Grown-Up Pose

by Sonya Lalli

  And then the reality came crashing down around her.

  He was a pimp and thought she was a prostitute.

  Fuming, she pushed his hand away again. Her face was hot, and she wanted to punch him because of the way he was sneering at her.

  “You’re a dick.” She could hear her voice crack as she shouted at him over the music. “A complete dick—you know that?”

  “There aren’t many that look like you.” He drew his tongue across his teeth. “Really, where are you from . . . ?”

  He trailed off just as Anu felt a pinch on her arm and then spotted Marianne’s jet-black hair off to the side.

  “There you are,” Marianne said loudly, eyeing the guy. “Who the hell are you?”

  The guy hesitated, his eyes skirting between Anu and Marianne.

  “He is leaving,” Anu said, shooting daggers at him with her eyes. “Or I’m going to get security.”

  The guy scoffed at her as he hulked back to the bar.

  “What was that about?” Marianne asked her after he left.

  Anu could feel all the blood rushing to her head. Was she crying? It felt like it. Her chest was heavy, and she couldn’t bring herself to say out loud what had just happened.

  “Anu, what is it?”

  Was it because she had been standing alone in a club? The way she was dressed? The revealing neckline, the bare arms, the skirt so short it could have been underwear? Of course she had the right to dress that way. She could wear whatever she damn well wanted. But what right did he have to approach her like that? Make those judgments? Say those disgusting things?

  “What—”

  “Nothing.” Anu met Marianne’s eye. “It was nothing. Please, drop it.”

  “OK.” Marianne looked taken aback and, a beat later, grabbed her by the hand. “We’re upstairs. Come with me.”

  Hand in hand, Anu let Marianne lead her upstairs. There was a second level full of tables, only half-full, and then a third. Another DJ up here played “music” similar to that below, and there were even more strobe lights. Here, the dance floor was full, and she spotted the rest of the group at the far edge. Among them was the South African girl who she had seen go into the bathroom; Anu must have missed her coming out.

  The scene looked exhausting. The high heels and collared shirts and cheap cologne and throbbing music. The blank expressions. The fog machine.

  They weren’t in the eighth grade. They weren’t at a fucking Rihanna concert.

  And for God’s sake, it was Christmas.

  Anu tugged on Marianne’s hand at the top of the stairs, stopping short.

  Did Kanika mind that she wasn’t around for the holidays, and did Neil remember to buy her the Lego set she’d wanted for Christmas, which Anu hadn’t had a chance to purchase yet?

  Would she be celebrating the holiday with Priya, Neil, and Ms. Dirty Messages?

  “Look,” Anu said, staring at the ground. The confidence, even the calmness, she’d felt after yoga had completely dissipated. “This isn’t really my night.”

  “Whatever that guy said, fuck him.”

  Anu shook her head. “It’s not just that.”

  The lump in her throat was growing, constricting her breathing. She was in London. She was here, finally here, so why was she still missing out? Why did playing this part feel so wrong, too?

  She felt Marianne’s hand in hers, and the simplicity and kindness of the gesture made her want to cry. Anu wondered if Marianne, who was as far away from New Zealand as it was possible to be, ever felt alone. If she ever missed her family.

  “You’re sad.”

  It wasn’t an accusation or a judgment. Just a fact. Anu nodded. She was sad. The pictures she’d snapped of perfect London were nothing like the memory she’d carry.

  This London, the one she was living in—it was lonely. And it didn’t love her back.

  “Here,” Marianne said, pulling her away from the light. In the corner, she reached into her bra and slyly pulled something out.

  There, their backs to the dance floor, Marianne opened her hand. In it were two white pills, unimposing, no more than the size of an aspirin. Marianne discreetly popped one into her mouth and then glanced at Anu.

  “What is it?”

  Shrugging, Marianne pressed the remaining pill into her hand. “You want to be happy, don’t you?”

  Anu did want to be happy. It was the reason she had always tried to please her parents. Why she followed her heart and married Neil at the age of twenty-three. Why, years later, she had left him and was now taking over a yoga studio.

  And it was the reason she was standing here right now. To find that sense of happiness that had always eluded her, hovering, reminding her of the youth she’d never had. The memories she never got to make.

  The pill was heavy in her palm, whatever it was. Maybe it would make her happy. It would be a reprieve, an escape. Maybe everything she’d wanted London to be.

  But she pressed it back into Marianne’s palm because it wouldn’t be the answer.

  chapter twenty

  MONICA: Hey . . . your phone must be on silent. Anu, call us ASAP.

  Back in the dorm room, she crawled under the covers fully clothed, her makeup still intact. Rolling to the side, she was almost surprised to find the cold concrete wall—and not Neil nor Kanika nestled in beside her. Warm limbs like hot water bottles beneath the sheets. The smell of Neil’s deodorant. Kanika’s pineapple shampoo. Crumbs on the pillow because Neil loved to eat his toast in bed.

  He hadn’t texted her back after she’d asked about Kanika’s school play. She’d missed it. And for what? For this? To attend some terrible yoga class? Get hit on in a bar? Fall asleep on the bottom bunk of a dorm room?

  She kicked her cold feet against the wall. What was she doing here? What kind of woman left her whole life behind on a lark?

  Something vibrated by her elbow. It was Monica calling, and surprised by the outreach, Anu answered.

  “Hey,” Monica said. She was wearing a gray sweatshirt she’d had since high school. “Jenny’s here, too.”

  Half of Jenny’s sunburned forehead materialized on her phone.

  “Anu, hey.”

  “Hey, guys.” Glancing at the tiny image of herself in the top-right corner of her phone, Anu dried her cheek with her sleeve, hoping they wouldn’t notice, but the eye makeup spread harshly down her cheek. “How was Chile?”

  “Good, thanks . . .” Jenny trailed off, and Monica readjusted the frame, until both of them were there sitting side by side. They were at Monica’s house in the suburbs, at the kitchen table the three of them had picked out together at HomeSense, right after Tom and Monica had moved in. There was a bottle of sparkling water and a bag of the expensive organic salt and vinegar chips they all loved open on the table.

  If she had stayed, she wouldn’t have been alone. Even if Kanika was at Neil’s, at least she could have been with them.

  “I’m sorry for leaving so suddenly the way I did, you guys. It wasn’t right. I haven’t been myself,” Anu said suddenly, the words pouring out of her.

  “I tried calling earlier,” Monica said, leaning into the screen. “We need to talk.”

  Anu nodded. “We do. I know you guys are mad at me—”

  “It’s not that, Anu. . . . Neil called. Priya Auntie started having chest pains during the holiday concert. Jenny picked Kanika up from school and brought her here, and Neil took Priya in. . . .”

  “To her doctor?”

  Monica shook her head. “The emergency room.”

  Anu’s heart dropped. Priya was in the emergency room? Was she having a heart attack?

  She cringed thinking about the last time she had seen Priya, sitting at the kitchen table right before Anu stormed off without saying goodbye. Would that be their last conversation? The last time she was ever go
ing to see the woman who had treated her like a daughter for more than a decade?

  Anu shook her head, panicking. No. No, she couldn’t think like that. Priya would be fine. Maybe she wasn’t the healthiest or the most active, but she was only in her mid-fifties. For Christ’s sake, she was younger than Anu’s parents.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying, Anu?” Monica’s voice startled her. “You need to come home—”

  “Mon, no,” Jenny snapped, pulling the screen toward her until only she was in view. “Anu, you don’t need to do anything, all right? You’re sick of people telling you what to do, what’s right—blah, blah, blah. And if you come home because you need to, pretty soon you’re going to be fed up again and then fuck right off. Who knows, maybe for good.”

  Anu paused, trying to register what Jenny was trying to say.

  Monica pulled the screen slightly back, until only half of each of their faces were in the frame.

  “Yeah, I guess Jenny’s right,” Monica said, although she didn’t sound like she believed it. “Everything’s in control here. And you know, Kanika loves us. We’re fine. It’s all . . . fine.”

  But everything wasn’t in control. It wasn’t fine.

  Anu shivered as she imagined Neil at the hospital in the waiting room by himself while the doctors tended to Priya. He hated hospitals. He hated the smells, like iodine and laundry detergent, and the almost blue fluorescent lights. His knees went weak at the sight of blood, at a realistic operating room scene on Grey’s Anatomy.

  Was Tom with him? Auntie Jayani, Priya’s best friend?

  Ms. Dirty Messages?

  And what did Kanika think was going on? Did she understand that her Dadima was sick? And that her mother had left?

  “Where is she?”

  “In the other room. We’re watching Mulan.”

  The movie was decades old now, the graphics dim and outdated, yet Kanika would climb onto Anu’s lap anytime they had watched it, and with her small, warm hands clasped around the back of Anu’s neck, she’d shake in equal parts excitement and fear whenever the villain Shan Yu appeared on-screen.

  “This is my favorite movie,” Anu had whispered.

  Wide-eyed, Kanika turned to the screen. “Then it’s my favorite, too,” and for more than a year, it had been.

  The tears welled up, and they wouldn’t stop. She wanted to be Imogen or Marianne or any other young girl with an infinite list of choices before her, but the truth was, Anu had only two: She could stay, pounding her fists and grinding her teeth through the pain, forcing herself to experience life the way others seemed to live it, or she could go back to her real life.

  “I don’t need to come home,” Anu said, quietly grieving for the woman she never got to be, maybe, or never could be. “I want to.”

  chapter twenty-one

  ANUSHA: Hi, Mom and Dad. Merry Christmas. I just landed back in Vancouver. Priya Auntie is experiencing some chest pains and so Neil has taken her to the hospital to be safe. Please try not to worry. I’ll be home in a few hours with Kanika if you want to call.

  She didn’t realize how packed the airport could be on Christmas Eve. Every flight to Vancouver was completely booked up, but she managed to get on a flight to Newark the following afternoon, and then a connecting one to Vancouver. She landed at two a.m. on Christmas Day, and a forty-five-minute taxi ride later, she arrived at Monica and Tom’s house in Surrey. They had mounted red and blue twinkle lights above the garage and around all the windows, and there was a silver Christmas tree on the porch, sparsely decorated with fake snow and ornaments Anu didn’t recognize.

  Taking a deep breath, she lugged her suitcase up the steps to the front porch, and Monica’s face appeared in the doorway just as Anu raised her left hand to knock.

  “It’s OK. She’s stable,” Monica said immediately, letting her in. “But she needs surgery.”

  Anu dropped her bag without meaning to.

  Surgery?

  “It’s called an angioplasty. It’s noninvasive, but she’ll be in the hospital a while.” Monica picked up her bag and led her inside. Once the door was closed, Monica threw her arms around her.

  The physical contact was overwhelming. Anu cleared her throat and gently pulled away. “How’s Neil holding up?”

  “Tom went in for a while to keep him company, but he said Neil didn’t seem to want him there.”

  Anu nodded. “I’m sure he didn’t. Neil doesn’t handle this kind of stuff well. He shuts down.”

  She followed Monica into the kitchen. Jenny sat at the kitchen table, picking at a store-bought gingerbread house.

  “Hi, Jen.”

  “Hi.” Jenny smiled at her, met her gaze. “Kanika’s sleeping.”

  “Maybe let her sleep,” Monica said as they joined Jenny at the table. “It took a lot to tire her out.”

  Anu smiled at the half-collapsed, half-eaten gingerbread house. She knew exactly which parts her daughter had decorated. She reached for a chunk of the roof that was a mash of red and green icing, Smarties, and sprinkles and popped it into her mouth.

  “Thank you.” She smiled at her friends, but she couldn’t look them in the eye. “For all of this. For stepping in when I . . .” The tears formed, and both Jenny and Monica slid closer toward her on their chairs. “I don’t deserve you guys. I really don’t.”

  “Oh, quit being dramatic. You do, too, deserve us.” Jenny pulled away and then Monica. “And even though you’ve been a pain in the ass lately—”

  “Jenny!” Monica exclaimed.

  “—we’re going to be here for you as you figure this all out.”

  Jenny’s smile turned into a giggle, and Anu smiled in return.

  “We’ve all had pain-in-the-ass stages,” Monica said. “Remember that summer Jenny counted her calories and by extension ours?”

  Anu smiled. “I hated Jenny that summer.”

  “Remember when Monica first started dating Tom, and we barely heard from her for, like, six months?” Jenny asked.

  Monica slapped Jenny’s arm, and for a moment, it was like it was before.

  “Still, I’m truly sorry about the way I left. I don’t know . . . I don’t know what happened. I still don’t understand it all.”

  “We know, Anu.”

  They smiled at her, smiles of true friendship and forgiveness.

  “Look who’s awake,” Jenny said quietly, and her tone made Anu spin in her chair, and her heart skipped a whole beat.

  * * *

  • • •

  Do you have enough Magic Markers, sweetie?”

  Kanika nodded as she pressed furiously into the paper with a blueberry-scented marker. A moment later, she set it down and reached for a yellow pipe cleaner.

  “Glue?”

  “Nope,” Kanika said, forcing its wiry end into the corner of the page. “I’m going to braid it in!”

  The morning had come and gone, and back at their own house, Anu had laid out everything in their craft closet on the kitchen table. It was Monica’s suggestion that Anu pass the time with Kanika making get-well-soon cards while they waited for Priya to get out of surgery. Something to occupy their minds.

  Anu painted a smile on her face and tried to keep herself animated, but Kanika was quiet and more interested in her art project than in talking to her mother. Anu knew she should say something, anything, about the situation. That she needed to explain what had happened and why Anu had disappeared the past week, put into words something a five-year-old could understand and deserved to hear.

  I’m sorry for leaving you.

  Was that how to start it? She was sorry. But how could she make her understand that while Anu was sorry for leaving her, she wasn’t sorry for leaving. She had needed to leave. That trip—whatever it was—Anu had needed it.

  Her phone buzzed on the table, and Anu lunged for it when
she saw Neil’s name and face appear. She had taken that picture of him at Kanika’s third-birthday party. He had been dressed up like a dinosaur, his face painted a bright green. After the separation, she had never bothered to change it.

  “Hi . . .” She quietly slipped into the dining room, sliding the glass door behind her. “Neil, how are you? How’s . . . ?”

  “It’s so nice to hear your voice, Anush.”

  Her chest hurt as they let the silence hang there. He didn’t answer the question, and for a moment, all she could hear was him breathing and she could picture him there, slouched in a bland, barren waiting room chair, his right leg shaking. Fleetingly, she was there, too. She was holding him. She was there for him, and his burden was her burden. His pain—it was hers, too.

  “Neil . . . I—”

  “How’s Kanu?” he interrupted.

  She realized she had been holding her breath. “She’s fine. We’re home.”

  “The surgery is scheduled for tomorrow morning. The doctors have been in and out all afternoon. I . . .” He trailed off. He was incapable of saying anything else, and she knew better than to press him.

  “Have you eaten?” she asked finally. When he didn’t respond, she continued. “Please, eat something, Neil. Can I bring you dinner? A change of clothes? Anything?”

  “I’m fine. No.” She could hear him pacing now, something vague and intimidating beeping in the background. “You’re home. You’re with Kanu—that’s all I need.”

  It wasn’t all he needed. It couldn’t be. Neil was in pieces, falling apart with every second Priya was lying in that hospital bed. She wanted to insist, pry her way into the situation further, show up at the hospital with an armload of things he wouldn’t even need, and hold Neil so he didn’t feel so alone. But that wasn’t her place anymore. And didn’t he have a woman in his life now? That was her place.

  “I’m not sure how long Kanu will have to stay with you. Her school backpack and snowsuit are at my house. You’ll have to—”