The Vibrant Years(72)

He didn’t stop her. It’s seven five two, he’d said as she tried to make her escape. My room number. In case anyone else catches you sneaking around.

Bindu sat up in bed, heart hammering, and wrapped her arms around herself. Don’t check your phone.

But there it was, another email from Oscar’s grandson. Expecting him to leave her alone forever had been naive.

She opened it.

Please, just meet me once. Just one conversation.

Over her cold dead body.

The pain of the good memories was crushing, a vise around her chest that she had to breathe around. Touching the ugly parts was out of the question. She had to find a way to get him to leave her alone before her family found out. Before Ashish found out.

The idea of any of this touching her son made her want to scream.

God, she hated men.

Great, now she sounded like the new generation. Casual in their use of powerful words.

I hate broccoli, Cullie used to say.

No, Cullie, you don’t like the taste of broccoli. That’s not hate.

I hate my computer science teacher.

No, Cullie, your computer science teacher is jealous of you and wants to prove his superiority, and his behavior hurts you. That’s not hate.

Hatred was when you felt no pain when madness and death came for your mother.

Hatred was telling your daughter that she deserved to be sold at a brothel down in Baina Beach.

Hatred was what you felt for yourself for not knowing who your son’s father was. And for hiding that from him his entire life.

Stop it. She rubbed her arms and tried to find her armor again. This was not the time to lay it down.

There were two other emails, one from Ashish and one from Jane with Connie cc’d. Pickleball tonight?

Bindu had been avoiding her Sunny Widows. She didn’t want to talk about Richard. Didn’t want to be on the courts with judgment being lobbed at her along with the damn ball. But they hadn’t been judgmental. They’d given her space, reached out without being intrusive.

She sent off a reply saying she’d see them tonight and then opened Ashish’s email.

Richard Langley’s children just put out a statement. He’d attached a link to the Miami Herald.

“Leave me alone,” Bindu said to the phone and got out of bed without clicking the link.

It was still dark outside. Bindu found her way to the living room by the light of her phone so she wouldn’t wake Ashish. He was fast asleep on the couch, long hair obscuring most of his beloved face. The quilt had slid off him, and she tucked it back around him. He’d been working late into the night, headphones pulled over his ears, fingers flying on his laptop.

Something fundamental in him seemed to have changed. He was thoughtful about what he said. He helped around the house. He’d even stopped looking like she was embarrassing him when she put on her dresses.

Bindu had a nagging suspicion he was regretting his recklessness with the divorce. As though marriage were playing house and divorce a tantrum.

Making chai would be too noisy, so she grabbed a glass of water and studied the fridge full of fish and meat that she’d bought yesterday. A smile nudged at her. Could there be anything more heartwarming than the fact that Cullie was bringing a friend home, and he loved Goan food?

Today Bindu was going to forget about everything else and cook for her granddaughter. She had it all planned out. Mutton xacuti, prawns kissmoor, and fried fish. And of course made-from-scratch bebinca.

Helping raise Cullie had been the happiest part of Bindu’s life, so uncomplicated and pure it had reset her. Cullie’s birth swallowed up the insidious emptiness that had crept in after Rajendra didn’t wake up one morning. There was something about being a grandparent that freed you from the mistakes of being a parent.

For some reason one got to be much more intentional about it, much less driven by emotion. Much more gentle and driven by love, which constituted wisdom, she supposed. Taking long naps with baby Cullie snuggled next to her when Alisha and Ashish went to work, delighting in her brilliant mind when she started to pick up the world around her, even soothing her when she struggled. All of it had come with not a flicker of doubt or stress.

Raising Ashish had been fraught with second-guessing herself. Until this moment, she hadn’t realized how much energy it had taken to navigate Rajendra’s silent scrutiny of her parenting. But it had been proof of his love for his son, and she’d held that tight.

When she’d moved to America, she left all that behind. For twenty-three years, their family had rambled through the hike that was life, but the rise and fall had been gentle. Mostly because of Alisha’s limitless ability for love. Until Ashish put his decision to “return home” above his family, Bindu had never had the courage to poke at the complicated thing her own marriage had been. There were things about how her son had behaved in his marriage that threw a spotlight on the dark corners of her own marriage that she’d tried so hard to block out.

“Ma?” Ashish said from the couch. “What time is it?”

It was barely five a.m. She should go back to bed and let Ashish get some sleep. But she wanted to get her day started.

“Why don’t you go into my bedroom and sleep. The noise won’t disturb you there.”

He rose, blanket trailing, hair in his eyes, face creased on his sleeping side. Instead of going to the room, he wrapped his arms around her and dropped a kiss on her head. “I love you, Ma.”