The Candid Life of Meena Dave(11)

CHAPTER SIX


The mid-October day was warm and sunny as Meena walked toward Back Bay from Kenmore Square. Her meeting with a broker had gone better than expected, and Clifton Warney was confident the place would be rented within a week of being on the market. He was eager to see it, but Meena needed a few days to clear out some of Neha’s things.

As she crossed to the center path of Commonwealth Avenue, the street grew quieter. The large tree-lined mall was bursting with autumn colors. Leaves in shades of amber, gold, and brown clung desperately to the drying branches, delaying their inevitable fall to the ground. She navigated around tourists who stopped to take photos of various statues. The Boston Women’s Memorial seemed to be the most popular, with mothers and daughters posing next to the three bronze sculptures.

It was something her father would have done, made Meena and Hannah stand there as he took endless shots with his 35 millimeter. He’d loved his camera, had shown Meena how to use it when she’d been a curious eight-year-old. She’d received her very own for her fifteenth birthday. She’d had it for a little over a year before the explosion took it, along with all their family photographs. Meena rubbed her knuckles against her chest to ease the tightening.

Heritage. She didn’t have one. Not in the genetic sense. She was who her parents had raised her to be. Sunday Mass, PB&Js in her brown-bag lunch. Books where the parents looked like hers, but she didn’t resemble the children. She wouldn’t let it be important. She’d been loved. That was the only thing that mattered.

You and I, Meena, are dreamers, her father would say.

And I’m here to make sure you can do, her mother would add. Dreams do not put food on the table.

Meena pushed away the memory to focus on the practical things like getting the apartment ready for renters. She also wanted to pull apart the significance of the note card she’d found that morning, this one in the bottom of a trinket box.

The women of this building are in charge, the husbands superfluous. The husbands married into the history of EH but did not have the same care or responsibilities. The running and keeping of EH is for the women directly descended from the original engineers.

Meena let her thoughts percolate as she walked away from Commonwealth Avenue and onto Newbury Street. Just a block over, the street changed significantly, shoppers laden with bags browsing the lunch menus of the numerous cafés along their way. The shop windows showcased mannequins in sportswear, evening gowns, and everything in between. Each low-rise building was neatly packed, snug against the next, with stores on the top two floors, a restaurant in the basement.

Meena rarely shopped. She didn’t need anything more than a few pairs of jeans, versatile yoga pants, T-shirts, sweaters, a multipurpose black dress for formal things or business meetings, and a coat. A pair of sneakers and her sturdy boots got her through most of the terrain she covered. If she needed something different, she got it from wherever she was, like a headscarf in a Muslim country or all-weather gloves in Kyiv. She would sell things back or give them away as she went.

Most of what she owned was what she needed for work. Two cameras, favorite Canon lenses, the Canon fixed 35 millimeter and fixed 50 millimeter, along with her laptop and charger, camera batteries, memory cards, off-camera flash cord, and various cables and external hard drives, and the other pieces of equipment she had to buy when an assignment called for it.

Meena paused in front of Sephora. Her one indulgence was makeup. She had a small pouch of lipsticks, liners, mascara, and moisturizers. She always had gloss in her jacket pocket. It made her feel better, brighter, when she had a pop of color on her lips.

Her mother had been the same. Hannah Dave had never left her bedroom without being fully made up. From the soft waves of her auburn hair to the dab of Chanel No. 5 behind her ears, she was always ready for company.

It’s the sign of a woman who takes care of herself. For Hannah, the time she spent getting ready was only for herself, an hour to focus on the external parts of her, from moist skin to brushed eyebrows. The scent of Pond’s Cold Cream put Meena right back into that bedroom.

The wind whipped her loose hair into her face, and she brushed it away as she headed back toward the Engineer’s House. Meena’s mind wandered back to Neha. Without photos or anything more on the internet, Meena had spent a bit of time imagining what Neha looked like. She pictured a stout woman with frizzy hair. There hadn’t been any makeup in the apartment, only a serviceable moisturizer, soap, and a two-in-one shampoo/conditioner. She could have been tall based on the length of the pants in the closet, and broad shouldered.

A cursory search of the apartment gave only a few clues to the woman. Colorful sweaters in her closet, plain pants and skirts. The pantry full of canned and boxed goods, the fridge bare, though one of the aunties had likely cleaned it out. Furniture packed so closely it left little open space, but the apartment wasn’t cluttered or messy.

“Wally, wait.”

Meena braced as the puppy came barreling toward her, shifting her weight to both feet. She squatted as the dog threw himself into her. Excited and happy. She gave him rubs, scratches, and coos. “Hi, Wally. Hi.”

She glanced up as Sam stood over them. “Why is it that he’s always trying to escape?”

“Because I’m the one that tells him no, makes him get off the couch, stops him from chewing on things that aren’t his toys.”