Everyone murmurs, not knowing how to respond to her. Simran keeps her head held high and chokes back a few threatening tears. She can’t let her outside reflect her inside. She won’t.
“You’ve been lying to me,” Kunal says.
“No. I mean, yes,” Simran says. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you earlier. You deserved that much.”
He turns and walks toward the kitchen, his mom behind him.
Simran start to follow them. Dad goes up to Mom. “What was Simran saying about you leaving?”
“Ranjit, I will not discuss this in front of everyone. I. Will. Not.”
“Well, I will not be made a fool in my own house!”
“I’m not trying to make you a fool. I’m trying to keep it together.”
“Dad, let’s take a walk,” Ronak suggests before facing his relatives. “Thank you for coming today, everyone.”
Simran’s brother might as well have a superhero cape blowing behind him. Don’t worry about that fuckup, people. The perfect child is here!
Dad puts his hand up before Ronak can come any closer to him. He repeats the gesture when his brothers and sister start talking to him.
He grabs his wallet and keys from the front desk. “I need to get out of this place.”
Simran sees his green BMW screech out of their neighborhood through the nearest window.
Nandini
“NOT NOW, PLEASE!” Nandini screams.
She double-checks that the master bedroom door is locked.
Another knock.
“Just leave me alone!” she yells like a little girl.
One floor below her, guests are starting to trickle out. At least, the considerate ones are. The rest are lurking in the kitchen and living room, rehashing what they just saw.
Nandini pictures herself opening the door, standing in the hallway overlooking the living room, and saying, Yes, please feel free to keep talking about my family in our house. Can I serve you some chai while you’re at it?
At least Greg left before this scene. How would she explain any of this to him? He wouldn’t be able to understand. She doesn’t even understand.
She checks her phone. Sure enough, there’s a text from him:
Greg: I’m sorry if I caused any trouble. I thought you told them. We really need to talk.
She walks toward the bed, rips off the plush white down comforter, and punches the throw pillows. Then she sits at the foot of the bed and rests her face in her palms. If she stays here, she can pretend that this was all a bad dream, a mistake.
It doesn’t matter that she did everything right, everything she possibly could. Things went to complete shit. Her emotions are a tangled knot of contradictions. She wants to yell at Simran again. She wants to make sure she’s okay. She wants to tell her she’s worried about her future.
How could this have happened? How could Simran have not told her? Could she have done something to prevent all of this? Where did she go wrong?
She takes a deep breath. Her questions don’t matter. The truth matters. And the truth is clear: Simran deceived her. After everything, her daughter felt the need to lie.
A voice from within her speaks back: But aren’t you lying to her by keeping things from her? What about the fact that you’ve never told her about what happened in India or about your job offer with Greg or even meeting Kunal’s mom for lunch?
She tells the voice that she withheld those things to protect her daughter.
The master bedroom is just as she remembers it from this morning, minus the king bed that had tight hospital corners before she ripped it apart. Brightly colored artwork from India, including a burnt orange tapestry Mami bought, hangs on the walls. The floors are shiny and wooden. Simran and Ronak used to wear socks and slide across them on weekend mornings, when Nandini and Ranjit were hoping to catch up on sleep. Where did those times go? How did they get here?
Her thoughts start racing, and she struggles to keep up with them.
You’re a disappointment.
You screwed up all those years ago, and here you still are, screwing up.
Just because your kids don’t know about what happened doesn’t mean it’s behind you. You’re always going to pay for that.
You deserve this.
How dare you think that things were about to change?
She stands up. Blood thumps through her ears. Her breaths quicken.
Do not give in to the panic. Do not let it control you.
She inhales and wraps her arms across her body, the way her therapist taught her to all those years ago. Her sari is suddenly too tight and itchy. She removes all the safety pins holding the folds together. Yards of gold silk fall to the floor in a heap. She wishes she could remain there, with her sari billowing around her feet like a shimmering puddle.
Her stomach twists. Does she need to throw up? She runs into the bathroom, avoids the mirror, and hunches over the toilet. Nothing.
From here, she can make out the faint buzz of Gujarati downstairs. People are cleaning and gossiping.
She turns on the shower to drown out the noise. In five seconds, her bra and underwear are in a pile on the floor. The hot water hits her body like a smack. She savors the heat, the pain. She clasps her hands together and prays for the gift of being able to forget.
Nine
Simran
Anyone who has ever flown to India knows they’ve arrived by the smell: a mixture of gasoline, oil, and stubborn humidity. The pilot announces Baroda’s weather in English and Hindi. Simran realizes she’s slept the entire flight, thanks to too many glasses of red wine. So much for exchanging life stories and gaining tough-love wisdom from her neighbor, the way Rachel did in Simran’s favorite Friends episode, when she was going to London to break up Ross’s wedding.
Everyone cheers when the plane lands, all of them tired of the plastic cups and stale air. (That and Indians love to cheer. The first time Simran went to a movie theater in Baroda, she was thrown off by the lasers people brought to point toward the screen whenever a beloved actress came on, each appearance followed by a barrage of whistles and claps. That’s the way to watch a movie, Nani said, appalled by the decorum of American theaters as she munched on the candy she snuck in.)
The heavy air feels like a wall between her and her life. She can almost pretend nothing ever happened. Slap a temporary Band-Aid over her post-dramatic stress disorder.
Simran almost forgot about how different the Baroda airport is from JFK. Here, she steps off the plane, gets onto a crowded bus to the airport, and then struggles to find her luggage on the carousel.