Chapter 14
Two days later, when Amar called to wish me happy birthday, he shared news of his own. After trudging through several temporary gigs at smaller colleges around the country, he’d finally landed a permanent position at the most reputable art college in Mumbai.
“I’m thinking of coming for a visit before the semester begins,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll get a chance again soon.”
Amar had visited us almost every year since we moved to Dallas.
“That’s great.” I smiled. “It’ll be good to see you again. Ma’s going to be over the moon.”
He held his silence for a moment. “Is everything good?”
“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”
“Okay, I’ll book my tickets and text you the details.”
My relationship with Amar was no longer marred by envy. When my life broke into pieces, he held me like a true brother and helped me get back on my feet. That’s when my love for him underwent a complete reformation. Two years later, on his first visit to the U.S., I came clean to him. I laid bare all the jealousy and resentment that had hollowed me for all those years. I abandoned all trepidation and confessed how much I had hated his kindness and generosity. “I’ve never not loved you, Amar but it was exhausting trying to be as good as you. Everyone around us thought you were the perfect child, the perfect son, and I hated being the second best, always. But I see it now. You’ve always been rightfully worthy.”
He’d barked a long, hysterical laugh. “Isn’t that fucking hilarious!” It was the first and only time I’d heard him curse. It was also the only time I’d seen him agitated. “I’ve never been the son they wanted, Sameer, even when they thought I was. Not for my parents, and neither for yours, I suspect.”
When I had given him a drunk, dumb look, he said, “I’m bisexual, Sameer. I’ve known for a long time but didn’t have the guts to tell my parents until now.”
“They know?” I had asked with raised brows.
“They haven’t disowned me, if that’s what you’re asking. They have no choice. I’m the only heir to their hard-earned crores,” he had spewed with bitter sarcasm. “But I see it in their eyes—the disappointment, the pity. So you have nothing to worry about, brother. You are the worthy son, fucking straight as they wanted.”
Pouring himself another big glass of whisky, he’d continued. “You gave me that look too, you know. The shock, the disbelief, as if I’d just confessed that I was a murderer. But I don’t take it to heart. Everyone has given me the look, or variations of it, even my most well-meaning friends. The only one who didn’t was Tara.”
“Tara knows too?”
He’d taken a valiantly big gulp from his glass and bobbed his drunken head. “She’s the only one who knew until last month. And guess when I told her? At our very first meeting. The very first time I’m talking to her, and there’s something about her that’s so genuine, honest, and decent that I spill my guts without thinking.”
I had waited while he steadied his gaze. “She didn’t make a big deal out of it but didn’t underplay it either. She just recognized it as a part of who I am and supported me the way I needed, quietly and staunchly.”
Every memory of Tara I had wished away when I left India came barreling back. We had been so young then, barely out of adolescent immaturity, and I was still behaving like an entitled prick, when Amar had trusted Tara with this delicate secret. And she had held him up when he had no one else to rely on. That was more than I had ever done for him. I had pelted him with jealousy and aggression at a time when he most needed a friend. So, regardless of our current status quo, I knew I had to be gracious to Tara during his visit. She was the knot that bound me to Amar, and he was the thread that led me to her.
···
When I saw Amar at the airport later that week, the now-familiar feeling of pure happiness flooded my heart. He wasn’t the skinny boy anymore, but he still sported a head full of curls and an expression of open-hearted kindness.
“Looks like you work out,” I said as I drove him to my parents’ home. “I see muscles.”
He shrugged, Zen as ever. “How’s Aarti?”
“She’s good.” I flinched inwardly at the way my voice rose in pitch. “You’ll see her the day after tomorrow. Mom has invited us to dinner. Apparently, you’re an important guest, and our presence is required,” I teased.
“I’m not a guest. It’s my home as much as it’s yours.”
“It’s all yours. I want nothing to do with that house or that man.”
“Still bitter, I see,” he said, casually peering out the window. “It’s so much less green than the last time I was here.”
“The metroplex is growing in all directions,” I said, then snapped. Enough skirting the issue. “Why don’t you just straight up ask me?”
“There’s nothing I need to ask you, dude,” he said, and continued gazing outside with an interest that was at odds with the bland concrete buildings and the giant network of highways rolling alongside.
“Then you know Tara is here.”
He smiled like he had won the game. “Yes, we talk. She called me when you bought that painting anonymously. That wasn’t very smart.” He chuckled. “Now, Tara, on the other hand—”
“Yes, she’s always been smarter than me.”
He caught the warmth in my voice and said, “I hope my being here doesn’t complicate things for you.”
“It doesn’t. I’ll always honor your friendship with her, no matter how I feel.”
“And how do you feel?”
A deep sigh was the only way I could respond to that question, and he took the hint.
“Heard about Sangita. I’m sorry. I wish I was in Delhi to help.”
I glanced at him. “Thank you, but there’s very little we can do anyway.”
“Have you talked to Riya?”
I shook my head.
“Well, I don’t need to tell you what the right thing to do is. She’s a little girl, and she’s your blood,” he said, as if I could ever forget that.
I responded with another audible sigh.
“Okay, no more lectures.” He flashed a smile. “Can’t help it. It’s my profession.”
“Congrats, brother. I’m glad you finally found what you wanted so badly for so long.”
“You too.”
“Not yet,” I replied. “She hates me…and I don’t know what I want. I don’t think she does either. Every time we talk, we end up fighting.”
“You’ve always had your disagreements,” he said matter-of-factly.
“But this time we’re hurting each other.”
He looked at me. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. I can’t lose sight of what’s on the line.”
“What’s that, your happiness?”
“You know as well as I do that’s not the priority.”
“Well, I’ll be here when you need me.”
I smiled gratefully. “I know. That’s the one thing I can count on, no matter what.”
···
Two days later, I arrived at my parents’ home with Aarti in the hopes of sitting down to a nice, intimate dinner with my family. But when I parked the car, I saw Tara in the rearview mirror, exiting a cab.
“Tara! What a nice surprise,” Aarti said to her at the door. I looked for hints of unpleasantness in her tone but found none.
“Aarti, good to see you again,” Tara replied, completely ignoring me as Amar answered the door.
“Amar!” Tara gave him a heartfelt hug. “It’s been too long.”
“Good to see you again, Amar,” Aarti said as Mom came to the door to welcome us.
“You have a very beautiful home, Mrs. Rehani,” Tara said.
“You can call her Aunty. There’s no need to be formal,” Amar said and looked at Mom.
“Of course.” Mom smiled. “Amar is my son, and you’re his dear friend. I’d love it if you called me Aunty.” With her arm gently draped around Tara’s shoulder, Mom led us to the living room.
Dad sat on the throne of his favorite armchair with a drink in his hand. After quick introductions and pleasantries, we settled down.
“What would you like to drink?” Amar asked Aarti and Tara.
“White wine,” Aarti said and smiled at me, and I stepped over to the dry bar at the far end of the room.
“Wine’s good,” I heard Tara say.
I poured Aarti some sparkling white. After Amar poured for Tara and brought it to her, I signaled him to join me at the bar.
“Why did you invite her?” I frowned.
“I didn’t.” He calmly poured himself some whisky. “Chachi did.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Ma doesn’t even know her.”
“I was talking to her about Tara, and she asked if she’d like to join us for dinner tonight.” He gave me an arm-pat and turned to Mom. “Chachi, some wine?”
“No, thank you, beta.”
Mom turned to Tara, who exuded ease and confidence, but I could tell she was quaking in her shoes meeting my mother for the first time. Perhaps she hadn’t thought it through when she accepted the invitation, and it tickled me. She wore a beautiful embroidered Indian short top and jeans, paired with oxidized metal earrings and stylish pumps. But with delicate eyeliner and a subtle shade of lipstick, she looked uncharacteristically demure for the feisty woman that she was.
“Tell me, what do you do, Tara? Are you an artist like Amar?” Mom asked.
“Yes, and I’m also an art consultant.” She explained her job and what had brought her to Dallas.
“That’s wonderful.” Mom looked at Amar and Aarti with pride. “You kids are so accomplished.”
Dad found his opening and wasted no time. “Do you know Sameer also attended your college?”
“Yes,” Tara said politely.
“Do you know why he was sent to a small city like Badauda?” he asked with visible disdain.
“Because it has one of the best fine arts colleges in the country?” Tara delivered the tart reply with a sweet smile, and I tried to suppress a chuckle. Atta girl!
But Dad recovered swiftly. “Yes, Amar said they were the best years of his life.”
“It’s a beautiful city with a rich history and warm people,” Amar added.
“Yes, but that’s not the reason we sent Sameer there.” My insides burned with anger and humiliation at Dad’s efforts to prove his point.
“Shall we eat?” Mom redirected in her gentle, classy manner.
“Yes,” Amar and I blurted in unison.
When we gathered around the table, I turned my attention to Aarti. Amar and Tara sat across from us, with Mom on Tara’s right. Dad was at the head of the table.
“I would love to see your work someday.” Mom smiled as she passed Tara the chicken korma.
“Would you like to come to the opening with Amar?” Tara asked with raised brows. “I can send your invitations with his.”
“That would be wonderful,” Mom replied, turning to me. “Are you both going?”
I nodded.
“So, Aarti, how are your parents?”
“They’re well, Aunty. Although they’re getting impatient that we still haven’t decided on a date.” She looked pointedly at me. “Sameer keeps dragging his feet. I’ve started to doubt if he’s at all serious about us.” When she placed a teasing hand on my arm, my heart began racing.
“We also want you to decide soon.” Dad jumped in. It was his favorite subject, after all.
“They’re getting engaged, but we want a proper ceremony, so we’re asking them to pick a date that works for them,” Mom explained to Tara.
This time, I couldn’t avoid looking at her and saw sorrow and disappointment flash across her face. But she followed it up with a big smile. “That’s wonderful, congratulations.”
She smiled at Aarti, while Amar warned me with a stern look that said, “What are you doing, dude?”
I scuttled to change the subject. “Guess what?” I draped an arm around Aarti and said, “We managed to snag a Selfia for the office. It was a bidding war, but Aarti’s agent is quite clever.”
Aarti beamed. “Sameer wanted it so badly, she was determined to make it happen!”
I scanned Amar for a reaction and caught him exchanging a look with Tara before offering Aarti a conciliatory nod.
“What, no compliments, no felicitations?” I prodded.
“That’s because he knows Anthony Selfia is an overrated hack,” Tara blurted.
Amar shook his head at her, but I didn’t expect him to jump in and defend me because, as he’d once put it, he preferred to remain non-aligned in the face of our Cold War. Only not all our wars were cold.
“I can’t believe someone like you would say that!” I fumed at Tara. “How can you claim to run an art advisory firm and not appreciate Selfia?”
“Exactly. It’s my job to advise people against buying junk.”
“Junk? Junk?” I cried. “Did you just call my five-figure piece of art junk?”
“Five figures? Did you just throw that much money at that worthless hack? This is exactly why he’s overrated. People with a lot of money who know zilch about art blindly follow whatever the current hype is.”
The gloves were off. My face was hot as I retorted, “Oh, excuse the rest of us mortals, who didn’t graduate with high priestess degrees from eminent art schools! What did they teach you there? New rituals to offer reverence to the same old dead artists?”
“Don’t condemn the masters to compensate for your own shortcomings. You know, if Selfia was a woman, he would’ve been scoffed off the field years ago. When female artists dared to bring private emotions into art, they were condemned as airing dirty laundry in public, quite literally. Then artists like Selfia come along, rip off ideas and techniques, and are hailed as trailblazers!”
“It’s no different in literature,” Aarti interjected with her cool demeanor.
“Thank you, Aarti.” Tara offered her sweetest smile. “I’m glad one of you has good sense.”
“Don’t encourage her, sweetheart,” I said to Aarti. She consoled me with a nod, then exchanged a private look with Tara.
“Aarti’s right. When women wrote about their relationships and emotions, it was called domestic fiction.” She made air quotes. “When women write romance, it’s seen as fluff, drivel. When men write about female emotions, as they interpret them, they appear on bestseller lists. When women write about their desires, it’s vulgar. When men do it, it’s art. Women sketching their own bodies is blasphemy, when men do it…argh, men have been doing it for ages.”
“I can’t believe this.” I shook my head while clambering for a crisp response but came up empty.
“I have to agree with Tara on this,” Aarti said in a calm voice, then took an elegant sip of her wine.
“Let me get this straight, you think I value Selfia’s art only because he’s a man?” I fumed, hotter than the steaming rice on my plate.
“No, you value Selfia because you don’t know the difference between art and hype,” Tara said with a condescending smile.
“And you would know, wouldn’t you?” I banged down my spoon, violating every etiquette rule Mom had ever instilled in me. “You’d know the value of absolutely everything.”
“Yes, because I do it every day. It’s my job.” Tara’s conceited cool irked me even more than her angry retorts. “Do you have any idea how the art market works?”
“No, how would I? I only have the money to make or break that market.”
“Don’t be smug,” she said. “You and your ilk would be nowhere without us. All you have is money, but no taste, no aesthetic sense.”
“And you do, do you?”
“My resumé and net worth say I do,” she said and looked at Aarti. They exchanged a smile, raised their glasses, and sipped their freaking wine.
I snarled at Tara as my insides turned to lava. “Give it up, Rehani. You’re just another zombie following the dead crowd to nowhere.”
“Guys…” Amar drew our attention back to the table. “This is exactly why we couldn’t leave you alone in a room during college.”
I felt Aarti’s body stiffen at his words. “Is this how they’ve always been?”
“No, this is an escalation. They used to argue, but they were always respectful and considerate. Never devolved into personal slander. Now they both harbor huge egos,” Amar said while calmly helping himself to more chicken and rice.
He was the king of admonishments. You wouldn’t realize how hard you had been whipped until you went home and reflected on it. Only then would the cicatrices become evident—the scars you’d carry for life. I suddenly pitied his students.
“I’m sorry, that was rude of me,” Tara said, looking at Dad, then at Mom.
“Not at all, my dear.” Mom placed a hand on hers. “I learned something new today.”
Tara’s shy eyes lowered to her plate. What was she playing at?
“I’m sorry too,” I said to no one in particular.
“The food is amazing, Aunty,” Tara said.
“Thank you. Durga is a very good cook.”
When Durgaben came in with a basket of warm, buttered naan, Mom introduced Tara to her. Tara detected her accent and spoke to her in Gujarati. Durgaben’s eyes lit up and her smile widened as they exchanged a few sentences.
“The food is absolutely wonderful,” Tara said in English. “Reminds me of home.”
“Yes, Durgaben is super talented,” I chimed in. Durgaben blushed slightly from all the attention.
“Thank you,” she muttered, and shuffled back out.
“Aarti, your nail color is so trendy,” Tara said. “I can never find such fun colors to suit my skin tone.”
“Oh, thank you,” Aarti gushed. “I’ll give you the name of a brand I like. It’s got a lot of great colors for Indian skin tones.”
“That would be amazing!” Tara showed her fingers to Aarti. “Look at this drab color I have on.” I thought the color was just fine, but Aarti disagreed.
“You’re right.” She frowned. “It clashes with your undertones.”
Whatever that meant.
“So have you two picked out what you’re wearing for the engagement?” Tara asked Aarti.
She was determined to avoid me and was doing a fantastic job.
“Ah, I wish!” Aarti blew out a sigh. “I can’t even get him to talk about a date.”
“Western or Indian?”
“Most likely, Indian.” Aarti squeezed my hand. “What do you think, Sameer? It will look glamorous, won’t it?”
“Sameer, you’re not eating,” Amar said. I shot him a fierce look, and he grinned back.
“What’s the matter, beta?” Mom quickly turned to me. “Is the food not to your liking today?”
“Everything is perfect, Ma,” I said with all the calm I could muster.
All through dinner, Tara continued to bond with Aarti. When she and Amar recounted some outrageous stories from their college days—I was conveniently excluded—even Dad managed a few chuckles. Aarti was having a splendid time. She had decided that Tara was smart and funny. By the time Durgaben brought out bowls of deliciously cold kheer, flavored with cardamom and saffron, Aarti was regaling us with wild stories from her college days. Everyone seemed to be enjoying a perfect evening. Except me. I was seething with unresolved emotions.
The moment we returned to the living room, Dad poured himself another drink. Mom sighed. Clearly she’d lost count of how many he’d had that day.
But I had other things on my mind. A worry about Tara, for starters. I pulled Amar aside. “It’s late, and Tara will insist on taking a cab back. Ask her to stay the night. It’s the weekend anyway. She doesn’t have to go in to work tomorrow.”
He frowned as he worked to gauge the intent behind my suggestion.
“I can offer to drop her back, but we both know she’ll refuse. Adamantly.”
That convinced him. “Tara, it’s getting late. Maybe you should stay here tonight? We have spare rooms, right, Chachi?”
“Oh, of course!” Mom said. “I’ll ask Durga to make a fresh bed.”
“I’ll do it, Ma,” I said. “Durgaben must be tired.”
Mom graced me with a smile.
“It’s alright, Aunty. I think I’ll go home.” Tara politely refused the offer. “I didn’t bring any extra clothes or anything else for that matter.”
“That’s alright, beta. I’ll give you some nightclothes and other things.” She stood from the couch to make the necessary arrangements. “Anyway, Amar is going to Sameer’s for the weekend. Maybe they can drop you off on their way. Where do you live, Tara?”
“Uptown.”
“Oh.” Mom turned to her. “Are you close to Sameer’s place?”
Tara shifted in her seat. “A few blocks away.”
Mom looked at me, then at her. I directed my calm eyes at Aarti.
“I’m sorry to cause trouble, Aunty,” Tara said. “This is really awkward.”
“Don’t feel awkward, beta. You’re Amar’s friend. This is your home,” Mom reassured Tara with a smile.
I followed Mom upstairs while she instructed me on the proper way to prepare for a guest.
When I returned, Aarti was ready to leave. “Sorry, I can’t stay,” she said as she kissed my cheek at the door. “Got an early morning tomorrow.”
Things couldn’t have turned out better if I had tried.