Bindi

by Paul Matthew Maisano

  “You’re bleeding just a little, Naya. The ambulance is coming.” He stroked her damp hair clumsily with his free hand. “It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be fine. We’ll be fine, jaanu.”

  But his lips were pale, his eyes frightened, and his brow damp with fresh sweat. He began mumbling not to her but to himself, to the room, looking for some kind of answer there. Or just looking away from Nayana.

  “Ram?” she said again, though there was no question.

  She felt the tears falling. They were for him. She was awake, lucid. So this is my punishment, she thought. She seized his wrist and pulled him close.

  “I’m sorry, jaaneman. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said. He held her face in his hands and repeated the promise, though neither of them believed it. At last she could no longer hide from him. She felt completely exposed, and what a weight lifted.

  “I’m sorry,” she said once again.

  XXIV

  It was an extravagance, perhaps, buying Bindi a suit when he would just grow out of it. But one never knew. After today’s somber gathering, surely there was a gala on the horizon they might attend together, or a wedding—would Eddie and Jane ever get married?—or just a special occasion. There was always something to attend in this town, and now Madeline had a date to take with her. Bindi stood there patiently while she clipped his little paisley tie in place, glad to have had the foresight to realize she could not have properly knotted one herself. Besides, the suit just seemed right, a way of paying their respects to her mother, the Costumer. She twisted his cowlick and gave it a tug.

  “You ready?”

  He was. And so was Madeline, for the most part. Something about explaining the process to Bindi had grounded her. She was certainly less likely to have the emotional meltdown she’d been expecting. He’d been quiet all morning. She worried it was dredging up his own mother’s death. And so she needed to be strong for him, which turned out to be a blessing. Wouldn’t any freak-out she might have experienced be less about her mother’s death and more about their shared past, or even just Madeline’s harbored resentment? What good did it do to hold the dead hostage? In any case, a funeral wasn’t the place for that. Therapy, perhaps, but today was about saying good-bye to the woman, good or bad, she’d called Mother.

  It was a hazy and balmy winter morning in Los Angeles. Franklin Avenue was dark under the cover of tree shade. This was the route she took to Los Feliz as well, though that job, too, would soon come to an end. Just ahead, they would stop to pick up Eddie and Jane. Bindi had folded over the hem of his jacket and was making little circles on the silk lining with his thumb and forefinger.

  “You doing okay?” He nodded. It was going to be a long day for all of them. She hated to put him through another funeral. Of course she’d given him the option not to come, but he said he wanted to be there. And thank goodness he was. “I’m glad you’re with me.”

  He lifted his fingers from the coat and pointed. She’d nearly missed the turn to Eddie’s place but was able to get over and make the light.

  “Good save, Bindi. I don’t know where my head is today.”

  Eddie came out alone, looking dapper in his suit and tie. His hair tidily brushed back so she could see his handsome face. Bindi moved to the back. Eddie told him he was looking sharp as he got in the passenger seat.

  “Jane?” asked Madeline.

  “She’s not coming this morning, but she’ll come this afternoon for the funeral. I’ll tell you later.” He fastened his seat belt and stared ahead. Madeline waited a moment, trying to gauge his mood. When he looked back at her, he softened at her concern. “She didn’t want to come for the viewing anyway.”

  “I’m not sure I do. Does anyone?” She ran her fingers along the breast of his blazer. “How are you doing?”

  He let out a sigh and gave a small shrug. He was distraught, of course, but did she really know how he was feeling? It seemed suddenly facile to think they were experiencing this day in the same way, despite having a mother in common, their mother in particular. She squeezed his hand.

  “Next stop: Hollywood Forever,” she said.

  She scrunched her nose at her brother and her own insolence, and this, combined with the comment itself, made him smirk as he shook his head at her. She mouthed a silent apology, and hoped Bindi had remained oblivious to the whole exchange. It was a ridiculous name for a cemetery.

  “Did you see our golden boy might be involved in a Real Estate scandal?”

  “Clinton?” she asked. “He’s not my golden boy. I voted for his wife.”

  “You and Jane both,” he said and laughed. “Maybe me, too. She’s certainly the sharp one. Actually, I think I wouldn’t have cared who was running. I’m just so glad to have a Democrat in office again. It feels like an eternity since Carter.” It did, she realized, but the greater relief was to have a First Lady in office who didn’t just stand mute, baking cookies, behind her husband. “You doing all right back there?”

  Bindi said he was fine again, but Madeline wondered. He kept saying so, but how could he be? Madeline checked out her brother’s tie. It seemed to be in order and not a clip-on. They would have to ask him to teach them at some point.

  The viewing room was empty, the lights respectfully dim. There were a half dozen chairs, presumably for those who wished to stay for a while. This was Madeline’s first visit, and she had no desire to sit down. They had not even moved beyond the doorway.

  “Is this your first time coming, too?”

  “For the viewing, yes,” he said.

  Of course, he’d come to confirm the arrangements their mother had made long ago. Madeline could imagine her mother, perhaps at the height of her career, still too young to worry about dying but deciding anyway that she would be buried at the Hollywood Forever cemetery to guarantee good company in death. Like so much in this town, something commonplace—where else did we all have so much in common?—could garner endless cachet by attaching a glamorous name to it.

  “Thanks for handling everything, Eddie. And the lawyers. I really appreciate it.” She looked at Bindi, who was staring at the casket. “Bindi, sweetie, why don’t you sit down for a minute? I need to talk to your uncle.”

  “Is he really doing okay with all this?” Eddie asked. “It must bring up so much for him.”

  “I know. I’ve been keeping a close eye on him. I’m just so sorry it’s happening right before his party. I know how that sounds, but I’ve been planning it since I got back. I just don’t want his day to fall in the shadow of this one and whatever else comes with it.”

  “No, I get it,” he said. “The other day, after I got the call from Jack, you know what Bindi asked me?” Madeline shook her head. “If there was something wrong with her heart. It surprised me because it was so specific. Not simply, ‘How did she die?’ Or even, ‘Did she have a heart attack?’ But boy, did that question haunt me later. I thought, if that doesn’t describe our mother better than any doctor or shrink ever could.”

  Madeline’s first thought was malicious, but that just as quickly fell away. She had often wondered if their mother’s heart had been broken before Eddie ever came along, before she was barely old enough to understand. Not exactly an excuse for a mother to abandon her children, emotionally if not physically, but it did explain a tiny piece of the mystery that had shrouded their icy, unfeeling, intoxicated mother.

  “There wasn’t so much money left,” he said after a moment. “I assumed she’d leave it to Jack.”

  “Ugh, that man. I’m convinced he killed her.” Eddie’s eyes bulged, as though he’d just watched it happen. “I mean, by not getting her the care she needed.”

  “Well, the house was in her name, and he doesn’t have access to her accounts now. She gave what was left to us.” Madeline nodded, again not sure what to say. “You know, we didn’t get her the care she needed, either.”

  There were so many ways to respond to this. Their mother had decided to mo
ve to Palm Desert with that man. She’d chosen him over them. When had she ever cared for them? She’d never lavished the care a child needed on her son or her daughter. But Madeline said none of this. What Eddie implied wasn’t wrong, but it didn’t mean this was their fault. It was complicated, as family often is.

  “Is everything okay with Jane?”

  “The short answer is no.” He leaned in and whispered, “We broke up.”

  “Oh, my God, Eddie.” Why was he smiling like that? Was he not devastated? “Are you okay?”

  “It’s definitely for the best.”

  They’d been together since so young an age. She had to admit she’d wished for this, but she had never considered that they might actually split up.

  “When did it happen? Did she move out?” He shook his head. “Do you need a place to stay?”

  “Thanks. We’ve actually been fine in the house together. Maybe we’ve both known this was coming for years. Anyway, this is just closure, I guess.”

  “I’m so sorry. It’s terrible timing.”

  “Well, timing might have had something to do with it. You and Bindi, Mom’s death. Life’s too short and all that.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything you need, anything I can do.”

  “You’re busy, sis.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “I know that.”

  “Hey, none of that. I’m not too busy for you.”

  “I appreciate that.” He squeezed her shoulder, then hugged her close. “Actually, I’m planning a trip. Thanks to Mom.”

  Something about his embrace and their mother’s body lying in the same room started to weird her out. She released herself and asked where he was going.

  “London, as of now.” He looked at Bindi, who had taken a seat close to the front of the room. “Hey, do you think anyone has come to see her?”

  “Let’s look at the guest book.”

  There were roughly a dozen names, most of them having come the first day. She knew her father’s name wouldn’t be there, but she looked all the same. She didn’t even know if he was alive, though she assumed she would hear from his lawyer if he had died. This was the lawyer who had contacted Madeline when she was eighteen about a modest trust set up in her and her brother’s name. Prior to that, she hadn’t seen or heard from her father since Eddie was in utero. She’d used some of the money to relocate to New York for school. Even if she thought of her father, she saw the lawyer in her mind’s eye. But Eddie had no image of their father at all to confuse him.

  “Oh, no, Maddy, what’s he doing?”

  It hadn’t immediately registered that her brother meant Bindi until she looked and found him standing before the open casket. She’d warned him it would be open, but she never thought he’d want to look inside. In fact, she’d told him it would be open on purpose, thinking he’d stay away. She only wanted to protect him from the sight of the dead body. She rushed to him but tried to appear calm when she reached his side.

  “Bindi, sweetie, why didn’t you wait for me? You didn’t have to see this.”

  “I wanted to,” he said. “The priest told me it’s a sign of respect. I was too scared to look at my mother, even though I was supposed to.”

  Madeline looked down. Her mother’s eyes were lined in the same smudgy black she’d been wearing since the sixties, her lips painted with a variation of the coral lipstick she so often used. But her face was utterly changed in death—quiet and restful, at peace. Seeing her mother like this, Madeline felt she finally had words to describe that same face in life: pained and hopeless, in misery. She wore an embroidered cloak, one of many she owned. It didn’t matter if she was going to the grocery store or the Emmys, she never left the house without a damn cloak.

  “It’s not so scary,” he said quietly. “I thought it would be.”

  He was right. It wasn’t scary. It was something else, something she couldn’t argue or find fault with, something final. A silent farewell, which—and now it seemed obvious—was the point of a viewing.

  “No,” she said. “You’re right. Will you take my hand, sweetie? I’m ready to go now, if you are.”

  XXV

  The sign hung between the pair of jacarandas that flanked the lower part of his sister’s driveway. Edward stopped his car in front of the valet service and studied its bright pastels, its Indian flourish. Maddy had clearly spared no expense for this party. She’d mentioned a theme but hadn’t told him it would be an Indian theme. He reminded himself that she was a smart woman, an artistically talented woman, and she would exercise good judgment and taste. But then why was he suddenly so nervous? The couple ahead of him stepped out of their shiny black Mercedes, then locked arms under the sign, which clearly tickled them pink. They turned together to the next in line, Edward, in his aging, once silver, now gray Honda Civic, perhaps wanting to share in the sheer joy of it, the cleverness, but something about his car distracted them—or was that embarrassment for his sake? They looked away and carried on. He took a moment to consider the pulsing bass line he heard coming from the house. All this for a nine-year-old? It was already hopping and sounded more like a club on the Sunset Strip than a child’s birthday party. Edward had arrived later than he’d wanted to. Jane and he were finally separating their lives on paper, and it had taken longer than expected. There was still more to do, but he didn’t want to miss another minute of his nephew’s birthday. She saw this and told him to go.

  A week had passed since they’d all gathered for the funeral. Today they came together again to celebrate a young life, forging his way into the future, a life that had already known such hardship and loss. But Birendra was doing remarkably well, adjusting to his new life, and he brought so much to their own lives. They had a good deal to celebrate.

  Edward reached for the present in the passenger seat. He had only wrapped volume 1 of the set. The rest, all twenty-one volumes, were in a box he could barely get to the car. He handed the valet five dollars and asked if he wouldn’t mind carrying the box up the driveway and setting it next to the door. There Edward discovered a stunning young woman who greeted him from behind a kind of hostess stand with her hands together in prayer. He approached and said hello, feeling single, yes, for the first time ever. She was extraordinarily thin and very tall, wearing an intricately wrapped head scarf, black eyeliner thick and long, peacock-feather earrings, a purple glass-bead necklace wrapped around her neck in four loose loops, and a dazzling cluster of jewels that sparkled between her eyebrows. She looked like a younger, more exotic Barbara Eden, from I Dream of Jeannie, if she’d just stepped off a catwalk. She reached into the hostess stand to retrieve a slim stack of items.

  “Your kurta and slippers,” she said.

  Edward was so distracted, first by this beautiful woman, then by the noise and movement down the hall, that he didn’t immediately accept the items: a pair of pointy melon-colored slippers, intricately decorated with copper spirals and other beads, and a matching embroidered shirt, neatly folded to frame an ornate neckline. What an interesting party gift, he thought. On his way to the guest room, a flash of teal caught his eye as a man walked past him on his way to the bathroom. He was wearing the same long, collarless shirt in a different shade. It fell to mid-thigh on him, over his jeans, and his matching slippers made a light tapping sound on the blond wood floors, a kind of emphasis of joy and acceptance. There was a shoe rack he’d never seen in the hall. It was half full. Edward suppressed a groan, realizing he was going to have to put these things on. Hollywood, he reminded himself. Go with it. Make-believe. Jane would never have approved of any of this.

  He followed the man down the hall, stopping at the guest room, where he’d slept on Christmas Eve. He closed the door and changed into the shirt and slippers, then stared at his colorful reflection. He looked ridiculous and almost forgot the present as he left the room. Tap. Tap. His footwear sang and sparkled below.

  Maddy’s living room, normally so precisely appointed, had been cleared of all furniture. The ceiling was draped with
long, billowing sheets of satin in the same pastel shades as the men’s kurtas. At the front of the room, a woman wearing a kind of half saree, half aerobics outfit that artfully exposed her midsection was counting down from five into a headset. She held one hand on her hip while the other twirled toward the ceiling. Several women guests, all white and all dressed in sarees, stood behind her and tried to follow but were mostly preoccupied with keeping their own wraps from unraveling. The music came from a DJ station that had been installed beside the sliding doors that led to the backyard, where he hoped to find his nephew.

  A man in a turban passed with a tray of colorful cocktails. Edward chose the orange one and took a large gulp. It was sweet with the slight bite of vodka. He turned and almost fell over; there was a painted elephant walking his way. When he was certain he was not hallucinating—surely it was something mechanical—he moved closer. The elephant was flesh and blood and walking right in front of him on a path flanked by two parallel plastic rails that formed a guided track. The elephant was only slightly taller than Edward, and its rotund body was covered with floral motifs that had been drawn in pastel chalks. The chalk was wet and muted at the elephant’s center, where the man riding it had spilled his drink. An elephant, no less! And Edward himself stood there in a kurta and pointy bejeweled slippers. He looked around at the other costumed men, like pastel eggs scattered about the yard at Easter. By the pool, he found a fair amount of glistening skin. Finally, in the water, he saw some children his nephew’s age, but Birendra was not among them. There was a young man in a turban handing a drink to a woman who looked an awful lot like Pamela Anderson hiding behind a pair of oversize sunglasses. And a second woman, dressed in a saree, was seated at the other end of the busty blonde’s lounge chair, applying a henna tattoo to the tops of her sun-kissed feet. Edward had to hand it to Maddy. She had created another world for anyone willing to enter. But where was she in all this? And the birthday boy? He spun in a circle but couldn’t find either of them—or anyone he knew, actually. He took another turn, this time looking for anything that would indicate he was at a nine-year-old’s birthday party: a cake, a stack of presents, other nine-year-olds. One of the men in a turban walked up to him with a tray of bite-size samosas. When he got closer, Edward saw he was not Indian and accepted the snack, much relieved that his sister hadn’t felt the need to complete the aesthetic on that front. A second server appeared in his field of vision, carrying delicate wafers of papadum topped with a red mousse. Edward took two, suddenly aware of his hunger. As the server left him, Edward did a double take, then looked around the yard at the other men with trays, all of them in turbans, all of them Hispanic.