The Bollywood Bride

by Sonali Dev

  She wanted to shake him. “She’s not sick, Viky, she’s mad. She’s crazy. Terminally insane. Psychotic. Paranoid. Severely demented.” Her voice broke around the words. “She hurtles between violence and being catatonic.” She threw out all the words they had thrown at her over the years. “She rips her own clothes and throws herself at walls. She doesn’t know her own name. She sets things on fire. She—she—” She almost beat me to death when I was seven. But she couldn’t say it. Even after all these years she couldn’t say those words.

  The tears that pooled in her eyes were hot, the cheeks they spilled onto even hotter. She swiped at them furiously. Her entire body started to shake again and it made her so angry she wanted to scream.

  Vikram tried to reach for her tears.

  She pushed away his hand and stood up and rubbed her eyes against her shoulder. The wool of her coat scratched her eyelids. “Don’t, Viky, please don’t. I can’t have this conversation again. What you did for me today. It was—I can never—I just want you to leave. Please. Please don’t put me through this again. I’m begging you.”

  He stood up and followed her. “I’m sorry, Ria,” he said in that soothing, intoxicating, unwavering voice of his. It fell on her like cooling rain. “I can’t do that. I’ve tried. I swear, I’ve tried and I just fucking can’t.” Very gently he circled his arms around her and pulled her close. She tried to stay rigid, to hold herself away from him, but she couldn’t. Her treacherous body melted into his. Her face sought that patch of skin on his neck that was her corner, her peace. There was no expectation in his embrace, no urgency in his caress. He just held her, solid and strong and sane.

  And she fell to pieces in his arms. Tears soaked his coat, his shirt, his skin. Finally when the tears slowed, leaving her lids raw and swollen, her lips moved and the words started to flow. He lifted her against him and sank back into the grass, settling her in his lap. Like her tears her words spilled from her in an uncontrollable stream. She couldn’t stop them, she couldn’t slow them, she couldn’t make them anything they weren’t.

  She told him about the seven-year-old girl who had disobeyed her dead grandmother and gone in search of her destiny in the forbidden attic and had her bones broken for it. She told him how much it had hurt, not just her wounds as she lay in the hospital for months, but to see Baba by her sickbed every day, crying his shame, and losing her words. About being sent away for it, being banished from her home forever until she was left with its ashes and an impossible promise. About the deal she had made with the body she had vowed to him alone. About the sniggering schoolgirls, the need to be normal, the absolute certainty with which she knew that it was the one thing she would never be. She told him about the nurse’s black, bloated body. She told him about Baba’s eyes, his despair, his charred lifelessness.

  “She burned the house down, killed him, killed the nurse, but he made me promise not to report it. I lied to the police, told them she was dead. Then I brought her here under the nurse’s name, so no one would know she was alive. I promised him I would take care of her, Viky. I protected a killer.

  “Did you know she was normal until I was born? Giving birth to me did this to her. It was me. I took her away from him and then I became the weight around his neck. If I had never been born, his life would have been completely different.” She was the reason he was dead. And today, she had stood by and watched his killer hum herself to sleep.

  Vikram’s arms tightened around her, cradling her in so much safety, so much strength she couldn’t exhaust it. She kept pushing at it, but it wouldn’t give. He wouldn’t let her go. He held her until the words dried up, until the tears stopped. He wiped the wetness from her cheeks and waited for the moisture in her eyes to dry. He looked into her eyes, his gaze as clear, as honest as a mirror. The same spotless invitation it had been all those years ago when he’d asked her to be his friend.

  “I don’t think your father banished you, Ria, I think he sent you away because he wanted to protect you. I think all he wanted was to give you the normal you so badly craved.”

  Baba had given her Chicago for the summers. But through the year he had visited her every chance he got, making the three-hour drive from Pune to Panchgani, bringing her bags of the buttery Shrewsbury cookies she loved, as though everything were perfectly normal.

  She had never told him there was nothing normal about a father who visited alone or who let tears leak down his stubbly cheeks. Other fathers came only with the mothers and watched their wives play the role of caretaker. They didn’t go down on their knees and feed pieces of cookies into their daughters’ mouths and wipe around their lips with shaking hands while the other parents turned their children’s faces away, as if witnessing this train wreck of a man with his unkempt hair and clothes and his desperately sad eyes could somehow damage their daughters beyond repair.

  Why does she let him come to see her? She had overheard one of the girls whisper. If I had such a weirdo for a father I would hide if he ever came to see me.

  But Ria had lived for the times when the school peon pulled her out of the classroom and she found Baba waiting beneath the high-arched ceiling of the receiving room, his eyes shining, his dimples digging deep crevices into his bony cheeks.

  “All he wanted was to give you a chance at happiness,” Vikram said, caressing her tears not so much as wiping them. “Ria, when was the last time you were happy?”

  Her cheeks warmed. He knew exactly where her mind would go.

  “Can you be happy without me?”

  He already knew the answer to that one too.

  “All that guilt you’ve been lugging around, what would that do to your Baba if he were alive?”

  Ria swallowed. The entire weight of her fear, her hopelessness, descended upon her. She was broken and it would have broken Baba’s heart to see her like this.

  “I think you’ve had enough for today, sweetheart. Why don’t we talk about this another time?” Vikram pressed his freshly shaved cheek into hers, pushed his lips into her swollen lids.

  Then he took her hand and stood.

  For all the terror she had felt about coming here, the idea of leaving the asylum grounds felt wrong. She just wasn’t ready for it. She hesitated only for a moment before following him blindly through the neatly trimmed landscape, trying not to think about how comforting it was to hold his hand, trying not to think about how weightless and free it made her feel, like a kite that could fly free because its string was in safe hands. He led her through the grounds and away from the gate, knowing she needed more time before going back into the world. Despite her woolen coat, her shoulders felt bare, kissed by the wind and the sunlight for the first time in her life.

  32

  It had been four days since they had picked up Vikram’s stuff from his hotel and moved it to the flat Ria had rented in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood overlooking a park. They knew it was only temporary. Ria didn’t have anywhere else to go and no idea what she was going to do when her two-month lease expired, and Vikram hadn’t told her how many days he had before he went back to Chicago to start work with the construction company. But living in that charmingly furnished flat with its colonial furniture and floral trim was so much like a real life together, so much like every dream she’d ever dreamed of a future with him, she couldn’t get herself to ask. It would be over soon enough.

  She knew this because every morning they went to the asylum and visited. And every visit reinforced Ria’s vision of her future and her decision that she would not do to Viky what the woman had done to her father. That first day they had watched her hum to that beat that seemed to beat inside her continuously. The next day she slammed her head to it, slamming and slamming against the padded wall for the entire hour that they watched. Yesterday she had reached for the bars and Ria had backed away in such terror she didn’t know if she would ever be able to go back.

  Actually, she’d felt that way after each visit. Every day when they came back to the flat Ria believed she would
n’t go back the next day, but coming home with Vikram erased the terror, infused her with strength, surged hope in her heart until she was ready for it again the next morning. And then the cycle repeated itself.

  Living with Vikram held no surprises. She knew his every mood, his every action. She felt perpetually wrapped up, mussed, messed with, and alive. On their way back from the sanitarium they picked up groceries at the corner grocery store, usually meat and cheese and bread to make sandwiches, and readymade soups. A few times they bought eggs and vegetables and cooked something up. He had always eaten more than anyone she knew. No matter how much food they bought, there was never a morsel left over. And he had a way of filling up every inch of their space by leaving cups and books and pencils all over the place. Every time she made their bed, he found a way to muss it up. And he worked around the clock, his mind engaged all the time.

  When he showed her V-learn it was like being able to walk through his mind, so inventive, so infinite, it saw with clarity the most intricate of concepts as though they were the simplest things. “Everything is simple at its core,” he told her. And if V-learn wasn’t enough for her to want to spend the rest of her days immersed in that brilliant, generous mind of his, she finally found out about that project he’d been working on with Drew that had put that proud smile on Mindy and Uma’s faces that day.

  On their visit to the asylum yesterday they had run into a teenage girl in a wheelchair. They had been strolling along the narrow concrete path that snaked through the grounds and had stepped off to make way for the wheelchair. Vikram had waved at the skinny, long-haired girl, twisting about in the chair, and she’d become so excited her jerking limbs had dropped the pink bunny she was carrying.

  Vikram had squatted next to the wheelchair. “Hello there, beautiful,” he’d said, dusting off the toy and holding it out to her until her flailing arms were able to take the toy from him. “I’m Vic. What’s your name?”

  “Rayna doesn’t talk. But she loves making friends,” the lady pushing the wheelchair had said, smiling at the girl in that way people smiled at very young children, even though this child was at least in her early teens.

  Vikram’s smile had been just his usual smile, open, playful, always the same for everyone. He’d chatted with the girl for a long while and she’d chatted back without saying a single word, just her sounds and eyes and expressive hands.

  Before they said good-bye and continued on their walk, Rayna had wrapped her arms around Vikram’s face and given him a noisy kiss on his cheek, and he’d given her mother a card and told her about the project.

  Drew and he had developed software to help children like Rayna communicate using a keyboard. He’d explained it to Ria as they walked through the grounds. Drew worked with autistic children who wouldn’t talk, but who could communicate through a computer. But the children tended to struggle with fine motor skills and often got frustrated with how long it took to type what they wanted to say. So Vikram had come up with a way to use word recognition based on context and customize it to each child so it wasn’t as frustrating, and minimized the use of motor skills.

  “We still have a ways to go, but the results are pretty spectacular,” he’d told Ria proudly.

  She’d held him and cried as though he’d broken her heart. He had found a way to help children who couldn’t talk, children who were trapped inside their own world, whose words didn’t cooperate with them. She had wanted to shake him for doing this to her. How much harder was he going to make this? How much harder was he going to make her fall for him?

  She knew her war with words wasn’t the same as Rayna’s, but she knew what it felt like not being able to reach the world around you as a child with no control and no power. And she knew how hard he must’ve worked. For her. Because he’d known her struggle. Even after what she had done to him, even before she came back, he had fought her fight for her.

  Their lovemaking had been crazed that night. She’d been frantic, wanting to crawl inside his body and become one with him, her hunger so elemental it had stolen every thought and doubt. He’d kissed and caressed every inch of her and loved her until she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, healing her cell by cell, forcing her to feel every shattering, life-affirming moment of it. “Choose this, Ria,” his every touch said. “Don’t leave me,” his every breath said.

  They hadn’t talked about her fears or about their future since that first day when she’d broken down on the sanitarium grounds, but she knew what he was doing. He was chipping away at her defenses bit by bit. Problem was, no matter how strong and invincible she felt in their little haven, the moment she stepped through those wrought iron gates all her fears returned. She knew this had to end. But he seemed in no hurry.

  It was impossible to keep his insidious confidence from seeping into her own treacherous heart. Without meaning to, she reached for the pencil and sketchpad he kept leaving all over the place, the need to capture the hope in his body, the faith in his eyes so strong she could no longer curb her fingers.

  “I feel like Rose from Titanic,” he said without looking up from his tablet. “Want me to take off my clothes? I’ll even sling that pendant of yours around my neck.”

  “Maybe later,” she said, unable to stop her laughter from making her strokes go all haywire.

  But she couldn’t stop and he didn’t move. He stayed sprawled across the couch and turned his focus back on his work as if she wasn’t trying to capture with her fingers what she couldn’t seem to wrap her heart around.

  When she was done he didn’t ask to see the sketch, and let her hide it away. And he wouldn’t ask until she was ready to show it to him by herself.

  The rest of the day fell into its usual rhythm. They talked to Uma and Vijay as they had done every day. Yesterday Ria had finally spoken to Nikhil and Jen, and apologized for leaving the wedding before the reception. As expected, Nikhil and Jen had been nothing but relieved to talk to her again. “I was as wrong as can be, Ria,” Nikhil had told her. “You and Vic belong together.”

  When Vikram called his parents, his father seemed completely at ease with knowing Vikram was there with her. Chitra tried to invoke her rights as his boss on V-learn to get him to go back home, and Ria had to smile at how Vikram reacted.

  “I need to be here with Ria right now, Ma,” he told her. “And I can work just fine from here. Once we know where Ria and I plan to go next I’ll let you know. If that’s a problem, let’s revisit the contract. It’s still in the grace period for rescission.”

  “I don’t want you to break your V-learn contract with your mother,” Ria told Vikram as they walked through the town hand in hand, heading to the sanitarium for their daily visit.

  “Ma has to get used to us whether she likes it or not,” he said as though them being together was immutable, and all Ria’s fears come crashing back.

  They approached the tree-lined street and she looked around to make sure no paparazzi were lurking in wait before they crossed the street. They were a little late today, and the sun was full and bright in the sky. Walkers and bikers dotted the sidewalk. The street looked nothing like the lonesome, deserted place it was when they got here a few hours earlier.

  “Looking to jump someone again?” Vikram asked, laughing at the memory.

  She punched his arm and stared at the stately building across the street. It looked calm and serene, not bad at all for a place where you could throw yourself at walls and hurt no one but yourself. If she was going to do it somewhere, this was as good a place as any.

  Vikram turned her toward him and cupped her face in his hands. “You are the most frustratingly stubborn person I’ve ever met, you know that?” Then he leaned over and kissed her, softly, possessively, tugging at her lips so gently she felt it all the way down to her toes, and she forgot about all the craziness in all the sanitariums across the world.

  “What am I going to do with you?” He leaned his forehead against hers. She voted for exactly what he had just done. But she didn
’t need to tell him that, because his eyes told her exactly what it was he wanted to do with her. The bigger question was, what was she going to do with herself? How was she going to end this once and for all?

  He took both her hands in his and hopped off the sidewalk onto the street and tugged her along, making her heart dance and her body sing. His intent crystal gaze smiled secrets into her eyes, his irresistible mismatched mouth blew promises at her. For all her resolve to protect him from herself, he made her dizzy with hope, heady with recklessness.

  His eyes froze in a moment of shock. The screeching of tires tore through the air. He tried to shove her away, but she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the way as a car sped by, missing him by inches. A man stuck his head out of the car and screamed at them. “Watch where you’re fucking going!”

  “Sorry!” he shouted back, grinning at the car as though this was somehow funny. This time there was nothing gentle about the way she punched him.

  “Viky! Are you crazy, are you trying to kill me? What is wrong with you? Why can you never keep your eyes on the damn road?”

  “Hey.” He tried to pull her close, but she pushed him away, her heart hammering as she imagined him bouncing off the bonnet of that car. “I’m fine. All in one piece. That guy just came out of nowhere.”

  “No, he didn’t. Look right, then left. How hard is that? Keep your eyes on the road. How hard is that?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll be more careful.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her across the street. She knew he was trying not to smile.

  “You think this is funny?” As soon as they reached the other side, she pulled her hand away and glared at him.

  “No, not funny. But you should see your face. Here you are still trying to justify walking away from me, and the thought of losing me does this to you. What do you think it does to me, every time I watch you contemplate leaving me?”