Chapter 30 #2
They find a bench along the side of the building that overlooks a single tree in a lone patch of grass. The cars whizzing by on the highway almost sound like waves.
“So calming,” Simran comments.
They’re silent for a few moments and then Kamal says, “Listen, I’m sorry again about yesterday—walking in the wedding. I shouldn’t have done that.”
It feels like eons ago. Simran waves it away. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I apologized to Leo too,” Kamal adds.
Simran schools herself into nonchalance, even as her chest coils inwards. She should call Leo, tell him what’s happened. But that would require her to say the words out loud. “That’s nice of you.”
“Simi, please,” Kamal says, chuckling. “I know you two are together.”
She sits up straight in surprise. “Did he tell—”
“I watched you watch all those Shah Rukh Khan movies back in the day, remember? I know the face you make when you’re looking at someone you’re crazy about.”
She gives him a weak smile, cheeks burning at how transparent she is.
“Hey, you know what I just thought of?” Kamal says. “That time—I think we were ten?—when you convinced me that if I rode your bike fast enough at the wall between our houses, I would be able to ride up and over it.”
The memory comes to her almost immediately, and then she recalls the aftermath. “Oh god. I remember that. Your arm was the weirdest shape I’d ever seen.”
“Broken in three places. I remember your mom in the hospital,” Kamal says, wincing. “She was raising hell because they weren’t seeing me quickly enough.”
Simran laughs, the forgotten detail coming back to her. “She straight up harassed the hospital staff. I was half in awe, half scared of her.” She goes quiet.
“I was trying to distract you but we landed up at the topic of hospitals anyway,” he says, sighing. “Story of my life.”
“I’m sorry—about your dad getting sick,” she says.
“Thanks. It was a really tough few years in and out of remission but he’s okay. It brought up a lot of stuff, but we’re all doing better now,” Kamal says.
Envy shoots through her—what does it feel like to be better? “Let me guess. Therapy?” she asks.
“Yes but not just therapy. Therapy is important, especially because Indian people don’t talk about their emotions. But it’s also isolating—it focuses on what’s happening to you.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “There’s so many other things. Time. Distance. Community.”
Simran frowns. “Community?”
Kamal looks out into the distance. “When I was back in Chennai, before my dad was in remission, there were so many people around—relatives, friends, neighbors—who bore the worry along with me and my family. We got to see how many people cared for him. That helped both him and me as much as anything else.”
Simran aches with wanting, with this possibility that never existed for her.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to add my stuff to yours,” Kamal says.
“I remember when Ashok mama was in the hospital the last time around.” Simran squirms in her seat.
She’s not sure she wants to hear this. “I was still in Chennai then. My folks were rushing to get the money together to buy your house quickly so they could send it over to Veena mami to cover the costs of the surgery. I felt so awful for her; it’s bad enough that your husband is going in for a bypass.
But to also have to deal with the banks and foreign exchange and the house deed all on her own? Your poor aunt.”
The low buzz that has droned constantly in her head since they left Iyer House for the hospital clears.
Kamal fades into the background. Her Chennai house, which had lain empty for years at that point, practically a mausoleum, hadn’t been sold out of some disregard for her parents’ memory or traded away to the neighbors as a deposit for a future matchmaking scheme.
It had been sold to pay for her uncle’s surgery.
Which had happened when Simran wasn’t answering any of her aunt’s many, many calls, probably to ask for her permission.
And then another snippet of memory unrolls, this one from less than two weeks ago when she had first come back to Iyer House.
On the balcony that night, Simran avoided her aunt at all costs because she didn’t want to talk about her marriage.
And when Simran had brought up getting the key to her house, her aunt had looked uncomfortable and then asked to talk to her.
Maybe Veena perima wanted to explain why she couldn’t give Simran the key, why she sold the house.
And again, Simran hadn’t given her the chance.
Kavitha was all too right. Simran did avoid things; she avoided anything and anyone that would upend her world yet again.
Moving on from her resentment of her aunt almost felt like moving on from her parents’ death—and then what would she have?
It was easier to hold on to her anger than allow it to change.
She is doing it right now, sitting outside with Kamal instead of being inside with her family.
Standing, she quickly thanks him for the phone and rushes back into the building.
Simran finds them again, still in that hallway, and goes to sit between Geeta and Kavitha in the chair vacated by her aunt, who is pacing up and down the hall.
Kavitha is rocking back and forth, back and forth. “I don’t know what I’ll do. If Appa …”
“Don’t say it. Please don’t say it, Akka,” Geeta tells her. Simran has never heard Geeta speak in this scared, pleading voice.
Kavitha’s voice, on the other hand, is hollow. “I don’t know how I’ll survive it.”
The pragmatist in Simran, the one that emerged sixteen years ago, could give Kavitha the answer.
She’ll survive but the meaning of the word will have changed.
She’ll live, but that life will be lesser.
Simran wraps an arm around Geeta, pulling her in, and she grabs Kavi’s face, her cheeks misshapen under Simran’s firm grip.
She looks right at Kavitha. “You won’t have to find out. Not today. Okay?”
“Okay,” Kavitha says meekly.
Simran lets go of her face and takes her hand before turning to Geeta. “Okay?”
“Okay, Akka,” Geeta says, sounding once again like that kid who let her oldest sister boss her around. The three sit like that, linked like a chain, Simran absorbing everything her cousins need to put on her in this moment.
Time stutters and stretches. More than an hour passes since they came in.
Everyone feels the need to do something other than wait and the air has turned frantic, borderline hysterical.
Rishi is cracking his knuckles disturbingly loudly.
Kavitha keeps braiding and unbraiding her hair.
Ravi uncle’s mobile phone, which several people have asked him to silence to no success, keeps going off.
Each time, his ringtone—the inexplicable choice of “Smooth” by Rob Thomas and Santana—sounds out, he answers with the same set of responses: “We’re still waiting to hear.
Haan, I’ll call you when we know anything. ”
The color has returned to Veena perima’s complexion and her jaw is locked as she takes in every inch of their surroundings. Simran knows that face. Despite the differences in their features, she’s seen it before, on her mother. Her aunt is done waiting; now’s the time for action.
“What do they think, they can just make us sit here forever?” With that, Veena perima begins to ask each and every hospital worker who has the misfortune of walking in their vicinity what is happening with Ashok peripa in increasingly dramatic verbiage.
Geeta, head still on Simran’s shoulder, just waves it away.
“Gimme your heart, make it real, or else forget about it” sounds from the other end of the hallway.
“Dad, for the love of God!” Rishi bursts.
“Arrey, what do you want me to do! The people want to know what’s happening with Ashok bhaisaab!” Ravi uncle protests.
“Just put your phone on silent!” Rishi says.
“Then how will he know when someone is calling him?” Manjula aunty chimes in.
“In my day, we had to sit by the phone, just waiting for someone to call us. And if it was long-distance? They’d have to send a letter to tell us when they were phoning. You kids don’t know how good you have it.”
“I apologize for being born in an era of immense technological progress,” Kavitha says sarcastically.
“It’s okay,” Ravi uncle replies.
“Excuse me, doctor!” This time, it’s Manjula aunty who has tracked someone down.
The orderly smiles kindly. “I’m a nurse.”
“But you’re a man,” she says.
“Mom!” Rishi hisses.
“Never mind,” Veena perima says, stepping in between the nurse and Manjula aunty. There’s not a trace of her softness from earlier. Her tone is snapping. “Can you tell me what’s happening with my husband? We came in two hours ago.”
“I’m so sorry—”
“No one will tell me if I’m about to be a widow!”
“Oh my god, Amma,” Kavitha mutters.
“Excuse me!” A person in a lab coat with fair skin and red hair walks up to the group from behind.
Veena perima pivots on a heel to stare up at him. “Who are you?”
“I’m Dr. Liebowitz. I’m your husband’s doctor.”
Veena perima blinks, momentum stopped cold. “Yes, of course, Doctor. What’s happening to my husband?”
“He’s going to be okay,” the doctor tells them.
The relief feels like the first rain after a drought, cooling and calming everyone’s heated worry.
Ravi uncle says a quick prayer of thanks out loud and the group murmurs in agreement.
Simran and Kavi hug as Rishi wraps his arms around Geeta.
“Let’s step into the room and I can explain.
” The seven of them move forward in unison.
The doctor glances at the group. “All of you?”
“Yes, why not?” Veena perima asks sharply. She steps up close to him, in a clear intimidation move, even though the man is much taller than her. It seems to be a superpower of sorts because it works on him just as well as it worked on Leo.