Chapter 5 #2
“My friends tracked it down on eBay,” she says, heart rising at her cousin’s animated expression.
She briefly smiles at the memory of Leo’s and Liv’s huge grins as they handed her the cylindrical tube the day before her actual birthday to circumvent her wish-me-only-once mandate.
Simran hurries to build on this common ground.
“Remember when we almost got to see Shah Rukh in New York, but then your mom caught us sneaking out and we got grounded instead? Can’t believe she kept us from meeting him.
” That night, stewing in their room instead of meeting their favorite actor, Simran and Kavitha had made a pact: Before they were thirty—an age that seemed ludicrously far away at the time—they would move to New York City together and go wherever they wanted and never have a curfew.
Kavitha’s mouth flattens and Simran senses she has said the wrong thing.
She clears her throat. “We should watch DDLJ later, once the party is done.”
Kavitha pulls at the neck of her gray-and-pink ghagra and places two vadas onto a guest’s plate. “No thanks.”
She can tell Kavitha doesn’t enjoy being this cold from the way the edges of her mouth droop down—or at least she hopes that’s true. “Ouch.”
“Did you expect that you would come back here, and it would be like the old days again?” Kavitha asks. “It won’t.”
Simran’s first instinct is to walk away from the conversation.
She doesn’t like pleading. But she fights the impulse.
She wants phone calls and visits and for them to know the inner workings of each other’s lives.
She wants Kavi’s opinions on all the movies that have come out since they stopped talking and all the ones that will come out from now on.
She wants her to meet Leo and Liv, for them to love her the way Simran does.
“What can I do to make you not hate me anymore, Kavi?” Simran asks quietly.
“I don’t hate you.”
“You’re acting like it.”
“No, I’m acting like you have for the last seven years.
I’m going about my life as if you don’t exist. How does it feel?
” With that, Kavitha hands her the tongs and walks away.
The words sting. Kavi’s hurt, and Simran wishes she were angry instead.
Anger has rungs you can hold on to, but hurt is liquid, impossible to grasp as it seeps into every space.
Simran pushes away the feeling that she deserves her cousin’s anger as she crunches down furiously on a vada and checks her phone. Three missed calls from Leo since she’d texted him earlier about being in Addison for the next two weeks. As if on cue, her phone buzzes in her hand:
Leo Bridgers [12:37 p.m.]: Of course we can raincheck on our date. Have a great time at the wedding! I bet everyone’s so excited you’re back.
Leo Bridgers [12:38 p.m.]: Unless you have some downtime today? Maybe a minidate? I could stop by on my way to Newark since I don’t leave till the evening.
Oh god. No matter how much she already misses Leo, the last thing she needs is having him here, around her family, around her around her family. There’s no way this thing between them would survive even five minutes at Iyer House.
Simran Gopal [12:40 p.m.]: Tempting but a minidate is like funsize candy at Halloween. Fullsize dating is so much better, don’t you think? Besides, it’s my cousin’s engagement ceremony so I literally won’t have a minute to myself all day.
Leo Bridgers [12:41 p.m.]: Bummer. I’m just hanging out till my flight, if anything changes.
He was so comforting and understanding the other night, but she can’t keep crying in his arms. It isn’t his burden; it’s hers.
That terrible day cleaved her life into before and after, into there and here, into with and without.
But if she can go back to her house in Chennai, that grief might not feel so acute, so complicated anymore.
Maybe, she fantasizes, he could even come with her.
“Mere saath ao.” Appearing from nowhere like a pocket-size Houdini, her aunt tugs her arm and pulls them towards the house.
“I need to talk to you about an important thing in private.” Simran trails her aunt through the kitchen and into the living room, and then Veena perima stops so suddenly that Simran walks into her.
Her aunt is staring daggers at three men clustered around a phone, watching, from the sounds of it, a soccer game. “Why are they all standing here, together, instead of where I told them?” her aunt mutters to herself. “Eh, you boys! Come here!” she calls to them, as if they were delinquents.
The trio of men could ostensibly be the same man: early to midthirties, not much taller than Simran, one bearded, the other goateed, and the last with—Simran suppresses a shudder—a soul patch.
They look up, eyes wide in alarm. Almost in unison, they spring into action, lining up in front of her aunt, and Simran now understands that she has been set up—for a setup.
“Perima …” she says, her tone weary and warning. How could her aunt have possibly arranged this in the three hours that Simran has been back?
“I know, I know,” Veena perima says, holding her hand up to placate Simran.
“You don’t want an arranged match, nah? What to do, they were supposed to be in the house and you were supposed to meet them naturally.
But as usual: If a woman has planned it, a man will mess it up.
” She barks at them now: “Chalo, introduce yourselves.”
“Hi, I’m Rahul Chinappa,” the guy on the left says, holding out a hand. Veena perima gives it such a withering stare that Simran is surprised the limb doesn’t shrivel. He drops it.
Simran turns back to her aunt. “This is still a setup.”
“What do you expect, Simi?” her aunt asks.
“You’re thirty-one, it’s time to settle down now.
Stop this roaming abroad and get married.
The older you get, the more set in your ways you are.
If you don’t get married, how are you going to have children before it’s too late?
” She flicks a finger to the left of her. “You, next.”
The second guy is smart enough to keep his hands in his pockets. “Hi, I’m Pramod Prasanna.”
Simran breathes in deeply, nostrils flaring, to keep her temper at bay but god—she and her aunt are right back in it. She squares her shoulders. “I don’t have a problem with marriage! I have a problem with you setting me up.”
The last guy leans forward. “I’m Mi—”
“What, you think I would choose someone bad for you? Don’t you think that I would only let you marry someone from a good family who shares our values?” Veena perima tells Simran. Bachelor number three shrinks back. “Compatibility is the most important thing, of course!”
It is baffling that her aunt, who had lived in America for well over a decade by the time Simran moved here, holds on to more conservative ideas than Simran’s parents did.
They had been open in how they raised her, treating her like she had agency and valuing her opinions.
All her friends loved to hang out at her house because her parents never eavesdropped on their conversations and let them stay as long as they wanted.
Her aunt had always been stern, but the kind of control she exerted over Simran by checking up on her constantly or keeping strict curfews or grounding her was smothering—and enraging.
Not even her own parents had questioned her so much; how dare her aunt?
Flinging an arm towards the men, Simran says, “You don’t know that we’re compatible!”
“Of course you are!” Her aunt scoffs. “They are all from our community with decent jobs—if I don’t know their parents, I know someone who does. That’s what I’m here for, Simi!”
“I mean our personalities, Perima,” Simran says. All three of the men’s heads are going back and forth, like they’re watching a tennis match. “You don’t know if they’ll even like me.”
“Why shouldn’t they?” Her aunt’s tone is fierce and almost outraged, as if it were an insult to even consider someone not liking her niece. “You’re well educated and you’re much better looking than any of them. They would be blessed to get a bride like you, even if you are over thirty.”
Simran groans, covering the side of her face with her hand as she turns away from the men her aunt has just slighted, alongside slighting her. “Perima, we’ve been over this. I’m not going to marry someone just because you tell me to. Marriage is a choice you make with a person you love—”
“So you could choose to fall in love with any of these three, nah?” At Simran’s exasperated look, her aunt holds up both hands, palms out, head waggling from side to side, as if she were conceding, before looking at the men.
“Okay, okay. What are you waiting for? She doesn’t want any of you. You can leave.”
They dutifully file out of the living room.
Simran crosses her arms and looks down at her aunt, who nods.
“I know, I know. I wasn’t too excited about them either.
You don’t know, it’s been so hard to find a boy worthy of my girls.
But I’m sure there’s a nice Tamil boy with a good job who lives close by somewhere out there.
” Veena perima pauses and gives Simran a sweet smile, which puts all her senses on high alert.
“Or maybe you’ll find someone at the kalyaanam,” she says almost musically.
“Chalo chodo, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. ”
This could be a great moment for Simran to be the person she’s grown into over the last seven years and talk to her aunt honestly and calmly.
To tell her that one of the reasons she left was because her aunt was setting up Kavitha to be married to someone who was all wrong for her—as proven by their engagement breaking a few months later—and that Simran didn’t want the same.
But their confrontations were always so explosive that after a while, Simran learned to strategically pick only the most important battles.
For everything else, it was easier to skirt around Veena perima’s orders and enforcements.
Like when they were in high school and Simran made up a friend who was an honor-roll student whose house they’d pretend they were studying at while actually going to the mall on the other side of town.
It slips off her tongue easily when she says, “Okay. I just need to go to the bathroom first.”
“Okay. I’ll make us some chai and meet you in the study.”
Simran releases a giant breath after her aunt walks back to the kitchen.
Through the years, this place has housed the most painful versions of herself: the heartbroken, newly orphaned child; the resentful, displaced teen; the college graduate who fled to Toronto with grief still in her veins.
She’s afraid that coming here again is forcing her back into being those Simrans, when all she wants is to be able to move forward.
Pulling out her phone, she texts Leo, wanting him to make her laugh, the way he always seems to know when she needs to the most.
Simran Gopal [1:12 p.m.]: This place is a madhouse. I wish you were here.
“Simran!” Her aunt’s voice pierces its way up through the house and she recoils, fumbling her phone and pressing randomly over the screen before she catches it safely and places it on the table.
Then she dashes upstairs, ducking down the long hallway and slipping out the window to the tiny, mostly forgotten side balcony to hide.
She’s not proud of ghosting her aunt, but she’s not ready to bring up the key yet.
First, she’s got to get Kavitha to speak to her.