The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(86)

Vijay shrugs again. “I guess she had some stretches where she was lucid and had her shit together. Right before she died, she had a stretch that lasted a few days—maybe a week. She was clean and yelling at Mathieu all the time to get the drugs out of the house. It was so loud. One of the old neighbors kept coming down and telling them to be quiet, but she was kind of a nuisance anyway, so they never listened to her. There was food in the fridge every day because she wasn’t off on those benders and losing track of time. She kept talking about going to India and what a great life we would have there. Saying it never snowed or got cold. That I’d have a big sister to take care of me. Guess that was you.”

“What happened then? If she had a plan to come back?” Sophie is desperate to learn every detail of why Nita and Vijay never made it back to India.

“Who knows? She and Mathieu had some big fight, and he stormed out of the apartment. She was shaking and agitated and said I needed to take a nap while she relaxed. I woke up and was hungry and kept trying to wake her up. No one else was home. After I couldn’t wake her for a while, I was so hungry that I went to the neighbor across the way and asked him if they had any bread or cheese I could eat, and then he followed me back and called the police. They came and stuck her on a stretcher and carried her out. Mathieu had come home around that time and was wailing about her being gone and telling me that it must have been something I did to cause her to take too much. Maybe I had been crying too loudly or whatever. That she knew the right dosage, and I must have distracted her.” The disgust and pain on his face are evident as he speaks of Mathieu.

“I’m sure it was nothing to do with you,” Sophie says quickly, already feeling a sense of responsibility toward him. “It sounds like she was in a bad place. Maybe even before she left India. But it wasn’t anything to do with you.”

“Yeah, maybe. She was an addict, so maybe it was silly for her to think she could ever have gotten clean. Dad kept trying to tell me all this good stuff about her, but all I could remember was her being an addict.”

Vijay tries to make light of the heavy subject, but Sophie can see in his expression that he has thought often of this time in his life and has many demons surrounding it.

“How did you end up with Simon?”

A wry smile crosses his face. “Mathieu only lasted for a few months as a single parent. And even then, Dad took care of me most of that time. Sometimes Aunt Dao helped, too, but mostly just Simon. One day Simon packed up my things and said I was going to go live with him. I was so happy to get out of there, I never questioned it. I think Mathieu was high when we left, so maybe he didn’t even remember it happened. I saw him every now and then after that. He came by the apartment a few times and yelled at Simon. Once, he tried to convince me to leave with him, but I knew better. And Simon wouldn’t have let him take me, anyway.”

Sophie wants to put her arms around Vijay and offer him the love and comfort he hadn’t received from his parents. They are two orphans, bound by blood, and she feels an instinct to protect him. They both lost fathers they loved. They both grew up without their mother. Their circumstances were so different and yet so similar.

“Have you kept in touch with him? Mathieu?”

Vijay scoffs. “Never seen him since we moved here. Don’t know where he is, and don’t care. Simon’s the only dad I need. And I’ve got Grams, so I really don’t need anything else.”

Sophie looks around the room. “This does seem like a great family and good place to grow up.”

“It was better than where I was, that’s for sure.”

Sophie realizes that behind his blasé, carefree demeanor is a very emotionally mature man. One who struggled and saw more adversity in the first few years of his life than she has seen in all twenty-eight years of hers. It was naive of her to think she could protect him, because he has already learned to protect himself and has been doing it for far longer than Sophie has. He has been forced to develop a perspective that she is only now grappling with. There is quite a lot that she can learn from this young brother of hers.

“And Simon and our mummy? They were friends?” she asks.

“Yeah, I guess so. I remember Dad always being around before she died. He brought me toys from California a couple times. Maman always said he was a nice man and I should learn those qualities from him.” He fidgets in his beanbag. “Truth is that after she died, I could tell he didn’t like talking about it. We moved here so Grams could help out, I think. Dad might not have been ready to have a kid when he ended up with one.”

Sophie smooths the comforter beneath her. “Did you ever wonder about your other family? The side from India?”

“Dad and Grams became my family. I didn’t need anyone else, so why bother wondering about it?”

Sophie tries not to appear wounded. She cannot fault Vijay for not feeling the same way about her that she does about him. He still has family. He’s not as desperate for a connection as she is.

“Now that you do know about me”—she tentatively meets his eyes—“I hope we can get to know each other more. There are relatives in India—”

He holds up a hand to stop her. “Look, I kind of said before that I’ve got all the family I need. Maybe you’ve got better memories of Maman than I do, but either way, I said goodbye to her and everything that came with her a long time ago, and I don’t see any reason to go back.”