by Sonali Dev
Waiting in the green room was making her too restless. She kept seeing Rico’s eyes watching her in the mirror. So she made her way to the restroom through the thankfully empty lobby, trying not to think about how a ball felt in her hands. The hard kick of yearning made her want to scream. What would she give right now to feel the worn leather of the inside of a glove, the tightly stretched surface of a ball? Not for long, but just for one instant to have that smell of leather and turf flood through her, what would that be like?
Exhaustion dragged at her arms and legs. All she wanted was to go home and sink into her bed, without facing Shobi, without thinking about Rico, or all the other shit he was dredging up.
She washed her hands, avoiding her own eyes in the mirror. Her phone buzzed . . . her car was here. Finally. She was about to let herself out of the restroom when she heard a retching sound. Someone was throwing up in one of the stalls.
She walked to the stall the sound had come from. “Are you okay?”
The response was another mighty heave.
“Do you need help?” Ashna asked again, and saw that the stall was unlocked.
“I think I’m dying.” It was Song. Of course it was. She reached back and opened the door, then returned to her crouch over the commode and heaved some more.
Ashna squatted down next to her and stroked her back. “Do you want me to call someone?”
Song shook her head. The poor girl looked miserable. “I should never drink red wine. It always makes me throw up. I’m such an idiot.”
Ashna didn’t bother to argue with that assessment. “You need some water.” She fished out a bottle from her bag and handed it to her. “Rinse your mouth out before swallowing. That’ll help settle your stomach.”
Song did as she was told while Ashna kept a hand on her back. That usually helped with the dizziness. The water seemed to settle Song’s stomach and she leaned her head against the stall.
Ashna pulled the flush lever, trying not to let the smell of alcohol-tinged puke bring back every bad childhood memory. “Think you can walk outside and sit down?”
Song nodded and Ashna helped her up.
For a moment Ashna thought Song would sink back down, but she leaned on Ashna and found her balance.
Ashna gave her a moment before she led her out. Just as she turned the corner out of the restroom looking over her shoulder to make sure Song was all right, she ran right smack into the rock-solid chest of Frederico Silva.
He grabbed her arms, steadying her, his touch gentle, his heartbeat frantic beneath her hands. She wanted to pull away, truly she did. They stood there like that, hands clinging to painfully familiar skin, soaking up who they used to be. Heat rose from him, his musky soapy scent working awareness into every nook and cranny of her being.
“I’m so sorry,” Song said next to them, and Ashna’s frozen body released. She took her hands off his chest.
“You all right?” Still holding Ashna, Rico turned to Song. There was such tenderness in his voice, Ashna wished she could disappear.
Speaking of disappearing, her ride!
She pulled away, fished her phone out of her purse, and ran out to the lobby. No! No. No. One missed call and two texts, and a canceled ride. She texted frantically, but it was too late. Darn it, the rideshare app searched and searched, giving her nothing.
“Hey, Ashna, everything okay?” Song asked. She was holding on to Rico but she looked much less green.
Ashna forced a smile, not that she wasn’t glad to see Song looking better. “My rideshare just canceled on me. Let’s get you to the couch.”
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize you were on your way out. Thanks so much for staying to help me. But why are you leaving? It’s still early.” Song tried to sit but lost her balance and fell onto the couch, taking Rico with her.
They tumbled back together, laughing, completely comfortable with each other. Ashna’s arms tingled where he had held her.
She looked at her wrist, even though she wasn’t wearing a watch, and felt immeasurably stupid. “It’s late for me. I have an early morning.” She fought to keep the smile on her face.
“How long before your ride gets here?” Song asked kindly, leaning her head on Rico’s shoulder.
Every single time Song touched him like that, as though he was hers to touch, pain sliced through Ashna. The feel of his chest wouldn’t stop burning on her palms.
The app found a ride. It was another twenty minutes, but the relief almost knocked her off her feet. “Not too long. Did you want me to get you a drink? Some ginger ale?”
Song’s smile was grateful, and it made her perfect face glow. “I’m feeling all better. The red wine’s out.” She rubbed her belly. “We’ll wait with you.”
We.
“Thank you. Really, you don’t have to do that.” Please don’t do that. “The car will be here soon.”
“No, it won’t.” Finally, Rico found his voice. “There’s thirty thousand people here for the conference. Wait times are ridiculous right now.”
She hated how she felt his voice everywhere.
When she looked up at him, there was a frown folded between his brows. The one that made him look like the past twelve years hadn’t happened. The focused gaze that had changed her life.
He typed something on his phone.
Ashna looked down at her own phone and channeled all her mental energy to will the wait time to move. It did the exact opposite. Still twenty minutes.
There was no way on earth she could spend another minute here with them.
“George will take you home.” Rico stood, pointing across the lobby to the black town car that pulled up outside the doors. The black town car he had made appear in under a minute. “Come on.”
Ashna didn’t want his driver taking her anywhere. “George can take Song home when she’s ready. My ride is almost here.”
His jaw was set. “Song has her own car. She can drop me off if George doesn’t get back by the time we’re ready to leave.”
Song beamed at him from the couch and opened her arms to Ashna.
Ashna bent and gave her a hug.
Of course, he’d want to drop Song off at her hotel when they were ready to leave.
Rico pressed a hand into her back. “Let’s go.”
Song slumped back onto the couch, waving at Ashna, and Ashna couldn’t bring herself to argue with Rico in front of her. Not that his hand on her back was making it easy to form words.
Why did bodies have minds of their own?
They walked out through the automatic glass doors into the cool night and she shivered. He opened the car door and she got in.
Shutting her door, he walked over to the other side and opened the passenger-side door. “Curried Dreams, 300 High Street in Palo Alto,” he said to the driver as he reached in and fiddled with the temperature control on the center console. The car, and the seat she was sitting on, warmed instantly. Ashna’s insides followed suit. “Ms. Raje can tell you where to go from there.” With that he thanked George, barely met Ashna’s eyes, and went back to Song.
When the town car pulled up to her home, Ashna thanked George and tried to tip him. He refused with a smile and a “Mr. Silva is more than generous, Ms. Raje.”
Those words dug into her already aching heart like sharp spikes as she got out of the car. It was probably the chill in the air but her nose ran, and she sniffed and pressed her jacket sleeve into her face as she stood in the middle of her driveway and stared at Curried Dreams behind her bungalow. She had no idea how long she stood there like that. Finally, when she could, she dragged herself up the driveway and the ramp, which had been put in for Yash’s wheelchair when he’d had his accident. It had come in handy later for Baba’s scooter when mobility became an issue.
Every light in the house seemed to be on. Every time Ashna came home, she expected Shobi to be gone. Nope. Still here. And yet she hadn’t come to the studio with the rest of their family. Mina Kaki had to have called her.
&nb
sp; Come on, Shobi, how will the child feel if you’re not there?
How many times had her aunt said those words to Shobi?
Shobi not being there had been a huge relief. Now that she knew how dishonest she felt being in the same room with Rico and her family, how much like a fake, Ashna was sure that adding Shobi to the mix was something she absolutely could not handle. Some relationships were just so ugly you couldn’t share them with anyone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I think you should tell Ashna that we’re together.” It was easy for Omar to say. But Shobi had no idea where she would even start with telling her daughter all the many things she had hidden from her. How had she ended up here? With a thirty-year-old daughter who didn’t know her mother was with someone. That she had been with someone since long before Bram died.
The look Omar gave her was almost as powerful over Skype as it was in person, intense with understanding. His neatly trimmed silver goatee had grown out just a bit and his gentle eyes were dimmed with worry. Those eyes and the way they saw her might be the reason she had fallen in love with him. They were certainly what had made her determined to return to him when every force in the world had conspired to separate them.
“I don’t know how,” she said without bothering to hide her despair. “The secrets between us have grown too large to swallow.”
“Then break them into smaller pieces. Isn’t that what mothers do?” A breeze blew through Omar’s thick silver hair. He was having tea on the terrace of their Juhu flat. Shobi heard the crashing of waves from the beach behind him. It was Mumbai’s premium view. Omar had bought the flat fifteen years ago, fulfilling a promise. Albeit an unspoken one.
Shobi had never needed any of the things from Omar that her family had expected from a husband for her. When you decided on your future so young, pragmatism had no place in it. Even so, those words had been everything: Our house has been waiting for you, jaan. Only you can make it a home. Not once had he asked her to leave her marriage. Not once had he questioned her when she had decided to.
“She’s your daughter, how can she not be strong?” Omar took a sip from his stoneware cup. He refused to drink his black chai with lemon and honey out of Shobi’s hand-crafted Wedgwood china.
After getting his law degree, Omar had ended up making his fortune writing for Indian TV and film. But his heart was that of a poet, incapable of the violence of unkindness, forever searching for the truth. How had he lived with her, a liar, for so long?
“When has telling the truth ever helped me?” Shobi poured herself another glass of wine and took a slow sip. The rich, full-bodied liquid warmed her despite the chill of Bram’s kitchen.
“All your life. It has helped you all your life. Don’t you see, Shoban, you are truth. The pain in your life comes when you’re separated from your truth.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because now you have the time to hear it.”
He put down his cup and leaned in toward the computer screen. “I miss breathing the scent of your hair.” It was something he had done for as long as she could remember, press his face into her hair and fill his lungs as though she were air.
When he’d done it that first time after she found her way back to him, he hadn’t hesitated even for a moment. No one other than Shobi had believed she would be with him again. Except him.
“You are my breath,” he mumbled in Urdu. “Follow the truth, jaan. Don’t be afraid of it.”
Shobi ached to hold him, to press against the starched hand-spun cotton of his kurta draped around his spare, tall body. Like his poetry, there wasn’t an inch of excess in his form.
He held up the computer, giving her a view of her beloved ocean before letting her go with his “Khuda hafiz.”
She watched the computer blink off.
“You are the ocean,” Omar loved to say to her. She had never lived far from an ocean. Not in Jaigaon, her family’s home just south of Goa; not in Sripore, the Rajes’ royal seat just north of Goa; and not here in Palo Alto. Although she could never think of this as home.
Except that her daughter lived here. Her Ashna, who had never been hers at all; Bram had never let her be. Not that she was special; it was what the world did to all women. Decided what they could claim, and at what cost. If they wanted more, it made them fight for it. In that, Shobi had given the world what it wanted. She had fought.
Except for Ashna.
She sat up on the barstool. The sound of the ocean, still in her ears, picked up force. The ocean inside her was a tidal wave.
How had she allowed this?
All her life she had refused to rely on anyone else to save her. So how had she stood impotent in this?
He had taken her child from her. But she was the one who had let him. And she was the one who had no idea how to get her back.
Shobi hopped off the stool and started pacing Bram’s kitchen. She had no idea when Ashna would be home. It was a bit embarrassing to suddenly find herself waiting up for her daughter. It was a good twenty years too late to play the overprotective mother. She stared at the rice and dal she had cooked for when Ashna did finally get home. It was also a little late to play the nurturing mother, but she didn’t care. She was sitting right here for as long as it took.
After her disastrous trip to the restaurant, she’d needed a bottle of wine. It had been horrifying how run-down Curried Dreams looked. It had to be breaking Ashi’s heart. How did people do this? How did they handle their children’s pain? Especially when they saw how unnecessary it was, how easy to fix. Why couldn’t Ashi see what she was doing?
Shobi had found herself unable to help Mina as she directed the staff and took care of the dinner crowd. The restaurant was full. The way it used to be when Bram ran it. Ashna might be right, she might actually have a chance to turn the place around. Then again, what happened when the popularity of the show passed? Ashna had no love for feeding people. Even when she’d helped Bram, it was always in other parts of the restaurant, never the kitchen.
Not that Shobi blamed her. Bram was an exacting monster in the kitchen. Well, he was that in all things, but his obnoxiousness was considered talent when it came to food. Shobi had once seen Ashna trembling outside the kitchen when Bram was in one of his culinary rages. When Shobi tried to ask her about it, she’d been mortified and had withdrawn deep into herself. In the end Shobi had done the only thing she could think of. Told her that she didn’t have to ever go into a kitchen if she didn’t want to.
The restaurant had always made all of Shobi’s rage at Bram surface. Even today she hadn’t been able to stand being there. How did Ashna do it? How did she go in there day after day with that room in the back, Bram’s lair, where he’d trapped himself those last few years, where Shobi had finally told him she was done with their farce of a marriage, and where he had taken his own life, with no regard for the child who had found him in a pool of his own blood?
In the end, Shobi had left without helping Mina and come back to the house. The bottle of red wine she had been nursing all evening was only half-depleted. She poured herself another glass. She’d had to walk to the Whole Foods down the street to pick up the wine, because the house was entirely and completely dry. Dry enough to make Mahatma Gandhi proud.
It was understandable that Ashna didn’t drink. Shobi remembered packing all the bottles in the house—hundreds of them, Bram was not one for moderation—into boxes on one of her visits and sending Bram’s man Friday off to the Anchorage with them. It had been a desperate attempt to get the man to see sense. Seeing sense was another thing her late husband had not been known for.
The front door opened, and Shobi jumped up. Patting her sari into place, she made her way out of the kitchen, and stopped short when she found Ashna tiptoeing to the stairs. Ashna had obviously seen the lights on and had been trying to avoid her. The poor child almost made it before Shobi cleared her throat. The guilt on her face at being intercepted tugged at Shobi’s heart.
&nbs
p; “Hi, beta. How was today’s shoot?”
At first when Mina had asked Shobi to join them on their visit to Ashna’s set, she had agreed to go. Then she’d realized that putting Ashna through that in public without warning would be too cruel, and she’d stayed back.
Ashna stepped backward and off the stairs. “It was fine. Just some pictures and sound bites. Yash got some good coverage, which was great.” She bit her lip. “They didn’t tell us. So I didn’t know families were coming.”
“I know. Mina asked me. But I had an interview.”
Ashna took her withdrawing breath and pulled on her blank face. “Right. How did it go?”
Was Ashna saying she had wanted Shobi to be there? “It was fine. The usual questions. I might have permanently given up on getting a journalist to come up with a surprising question. Your interview on the morning show was great. You came across as sweet and poised as always.”
Ashna colored and rubbed a nonexistent spot off her giant handbag. “Thanks. I barely needed to say anything. They are mostly interested in Ri . . . Frederico anyway.”
Not for the first time, Shobi wondered about the football player who made her always cool and collected daughter stutter.
Shobi was almost certain there was something going on there. It wasn’t like the man was trying to conceal his interest—no, his wonder—when he looked at Ashna. Strangely enough, it seemed a bit like how Shobi felt when she looked at Ashna, as though the hurt at being shut out by her was a physical ache. Like Shobi had her nose pressed against glass, hungry to get into that most hallowed place that was Ashna’s heart.
Now that Shobi thought about it, Ashna seemed more than aware of it—the football player’s regard, not her mother’s. Which gave Shobi the niggling feeling that this wasn’t the first time the boy and Ashi were meeting.
