Recipe for Persuasion

by Sonali Dev

  Even though Ashna felt like she’d made the perfect cliff-dive into the ocean as the tide ebbed, the judges’ focus wasn’t on the chefs today. It was on the celebrities. They were the ones being tested for skill level without the assistance of their chefs. Rico had made an omelet stuffed with Portuguese sausage and peppers and served it with baked beans. Or attempted to.

  As for his skill level, well, there wasn’t any in evidence. His omelet (a generous label) was at once burnt—giving it a rusty color not commonly observed in nature—and uncooked—making it spring a watery leak when a judge pierced it with a fork.

  Turned out eggs, much like memories, were unforgiving.

  Naturally, the man was entirely unruffled by the judges’ candor as they described every detail of his failures with flourish. He laughed, from a deep, unshakable place inside him. “May I suggest cleansing your palates with the masterpiece my chef just presented you with.”

  His chef didn’t mean to blush, really she didn’t, but she stuck up her chin and acted as though warmth weren’t suffusing her face as the audience went crazy.

  Thankfully, all the stars were in the same cooking boat—more invested in the audience than the food—and the neglect meant that their omelets fell roughly into three categories: burnt, raw, and in Rico’s case, partially burnt and partially raw. It made for a quick and lighthearted judging round that didn’t require Ashna to say another word to Rico before she made her escape.

  By the time Ashna was headed home her brain was so snarled up, there was no untangling it. The rideshare driver maneuvered the car onto High Street. India and China’s building was a few minutes away. If India hadn’t been off at her yearly yoga retreat, Ashna would have stopped by. She couldn’t remember the last time she had needed one of India’s yoga and meditation sessions so badly.

  The idea of seeing Rico again tomorrow made the bats flap in her stomach with renewed fervor. They had taken up permanent residence in her rib cage, hanging by her lungs, ready to start flapping at the slightest excuse. There was no chance of her and Rico being voted off tomorrow. As if Rico’s heroic dive at the knife weren’t enough, his self-effacing charm in front of the judges today had made sure they had undisputed audience support.

  Rico’s face when she had called him self-centered and spoiled ran through her mind again. He’d hated that. His pride in being humble and fair had been one of the things she’d loved most about him. It was a lesson his soccer-legend father had taught him well. Then again, not well enough, because she couldn’t believe how badly he had behaved with DJ. That entire painfully awkward exchange had dredged up a deep sense of loss inside her.

  Who was she kidding, that sense of loss had been her constant companion for twelve years now.

  This would be so much easier if she full-out hated him.

  That cause was not helped at all by the fact that the first thing he’d done after the shoot was apologize to DJ, with humility and fairness.

  But only to DJ, making sure Ashna understood that it had nothing to do with her. You deserve my rudeness, only you, not DJ, that apology had said to her. That’s what she needed to remember, not his gentle touch in the depths of her panic.

  The two men had practically fist-bumped, chest-bumped, and gone on their merry way as though being a prized ass were totally acceptable.

  The car pulled into her driveway. Thankfully, her driver had picked up on her mood and left her alone. She still gave him a five-star rating on “fun conversation.” Whoever had put that on the driver survey deserved a special spot in hell.

  Across the jacarandas behind the house, Curried Dreams stood silent and stately. As a girl, Ashna had imagined the thicket of trees that separated the house from the restaurant as an enchanted wood from the fantasy books she loved. One weekend she had come home from the Anchorage and found that Baba had gotten someone to hang a hammock between two trees for her to read in.

  Baba had always been weird about the fact that their house wasn’t as grand as the Anchorage or Sagar Mahal. But Ashna loved the bungalow. She felt a kinship with it. Just like Ashna herself, it had been something Baba had tried to love, but it had fallen short of his expectations.

  As Ashna stepped onto the porch, she noticed that the light was off. Ashna always left it on when she went out. Had the bulb blown out again? She’d just replaced it last month. Someone moved inside the door. Heart racing, Ashna dug in her handbag for her phone. She was about to dial 911 when the front door flew open.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ashna screamed and dropped her phone.

  “Good evening, beta!” Shobi said with all the calm of someone who hadn’t just had the living daylights scared out of her. “Or should I say good morning?”

  “Shob— Mom?” Ashna said, frozen in place, as Shobi squatted and fished the phone out from beneath the white wicker chair without dislodging a strand of hair or disturbing her neatly draped starched cotton sari.

  “The very one.” Shobi handed Ashna her phone and walked into Ashna’s house as though it were her own. Which technically it was, if you defined ownership strictly in legal terms.

  “What are you doing here?” Ashna looked around her usually fastidiously tidy living room, a sense of dread growing inside her.

  Cups—at least four of them—were scattered across the coffee table along with file folders and papers, and a plate of cookies (or biscuits, as Shobi called them). An unfolded kantha quilt draped the antique Queen Anne couch. The pillows that usually lined the straight back in a perfect diamond pattern were strewn everywhere.

  A sour feeling bubbled in Ashna’s stomach. The house had always been in this kind of disarray when Shobi visited. It used to feel warm and cozy, until Ashna started to associate the mess with the constant fear of Shobi leaving. Ashna lined the cushions up, one mustard and one olive in order.

  “Sorry. I’ll clean up. I got caught up in some work. I . . . I wasn’t expecting you not to be here. I . . . I have the garage code. I . . . um . . . I wanted to surprise you.” Shobi smiled as though they were just any mother-daughter pair who routinely did things like surprise each other with visits. “I didn’t realize you wouldn’t be home.” Shobi never rambled. Was she nervous? Shobi was never nervous.

  “I told you I’m doing the show. We shoot in San Francisco. Traffic coming home was bad.” Ashna picked up the empty and half-empty cups. Anger at the fact that Shobi hadn’t believed her about the show rose fast, which led to the realization that it was Shobi’s fault that she was stuck with Rico, and that did nothing to help the anger.

  “It’s not like I didn’t believe you.” Shobi picked up the plate of biscuits and followed Ashna into the kitchen. “It’s just that I really wanted to see you and you refused to come to India. So I thought . . .”

  Ashna started rinsing the cups out.

  “We have to talk, Ashna. It’s about time.”

  A horrid laugh spurted from Ashna. She pressed a fist into her mouth and swallowed it back.

  She checked the Swiss cuckoo clock next to the fridge. In five hours she had to be up and at the farmer’s market.

  The need to turn Baba’s restaurant around flared inside her afresh. Her mother’s presence always made her grief, her protectiveness, her guilt over Baba a hundred times worse.

  Suddenly, all she wanted was to get back to the studio and shoot the next episode, Rico’s presence there be damned. Even if they received more votes than all the other teams put together she wouldn’t feel guilty about it. Suddenly, any advantage that helped them win felt too small, even if that advantage came from the darned viral video.

  “I really don’t have the time for this right now.” She turned to Shobi. Her waist-length silver-streaked black hair hung over one shoulder. Ashna patted her own tight bun. The huge red bindi in the center of her mother’s forehead was perfectly placed just above the spot where her eyebrows would intersect if they met.

  Unlike Mina Kaki’s, Shobi’s face was faintly lined. Light creases broke the flatness o
f her high forehead. Parenthetical lines bracketed her mouth, her passion for her work etched into her face.

  “We have to make time, beta.” She sounded so sad that Ashna wondered if something was wrong with her. Oh no, that’s what this was about.

  “Are you sick?”

  “I deserved that,” Shobi said, and reached out a hand, possibly to pat Ashna’s, but Ashna couldn’t be sure because she withdrew it. “I’m fine. Healthy as a horse. Getting a little thick around the middle, but that’s about it.” She was being charming, the way she was in her TV interviews.

  “Then what do you want?” Now, after all these years.

  “I want to help you.” Shobi watched Ashna’s face. “And myself. We deserve to at least try to have a relationship.”

  “Okay, I see what this is.” Ashna rewashed one of the cups; tea stains weren’t easy to get off. “I can imagine how overwhelming this is for you. Meeting your life’s goal. I get it.”

  Shobi looked confused. The one thing Ashna knew her mother to be was a straight shooter, so why, now, was Shobi choosing to play games?

  “The Padma Shri,” Ashna said, scrubbing the cup. “Congratulations. That’s huge. But now you need a new goal.” She pressed a wet hand into her forehead. “That’s what this is. A new goal. Wanting to fix things with your daughter.” Shobi had finally decided to involve her in her Shobi-drama. Thank God, Ashna was too old to care.

  Shobi pressed a hand to her forehead, mirroring Ashna’s action. “Winning the Padma Shri was never my goal. Helping people was.”

  “Wow, so that’s the part you decided to address in what I said?” Every single time her mother showed her where Ashna fell on her list of priorities it hurt as though it were the first time. How could she be so weak?

  Her mother sighed. “Don’t you at least want to try to understand what my life’s been like?”

  “I do understand. I was there, remember? Watching from eight thousand miles away.” Because you left me. Over and over again.

  “I was forced into a marriage with your father.”

  Not this again. “Thanks for sharing that. After overhearing your fights my entire childhood, you think I didn’t figure that out myself?” She had heard those words innumerable times. “You didn’t want Baba, you didn’t want me. I know. You got stuck with us, and you did what you had to do to make sure you didn’t lose yourself, to break the chains, to find your voice. All the things. Now look, Padma Shri! Boom! It all worked out. I’m proud of you and everything, but I’m not the ‘Economic Status of Rural Women.’ You can’t fix me by putting the right systems in place.” It was a little late for that.

  Shobi just stared at her. Two women, strangers almost, separated by an expanse of black granite.

  “You’re right,” Shobi said finally. “You’re not a problem. And I am most certainly not trying to fix you. Really, beta, I am not. But—” Of course there was a but, and this would be over faster if Ashna just let Shobi get it out.

  “But I see how sad you are and I see that it’s my fault and I want to help. Is that so wrong?”

  Ashna lined up the washed teacups. “First, I’m not sad. I have a good life. I like my work. It’s not ‘uplifting millions of lives,’ but it is mine. If you’re afraid that I’ll say something to the media—someone from the Times of India already sent me an email asking if she could talk to me about you—don’t worry. I know the drill. I won’t say anything that makes you look bad.”

  Shobi rubbed her temples. Something like hurt flared in her eyes. “Thank you. But that’s not what this is about. You have the right to not just like your work. You have the right to know what it feels like to—”

  “No! You don’t get to walk in here and stir shit up because you need some sort of closure or redemption or whatever one needs when all of one’s dreams are fulfilled.”

  “Ashna, I’m trying to do the right thing here.”

  “No, you aren’t. You’re trying to ease your guilt. And you want me to fall in line the way I always have. And I’m refusing to do that.”

  Shobi turned away from her, temper flashing in her eyes even as she suppressed it, and grabbed another cup from a cabinet. She poured tea out of the kettle. Had she used one of Ashna’s blends without asking her?

  The amber liquid splashed into the cup, half of it spilling onto the granite.

  Shobi grabbed a paper towel and patted the mess like someone who hadn’t cleaned a thing in her life. “We’re done with this foolishness.”

  Ashna tore another paper towel and wiped the tea clean. She couldn’t agree more; whatever plan Shobi had come here with was foolishness and Ashna was done with it too.

  Shobi took a sip. “You know that I’m the owner of Curried Dreams, right? I inherited it as his wife.” Her parents had never gotten divorced. Ashna remembered how guilty she had felt every time she prayed that they would. “I think it’s time to sell it.”

  Ashna dumped the paper towels in the garbage, hands shaking. The urge to press down, crush the garbage until it shrank to the bottom of the bin pushed inside her. “That’s a new low, even for you.” She gave in and jammed her hand into the garbage, pressing it down until it crushed and folded and smashed.

  “You already hate me. I might as well do what’s right for you and risk you hating me more.”

  “How is forcing me to give up my livelihood right for me?” She washed her hands to keep from shoving the garbage again.

  “If it weren’t for Curried Dreams you would actually be looking for and doing something you enjoyed. You’d get out from that dark place your father thrust you into.”

  Ashna was shaking now. All she wanted was to walk away. To crawl into bed. To get away from Shobi.

  The habit of walking away from things must be a hard one to break.

  Go to hell, Frederico Silva!

  “Curried Dreams is not a dark place. I can turn it around. I’m close to doing it.”

  “You’re not going to win that show. You don’t even like being a chef! You can’t win without passion.”

  “Thanks, Mom. And not all of us are selfish enough to put ourselves and our damn passion before everything else!”

  Shobi gasped and Ashna sucked in her lips.

  All the fight seemed to leak out of Shobi. She sank onto a barstool. But the hurt didn’t last. Within moments Ashna could see the cogs in Shobi’s brain turning again. This was probably how she looked when she was trying to sort through the mess of laws and corruption and centuries-old traditions to come up with a way for her foundation to solve problems. Why hadn’t Ashna inherited that ruthlessness, even just a little bit of it?

  Shobi took a sip of tea. “This tea is great, by the way. I have to take some back with me. Where do you buy it?”

  Ashna poured herself some and sat down across from her mother. “I’ll get you some.” This probably meant Shobi was getting ready to leave.

  Try to show estranged daughter you care: check.

  Leave when it doesn’t work out: check.

  For a while they drank in silence, both shaken after their outburst. But at least they’d be rid of each other soon.

  “We don’t have to end up here every time we try to talk,” Shobi said quietly. It was her pretending-to-be-nonconfrontational voice.

  Ashna rolled her eyes. “You just threatened to sell my work. How can we not end up here?”

  “Okay, that was a . . . how do you young people say it? Something to do with acting like a penis?” Shobi didn’t blush at the use of the word or show any awkwardness, but something told Ashna that it took effort. How had Ashna never seen how hard her mother worked to never come across as silly, to always be taken seriously?

  “Dick move,” she said. “We call it a dick move, and yes it was.” All Shobi’s moves were.

  This was the first time ever that Shobi was owning up to one of them.

  Ashna braced herself for the inevitable deeply impassioned lecture about a woman with agency being labeled with such a masculine insult.
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  Instead, another inscrutable silence followed. “I really want a chance, beta.” Ashna had no idea what that meant. “Can we at least make a deal?”

  Another wave of exhaustion swept through Ashna. The first part of what Shobi had said danced enticingly in front of her, but she knew Shobi well enough to know the second part was key. “What kind of deal would you like to make?”

  Shobi got up and took her cup to the sink. She didn’t wash it, but she did place it inside the sink. “How about this: If you win this show, I’ll admit you were right. I’ll sign over ownership of Curried Dreams. I’ll even help you with money to renovate it. But if this show doesn’t go the way you want it to, we sell the restaurant, and you find something you really . . . well, we sell it.”

  Ashna reached for anger, her trusty shield from Shobi. She ached to tell her she would never let her sell Curried Dreams—win or lose. But she didn’t want to admit that there was a possibility that she wouldn’t win. Perversely enough, something inside her wanted to see Shobi rejoice at her failure. To see Shobi destroy Curried Dreams, something Shobi hated and Ashna could never hate. A vicious part of her wanted to put Shobi in a position where she definitively demonstrated the selfishness and cruelty she was capable of.

  As was their norm, the conversation was at a point where all Ashna wanted was for it to end.

  “Okay,” she said, not bothering to hide her exhaustion.

  “There’s one more thing I want,” Shobi said.

  Of course there was.

  “I can’t wait to hear what it is,” Ashna said drily.

  Shobi smiled; there was even a hint of pride in it. How messed up were they? “I want to stay here with you for the duration of our deal. Until the show is done.”

  Unbelievable! How did Shobi always, always find a way to defeat her?

  “Why?” It was all Ashna could manage.

  Shobi’s face was a negotiator’s mask—blank but not unyielding. “Because I think it’s time we got to know each other.”