by Sonali Dev
Mira opened her mouth, but Ria couldn’t take another apology. “It was nice meeting you, Mira.” This time her voice didn’t tremble. She blasted a Ria Parkar smile at her, the best one she could muster, pulled herself up to her full height, and with all the practiced grace of an Ice Princess she floated up the stairs without a backward glance.
Behind her Mira sucked in a breath. “Stop it, Vic! What’s the matter with you? She can still hear us.” Mira’s breathless whisper turned into a throaty moan, painting pictures in Ria’s head. The Ice Princess melted around her. She sped up, running the rest of the way up to the door.
“Why would I care?” His voice chased after her, hot and seductive and just loud enough to hit its mark before she made it out the door.
5
Ria pulled the door soundlessly in place and moved away from the gleaming glass before she gave in to the urge to slam it so hard it shattered. Vikram’s voice lingered in her ears, burning graphic images into her brain. The heavy silk of her ghaghra swirled around her legs like tethers. Her ankles wobbled in her too-high heels. The beadwork on her halter clawed into her neck. She wanted to pull at it, but she couldn’t. She’d spent too many years holding her fingers back. She’d had too much practice—with uncomfortable clothes, with unbearable feelings. She had too much control.
She pulled herself together, gathered up her ghaghra, barely lifting it a few inches off the floor, tugged her scarf around herself until it squeezed her shoulders together, and made her way across the kitchen. As long as no one spoke to her, she could handle this.
The entire house was exploding with people. Cozy groups gathered everywhere like tangled-up human knots. Laughter rang through the air. It was like one of her movies playing out in real life. Colorful clothes, beautiful people, the thumping beat of shaadi music. The sizzle of warm memories buzzed through the air like an electrical charge.
Her aunt and uncle had spent their entire lives collecting these people, building the right to gather so much happiness. At every path that converged they had made the right decision, made the right sacrifices, and held on to the right values. Nikhil was a culmination of all the good they had ever done and this day was a celebration of all they had earned.
Suddenly Ria couldn’t breathe. This beautiful day, these beautiful people—she couldn’t bear it. Her own ugly choices twisted into a noose that wrapped itself around her neck like the guilt she could never shake off.
Someone called her name from a distance. Her tongue bloated and filled her mouth. She couldn’t make the words to respond. Turning away, she escaped into the mudroom and stumbled into the night. It was too cold for October. She let her scarf slide off her shoulders. The chill hit her skin like razor blades. With the first step she tripped over her heels. Reaching down, she yanked them off and kicked them across the grass. Then, pulling up her ghaghra all the way to her thighs, she broke into a run.
The freezing blades of grass stung her bare feet as she flew across the yard. Her legs knew where to take her. The gurgling of the river was as loud as ever, rising in pitch as she crested the hill and headed down to the bank. The sound of the water drowned out her thoughts. She ran toward it, unable to stop until she came to the water’s edge, where an enormous oak rose out of the ground and brought her to a grinding halt. She looked up at it, panting. It loomed in the darkness, the shadows making it even larger than she remembered.
Their tree.
A low branch shot out across the water, reaching halfway across the river. A bridge its builder had abandoned before it could make it to the other bank.
Their bridge.
Their home. Their haven. Their memories. Them. Two strays Uma and Vijay had taken in. And loved.
This is where he had dragged her that first day, when he hadn’t been able to stand by and watch her cry without doing anything about it. She’d been eight years old. And he’d been the most determined eleven-year-old she’d ever met.
Can you teach me to climb like that? he’d asked her.
And her words had come back.
You want to be friends? he’d asked her.
And her life had changed.
Ria tilted her head back and stared up at the thick canopy above her. Milky moonlight filtered through the black-on-black patterns that should’ve been eerie, but were comforting instead. They’d sat here a thousand times, Vikram and her. They’d scampered up these branches, torn their clothes against the scraggly wood, torn their skin and not cared.
They’d walked to the forked edge of the bridge like pirates on a plank and thrown themselves into the water. Pushed each other off with no warning. Leaned back into space until their world turned upside down.
Ria reached out and touched the trunk, every dip and bump on the bark familiar. The insanely loud gurgle of the river, the distant glow of the only home she’d ever known, everything far too familiar, far too precious to have lost. A reminder of how easily she could lose what was left of her if she wasn’t careful.
She twisted around and leaned against the trunk. Sharp ridges scraped into her bare back as she slid to the ground. Her ghaghra pooled around her, the gold-and-copper thread trapping moonlight and sparkling against the silk.
When her father had sent her away to his sister’s house all the way across the world, it had felt like the worst punishment for Ria’s disobedience, for not being able to talk, for letting herself be hurt. It had felt like being shoved over a cliff into an abyss. On the flight here she had believed without a doubt that Baba had washed his hands of her and that she had lost the only family she knew forever.
Instead she had found this—home, family, a friend who somehow dug out joy from the deepest parts of her, dug out words, dug out all the things Ria never knew hid inside her.
He was her Uncle Vijay’s nephew, his sister’s son, but unlike Ria he had chosen to come here. His visit that first summer had been the result of a tantrum when he’d refused to spend another summer stuck at his home in San Francisco with a nanny while his entrepreneur parents took the world by storm.
After that summer, neither one of them had wanted to be anywhere else. Year after year Ria had counted the endless months at her boarding school waiting for the summer to come. She had learned to use her silence as armor and her memories as escape from the sniggers and name-calling. Being The Girl Who Came From Insanity for ten months had been easy to bear with this to look forward to. It had taught her how to remove herself from the present, save herself for the future, and hide herself in the past.
I don’t have to be near you to be with you, Ria, he had told her once when it was time to say good-bye and she couldn’t make herself. It’s what she had used years later that first time the camera had turned on and her bones had melted and sweat had poured from her. I don’t have to be here to do this, she had told herself, and then she’d let her body become whom it needed to be.
Unlike the great love stories Ria played out in her movies, there had been no moment when the heavens opened up to the frantic wail of violins. No lightning bolt had cracked through the sky when she had realized she was in love. There had been no declarations, no grand gestures. No transition from not knowing to knowing. It had just been there, just like that. Always.
This is where he had first kissed her. Pulled her out of the water, pressed her against the tree, and dipped into her. They had spilled and soaked into each other, growing into adults in each other’s arms.
This was also where he had kissed her that last time.
They had sat under the oak, their arms, their legs, all of them entwined. She had pressed her face into his neck, the strength of her feelings making it impossible to meet his eyes. His fingers tangled in her hair, tipping her head back to face him. His teasing smile melted, turned hot and intense.
I don’t have to go, he whispered against her lips. Her stomach did that thing it did only for him.
But he did have to go. For two years he’d been obsessed with getting into the research program, with exploring t
he Amazon rain forests of Brazil. He’d been selected from thousands of applicants, one of only forty to make it from all around the world. She had never doubted he would. He always made it. He thought it came easily to him—the scholarships, the perfect scores, the skipped grades. But she knew his focus, she knew how much he gave. How could she take this away from him?
It’s just eight weeks, Viky. And I’ll still be here when you get back. Can you believe it? This time I’ll be here forever! After ten summers worth of good-byes, this was going to be their last one.
Finally, he said. His mouth, those lush lips that didn’t quite fit together smiled against her lips. It took long enough, but I rescued the princess from the dungeon. His nickname for her boarding school in India couldn’t be more perfect. And she was done with it.
She smiled, a dimple dipped into her cheek beneath his finger. He lifted it and kissed the sensitive dent. Sparks flew across her body. She pressed into his lips.
But who will rescue me from you, Ria?
She stroked his beloved face. Don’t say that, Viky.
He covered her hands with his own and pulled them to his chest, his crystal eyes so vulnerable, so completely lost in her that panic gripped her. It’s true. Ria, do you remember what it was like before us?
She couldn’t answer. Truth was she didn’t remember.
Last year I tried to find out.
Viky. She didn’t want to know.
I was at a party. My friends had been on my case, trying to get me to hook up with someone. And I tried. I’m twenty-one, what if we think this is more than it is? They kept introducing me to these girls. But I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing. Except that I wanted to be with you so badly, I couldn’t breathe. I’m me because I’m yours. Without you I don’t know who I am. You’ve ruined me, Ria.
She covered his lips with her own, dug her fingers into his hair, tried to crawl into his skin. She poured all of herself into her kiss, promising him everything, giving him everything.
His breath caught. He reached into her, returned the promise with every tug of his lips, every stroke of his tongue. Over and over, until every thought, every doubt was gone.
When he pulled away, his eyes closed, his beautiful mismatched lips wet and parted, his chest rising and falling in an uncontrolled rhythm, she felt as if someone had unplugged her. The loss of his touch, the space separating them, it made panic well up inside her again.
Sweetheart, it’s all right. He stroked her back, her hair, her face, soothed her until she could breathe again. It’s just eight weeks. After that, we have a lifetime.... After that we’ll never be apart again. . . . I promise.
Ria lifted her face off the soaking silk draped across her knees. Everything was wet. Every part of her felt like a sodden mess. She swatted her cheeks with the back of her hand. Bloody hell. Not this.
She couldn’t believe she’d let the tears start. Once the tears started she didn’t know how to stop them. Words and tears—they were the twin gauges of her mental health that took over when she lost control, one drying up, the other oozing from her without consent.
She stood up, rubbing her arms, trying to wipe off the sensation of being touched by him. She had to get it off. She had to focus on how he had looked at her today. Not ten years ago. Not like she was precious, but with impotent rage and disgust, as though she were a festering, paralyzed limb and he wanted nothing more than to be rid of her.
And then there was the way he had looked at Mira. With tenderness, with ease.
Vic will move on, his mother had told Ria. When you’re young everything seems like the end of the world. But no one is unforgettable.
Chitra had been right. She was forgettable.
Vikram had figured out who he was without her. He had found someone. Someone healthy and strong like himself. Someone who wouldn’t ruin him.
She counted to ten, to fifty, to a hundred, then checked her cheeks again. Not completely dry, but not a monsoon either. She wiped off the remnants of moisture with the tip of her scarf. There. No tears were going to drown her.
“Seriously, Uma Atya, I’m fine.” Ria tried again to stop her gaze from darting all over the place and focused on her aunt’s concerned face. She hadn’t seen Vikram and Mira since she’d come back inside, but every time someone moved her heart jumped. And from the expression on her aunt’s face, she wasn’t doing a very good job hiding it.
Fortunately, dinner was served and her aunt was a little distracted with bullying the guests into eating far more than they wanted to. One unsuspecting soul ventured too close to Uma and she heaped syrupy sweet jalebis onto his plate before he could escape. Three other guests promptly changed course and ran in the opposite direction. Being next to Uma right about now was probably the best spot in the house if you wanted to be left alone.
“There, that’s so much better.” Uma turned back to Ria and tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear and Ria realized she was smiling.
“I told you. I’m fine. Just a little exhausted. I know I shouldn’t be after sleeping all day.”
“What, ‘shouldn’t be’?” Her aunt blasted her with her classic college-professor glare. “The way you kids work yourselves, I don’t know how your bodies hold up. We are human, not machines, beta.” Ria would never get tired of hearing her aunt call her her baby. “I’ll bet you haven’t eaten a thing since you woke up. Am I right?”
Ria shrugged and gave her aunt her sweetest smile.
“Don’t flash those dimples at me, I’m immune. I have my own, remember?” Uma smiled and two deep dimples dug into her cheeks. She thrust a plate into Ria’s hands, but before she could spoon food onto it, a chorus of voices rang out behind them.
“Oh good God, it’s Ria!” Four women surrounded her, coming at her like blasts from her past, their silk saris, bronze lipsticks, and smoky eyeliners warming her from the inside out, their Chanel and Estée Lauder scents enveloping her as tight as their hugs. She found herself smiling as they appraised her, tipping her chin back with diamond-studded fingers, making sure little Ria was all right.
For over thirty years these women had been her aunt’s friends, her sisterhood. “The Auntie Brigade,” Vikram had called them. Little shocks of recognition sparkled inside Ria. A mole on a cheek. A cleft on a chin. The way one of them raised only one brow when she laughed. The way all of them called her honey, as if she belonged to them.
Just the way she remembered it, they all started talking at once. “I can’t believe it. It really is Ria. . . . Well of course, it’s Ria. It’s Nikhil’s wedding, after all.... Oh ho, but she’s a film star! . . . Arrey, so what? She’s our Ria first.... Look how beautiful . . . Of course she’s beautiful, she’s Ria. . . . Look at that ghaghra! . . . Forget the ghaghra, look at that blouse.... Remember when we could hold a halter up with those tiny strings? . . . My memory isn’t that good.... Look at those arms.... Why do you kids like muscles? Muscles are for men. . . . Not our men!”
As a little girl, Ria had loved listening to their banter. She would squeeze into Uma, close her eyes, and pick out their voices as they talked. Radha had come to America very young and she sounded as American as the grocery-store lady. Sita’s South-Indian accent was thick and earthy but completely un-self-conscious. Anu had the clipped Queen’s English of a fancy Delhi private school and she refused to Americanize it in any way. Priya had a soft-edged North-Indian lilt which she mixed freely with her acquired Americanness. She stretched out her words and rolled her r’s so that each sentence became a linguistic potpourri, a mix of all the things she’d been and all the things she’d become.
Each one of them had extended the band of their innate motherliness around Ria, tightening up her barrettes when they slid off her pigtails, dusting off her knees when she fell. Piling her plate at parties and picnics and bullying her into finishing her food.
Smiling, Ria leaned over and touched their feet, each one in turn, and the timeless sign of respect made every one of them tear up, even the no-nonsense Anu Auntie.
They fretted self-consciously and kissed her forehead, mumbling blessings into her hair.
“May all your dreams come true, beta.”
“May you live a long and happy life.”
Ria thanked them softly. For one long moment, everyone stopped talking. Emotion hung heavily in the silence, memories sparkled in everyone’s eyes along with questions no one would voice, not on this auspicious day in the midst of this celebration.
Uma cleared her throat. “Can we let the child eat, please?”
“What, you haven’t eaten yet?” they all exclaimed in unison, and Ria quickly picked up the plate she had put down and held it up.
“I was just about to eat. I swear,” she said, and let Uma Atya pile obscene amounts of chicken biryani onto her plate.
“It’s preposterous how skinny you actresses are these days,” Radha said.
“It’s the camera,” Sita said. “It adds ten pounds they say, no?”
“Really? My pictures look like it adds forty,” Priya said.
“Yes, that’s definitely the camera,” Anu said, and patted Ria’s cheek. “Eat, eat. We’ll leave you alone so your atya can hog you. But only for today. After that you’re all ours.”
They all mumbled in agreement, kissed and petted Ria some more, and went off in search of dessert.
Uma Atya pointed at the biryani on Ria’s plate. “It took me six hours to make this, so you better eat up.”
“Don’t you want to go get dessert with them?” Ria asked hopefully.
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere until that’s all gone.”
Ria jabbed the rice with her fork, pulled a long face, and thrust some into her mouth. The most delicate blend of spices exploded on her tongue. “Oh God, Uma Atya, this is incredible.”
Uma adjusted the scarf on Ria’s shoulder, smiling away. “No wonder you’re my favorite niece.”
