Chapter 12
Ten days until the wedding
After spending most of the afternoon getting Leo the outfits he’ll need to wear to the wedding, he and Rishi head over to Iyer House.
“Listen, it’s great you’re helping around our house,” Rishi says as they cross through the backyard gate into the Iyers’.
“But if they’re in the same room, you need to show allegiance to Veena aunty over my mom. ”
Leo frowns. “Do they not like each other?”
“No, they do,” Rishi says. “But that doesn’t negate the competition. No one will ever acknowledge it but it’s always on. Whose house is biggest? Who has the best job? Whose kid went to the best college? It’s all one big pissing contest.” He grimaces. “Metaphorically.”
“Even with the wedding?” Leo asks.
“Especially with the wedding. Geeta’s been the entire community’s example of a perfect kid since elementary school. I think that’s why my parents are extra neurotic these days. They can’t win the whose-kid-is-better contest, so they want to win the wedding. You’ll see.”
“That’s not ominous,” Leo mutters as they step in through the back door of Iyer House.
The living room is packed with a seemingly infinite number of boxes and packages, along with garment bags and crates of water bottles stacked on top of each other.
On the far side of the living room, sitting in the bay window bench, Simran is putting together party favors, placing tea light holders in the shape of an elephant into a small bag, and cinching it.
Their eyes meet, and it feels like a tether urging him towards her.
“Yennadi paninduruke? Why is that book on the floor?” Veena aunty’s screeching brings him out of his haze as Kavitha scrambles to place the book on the coffee table.
Out of the corner of his mouth, Rishi explains, “If something is sacred, you can’t put it on the ground. And watch your feet.”
“My feet?” Leo says, curling his toes inwards.
Rishi chuckles. “Just don’t kick or step on sacred things, even accidentally. Books, money, other people. And whatever you do, don’t—”
Someone calls Rishi over to them.
“Don’t what? Whatever I do, don’t what?” Leo whispers frantically but Rishi’s already walked away.
“Aiyo!” Veena aunty exclaims. At first, Leo startles, but then he realizes it’s not directed to him—this time.
“After all I did to arrange it with the wedding planner, these lights are not working. I invited everybody to come and see us turn them on. Tsch, how will we mark that these are now two wedding houses if we can’t turn the lights on?
Ashok! Zara dekh lo!” She holds out the remote to the other corner of the living room where Ashok uncle is seated in a brown leather wingback, so silent that Leo hadn’t even noticed him.
He stands with creaks from both him and the chair and takes the remote from his wife.
He presses the button a couple of times and then frowns.
“Must not be connected properly,” he says, and hands it back to Veena aunty before retreating to his chair.
Veena aunty smacks a hand to her forehead. “Now who is going to climb onto our roof to make sure everything is plugged in correctly?” Just thinking of being on a roof makes the soles of Leo’s feet tingle with vertigo.
“Leo can do it!” Rishi chimes in.
He looks at Rishi, who gives him a surreptitious thumbs-up.
His mouth has gone dry. Of all the years Leo played hockey, he’s never been hit as hard as the terror that slams into him now.
He sees his fear reflected back in Simran’s expression.
But he can’t say no, not now, not when he has to make up for the way he and Veena aunty first met.
Plastering on a smile and curling his hands into fists to stop them from trembling, he says, voice a little too loud, “Sure!”
“This is good! We can get you back to neutral with Veena aunty,” Rishi tells him as they go to the garage to get the ladder.
“What the hell, man! I’m scared of heights!” he hisses, and Rishi’s face drains of color.
“Shit. Okay. Why don’t I climb up and fix the connection and we’ll say you did it when we go back inside—”
But Rishi’s solution is thwarted when everyone from the living room empties out into the backyard, and more people from around the neighborhood join.
Simran is biting her nail and she must have told Kavitha because her cousin is swaying with nervous energy.
He quickly stares at the grass, needing to focus on something steady.
“I’ll hold the ladder at the bottom,” Rishi says, voice falling away at the edges. “Sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” Leo has noticed that he has a voice of reason that pops up whenever he’s about to do something risky.
It’s soothing, a bit like his mother during one of her sessions, and it will advise him to state calmly why he’s uncomfortable and walk away from the situation.
He ignores it now because there’s another, more aggressive voice that’s telling him he can’t lose more points with Veena aunty.
Gingerly, he makes his way higher and higher.
Slightly hysterically, he thinks of that Eminem song: His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy.
If he can just take it one step at a time, nice and slow—
“Arrey, hurry up! If we turn them on after sunset, it will be a bad omen!” Veena aunty shouts.
He can do this. For Veena aunty. For Simran.
His shallow, uneven breaths are roaring in his ears as he climbs higher.
Once he reaches the top, he almost stumbles onto the sloped roof.
If the gutter doesn’t support his weight, he’ll plummet to the ground—no, no, don’t think about that now.
He shuffles sideways over to the large power strip and all he has to do is press two of the plugs in fully.
Easy. Except that means he will have to lift his hands from where they cling to the shingles.
Leo whispers a prayer to the universe at large because there’s no particular god he believes in and lifts one hand.
It takes a slam of pressure for him to get the first plug into the socket and the force of the motion nearly makes him lose his balance.
The house blinks into glorious life to the right of him, strings of lights hanging from the roof all the way down, like a shimmering veil.
For a few moments, he forgets where he is and admires how much it changes the home into a place of celebration and joy.
Muttering “Let there be light” under his breath, he plugs the second connection in and it illuminates the house below him.
He’s done it, somehow. He allows himself a moment of congratulations before descending for his moment of glory with both feet firmly on the ground. But when he gets down, the crowd has moved next door and only Rishi, Kavitha, and Sim remain, looking grim.
“What?” he asks, twisting back to look at the houses. His hands are still shaking.
“You lit up the Chopras’ house first,” Kavitha says, sounding apologetic.
They walk over to the Chopras’ backyard, where everyone is oohing and aahing.
Manjula aunty loudly proclaims how wonderful he is, excitedly introducing him to everyone as her houseguest and “a very nice boy,” which he quickly realizes is high praise.
Standing just outside the circle of friends who tell Rishi’s mom how stunning her home looks, Veena aunty gives him a stony glance that makes him wish he’d stayed up on the roof.
With a jerk, she turns away and leaves, heading back into Iyer House.
“Sorry,” Simran mouths before heading out when Veena aunty calls for her, Kavitha, and Ashok uncle to follow as Rishi introduces him to a few more people around the backyard, all part of the inner circle of The Community.
Later that night, Leo tosses and turns before giving up.
He swings around, places his feet on the ground, and braces his right hand against his left shoulder, wincing as he rotates the joint.
It’s not the noisy crack that sounded when he got his injury, the one he hears in his nightmares sometimes, but it still lets out a dull click with each roll.
He knows that if he can’t win over Veena aunty, then none of the rest of it matters. And no matter what Simran says, he does think he can win Veena aunty over. Though he’s at a considerable disadvantage by not being able to lead with the most salient point: how much he cares about her niece.
He pulls out his phone and opens the group chat where he, his sister, and his mother have been texting in place of their usual Sunday night dinners.
Leo [11:23 p.m.]: How’s Switzerland?
Olivia [11:26 p.m.]: Cheesy. Chocolatey. Perfect.
Olivia [11:27 p.m.]: Tell Simran to stop answering my 7-minute long voice notes with two-line texts, and just call me back.
Leo [11:28 p.m.]: Tell her yourself.
Olivia [11:29 p.m.]: What do you think the voice notes are about?
Dr. Mom [11:30 p.m.]: Leo, did you reply to your dad’s email about the baseball game?
Leo swipes over to his email and sure enough, his father has asked if he wants to go to a baseball game in two weeks, the most common way they spend time together.
Baseball in the summer, basketball in the fall and spring.
Never hockey. They haven’t been to a hockey game, or even watched one together, since Leo’s injury in his senior year of high school.
It only adds another layer of awkwardness that his father always cc’s his mother, even years after their divorce, as well as Liv, who is technically his stepdaughter.
One time, he even invited Félix, his mother’s husband, which was so awkward.
Luckily, Félix turned it down politely and his mother therapized his father as trying to prove how okay he is with everyone.
Which, if he ever spent time with his son outside of sports stadiums, he would realize he does not need to do.
Leo rolls his eyes and shoots off a quick reply to his dad confirming he can make it and that his mother and Liv will not be joining.
And even with all of that, Leo is, somehow, deeply knotted into another family’s drama. His shoulder clicks again.