Chapter 23
chapter 23
“Uh…Mom?”
Gia didn’t look up from the sink, where she scrubbed at a frying pan like she was trying to erase the sins of the past. “Mmm?”
“Can we talk?”
“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm,” Gia said, more to the pan in her hands than her son. “Talk.”
Even though she was barely paying attention to him, Dev’s leg began to bounce under the table. It had been jiggling all evening—from the moment he had stepped into his childhood home for Sunday night family dinner, and throughout a sumptuous meal of warm parathas, homemade daal, and chicken curry, and while waiting for his brother to pack his yawning daughters into the car.
Had Dev known that family confrontation would have this effect on his nervous system, he would have stretched beforehand because at this rate, he was overdue for a calf cramp.
Everyone had left, save for Aashi, and it was that magical time after a good meal with a few hours to spare before his mother hunkered down on the couch, ready to zone out while catching up on her favorite Tollywood soap operas.
“Mom,” Dev said, wincing when, in an effort to raise his voice authoritatively, it sounded tinny and whiny instead. “I need to talk to you about something.”
From where she sat across from him Saran-wrapping leftover fruit salad, Aashi stood up, her chair squeaking in protest. “Let me take over, Didi. This sounds important.” The sisters traded ominous looks as they switched places.
Well, at least Dev had their undivided attention now.
“All right, Dev,” Gia said as she settled into Aashi’s vacated seat. “ Bolo. Tell me what this is about.” The look on Gia’s face gave Dev pause. She was flushed, the corners of her lips twitching as if she was fighting a smile. Inwardly, Dev winced. If she thought he was about to announce he’d found his future wife, she was going to be very disappointed.
That was who he was, Disappointing Dev, letting people down since birth. After all, hadn’t Gia lamented many times, out loud, to him, her family, and her friends, that she had prayed for a daughter after her firstborn?
“Let’s hear it, son.”
“I want to talk to you about the bazaar.”
“Oh, this makes me so happy—” Gia broke off and blinked a few times before settling on the confused squint she reserved for teenage cashiers at the grocery store mumble-asking if she needed help carrying her groceries to the car. “The bazaar? You want to talk about… the bazaar ?”
Dev couldn’t resist, his leg momentarily stilling. “Well, of course. What else would there be to discuss?”
Gia’s face pinched like an overdehydrated raisin. “Nothing. What about the bazaar?”
“Is it true that you’re letting Neel take over?”
From the kitchen, the sloshing of soap and sponges halted as Aashi waited to hear Gia’s answer.
“Why do you ask?”
“He told me.”
Gia waved a dismissive hand in the air and Dev noticed, for the first time, that her wedding bangles—a traditional gift from one’s parents and in-laws to signify her status as a married woman—were gone. “Oh, you know Neel. He likes to have his hand in everything. He’s interested in the bazaar now, but he’ll move on.”
Dev thought back to the greedy look in his brother’s eye and the plans he had concocted for his wife. Once the shininess wore off, Neel might move on, but Priya would be left behind to carry the burden. And Priya was nothing if not dutiful—especially when it came to family burdens like obnoxious, crappy husbands.
“I don’t think so, Mom,” he said. “I think Neel is pretty set on this. He’s stuck on the idea.”
Taken aback, his mother frowned. From a short distance away, Aashi had dropped all pretense of pretending to mind her own business. She was leaning against the counter, rubber-gloved hands clasped in front of her, as she watched them.
“Well…” Gia deflated like a balloon. “I mean, it’s not like I have a head for business.”
Dev stiffened. That sounded like something Neel would say. Or their father.
“If this is what my eldest son wants, who am I to deny him?” Gia added.
“But he’s an idiot who only cares about himself!”
Gia raised a cautionary eyebrow. “Do not speak of your brother like that. He is doing what’s best for the family.”
It was his cue to back down, and under normal circumstances he usually would have. Well aware of the extent of conflict resolution in the Mukherjee house, Aashi turned back to the dishes, sponge in hand. But Dev could not dismiss Naomi’s insistent face from his mind, her eyes wide and charged with something he didn’t quite understand but had obviously meant the world to her.
He didn’t want to let her down.
“I know Neel wants to do what’s best for the bazaar,” Dev said. “But I think you’re underestimating yourself. You’re the one who built a community there.” For a moment, Dev stumbled when he realized he was repeating something Naomi had said when she had pitched her grand idea for the rebrand. He was even more startled to realize how clearly the words rang when said out loud, even from his less charming voice.
They rang with certainty. In the past, when arguing against his parents’ old-world logic, he had always found himself stumbling at the crossroads between what he thought he wanted versus what they deemed was best for him and his family. But right now, he knew he was speaking a truth that, to his surprise, mattered to him. This conversation mattered to him. He didn’t want to be brushed aside, as he had been so many times before when speaking his mind.
He wanted to be heard.
Dev reached deeper. “No one but you can rebuild that same sense of community, Mom. Certainly not Neel. And you deserve something for yourself, something that’s all yours that you can be proud of.”
Gia stared at him, speechless. The room was silent, Aashi having abandoned her scrubbing again. Intimidated, Dev began to ramble.
“No one cooks like you, Mom,” he said. “Not that you have to cook for the café, but you can choose what you—”
He stopped when his mother lifted her hand. When she finally spoke, her gaze was directed over his shoulder, into a future, or maybe the past, that was further away than Dev could reach. “You’re not wrong. It is my store. And I have a legacy, too,” she said slowly. “I’m…I’m going to think about this. I appreciate you trying to look out for me, though.”
It wasn’t flat-out agreement; hell, she had even figured out a way to admit he was right without actually admitting it—not that Dev expected to hear those words cross his mother’s lips in this lifetime. But he felt strangely hopeful. All his life, he’d feared confrontation with his formidable parents, who, he had always assumed, would stick to a set of unwritten rules he didn’t understand come hell or high water. But in the moment, he felt like he was talking to someone different. Like they’d made a major breakthrough in their relationship.
“Since you’re in the mood to think about the unexpected,” he ventured, “maybe we could talk about this whole matchmaking thing.”
Gia sat up straight, a speculative gleam in her eye. Aashi dropped her sponge and hurried to join them at the table. “Yes?”
“I’ve met a lot of the potential matches now, and…”
“Go on.”
“And I’m starting to wonder what would happen if I ended up with someone who wasn’t on your list.”
Lips parted, Gia whipped her head to look at Aashi, then back to Dev, to Aashi, and finally back to her son.
That’s one calf cramp for me and whiplash for Mom , Dev thought as his leg began to bounce again.
“Did you have someone in mind, Dev?” Aashi asked.
They stared at him—their eyes intense and unblinking—and, under their scrutiny, Dev’s courage waned and he blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “No, I’m talking hypothetically. Would it be so bad if I picked someone according to my own list of wants?” When he realized what he had said, a pinch of uncertainty zipped across his chest. Had he meant to say that? It was the first time he had ever even hinted to his family that marriage was a desirable outcome for himself, that he was invested in a future with someone else.
It should have been liberating or triumphant, maybe. But as Gia shook her head, impatience bracketing her mouth, Dev averted his eyes to the tabletop. His other leg began a restless bounce in unison with the first. Great. He was sweating from the top up, performing a fucking Riverdance from the waist down.
“Dev, we’ve talked about this,” Gia chided. “How can you not understand that I am thinking of your future from a place of experience? That I might have a better idea of what marriage means and what a successful union requires?”
Aashi cleared her throat. “Didi, we can’t know that we would automatically disapprove of the kind of girl Dev might like.”
Dev shot his mashi a grateful look, but Gia pursed her lips and shook her head again. “Dev is unrealistic. I could send a thousand girls his way, and he wouldn’t like any of them. He doesn’t know what he wants. He just knows that I’m wrong.”
All the hope that had brewed in his chest earlier dissipated like wisps of smoke in the rain. Dev’s temper flared in its wake. He could never be right, not in this family.
“I’m not arguing for the sake of arguing, Mom. I’m trying to tell you what I want.”
“Marriage isn’t just about you , Dev. That’s not our way,” Gia replied. “It’s about our family, too.”
“Can you at least understand why, from the way you’re talking, the idea of an arranged marriage would be unappealing to someone like me?”
“?‘Someone like you,’?” Gia mimicked, scorn bracketing her mouth. “I don’t even know you anymore. First, disrespecting your elder brother, now this. You think you’re so Canadian now, huh? You know, in so many ways, you’re just like your father.”
The words were like a punch to his gut, a hard jab that landed somewhere between his pancreas and large intestine. He’d received criticism from his mother his entire life, but this was different. This was brass knuckles.
Like your father.
Aashi eyed him with concern, but Gia continued, oblivious. “Your father always thought he knew everything, always wanted to do things his way. He never wanted my opinion, never thought I might have something important to contribute. He was so cold.”
Dev lowered his gaze and allowed Gia’s disapproval to wash over him, as it had so many times in the past. Except this time, it wasn’t a quick rinse that he could pat dry later with an eye roll. This was soaking in like a bone-deep chill.
His entire life, he’d been the odd one out in his family. Not a day went by where Dev wasn’t aware that he was awkward, aloof, difficult to deal with, and about a thousand other things that made his brothers smirk and his parents shake their heads. Forget trying to be considerate, generous, and kind. Forget warmth. In the end, he couldn’t escape the one thing he’d promised himself he would never be.
Cold, like his father.