Secret Keeper (21 page)

“I don’t care what people say,” Reet said. “I want to finish this quickly.”

The strangeness of her statement silenced everybody except Jay.

“I’m leaving in four days,” he said, detonating another bomb as though they weren’t already shattered. “My ticket’s booked. We’ll have to be married quickly at the temple if this is going to happen at all. I’ll get a ticket for Reet before I leave and she can join me as soon as possible.”

His parents looked as if they were about to faint, and Asha’s own head was spinning. They were getting married this week! Jay was leaving and taking her sister with him. She couldn’t say anything; she was having a hard time breathing.

“When did you decide this, Beta?” his father asked. “Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“I wanted to meet my bride first, and see if she agreed.”

“I agree,” Reet said immediately. “What day and time?”

“I’ll send a rickshaw for you on Saturday,” he said. Then he looked around the room, his eyes scanning every face except one. “Thank you all for understanding. Perhaps we can celebrate when we return for a visit next year. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot to do to get ready.”

He bent to give a farewell pronam to Auntie, Uncle, Ma, and Grandmother, then left the house without another glance in either Reet’s or Asha’s direction.

“I’ll take these into the kitchen,” Reet said, gathering up the still- full teacups and disappearing also.

Jay’s parents were talking at once, trying to make excuses for their son’s behavior, and Asha’s family was doing
the same for Reet. The first meeting of bride and groom had been so jarring that everybody was embarrassed.

After their guests left, Uncle slumped in his chair. “An elopement at the temple? With no marriage ceremony or celebrations in our homes? I don’t understand this, and I’m not sure Bintu would have liked it one bit. That boy still seems odd to me. Are you sure about him, Sumitra?”

“I loved him,” Ma said right away. “He’ll never lie to her. And he’ll be loyal, too. I can tell. I’m sad they’ll be living so far away, but somehow it seems right for at least one of us to start a new life in America.”

He’s loyal, all right, Ma,
Asha thought as she wearily trudged upstairs.
He keeps his promises, just as I do.

THIRTY-ONE

A
GAIN AND AGAIN SHE WENT OVER HER CHOICE IN HER MIND,
but she couldn’t see how to make it turn out differently. Again and again she saw herself up on the roof, making her request to Jay. His fury. The proposal. Ma’s delight. Her sister’s cold anger. Their decision to marry quickly and move to New York. It couldn’t have ended differently. It was the only way she could have kept her promise to Baba. At least Ma was acting more like herself again, and Reet—well, Reet and Jay would be fine once she, Asha, was no longer around.

the characters,
she thought as she read “Cinderella” to her cousins. Reet was already in bed, her back to her sister.

“And they lived happily ever after,” Asha finished.

“What a lie,” said Reet.

“What?” Suma asked. “What do you mean, Shonadi?”

“I mean that life isn’t like a story,” Reet answered.

“For you it is,” Sita said. “You’re the princess and Jay is the prince.”

That makes me the wicked stepsister,
Asha thought, tucking the little girls into bed.

Early Saturday morning, Uncle took Reet to the temple to be married. A few hours later, Reet returned to the Gupta household, even though she was supposed to move under her in- laws’ roof. Dutifully, Reet had offered to shift next door, but the Sens insisted she remain where she was until her departure as a gift to Ma.

Now Asha heard her sister making the girls’ bed as she usually did after breakfast. Uncle had headed to the living room and switched on the news, which began blaring through the house.

Asha stopped in the hall outside the bedroom. Ma was inside, approaching her older daughter hesitantly “Are you married, Shona?” Ma asked.

“Yes. I am. Till death do us part. The priest made it short and quick. My husband paid the fee, and now he’s home packing his suitcases for the trip.”

“Well, this is not how I pictured it, but I’m so glad and proud, Shona.”

Reet’s face softened; Asha could see it through a gap in the curtain. “Good, Ma,” Reet said. “And we can have some
kind of a party when we come home for a visit. His parents want to arrange something, too, so their relatives won’t feel slighted, and he agreed.”

Asha went to the bathroom in a daze, her head spinning. Her sister was married to Jay. Jay was married to Reet. It was done. Irrevocable. She’d have to live with her decision for the rest of her life.

Jay left for New York without a word to Asha. After his departure, Raj didn’t wait for Asha to ask, he simply cut the lock on the door to the roof. Asha took her diary up there and wrote and wrote, filling the last pages of “S.K. 1974” with tiny writing, even though the year had ended months ago. Now that she couldn’t talk about the constant ache of missing Baba with either Reet or Jay, she poured it out in her diary. Sometimes, though, she’d find herself sitting without writing, staring at the closed shutters across the way.

She imagined Jay arriving at the New York airport, taking a taxi to the university, meeting his professor, setting up a studio, looking for an apartment. Trying to ready a home where he would bring his bride in a few weeks’ time. She wondered if he was picking out plates, sheets, towels, pillows, and what he was thinking about as he started his new life. Did the image of a girl on a roof ever come to his mind?

The days passed somehow, and still Reet wasn’t speaking to Asha. Jay sent the plane ticket, and Reet and Ma
began making shopping trips to prepare for Reet’s journey. Uncle offered some of the money he would have spent on a wedding to buy a trousseau.

Ma and Reet accepted it and brought home new sarees, a winter coat, salwars, new underwear, a lacy nightgown, and twelve skeins of good- quality wool that Reet insisted on buying for Ma. Auntie and Grandmother fingered the nightgown and teased Reet about when she would wear it for the first time, but Asha could hardly look at it.

Only Raj guessed what Asha was feeling, and his answer was to take her outside to play catch for hours. It helped. The thwack of the ball in her palm, the perfect arc of it as she threw it into the dusk and he caught it. Again and again, to and fro they moved in a rhythm that became a silent dance. Sometimes they picked up rackets and volleyed back and forth until they’d reached a hundred and were both drenched in sweat. That helped her forget, too. For a while.

One day a letter arrived from Delhi addressed to Asha. She studied the engraved insignia in the upper left- hand corner before opening it; it was from Bishop Academy. Curious, she took it to the privacy of the bathroom to read.

Asha’s eyes were so blurry by the end, she could barely read the postscript, which made her smile. For the first time she could look into the future and see some kind of gain.
She’d had to give up Baba, then Jay, and even her sister, but at least now she might not have to lose all of her dreams. And maybe she could even manage to keep the bossy, scolding, engaged version of their mother around, the one she loved so dearly despite all the mistakes Ma had made.

Asha took the letter and found her sister hanging laundry on the line in the garden. “Where’s the washerwoman?” Asha asked. “Why are you doing that?”

“I gave her the afternoon off,” Reet said coolly. “I owed her one, anyway. And I like doing laundry. What’s that you’ve got there?”

“A letter. From Mrs. Joshi. Reet, you wrote to her even while you were furious?”

Her sister shrugged. “You’re not the only one who made promises, you know. I made some, too, remember?”