shirt stood behind a podium at the entrance to India Fare. David, Radha would learn soon.

  “Reservation?” he asked, not looking up from his book.

  “Reservation? I don’t have one,” Radha said.

  “No walk-ins until September, I’m afraid. And our next available reservation is for June seventh at 3 P.M. Would you like to book that?”

  “June?” Radha asked. “That’s absurd.”

  “Did you see our review in the New Yorker last week? Even the June seventh reservation is only because I had a cancellation just this morning. Otherwise it would be July twenty-third.”

  Radha looked past him through the two heavy black curtains and said, “It’s just me alone. The bar is empty, I’ll eat at the bar.”