The Vibrant Years(96)
It was always your money. I added your actor’s fee to it and put it away in your name and let it grow. If you needed it during your marriage and if it would have given you freedom, then I’m sorry I didn’t tell you it was there. I didn’t know how to. Not without breaking my promise to you that I’d stay out of your life.
It makes me happy that it’s yours now. I hope you were able to do something wonderful for yourself with it. I suspect you’ve lived a life that was every bit as beautiful and honest as you. I imagine the kind of mother you are, the kind of grandmother, and I ache with envy for those who got to be around you.
But I would not change what happened between us. You are and always were my Poornima. I would not exchange a second of the time I spent with you for all the wealth in the world. I would not part with the fullness of one of those moments when you let me into your limitless heart. I don’t know if what we had was love, but if it wasn’t, then I’ve never felt love in my life.
Thank you for showing me.
Eternally yours,
Ashishchandra
He’d signed it as Ashishchandra, the love of Poornima’s life. The man he’d played when he was hers.
Could your whole body hurt from regret? Could your tears parch you but also wash away a lifetime of grief? She put away the letter and stroked the paper-thin fossils of her past in those parijat petals. Fire blooms. Then she went to the bathroom and splashed her face until the sore throbbing had washed from her swollen eyes.
She’d asked everyone to leave her alone in the condo when she watched the film. She’d promised she would call after. Ashish had gone home with Alisha, Cullie with Rishi. Her family, complete in this moment of happiness. So what if it was fleeting? All we have is now anyway.
Her finger hovered over Lee’s number on her phone. The need to talk to him burned softly in her heart, to tell him, to bounce her feelings off him to give them form and weight, to have him listen and color them in with his insight. He’d told her he loved her a few nights ago. She hadn’t been able to say it back, but she suspected that she did love him.
The three men who had claimed to love her before this, their love had been about them. She’d brought Oscar’s art to fruition. She’d given Rajendra an outlet for his sexual fantasies. She’d given Richard his muse back—for the umpteenth time in his life, if his five ex-wives were to be believed.
It was strange to count Richard with Oscar and Rajendra, but the fool had left her all his money. Even if it was only to use her as a giant raised middle finger for his family. A smile spread across her face. Well, he had come to the right place. She had gotten him retribution, all right.
Family was the most important thing in your life, and that family didn’t have to be blood. Only one person had been Richard’s family for the past five years. Mary, the receptionist at the HOA office. She was the one who deserved his rage money, and Bindu had given it to her.
If Richard had left Mary the money himself, she would have been the one to deal with his family’s anger and the ugly names in the media. Maybe that’s why he’d left it to Bindu. Because he thought she’d know what to do. Or maybe she was giving him too much credit.
Lee’s love felt easy. Light on her skin, fresh on her tongue, the first drizzle of the monsoon, and just as dependable. It felt fueled by itself, not a mold he wanted to pour her into like molten silver.
Oscar had been able to love her without reservation because he knew he could never have her. Who was it that said, “The only kind of love that lasts forever is the unrequited kind”?
Rajendra had been able to love her, so long as she put parts of herself away except when they served him. He’d had to re-create her so she wouldn’t be shameful for him to claim publicly.
Her love for both men had come from a place of self-loathing. From a belief that she wasn’t like everyone else, like she didn’t fit. She’d believed their loving her despite her differentness was the gift they gave her.
But was that even love? What she’d felt for herself for so many years had barely scratched the surface of the love she was capable of.
She turned on the film again, and love gripped her, so intense that she had to breathe through it. It was the kind of love she felt for Cullie, and Alisha, and Ashish. A love she’d portioned carefully for parts of herself. Today, now, she let it all out. She let herself love the young body that the camera had captured in all its lush, unabashed glory. She loved the spirit that had reveled in the camera, let it in, trusted it enough to show the depth of her pain and pleasure without a single boundary.
She wanted that camera on her again.
She called Lee. “Want to come over?” she asked as she watched herself on the screen, risking everything to get what she wanted, and waited.
In a few minutes she heard the front door open.
“You’re beautiful,” he said over her shoulder.
She didn’t need to ask if he meant her or the girl on the screen. They were one and the same. So she said, simply, “Thank you.”
For a long while they watched in silence. A parijat-laden queen in ecstasy.
“That’s not all it is, you know,” he said finally as Poornima dropped her robe. “Your beauty. That’s not the only reason I love you.”
She turned the movie off and faced him.
“I mean, you’re not that beautiful.” He smiled, his lopsided Lee smile. “Fine, I’m lying. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. But my point is, that’s just one part of it.”