Chapter Twenty
Park Slope is gorgeous. The vibe is somewhere between Chicago’s Wicker Park and Gold Coast neighborhoods, but at a somewhat grander yet more intimate scale. We ride past a huge park and through narrow streets lined with brownstones that are at once grand and cozy.
I’m a lot more comfortable on the bike this time. My hands on Krish’s shoulders aren’t cutting off his circulation. When we were trying to make it to Anderson’s in time, I was filled with fear—of being on a motorcycle for the first time, of not knowing if there was any way on earth we could actually find the ring’s owner, of being physically so close to a stranger.
Or maybe I wasn’t afraid of that last one. I hadn’t given a thought to the fact that I had grabbed onto a strange man for dear life. But there’s that gentlemanly thing Krish has going on. Even now his body language is so reserved, so nonthreatening, so entirely unaffected by our nearness in this deeply respectful way, that my natural distaste at the nearness of men feels eased, maybe even erased.
“Thank you,” I say as we turn into a lane lined with wide-canopied trees.
“For?” Krish says, and we pull to a stop in front of the quirkiest brownstone on the block. For the most part it’s like all the other attached town houses surrounding it, but the steps leading up to the front stoop are painted in all the colors of the rainbow.
Krish waits for me to get off the bike, then puts it on its stand and hops off himself. When he turns to me, there’s a storm in his eyes that takes me by surprise. We’ve obviously not arrived here in the same state of mind. Did I do something?
“What were you thanking me for?” he asks with some force, spinning away from the house, and I take a step back.
He immediately softens. “Mira?” He wants something from me, and I don’t know what it is.
I step closer because I can feel pain rolling from him in waves. “Just for everything. For ... for being so kind.”
He laughs. “I just snapped at you for no reason. Do you always have such low standards?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly that. You’re impressed with me when I show the bare minimum courteousness and decency.”
“You don’t, though. You show above-average courteousness and decency. Even if you’re a bit ... How do I put this? Moody?”
“Moody?” His eyebrows tend to furrow when he’s amused.
“As moody as a menopausal woman and as broody as a menopausal man.”
“Okay then. Mira is a poet.”
“She was. Did you not know that? Rumi and I are both named after spiritual poets.” I laugh because our parents might be the two least poetic or spiritual people in the world. We were named by my father’s uncle, the man who brought them to America. Baba asked him to name us as a sign of his subservience. Although he likes to call it respect.
“My mom would love your names. She lived for poetry. Read it to me every night growing up. Everything from Robert Frost to Mary Oliver to Kahlil Gibran and Rumi.”
It’s the first time he’s mentioned his family. He looks even more surprised about it than I am.
“Your mom must’ve gone to one of those fancy private schools in India. Oh, or are you third generation?” I don’t think I know many Indian people in my generation whose parents were born here. But I know they exist. I went to a museum exhibit once that traced the history of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent to the United States as far back as the 1800s.
Maybe he’s only half-Indian, since he did say his ancestors came here on the Mayflower . His skin is a few shades lighter than mine, but almost everyone’s is. That might explain some of his awkwardness around the culture.
“I was adopted.” He says it quickly, like he’s not used to saying the words. “My parents are white. Good old British-from-the-motherland white.”
I react in the worst way possible. I go speechless. Not because there’s anything at all the matter with being adopted, but because I’ve been so horribly clueless, so unkind. I’ve made so many assumptions. Even judgments.
Shame warms my cheeks as my mind runs through all possible responses and settles on “That explains so much.” The second-most obvious thing about me, after the fact that I never say anything negative about my family in public, is that I never say what pops in my head unless I’ve overthought it. Something is very wrong with me.
He laughs. A big, incredulous laugh that’s filled with relief. “Have you been judging me this entire time?” The fading sun is reflecting off his glasses, but behind the lenses his eyes are crinkled with his laughter.
“Maybe it started when you mentioned the Mayflower . No, wait, maybe it was when you didn’t know what a jalebi was.”
“That never happened.”
“It’s a metaphor for how you were in Jackson Heights. Like an alien.”
“An Englishman in New York?” he says just as the Sting song pops in my head.
“You listen to Sting?”
“My parents were all about British bands.”
“Were?” I ask, knowing full well it’s terribly rude and nosy.
“How did Mira from Naperville start listening to Sting? Is it a Brown Town thing?” Naturally he remembers everything I’ve ever said.
“Rumi.” My twin has always existed in a time and place different from the one we lived in.
He raises his chin in an ah . Neither one of us acknowledges that he’s done talking about his parents. I turn to the town house looming behind us.
“You think it’s hers?”
“The ring?”
I nod.
He shrugs.
We stand there looking at the rainbow-colored steps leading up to the buttercup yellow door with a lion head knocker.
“It would all be an awful waste of coincidences if it weren’t, wouldn’t it?” he says, and I smile.
“Shall we?” I ask.
Instead of giving me his arm, as I’m picturing in my head, he stays rooted to the spot. “Maybe we should wait for her to call us.”
“Really?” Now he has cold feet?
“No. Let’s do it,” he says, and we take the steps up.
“Knocker or bell?” I say.
“Decisions, decisions,” he says, and I knock and he rings.