Chapter Thirty
Last night Krish and I sat on that rock until we were soaked to the bone and the sun was completely swallowed by the ocean. Then Krish brought me back to the hotel. We barely said a word. I felt like my skin had been peeled back from my body, leaving me raw and bleeding, exposed.
“I’ll wait for you to text me,” he said as we separated in the elevator.
When I got back to the suite, the moms were fast asleep. I pulled on my pajamas and fell into bed, fervently grateful for that.
This morning I woke up with a fever.
While Romona is on the phone with her nephew, arranging for a doctor, Aie lectures me about toughening up. “We’re two women in our fifties, and we’ve handled the travel without getting sick. You can’t let your in-laws think you’re so weak.”
I don’t react. I feel like I’ve been beaten. Like something inside me has been scooped out and burned.
The doctor comes to see me and diagnoses exhaustion and asks me to stay in bed for the rest of the day. I tell the moms to carry on without me and get their own outfits taken care of. We were supposed to do Druv’s clothes today and theirs tomorrow. We can just switch that out, since they don’t need me to make their selections. Thankfully they agree to leave me.
The day passes in a haze. I don’t look at my phone. I feel nothing but emptiness. I just lie there. Not awake and not asleep, my mind more feelings than thoughts.
At the end of the day—which passes in a flash—the two moms come home and show me all the saris they’ve bought for themselves and the sherwanis and kurtas for the dads. I smile and nod and hope those reactions reach them through the thick fog of my nothingness.
We’re invited to dinner to one of my father’s cousin’s homes, but I’m still running a fever. Aie pushes some acetaminophen into my mouth and tells me to snap out of it. But Romona insists that I need more rest and declares that I’m staying back in the hotel.
“What’s wrong with you?” Aie keeps asking when Romona is out of earshot, her whispers laced with anger, and not worry.
I shamelessly wait for Romona to be around so I can use her as a shield and not answer. And there’s nothing Aie can do to make me. When Romona is in the shower, Aie begs me to promise that I will pull myself up and get back to normal by tomorrow.
My phone has been lying on the nightstand all day. I haven’t been able to touch it. I imagine both Druv’s and Krish’s eyes glaring out at me from it, and I don’t have what it takes to deal with that.
Romona hands me her phone. “It’s Druv. He’s been trying to get through on your phone. He’s worried.”
All my life I’ve lived with a feeling of being pushed into a corner. Now I feel like someone is hammering me into it. I know it isn’t fair. I know that’s not what Romona is doing. I know that’s not what Druv is doing, but all I wanted was one day.
I take the phone.
“Mira? Sweetheart?”
“Hi.”
“I’m taking the next flight out.”
“Druv, please. It’s nothing serious. I probably picked up something on the plane. The doctor thinks it’s exhaustion. Not even an infection.”
“Then why do you have a fever?”
“It happens to me sometimes.” When I’m sad. “When I’m overwhelmed.”
“Mira?” He sounds so very scared. “Is something wrong? Did I do something?”
“No.” I should laugh to emphasize that, but I can’t make the sound.
“I’m telling Ma to select my clothes herself. You’re not leaving that hotel room until you’re good and ready. It doesn’t matter what I wear. I don’t know why Ma insisted on going to India for the shopping. There’s plenty of stuff right here in Chicago.”
I want to sob, but Aie and Romona are both listening while pretending to get dressed. I should get out of bed and shut the door. Maybe tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow.
“Please don’t be so nice, Druv,” I say, and the moms exchange gleeful glances. “I’m looking forward to picking your clothes out.”
He makes a joke about fluorescent-yellow clothes. I respond appropriately, but in the end, when he hangs up, I feel like I’ve sprinted a long-distance race. The moms order food for me. Dal and rice, my favorite. They want to stay to make sure I eat. I assure them that it’s wholly unnecessary, that I will eat. That I’m famished (the thought of food feels impossible). Finally the fear of Mumbai traffic gets them out of the door and on their way.
The relief of being left alone is immeasurable. I know I must get up. I must shower. I must not let whatever is happening inside me win. I’ve done this before. I’ve beaten this kind of sadness.
I find my phone. It’s bursting with notifications. I can’t handle those right now. I just need to hear one voice.
“Miru?” Rumi answers on the first ring. “What’s wrong, honey?”
I don’t know how he knows something is wrong, but he does.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” I say.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “Just get out of bed and go to the balcony. Can you do that?”
“I will.” Soon.
“You don’t have to get married to him if it doesn’t feel right,” he says.
“That’s not it. He’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him, if anything.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. Not just him. Anyone. Anyone would be lucky to have you love them. Ask me how I know.”
I laugh. “Saket has been so good for you.”
“You sound a hundred years old. Which makes me feel a hundred years old.”
“I feel two years old. Like I can’t do anything.”
“Your body is rejecting your emotional hypercompetence.”
“Did you just make up that word?”
“Maybe. Is it Vasu?”
“I think I met someone who knows who she is. There was just so much hatred in this person when he talked about her. He didn’t even know her. Just the association of her name. I think they hurt her. How could they?”
“People are dicks, Miru. Society has given them permission to be dicks as long as their evil is focused on those who can’t protect themselves.”
“I don’t think I can deal with it anymore. I don’t think I have it in me to learn how to live in this world.”
He’s silent for a moment. It sounds like agreement. Then he speaks. “Do you know how many people would have put that ring on their own finger and gone about their lives? Or thrown it away? You found this woman. That’s something no one else would have tried to do, let alone actually done. I don’t think you have any idea what you have in you.”
Before I can respond to that, there’s a knock on the door. “Gotta go,” I say. “That’s room service.”
“I’ll stay on the phone until you get it.”
“I’m not going to stay in bed and wait for them to go away, Rumi,” I say when I was intending to do just that. “I’m getting up, I promise. Thank you.”
“Good girl. You got this.” He lets me go.
I force myself out of bed and open the door.
It is room service, but standing behind the waiter is Krish.
I can’t deal with him right now. I turn around and go back to bed.
“Just leave the food by the door. Thank you,” I call to the waiter. “I’ll sign the check later.”
“Can I come in?” Krish says from outside the door.
“Please don’t.”
“Do you mean that?” He sounds so far away. He’s still outside the door.
“No,” I say. “But you don’t have to do this.”
I close my eyes and hear the door close.
“I’m inside,” Krish says. He’s still by the door. “I can leave. But I’d really like to see you for a minute.”
Something in the region of my heart wobbles. “There’s nothing to see.”
“Okay.” He pushes the trolley with the food into the bedroom.
The way he looks at me hasn’t changed after what I told him yesterday, and my breathing eases. It’s like the ugliness I vomited all over him has been washed clean. He’s as fresh as he always was.
“I can’t eat.”
He takes the dome off the dish. “Okay. Can you drink?” He holds a spoon of dal out.
It’s my first actual laugh of the day. “Gosh. Are you seriously even Indian?”
“What? One drinks soup.”
“It’s not soup. It’s dal, and you eat it with the rice.”
“Interesting,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s teasing me or if I really just taught him how dal-rice is eaten. He mixes them together and holds the spoon out to me.
I take it from him, but I can’t make it move to my mouth.
“It’s the first bite. That’s the hardest one. The first step. That’s the hardest one.”
“You’ve done this before.”
He nods. “I told you my mom struggled with episodes of sadness when I was young. It was depression. Dad always knew what to do.”
“I don’t think we’re allowed to say that word in my house.”
“Depression?”
“Shhh.” I press a finger to my lips. Then I put a spoon of dal-rice in my mouth and chew and swallow.
Krish takes the spoon, fills it again, and hands it back to me. It takes a few spoons, but finally my body registers that I’m hungry, and I take the bowl from him and start eating. “Have you eaten?”
“Yes. The buffet at the hotel is something else. I think I might never leave. They have an entire table filled with hot sauces.”
It’s strange to be reminded that there’s a world outside what I’m feeling. I try to smile but can’t manage it.
I get through half the bowl and try to put it back.
“There’s not much left. Let’s finish it.” He nudges the bowl back toward me.
I start eating again. “What are we going to do next?”
“Maybe a shower. Those really help. A walk on the beach before the moms get back?”
“Funny. About Vasu.”
He studies me, gauging what I can handle.
“I want to know,” I say with the first spark of life I’ve felt since we got off that rock.
“Let’s go to the balcony.” He holds out his arm. “I need some fresh air. I’ll fill you in there.”
I go, mostly because I don’t have the energy to fight him.
We sit down on the wicker swing that faces the ocean. Another sunset hangs over the horizon.
“I checked the archives at the Asiatic Society Library for wedding announcements,” Krish says. “And Namdeo was definitely married to her in March of 1984.”
For the first time today my brain kicks into gear, and I sit up. “I knew it.”
“I think I might have tracked her brother down. I’m going to Yevla tomorrow. To see what I can find.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did.” He glances at my phone.
Then I remember Vishal’s menacing face. “Could it be dangerous, do you think?”
He shrugs. “I’ll be careful.”
“I’m going with you.”
“Let’s get better first.”
I already feel better, but the idea of leaving the hotel room still feels daunting. A trip out of town feels impossible.
“Plus that would mean telling your moms.”
That’s totally out of the question.
“Let me do this by myself. I’ll keep you posted the entire time. Hourly updates.”
“How are you going to talk to people?”
“I’ve been using a translation app on my phone. But most people understand English, if I tweak my accent.”
“Fine.” There’s no choice anyway.
“Focus on getting better,” he says. “I have a good feeling about this. I think we’re going to find her. I just know it.” He smiles, and his impression of me is so spot on, I smile too.
“Thank you.”
We sit there, staring at the ocean. When I can finally get up, he pushes me into the shower. When I come back out, feeling almost human again, he’s brought me ice cream from some place the internet insists has the best mango ice cream in the world.
The internet is not wrong. “I want this to be the last thing I eat before I die,” I say as I eat the entire bowl of hapus mangoes and cream and crawl into bed.
It’s the first time in my life that I remember someone tucking me in.