The Vibrant Years(68)

Ashish had made sure she had an unending supply. He’d had a client in Gainesville. He’d work twelve-hour days all week and fly back for the weekend on Friday evenings. He’d never come home without a box of cookies.

When they’d first met, he’d found it hilarious that oatmeal raisin was her favorite cookie.

Why is that funny? she’d asked.

Because it’s so apt. If you were a cookie, of course you’d be oatmeal raisin.

Because it’s delicious?

Because it’s the most sensible cookie. I mean, it’s practically a granola bar.

The answer should have upset her, but it had made her feel like he got her.

What would you be if you were a cookie? she’d asked him.

You tell me.

A macaron.

He’d grinned. Because I’m beautiful and fancy?

No, because you’re frivolous and entirely nuts. She hadn’t known then that, like a macaron, he wouldn’t last. Macarons, too, tended to be gone too fast.

She’d been sick and oddly lonely through her pregnancy. Until she’d had to get off her feet in the last trimester and Bindu had taken a flight from Mumbai to take care of her. Aly’s own mother had been busy with caring for her father one town over. Not because Daddy was sick but because he needed her to.

When Aly didn’t open the bag, Ashish took it back and opened it. “You can eat one and give the rest to Ma and Cullie.” He held one out and said in the tone that had gotten her to do all the things she would never have tried if not for him.

She snatched the cookie and took a bite, resisting the urge to put the entire thing in her mouth, then rage eat the whole box.

“You look good,” he said. Throwing the words out quickly, as though he knew he shouldn’t be saying them but couldn’t help himself. That pretty much described everything he’d done toward the end of their marriage.

“Can we not do this today, Ashish?” Actually, could they just never do this. Ever.

“What happened?” he asked.

She stared at the road. She shouldn’t have said the word today—that had to be what tipped him off.

You goaded me into the most humiliating experience of my life.

Your mother has inherited my boss’s child’s inheritance.

“I just spoke to Mummy.” Why did she settle on that? When she should not have said anything at all. But being able to say the words without having to modulate her tone made her giddy with the oxygen that hit her lungs. One of the gifts of their marriage had been how well Ashish understood the snarled-up tangle that was her relationship with her mother.

“How are they?” His voice was odd. He was obviously trying to figure out if she knew that he talked to her parents.

“You tell me. You talk to them more than I do.”

“You live with my mother.” There was anger in his voice. His all-the-suppressed-things tone.

“Lived.”

“It’s just physical separation of spaces. It doesn’t change anything.” Was he talking about them? They were divorced. Or hadn’t he noticed? Or did he mean Bindu? Or both?

It was obvious from his face that something was bothering him. She refused to fall into the pattern of being his fixer.

“Ma seems different. In that condo.” He frown-smiled. “It’s funny, right?”

“Is it?”

“Come on, Aly. I mean, it’s Ma. Those dresses. The dates. I can barely recognize her.”

“Actually, she seems more herself than I’ve ever seen her be before.”

His smile turned incredulous, and Aly braced herself for something about her turning everything into “psychobabble about identity.”

Instead he said, “It’s strange how you two—now three—support each other at the cost of everyone else.”

At the cost of everyone else? “She’s living her life, enjoying opportunities she’s never had before. Why is that a problem?”

He let out a bitter laugh. “Living her life? Or is she trying out someone else’s life? What was wrong with her life with us?”

What he meant: Why was it not enough for Bindu to be his mother, his father’s wife, his daughter’s grandmother? Just the way he’d wanted Aly to be his wife, his mother’s daughter-in-law, his daughter’s mother first.

“Why does her life have to be only what fits yours? Why should you decide which life is hers to want? How long does she have to fit the role you’ve set? She’s a whole person. Why does she have to put that away to make you feel loved?”

Instead of looking like she was attacking him and attacking back, he paused. Was he thinking about it? Ashish never thought about things she said. His only defense, ever, was offense.

His brows drew together, his lips pursed. Her words seemed to have hit something inside him. “Why do roles feel like bondage to you? Men have predefined roles too. Don’t you think we struggle with them too?”

He’d always told her that she’d been able to quit her job and follow her passion because he held down his job, because he sacrificed his passion and did what needed to be done for their family.

If you decided to follow your passion, I would support you, she’d said.

But I won’t because I care about what this family needs, he’d responded.

When he’d decided to move back to India, he’d thrown that back at her, extracting his pound of flesh. You said you’d support me if I decided to follow my passion. Now I am. Let’s go back home.