The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(78)

She gingerly pushes the door open wider and finds Dao rummaging through a small navy-blue suitcase that looks worn and old. There are some canvases leaning against the wall behind her.

Dao looks up to greet her. She stops rifling through the suitcase, and her hand flutters to her heart. “You really do look just like your mother did. Your hair is straighter than hers was. She had these waves in her hair that would form like magic even when she air-dried her hair, but your features are identical.”

Sophie’s cheeks warm. Speaking of Nita had always been taboo in her home, but she’d often heard relatives whisper the same sentiment when they thought she wasn’t listening. “It must be hard for Rajiv to have the ghost of Nita in his house,” they’d say. Sophie had wanted to look like Nita—it was a way to feel close to her—but also didn’t want to cause Papa any more pain, so she’d always been conflicted when someone made a comment about her resemblance. Hearing Dao, who knew a completely different side of Nita, say it in a positive way is refreshing.

“I wish I had known her better,” Sophie says, approaching Dao and the suitcase on the small dining table between them. She sees that it is from the set Papa had used. “The woman I remember is so different from the one you knew.”

Dao cocks her head sympathetically and motions for Sophie to sit before taking the seat next to her. She puts her hand on Sophie’s forearm.

“None of us are just one thing,” she says. “Your mother was as complex as I’m sure you are. I’m certain that was true of her time in India and her time in France.”

Sophie isn’t so sure. As she looks back on her own life, it feels very one note. But this journey she’s been on since Papa passed has changed her. In ways she likely has not even processed yet, but she sees her flaws more clearly now and sees strengths she never knew she had.

“What do you remember most about her?” Sophie asks.

Dao’s brow furrows as she ponders the question. “I think the thing that stood out most, especially toward the end, was that she was lost.”

Sophie straightens. “What do you mean?” Sophie’s memories of Nita are of a bold, self-assured woman.

Dao stares at the suitcase on the table in front of them. “She always seemed like she was in control. But as you got to know her, as you got past the exterior, she seemed scared and lost. From that first moment when I met her at the hostel, her jaw was set in determination that she had made the right decision to come to Paris. But when she thought no one was looking, you’d see her eyes flicker with the insecurity and doubt of a child. She was like that until the last conversation I had with her, when she told me she was going back to India. That day, I felt that her steely gaze and set jaw were more than an act and were genuine. I could see how badly she wanted to pull herself out of the spiral that time. Now, having met you, I wonder if she was lost because she had left you and felt restored after deciding to go back to you. She loved Vijay so deeply that I’m sure she felt the same way about you. It must have devastated her to leave you like she did.”

Sophie lets Dao’s words sink into her. It seems senseless that Nita stayed away if she felt so lost. Sophie, too, had felt lost after she left, and they could have found their way home through each other rather than spending the rest of their lives apart. Sophie will never know what motivated Nita to stay away for so long or what caused her to decide to come back. There is some comfort in knowing that she had planned to return, though. Sophie was wanted, and she just needed someone in Nita’s Paris life to tell her that she hadn’t been forgotten. There is no worse feeling than thinking your mummy has left you, and the feeling has gnawed at Sophie until this moment. She feels herself start to release tension that had woven its way into every fiber of her being since she had found those letters.

“I thought she had left because of me,” Sophie says softly, not realizing until the words are out that she had felt that way. “That I must have done something to make her unhappy. To make her go away.”

Dao shakes her head emphatically.

“How can you be so certain?” Sophie asks, her voice small and innocent, just like she is six years old again. “She didn’t even mention me for all the years you knew her.”

Dao stands and moves toward the wall on which the canvases rest with their backs to the room. She brings them over and turns them so Sophie can see. Sophie’s eyes drift to the one of her as a little girl with Nita’s bangles strewn around her and a look of disappointment on her face because she knew she would be scolded. She remembers that day so well and is surprised to see a painting of it. She had been five years old and had snuck into Nita’s wardrobe room and pulled all the bangles from their neat rows and jumbled them in a pile on the floor, a colorful mess of glass circles in varying thicknesses. Nita’s face had been soft initially, so Sophie didn’t realize she had done anything wrong. And then Nita’s face grew dark, and she jerked Sophie up from the floor, chastising her for having made such a mess. “Your papa likes order,” she said. “You must never disturb that!” Sophie had sulked away with tears in her eyes for having disappointed her parents. She heard the gentle clink of the bangles as Nita sorted them and put them back neatly in rows organized by color.

The other was of her sitting on the hichko in the front yard of their bungalow with her small feet barely dangling off. She must be three or four years old in that painting. She has spent so many hours on that bench swing since that time. Sophie has fond memories of Nita sitting with her chai on the hichko, and ever since she left, Sophie has sat on that swing to feel closer to her, the same way she stared out the kitchen window where Nita had kept her easel in the bungalow.