Chapter 28
During cocktail hour, the Iyers and Chopras head outside to the manicured gardens at the back of the hotel for the photographs.
The summer weather is so perfect it would render Instagram filters jealous.
If Geeta looked like the sun come to life in the morning, she looks like the evening sky has embraced her in a midnight blue and chrome lengha, the red of her new sindoor blazing and bright against her dark hair.
Rishi matches her in a sherwani in an inverted color scheme and gold chain that Geeta tied around his neck, after he tied her mangal sutra, claiming that he’d never say no to a piece of jewelry.
When Geeta, Simran, and Kavitha take their photos together, it creates a gradient—Simran in a royal blue sari with a silver blouse and Kavitha in a baby blue anarkali with a white dupatta—just as Geeta had said it would when she assigned them colors to wear, down to the Pantone number.
Simran must admit, her specificity is paying off beautifully.
The main photographer, a tall Indian woman with artfully graying hair, takes Rishi, Geeta, and their parents—both sets still scowling in the direction of their newly wedded and pregnant-out-of-wedlock children every time a camera is not on them—to the far side of the gardens so the hotel’s hedge maze can serve as a backdrop.
“You girls come with me over here,” the assistant photographer says, pulling them to another corner.
“Cut it out, Kavi,” Simran says between clicks of the shutter.
Kavitha’s head turns sharply to her. “What do you mean?”
“Excuse me, miss, face forward, please!” the second photographer interrupts. “Tilt your head a little to the left—perfect, hold that pose!”
“You’re mad, that’s fine. But let’s not do the whole silent treatment,” Simran says when the man steps away to change out some of the equipment.
Kavitha levels a blank look on her. “Why not? We did it for seven years.” Simran blinks, taken aback by her cousin’s reversion to low blows.
“Do you remember back when this whole thing started, what I said? You asked what it would take for us to be good again and I said you would have to tell Amma about you and Leo.”
“Okay, we’ve got all we need!” the photographer tells them. “You can go inside and enjoy the party.”
Kavitha storms off, as much as someone can when their heels are sinking into the grass. Simran, in flats, a force of habit around her short family, follows her and catches up quickly. But before they go in, they’re stopped by a yell from Geeta.
“Did you guys get your entrance dance choreo sorted out?” she calls, and Simran’s head falls back with a groan.
They haven’t. There’s one more short dance for when they are announced into the reception party.
She had started to teach it to Kavitha this morning while they were getting dressed, before they were distracted by all the drama of the day.
The two of them go inside and duck into an anemically lit meeting room.
Simran runs through the choreography silently but in the middle of teaching her cousin a move where they put their hands on their hips and jump forward with a pelvic thrust, Kavitha faces her instead.
“Admit it. You’re going to up and leave.
Again,” Kavitha says, lips set in a straight, unyielding line.
“Do the thrust—I need you to be in the right spot so I can show you the next move,” Simran instructs.
“Are you just going to ignore what I said?”
“No,” Simran replies. “But we don’t have much time to learn this so unless you want to do a sloppy dance in front of all four hundred people attending this thing, keep practicing.” Kavitha makes a face but does as she says. “I said sorry for how I left before.”
“Sorry only means something if you’re not planning on doing it again,” Kavitha replies.
“It’ll be different this time,” she says, imploring. “We’ll stay in touch. And we’ll see each other a lot, I promise. I’m going to visit the baby all the time.” Simran raises one hand and does a “come closer” motion with her palm up and her fingers folding in. Kavitha imitates her.
“So you’ll come all the way to Connecticut to see the baby and Geeta and Rishi. But you won’t come to New Jersey to see your aunt and uncle. The people who adopted you.” The jab lands spikily. Kavitha isn’t sad or disappointed, like before. Now she’s angry.
“What does that matter?” Simran restarts the song.
“It matters,” Kavitha says, running through the first minute of choreography perfectly, her face tight. “Because you didn’t see how heartbroken she was the last time you left.”
It flashes in her mind again, that memory of her aunt’s quiet acceptance when Simran called from Toronto. “She was just upset I didn’t do what she wanted me to. Perima only cares whether I follow the exact plan for my life that she’s set out.”
“That is her way of caring about you! She makes those plans because she wants to see you happy,” Kavitha says, half yelling as she jerks her elbow out four times, moving her legs in tandem.
Simran shimmies forward and Kavitha copies her. “Why does she get to decide what happiness looks like for me?”
Kavitha snorts as she puts one hand behind her head and the other on her hip and moves it out and in, three thumkas in a row. “If you’re holding out for a better answer than ‘Because that’s what Indian parents do,’ you’re out of luck.”
“Adoption or not, she’s not my mother.” Simran and Kavitha meet in the center of the room and slap hands before switching spots and repeating the moves.
“You’ve been saying that since you were sixteen! I get it, she gets it, we all get it!”
“No, it’s hip, hip, then chest, chest,” Simran corrects.
They run through the rest of the dance. “You know,” Kavitha says, panting. “It’s basically impossible for a relationship to improve if one of the people is absent.”
As the song ends, Simran bends over, hands on her knees, catching her breath. Talking, let alone arguing, while dancing is past even her advanced skill set.
“I stuck around and it changed,” Kavitha says.
“She changed. I didn’t marry Ajay. My mother didn’t excommunicate me.
In fact, she stood up for me. And she was devastated when you left.
Why do you think I came up with this scheme?
It wasn’t about Leo winning her over. It was about getting you to stick around long enough to see her for who she really is. ”
“If that’s all true,” Simran says, straightening and putting her hands on her hips, “why haven’t you come out to her yet?”
Her cousin stops short. “You don’t get to decide that for me.”
Simran is immediately contrite. “That’s not how I meant—”
“Family is complicated,” Kavitha says.
Without the dancing to distract them, Simran doesn’t bother to resist rolling her eyes at her cousin’s sage wisdom. “I know.”
“Actually, you don’t,” Kavitha says, her tone softening.
“Your parents died and I’ll always wish that hadn’t happened but it’s not the same.
When you lose someone, all the bad things are scrubbed away and you keep all the good.
It’s the sole upside: Only the love is important enough to remember.
The annoyances, the fights, the spaces where they frustrate you so much—that’s forgotten. You get to forget that.”
“I would do anything for a chance to have all the messy stuff with them,” Simran says, tears welling up at the back of her throat. She bites down on her lip to stop them; she doesn’t want to cry again today.
“You can’t have it with them, but you can have it,” Kavitha says.
“You can have it with a mother like mine, who loves fiercely and believes that makes her an expert on your life. A father who is quiet all the time because he was raised to believe men didn’t show emotions or weakness, especially not to women, and is figuring out how to unlearn that while surrounded by only women.
A sister who annoyed you so much growing up, but you can’t imagine life without her because who she is helped you figured out who you aren’t. ”
“Do you know what it was like for me here?” Simran asks, her voice rising.
To realize that Kavitha has never understood feels like a chasm between them too large to overcome.
“Why can’t you see? I lost everything and your parents never talked about it!
The Simran who had parents, the Simran who went to the same school her whole life and lived in the same house since she was born, the Simran who had friends and took Bharatnatyam lessons after school and got to come and go as she pleased without being questioned about every single thing, the Simran who thought she’d live in Chennai for the rest of her life—she ceased to exist too. ”
“I would never minimize how difficult it was for you then.”
“It’s still difficult for me now, Kavi!” Simran says. “That’s why I can’t be at Iyer House.”
“And that …” Kavitha’s words are small, her ire deflated. “You always call it Iyer House.”
“Everyone calls it Iyer House.”
“And some of us also call it home. You could call it home.”
Simran doesn’t have the words to explain the burning buried deep inside her.
It’s as if each year following her parents’ death, each year that no one continued to talk about them or their grief, added a layer of sediment that eventually turned to rock.
Now it’s nearly impossible to excavate the feeling.
“Home is where my family was. And I’ve lost that home just like I lost my family. ”
Kavitha holds up a finger. “You lost your parents. You still have a family. You’re choosing to push us away.”
“She sold my parents’ house without telling me, Kavitha,” Simran says quietly. It’s her trump card, the unimpeachable proof of Veena perima’s sins against her.
But instead, her cousin’s lip curls up, almost a snarl. “Forget it. You just want to think the worst of her.”
The door suddenly opens and Rahul pops his head in. “Simran didi, Kavitha didi, it’s time. The DJ is ready to do our entrance intros.”
With the guests already inside, the foyer outside the hall is empty but the air is crowded with tension.
Ravi uncle stands with his arms crossed, Manjula aunty keeps looking over at Geeta and Rishi and tutting loudly.
With every tsk, the frown on Veena perima’s face etches deeper and Ashok peripa shifts from foot to foot with palpable discomfort.
But Geeta and Rishi? They’re beaming, unburdened, their smiles unshrinking in the face of all this disapproval.
From inside, the music cuts out and the DJ’s voice booms over the speakers as he riles up the crowd to clap for the family, announcing the bride and groom.
The double doors open and Geeta and Rishi enter, holding hands, cheered on like rock stars; the DJ announces Rishi’s parents next, followed by Geeta’s with an enthusiastic “Put your hands in the aiiiiiir for the Iyerrrrrrrrs.”
The doors close and it’s quiet again. Simran and Kavitha line up next, her cousin purposely turning her face the other way. Simran’s hackles go up and she grabs Kavi’s arm to turn her so they’re facing each other.
“Excuse me, senorita!” Kavitha reluctantly looks at her.
“So that’s it? You’re going to cut me off because I don’t get along with your mother?
Do I not mean anything to you on my own?
I came here because I missed you, because I want to be there to help you build the life you deserve.
I want to help you go far enough away to feel free to—”
Kavitha’s sweet features rearrange into pure outrage. “Do you hear the unbelievable levels of hypocrisy and condescension in that sentence? I don’t need you to fix my life, I just want you to be a part of it. And that includes my family. Our family! What makes you think I would go far away?”
“You said you wanted to move out of Iyer House!” Simran retorts.
“Yeah, to New York, that’s forty-five minutes away! Maybe if you’d stuck around, you would have realized that putting up boundaries doesn’t mean moving to another country.”
Simran’s reply is lost as the DJ calls from inside. “And let’s get everyone to put their hands together for the sisters of the bride, Kavithaaaaa and Simraaaaaaan!”
Just as the double doors open and their music cue plays, Kavitha leans over to Simran.
“You know what? You were correct. You abandon my family, you lose me too. Actually, it’s done: You’ve lost me.
” The bass drops and they both shimmy their way into the hall and dance as everyone their family knows cheers them on.
Simran puts her all into dancing, allowing it to distract her.
As the reception continues, she rushes around, getting water for Geeta and Rishi and making sure they eat.
At one point, she gently pushes her uncle into the center of the circle to dance with her aunt.
Her emotions twist and warp into a strange shape; she’s bopping along with everyone, whistling as they dance in tentative moves.
Her aunt is shy, for the first time Simran has ever seen, and it fills her with an unexpected jolt of tenderness underneath her anger.
She watches as Geeta and Kavi rush them, hooting and cheering them on, joining in on the dance, a perfect family moment, and something frays within her.
As the strobe lights flash, she watches Leo from across the room.
He looks back but he doesn’t make a move to come to her, and then he turns away.
She swallows down the ache in her, returning to the dance floor and clapping as Rahul shows off his amateur breakdancing moves.
Her shoulder bumps into Kavitha, who opens her mouth to say sorry until she sees it’s Simran.
Instead, she turns back to the circle without a word. Simran does the same.
Why did she ever decide to come back? The blank walls of her sorrow close in on her, and she feels more miserable, more deserted, more broken now than she did on her birthday. Than she has since the first few months after her parents died.