Chapter 18 #2
“It was. We were a team in shenanigans, and we were a team against all the other kids, even against our parents too when they were unfair or too strict.”
“Mostly your mom,” Simran says.
“Mostly. But sometimes yours. They were both raised by our patti, after all,” Kavitha replies and then pauses. “I used to wish you’d come to New Jersey and live with us. And then …” Simran’s throat constricts. “Then it happened and I was so upset at myself for ever wishing that.”
But all Simran can think of is how her cousin held her together when she was in pieces.
Kavitha ushering a grief-torn Simran around her new school.
Kavitha introducing her to American fast food.
Kavitha agreeing to watch DDLJ for the eighteenth night in a row, simply because it was the only thing that brought Simran a modicum of comfort.
She sits forward. “You didn’t mean it like that.
You’re the reason I survived moving here. ”
“It was okay when you were still living here and Amma was pushing us around. It was still the two of us, dreaming of one day living somewhere else together, away from her rules.”
Simran swallows a lump in her throat. Kavitha hasn’t forgotten their pact. “I remember.”
Kavitha looks directly at her. “And then you left.”
“I asked you to come with me!” Simran bursts out. Someone at a table a few feet away adjusts their chair with a metallic scrape, reminding her that they’re in public.
“How could I have come with you? You ran away!” Kavitha says. She slouches back in her chair, deflated.
The sun has come out in full force and beads of sweat are gathering in the middle of Simran’s back. “Kavitha, your mom kept talking about getting me married off; I didn’t want that. I barely understood how you were okay with it.”
“I asked her to do it,” Kavitha says, and Simran stills. “What?”
“I asked her to set me up with someone. I mean, she was already always introducing me to guys but I told her I would get engaged if we found someone I liked. I chose Ajay—well, after my mother found him.”
Simran’s jaw is on the ground. “Why would you do that?”
Kavitha laughs, but it’s brittle. “You see that as, like, the ultimate insult, don’t you?
That my mother would dare make that choice for you.
That every time she tries, she’s trying to, what, pin your wings?
That’s not how it felt for me.” She shrugs.
“I didn’t know what my life was going to look like.
She had strong ideas and I didn’t hate them. ”
“Of course you didn’t know what your life was going to look like!” Simran says. “You were twenty-two.”
“I was lonely,” Kavitha replies. Simran’s mouth snaps shut.
“My younger sister was off being brilliant and building her life with Rishi. My older sister was less than half an hour away but never came home and never had time for me. I didn’t—” She cuts herself off.
“I didn’t want to live in Iyer House for the rest of my life. Guess that kind of happened anyway.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Simran asks. The condensation from her glass of too-acidic house white wine drips through the holes in the metal table onto Simran’s leg. “Back then? We could have figured it out together.”
“You were long gone,” Kavitha says. “If you think moving to Toronto was the first time you ran away, then you’re lying to yourself. You’ve been running from us since the minute you moved here.”
“Never from you,” Simran says.
Kavitha shakes her head. “I know you don’t believe me but my mother was really upset when you left.
And then my dad had the heart attack. I stayed because they needed me, and maybe after calling off the whole Ajay thing, I needed them too.
Eventually, I stopped thinking about moving out.
” She looks off into the distance, away from Simran.
“After a while, I couldn’t even keep being angry.
I tried, but it’s just not me. I wasn’t mad at you, I was just … sad at you, I guess.”
Simran absorbs this. At some point, it became clear to her that she had to leave Iyer House.
Being surrounded by people who knew her parents but acted like they had never existed was destroying her.
But now she sees it from the other side: that every time she left—to live on campus, to stay for two extra years and get her master’s degree, to move to Toronto—she was also leaving Kavitha behind.
That asking her to come to Toronto was not actually something her cousin felt like she could do and she’d never bothered to ask why.
They’re silent for a long time before Simran says, “I am sorry.”
Simran can’t tell if Kavitha’s small nod is an acceptance of her apology or just her shifting in her chair. “I took the bar exam in New York,” Kavitha says. “And I passed—”
“Kavi! Congratulations!”
“—three years ago,” Kavitha says. “My results expire at the end of this year. So to answer your question, yes, I do want to move out of Iyer House. But I’ll stay until I can leave in a way that feels right.”
“What will make it feel right?”
“I don’t know.” But that doesn’t sound wholly true.
Kavitha stands. “Come on,” she says, leaving a twenty on the table. “We should go home before Amma calls Middlesex County police and puts out a missing person’s report.”
The entire ride home, Simran is buoyed. She and Kavitha finally talked—really and truly. It felt like clearing the air. There’s hope for them yet.
“Oh good,” her aunt says when they walk in and drop the groceries on the kitchen counter. “You’re back, I was starting to worry.” Simran and Kavitha exchange a glance as Veena perima continues, “Where were you?”
“We told you, Perima. We got coffee with Laurel,” Simran says, knowing this is a test.
“Where?”
“The Dunkin’ Donuts on Bailey Street,” she replies, smooth as silk. “America runs on it,” Kavitha adds unhelpfully.
Veena ignores this. “It’s very hot for coffee.”
“We got iced coffees, Perima.” It feels like playing a sport after a long time; Simran’s a little rusty but the muscle memory of avoiding her aunt’s attempts to suss out a lie remains strong as ever. It’s almost fun.
“The Patels came over, that Gujarati family who lives in Bergen County. Their daughter Janvi is having a baby, did you know?” Her aunt switching topics so swiftly gives Simran whiplash.
“I did,” Kavitha says. “And she’s thirty-eight. See, Amma? Women’s lives aren’t over if they’re not married by thirty.”
Veena perima gives her a withering stare. “Kavitha, naan patikadu illai. But she is thirty-eight now. She got married when she was thirty-four. So she has been working to this. I don’t see either of you doing that.”
Simran never ceases to be amazed that no matter how long Veena perima lives in America, she holds on to her conservative Indian values.
Simran’s maternal grandmother had been so much like Veena perima, strict, demanding, raising her daughters with an iron fist till she’d passed away young, when they were still both in high school.
Simran’s mother, Vidya, had broken away from that idea, telling Simran that she should marry someone only when she met the right person, and only if she wanted to get married.
Simran held on to that way of thinking fiercely.
Not for the first time, she wonders how the two sisters could be so different.
“Having a husband is not necessary to have a child,” Kavitha replies.
Veena perima’s head bobbles from side to side. “Haan haan, I know. The Mehtas’ daughter is going to be a single mom, she did artificial insemination, no marriage.”
“That’s one way.” Kavitha smirks and on that baby face of hers, it only looks more devilish. “Or you know … regular insemination, no marriage.”
Veena perima’s brow furrows as she comprehends what her daughter has just said. “Chee, Kavitha!” She busies herself with cutting long beans, shaking her head as Kavitha cackles.
Simran watches them volley back and forth.
When she lived in Iyer House, every interaction between Simran and Veena perima was charged with her anger and resentment.
Kavitha was more neutral, just another teenager chafing under her mother’s rule—but their interactions now feel light. Maybe even fun.
A memory flashes in her head of Veena perima and Ashok peripa’s faces when Simran talked to them right after she left Iyer House.
As soon as the plane had touched down in Toronto and she had turned her phone back on, it had rung with a video call from her aunt and uncle.
She’d expected her aunt to put up a huge fight, but instead, all Veena perima had asked was “Are you okay?” When Simran had repeated what she’d written in her note—that she needed to leave, that Iyer House wasn’t her home but she was excited about her new job and living with her friend in Toronto—her aunt said nothing.
She had tossed her raspberry-colored dupatta over her shoulder, the chiffon material falling almost mournfully as she turned away from the screen.
Ashok peripa had put a hand on his wife’s shoulder, an extreme display of sympathy by his standards.
In Tamil, he’d told her to be safe and hung up.
She’d left and they’d let her. For a split second, she had felt the weight of all she was pushing away, but there had been too much damage in close proximity; she needed space.
Of course, the next day, Veena perima had called again, absolutely riotous that she hadn’t come home yet.
The woman was nothing if not reliably intransigent.
As she watches Kavitha and Veena perima now and thinks about her cousins, Rishi, even her uncle, Simran wonders if maybe the only things that haven’t changed in seven years are her and her aunt.