The Vibrant Years(50)
“Is it bad?” Bindu asked, trying to suppress the prickle of irritation.
She was not going to think about the parijat flowers from her garden or how she’d picked them for Oscar. It had been too many years since she’d smelled the intoxicating scent or thought about how he had looked at the fragile garland of the orange-stemmed white blooms as she held it out to him.
Leaning over, Bindu smelled the expanse of roses packed together to create an ombré effect, from a deep red to a pure white in an almost perfect fade. “It seemed sweet enough to me. Albeit a bit grandiose.”
“Grandiose is one way to put it,” Alisha said.
“Cheesy is another,” Cullie added.
They were in fine form today.
Bindu ached to join in their laughter, but she couldn’t seem to find her way there. “Maybe you two need to be a bit more generous.” She tried not to snap.
“Sorry,” Cullie said, looking anything but apologetic. “I didn’t realize the difference between a date who sends you two hundred roses and one who exposes you to biohazardous conditions was a matter of generosity.”
“I’m not asking you to be generous to Noseless Veterinarian.” In fact, if Bindu got her hands on the man, she was going to knee him in the gonads. “I can’t believe you went to his house with him,” Bindu said. Usually, she worried that Cullie trusted no one, but knowing whom to protect yourself from and whom to trust: that was the vital thing. A thing Bindu had learned a little too early in life. Or maybe too late.
Alisha and Cullie exchanged a look that said Bindu couldn’t possibly understand their plight. Why, because of some chocolates and roses?
“It’s easy for you to judge, Binji,” Cullie said. “You’ve never done anything stupid in your life.”
Bindu knew Cullie meant it as a compliment, but her words fell on Bindu like the slice of a knife. She turned to Alisha but found no understanding there either.
“This comes easy to you, Ma. Making friends, men, dating. It’s a good thing. We wish we could be like you.”
“Dating? Until six months ago, I’d never been on a date in my life!” They knew this.
“And yet look at the flowers littering this place,” Cullie said. “You don’t know what it’s like to be stuck in a humiliating situation, to not know how to get out of it.”
Bindu swallowed back the laugh that threatened to burst from her. If she didn’t swallow it back, she was going to cackle like someone who’d lost their hold on reality.
“Remember the man who packed up my leftovers, including my half-eaten bread, and took it home? After he’d made me pay for dinner,” Alisha went on. “And the one who spent the entire time filling me in over coffee on all the foods that gave him gas. I get scavengers and flatulents, and you get extravagant gifters and Hallmark poets.”
Bindu looked from one teasing face to the other. Her girls, who were her whole life, the two people in the world who knew her best, knew nothing about her.
Cullie doubled over with laughter, and Alisha smacked her on the back.
“I still can’t believe you waited until he shoved poop in your nose to run!” Alisha said.
They shuddered in unison through what they thought was humiliation. What would they think if they knew what real humiliation looked like?
Bindu manufactured a smile, but it took everything she had.
Alisha and Cullie studied her as though they’d suddenly noticed that she wasn’t with them. Why isn’t this cracking you up? their curious gazes asked.
“Listen,” Bindu said. “It’s been two bad dates and a few underwhelming exchanges over the phone. We’re doing this for Cullie’s app, remember?” Her eyes slid from Alisha to Cullie.
One of the reasons Bindu had suggested helping was that both Alisha and Cullie needed to get out more. To live more. She didn’t want them to reach sixty-five and have this sense of having let life pass them by.
“We can’t stop until Cullie has what she needs. And if we find love along the way, that’s just a bonus.”
Alisha’s eyes went round with horror. Bindu might as well have suggested mud wrestling, which honestly wouldn’t be a bad thing for Alisha to try. “I am most certainly not looking for love,” Alisha said as though her dearest wish was to undo the time she had been in love. “Before we go on, I need both of you to be very clear on that. I’m only doing this to help Cullie get something to NewReal.”
“Breathe, Mom. It won’t kill you to believe in a little magic.” Those were the most uncharacteristic words that had ever come out of her granddaughter. Had she just used the word magic?
Cullie noticed the shock on Bindu’s face. “It’s not like we’re asking you to skydive out of a plane,” she added, throwing in a little more of her usual prickliness. Did she think Bindu was that easy to fool?
Alisha studied the roses as though something about them had turned suddenly disturbing. “Honestly, it feels like you are.”
“It’s dating, Alisha!” Bindu snapped, mood cartwheeling again. “How can you compare it to jumping out of a plane? It’s just being able to go out and enjoy someone’s company and maybe find someone who makes you feel seen. And you have limitless choice.” She spun around, such annoyance burning in her that Alisha stepped back from the ferocity of it.