The Vibrant Years(16)
“I was able to book an interview with Meryl Streep.” Ah, forget it, she let all the excitement racing through her show in her voice and bounced in her seat. She couldn’t bring herself to add that she might not get to do the interview herself.
“Meryl!” Bindu said, her film-buff eyes lighting up like sparklers. “You’re bringing them the mother lode. How can those idiots not know what they have in you!” The fierceness in her voice burned through some of the awkwardness they’d been tiptoeing around recently. It was this contrast between Bindu’s unconditional support and the impenetrable skepticism Aly always got from her own mother that had made her spend the past twenty-five years hero-worshipping her mother-in-law.
Aly missed that. Missed the woman who’d been her rock for so long. The woman sitting across from her was still her Ma, but a chilly air curtain seemed to have fallen between them, even though they continued to behave as though nothing had changed.
Bindu slipped her credit card to the waiter, a tall blond surfer type. Aly could swear he blushed when Bindu smiled at him.
“Before I go, Ma . . . um . . .” Ugh, she hesitated.
Bindu slid her a sharp glance. Dammit, she knew exactly what was coming. Aly cleared her throat and soldiered on, because one had to do what one had to do. “Stacy from the HOA called. You’ve been ignoring their emails again.”
“Did she now?” Bindu laughed her disinterested laugh and wiped a nonexistent spot off her big white patent leather bag. “I have a joke for you. It’s a good one. I read it on Facebook: What do you call a coven of Karens?” She paused for the punch line. “An HOA.”
Despite herself, Aly smiled. She found it particularly funny that her mother’s name had suddenly taken on such pop-culture significance despite the fact she was an Indian Catholic woman from Goa. Still oddly fitting.
“No offense to our Karen, of course,” Bindu added with a knowing smirk. “What did the coven complain about this time?”
The blushing waiter brought their bill back, and Bindu signed it with the flourish of a star signing an autograph.
“I know you enjoy annoying them, and I understand the sentiment, truly I do. But why would you hang bras to dry in your lanai? You know they have that right at the top of their bylaws.” Aly felt like she was at Cullie’s middle school, trying to explain to the principal that the other child had been calling Cullie offensive names for months before Cullie had hacked into her email and leaked the terrible things she’d been saying about people to the entire school.
“Don’t you think it’s a particularly stupid thing to have at the top of the bylaws? This is Florida. The lanai is the best place to dry your underthings. Also, Vanessa only complained because her husband bought me two margaritas and danced with me at last week’s happy hour mixer. One would think she’d be relieved to have him off her hands for a bit. He looks like a mole rat. And he wants to be a naked mole rat, if you know what I mean.” Bindu wiggled her brows.
“Ma! They’ve been married fifty years!” But God help her, she laughed.
“And isn’t that punishment enough?” Bindu went on, studying her french manicure. “Fifty years! If the man wants to dance with a woman who can actually dance, why would you deny him that?”
“This is the twelfth complaint in the past six months.” Aly tried not to sound exasperated.
“And every one of them is from one of the Grumpy Wives. The Sunny Widows love me.”
“That’s because you have them acting like you.”
“What does that mean, Alisha?” Bindu pulled on her very trendy aviator sunglasses. Aly believed herself to be the kind of woman who was comfortable with having a mother-in-law who was hotter than she was and way more glamorous, but sometimes it was a lot. “Being a widow does not mean we’re dead. It is not our fault that society encourages women to marry older men and then they go and kick the bucket years before we do, leaving us behind to count our toes.”
Bindu had been widowed young, but she’d never been a Tragic Widow. Ashish’s father had died before Aly married Ashish, but from everything Aly had heard—and from everything her ex-husband had internalized about marriage from his parents—Bindu’s husband had obviously been a man who expected the world to revolve around him.
“You’re the one who wanted to live in Shady Palms,” Aly said, cracking open Pandora’s box.
Bindu had moved in with Aly and Ashish during Aly’s last trimester with Cullie, halfway through grad school. If not for Bindu, they would have had to change course on all their dreams.
People tended to have a range of reactions to Aly’s living with her mother-in-law after her divorce, everything from horror to envy. But Aly had known no other life. All through Aly and Ashish’s almost twenty-three-year-long marriage, twelve years in Fort Lauderdale and almost eleven years in Naples, Bindu had been part of their household.
After the divorce, Bindu had asked Aly what she wanted.
Please don’t leave me, Aly had blurted out. Words she would never have said if the idea of more change hadn’t made her feel like throwing up, words that would have killed Aly from mortification had she said them to a single other person on earth.
Bindu had stayed and made sure Aly’s shock at Ashish’s betrayal didn’t suck her into the darkness that descended around her after the eerily quiet conversation with Ashish that ended their marriage. Then that stupid argument with Bindu had changed everything yet again, with just as much lack of drama.