The Henna Artist(78)

I was taking the coward’s way out, too: instead of confronting her in person, I talked to Parvati in my head. It’s your responsibility—not mine—to control your son! Look at the brilliant match I arranged for your family! And you repaid me by destroying everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve!

My only other option was to retaliate by telling all of Jaipur that her son seduced my thirteen-year-old sister, but it wouldn’t have helped. I would have come out worse, like a petty, vindictive crook. Even if the ladies believed me, they would be compelled to side with Parvati, one of their own. If their sons found themselves in similar straits (not that unlikely), they would need her support.

Malik visited me daily, even if we didn’t have appointments, to make sure I was eating. Today, he wafted a tiffin full of curried dumplings under my nose.

“Won’t you even try the kofta? Chef seasoned it with extra jeera.” His lucrative side business, selling supplies to the palace kitchen at cut rates, still earned him five-star meals from the palace chef.

I said nothing. I wiped perspiration from my neck with my old sari and kept grinding.

“Auntie-Boss, please.”

I told Malik I had no appetite.

He shook my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

“I told you! I don’t feel like eating.”

“Auntie-Boss?”

I turned to him, annoyed.

He tilted his chin at the door.

I followed his gaze.

Parvati Singh was standing at my threshold, a handbag slung over one arm, a dripping umbrella at her side. I had never, even in my dreams, expected to see her in my home. I released the pestle. It revolved around the inside of the bowl until it came to rest.

“May I come in?” she asked, her voice cool.

I watched Malik walk to the door and stand in front of Parvati, as if he meant to knock her down. She was forced to step back, in the corridor, to make room for him.

“Your shoes,” he said.

I thought she was going to argue, but she bent to remove her wet sandals.

Just outside the door, he stepped into his chappals and, with his head held high, walked out into the street. He had no umbrella; the warm rains never bothered him.

Parvati took a moment. Then she walked through the entry, majestic once more, as if it were her house and not mine. She closed the door, and stood. I watched as she inspected the room: the scarred table where I mixed the lotions, my sagging cot, the battered carriers, the folded, fading blankets, the almirah with the uneven doors I had bought from a neighbor. I cringed, seeing my possessions through her eyes.

“Hmm,” she said, “I’d expected...” She let the sentence hang.

She took a step toward me.

Instinctively, I took a step back.

She stopped.

Parvati set her handbag on the countertop and picked up a box of matches next to my lantern. “I had expected you to come to me,” she said as she lit the lantern and turned up the flame.

Until then, I hadn’t realized how dark it had grown inside. I stood still, unsure of myself.

“Always before you relied on me. Remember?” She blew the match out. “When you first came to Jaipur and you wanted to be introduced to society. Then to the palace. You’re an ambitious woman. I don’t hold that against you, you know.”

I looked at her. It was hard to tell whether she was smiling or frowning.

“Now that your business is failing, I thought at least you’d ask me to—”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! My hands curled into fists, and anger flared in my breast. “My business is failing because of you. And you want me to beg you to stop spreading lies about me?”

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted, much as Sheela Sharma’s did, in displeasure. “Did you for one moment consider,” she said, “that those rumors didn’t start with me?”

My surprise must have shown in my face.

“Not that I wasn’t happy to fan the flames,” she continued. “I had thought at least a portion of your clientele would think the accusations too ridiculous to believe. I was wrong. People are more gullible, and less compassionate, than any of us want to believe, don’t you agree?”

She reached into her handbag. When she pulled out her hand, her fingers were curled around an object. She slid her hand on the countertop toward me until her arm was stretched flat. Then she removed her hand.

The pocket watch Samir had given me lay between us.

Reflexively, I felt in my petticoat. It wasn’t there, of course. I hadn’t seen it for ages—hadn’t needed to be anywhere on time. Images came unbidden to my mind—Samir’s lips, his hands, our bare chests—from that night at Geeta’s. I hadn’t remembered picking up the watch when I left.

My courage evaporated—poof!—and my face flushed with heat.

Parvati shook her head in disappointment. “Geeta came to see me several months ago. Samir’s latest.” Her smile turned into a grimace. “Just how humiliating would it be for you to have your husband’s mistress come to you for comfort, to complain he’d been unfaithful, not to you, but to her?”

I shut my eyes. I wanted to forget that night ever happened.

She began pacing the room, restlessly, the way she had paced in front of her hearth at the holiday party. She was rubbing the knuckles of one hand against the other. She stopped suddenly to study the terrazzo floor, tilting her head. “Hmm.” She turned to me, nodded her head once, as if acknowledging my design.