39. A Man Who Stayed #2
Then the calls became harder to arrange.
The time difference changed every time production moved.
Her fourteen-hour days became sixteen. My weeks disappeared into recording, interviews, rehearsals, and meetings.
Sometimes one of us fell asleep waiting for the other to call.
Then the visits changed. A week became four days.
Four days became two. Two became one night in a hotel before one of us had to leave for an airport while it was still dark.
The less time we had, the more Radhika wanted something solid waiting at the end of it. Something distance couldn’t move.
She started asking about marriage. Sometimes it came disguised as a joke.
She'd hold up her hand after seeing a ring in a shop window and ask what kind I'd choose for her.
She'd send me a photograph from a wedding and tell me the flowers were ugly.
Once, while we were in bed, she traced a finger over the tattoo on my hand and asked whether I had ever thought about wearing a ring above it.
“Yeah,” I said.
Her eyes brightened. “You have?”
“Of course.”
“When did you think about it?”
I kissed her shoulder. “I don’t know. Sometime.”
That answer was enough the first time. It wasn’t enough the next. Every visit ended with her going home without a ring, and every time it happened, the disappointment became harder for her to hide.
“When do you think?” she asked once.
“We’ve talked about this.”
“No, I’ve talked about it. You’ve said it isn’t the right time.”
“Because it isn’t.”
“When will it be?”
“I don’t know.”
She looked away.
That was how the fights began. First came the quiet. The careful questions. Her trying to find a door I hadn’t realized I was holding shut.
“Why can’t we just be what we were before?” I asked her during one of those arguments.
“We are what we were before.”
“No, we aren’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means every time I see you, I feel like I’m failing an exam I didn’t know I was taking.”
“I'm not testing you.”
“It feels like it.”
“I want to know where this is going.”
“Why does it have to be going anywhere? Why can’t we just be in love?”
She stared at me.
“As though marriage would mean we stopped being in love?”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“No. You only make it sound like wanting a future with you is ruining the present.”
She began asking when she would meet my parents.
It'd been months since Holi. Months since I'd stayed in her family’s home, eaten at their table, stood beside her father while he asked what kind of future I imagined with his daughter.
Radhika had met Rithy dozens of times. She loved him.
He loved her. She knew the band better than most people who had worked with us for years.
“The only family worth meeting, you’ve already met,” I told her.
“That's a horrible thing to say.”
“It’s true.”
“Your mother isn't worth meeting?”
My jaw tightened.
“You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t. You never speak about them.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“There's always something to say.”
“Rithy is my family. The guys, the band, that's my family.”
“I love Rithy and the band. That doesn't mean your parents don't exist.”
I shut down every time. I could see how it looked to her. She had brought me into the center of her life, and I kept her standing outside mine.
The truth was worse. How could I take Radhika Malhotra to my parents’ house after seeing where she came from?
Her family had staff. Marble courtyards.
Generations of history built into every wall.
Her mother had welcomed me in silk and gold while her father questioned whether I understood the responsibility of loving their daughter.
My father ran the inside of our house with military precision.
Beds made tight. Clothes folded. Shoes lined up.
Bedrooms spotless. One dish left in the sink could send him into a rage.
But the rules only applied to us. The porch sagged for years. The sockets sparked and our roof leaked whenever it rained hard enough. Anything that required effort, money or responsibility from him could wait until the next paycheck.
Then he drank the paycheck.
Sometimes I called Ma and heard something in her voice that made me wonder whether she was hiding another bruise.
Sometimes she didn’t answer at all. I was working toward getting her out.
That was the plan. A safe house with new pipes and wiring that didn’t threaten to burn her alive.
Somewhere Dad couldn’t drink away everything she earned.
Somewhere she could lock the door and know he wouldn't be standing on the other side of it.
All I had to do was earn enough money and convince her to leave him. I was getting close.
A few more months. Another album advance. The next tour. Then I could buy it for her. But until then, what was I supposed to do? Bring Radhika into that house and watch her understand exactly where I came from?
Let her see the dents in the walls? Meet the man who had put them there or had put the scars on my body?
Not to mention Ma and Rithy's? Her fingers had traced mine in the dark, gentle and curious, but she had never asked after the first time I pulled away. She knew there was something beneath them. She just didn’t know what.
I couldn’t tell her.
Every time I imagined trying, my throat closed.
I saw pity in her eyes before she had the chance to feel it.
Saw the distance that would appear once she understood all the damage she had mistaken for mystery.
Compared to her life, mine was a garbage pile.
How long before she smelled it and ran? Ran toward a man that matched her standing, her history, her upbringing?
So I let her think I was ashamed of her.
Or not serious about her.
Or selfish.
Those were easier things to survive than letting her see the truth.