Oleander Girl (44 page)

Rajat hopes Pia has not landed them in new trouble with her impulsive behavior. He’s proud of how brave she has been, though. Her face, backlit by the window, seems to have acquired a golden sheen. But he’s tired. “You are all those things, and loyal, too. I’m sure A.A. appreciated your championship. Now I have to take a nap.”

“That’s an excellent idea,” she says in a matronly voice. “I’ll wake you when it’s time for lunch and help you to the table. The doctor said it’s important for you to move around.”

Then she’s Pia again. “I can’t wait to tell you about my adventures at Grandma’s! You know I stayed with her while you were in the hospital? It was such fun. I’m so glad we’re inheriting a Grandma from Korobi-didi.
The pipes weren’t working right, so Bahadur and Cook brought water for us in buckets from the outside tap, and I helped them. At night Grandma and I slept together in a big, high bed with posts and stairs to climb up, and she told me all kinds of stories. Did you know, that house is supposed to have a secret room behind a bookshelf where they used to hide revolutionaries during the independence struggle! She said I can search for it next time I visit. That temple has a lot of stories, too. One evening Mr. Bhattacharya stopped by for the evening puja, and he was really different and nice. I’ll tell you everything at lunch.”

From the doorway she adds, “Korobi-didi called twice, but you were sleeping and she told Maman not to wake you. She bought a new ticket. She should be on her way home already. If she makes all the connections, she’ll be in Kolkata tomorrow.”

Korobi’s name is like a sea wind. He remembers calling out for her. Was it in the hospital? Was it during the crash? It’s good of her to cut her search short and return for his sake. The wind blows through him, cleansing. Salt and distance, smell of the deep. He realizes he has never seen the ocean except tamed and touristy at Digha. When Korobi returns, he’ll ask if she’d be willing to travel to a real ocean with him. Maybe when they are there, he’ll be able to describe how it felt when he thought he was going to die, and afterward, this calm. At the ocean, they will talk to each other truly, and listen.

“She called Grandma’s house while I was there. She talked to me, too. She asked all about your injuries. Oh, I forgot! She said to give you a big hug for her—here it is—and tell you she has something very important to share with you, face-to-face, as soon as she gets back.”

Mrs. Bose has shut herself in her bedroom with the phone because she does not want the children to know how agitated she is. “What do you mean, Mitra’s trying to blackmail us about Korobi’s father?” she asks her husband. “Has he gone crazy? He knows he’ll go to jail if the police get hold of him, so now he’s clutching at straws?”

Mr. Bose says, “You’re right about him being desperate. But he isn’t crazy. Quite the opposite. He seems to have planned everything out. He sent me a fax with all the relevant information. He said that if we don’t respond within a week, he’ll send it to Bhattacharya. I checked with Desai. At first he was reluctant to break confidentiality, but when I explained what Mitra was trying to do, he admitted that the information is authentic. Mitra broke into Desai’s office and stole the file. Korobi’s father is some history professor named Rob Lacey. But, Joyu, listen: he’s black.”

“Impossible! Why, you just have to look at Korobi to know—”

“That’s what I said, but Desai explained that Korobi’s father is very light-skinned. And there’s more. Apparently Korobi’s parents never got married.”

“What are you saying? Korobi’s illegitimate? How can that be? Korobi’s mother would never do such a—such a horribly immoral thing! Why, she comes from one of the oldest—”

“It’s true, unfortunately. Desai said something about a promise Anu had made to her father in the temple. I didn’t have the time to get into all the details.”

“Oh, God! What will we do, Shanto? Never in my wildest nightmares could I have imagined something this terrible. How can we have our son marry a girl of mixed blood who has, moreover, such a scandal in her past? Here we were so delighted to be making an alliance with one of Kolkata’s most respected families, and now we discover—this?”

“Times are changing, Joyu. I’m not pleased, either. But such things matter less now.”

“They still matter a great deal!” Then Mrs. Bose is distracted by another thought. “Did Desai get a chance to tell the poor girl any of this before she boarded her plane?”

There’s a pause. Then Mr. Bose says, “Mitra told me quite clearly that Korobi has met her father. It was all in the folder. Lacey flew to California and met with Korobi two days ago.”

“Two days ago? He must be lying!”

Mr. Bose hesitates, then says, “I don’t think so.”

“Korobi saw her father two days ago? But she’s talked to me since then. Twice. She didn’t say anything about this. She talked to you, too, didn’t she? Did she mention her father to you?”

Mr. Bose is silent.

“She let us assume that she failed to find him! How could she be so—duplicitous?”

“Calm down, Joyu!”

But Mrs. Bose can’t calm down. “How can I trust her again? It’s bad enough that she has all this—dirt in her background, but on top of that, she’s a lying, cheating—”

“I was upset, too. But try to see it from her point of view. Maybe she’s scared about how we’ll react.”

“And so she plans to hide such a huge thing from us? To deceive her own husband?”

“Let’s set aside the issue of Korobi for a little while. Right now we have to decide what to do about Mitra. He’s demanding that we withdraw our charges, call off the police. He’s asking for money—a lot of it. Additionally, we have to provide him with a positive recommendation so he can look for a new job. If word of what has happened here gets around—now or later—he’s going to leak the story to the press. They’re always interested in skeletons hidden in the cupboards of the newly rich—though maybe we’ve fallen out of that category now!”

“How can you joke at a time like this? If Bhattacharya—or his party members—got wind of this, it would be the end of any kind of partnership, any possibility of saving the business. I don’t understand—why should Mitra harbor such a grudge against us? We helped him as much as we could, in spite of all the losses we suffered.”

“He sees it differently. He went on and on about how we wouldn’t let him return to India after 9/11, even after the police arrested him and his wife was so terrified. How they had to move into a tiny, bug-infested apartment in a bad neighborhood because he didn’t have enough money to pay rent. How depressed his wife became there. Our behavior pushed him into gambling—to try and make some quick money to send her to India—though obviously that didn’t work out well. But most of all, he blames Korobi for destroying his marriage. Says she turned his wife,
who loved him dearly, against him. Korobi put ideas into her head and encouraged her to run off. Mitra says his life is ruined because of her.”

“Korobi! She’s the reason why he turned on us?”

“You can’t take what he says seriously, Joyu. He’s not rational right now. But he is extremely shrewd, and therefore dangerous. I’ve told him I can’t do anything until I get the money from the sale of the paintings—and he knows I can’t—so that buys us a few days. Then you and I will have to make a decision.”

“This engagement must be broken. That’s my decision. It’ll solve all our problems.”

“Sweet, that decision is not ours to make. It’s up to Rajat.”

“The poor boy! I can’t even imagine how upset he’s going to be when he learns how Korobi’s trying to deceive him.”

“Jayashree, listen to me! You can’t say anything to him right now. First, because he’s just recovering, and it’ll be too much of a shock. Remember, he loves her. And second, you have to give Korobi a chance to meet with him. Who knows, maybe she’s looking for the right way to tell him this news, which must have shocked her as much as it did us.”

Mrs. Bose disagrees. That girl was not planning to tell them anything—she can feel it in her bones. If Korobi does confess now, it’ll only be because Mitra has already spilled the beans. Mrs. Bose loves Mr. Bose more than she loves anyone else in the world, but when will he learn the folly of trusting too much?

“I don’t know if I can keep such an upsetting thing inside me, Shanto, when I’m already so weighed down with other matters. However, I’ll try. For Rajat’s sake.”

And she does. Each time she sees Rajat and the words come into her mouth, she swallows them. Each time he expresses his delight because Korobi will be returning tomorrow, she turns away, though she longs to warn him. She can’t help wondering if Sarojini is in on this scam, too; the possibility upsets her further. Since the accident, when Sarojini was such a rock of support, she has begun to think of the old woman as a mother. All day the unspoken sentences build inside her chest like steam. Blood pounds in her temples. Her entire body aches. She takes a shower; perhaps it’ll loosen those tight shoulder muscles. But the hot water only
makes her feverish. When she comes out and finds that Bhattacharya has left another message asking her to call, saying they need to speak urgently, she’s ready to snap.

Just as dinner is served, Pia says, “We’d better hang up the engagement photo again! We don’t want Korobi-didi to see that we’d put it away. It would hurt her feelings.”

“Do it later,” Mrs. Bose says. “Come and eat now.”

“We don’t have much time! She told me she’s planning to come here straight from the airport.” And with that, Pia is off. She searches the spare room until she finds the photo in a drawer, where Mrs. Bose has stuffed it. In her dramatic way, Pia makes a big to-do, calling to Pushpa to bring the hammer and nails, telling Rajat to stand back and watch if the photo is straight. Mrs. Bose has to press her lips together to keep from yelling at her. It’s not the child’s fault, all these problems, she tells herself. I should be thankful that she’s recovered so quickly from the trauma of the accident.

Once it’s up, Pia turns to Rajat for approval.

“It’s an amazing picture,” he says. “I wonder who the photographer is?”

Mrs. Bose does not find this amusing. She tells them to come to the table, the food’s getting cold. Still they dawdle.

“What beautiful hair Korobi-didi has,” Pia says, touching the picture with a loving finger. “You think Maman will let me get mine curled like hers for the wedding reception? Of course mine won’t look as nice because hers is so much longer.”

“Not anymore,” Rajat says.

Mrs. Bose stops ladling dal into their bowls. “What do you mean?”

Rajat looks awkward. Clearly the words slipped from him when he wasn’t paying attention.

“Tell me,” she persists, folding her arms as though he were a guilty teenager.

Perhaps the accident has lowered his resistance. Or maybe he’s startled by her insistence. He tells her about Mitra, the photo he had e-mailed.

“Mitra was involved in that, too?” Her voice rises though she knows she should control it—Rajat hates people who yell.
Stop, Joyu,
Shanto
would have said.
The boy isn’t well. Don’t rant at him.
“That man’s obviously been planning to get us for a while. Why didn’t you tell me earlier? We could have been proactive, prevented worse things.”

“I didn’t tell you because it’s my private business,” he tells her coldly. “Mine and Cara’s.”

Her hands begin to shake. The tone, the words, the ridiculous name he’s given Korobi—they push her over the edge. That scheming, deceiving girl—and now he’s taking her side against his own mother?

The words have been waiting all day. They explode out of her like soda from a can that has been violently shaken.

“Oh, really? If you two are that close, you must already know what your papa called to tell me today. The truth about your darling Cara’s father—surely that’s your business, too, what Mitra is using to blackmail us? No? Looks like she forgot to mention a couple of little facts.”

I step outside the airport terminal into the early morning, the sky just lighting up, surely a good omen. Bahadur is waiting with the car. He glances at me and glances away. I see, with a lurch of the heart, that he doesn’t recognize me. Is it just my hair, or some deeper sea change I’ve undergone? I put a hand on his arm and smile. His leathery face breaks open in an astonished grin.