by Sonali Dev
She had made it a point to leave the flat before dawn and return before the town woke up in earnest, and she never went anywhere for the rest of the day. No one should have known where she was. But somehow someone had figured it out. She hadn’t heard him follow her, but then she hadn’t been listening for it. Her mind had been too preoccupied with dredging up courage. He had to have been waiting for her, watching her as she stood at the gates too afraid to go inside.
“Ms. Parkar, why didn’t you go inside?” The footsteps behind her sprinted toward her, gaining on her.
She tried not to let the sick violated feeling slow her down.
He was just behind her now, almost at her shoulder. His voice had that overfamiliar reporter quality that grated against her nerves. She broke into a jog.
He ran past her, stopping in front of her on the narrow sidewalk, blocking her way, and shoved a recorder into her face. There was no apology, no hesitation in his actions. He believed he had the right to do this to her. She stepped onto the grass and tried to keep walking.
“Come on, Ria, just one question.” He moved to block her path as she tried to get around him.
“Please leave me alone,” she said, without looking at him. Stopping and saying words made her feel like a victim, cornered and helpless. She had to keep moving. She considered turning around and walking back to the manor house, but she couldn’t bring herself to do that. She rocked back and forth on her heels. Every time she tried to take a step he moved, dodging her footsteps, not letting her pass. He wasn’t going to let her go.
“I’ve been waiting here all night. Just one question. Come on, Ria.” Every time he said her name she wanted to gag, the need to slap him so violent it made her shake.
“I said no!” She shoved at his shoulder with all her strength. He stumbled back and she tried to run for it. But he grabbed her arm. She tried to snatch her arm away, but his fingers dug into her skin, and held her too tight. Trying to stay calm, she reached for the phone in her coat pocket with her free hand.
“When was the last time you visited your mother?” His tone was no longer pleading, but angry and demanding.
“Let me go.” Her panic slipped into her voice. Forget staying calm, she had to get away. She started to struggle and pulled frantically at her arm.
His arm flew off her. She fell forward, but found her balance. He screamed and she swung around to see him flattened against the wall, whimpering. A figure in a long wool coat pinned him in place with one massive arm and loomed menacingly over him. Her body reacted instantly, recognizing the achingly familiar form even before her mind made the connection. Her entire being lurched into alertness.
“Viky? Viky, get off him! You’ll kill him, let him go.”
Vikram turned around and looked at her. Such raw emotion softened his eyes it was a miracle her legs held her up.
“She asked you to leave her alone! Didn’t you hear her?” he said, his deep, honey voice harsh with anger, but his eyes never left Ria.
The man let out a whimper and thrashed about. Vikram’s arm, a crowbar against his chest, rippled with so much power he couldn’t have moved if his life depended on it.
“Viky! Seriously, let him go. Please. He’s only doing his job.”
Vikram turned to the man and lifted him up by his collar, his feet shuffled and kicked air. “If you ever look at her again, let alone touch her, you won’t be able to so much as jerk off with those hands. You hear me?”
The man moaned and tried to nod and the camera around his neck swayed.
“Did you take pictures?” Vikram asked, reaching for his camera, and the man started struggling with renewed fervor.
Anger ripped through Ria like an explosion. He had been standing there taking pictures while she struggled with her obscene struggle. Her violation was so fierce she ran at him and grabbed the camera, trying to yank it off his head, surprising Vikram so much the man slipped from his grip. The bastard took the opportunity to knee Vikram in the belly and took off.
“Stop!” Ria shouted and raced after him. He would not get away, not with her pictures, not while she lived. She leapt across the distance between them and jumped on top of him, taking him down.
He slammed into the ground beneath her, screaming like a madman. Ria struggled with the camera, pulling it off his neck, anger slamming in her chest like a fever. Hands lifted her off, pulled her back. Vikram reached for the man again and pulled him up by his collar.
Ria was about to smash the camera to the ground when the man started sobbing. “Don’t. Please don’t break it. It’s not even paid for yet. My wife’s pregnant. Please. I needed the money.”
“Shut up.” Vikram twisted his arms behind his back, but the man was sobbing so hard Ria couldn’t do it.
“Get the SD card,” Vikram said to her.
She popped the card out. “You’re a bastard,” she said to the man, and dropped the camera on the grass. The man had stopped struggling and Vikram let him go.
“I’m sorry,” he said, tears and snot leaking from him. He picked up the camera with both hands, as though it was a precious pet, and walked away.
Ria threw the card on the concrete path and stomped it with her boot heel and kept on twisting and crushing until it was nothing but black powder.
“Sweetheart, it’s gone. It’s done.” Vikram said to her.
For a moment neither one of them moved.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
They spoke almost simultaneously, and then Vikram took a step closer.
“He didn’t hurt you, did he?” He glanced at her arm, but he didn’t reach for her.
She shook her head. “You?”
He shook his head too. They stood there like that for a moment. Their gazes meeting and retreating, their bodies paralyzed with feeling. Then his shoulders started to shake. “I don’t think the bastard will ever be okay again. What the hell was that, Ria?” he asked, and she started to laugh too.
For a long time they stood there like that, laughing, unable to believe that she had actually jumped on top of someone and taken him down. An indescribable alchemy of emotions stirred inside her—disbelief, anger, embarrassment, shock, but also pride and an entirely unexpected heady sense of power. And of course that tingle, that joy that blossomed whenever he was near.
“You want to try and go inside?” he said finally, nodding in the direction of the high gates. Ria’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach. She looked at her toes.
He took a step closer and tipped her chin up. Her eyes flickered up to meet his, the comforting gray so steady, so strong, her insides grew calm. All the weight she’d been carrying shifted to his outstretched hand. That barest touch of his bolstered her. For the first time since they had been apart she felt safe.
She reached for that sense of power that had nudged at her moments ago and took his hand when he held it out. Together they walked back to the gates. She pressed the bell and told the receptionist who she was.
“Good morning again, Ms. Pendse.” The receptionist didn’t even attempt to hide the sigh in her voice and unlocked the gates.
This time when the buzzer rang, Ria let her hand push against the cold weight of the iron bars until the gates swung open. Her legs faltered, but Vikram’s hand tightened around hers and she kept walking.
She didn’t let herself falter again after that. Not when the warden unlocked a smaller iron gate leading to a long corridor, not when they followed him into the back wing of the manor house. They walked past more locked gates that led into more long sweeping corridors with high ceilings and polished terrazzo floors wrapped in silence. The tapping of their footsteps echoed against bright white walls. Ria had to force herself not to read the names hanging on the closed doors as she floated past them, her arms, her legs, all of her weightless, formless. She had no mass, no shape. All she had was Vikram’s palm pressed against her own, his fingers tight against her own. Not so much support as proof that she existed in this moment. She
had fought the moment so hard but it had arrived all the same.
Finally, they came to the end of a corridor, and the warden pointed to a window. Vikram thanked him and signaled for him to leave them alone. Ria let Vikram’s hand go and walked up to the window. For the first time since she was seven years old, Ria’s eyes rested on the surprisingly small, impossibly frail creature who had cast such a large, intractable shadow over every part of Ria’s life.
The window was fitted with iron bars like a prison cell. Thick soft vinyl pads covered the bars. In fact, thick sheets of padding covered everything—the walls, the doors, the bed frame, even the chair. The creature sitting in the chair at the center of all that cushioned padding, rocking herself, was so delicate, so fragile that Ria couldn’t imagine how all this softness could protect her if she went hurtling into something.
A red puckered burn scar covered half her clean-shaven head. A purple bruise stretched from the scar across her cheek to her soft pink mouth. Other fading, yellowing bruises patterned her arms and her neck and disappeared into her gray gown. Two of her fingers were bound together with tape the exact color of her pale beige skin.
Ria fixed her eyes on the delicate, long-fingered hands that rested in her lap. The fingers were moving, tapping out some sort of rhythm. Ria couldn’t tell for sure over the ringing in her ears, but she thought she heard humming. For a long time all Ria could do was look at the drumming fingers and let the trembling inside her synchronize itself with the rhythm they were beating out.
“Hey!” the voice suddenly called out, and Ria looked up, surprised that it could speak. She had never imagined it with a voice. It’s voice was exactly Ria’s voice. It looked at Vikram with eyes that were exactly her eyes. “Hey!” it said again.
“Hey there.” Vikram smiled gently—that smile he saved for the little kids who adored him so much. He did a small wave with his hand. She smiled back. A big beaming grin split lips exactly identical to Ria’s lips. Two of her front teeth were missing.
“How’re you doing?” he asked.
“Hey!” she said again as if he hadn’t spoken. The smile on her face stayed bright and blank.
Tears started to stream down Ria’s cheeks.
Vikram pulled her close and pressed his lips against her hair. The woman in the room didn’t notice.
“Hey!” she said one more time, before she went back to humming.
Ria stood there watching her, leaning into Vikram, her head resting on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. His arms wrapped around her, collecting her into himself. They stood there like that watching her hum, watching her drum, watching her until she fell asleep, smiling to herself, and her fingers stilled in her lap.
31
The sanitarium sat on twenty acres of grounds with thick wooded areas alternating with clipped lawns and pruned shrubbery. Although what good these magnificent grounds were to someone locked in a padded cell, Ria couldn’t imagine. Vikram walked next to her as she meandered along the path that wound around a retention pond and led to the back of the property, away from the road and the sound of passing cars. Away from the gates.
There was something safe about the place. It was cocooned in the silence she needed. The raw, torn-open feeling inside her was still too fresh. She hadn’t armored it shut yet. She couldn’t handle anyone seeing her like this, asking her questions. She had too many questions of her own, too many things she herself had hidden away from for too long. She wasn’t ready for the world’s obscene curiosity and she most certainly never wanted to take anyone down ever again, even though the memory made her smile.
They stopped at the edge of the pond and lowered themselves onto the sloping bank, sitting cross-legged on the thick carpet of grass that rolled down the hill and into the water. Their denim-clad knees touched. She felt Vikram’s eyes on her as she watched the water.
She had no idea how he had shown up that morning out of the clear blue sky or what he was doing here. But having him next to her outside that padded room, it was so precious, so impossible to quantify, she held on to it, refusing to taint it with questions.
“It was Uma,” he said, speaking for the first time since they’d entered the grounds. “Uma told me where you were.”
Uma had promised Ria she wouldn’t tell anyone. What had he done to make her tell him? Why had he even asked? He had made it clear enough he was done with her.
He touched her hair, tucked it behind her ear. “The article about the suicide scared me half to death. What the hell were you thinking getting on that ledge like that?” He was reprimanding her and instead of making her angry she held on to it. The strangest things in life were precious. Someone to tell you when you were wrong was one of them.
“I wasn’t trying to kill myself.” She wanted to explain about the phone, but she was too tired. And it sounded completely crazy when she thought about it now.
“I know that.” The complete absence of doubt in his voice made her want to sidle up to him. “I know how much you love heights. But it was still a really stupid thing to do. What if you had slipped?”
Ria shrugged. It wasn’t something she should have done. She wasn’t proud of it.
“I couldn’t believe the crap in that article. At first it made me so angry I couldn’t see straight. But then a lot of shit started falling into place in my head.” He went up on his knees and faced her. “How could you have lied to me about your mother’s death?”
“Viky—”
“And I was such a fool, I walked away. I should’ve seen through it. I thought it was the shock of losing both your parents, I thought you wanted to leave everything about your old life behind. Including us. But the movies? I should have known better.”
He scooted closer and wiped her tears. “And then I did it again at Nikhil’s wedding. Ria, I’m—”
“Please, Viky. Please don’t apologize.” Anything but that.
“But I am sorry. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. I was an idiot ten years ago. But now? Instead of licking my wounds, I should’ve been with you when the story broke. I tried. I went to Mumbai to make sure you were okay. But you were gone. And no one knew where you were. Except that agent of yours, who’s Fort Knox. And Uma, who almost killed me for letting you go after I told her about us.”
He had told Uma about them? And gone to Mumbai looking for her? “I thought you never wanted to see me again.” She laid her chin on her knees, pulling them tight against the pain in her chest, and watched his face.
“God, Ria. How could you believe that? What I wanted was for you to not leave me again. I was desperate. I would have said anything. Done anything to stop you. And of course I said the one thing I shouldn’t have.” The regret in his eyes was so raw, she wanted to wrap her arms around him. She couldn’t believe how good it felt just to look at him. To know his face so well.
“That’s not true,” she said, lifting her head off her knees. “You were right. If anything would have stopped me that would have been it. But you couldn’t have stopped me. I just couldn’t stay, Viky. I still can’t.”
He didn’t react. Not even a frown. He just sat there on his knees looking at her like he never wanted to look away. “The first week after you left, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t do anything but work. I think I created a hundred videos for V-learn. The host site almost told me to take my business elsewhere because they couldn’t keep up.” He smiled. “But you were right. I was dragging my feet on the eco deal. I was being a coward and not putting my money where my mouth was with V-learn. I was afraid of believing in anything again.”
He lifted her chin so she was looking in his eyes. “I’m done running now. I signed a contract with Clive and Hadley. They get to use my patents for the next ten years and work with me exclusively until we go into production. And Ma’s foundation is funding V-learn and I get to run it, to hire people globally, to translate, to work with schools. We can do whatever we want with it.”
She cupped his cheek. “That’s fantastic,
Viky.” It felt so good to touch him.
“You don’t have to worry about this on your own anymore.” He pointed to the stately manor behind them. “We’ll take care of it together now. Even if you don’t want to act anymore, we can take care of it. You can do whatever you want. You can paint again. In fact—” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a brown paper bag. Inside it were three tubes of acrylic and a brush.
She pushed it away.
“Look at the colors,” he said, extracting the tubes and handing them to her.
Burgundy, jade, and turquoise. She smiled and gave them back to him.
“I bought these in Chicago the day before the wedding. I was waiting for the right moment to give them to you.” He put the tubes back in the bag and held it out to her.
She scooted back, away from him, away from the paints and twisted her fingers in her lap. “I don’t want to paint, Viky. I’ve already told you what I want.”
He put the bag back in his pocket. “It’s what your lips tell me. But it’s never been about the words for us.” He stroked the fingers she was twisting together, easing them apart. “It doesn’t make sense, sweetheart. Why won’t you stop running from us?”
Was he blind? Hadn’t he just been in there with her? Hadn’t he seen what she was going to turn into? Suddenly, she was too exhausted to fight, too tired to lie, to give him explanations he refused to accept. He had seen it, the truth had stared him in the face. It was more powerful than anything she could make up.
“Viky, you just saw the person who gave birth to me. How can you possibly want to be with that?”
He blinked, his face blank. “Your mom? What does this have to do with—”
His brows drew together. Understanding suffused his eyes. “Shit! How could I have been so stupid? This is about your mother?” It sounded like a question, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He sprang to his feet and started pacing. “How could I have missed it? This is exactly how you would think.” He dropped back down on his knees, glaring at her. “You think you’re protecting me, don’t you? Just like you thought you were protecting me ten years ago. You think you’re going to get sick like your mom.”