Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors

by Sonali Dev

  That seemed to relieve Emma. “And I can paint?”

  “Of course.” Trisha thought about what would happen if someone told her she could never operate again. She couldn’t imagine it. Not even for a moment.

  Emma studied her wordlessly for a few seconds, some of that lost respect returning. “Okay. But there’s something you should know. I never change my mind once I make a decision. I don’t plan to start now. I won’t have the surgery. So if this is some sort of strategic maneuver, it won’t work.”

  Trisha nodded and made the effort not to show her relief. One step at a time. That’s how you changed the world.

  Chapter Ten

  DJ was six years old when Emma was born, but he remembered everything about the day he went to see her at the hospital for the first time. He especially remembered how that day had felt. It was the same feeling that sparkled to life at the edges of his consciousness every time something good happened to him. It was the magnet that the homing device for happiness inside him hungrily sought.

  Dad had cooked him breakfast—bacon, eggs, and porridge. It was what his father always made when he wanted a day to feel special. Then he had helped DJ get dressed in his best sweater vest and checkered shirt.

  “You have to look your spiffiest and eat well on important days,” Dad had said, “and this is the most important day of our life.”

  Dad had also worn his sweater vest, the one he wore to play cricket at the neighborhood pitch every Sunday. They had gone to the hospital like that, all matched up. The reason DJ remembered it in such stark detail was that when they reached the hospital one of the nurses had pinned an “I’m a big brother” button on DJ’s vest, and then taken a Polaroid shot of him in his dad’s arms as he leaned down to look at Emma, a little cloth-wrapped sausage that smelled like Dad’s milky porridge, pressed into Mum’s chest.

  Funny how photographs become the form your memories take. Of all his worldly possessions, that faded Polaroid was possibly DJ’s most cherished one. Everything that meant anything to him, everything he wanted out of life, it all seemed to be trapped in that picture.

  Leaning back in the ergonomic chair in the hospital waiting area, he stared at the happy faces tucked into the plastic sleeve of his wallet.

  It had been eighteen years since Dad died, twelve since Mum had followed him. There had been some dark lonely times in there. But the reason he’d pushed past them was the person sitting on a bed somewhere above him with a mass growing in her brain. After Mum died, Emma had been his reason to survive, to wake up in the morning.

  At twelve, she should have been the one lost, but it had been he who had fallen to bits. His guilt had felled him, paralyzed him. It had felt humongous, uncontainable inside him, unforgivable. But Emma’s unhesitating forgiveness had gathered him back up, strapped him back in place. Her faith in his being worthy of redemption was what had forced him to accept Ammaji’s help that last time.

  Emma and Ammaji, those two had punched holes into the darkness he’d been drowning in until he could see again. Ammaji had died just a year after Mum. The idea of Emma not being around made his future seem like a road disappearing into that same darkness again.

  He’d been sitting here in the waiting area for a half hour. He knew he had to go back to Emma’s room. He’d left her alone all day, mostly because she was being an idiot and he needed to figure out a way to screw her head on straight. But also because he couldn’t face her. He didn’t know how.

  Truth was, he understood exactly why she was acting the way she was. Whenever life made his sister feel powerless, she got doubly powerful. After Dad died, they’d been homeless for two days, sleeping on park benches. Emma was the one who had dragged Mum and DJ to the church. At six, she’d known to do that and not cared that the nuns would judge them. It’s how Father Batista had gotten Mum her job at Heathrow, and from there everything had fallen into place.

  When Emma had forced him to apply to culinary school after Mum died, she hadn’t expected him to leave her behind in England. But she’d dealt with that by challenging every teacher at her art school by being more and more preposterous with art until she’d broken down every expectation they’d had of her.

  Now she was doing this. It made her feel in control. But it was stupid. Suicide.

  The word made acid rise up his gullet, made his skin feel too tight.

  In one thing she was right: he had to listen to her. If she needed to feel powerful, he couldn’t steamroll her. No matter what else happened, they had always listened to each other. That’s why they felt heard no matter who else shut them out.

  Dr. Raje had probably already seen her. Maybe she had convinced Emma that her life was worth saving. The indignation on Trisha Raje’s face, infuriating as it was, might be exactly what Emma needed. The woman obviously had no experience backing down from a fight in her overindulged life. The clash of two immovable forces was his best hope.

  He threw another look at the photograph that time had faded into sepia tones before folding his wallet and pressing it to his chest and caught the eye of a woman who was watching him from two seats away. She had golden dreadlocks and the most stunning blue eyes that twinkled gently when she smiled at him. He smiled back, hooking into a stranger’s kindness and seeking comfort in it for a moment.

  The woman got up and moved to the chair next to him. She threw a pointed look at the wallet he was clutching as though his life depended on it. “A parent?” she asked softly.

  “My sister.” He opened the wallet and gave her a glimpse of his almost lost family.

  “Beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” He touched the picture one more time before tucking it back into his pocket, because he was having just the kind of day where kindness from a stranger might cause him to burst into public sobs, which was a bit too horrifying for his English heart.

  “Is she going to be okay?”

  He hoped so, but he couldn’t say it, so he shrugged. “Do you have family here too?” They were in the Neurosciences Institute. Nobody would be here if they could avoid it.

  Something horribly sad flashed in her eyes. “Orphan,” she said, raising her hand as though in a roll call. “Don’t have a family.” She tried to cover up the sadness with a breezy smile. “I’m a journalist. I’m working on a series of films on end-of-life treatments and terminally ill patients.”

  “Cheery,” he said.

  “Someone’s got to tell the stories of the people medical science can’t save.” She said it with the kind of sincerity only someone who had found purpose in their work would recognize.

  “Until a week ago we thought no doctor could save my sister.”

  “And now?”

  Now she didn’t want to be saved. “And now it’s complicated.” He stood. He needed to find his complicated sister and get her to see how uncomplicated this really was.

  She stood, too. “I’m Julia Wickham.” She stuck out her hand and he took it. What the handshake lacked in firmness, her smile made up for in kindness.

  “DJ Caine.”

  “Do you mind my asking who’s treating your sister?”

  “Dr. Trisha Raje,” he said absently, eager to get to Emma and find out how her meeting with her doctor had gone. “I have to go. It was nice meeting you.”

  “Nice meeting you too.” She gave him another stunning smile. “Is it okay if I call you? I’d be very interested in speaking with your sister.”

  He almost laughed; Emma would strangle him with her bare hands.

  “I know it’s a difficult time. But research has shown that laying out your thoughts on camera can aid in processing traumatic events and help deal with them. This might be exactly what your sister needs to uncomplicate things.”

  What Emma needed was her tumor to be in a different part of her brain. Just the way she needed their mum to be here to talk her through this, and not a brother who had no idea what to do.

  “Think about it. We don’t pay but we set up a funding campaign and our reach on soc
ial media is so good that donations from viewers can really add up. I know what the bills can be like. And we usually raise enough to pay them off and have money left over.”

  “Thank you but, no, we aren’t interested.”

  She looked disappointed, but she smiled kindly, extracted a business card from her bag, and pressed it into his hand. “Let’s at least exchange cards. Who knows what might come up.”

  He took her card and retrieved one for her from his wallet. “I’m a private chef. In case you know anyone who needs a party catered. But, sorry, won’t be able to help you with anything else.”

  With another bright smile she slipped his card into her bag. “Good luck with your sister.”

  That he could use. He thanked her and made his way to Emma, hoping she wouldn’t throw him out.

  SHE DIDN’T. INSTEAD, when he opened with, “I’m sorry. I should have heard you out. I’m going to listen now,” Emma’s skeptical brow quirked up. It didn’t seem to believe him any more than she did.

  But when he handed her the box of pralines he’d made her, she snatched it up and popped one in her mouth. For a while there were no words. Just satisfied sounds as she closed her eyes and soaked up the taste of her favorite candy.

  Finally, she spoke around the last bits of it. She always let it melt in her mouth instead of chewing it like a normal person. “Good. Because the doctor discharged me. I need to go home with you.”

  Sod it all! What? All his resolve to stay calm exploded inside him. “Go home? What the bloody bollocks is that supposed to mean?”

  She gave the praline in her mouth a thoughtful suck. “It means you get to take me to the flat you currently reside in.”

  “Quit being a cheeky cow! How the hell could she discharge you?” His voice was steadily rising.

  Instead of matching his anger, Emma channeled the Dalai Lama and went utterly calm. Ever since she’d told him about the tumor, all she’d been was a crackling ball of contrariness. Even when her body had been tired, she’d ceaselessly fought the finality of the test results and diagnoses being thrown at her. Her resolve had been a bit scary, but having her act like she was making peace with something she couldn’t fight, that was downright terrifying.

  He opened his mouth, only to have her palm go up in his face. “Even Dr. Raje saw that this is my decision and not hers. And most certainly not yours!”

  “You have a tumor in your brain!” he wanted to shout. “How am I supposed to keep you safe at home?” But he couldn’t bring himself to say the word tumor out loud.

  What kind of doctor let someone with tumors wrapped around major nerves go out into the world?

  “I need to speak with her before we go anywhere.” His desperation must have shown, because his sister leaned forward and took his hand.

  “Get your knickers out of your arse crack. She’s only letting me go home for a bit, a week maybe. We have to come back and see her in a few days. You can conspire about how to change my mind with her then.” She pointed to a file folder on the nightstand. “All the instructions are in here. All my prescriptions are in my bag. There’s some test results Dr. Raje’s waiting on. Until then she thinks I’ll be fine.”

  “Define fine.”

  “Let me see . . . Well, I get to go to work and slap some paint on a bloody canvas. I get to do what I love for a little bit longer before I die. How’s that for a definition?” She poked him with a finger, right in the middle of his chest.

  Warmth prickled at his eyelids and he turned away and pressed his face into his elbow.

  A nurse walked in and asked if she could remove the IV. Emma nodded and held out her hand.

  “I’m not asking for your permission. I’m doing this my way.” Emma glared at him, not flinching as the nurse tugged out the plastic needle and pressed a wad of cotton into the blood that seeped out with it.

  As a child, Emma had burst into tears at every little thing. Then Mum had died and she had turned into someone else overnight. Someone who constantly fought to become and not become their mother. Their mother’s funeral was the last time she had shed tears around him; it was the first time he had shed tears around her. They had switched places that day. Her softness had calcified and gone tough, all his hot bluster had fizzled. She had grown an armor, he had realized the uselessness of his.

  Of course she wasn’t asking for permission. Emma Caine believed choice was the cornerstone of existence. Her art, everything she stood for was about tirelessly exploring the relationship between choice and power. Now for all her fierceness she looked vulnerable, and it made her seem like the little girl who had curled up in a ball in their mother’s chair and waited up for her when she worked the late shift.

  “Okay,” he said. “Tell me what you want to do.”

  For a second all her walls collapsed. Just fell to the ground around her. This was what she had needed all along.

  “I want to get out of here. And I want to go to work tomorrow.”

  The nursing home that housed the art residency she worked at was her life. She had left London in search of something and when she’d found the residency, she had found purpose, found herself. It was a therapeutic residency where they used art to treat everything from dementia to depression and anxiety and other struggles aging residents faced. Emma had once explained it to him as helping them access their lost inner child so they could heal that loss.

  “Done. I’ll drive you there and back. What else?”

  She smiled a tremulous smile, which for her was like all-out bawling. “That’s good for now. Can’t take up too much of a fancy chef’s time. Who will feed all those rich people if you’re babysitting me?”

  “I’ve been babysitting you all my life, sister mine. I got it sorted.”

  That, she didn’t argue with.

  They only realized the nurse had left when she came back with a wheelchair and insisted on taking Emma down to the car in it. Which didn’t make DJ feel any better about them letting her go home. Panic started to rise again, but he pushed it away. He had to let her breathe. Even if it meant he couldn’t until she changed her mind.

  Grabbing her bag and sketchbook, he followed her out. She smiled up at him, and for a moment she was the little sister who’d made him feel like a bloody hero. My Big Brother was the first picture she’d done for him. He’d worn a cape and had six arms, a cross between a superhero and the statue of the Hindu god Vishnu who sat in the altar tucked into the corner of Ammaji’s kitchen.

  They waited at the curb for the valet to show up with Emma’s car. The sun had slipped away for the evening, but the bright porch lights tried to play substitute and made Emma’s jet-black curls glisten like a halo around her small face. Hair she had hated as a young child because it had been different from everyone else’s. But then she’d grown up and turned it into a canvas. Unlike him she had gone through all the phases of embracing her African heritage: she had nurtured an Afro, had it braided, shaved it off, grown it long. Pride swelled inside him for her ability to make beauty out of everything, even her struggle to find herself.

  He, on the other hand, had inherited hair genes from their father’s side. His curls were more relaxed than Emma’s. Indian hair, Mum always called it. It was the only thing he had inherited from his father other than his hazel eyes. He had started shaving it off when he got to Paris and had never grown it out again. Unlike his sister, he had neither the talent nor the stomach for identity struggles. The only time he had tried to find himself, he’d ended up on the wrong side of the law.

  Emma stuck her nose up in the air and inhaled like a hungry dog, then laughed at herself. “Fresh air, DJ! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  He dropped a kiss on her head.

  She looked up at the hospital building. “Thanks for taking me away from here.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to go, Em. Just promise you’ll tell me immediately if you don’t feel good. That you won’t try to be a hero.”

  “Try?”

  “Yeah yeah, but her
oes must take care of themselves, too, love.”

  “So they do. I will be a good girl. If the room starts to spin, I will try not to hit my head on something sharp when I fall. Good?”

  “You are not doing a great job of putting me at ease,” he muttered as he helped her into her Volkswagen Beetle. She wasn’t allowed to drive anymore, but her eyes lit up when she saw the car. She loved the bloody thing at least as much as she loved him.

  He slid behind the wheel and felt immediately like he had slipped on too-tight shoes. Did he mention it was hot pink? Which was probably why his little sister was grinning like a loon right now.

  She waved bye to the nurse and settled into the puffy seats that seemed to have been created for her. The yellow halter dress and six-inch heels she was wearing made her look like one of those celebrities caught on camera while stepping out for ice cream instead of a patient leaving the hospital after a heartbreaking diagnosis.

  The nurse stood there watching them drive away with a look DJ had seen far too many times. Emma saw DJ shaking his head at the rearview mirror and elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Another broken heart left in your wake,” he said. “Poor gits. They have no idea that Emma Caine’s heart belongs to her art.”

  “You better believe it,” she said. “Don’t look so smug, brah’. It runs in the family, innit?”

  So it did. When homelessness was where your life started, you fell in love with the thing that gave you hope, that fit you right, that gave you power.

  They drove down Palm Drive, soaking in the posh campus, and the posh town it was nestled in. Emma’s forehead puckered with worry. “Who would’ve thought losing your health would be so expensive? I have some money saved up. You don’t have to take this entire thing on yourself.”

  When he didn’t answer for a while, she sank deeper into the seat and closed her eyes. “Okay, so I don’t. But I’ll come up with something.”

  He reached out and patted the arm folded across her belly. Mum used to wrap her arms around herself exactly this way. “You don’t need to worry,” he said. “I’m a fancy chef, remember? I’ve got enough stashed up. You were right all along about me being miserly and insecure. Good news is it’s going to get us through this.”