Lovetorn (19 page)

“Don’t worry,
didi
,” she said. “He will always be yours.”

The next day I was still in a funk, unable to rouse myself from it. I kept hoping to hear from Toby; but there was nothing, not even those silly, funny, pointless videos. When the household was quiet, I considered calling him but decided against it. How many more times could I say “Sorry”? All I could do was hope he would come around on his own. Even then, what did I think was going to happen next? I placed my fingers to my lips, recalling that brief moment yesterday when I had given in to him. I had loved how he smelled, how he tasted. I felt terrible for loving it.

At five in the evening my father told me to get dressed; we were going out for dinner.

“Why?” I asked. I couldn’t fathom the thought of putting on proper clothes and brushing my hair. “I don’t feel like it,” I said. “Can’t we order in?”

“Your mother, with God’s grace, is feeling a little better today,” he said. “It will be a good change for her. After all, we don’t know what her mood will be tomorrow.”

A couple of hours later we were circling the parking lot at Chili’s. My father checked his watch anxiously, almost rear-ending a car in front of him. Finally we entered the noisy restaurant and were shown to a table by the window. We ordered lettuce wraps without the chicken, burgers without the beef, cheese quesadillas, French fries, and Cokes all around. I had a headache. I wasn’t even hungry.

A window on the far wall overlooked the parking lot. Someone there caught my eye.

“Papa, I think I just saw Mr. Phil,” I said. My father, sitting opposite me, turned around for a second to follow my gaze.

“What a coincidence,” he said, a weird smile on his face. My father was facing the door. His eyes looked over my head. He smiled broadly now.

“What happened to your
choti
?” a voice said. I drew in a sharp intake of breath and felt the blood drain out of my face. Sangita, sitting next to my father, clapped her hands gleefully.

Vikram was standing right behind me.

I felt faint. The room was spinning. I noticed the flash of his belt buckle, the hair on his arms that peeked out from beneath the cuffs of his shirt, the smidgen of pink gum that was visible when he smiled. He looked down at me, his arms raised skyward as if he were beseeching some unseen angels, and said, “Surprise!”

Chapter Twenty-five

“I’M SHOCKED,”
I said to him. “I had no idea. What . . . How . . . What are you doing here?”

He was sitting next to me now. He pulled his chair close to mine. I recognized his cologne. I had bought it for him on his last birthday.

“I knew before you left that I would try and come see you here,” he said. “Two years is too long to be apart. I wanted to surprise you.”

“But
I
knew!” Sangita said. “Papa told Ma and me. But he made me
promise
not to say anything. It was very hard. Especially last night when you were crying for him!”

Vikram, sitting next to me now, knocked his elbow against mine and winked. His hair had been recently cut, shorn close to his head. The black thread he wore for religious reasons, that he had always worn, was wound tightly against his wrist.

I couldn’t believe he was here. My mother looked at both of us, her eyes darting from Vikram to me and then back to Vikram again.

“No need to cry for him now,” my father said, pushing a plate of onion rings toward us. “Your Vikram has come for you.”

Mr. Phil was waiting to take Vikram to his hotel. We walked out together.

“So, you didn’t answer me,” he said. “What happened to your
choti
?” It was the first time we were alone since he walked into the restaurant.

“Oh, I just got tired of it,” I said. “Too much upkeep.”

He stared at me silently.

“You look very nice, Shalini,” he said at last. “Very pretty, very grown-up. You’ve changed a lot.”

“Thank you,” I said, nervous now. He was the boy I had known for sixteen years, engaged to for thirteen. I didn’t have a thing to say to him. I looked into the parking lot for Mr. Phil and was relieved when he finally rolled up with the car.

He called me two hours later at home. He was jet-lagged, unable to fall asleep.

“We have a week together,” he said. “I want to see everything about your life here. We have so much to catch up on, Shalu. I’ve really missed you. It’s so good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you too,” I said. “But try and get some rest now. We will talk tomorrow.”

I hung up, made some tea, and went out to the patio. The fairy lights my father had installed on the trees last Christmas were still up, their tiny bulbs twinkling in the dark, balmy night. I sat down on one of the padded deck chairs, put my feet up, crossed my ankles, and rested my head against the soft cushion. I heard only crickets in the bushes, a sports broadcast from somewhere down the block.

I wanted to be thrilled. When I had seen Vikram, I should have jumped out of my seat, flung my arms around him, and let him twirl me around in the restaurant. That was what the old Shalu would have done. But instead, I had sat there, too stunned to move, too mystified at his decision to fly halfway across the world to see a girl who had kissed someone else, who wanted someone else. When I had seen him, I’d seen Dada and Dadi, his parents and mine, thirty-seven people steering the course of our lives. I’d seen two ruby rings picked out by his mother. I’d seen a crying three-year-old whose white party dress had been stained by pink icing and a six-year- old boy wiping her tears away.

I had seen all of that.

But I hadn’t seen me. I had been “Vikram’s girl” for so long, I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

But a promise had been made. Where I came from, promises must be kept. Vikram was here to see me. I just
had
to love him again.

It was the last week of summer camp. I was scared to go back to regular school, but I had to. I had to talk to Toby, to make him understand. I needed him in my life again, in whatever way he chose. I just couldn’t stand for him to hate me.

The heat was stultifying. I was amazed at how quickly it had turned, going from breezy and pleasant to searingly hot. At school, few people hung around outdoors. I didn’t see Toby anywhere. I walked past the music room and his locker, poked my head into the lunchroom. It was all I could do to carry on with my classes.

Vikram was there when I got home in the afternoon, being given a guided tour of the house by my father. A bag lay open on the floor from which spilled gifts from India: jars of pickled lime wrapped in twine, CDs of Bollywood music, saris, and gold jewelry.

“Call me courier,” Vikram said, laughing.

The afternoon turned to evening. My mother went back to her room. The four of us had dinner together. Vikram was eager to know everything about our lives here. He commented on Sangita’s deep tan, asked my father about his driver’s license; then they talked about the subprime crisis as Sangita and I cleared the table. When I returned to the living room, Vikram made space for me on the couch next to him. Our hands were hidden behind a velvet cushion. He picked up my fingers and started playing with them. It should have felt comfortable and familiar. I pulled my hand away, and he turned to look at me, a slight frown on his face. When my father offered to drive him back to his hotel, I was relieved.

The following day Vikram went to have lunch with my father at his office. My father wanted to introduce his future son-in-law to his boss. I shook my head as I thought of what Mr. Jeremy, with all his modern ideas, would think of that.

At school, I saw Toby sitting on a wooden bench alone, listening to his iPod. He pulled out his earbuds when he saw me approaching. I sat down next to him.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied.

“I looked for you yesterday.”

“Yeah, we were away for a couple of days. In San Francisco. Didn’t get back till late last night.”

“Oh, you didn’t mention you were going away,” I said. I realized how ironic that sounded, that I would be offended that he didn’t tell me about an overnight trip with his family when I hadn’t told him I was supposed to be getting married in a year.

I sat up straight and looked at him. A stray black hair was on his beige T-shirt. I reached over and pulled it off.

“I’m miserable,” I said to him. “Ever since the other day. I feel like crap about everything. It’s not like me to screw things up.”

He turned and looked away, toward a few kids who were playing hacky sack on the grass.

“I don’t want you to be miserable,” he said. “Don’t want you to feel like crap.”

I sighed.

“He’s here,” I said.

Toby’s head snapped back in my direction.

“Vikram. The guy. My fiancé.” The words sounded awkward. “He’s here. Showed up on Sunday night to surprise me.”

“Good for you,” Toby said.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “He’s so sweet. Such a good guy. My parents love him. He loves me. I thought I loved him too. But then I came here. Everything changed. My life opened up. I met you. I heard you play the flute. I couldn’t think of anything else after that.” I was crying now. “I’m crazy,” I said.

He wound his earbuds around his iPod and put it into a front pocket of his backpack. The bag had been sitting between us. He lifted it and put it on the ground. He moved closer to me.

“Yup,” he said. “You’re all kinds of crazy.” He lightly put his arm around my shoulder.

I turned to him, my eyes beseeching.

“What will I do, Toby?”

He shrugged and lay his hand over mine.

Every night was spoken for. Hollywood Boulevard. Chinatown, Beverly Hills. Vikram bought a yellow Lakers hat, which he wore everywhere. He carried his father’s old Nikon camera, and Sangita teased him about being the only teenager in the world who didn’t have a digital camera. He joked back that he wanted to be “old school.” He wanted to see everything. Some days, my mother joined us. Others, she retired early. One evening we all had dinner with Renuka and her parents. When Vikram had gone to the restroom, Renuka told me how cute she thought he was, how hot.

“I’m kinda surprised,” she said. “He just seems, you know, so nice and normal, like not the kind of guy who’d be okay with getting engaged at six.”

“He’s more than okay with it, Renuka,” Sangita said proudly. “He
loves
my
didi.
”

Renuka folded her arms in front of her, a shadow of something that looked vaguely like jealousy fleeting across her face.

She was right; there was so much about Vikram to love: whenever he said hello or good-bye to my parents, he touched their feet like the well-brought-up boy he was, and they put their hands on his head in blessing. Even though he was a guest in our city, he wanted to make sure that we were happy and comfortable.

Yet Vikram and I were never alone together, a continuation of Dada’s decree despite the fact that we were thousands of miles away. I didn’t mind it. Sangita continued to remind me of how happy I must be having my Vikram so near. I said nothing. I was counting the days until he would leave.

Chapter Twenty-six

VIKRAM WAS LEAVING
on Friday night, catching a connecting flight in Kuala Lumpur before going on to Bangalore. He said he wanted to spend most of the day with me. It would be a year before we would see each other again.

I told him it was my last day of summer camp. I wanted to finish my classes, tie up any loose ends, and then he and I could spend the evening together before his flight.

At school, there was a picnic to celebrate the last day. I wore a new yellow top and lip gloss, my mother’s dangling gold earrings. It would be my first school party.

We congregated on the green grass, freshly watered and mowed. Tables had been set up and covered with plastic tablecloths patterned with confetti and balloons. I went over and poured some Sprite into a paper cup.

On a low wooden platform, some of the school musicians unpacked their instruments. A boy with a violin, a girl with a cello. Toby pulled out his silver flute. He polished it while his eyes searched the crowd. They found me, and stopped searching. I waved at him.

They were jamming—bluegrass, rock, jazz. I sat on the grass, my knees pulled up to my chest, watching and listening. Sasha, whom I had seen a few times around school over the summer, asked if she could sit next to me. She had a plate of potato salad drenched in creamy mayonnaise. She offered me a bite and I gratefully accepted, relishing the flavor of the fresh dill. The sun was high, but a calming breeze had lifted away yesterday’s heat. A girl in a frayed denim skirt was tapping a tambourine against her leg. I realized I was swaying in time to the music. I looked around and saw familiar faces, happy faces. Then my eyes went back to Toby, who was playing a spirited folk number, his eyes closed, his head rhythmically moving from side to side, his long fingers gliding up and down the shiny silver instrument. I wanted to hold his hand again, wanted those lips to caress mine. I didn’t know how this was going to work. I didn’t know what I was going to do. All I knew was that I was crazy about him.

Right then, at that moment, nothing existed beyond Toby and me.

When the music died down, he jumped off the platform and came toward me, easing himself onto the grass.

“You’re so good,” I said to him.

“I can teach you if you want,” he said.

“I think you’ll give up after one lesson,” I said.

He paused, and his eyes moved all over my face, resting on my mouth.

“Maybe not,” he said quietly. “I’m still here, right? I guess that’s saying something.” He lifted his arm and wove it behind me so it was gently touching my waist. I didn’t move. His other hand was on my knee. He was wearing colored rubber bracelets. I gently fingered them.

I don’t know what made me look up. There had been no noise out of the ordinary, nothing calling to me. But I glanced up and, twenty feet away, saw a boy in a yellow Lakers cap staring straight at me.