Chapter 14
Simran tiptoes down the hallway. The house is silent except for the appliances sighing into the night and the nearly symphonic, unchanged pattern of Ashok peripa’s snores.
She waits for a crescendo before sliding the window up and then climbs outside into the enveloping dark, where the cicadas are giving her uncle a run for his money.
This tiny balcony is Simran’s favorite place in Iyer House because no one else seems to remember it exists.
When she lived here, it was the only place she could be alone.
She paces in a circle, waiting. She’d texted Leo only to have him call her, which she declined—his preference for talking on the phone is bewildering.
They did that three times till he finally gave up and texted her back.
The ladder is resting against the ledge and Leo’s head pops up as he climbs into the balcony.
He takes a deep breath when both feet are firmly on the ground before his mouth sways up into a smile.
She smiles back, slightly disappointed he’s wearing a shirt.
“Namaste, Simran.” He pronounces it the way a native speaker would—nuh-muhs-thay—rather than the Anglicized way that’s thrown around in yoga classes and wellness retreats.
“Namaste, Leo,” she replies, walking to him. “Kaise ho?”
“My Hindi skills don’t go that far yet.”
“How far do they go?”
“Namaste, Simran,” he repeats, and she laughs as he sits with his back against the wall. “But I’m going to learn!” He holds up his phone and shows her the language app he has access to through his work.
“You want to learn Hindi? That’s a lot of effort for two weeks with my family.”
He puts the phone down next to him. “Well, it wouldn’t be just for two weeks with your family.”
She understands what he’s saying: It’s for her. It’s for longer. There it is, that warmth coursing through her, welcome even in the hot summer night.
“Am I your girlfriend?” The question tumbles right out of her mouth.
She doesn’t really know what she’s doing.
Leo’s had way more serious relationships than her; she’s even met a couple of his girlfriends over the years.
Clearly, he’s doing all this because this thing between them is important, but she wants a name for that thing.
He cranes his neck up at her. “Yeah.”
Simran tilts her head. “That’s it? No discussion?”
“I’ve known you for thirteen years. I’ve had a crush on you for pretty much that whole time, since the day we met in my sister’s dorm room and you barely looked at me—which, fair.
I was wearing my Goofy Movie T-shirt and all that orthodontia made my mouth look like a broken-down roller coaster.
But I’ve been flirting with you for the last two years straight.
And in the past three days, I’ve climbed up a ladder twice for you.
So no, there’s not going to be a discussion.
Now please sit your ass down and tell me how to say ‘girlfriend’ in Hindi,” he says, leaning forward to take her hand and tug her towards him.
She sits down next to him and nudges his leg with her knee. “I liked the Goofy Movie T-shirt, actually.”
“You’ve always had good taste.”
“Want some feedback, though?” she asks.
His mouth twists. “Am I customer service or your boyfriend?” Even as he says “boyfriend,” the word feels so inadequate to Simran.
How can the same word that middle schoolers use be what they call this thrilling precipice they’re on, toes tipping over the edge?
He waves his hand. “All right, lay it on me.”
“You’re doing great,” she tells him, and he looks at her skeptically. “But you’d be doing it better if you were shirtless.”
Surprise, then delight, overtakes his face, eye crinkles out in droves.
He reaches behind to tug on the back of his T-shirt and pulls it off in one swift motion.
A laugh spills out of her, a clear bell in the quiet night, and she covers her mouth, remembering her family on the other side of the wall.
“There isn’t a word for ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ in Hindi,” she says.
“But if you really want to impress Veena perima, you should learn Tamil. Our family speaks both languages because she and my mother grew up in Mumbai.” She watches his dark eyebrows knit together. “Sorry. My family is a lot of work.”
Leo breaks out into that seesaw smile. “The fact that you are trilingual is an insane turn-on.” He looks something up on his phone and reads from the screen. “Tamil is considered the oldest classical language in the world still in use today. Cool!”
He says it so sincerely, unguarded and nerdy, that it makes her laugh.
He is very good at liking things with his whole heart.
Her eyes take in his side profile, the corded angles of his collarbone.
She wants to kiss him again, quite desperately.
She wants to do more than just kiss him, more than just quite desperately.
“I could help you,” she offers. “Learn Tamil.”
“That’d be great,” Leo says.
“Lesson one: ‘Hello’ is ‘vannakam.’”
“Vuh-nuh-kum,” he parrots, getting the hard “v” sound right but the emphasis slightly wrong.
She corrects him and he gets it on the second try.
As they move quickly through some basic vocabulary, something tugs insistently within Simran.
Leo learning the language of her heritage is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for her.
Tamil is the language of her parents and of her grandparents before them, the language of all the generations through time that led directly to her sitting here.
With each word she says and he repeats back to her, it’s like invisible threads are binding the different pieces of her into one.
She didn’t know being with someone could make her feel that.
“How do you say ‘goodbye’?” he asks.
Simran realizes something. “There’s no word for ‘goodbye’ in Tamil. Instead, you say ‘poitu varen.’”
“Poy-too vah-reh. What does it mean?” he asks.
“‘Poitu varen’ means ‘I’ll leave and I’ll come back.’ You say it because goodbye is too final.”
He tightens the arm he has around her. “I like that. There’s always hope for another meeting.”
She smiles, leaning into him, into his optimism. “It’s never the last time.”
Except, a voice in the back of her head tells her, that sometimes it is. Did she call out “Poitu varen!” to her mother and father when she left for school on the day they died? Did they say it to her, a promise unfulfilled? Sometimes there is no return. What’s most precious to you is lost forever.
As if he senses the shift in her mood, Leo curves his arms around her. “I’m fine,” she says, but she slings her legs across his lap and flattens her cheek to the warm skin of his bare chest.
“Okay. The hug’s for me,” he says into the top of her hair. After a long stretch of quiet, he asks, “Did your parents have a nickname for you?”
“My mother used to call me ‘chellum.’ It kind of translates to ‘darling.’”
She feels Leo nod. “Good to know.”
Simran lifts her head to look at him. “You’re not going to call me that, are you?” She couldn’t bear anyone else calling her that. Even saying it now makes her feel like she is disintegrating. It’s gone from this world, just like her mother.
“No, the opposite. Making a list in my head of things never to call you in bed,” Leo replies, and the laugh that bursts out of her dissipates the fog of melancholy in one shot.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to get so …” She shakes her head.
Leo pulls a strand of hair away from her face. “It’s okay. Sometimes, in very small balconies, very big feelings just come out.”
She smiles and moves closer to him, cupping his cheek, running her thumb over his soft, full lower lip.
He leans in to kiss her and she’s present once more, flesh and bone, instead of a body made of negative space, so full of wanting what she’ll never get back.
Leo’s fingers find that place she’s learning he likes, splayed over the side of her neck.
She presses into him and runs a hand from his shoulder all the way down to the hard muscle of his stomach, skin she’s been aching to touch.
Of all the ways their new togetherness needs to find a rhythm, this is not one of them.
Suddenly, Leo pulls away. “Do you hear that?” he whispers.
She’s immediately snapped out of her haze.
She hears the creaking of a floorboard inside the house.
They stare at each other, frozen. Then, in a flurry of action, Simran springs out of his lap and Leo scrambles up, grabbing his shirt and crossing the balcony in one long stride before vaulting himself over the low wall, his fear of Veena perima surpassing his fear of heights.
She goes to the ledge, watching as he scampers down the ladder.
“Simi?” Simran whips around at the sound of Veena perima’s voice.
Her aunt is leaning out of the hallway window and Simran instinctively crosses her arms, hoping she can blame the flush of her skin on the warm night.
“I went to go check on you and saw you weren’t in your bed.
” Simran stops herself from protesting—she’s thirty-one but she’s still getting bedtime check-ins. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” Simran replies, which isn’t entirely untrue.
Veena perima makes a noncommittal noise and ambles through the window onto the balcony. Simran glances at the backyard. No sign of Leo, thank goodness.
“I know. Sometimes, you’re so tired all you want is sleep. But it won’t come. Instead, your brain replays every bad and good thing that’s ever happened over the years.”
Simran is surprised by her aunt’s extremely accurate description of insomnia. She didn’t expect to have that in common. “You can’t sleep either, Perima?”
“Naan yepidi tunga muddiyum? I’m a mother,” her aunt says, walking to the other side of the balcony. “I worry about you girls too much. You’ll see one day.”
Simran rolls her eyes and sits on the ledge. “Geeta is literally getting married next week. Everyone is fine.”
“My foot, everyone is fine,” her aunt says, pacing across the small space. “There is so much I need to do.”
Silence fills the space between them until Simran realizes she’s unlikely to get another opportunity as perfect as this with her aunt. “Perima, I’ve been meaning to ask you: I need you to give me the key to the Chennai house.”
Her aunt turns sharply towards her. “The key to the Chennai house?”
“Yes. I want to go back,” she says. “I’d like to sort through my parents’ things. I didn’t even know the record player was Appa’s.”
She stands and takes a step closer, looking over her aunt, silently willing her to say something about her parents.
Anything. There are so many ways Veena perima could have helped her keep their memories alive.
Simran could have brought in their family traditions for Diwali, gone through her mother and father’s wedding album with her aunt, who is prominent in all the photos.
Months after her parents passed, she tried to talk about them.
Veena perima was her mother’s older sister—she’d even lived with them when Simran was a baby, before she’d married Ashok peripa and moved to the U.S.
She was the only one who knew them as well as Simran had.
But whenever Simran tried, her aunt would tell her that now was not the time or that she was very busy.
And so she shoved her feelings back inside her, where they churned like a raging sea.
Every day that her aunt went without mentioning them was another day Simran had to be the only one to carry their memories in this world, and every one of those days became another grievance.
Death is deeper than kin, longer than memory, stronger than forgiveness.
Veena perima looks up at her, that vein in her forehead prominent, as it always is when she is stressed about something. “Are you going to take the record player with you? Your Peripa really enjoys them.”
Simran steps back, deflated. The pattern stays in place: her aunt’s silence, and Simran’s resentment. But though Simran would like the records and the player, the fact that Ashok peripa loves them softens her. At least there’s some remembrance of them in this house. “No. Peripa can keep them.”
“Thank you,” she says. Simran blinks, surprised.
She’s not sure she’s ever heard Veena perima thank anyone.
Her aunt has walked to the other end of the balcony and is looking out into the backyard.
“I always thought we’d get you married at that house,” she says, almost to herself.
It comes out soft as a secret, so unlike her usual bristling declarations.
Simran watches as she resumes pacing, nudging at the dirt gathered in the corners of the balcony with her slipper-covered toes.
When Veena perima turns back to her, her mouth is pursed and her words are still in that hushed tone.
“Simi, I need to talk to you about something—”
Simran fakes a huge yawn, cutting her off.
This contemplative woman with worry etched across her face and words she’s holding in—Simran doesn’t know her.
She doesn’t know how to act around her and she doesn’t want to hear whatever it is she wants to talk about—probably getting Simran married, again.
“Perima, I’m feeling sleepy now. Why don’t we talk about this later?
I’ll take the key from you then.” Simran walks to the window and turns to say good night.
Her aunt is still staring at her, brow furrowed, lips almost quivering, an expression Simran can’t read.
Then her chin goes up. Something has just happened, though Simran is not sure what.
But when Veena perima finally speaks, she sounds like her brisk and bossy self again.
“Yes. We’ll talk after the wedding. Too much going on until then. ”
As Simran climbs through the window back into the house, she hears her aunt say, “Oh! The ladder is still here. That Leo boy must have forgotten to put it away. I’ll make him take it down and put it in the garage tomorrow.”
The hope of any future balcony dates with Leo has just been snuffed out.