Finally, they came to the end of a corridor, and the warden pointed to a window. Vikram thanked him and signaled for him to leave them alone. Ria let Vikram’s hand go and walked up to the window. For the first time since she was seven years old, Ria’s eyes rested on the surprisingly small, impossibly frail creature who had cast such a large, intractable shadow over every part of Ria’s life.
The window was fitted with iron bars like a prison cell. Thick soft vinyl pads covered the bars. In fact, thick sheets of padding covered everything—the walls, the doors, the bed frame, even the chair. The creature sitting in the chair at the center of all that cushioned padding, rocking herself, was so delicate, so fragile that Ria couldn’t imagine how all this softness could protect her if she went hurtling into something.
A red puckered burn scar covered half her clean-shaven head. A purple bruise stretched from the scar across her cheek to her soft pink mouth. Other fading, yellowing bruises patterned her arms and her neck and disappeared into her gray gown. Two of her fingers were bound together with tape the exact color of her pale beige skin.
Ria fixed her eyes on the delicate, long-fingered hands that rested in her lap. The fingers were moving, tapping out some sort of rhythm. Ria couldn’t tell for sure over the ringing in her ears, but she thought she heard humming. For a long time all Ria could do was look at the drumming fingers and let the trembling inside her synchronize itself with the rhythm they were beating out.
“Hey!” the voice suddenly called out, and Ria looked up, surprised that it could speak. She had never imagined it with a voice. It’s voice was exactly Ria’s voice. It looked at Vikram with eyes that were exactly her eyes. “Hey!” it said again.
“Hey there.” Vikram smiled gently—that smile he saved for the little kids who adored him so much. He did a small wave with his hand. She smiled back. A big beaming grin split lips exactly identical to Ria’s lips. Two of her front teeth were missing.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
“Hey!” she said again as if he hadn’t spoken. The smile on her face stayed bright and blank.
Tears started to stream down Ria’s cheeks.
Vikram pulled her close and pressed his lips against her hair. The woman in the room didn’t notice.
“Hey!” she said one more time, before she went back to humming.
Ria stood there watching her, leaning into Vikram, her head resting on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. His arms wrapped around her, collecting her into himself. They stood there like that watching her hum, watching her drum, watching her until she fell asleep, smiling to herself, and her fingers stilled in her lap.
31
T
he sanitarium sat on twenty acres of grounds with thick wooded areas alternating with clipped lawns and pruned shrubbery. Although what good these magnificent grounds were to someone locked in a padded cell, Ria couldn’t imagine. Vikram walked next to her as she meandered along the path that wound around a retention pond and led to the back of the property, away from the road and the sound of passing cars. Away from the gates.
There was something safe about the place. It was cocooned in the silence she needed. The raw, torn-open feeling inside her was still too fresh. She hadn’t armored it shut yet. She couldn’t handle anyone seeing her like this, asking her questions. She had too many questions of her own, too many things she herself had hidden away from for too long. She wasn’t ready for the world’s obscene curiosity and she most certainly never wanted to take anyone down ever again, even though the memory made her smile.
They stopped at the edge of the pond and lowered themselves onto the sloping bank, sitting cross-legged on the thick carpet of grass that rolled down the hill and into the water. Their denim-clad knees touched. She felt Vikram’s eyes on her as she watched the water.
She had no idea how he had shown up that morning out of the clear blue sky or what he was doing here. But having him next to her outside that padded room, it was so precious, so impossible to quantify, she held on to it, refusing to taint it with questions.
“It was Uma,” he said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the grounds. “Uma told me where you were.”
Uma had promised Ria she wouldn’t tell anyone. What had he done to make her tell him? Why had he even asked? He had made it clear enough he was done with her.
He touched her hair, tucked it behind her ear. “The article about the suicide scared me half to death. What the hell were you thinking getting on that ledge like that?” He was reprimanding her and instead of making her angry she held on to it. The strangest things in life were precious. Someone to tell you when you were wrong was one of them.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” She wanted to explain about the phone, but she was too tired. And it sounded completely crazy when she thought about it now.
“I know that.” The complete absence of doubt in his voice made her want to sidle up to him. “I know how much you love heights. But it was still a really stupid thing to do. What if you had slipped?”
Ria shrugged. It wasn’t something she should have done. She wasn’t proud of it.
“I couldn’t believe the crap in that article. At first it made me so angry I couldn’t see straight. But then a lot of shit started falling into place in my head.” He went up on his knees and faced her. “How could you have lied to me about your mother’s death?”
“Viky—”
“And I was such a fool, I walked away. I should’ve seen through it. I thought it was the shock of losing both your parents, I thought you wanted to leave everything about your old life behind. Including us. But the movies? I should have known better.”
He scooted closer and wiped her tears. “And then I did it again at Nikhil’s wedding. Ria, I’m—”
“Please, Viky. Please don’t apologize.” Anything but that.
“But I am sorry. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. I was an idiot ten years ago. But now? Instead of licking my wounds, I should’ve been with you when the story broke. I tried. I went to Mumbai to make sure you were okay. But you were gone. And no one knew where you were. Except that agent of yours, who’s Fort Knox. And Uma, who almost killed me for letting you go after I told her about us.”
He had told Uma about them? And gone to Mumbai looking for her? “I thought you never wanted to see me again.” She laid her chin on her knees, pulling them tight against the pain in her chest, and watched his face.
“God, Ria. How could you believe that? What I wanted was for you to not leave me again. I was desperate. I would have said anything. Done anything to stop you. And of course I said the one thing I shouldn’t have.” The regret in his eyes was so raw, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She couldn’t believe how good it felt just to look at him. To know his face so well.
“That’s not true,” she said, lifting her head off her knees. “You were right. If anything would have stopped me that would have been it. But you couldn’t have stopped me. I just couldn’t stay, Viky. I still can’t.”
He didn’t react. Not even a frown. He just sat there on his knees looking at her like he never wanted to look away. “The first week after you left, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything but work. I think I created a hundred videos for V-learn. The host site almost told me to take my business elsewhere because they couldn’t keep up.” He smiled. “But you were right. I was dragging my feet on the eco deal. I was being a coward and not putting my money where my mouth was with V-learn. I was afraid of believing in anything again.”
He lifted her chin so she was looking in his eyes. “I’m done running now. I signed a contract with Clive and Hadley. They get to use my patents for the next ten years and work with me exclusively until we go into production. And Ma’s foundation is funding V-learn and I get to run it, to hire people globally, to translate, to work with schools. We can do whatever we want with it.”
She cupped his cheek. “That’s fantastic, Viky.” It felt so good to touch him.
“You don’t have to worry about this on your own anymore.” He pointed to the stately manor behind them. “We’ll take care of it together now. Even if you don’t want to act anymore, we can take care of it. You can do whatever you want. You can paint again. In fact—” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a brown paper bag. Inside it were three tubes of acrylic and a brush.
She pushed it away.
“Look at the colors,” he said, extracting the tubes and handing them to her.
Burgundy, jade, and turquoise. She smiled and gave them back to him.
“I bought these in Chicago the day before the wedding. I was waiting for the right moment to give them to you.” He put the tubes back in the bag and held it out to her.
She scooted back, away from him, away from the paints and twisted her fingers in her lap. “I don’t want to paint, Viky. I’ve already told you what I want.”
He put the bag back in his pocket. “It’s what your lips tell me. But it’s never been about the words for us.” He stroked the fingers she was twisting together, easing them apart. “It doesn’t make sense, sweetheart. Why won’t you stop running from us?”
Was he blind? Hadn’t he just been in there with her? Hadn’t he seen what she was going to turn into? Suddenly, she was too exhausted to fight, too tired to lie, to give him explanations he refused to accept. He had seen it, the truth had stared him in the face. It was more powerful than anything she could make up.
“Viky, you just saw the person who gave birth to me. How can you possibly want to be with that?”
He blinked, his face blank. “Your mom? What does this have to do with—”
His brows drew together. Understanding suffused his eyes. “Shit! How could I have been so stupid? This is about your mother?” It sounded like a question, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He sprang to his feet and started pacing. “How could I have missed it? This is exactly how you would think.” He dropped back down on his knees, glaring at her. “You think you’re protecting me, don’t you? Just like you thought you were protecting me ten years ago. You think you’re going to get sick like your mom.”
She wanted to shake him. “She’s not sick, Viky, she’s mad. She’s crazy. Terminally insane. Psychotic. Paranoid. Severely demented.” Her voice broke around the words. “She hurtles between violence and being catatonic.” She threw out all the words they had thrown at her over the years. “She rips her own clothes and throws herself at walls. She doesn’t know her own name. She sets things on fire. She—she—”
She almost beat me to death when I was seven.
But she couldn’t say it. Even after all these years she couldn’t say those words.
The tears that pooled in her eyes were hot, the cheeks they spilled onto even hotter. She swiped at them furiously. Her entire body started to shake again and it made her so angry she wanted to scream.
Vikram tried to reach for her tears.
She pushed away his hand and stood up and rubbed her eyes against her shoulder. The wool of her coat scratched her eyelids. “Don’t, Viky, please don’t. I can’t have this conversation again. What you did for me today. It was—I can never—I just want you to leave. Please. Please don’t put me through this again. I’m begging you.”
He stood up and followed her. “I’m sorry, Ria,” he said in that soothing, intoxicating, unwavering voice of his. It fell on her like cooling rain. “I can’t do that. I’ve tried. I swear, I’ve tried and I just fucking can’t.” Very gently he circled his arms around her and pulled her close. She tried to stay rigid, to hold herself away from him, but she couldn’t. Her treacherous body melted into his. Her face sought that patch of skin on his neck that was her corner, her peace. There was no expectation in his embrace, no urgency in his caress. He just held her, solid and strong and sane.
And she fell to pieces in his arms. Tears soaked his coat, his shirt, his skin. Finally when the tears slowed, leaving her lids raw and swollen, her lips moved and the words started to flow. He lifted her against him and sank back into the grass, settling her in his lap. Like her tears her words spilled from her in an uncontrollable stream. She couldn’t stop them, she couldn’t slow them, she couldn’t make them anything they weren’t.
She told him about the seven-year-old girl who had disobeyed her dead grandmother and gone in search of her destiny in the forbidden attic and had her bones broken for it. She told him how much it had hurt, not just her wounds as she lay in the hospital for months, but to see Baba by her sickbed every day, crying his shame, and losing her words. About being sent away for it, being banished from her home forever until she was left with its ashes and an impossible promise. About the deal she had made with the body she had vowed to him alone. About the sniggering schoolgirls, the need to be normal, the absolute certainty with which she knew that it was the one thing she would never be. She told him about the nurse’s black, bloated body. She told him about Baba’s eyes, his despair, his charred lifelessness.
“She burned the house down, killed him, killed the nurse, but he made me promise not to report it. I lied to the police, told them she was dead. Then I brought her here under the nurse’s name, so no one would know she was alive. I promised him I would take care of her, Viky. I protected a killer.
“Did you know she was normal until I was born? Giving birth to me did this to her. It was me. I took her away from him and then I became the weight around his neck. If I had never been born, his life would have been completely different.” She was the reason he was dead. And today, she had stood by and watched his killer hum herself to sleep.
Vikram’s arms tightened around her, cradling her in so much safety, so much strength she couldn’t exhaust it. She kept pushing at it, but it wouldn’t give. He wouldn’t let her go. He held her until the words dried up, until the tears stopped. He wiped the wetness from her cheeks and waited for the moisture in her eyes to dry. He looked into her eyes, his gaze as clear, as honest as a mirror. The same spotless invitation it had been all those years ago when he’d asked her to be his friend.
“I don’t think your father banished you, Ria, I think he sent you away because he wanted to protect you. I think all he wanted was to give you the normal you so badly craved.”
Baba had given her Chicago for the summers. But through the year he had visited her every chance he got, making the three-hour drive from Pune to Panchgani, bringing her bags of the buttery Shrewsbury cookies she loved, as though everything were perfectly normal.
She had never told him there was nothing normal about a father who visited alone or who let tears leak down his stubbly cheeks. Other fathers came only with the mothers and watched their wives play the role of caretaker. They didn’t go down on their knees and feed pieces of cookies into their daughters’ mouths and wipe around their lips with shaking hands while the other parents turned their children’s faces away, as if witnessing this train wreck of a man with his unkempt hair and clothes and his desperately sad eyes could somehow damage their daughters beyond repair.
Why does she let him come to see her?
She had overheard one of the girls whisper.
If I had such a weirdo for a father I would hide if he ever came to see me.
But Ria had lived for the times when the school peon pulled her out of the classroom and she found Baba waiting beneath the high-arched ceiling of the receiving room, his eyes shining, his dimples digging deep crevices into his bony cheeks.
“All he wanted was to give you a chance at happiness,” Vikram said, caressing her tears not so much as wiping them. “Ria, when was the last time you were happy?”
Her cheeks warmed. He knew exactly where her mind would go.
“Can you be happy without me?”
He already knew the answer to that one too.
“All that guilt you’ve been lugging around, what would that do to your Baba if he were alive?”
Ria swallowed. The entire weight of her fear, her hopelessness, descended upon her. She was broken and it would have broken Baba’s heart to see her like this.
“I think you’ve had enough for today, sweetheart. Why don’t we talk about this another time?” Vikram pressed his freshly shaved cheek into hers, pushed his lips into her swollen lids.
Then he took her hand and stood.
For all the terror she had felt about coming here, the idea of leaving the asylum grounds felt wrong. She just wasn’t ready for it. She hesitated only for a moment before following him blindly through the neatly trimmed landscape, trying not to think about how comforting it was to hold his hand, trying not to think about how weightless and free it made her feel, like a kite that could fly free because its string was in safe hands. He led her through the grounds and away from the gate, knowing she needed more time before going back into the world. Despite her woolen coat, her shoulders felt bare, kissed by the wind and the sunlight for the first time in her life.