“You’re up already?”
“I’ve been awake for a while. I took a shower and went downstairs to buy a newspaper.”
She stretched under the covers and closed her eyes, allowing herself to drift in pleasant relaxation. It was funny to be out here with Abhay. She was supposed to be in Los Angeles. Well, really, she was supposed to be at home, preparing for her wedding. The thought made her giggle.
“What’re you laughing about?”
She wriggled herself upright on the bed, holding the sheet over her front. “It’s just strange. I’m not supposed to be here.”
He flung aside his newspaper and crawled onto the bed. “Sure you are.” He slid a hand under the sheet. “This is exactly where you’re supposed to be, because you made the decision to come here. You’re in charge of your own destiny.”
“You’re freezing.” She gasped, yet didn’t push him away. She shivered and giggled as his cold hands stroked her. She helped him shed his clothes. Soon she grew warm in the tangle of sheets. There was nothing in the world except her and Abhay, moving together in the pale morning sunlight. They dozed again, and when she woke up, the sun was bright and high, streaming into the room.
Once they were dressed and outside on the sidewalk, Abhay asked, “What should we do today?”
She squinted in the bright light as they stepped onto the sidewalk. She thought about putting on her sunglasses but decided not to bother. She felt so light, as if she could drift along like a leaf without caring where she went.
He took her out to a fancy brunch at a nearby hotel. They filled their heavy china plates at a long, gleaming bar stocked with marinated asparagus, herbed potatoes, mini-omelets, scones, and a fruit salad with glistening berries, orange sections, and melon slices. They sat at a table covered with a thick white cloth and ate looking out the window at a patio and garden.
Rasika enjoyed the taste of everything. She felt empty of worries, and full of—something. Happiness? No, not exactly. Just full of being here with Abhay. He was so funny. It was adorable how he had tried to dance with her the evening before. But her husband had to be sophisticated, accomplished, important, and both older and taller than she. Abhay was none of these things.
They split the bill and stepped out to the sidewalk. “Let’s go to the Japanese garden,” Abhay suggested. He took her hand and they walked, swinging arms, to the MAX station.
“This garden is one of my favorite places in Portland,” he said as he paid for both of them. They passed along the stone-slab path among the trees to the pavilion. “Sometimes they hold receptions here,” Abhay said. They stood on the wooden porch and leaned over the railing to look at the Zen garden of gravel raked into a complicated pattern of circles and swirls.
“I wonder how long it took them to do this,” Abhay said.
They walked around to the other side of the pavilion, where the ground sloped down and away. From this height they had a view of downtown Portland, and past the linear forms of the buildings in the distance, against the pale blue sky, floated the pale gray form of Mount Hood. “I love seeing this scene from the city,” Abhay said. “It looks like the mountain’s nearby when actually it’s about fifty miles away.”
Rasika took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The mountain was like a vision from heaven.
They continued along the paths, not looking at the few other visitors who walked past them. The garden was cool, green, tranquil, balanced. When they got to an arched bridge over a pond, Abhay said, “How about I take a picture of you? I can stand over there.” He pointed across the pond.
She turned in alarm. “Did you bring a camera?”
He shook his head. “No, I figured you had one, though.”
“I don’t want to have any record of this trip.”
He left her on the bridge and walked along the path until he was on the opposite side of the water. She saw him standing there, observing her. After a few moments, he motioned for her to join him, and she walked off the bridge and down the path toward him.
He picked up her hand and kissed the palm. “You were framed by this weeping willow, and you looked like a flower yourself, in your yellow sweater.”
They wandered under the trees, among the ferns. The path took them over a little creek. They stepped over and around the flowing water, balancing on the flat stones. Rasika squatted down and dabbled her fingers in the trickle. She wanted to stay here forever. They descended to a little hut enclosure with a bench, in a quiet, dark corner of the garden. They sat. No one else was within view. They looked out at the gray slender tree trunks among the layers of leaves in front of them, the light green of the maples, the darker pines beyond. Birds twittered and chirped. Water trickled over rocks somewhere nearby. From a distance came the dull roar of traffic.
She closed her eyes. “I wish it could always be like this.” She took a deep breath.
“It can.” He slid closer to her on the bench, and put his arm around her shoulders.
She opened her eyes. The sun peeked around the rim of the roof above them. Tomorrow at this time she’d be on a plane home. She needed to put herself back together, get herself into shape for her upcoming wedding. Since last night she had forgotten her goals. It was as if she’d forgotten to get dressed, and she hadn’t even cared. She needed to clothe herself again. She pushed Abhay away. “It wouldn’t be like this even if I lived here. I’d be stressed-out and my parents would be angry and I’d never be able to relax. Right now, no one knows I’m here. I’m hidden.”
They heard voices, and another couple emerged from the path. Abhay stood up. Rasika didn’t want to move, but she knew the other couple would want a moment of privacy. She pushed herself up, and her body felt heavy as she followed Abhay along the narrow path ahead.
They were back in the central area, near the little gift shop, which Rasika entered. Abhay followed and stood with his hands in his jacket pockets. After a few moments, he pushed open the door. “I’ll just be sitting on that bench. Take your time.”
Rasika picked up tea cups and pots, packets of origami paper, cherry blossom bath beads, enameled butterfly earrings, silk scarves, carp kites. She wanted to buy something to represent her tranquil time in this garden with Abhay. Finally, she settled on just one thing, which she paid for with two quarters. Its simplicity would remind her. She held it in her hand and walked out to where Abhay was sitting on the bench.
He rose. “You get anything?”
She opened her fingers and displayed a smooth black pebble on her palm. “They have these rocks all around the trees,” she explained. “I like them.”
He picked it up and rubbed it. “What’ll you do with just one?”
“When I look at it, I’ll think of Portland.” She took the pebble back.
“Why can’t you stay?” he asked gently. “If you like it so much.”
Her throat felt tight, but she refused to cry in public. It was too messy, too inelegant. She swallowed down her tears, blinked her eyes, and was able to look at him steadily. “I don’t know anyone here,” she said.
“You know me.”
She opened her mouth to respond, and then shut it. Instead she shook her head. “I can’t stay here because—” She couldn’t think of a reason. She stepped closer to Abhay, he opened his arms, and she leaned against him and gave way to her sobbing. She was still clutching her stone in one palm. She felt as if all the water of Portland—the river, the little creek here in the Japanese Garden—were all flowing through her, and she allowed herself to be swept along. She felt Abhay working, slowly, on untangling the strands of her hair. She heard footsteps coming through the entrance gate, and voices. It was all background noise, like the breeze through the branches.
Rasika managed to control her sobbing, and stepped away from Abhay’s embrace to find a tissue in her purse. She knew she looked terrible: wet face, mussed hair. At least she hadn’t put on any makeup this morning. As she was mopping her face, she was aware that some people had stopped to say he
llo to Abhay. She didn’t feel like being introduced to anyone, so she continued to pretend to rummage through her bag.
“Rasika,” Abhay called.
She ran her fingers through her hair and turned around. Standing next to Abhay were two pretty young women: one had long reddish hair, and the other, short brown hair. They were smiling at her with interest. She felt a jolt of jealousy. Abhay stepped over to Rasika, grasped her hand, and pulled her into the little triangle.
“Rasika, I want you to meet my friends, Kianga and Ellen.”
She managed, as graciously as possible, to shake hands with both of them. This is what she’d turn into if she stayed in Portland. She’d wear baggy, old clothes and wouldn’t bother with makeup or manicures.
Abhay was talking fast, filling in his friends on how he knew Rasika, and what they’d been doing in Portland.
“You should have told us you were having a friend visit,” Kianga said. “We could’ve had you over.”
Rasika said, “You didn’t tell me you had women friends in Portland.” She realized she was showing a lot of teeth when she smiled, the way her mother did when she was trying to hide negative feelings. “He pretends he works all the time.”
Kianga and Ellen both laughed. “He does work a lot,” Ellen agreed. “But he comes over pretty often.”
“By the way, can you come to my birthday party next Saturday?” Kianga asked Abhay. “I want to ask you about India. I’m leaving right after Thanksgiving.”
Rasika was shot through with jealousy. She knew it was completely irrational. Why should she care if two hippies happened to like Abhay, and if he happened to like them? In order to control her feelings, she excused herself, pulled her hand from Abhay’s, and walked away toward the gate. She stood sideways, half-looking at Abhay, and half at the driveway and trees outside the gate.
The two girls were saying their good-byes and Abhay was backing away from them, waving. The brown-haired one skipped over to him and pecked him on the cheek.
Rasika whipped her sunglasses out of her purse and shielded her eyes. She planted herself with her back to Abhay and crossed her arms over her chest. When he joined her, she felt him place a hand on her elbow. She shook him off.
“It’s not what you think,” he said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She marched down the driveway.
“I mean—I hope you’re not jealous.”
“Of course not. Why would I be?”
“It seems like you’re angry.” He placed a hand on her lower back, and she elbowed him away. “They’re just some people I met. Nobody special. That’s why I didn’t even bother mentioning them.”
“I don’t know why you think I care.” She swept ahead of him down to the bus stop. When the bus arrived, she tucked herself into a corner of the seat and, still with her black lenses on, kept her face toward the window.
They got off the bus in front of a long white building with rows of windows. “Where are we?” she asked.
“I thought you might like to go shopping. This is a mall downtown.”
“You hate malls.”
“But you like them.” He reached for her hand, and she crossed her arms again. “I’m really, really sorry about what just happened.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
Inside the mall, she stopped in the bathroom, combed her hair, and gathered it into a ponytail. Then she wandered from floor to floor, from shop to shop. Thankfully, Abhay had planted himself on a bench on the first floor. On the top floor of the mall, she circumambulated the balcony and felt she was regaining herself. She consciously held herself tall as she walked. She didn’t purchase anything but drifted past the store windows, absorbing all the things she might want to buy once she was married.
Suddenly, she remembered her phone. She dug around in her purse, fished it out, and checked to see who’d called. Oh, god. Her mother, of course. Sixteen times. And Jill, three times. And even Benito. She speed-dialed her mother’s cell phone.
“Where have you been?” Amma demanded.
“Amma, I’m sorry. My phone got turned off. I didn’t realize it.”
“I called Jill. She kept telling me you were taking a shower. How many showers do you need?”
“Sorry, Amma.”
“I don’t know where you are, or what you are doing. Some man named Benito called the house. He seems very friendly with you. We have been giving you too much freedom to go and come as you please. At least you will be safely married soon. We will not have to control you anymore. That will be your husband’s responsibility, and what he will do—”
Rasika held the phone away from her ear for a moment. Then she shouted, “Amma, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.”
“Hello? Hello?” her mother shouted, very clearly.
“Amma, I can’t hear you. I’ll hang up now.” She pushed the “off” button and shoved the phone into her purse. She leaned back against the balcony railing and covered her face with her hands. She just wanted to disappear. Why did she think she could run away from her life? Her parents could always track her down. And why had she even bothered to visit Abhay? She didn’t want a life like Abhay’s. She didn’t care about him. Her jealousy of those two girls had jolted her back to reality. She had to go through with what she had planned. She had to make the whole thing work, because there was no real alternative, after all.
Outside the mall, as Abhay walked Rasika back to her hotel, he tried to reason with her. “It’s not like you think.”
“Abhay, it doesn’t matter.”
He persisted, “You don’t know what they’re like. They have all sorts of people living at their house, and I don’t even know who’s sleeping with who. It’s kind of strange.”
“I thought you liked that kind of thing—everyone living together and all that.”
“I don’t like sleeping around.”
“How do you know about the situation at their house? You must have participated.”
Abhay ran a finger over his upper lip. How was he going to get out of this? “We’re just friends. I mean—Kianga and I—we got together once, but she has a lot of other boyfriends.”
“I don’t want to know.” She covered her ears. “It’s none of my business.”
A saxophonist had set up on the street corner, with his case open in front of him. He was playing a bouncy rendition of “Good Morning, Heartache.”
Outside her hotel he said, “I’ll come by tomorrow to ride out to the airport with you.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I want to.”
She pulled open the glass door so hard it flew out of her hand. She rushed through without saying good-bye.
Early the next morning, Abhay hurried to her hotel. He saw as he strode down the hall to her room that the door was open. Inside, a uniformed maid was stripping the bed. He went down to the front desk and found that Rasika had checked out half an hour before.
Chapter 13
The day she left for India, Rasika’s face broke out in pimples. And not just one or two in inconspicuous places. She had two on her chin, three on her forehead, and one on the end of her nose.
Ever since her trip to Portland a month ago, Rasika had been on her best behavior at home. She hadn’t contacted Abhay at all, even though he’d e-mailed and called her several times. She’d come home right after work, had kept to a rigid schedule in terms of exercising, and had limited her caffeine intake. Just yesterday she’d gotten a manicure and pedicure, and had her arms and legs waxed. Why pimples? And why now?
Her mother was in such a rush that she didn’t notice them until they were on the plane to New York. “Since high school, you haven’t had pimples like this!” she said. “Don’t you have any cream?”
Rasika shook her head. When they got to the New York airport, her mother’s mission was to find some acne cream. She commanded Pramod to scour one corridor while she frantically inquired at stores along another corridor. No one carried any kind of
acne cream. So her mother could do nothing but inspect Rasika’s face at frequent intervals. “Couldn’t you have waited until after the wedding?” As if Rasika had broken out on purpose.
They arrived in India after midnight, and after a short nap, Rasika woke up. She was sharing the bedroom with her cousin Mayuri, who worked nights at a call center.
Rasika sat up in bed. She knew her mother wanted her to have a good, long nap so she’d be fresh when Yuvan and his parents arrived that evening, but Rasika was wide awake. Her senses were alert and her heart was pounding, as though she were facing a grave danger. She put her hand over her heart to try to steady it, closed her eyes, and attempted to breathe calmness into herself.
In the evening, Rasika bathed and changed into a heavy silk sari in her mother’s family home. Only after she was dressed did she realize how ugly the sari was: wide stripes of black, olive green, and maroon, with a gold border. “Mridula Auntie has given you this sari,” Amma said. Mridula Auntie was Rasika’s aunt—her mother’s younger sister—and also she was Yuvan’s aunt. She was the one who had originally sent Yuvan’s information to them.
Mridula Auntie smeared Rasika’s face with foundation cream, and patted on some powder, which was the wrong shade—far too light.
Rasika’s grandmother, who was still tall and graceful, appeared in the doorway. “Ayyo, why are you putting so much on? You are hiding a beautiful face.”
“She has pimples.” Mridula Auntie kept working.
“The sari is not good,” Pati said. “She needs something delicate—not dark like that.”
“This is the latest style, Amma.” Mridula Auntie stepped back to examine Rasika, and adjusted the palloo of the sari over her blouse.
Rasika submitted to everything. She didn’t really care what she looked like.
When Yuvan and his parents arrived, Rasika was seated in the corner of the living room with the palloo of her sari wrapped demurely around her shoulders. She had always loved this elegant space of her mother’s family home. Because there were no brothers in the family, Mridula Auntie and her husband stayed here with Rasika’s grandparents. Mridula Auntie liked to look through magazines for decorating ideas. One wall of the long room was made up of glass doors, which could be opened to the courtyard to create extra entertaining space. The lightbulbs were covered with actual shades—unusual in Indian houses. The furniture was appropriate for a tropical Indian home: thick embroidered cushions placed on solid teak furniture. At that moment, however, Rasika did not much care about the beauty of this room.
And Laughter Fell From the Sky Page 21