The Vibrant Years(18)
Oh, he said peonies! Get your mind out of the gutter, Bindu!
“You okay, Bindu?”
She took the flowers from him. “Yes, of course. I love penis!” Shit. “I mean peonies.” She enunciated the o hard this time and turned away quickly. Had anyone considered how unfortunately named these poor flowers were?
He was laughing when he followed her into her open kitchen. “I love a woman with a dirty mind.”
All those shades of pink and magenta made a stunning contrast against the white quartz of her countertop. The sight made happiness glow inside her, and she used it to shove away her embarrassment.
“Let me find something to put your peonies in,” she said, barely enunciating the o this time, face absolutely straight. “Wouldn’t want any wilting.”
He barked out a delighted laugh. “That’s awfully kind of you. The propensity to wilt is the cruelest curse of these golden years.”
She filled a vase and met his eyes as she arranged the plump blooms in an alternating pattern. “With peonies this large, a little wilting is of no consequence,” she said, then burst into laughter.
“You’re a gift, woman. Has anyone told you that?” His face was ruddy with his laughter, as though they’d been walking on the beach under the burning sun.
A memory from her youth in Goa—the salty breeze of the Arabian Sea whipping her face and snarling her hair—rose so starkly inside her she had to catch her breath.
“No,” she said, the words leaving her before she could swallow them, “but I’ve been told I’m trouble.”
“Oh, you’re most definitely that too,” he said, holding out his hand.
Holding hands was such a childish thing, or a little too American, and she wasn’t sure she could do it. Rajendra had never held hands with her. Given how much sex they’d had, that realization made her suddenly and inexplicably sad.
She took his hand. It was tough and papery at the same time, like holding bunched-up newsprint. She imagined how many times his hands might have crushed up paper in frustration over words not doing his bidding, an image she’d seen in so many films.
But there was warmth under the leathery flesh. Life, even after more of it had been lived than was left to live.
He squeezed her hand and brought it to his lips and dropped a kiss on her knuckles. Oh yes, this man was definitely expecting more than just dinner tonight. The thought made her smile. A lifetime ago she’d loved this mix of power and nerves. Now it made feathery wings flutter in her belly.
“Let’s get that dinner warmed up, shall we?” She’d cooked the meal yesterday. She was no longer young enough to cook all day, clean herself up, and have the energy to be charming at the end of it all. That had been her job for twenty-two years. She’d done it excellently and for long enough that it was well and truly out of her system.
Managing your energy and your assets was the key to aging right.
“Yes, please. Before my belly starts to growl,” he said. “If I eat too late, I fall asleep right after. And I’m not planning on that.” The suggestive smile on his deeply lined face made his shaking just a little bit worse.
Relax, tiger. “We can’t have that, can we now?”
When she turned to the kitchen, he tried to follow. “How can I help?”
Ah, how she loved the 2020s. If Rajendra Desai hadn’t died over two decades ago, the fact that men were now expected to help in the kitchen would certainly have killed him.
“Why don’t you open the wine.” She pointed to the minimalist wine rack on the kitchen island, one of Cullie’s many housewarming gifts. “Pour us some, and regale me with stories of your National Book Award speech.”
It was his favorite thing to talk about. Throwing her a look the most devout of worshippers saved up for goddesses, he got right to it.
If someone had told Bindu that she’d ever go on a date after she lost her husband, she would have called them delusional. When she was growing up, talking to a man she wasn’t related to would have earned her a beating from her mother, so dating was an entirely foreign concept then. All she’d seen of love came from the movies her grandmother sneaked her into, the outwardly quiet yet inwardly volcanic form of love from Indian cinema of the sixties and seventies.
Then, at seventeen, she’d exposed herself to ruination. Rajendra had swooped in out of nowhere and married her and saved her from destroying her family’s honor. Bindu had spent every single day of their marriage making it worth his while.
If gratitude were love, she’d loved him enough to last her a lifetime. It took an effort to shove away the sense of loss that had recently taken to rising inside her when she thought about her marriage, but she refused to disrupt the memories. Refused to think of them as anything but happy. What was the point of examining your past?
It was something Rajendra had said to her over and over as he unmolded and remolded her. You are not that person anymore. Forgive yourself. What is the point of examining your past?
Now, here she was, with a man named Richard eating her up with the bluest eyes as she moved around her kitchen in a hot-pink dress that showed enough cleavage that it would have caused her mother to disown her. Even now, all these decades later, making jokes about her mother disowning her felt, as the kids said, too soon. It made nausea churn in Bindu’s belly, and she pushed it away, choosing instead to focus on how funny Aie’s disapproval of her clothes had felt, years before it morphed into shame at having borne a daughter she’d only ever seen as a whore after one youthful mistake.