She’d started moving again. She’d married Rohan. Birthed Max. Moving, moving, moving. Never stopping. Only responding to the things life threw at her. Max’s struggle with gender identity…her divorce from Rohan…Keane. Again.
And for a while, nearly a whole glorious month, it had felt like her train was finally going to make it. To that happy ending right over the horizon. But then he’d done it again.
Lena’s heart spasmed at the memory of how the co-therapist who had answered her call had wept. She was one of the best therapists Lena had ever known, a gentle soul, who had never hurt anyone and spent much of her spare time advocating for and setting up mindfulness programs for schools across SoCal. Yet, whoever Keane had sent to blackmail her, had reduced her to tears.
“He dug up one of my ugliest secrets. The reason I became a child therapist,” she’d confessed to Lena, in a hushed whisper, on the phone. “I’ve spent my whole life trying to atone for it, but he said he’d make sure everyone knew and even report it to the media if I didn’t vote to kick you out of the practice. I’m pretty sure he got to all the other therapists, too. I don’t know who has it in for you, Lena, but you need to watch out…”
Need was the wrong word, Lena thought dully, as Keane raged on about how she was the coward and he was somehow right to have gotten her shut out of her own practice.
Needed. She had needed to watch out. She should never have agreed to play Keane’s game in the first place. It was just like the one he’d played on her when she visited him in Beacon Hill. Already set up before she walked through the door, and rigged so that she had no chance of winning.
She’d realized that, and she’d hung up.
And as soon as her last hope of working this out with Keane evaporated, whatever drive had kept her train moving all these years completely disappeared.
She interrupted Max’s practice at the hockey center and pulled him aside to do something she’d never done before with him. Have an age-appropriate conversation with her son about her own feelings and what she was going through.
“Your father and I have broken up. Also, I lost my job, which means we can no longer afford to live in L.A.,” she confessed to him, her heart heavy with emotions she could hardly define. “I’m…confused and really sad. And I need to move in with Grandpa for a little while to figure out the next steps.”
Then she gave him a choice that almost broke her to give it, but she had to be fair to her child “You can stay with Keane, or you can come to Grandpa’s with me.”
“I want to stay with Keane,” Max had answered after a few thoughtful beats. “But why can’t you stay, too? Maybe you two can make up.”
Three days later, she couldn’t remember how she answered Max.
All she recalled was her train getting slower and slower, as she climbed out of the Uber alone and walked into her father’s house with a bag packed for one. Her legs became heavier as she climbed up the steps and trudged back into her childhood bedroom, then fell like a stone onto her bed.
Things had happened after that. There had been a lot of “Lena, Lena, why are you not getting up?” from her father the first couple of days.
Food had started appearing when she didn’t respond. Takeout at first. Then daals and other favorite dishes she’d loved as a child.
She’d taken a few bites, but they tasted like dirt. The whole world tasted like dirt. She’d let herself fall for Keane again, only to learn she was the same irredeemable asshole he’d always been. And her heart felt irrevocably broken.
“What kind of mother are you?” her father demanded, switching tacts the third day. “Your child needs you, and how about your job back in California, hmm? How about this proposal you have been working on all summer? Should you not be preparing to go home and deliver that?”
She refused to come out of the covers she’d buried herself beneath, but answered, “Keane got me fired from my job to make me stay in Boston. Because basically, I fell in love with a controlling asshole who was never going to let me live my dream if it interfered with anything he wanted.”
Admitting that out loud tore at her heart. Back when she’d gone back to school after having Max, she’d been sure becoming a therapist was her true calling. But her every instinct this summer had been wrong. She’d never felt like more of a fraud.
Silence. Then: “Well, I am not surprised about this turn of events. He is a demon. I told you that.”
“Yes. Yes, you did,” she answered from underneath the covers, her heart, mind, and body a dull stone that could no longer move. “And you were totally right, Dad. I was stupid for falling for him the first time. Even more for doing it again.”
“Oh, Lena…”
Her father, as far as she knew hadn’t touched a beer since that day they’d dragged him out of the store, but his voice broke again. Like she’d kicked him in the chest instead of agreeing with him. And the next sound she heard was his footsteps as he rushed out of the room.
More time went by. Suns rose and set, and she couldn’t bring herself to care about either.
There were texts from Vihaan that she didn’t answer. She blocked Keane’s number all together.
Her father gave her a report on Max. Something about camp being over and deciding to stay with Keane for a while longer, since she was so sad.
She tried to care. Tried to be the fierce mama bear, she swore to become after Rohan hit Max for showing up at his holiday party dressed like a boy. But she knew Max was in good hands with Keane. Even if she herself wasn’t. “Tell him, thank you,” she told her father. “Thank him for giving me some time.”
The next day, she opened her laptop, and did something she hadn’t done since she and Rohan came to the sensible conclusion that Max should be raised like they had been. Education-focused and without a TV. But there it was, still waiting for her. Her old Netflix account.
She spent the next few days eating leftovers and watching teenagers who were even more stupid than she’d been over Keane, falling in and out of love with vampires and werewolves. One even fell in love with some weird kind of spirit that could hop in an out of bodies. None of these romances ended well. Even the ones that could be called a happy ending, left a trail of dead bodies in the wake.
Nothing made her feel better. Not her father’s daal. Not trashy Netflix offerings filled with stupid teenagers. Not sleeping as long as she wanted without having to attend to Max. Nothing.
But by the fifth day of her moping her father became fed up.
“Hey!” she said when he woke her up way too early one morning, by yanking all the top covers off her bed.
“We are Asian and we are crazy, but we are not rich, Lena. Therefore, I cannot allow you to roll around in this filthy depression like people with much more money than us do. Now take a shower while I clean this room. And afterward you will come with me. I need your help to evaluate a business property I have recently purchased.”
“Wait, you bought another convenience store? But dad, what about your retirement?”
“We can talk more on this subject when you no longer smell like a goat farm,” he answered, making a shooing motion toward the bedroom’s door. “Go, go. I refuse to talk to you anymore until you do as I say.”
So apparently, she’d come one really depressing full circle, she thought as she stepped under the spray of her mandated shower. Here she was, living under her father’s roof again, her last name legally changed back to Kumar, no longer feeling sorry for herself, because her father refused to indulge self-pity.
The shower was really refreshing, though, she had to admit. And lest she thought about falling back into her depression, when she returned to her room, she found her jeans and favorite Mount Holyoke t-shirt sitting where her laptop used to be on top of a stripped-down bed. No bra and panties—there were lines even her strict Indian father wouldn’t cross—but still.
Maybe because of the shower, Lena found herself with just enough energy to make getting dressed happen.
“Te
a?” her father asked when she came downstairs to find him sipping a cup of English Breakfast at their kitchen table.
“Where’s my laptop?” she asked.
“You may have it back after we return from viewing my new property.”
Lena went along with her father but frowned when she saw they were driving into one of the unincorporated neighborhoods bordering Dorchester.
“Come on, let’s get out. I will show you that property now.”
“What is this?” she asked when they climbed out of the car to look up at a mid-sized brick office building with a faded sign, advertising it as the Farrington Business Park.
“Is this the building you’re planning to buy?”
“Yes, it is,” her father said, coming to stand beside her.
“But this place is too large for a convenience store,” she pointed out.
“Oh yes, it most certainly is,” her father agreed with a nod. “I would put my new convenience store there in the corner and you would use the rest.”
“Use the rest?” she repeated. “Use the rest for what?”
“Whatever you want, beti,” he answered.
She turned to her father, not understanding. “What do you mean whatever I want?”
“You know, I, too, once spent too much time in bed. Weeks. Close to a month. My depression was even worse than when I had to give up my store,” he said, instead of answering her question. “I drank no beer, but my sadness was very, very bad. I could not eat. I could not sleep. And I did not know how to get out of it, until suddenly I did.”
“What did you do?” she asked, finding it hard to believe her hard-working father ever went through a dark period like that.
“I took a shower, shaved my unfortunate beard, and ate breakfast at the diner your mother and I used to study at. And then I went and got you from foster care and took you home.”
The last part threw Lena for a loop. “I was in foster care? But I thought…”
“I know what you thought.” He looked down at the ground, a guilty shadow crossing over his face. “That I sacrificed my medical career after your mother died. But the truth is, your mother and me…we were a pairing that never should have happened. We were study partners for a class where I needed to be smarter and she needed to put in more hard work. As a team we worked well together, and in truth I found her very attractive, very funny. It was easy to fall into what I thought would be a fling. She was not from my culture at all and our differences led to many, many arguments. She broke up with me often, and I think we would both feel relieved, but somehow, we always ended up coming back together. And when she fell pregnant, I did not know what to do…”
Dad shot her a guilty look. “I did not think I could bring her home to the family who was paying for my expensive schooling and say, this is my black American wife and baby. So I did what only a coward would do. I left. And she died in hospital. Alone, with no one by her side…”
He shook his head, his face twisting in pain as if all this happened yesterday and not over three decades ago. “When the hospital called me, I refused to come. I told them to give you to another family and send me the papers. I would sign over my rights. And I went back to school as if your mother, as if you, never happened. But then a social worker came to my apartment with papers a few weeks later. There was another family. A black family who wished to adopt you. Good, I thought. This will erase it. This will make it right. But when I tried to sign the papers, I found I could not. I sent the social worker away and took to my bed. I did not go to school. I did not work. I just lay there, thinking of you…and your mother. I loved her. But I failed her. I failed you. Because I was a coward. I will never forgive myself for that, Lena. Or for abandoning you.”
I’m sorry but you’re a fucking coward. And if there is an option between just about any fucking thing and me, you will always, always choose anything but the man who loves you!”
The memory of Keane’s words kicked her in the stomach. But Lena shoved it down and forced herself back to the present, to the father standing in front of her. “Dad, I understand how hard that must have been for you. Especially for someone who grew up with your culture and background. I forgive you, and you should forgive yourself, too.”
Her father sniffed. Looked at the building, then back at her. “That demon was right about you,” he said. “He was the only one who had ever guessed.”
“Guessed what?” she asked, having no idea what Keane had to do with her father’s confession.
“Can you believe he came by the house the day before you broke up with him again? This time with blueprints. He asked me again for my permission to marry you, even after everything he had done. He told me a speech about how you were always talking about everything I sacrificed for you, but he said he knew the truth. He said he understood why I did what I did, because when it came to you against anything, it was a no brainer. You were the best choice either of us have ever made. He told me that. Something I had never even told myself. And I asked him, what about Max, thinking he must not know about his being a girl if he were here at my door once again asking for your hand. And the demon said, ‘Max is a no brainer, too. I don’t care if he used to be a girl. I want both of them in my life, and if that means getting you on board, then I tell you what, old man, I’ll give you a spot in my new development to sign off.’ Then he showed me on a new blueprint where he had made a space for a shop. Just for me.”
“He tried to buy you, too?” Lena asked, shaking her head. It hurt. It hurt too much to hear this. To know Keane was working her father, even as he blackmailed her co-workers.
“Yes, Lena, he tried to buy me,” her father confirmed. “You and I both know this is what your demon does. How he operates, so to speak.” Her father shrugged. “Anyway, I gave him my blessing for his marriage proposal.”
“You did what?” Lena asked, barely able to believe her ears.
“However, I answered no to this offer of giving me a new store on that same corner,” her father continued on as if she had said nothing. “And that is why we are now standing here in front of this building.”
He waved a hand up at the building, and Lena shook her head, still not understanding. “Why are you telling me this? What does my mom, foster care, or Keane, have anything to do with you buying this building? And why did you say yes to Keane’s marriage proposal after he tricked you out of your store?”
Her father sighed, his shoulders slumping just like hers did when she was disappointed. “You are a very smart girl, Lena. Like me, a really hard worker. But unfortunately, you are also not smart like your mother. She followed her own heart, even when it pointed her at a skinny Punjabi boy, who was too cowardly and ignorant to understand, no other woman would ever do what she did to his heart. She decided to keep you even though it would derail her medical career. This businessman of yours, he is exactly like your mother. Inappropriate. Not the kind of person your father expected you to bring home. Yet, you could not help but be drawn to him again and again. I think I would have felt the same way had your mother lived. But he is much more powerful than your mother. He knows you are like me, a coward when it comes to love, and so he is willing to do anything to keep you. Anything. He can be a demon or a Gandharva. It is your choice. Just like this building. For he will not change.”
“What do you mean my choice?” she asked, her heart spasming painfully. “I didn’t ask you to buy this building. I didn’t ask him to get me fired from my job!”
“Yet, the choice is still yours,” her father pointed out, nodding toward the building. “So my daughter, what will it be?”
Chapter Thirty
Prom Night, High School
Keane started out at Boston Glenn as the new bully, but by spring of their senior year he was king of the school literally—or at least he would be crowned the king tonight, Lena had no doubt.
His current GOM--girlfriend of the month, as Lena started calling them after his fifth break-up right before their junior winter break—was C
ordelia Roe. This being Boston Glenn, every school year ended with a supposedly secret but always widely broadcasted ranked list of the prettiest and richest girls at the school. Cordelia’s name could always be found near or in the case of their junior year, at the very top.
And this being their senior year, she refused to settle for simply reigning over the school as Boston Glenn’s Queen Bee. She’d been campaigning for the Prom Queen tiara big time, which meant her hot hockey player boyfriend would for sure get kinged right along beside her.
“Please come to prom with me, I’m begging you,” Vihaan pleaded as Lena helped him get dressed on prom night. “My big debut won’t be the same without you.”
No, it wouldn’t. Tonight Vihaan would be doing something four years and one secret boyfriend in the making, officially coming out. It killed Lena that she couldn’t support her best friend and the guy he’d met last summer at Tuft’s summer program for high school seniors. But… “I promised Dad I’d relieve him early tomorrow morning. And he’s always exhausted after his Saturday shifts.”
Vihaan, proving just how quick immigrant kids can adopt American teenage attitudes, rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, yes. Our parents are always exhausted. There is nothing to be done about this.”
Lena winced. “But you see, there is. I could keep my promise and work…”
“…during a once-in-a-lifetime event that you will never have the chance to relive.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s okay. Now, if you were burning Boston Glenn to the ground tonight, I’d be like, ‘Forget you, Dad and show up in a party dress.’”
“With matches!”
They cackled together. Boston Glenn had been their ticket to a big league education. Lena doubted Vihaan would have gotten into Tufts or she into Mount Holyoke, her mother’s alma mater, without the world-class education the prestigious school had afforded them. But by the end of four years, saying anything nice about their ridiculously snooty prep school felt a little like a reformed criminal saying jail had made them a better person. Sure they were better, but hell was still hell.
Keane: Her Ruthless Ex: 50 Loving States, Massachusetts Page 21