by Sonali Dev
“When do your parents get here, Vic?” Jen asked.
Great. Ria’s two minutes of warmth evaporated in an instant.
“They’re in Copenhagen for a conference. They’ll be here in time for the wedding.”
Fantastic. Here she was hoping for the weeks to race by, and Chitra was waiting for her at the other end.
“I can’t wait to meet your mother,” Jen said, “if Uma is anything to go by.”
Nikhil raised his beer. “To moms.”
Jen raised her glass. “To family.”
Vikram raised his bottle. “To a house full of brats for Jen and Nic.”
Mira raised hers. “To finding the love of your life.”
Vikram’s hand faltered on the way to his lips and Ria tried to look away before their eyes met.
“So, Vic, you were telling us how you and Mira met,” Jen said with her best matchmaker smile.
Vikram watched Ria over his bottle and she knew that nothing good would follow. “At first it was Mira’s art that drew me,” he said. “But I had never met anyone so open. So uncomplicated. So loyal.”
“Do go on.” Mira laughed that exuberant laugh of hers. But her eyes glowed under her offhandedness. Vikram didn’t notice. His gaze was fixed on his beer bottle.
And they were back where they had started. A sick sort of irritation rose inside Ria. She was stuck in a preposterous tragic farce, spinning around and around in all that they couldn’t change, churning it like the legend where the gods and demons had churned up the ocean in search of the nectar of immortality, but poison had churned up instead and Lord Shiva had had to drink it before peace could prevail.
“Sounds nice,” she said before she could stop herself. “I’ve never met anyone quite that special myself.”
Vikram’s eyes narrowed and the poison of their past bubbled up even higher around them.
“Come on, you’re not saying you’re single. I mean, look at you!” Mira threw an incredulous look around the table. Jen nodded in agreement. Nikhil shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Vikram’s entire attention seemed focused on ripping off the beer-bottle label.
“Seriously, how do you keep them away? Guys must be climbing over themselves to get to you,” Mira said, yet again missing the tight set of Vikram’s shoulders, the hard clench of his jaw. “I can’t imagine any man not wanting to go out with you.” She looked from Nikhil to Vikram, and Ria had a sense of watching someone wander onto a minefield. She wanted to throw a blanket over her head and whisk her away to safety.
Vikram rubbed his fingers over his temples. When he finally looked at Mira his eyes gentled. “It takes more than just looks, Mira,” he said, ruining any hope Ria had of peace, and she didn’t know why she was surprised. He wasn’t going to let a single opportunity to put her down pass by. It was the nature of churning up poison. Someone had to skim it off and drink it. That was the only way to get rid of it.
“What is that supposed to mean, Vic?” Jen jumped into the fray from across the table, turning it into a free-for-all. “That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever heard you say. Any man in his right mind would want to be with Ria. And it has nothing to do with looks.” She glared at him.
Nikhil placed a calming hand on hers. “I don’t think that’s what Vic meant, Jen.”
“What did you mean, Vic?” Jen asked with exaggerated sweetness, and Ria wanted to hug her and ask her to leave it be all at the same time.
Vikram shrugged. “Just that. That looks aren’t everything.” He met Jen’s glare, refusing to back down. The set of his jaw, the willful steadfastness of his gaze, it was so classically Vikram, Ria forgot what they were talking about. This was the Vikram who had believed so completely in them, in her, that ten years later his heartbreak still bled fresh.
Like an idiot, warmth prickled in her eyes. But she couldn’t let the tears fall.
Jen jabbed at her noodles. She wasn’t done glaring at Vikram. Ria pushed away the useless surge of feelings. She had to get off this roller coaster. She smiled gratefully at Jen and reminded herself that Vikram had done nothing but insult her and provoke her since they had met. It didn’t matter that she deserved every word. He was hungering for the fight they had never had. The one she owed him, but could never give him. And she’d encouraged him enough.
“It’s okay, Jen,” she said. “He’s right. It does take more than looks. It takes time and effort, which I can’t give a relationship right now.”
“It sounds like you just haven’t found the right person then,” Mira said, leaning into Vikram, who was getting more stiff and tight by the minute.
“Something like that.” Ria’s voice was so calm she surprised herself.
Instead of calming down, Mira brightened as though a few lightbulbs flashed on inside her head at once. “You know what?” she said, almost jumping out of her chair. “We should find you someone while you’re here.”
Both Vikram and Nikhil sat bolt upright. Ria gripped her chair.
Jen’s eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea, Mira!”
“You know who’d be perfect?” Mira spoke directly to Jen now, the usual enthusiasm on her face a full-blown riot. “Sanjay.”
Jen clapped her hands and beamed. Both Mira and Jen turned to Ria. She cleared her throat and schooled her features with every bit of skill she possessed.
“Sanjay’s my brother. He’s a writer,” Mira said. “He teaches creative writing at Northwestern. He’s the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.”
“And he’s really hot,” Jen added, widening her eyes to prove exactly how hot Sanjay was.
Nikhil groaned.
“Come on, Nic, you have to admit that Sanjay is perfect for Ria. They’re both so sincere and creative and contemplative. It’s a perfect fit.”
“No, really, it’s not. The last thing Ria needs is someone contemplative. They’ll both contemplate themselves into an early grave.” Nikhil looked from Ria to Vikram like someone trying to diffuse a bomb.
The bomb ticked away in Vikram’s neck. Please, not again. A horrible sense of foreboding came over Ria, but the idea of Vikram’s girlfriend setting her up with her brother was so absurd, so completely unexpected, it left her speechless.
“Stop being so overprotective, Nic.” Mira joined Jen in frowning at Nikhil. “Ria doesn’t seem to have a problem with it.”
“Like hell she doesn’t have a problem with it!” Vikram’s voice boomed across the restaurant.
All four of them turned to him, startled. Four pairs of eyebrows flew up in unison, four mouths gaped open like caricatures in a comic strip.
“What is wrong with you people? Can’t you see the look on her face?” His chest pumped as he struggled to lower his voice. People at the neighboring tables shifted uncomfortably in their seats. “She just told you she didn’t have time for a relationship. Didn’t you guys hear her? She’s a frickin’ film star. She’s not interested in giving it up for some guy.”
Mira pouted at him. “Sanjay’s not just some guy. I thought you liked him.”
“Of course I like Sanjay,” Vikram snapped, and Mira drew back. His eyes bored into Ria. “He’s a great guy. Which is precisely why you need to stop this. He doesn’t need this shit. Fuck, no one does!”
The sound of Ria’s indrawn breath was magnified by the sudden stunned silence at the table. Vikram was shaking. Rage radiated from him in hot palpable waves and slammed into her. Little explosions of pain went off in her head and blasted through her control. She leaned forward and glared back at him. Everyone else at the table disappeared. Everything around them disappeared. Leaving just them, and this moment. And another moment ten years ago. Everything between those two moments went up in flames.
All the hurt and pain disappeared. All the loss. All the yearning. It all disappeared. The sheer rage that had piled up and blistered between the two moments drowned everything else out. It pounded through Ria and rang in her ears like clashing cymbals.
“Vic!” Mira’s voice seemed to come from
miles away. “What is wrong with you? I’ve never seen you like this. Vic!” She tugged at his sleeve, but he yanked his arm away.
“You know what?” Ria said, swallowing hard. “It would be great to meet a nice guy. I seem to have met only jerks so far.” Her voice trembled and cracked, and it was more than she could bear. Pain flashed across her skull, grabbing her temples in a vise. The food she had eaten churned in her belly.
Bloody hell. She was going to throw up.
She pushed herself away from the table. The scrape of chair on tile ripped through her pounding head. She fled.
Voices buzzed behind her like swarming bees. Nikhil, Jen, Mira, beseeching, cajoling voices. Sit down, man. Calm down. The collective attention of the entire restaurant focused on her. Shit. Shit.
She heard footsteps behind her and broke into a jog. But it was no use, he was right behind her. His breath blew into her back. The waves of anger that had become too familiar rammed into her. They went down a narrow corridor. The red Exit sign blared and pierced through her blurring vision. She kept going, out the door and into the night. She heard his hand slam against the door and wanted to turn around and shove him back inside.
They were in an alley outside the restaurant. A spasm of pain so vicious screamed through her temples she doubled over. The smell of rotting food punched her belly and something horrible spurted up in her throat. She pressed into the wall, trying to control the spasms, trying to clamp her mouth shut and focused on not emptying her insides.
“Ria,” he said behind her, his voice suddenly helpless. But he didn’t make a move to touch her.
“Leave me alone. Please.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach to stop the cramping waves of nausea and rested her head against the rough brick. Shame at her lack of control mixed with the burn of bile in her throat and the starbursts of pain in her head.
Before Vikram could respond Nikhil stepped out into the alley.
“Ria? You okay?” Nikhil asked, pushing past Vikram and pulling her away from the wall.
“No. I’m sorry. I just want to go home, Nikhil, please.”
Nikhil lead her through the alley to the parking lot. Vikram didn’t move. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there. Ria didn’t have to look at him to know exactly what his face looked like.
10
As if guilt and shame weren’t enough, now Ria was overcome by embarrassment so acute she didn’t think she could ever get past it. Even running wasn’t blocking it out. With every pounding step along the snaking river the tangle of memories in her head tightened, and the only clear thing she could distinguish from the bloody mess was the rage on Vikram’s face. And the rage that had exploded inside her in response.
She had thrown up after coming home last night, silently, so no one would know. And then tried to sleep. But ever since Nikhil’s engagement party, there had been no sleep. Close to forty hours without a wink. Her eyelids had turned into screens that played her memories on a loop. Memories that kept reaching past the anger and homing in on the feelings that had spawned such rage.
Shafts of light pierced the foliage and fell in polka dots on the grass around her. A few of the trees had already changed color. Splotches of orange and yellow flamed against the thick green canopy that edged the water. She had never seen Chicago in the fall. She had never been here in the spring or winter either—she had seen only the summer. She was a one-season girl. Incomplete.
Numbness ran up and down her legs, but she picked up her pace and kept on running. That last summer she had almost stayed and watched the seasons turn with her acceptance into Purdue and the I-20 firmly stapled to her passport. After years torn up by endless separation, finally, Vikram and she would’ve had nothing but a two-hour train ride between them. They had worked out a schedule for weekend visits, leaning over a calendar at the kitchen table with sunlight streaming in through the mullioned windows, their fingers interlaced under the table, their dreams intertwined in their hearts.
A fallen tree trunk blocked her path. She leapt onto it and then onto the other side. A jolt of pain zinged down her leg to her ankle, but she didn’t stop.
Montages from the past whizzed by her like the view from a moving train. The way Vikram had kissed her at the airport, grabbing her hand and pulling her into an alcove. The pain of letting his hand go that last time as he disappeared through the gate had felt like having her heart sliced out of her body. But then she’d gone home from the airport, and seeing the look on Uma’s face had taught her what real pain felt like. The never-ending flight back to Mumbai. Back to Baba. God, please let him be alive. That had been her one prayer, her chant. You can take whatever you want from me. Just let Baba be alive.
Pain clamped around her legs, around her chest. She clung to it and kept on going. The smell of the burn ward—like drowning in waxy petroleum jelly with something rotten trapped inside your lungs. The screams. Mad with pain. As if they’d eat their limbs to escape it. Screams that would never fade from her memory no matter how many years went by.
Baba’s burnt body with its skinless flesh. No screams, just mute agony and single-minded purpose in his eyes. The labored movement of his tattered lips. No municipal hospitals, Ria. No authorities. No one but you. You have to care for your mother. You. Swear you’ll find a way.
She hadn’t been allowed to touch him. His body mush under the gauze.
Yes, Baba, I swear.
So many words she wanted to say to him, but her last words to him had been the promise to protect his murderer. The wife he had spent a lifetime caring for before she had thrown an oil lamp at him and turned him into a wick to ignite the entire timber house. But he hadn’t left without her, he had wrapped her in a blanket and carried her out, his own body in flames. The nurse never made it out.
Ria, the child of their accursed marriage, had been left with the ashes of the house that had never been her home, the ashes of a father she had wanted so badly to be her home, and two promises—one of which she had to break in order to honor the other.
Vikram and Baba. Two men who were everything to her, but always separately. She’d been so close to bringing them together. So close to closing the gap between her two lives. And then an entirely unexpected third life had taken her.
She flew across the path, desperate to push the putrid stink out of her lungs. She had seen Vikram’s face that day, on her dead father’s body, and she had known what she could do to him.
Viky, Viky, Viky, her feet beat into the ground. She had been running for hours and instead of her mind calming, her body felt seriously deranged. Pain screamed from every overstressed muscle. The familiar row of houses came into view just as it became impossible for her to run another step, and she finally allowed herself to stop, wondering how she was going to make the long limp home.
Each step threw her more and more off-balance until everything around her tilted off its axis. She needed to sit down. There was a wooden bench across from the oak tree just around the corner. She hobbled in its direction.
But it was occupied. Much like all the spaces she wanted to be in these days. She groaned—the melodrama of her thoughts would do the drama queens she played proud—and tried to change course, but her legs were no longer taking orders from her. They wobbled and jerked. The figure on the bench rose, emerging from the shadows with a self-possession she would have recognized even without the electric jolt that sparked down her belly.
She recognized the exact moment when he changed his mind about waiting for her. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and jogged to her. “What the hell, Ria? What happened? Did you fall? Are you hurt?” He searched her body with his eyes.
She shook her head. Fresh pain shot through her at the movement. “I’m fine.” What kind of idiot ran until her body felt like it was broken?
An agonizing cramp twisted in her calf and she fought to keep the wince off her face. He reached out, but stopped before he touched her.
“How much did you run? Did you at least stretch first?
What is wrong with you?”
She ground her teeth to block out the pain. Please, Viky, not now.
His face softened. “Let’s get you to the bench. You need to sit down.” He nudged his arm closer and waited for her to take it.
But she couldn’t move. The cramp in her calf jammed her in place.
He squatted down beside her and slid one hand beneath her shoe. “Put your hand on my shoulder. I don’t want you falling over.” His voice was as rough as his fingers were gentle.
She touched him. Her fingers melted into the thick muscled warmth of his shoulder.
“Try to pull your toes up toward yourself.” He nudged the pad of her foot up with steady pressure and massaged the cramping muscle.
A spasm of pain shot up and down her leg. Her fingers fisted the slippery material of his shirt.
“Shh. It’s okay. Try to relax, let it stretch. You need to stretch out the muscle for the cramp to release.”
Only a fool would melt at his kindness. He was a doctor. He was just doing his job. It had nothing to do with her.
Just like he asked, she tugged her toes toward herself. Sure enough, after a few moments of stretching the cramp eased.
He let her foot go, and not lingering for even a second, rose back up.
She let her hand slide off his shoulder. Wanting to linger. Oh, so badly wanting to linger.
Except for that pulse in his throat he stood as still as a statue. “Can you walk on it?” He offered his arm.
She didn’t take it, and started toward the bench, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.
He fell in step beside her. “What were you thinking going for a run after yesterday?”
Her cheeks warmed with embarrassment at the memory of their last encounter. “I told you, I’m fine.”
They reached the bench. Again he offered her his arm. Again she didn’t take it. She squeezed her eyes and bent her knees and landed gracelessly on the bench. The pain was definitely a good distraction.
“No, you’re not. You were sick yesterday, you should be in bed.”
