“Tell your mum our driver, Uncle Lobo, will take us to the theater and back. There is nothing to worry about,” Annette said.
“Tell Mum Cyrus will be your bodyguard. He will guard you with his life,” said Cyrus. Tara looked down at her hands as the others giggled.
Of course, Amma said no. She said Daddy would not allow it. She was too young to go out with friends. They had not met the Saldanhas and knew nothing about them. They would all go to Ideal Ice Cream Parlour in Hampankatta and have tall glasses of gadbad instead.
Tara escaped to Morgan Hill with Vijay and moped.
“So old-fashioned!” she complained to a rock, of her family.
Chapter 15
By mid-May, Daddy and Amma had found the perfect house. It was in Falnir, a nice neighborhood in the heart of Mangalore city, where fancy terraced houses blended with large traditional homes. Their home was on Model Street, in a colony of twenty-four houses, all painted white, with neat rose bushes in the front and a little patch to grow fruits and vegetables at the back. Pretty bougainvillea trees lined one end of the compound.
Daddy said they would move in by the end of May. Amma was thrilled that things had fallen so beautifully in place. Tara searched for some fragment of relief, of happiness in her heart. Day after day, year after year she had yearned to be reunited with her family. And yet, now, she found only despair. She wished for time to stand still, for the days to stretch on infinitely. She wished the end of May would never arrive. Falnir was so far away from Second Bridge; it seemed like a different world. How could she ever come to Annette’s house? If only Daddy would change his mind and take his wife and son back to Dubai.
She continued to run up to the Saldanah house every afternoon, but said nothing to her gang about moving. Every day, she counted the days left to be in Cyrus’s proximity. Would he miss her at all? Just a tiny bit? Even though she didn’t belong to his world of attractive, self-assured girls—girls who became class monitors and excelled at badminton and participated in school debates and danced gracefully in his arms at the Saldanah ball.
The day she dreaded came too soon; the more she wanted it to go in slow motion, the more it galloped to the finish line. That final afternoon, in a low voice, she told Annette that her family was moving to Falnir the next day.
“What!” cried Annette. “You bad girl. Why didn’t you tell us before?”
“Sorry.”
“Oh, I will miss you so much!” Annette wailed. “You will visit us, no?”
“I will try.”
The group continued to play their board games in silence. Cyrus refused to look up. His focus was entirely on his Ludo board, even when Annette sighed, and said, “Tara dear, you’ve made me so very sad today.”
“I wish you all the best, Tara,” said James, looking up from his board. “Annette, stop being a drama queen. Wish her good luck.”
That afternoon, Tara stayed as long as she could, through the anxious hours of being ignored by Cyrus. Eventually, she had to leave, or she would get into serious trouble at home. The girls hugged her. Even Mrs. Saldanha came out to say good-bye.
“Good-bye, sweet friend,” said Annette, planting a kiss on Tara’s cheek. “You are the nicest girl I have ever met. I am going to really, really miss you.”
Tara prepared to leave, then decided to linger a few minutes longer. Did she have the courage to say good-bye to Cyrus?
Annette noticed. “Cyrus,” she yelled. “Stop being a donkey, man. Say bye to Tara.”
Cyrus raised his head from his game and waved at Tara.
“Bye,” he said.
“Bye,” she whispered. There could be no more stalling. She embarked on the excruciating walk to the gate. So, this was it. She wondered if she should allow the tears she was holding back to flow. He hadn’t even said a proper good-bye. He had acted like she was invisible, like she didn’t matter, like all that teasing and wanting to be on her team was a joke. Yes, that is what she had been to him. A stupid, insignificant, irrelevant joke.
She pushed open the gate and fastened her pace once on the road. The sun was in the far west, the paved road that led to Morgan Hill almost deserted. She had gone a few yards down the street when she heard footsteps. They were close behind her, she could tell. She looked over her shoulder, too consumed with her turmoil to even be alarmed. Then, her breath caught in her chest. What was he doing following her? She stopped and looked at his tan shoes in utter bewilderment.
“May I walk with you till the end of the street?” he asked. She said nothing.
“May I?”
She nodded.
They walked in silence. The sound of their footsteps on tar amplified. She wondered what Grandfather Madhava or Daddy might say if they saw her walking down the street with a boy.
“God, why do you have to leave?” he said after a while.
“Because my family has come back. . . .” she started to say.
“Oh, I know that. But why do they have to move you so far away?”
She didn’t know how to respond to that.
“Star, I will miss you.”
Tara looked down at her feet, dumbfounded.
“I like you. Very much.” The intensity in his voice shocked her. She said nothing, her tongue was in knots.
“Do you like me?” he asked.
She opened her mouth to say something. But what? What was the appropriate thing to say? She felt his fingertips on her elbow. She recoiled; it was her stupid reflexes again. How was she going to muster enough courage to not behave like a completely terror-struck idiot?
Cyrus let go of her elbow. “Okay, okay, don’t be scared,” he said.
They continued to walk in silence, two unlikely figures in the early evening light. They were almost up to the end of the paved street, and the Pentecostal Church at the northern end of Morgan Hill loomed into view. He couldn’t possibly walk with her beyond the church. She stopped, and in a sudden burst of urgency, the courage she was searching for finally came to her lips.
“Yes,” she said.
“What?”
“Yes.”
“You like me?”
“Yes.”
From the corner of her eye, through her moist lashes, she saw Cyrus smile. It was the most heartwarming, disarming smile she had seen on a human face. He touched her cheek softly with the palm of his hand. This time she did not recoil.
“Can you look at me for a minute? Please?” he implored. She obeyed. He dropped his hand from her cheek, stuffed it in his pocket. “I’ve always wanted to tell you a little story. I will make it fast,” he said. “When I was little, my nanny had a framed picture of the Madonna in her room. It was a small print of a Renaissance painting, I think: Madonna with son, on a throne surrounded by white lilies. When I first saw you, Star, I was stunned. You look every bit like the Madonna in that picture, the same divine face. Unfortunately, Nanny took it with her when she left, or I would have brought it to show you.”
Cyrus touched her cheek again, then gently cupped her chin. She closed her eyes. She hoped nobody from her neighborhood would see her like this. She wished she could still the trembling of her foolish lips. She wondered if there were women at the nearby water station. She wished for the warmth of that hand to never leave her.
“You have an aura around you of deep peace. You are so different from the other girls, so unique. Don’t ever change, okay?”