by Sonali Dev
He nodded and followed her down the stairs.
“I can’t leave without saying bye to Sara,” she said, and he nodded again.
Sara looked worried when they entered the room. “Are you two all right?” she asked.
Mili didn’t answer.
“I have to take Mili home, Sara. Something’s come up.” Samir stood aside as Mili walked up to Sara and took her hand in hers.
“Please take care of yourself, Sara. It was so nice to meet you.”
Sara touched Mili’s cheek and Mili’s already-rigid back stiffened some more. But tears didn’t form in her eyes.
“Is there anything I can do?” Sara asked. You would have to be a block of wood to not sense how much Mili was hurting.
She shook her head.
“Will you come back?”
She nodded. “I’ll come see you as soon as I can. But you have to promise to be better when I come back, okay?”
“I’ll try,” Sara said, her eyes filling and brimming over. Mili pulled away, her eyes as dry, as desolate as the Rajasthan sky in the dead of summer.
Samir forced himself to move. He walked up to Sara. He still couldn’t let her hug him. His heart was just not that big. But he did let her hold his hand.
“Will you come back, beta?”
He nodded.
“Thank you,” she said. “If I don’t get a chance to see you. Thank you for this.”
He looked at Mili. She wasn’t looking at him. “Thank her,” he wanted to say.
Sara wept like a baby when she let Samir’s hand go.
Kim wept like a baby when she held Mili.
And still Mili didn’t cry.
25
The ride back to Ypsilanti was the longest and shortest ride of Samir’s life. Silence stretched between them like an unbreachable chasm. If he didn’t find a way to cross it everything would be over before it even started. What had happened between them yesterday still sent tremors through his body. She sent tremors through his soul. He could still feel her against him. She was under his skin, inside him, her softness wrapped around his sinew, his nerves. She’d made the most painful thing he’d ever done bearable. And he’d ripped her heart out. And he had to find a way to make it better. He just didn’t know how. All he knew was that he wasn’t going to lose her. He just couldn’t go on if he did.
But she sat there, still and mute, her fingers clasped together in her lap, her body squeezed into the door. Her eyes dry.
He opened his mouth a few times to say something, anything, but he had promised and he couldn’t break his word. From the moment they had got into the car his phone began ringing off the hook. First it was Virat, then DJ. He didn’t answer. He could not speak to anyone right now. Finally, he turned the phone off. Mili didn’t so much as move a muscle through it all. Not until they were back in the smelly parking lot.
It was garbage day again and the truck was scooping trash out of the huge green Dumpster. As he pulled to a stop across from her mutilated yellow bike, he wondered if she would ever throw it away. He had tried throwing it away once but she had threatened him with bodily harm if he dared to touch it. Before he could come around and get her door she opened it herself and headed for the stairs.
“Mili, can we talk now?” He ran past her and stood over her in the stairway.
She swallowed and forced herself to speak. “You promised.”
“I promised not to speak in the car but we’re home now. We have to talk.”
She squared her shoulders and looked at a point slightly to the right of his head. “Come inside.” Her tone was so defeated, so un-Mili-like, he wanted to kill himself for what he’d done. He opened her door and let her into the apartment.
The smell of old cooking hung in the air. Usually they opened the windows to let the smells out. But because they had been gone for a day the smell had sat and festered in the apartment and sunk into the carpet, the walls.
Mili entered the house and turned to face him.
“My keys.” She held out her hand.
“Mili.”
She left her hand out and he returned her keys. She withdrew her hand before he could touch her.
“Where are the papers you want me to sign?”
“Mili.”
Every time he said her name she flinched. And it was like a knee to his balls.
“Can we talk first?”
“What’s left to talk about?”
The fact that I’m in love with you. But she looked so disgusted with him, so heartsick, he couldn’t get the words out. “What about us?”
“Us?” She laughed. Not her husky, sunshiny laugh, but a painful groan of a laugh.
“Which us, Samir? The us you created to end my marriage? The us you made up so your brother’s betrayal would cost him nothing? Or the us where you made a fool out of a stupid virgin, where you let her expose herself in the most humiliating way, so she could have no recourse, no life after you?”
“Mili, you know that’s not how it was.”
“No. I don’t know anything, Samir. After this I will never know anything for sure again. I will never trust anyone again. You’ve taken my trust, my honor, my self-respect. You’ve sullied me. You made me feel filthy. I’ll never feel clean again. I was pure.” She stopped talking and clutched a fist to her chest. “I felt pure. I know that means nothing in your world. But I was untainted. Now I’m a sinner, a slut. You robbed me of who I was.”
“Mili. I didn’t know.”
This time her shoulders just shook, but no laughter came out. No tears either. “You didn’t know that you don’t sleep with your sister-in-law?”
“You are not my sister-in-law, Mili.”
“Why, because you say so? Because your dishonorable, cheating brother says so?”
“Mili, this was not Bhai’s idea.”
“That’s a relief. This was your idea then. I spent my entire life loving him, waiting for him, and he sent his brother to sleep with me. And I’m such an idiot, I—I—Tell me, Samir, was I easy? Was I at least a little bit of a challenge?”
“Mili, it wasn’t like that.”
“Oh my God, you didn’t even have to try. I practically begged you to sleep with me. Was sleeping with me in the plan or just making me fall in love with you? Did you brothers sit down and plan it? Get her to sleep with you. These village girls are really easy and stupid.”
“Mili, stop. Don’t do this to yourself. You’re not stupid and we didn’t plan it. At least not the way you think. All we wanted was to get you to agree to drop the court case and sign the annulment.”
“And you had to wait until now, until I—You’ve been here four weeks, Samir.” Her voice rose, but she choked it back.
God, why hadn’t he told her? Why had he waited? And he knew it wasn’t the script. It was this. This look in her eyes. He’d known she’d throw him out and he’d been too much of a coward to face it.
She held out her hand and shook it. “Give me the papers. I’ll sign whatever you want. Actually, wait, let me make it easier.”
She went to her bedroom—he heard her moving around. It took him less than a moment to realize what she was looking for. He pulled the marriage certificate out of his laptop case.
When he entered the room, Mili was squatting next to the desk with the brown bag open. She turned around, her forehead lined with confusion. When she saw the plastic wrapped paper in his hand he thought she was finally going to cry. She didn’t.
He had gone through her things. He had lied to her. The full extent of his betrayal killed every last sign of innocence from her eyes. “Mili, I’m sorry.” He held the marriage certificate out to her.
The heavy cover of the suitcase slammed on Mili’s hands. The sting of pain registered in her brain, but she didn’t feel it. She slid her tingling fingers from the sharp metal jaws and stood up. Samir held her marriage certificate out like an offering, as if he expected her to take it from his hands. Those long tapered fingers that had violated every inch of h
er gripped the piece of paper she had always treated with the reverence of a holy text. Bile churned in the pit of her belly. She wrapped her arms around herself. The pain in her fingers finally broke through her consciousness and spread through her.
“Send me whatever papers you want me to sign,” she said to the tattered piece of paper, unable to look away from it.
Poor Naani. She had to have been the one who filed the court case. Mili was sure of it. And now all her machinations had backfired. Everything had backfired. Mili thought about the desperation in Naani’s voice. He won’t get away with it. He has to pay the price.
No, Naani. He wasn’t the one paying the price.
“Whatever legal documents you’re talking about, I didn’t send them. It must have been my naani. I’ll talk to her. You won’t hear anything more from us.” She tightened her arms around herself and forced herself to look directly at him. “But please, if you have any decency left in you, don’t ever come anywhere near me again. I never want to see you again. I never want to hear your voice. Never want to hear your name. I find you repulsive, disgusting, and I want nothing to do with you. Ever.”
Mili waited, but Samir just stood there like a statue who had been slammed into the ground with a sledgehammer. She couldn’t ask him to leave again. She couldn’t talk to him again. But she had to get away from him. She walked past him and out of her room, out of her apartment, out of the building. She kept walking. Across the stinking parking lot, across the green campus lawns, past the red brick walls, over the gray cement walkways.
She took the long winding roads, every hill, every steep climb she could find. Unseasonably cool wind whipped her face and made her torn sleeve flap against her arm. The sun was still up in the sky, flowers bloomed everywhere, but the only thing she could see was the look in Samir’s eyes as he stood there clutching the marriage certificate he had stolen from her. Her eyes burned, her throat burned. Parched and dry. She yearned for tears, to wash away the pain, to drown the shame, but none came. And she knew with absolute certainty that her tears were gone forever.
When finally she reached Pierce Hall, she sat on the stairs for a long while, unable to go inside. But how many places could she avoid that she’d been in with him? She couldn’t avoid her own heart, her own body. She felt him on her, inside her, tearing her open. Every gentleness turned to violence, every whisper he’d whispered in her ear turned to a scream. The most beautiful time of her life had turned into a nightmare. She had turned into someone she would never recognize and even the memory of happiness was gone. Gone with him, gone with the him she loved. A mirage in the desert. A promise of rain that would never fall.
Finally, she got up and went in. She spent the rest of the day working. When she went back home Samir was gone. Her marriage certificate sat on the dining table. The smell of stale food still hung in the air. Amazing how something that smelled so good two days ago could now stink like death.
26
“Listen, Chintu, my wife is going to kill me and it’s going to be your fault.” Usually Virat wasn’t the dramatic brother—that was Samir’s role.
I had no idea you city boys were such drama queens.
Samir adjusted the road sign one last time and jumped off the ladder he’d been perched on. The set technician gave him the thumbs up, but Samir still wasn’t sure it was exactly where he needed it to be. He signaled the team to take five minutes until he was done with the call.
“Bhai, I’m working, did you need something?”
“You worked even before you went to America. But you never forgot to call your family. I haven’t talked to you in two months.”
“I spoke with you two days ago, Bhai.”
“You call that talking? All I’ve gotten out of you these past months is monosyllables, Chintu, and frankly you’re scaring the fuck out of me. Rima wants you to come home for Diwali.”
“Can’t do it.”
“Really, that’s your answer? This is your bhabhi we’re talking about. She’s going to need more than that.”
“I’m shooting.”
“On Diwali?”
“Early morning the next day.”
“Have you told Baiji you’re not coming home for Diwali?”
“Not yet. Listen, can you tell her for me?”
“No fucking way you’re firing that gun off my shoulder.”
“Then I’ll tell her.”
“Chintu, you know what Baiji’s thinking, right?”
Samir said nothing. He walked to the other end of the street set and looked at it from where the third camera would be. It was still off.
“If you come back from America after spending two weeks with your mother and act like someone died, you know what it looks like to Baiji, right?”
“My mother is living with you right now, in Jamnagar.”
“I know.” At least Virat had the decency to sound sheepish. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. But I’m worried about you, damn it.”
“Don’t be. I’m fine. I’m just stressed about the film. There’s still too much to be done.” But first he needed to get off the phone.
“Don’t you want to know what happened with the annulment papers?”
Samir’s heart kicked to life in his chest. He couldn’t speak.
“Malvika signed them. The property case is officially closed. That damn saga is finally over. Whatever you did, it worked like a charm. She even sent the marriage certificate and the mangalsutra back. And a box full of saris. Apparently, our grandmother had been sending her a sari for every Teej over the years. What the fuck am I going to do with twenty brand-new saris? They’re all still in their packaging.”
His family had sent her gifts on the Teej festival. His grandfather had used up her dowry. All those rituals. All the promises that went with them.
It is a marriage to me, Samir.
“Send the saris to the National Women’s Center in Jaipur.” How had she even paid for shipping? The memory of her empty fridge, her empty closet, her empty apartment squeezed his heart.
“Chintu, seriously, what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Why? They have a safe house for women who have nowhere else to go. These women need clothes. What else would you do with the saris?”
“Why the fuck would you know this?”
“It’s one of the charities my accountant pushes for taxes. Sounds useful enough.”
“Fine. And Chintu, call Rima. What they say about pregnant women being hormonal, it’s all true. She spends half the day worrying about what’s wrong with you and the other half driving me crazy about it. If you don’t call her, she’s going to be on a plane and then God help you.”
“I’ll call her.” He should’ve said more, should’ve apologized for being such a bastard of a brother. He’d completely forgotten to call Rima and check up on her this week. The baby was coming. Their lives were about to change forever. How had he forgotten about the baby? But he forgot a lot of things these days. Except the one thing he could not forget, no matter how hard he tried. No matter how many twenty-hour days he worked.
Today he’d been on the set for over fourteen hours, working with the set designer and the technicians to get it exactly right. They had another week before the schedule started and it still looked like a set, not like the low-income housing in the armpit of Mumbai he needed it to look like.
“The street edging is still too perfect, Lawrence. We need more dust, more crumbling mortar.”
His set designer looked exhausted. “Yes, boss. A little more yellow in the whitewash, what? You’re right, in this light it’s too much white.”
“More yellow, more gray streaks too. If the water tank leaks down this wall, we need more water damage.”
“Brilliant, boss. You want to do now? Tomorrow okay?”
The workers were sprawled across the lawn, smoking. They looked like he’d need a crane to move them.
“No, let’s wrap up for today. Seven tomorrow?”
Lawrence nodded in h
is usual enthusiastic way. “Sam-Sir, you having dinner with us?”
“Thanks, boss, but I can’t. I still need to check the lights and make sure the effect for the night shots is correct.”
“I’ll stay. No problem,” Lawrence said. His set tech was a gem.
“No, Lawrence, I got it. You’ll get the union up in arms if you make the guys work any more.”
“Sam-Sir, for you the guys will stay. No union-shunion, not for you.”
Samir patted Lawrence on the shoulder. “Thanks, boss. I’ll need that another day. Not today. Today you go get some rest. Fantastic job so far, thanks.”
The rest of the crew was already at the local bar. The set guys picked themselves off the grass and headed there. If they were offended he wasn’t joining them they didn’t say anything. Usually, he’d be the one buying the drinks for his guys, sharing some smokes with them. He wasn’t a smoker but hanging out with these guys was fun. They had some great stories. They had the dirt on everyone. All the stars, all the producers. Maybe tomorrow.
He pulled out the set sketches and started to study them against the streetscape, trying to put his finger on what wasn’t working.
“Looks really great, Sam.” The practiced husky voice reached him before he saw Neha crossing the lawn. She appraised his set and looked sufficiently impressed.
“Neha, I didn’t know you were shooting here.” He let her air-kiss both cheeks so her glossy pout remained untouched.
“Well, you’ve given up on your old friends, but your friends still care about you.”
Is that why you went to the press and accused me of bashing your face in? “Thanks,” was all he said.
She ran her fingers over his cheeks. “What’s with the depressed Devdas look? I thought you hated stubble. This one’s almost a beard.”
“I do. I just haven’t had the time to shave.”
She took a step closer and strung her arms around his neck, pushing herself into him. He didn’t move but a terrible queasiness rose in his gut.
“I still have your razor in my toilet kit. What say you come back to my room and I can take care of it for you?”