32
I
t had been four days since they had picked up Vikram’s stuff from his hotel and moved it to the flat Ria had rented in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood overlooking a park. They knew it was only temporary. Ria didn’t have anywhere else to go and no idea what she was going to do when her two-month lease expired, and Vikram hadn’t told her how many days he had before he went back to Chicago to start work with the construction company. But living in that charmingly furnished flat with its colonial furniture and floral trim was so much like a real life together, so much like every dream she’d ever dreamed of a future with him, she couldn’t get herself to ask. It would be over soon enough.
She knew this because every morning they went to the asylum and visited. And every visit reinforced Ria’s vision of her future and her decision that she would not do to Viky what the woman had done to her father. That first day they had watched her hum to that beat that seemed to beat inside her continuously. The next day she slammed her head to it, slamming and slamming against the padded wall for the entire hour that they watched. Yesterday she had reached for the bars and Ria had backed away in such terror she didn’t know if she would ever be able to go back.
Actually, she’d felt that way after each visit. Every day when they came back to the flat Ria believed she wouldn’t go back the next day, but coming home with Vikram erased the terror, infused her with strength, surged hope in her heart until she was ready for it again the next morning. And then the cycle repeated itself.
Living with Vikram held no surprises. She knew his every mood, his every action. She felt perpetually wrapped up, mussed, messed with, and alive. On their way back from the sanitarium they picked up groceries at the corner grocery store, usually meat and cheese and bread to make sandwiches, and readymade soups. A few times they bought eggs and vegetables and cooked something up. He had always eaten more than anyone she knew. No matter how much food they bought, there was never a morsel left over. And he had a way of filling up every inch of their space by leaving cups and books and pencils all over the place. Every time she made their bed, he found a way to muss it up. And he worked around the clock, his mind engaged all the time.
When he showed her V-learn it was like being able to walk through his mind, so inventive, so infinite, it saw with clarity the most intricate of concepts as though they were the simplest things. “Everything is simple at its core,” he told her. And if V-learn wasn’t enough for her to want to spend the rest of her days immersed in that brilliant, generous mind of his, she finally found out about that project he’d been working on with Drew that had put that proud smile on Mindy and Uma’s faces that day.
On their visit to the asylum yesterday they had run into a teenage girl in a wheelchair. They had been strolling along the narrow concrete path that snaked through the grounds and had stepped off to make way for the wheelchair. Vikram had waved at the skinny, long-haired girl, twisting about in the chair, and she’d become so excited her jerking limbs had dropped the pink bunny she was carrying.
Vikram had squatted next to the wheelchair. “Hello there, beautiful,” he’d said, dusting off the toy and holding it out to her until her flailing arms were able to take the toy from him. “I’m Vic. What’s your name?”
“Rayna doesn’t talk. But she loves making friends,” the lady pushing the wheelchair had said, smiling at the girl in that way people smiled at very young children, even though this child was at least in her early teens.
Vikram’s smile had been just his usual smile, open, playful, always the same for everyone. He’d chatted with the girl for a long while and she’d chatted back without saying a single word, just her sounds and eyes and expressive hands.
Before they said good-bye and continued on their walk, Rayna had wrapped her arms around Vikram’s face and given him a noisy kiss on his cheek, and he’d given her mother a card and told her about the project.
Drew and he had developed software to help children like Rayna communicate using a keyboard. He’d explained it to Ria as they walked through the grounds. Drew worked with autistic children who wouldn’t talk, but who could communicate through a computer. But the children tended to struggle with fine motor skills and often got frustrated with how long it took to type what they wanted to say. So Vikram had come up with a way to use word recognition based on context and customize it to each child so it wasn’t as frustrating, and minimized the use of motor skills.
“We still have a ways to go, but the results are pretty spectacular,” he’d told Ria proudly.
She’d held him and cried as though he’d broken her heart. He had found a way to help children who couldn’t talk, children who were trapped inside their own world, whose words didn’t cooperate with them. She had wanted to shake him for doing this to her. How much harder was he going to make this? How much harder was he going to make her fall for him?
She knew her war with words wasn’t the same as Rayna’s, but she knew what it felt like not being able to reach the world around you as a child with no control and no power. And she knew how hard he must’ve worked. For her. Because he’d known her struggle. Even after what she had done to him, even before she came back, he had fought her fight for her.
Their lovemaking had been crazed that night. She’d been frantic, wanting to crawl inside his body and become one with him, her hunger so elemental it had stolen every thought and doubt. He’d kissed and caressed every inch of her and loved her until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, healing her cell by cell, forcing her to feel every shattering, life-affirming moment of it. “Choose this, Ria,” his every touch said. “Don’t leave me,” his every breath said.
They hadn’t talked about her fears or about their future since that first day when she’d broken down on the sanitarium grounds, but she knew what he was doing. He was chipping away at her defenses bit by bit. Problem was, no matter how strong and invincible she felt in their little haven, the moment she stepped through those wrought iron gates all her fears returned. She knew this had to end. But he seemed in no hurry.
It was impossible to keep his insidious confidence from seeping into her own treacherous heart. Without meaning to, she reached for the pencil and sketchpad he kept leaving all over the place, the need to capture the hope in his body, the faith in his eyes so strong she could no longer curb her fingers.
“I feel like Rose from
Titanic,
” he said without looking up from his tablet. “Want me to take off my clothes? I’ll even sling that pendant of yours around my neck.”
“Maybe later,” she said, unable to stop her laughter from making her strokes go all haywire.
But she couldn’t stop and he didn’t move. He stayed sprawled across the couch and turned his focus back on his work as if she wasn’t trying to capture with her fingers what she couldn’t seem to wrap her heart around.
When she was done he didn’t ask to see the sketch, and let her hide it away. And he wouldn’t ask until she was ready to show it to him by herself.
The rest of the day fell into its usual rhythm. They talked to Uma and Vijay as they had done every day. Yesterday Ria had finally spoken to Nikhil and Jen, and apologized for leaving the wedding before the reception. As expected, Nikhil and Jen had been nothing but relieved to talk to her again. “I was as wrong as can be, Ria,” Nikhil had told her. “You and Vic belong together.”
When Vikram called his parents, his father seemed completely at ease with knowing Vikram was there with her. Chitra tried to invoke her rights as his boss on V-learn to get him to go back home, and Ria had to smile at how Vikram reacted.
“I need to be here with Ria right now, Ma,” he told her. “And I can work just fine from here. Once we know where Ria and I plan to go next I’ll let you know. If that’s a problem, let’s revisit the contract. It’s still in the grace period for rescission.”
“I don’t want you to break your V-learn contract with your mother,” Ria told Vikram as they walked through the town hand in hand, heading to the sanitarium for their daily visit.
“Ma has to get used to us whether she likes it or not,” he said as though them being together was immutable, and all Ria’s fears come crashing back.
They approached the tree-lined street and she looked around to make sure no paparazzi were lurking in wait before they crossed the street. They were a little late today, and the sun was full and bright in the sky. Walkers and bikers dotted the sidewalk. The street looked nothing like the lonesome, deserted place it was when they got here a few hours earlier.
“Looking to jump someone again?” Vikram asked, laughing at the memory.
She punched his arm and stared at the stately building across the street. It looked calm and serene, not bad at all for a place where you could throw yourself at walls and hurt no one but yourself. If she was going to do it somewhere, this was as good a place as any.
Vikram turned her toward him and cupped her face in his hands. “You are the most frustratingly stubborn person I’ve ever met, you know that?” Then he leaned over and kissed her, softly, possessively, tugging at her lips so gently she felt it all the way down to her toes, and she forgot about all the craziness in all the sanitariums across the world.
“What am I going to do with you?” He leaned his forehead against hers. She voted for exactly what he had just done. But she didn’t need to tell him that, because his eyes told her exactly what it was he wanted to do with her. The bigger question was, what was she going to do with herself? How was she going to end this once and for all?
He took both her hands in his and hopped off the sidewalk onto the street and tugged her along, making her heart dance and her body sing. His intent crystal gaze smiled secrets into her eyes, his irresistible mismatched mouth blew promises at her. For all her resolve to protect him from herself, he made her dizzy with hope, heady with recklessness.
His eyes froze in a moment of shock. The screeching of tires tore through the air. He tried to shove her away, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the way as a car sped by, missing him by inches. A man stuck his head out of the car and screamed at them. “Watch where you’re fucking going!”
“Sorry!” he shouted back, grinning at the car as though this was somehow funny. This time there was nothing gentle about the way she punched him.
“Viky! Are you crazy, are you trying to kill me? What is wrong with you? Why can you never keep your eyes on the damn road?”
“Hey.” He tried to pull her close, but she pushed him away, her heart hammering as she imagined him bouncing off the bonnet of that car. “I’m fine. All in one piece. That guy just came out of nowhere.”
“No, he didn’t. Look right, then left. How hard is that? Keep your eyes on the road. How hard is that?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her across the street. She knew he was trying not to smile.
“You think this is funny?” As soon as they reached the other side, she pulled her hand away and glared at him.
“No, not funny. But you should see your face. Here you are still trying to justify walking away from me, and the thought of losing me does this to you. What do you think it does to me, every time I watch you contemplate leaving me?”
“So you were trying to make some sort of sick point by trying to walk in front of a bloody speeding car?”
“Is that what it will take, Ria?”
She refused to dignify that with an answer, and stormed toward the gates.
“What happens if I get in an accident and end up in a wheelchair?” he asked, as usual having no trouble keeping up with her no matter how much she sped up.
She pressed the buzzer and shoved the gates open. “Please don’t do this. Not right now.” She took the now familiar path into the building. He followed in silence, pressing his hand into her back as they approached the padded room.
Her mother was sleeping today. Using that word for her made Ria’s stomach tip and turn, but in that state she looked so peaceful, so harmless, so delicate, Ria’s mind settled around it. She didn’t quite feel like a mother, but she did feel innately human, and sadness squeezed in Ria’s heart for all the times she had thought of her as anything else.
They stood there watching her the way they had every day, and then headed for the retention pond. Amazing how fast things became habit.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Vikram said when they had walked in silence for a while.
“That’s never going to happen. What you’re asking me is hypothetical. This . . .” she looked at the building. “This isn’t hypothetical, Viky.”
“What if I told you it isn’t hypothetical, that it did happen. I was in a wheelchair for six months after an accident five years ago. I got hit in the back by a crane. The doctors didn’t think I’d walk again.”
She turned around meaning to glare at him for lying, but when she looked in his eyes she reached for him instead. But he stepped away and this time he walked away from her.
“God, Viky, why didn’t you tell me?” She followed him.
He kept walking. “Tell you when? When you were missing from my life for ten years?”
That age-old shame for the pain she had caused him squeezed her heart. “I’m sorry.”
He stopped and turned to her. “What are you sorry about exactly? That somehow this, like every bad thing that’s ever happened to me, is your fault?”
She looked up at the sky, a flock of birds was flocking home. How did he not see how much she had hurt him? Could still hurt him.
“You were trying to protect me, Ria. But bad things still happened. And you know what made them worse? That you weren’t there. I would’ve given anything for you to be there.”
She cupped his jaw. She would’ve given anything to be there too.
“You won’t say it, but I know that if you’d known you would have come to me. If I ever got sick you would never leave me.”