The Bollywood Bride (13 page)

14

R
ia followed Vikram to the big red truck parked on the street. This was his car? He held the door open for her. Even with her height she needed a ladder to get into this thing. With all the awkwardness of a newborn filly she pulled herself up into the seat. He slammed the door shut and jogged to the other side, leaping into the driver’s seat with all the easy grace of a stallion.

The humongous monstrosity of a car purred to life beneath his fingers. He fit inside it as if it were built for him. Despite the preposterous amounts of space the car took up on the outside, the interior was tiny, with a single bench seat. Who made cars with bench seats anymore? She sucked everything in and squished herself into a sliver against the door.

It didn’t work.

Vikram’s presence beside her consumed her. She felt every breath entering and leaving his body. She felt his every move. Every time he changed gears or turned the steering wheel the muscles in his arms bunched and a zing shot through her. She would’ve given anything for a hand rest or a gearbox—something solid to provide separation. She placed her handbag between them and pulled her denim jacket tightly around herself, clutching it so hard her fingers turned numb from the pressure.

Vikram leaned over and turned up the heat. “Do you want me to turn on the seat warmer?”

She shook her head. The silence between them was heavy and exhausting. By the time they drove into the temple parking lot, Ria found that her knees were locked from the tension. Vikram opened the door for her, and she hopped off the high platform. His fingers wrapped around her elbow and their eyes met, making that spark she was getting used to zing through her belly again. Even when he withdrew his hand the awareness of his touch lingered on her skin.

They walked side by side, the tug between them so strong, so palpable, it was a physical force. Silence followed them into the temple, trailing them as they went up the wide steps, hanging between them as they bent to remove their shoes in the shelf-lined room and walked barefoot across the cool ceramic tiles to the priest’s office. They’d visited the temple with Uma and Vijay a few times every summer and it was as familiar as everything else. The only thing new was the silence between them.

And it was so disorienting that even when the priest launched into a lecture on the seriousness of marriage, neither one of them could find the words to correct him. Finally, when the priest asked how long they had known each other, Vikram cracked. “We’re not the bride and groom.” His voice was a low rumble in his chest. “We’re the groom’s cousins.”

Not that his admission made a dent in the priest’s ministrations. He went on with his sermon regardless, his head shaking benevolently as he dispensed wisdom at them across the metal desk. Two ornate rosewood statues of the goddesses Laxmi and Durga flanked the window behind him and sunshine danced on his generously oiled bald patch like a halo. He had his lecture to give and he was giving it no matter what.

“Temptations are ubiquitous,” he said in an accent so thick it was like an entire different language. “Coming at us from all directions, feeding on our desires, on our hunger for momentary excitement. The true nature of marriage is not external pleasure, it is internal oneness.” He paused, looking from Ria to Vikram as if they were part of a larger audience. Ria had the urge to turn around and make sure there weren’t more people behind her. She caught Vikram’s eye and almost smiled.

The priest’s hands made sweeping motions. “The minds must marry first.” He clasped his hands together, then pulled them apart with drama befitting the finest character actor. “If we allow the external to transcend the internal we see only differences, and that can cause only separation, never harmony.” Another pause. Another emphatic nod. “Our intellect skews reality. We have to be connected to what is real and ignore that which masquerades as reality. It is your insides that must fit together.” He gave them a long meaningful look.

Vikram was holding himself completely still as only Vikram could. His stillness was its own language. This one wasn’t an angry stillness. The effort it took him to keep his lips from quirking made his eyes shine. He gave her a warning look—
Don’t you dare smile.

The priest sighed contentedly, glad to have done his duty by them and curiously unconcerned by the minor detail that they weren’t the bride and groom. He reached into the desk drawer, pulled out two booklets, and placed them in front of him. “You will need the Marathi-language vows, correct?” he asked.

Ria nodded.

“This one is more thorough. All the ceremonies are explained in detail.” He patted the substantially thicker booklet covered in heavy stock paper. This one”—he lifted the second, thinner one—“is the shortened version, easier for the Western mind to grasp. Why don’t you look through both and decide which one you want and I will make a Xerox copy for you. No hurry. I’ll be back in few minutes.” With that he left the room with surprisingly brisk strides.

Vikram pushed himself off the chair. For a moment Ria thought he was going to follow the priest out. But then he walked to the other side of the table, leaned his hip on it, and waited, totally somber again.

Ria pushed one of the booklets toward him. “Why don’t you look at one and I’ll look over the other.”

He jumped back as if she had suggested something completely irrational. “No way.” He slid the papers back at her. “This is all yours.”

She frowned at him and flipped the thick booklet in front of her open. The bold, ornate lettering was all curves and swirls, each paragraph bulleted with a miniature Ganesha symbol.

 

•
The Hindu wedding ceremony comprises the seven steps of matrimony signifying the seven vows. The first step of the seven vows is taken to pledge that the marrying couple would provide a prospered living for the household, avoiding those that might hinder their healthy living.

 

Ria blinked at the heavy-handed language. Two paragraphs explaining exactly how the marrying couple might do this followed. She skimmed over them and moved on to the next step.

 

•
During the second step, the bride and the groom promise that they would develop their physical, mental, and spiritual powers in order to lead a lifestyle that would be healthy.

 

Another two paragraphs explained what “healthy living” meant. Impatience bristled inside Ria.

 

•
During the third step, the bride and the groom vow to expand their heredity by having children.

 

Ria suppressed a groan.

 

•
For these children, the fruits of their union, the couple will be responsible. They also pray to be blessed with healthy, honest and brave children—

 

Ria slammed the booklet shut and pushed it away. She knew she was being irrational, but she was so annoyed with the person who’d come up with this, she wanted to toss it across the room.

She opened the other one.

 

 

A vision of Jen in her bridal sari formed in Ria’s mind. Nikhil followed close behind her, his right hand clasped tightly in hers as they stepped around the fire, each step deliberate, mindful.

 

 

Suddenly the bride in Ria’s mind wasn’t Jen anymore, it was her. And she didn’t have to see the groom’s face to know who he was. She looked up, conscious of Vikram’s gaze on her. He watched her, his eyes intense.

“Looks like you’ve decided which one you want,” he said, and pulled away from the desk.

“You sure you don’t want to take a look?” Her voice was breathless.

“Yes, I’m sure. Do you mind if I meet you outside? Need to make some calls.” Before she could answer he was gone.

By the time the priest had copied the pages and lectured Ria some more about the Hindu vows, another twenty minutes had passed. Vikram wasn’t on the patio when she came out of the ornately carved entrance. She looked around, squinting to find him in the sudden brightness. He stood at the bottom of the steps, leaning against the concrete balusters. He lifted his head and looked at her as she walked out into the sunshine. Light bounced off his hair and caught the crystals in his eyes. A soft, glowing fire started between her ribs, right at the center of her. Very gingerly, she took a step toward him, making sure she didn’t trip. Although at this precise moment she wanted nothing more than to go flying into his arms.

He ran up the steps, coming to meet her halfway.

Something in his eyes made panic well up inside her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nikhil just called. It’s not a big deal, I don’t want you to worry. . . .”

“Vikram, what’s wrong?”

“Uma had some pain in her arm—her left arm. So Vijay’s taken her to the hospital.”

“No.”

Vikram grasped her elbow and steadied her with his gaze. “Ria, she’s fine. Vijay just wants to be sure. He doesn’t think it’s anything. Chances are she pulled a muscle or something.”

“I want to go to the hospital. Right now.”

“Of course. I already told Nikhil we’re on our way.”

As they ran to the car, his hand pressed into the small of her back. But instead of the usual burning impact, this time his touch calmed her, infused her with strength. This time when he helped her into the truck his hand lingered for a moment, making sure she was okay before letting go. The cab of the truck was still too small, and Vikram’s presence next to her still overwhelming, but instead of sparking tension, a strange mix of emotions buzzed inside Ria—an unyielding cocoon of safety wrapped around her restlessness and anxiety, and kept her from breaking down.

But she couldn’t hold herself still. She kept twisting around and asking him again and again what Nikhil had said. She tried calling Nikhil and Vijay Kaka, but they were probably inside the hospital and she couldn’t get through to them. She pushed Vikram for details, asking him for the tenth time exactly what Nikhil had said.

“Nikhil didn’t sound like there was anything to worry about. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m sure Uma’s fine. We’re almost there. Just a few minutes more.” He twisted his entire body around and faced her when he spoke, just the way he’d done when they were younger. Even back then he had always looked away from the road when he spoke to her, whether he was riding his bike next to her or driving. And it had always scared the living daylights out of her and made her scream at him.

“What are you doing? Keep your eyes on the road, Viky!” Her voice came out shrill, and scared, and sixteen.

His hands tightened on the steering wheel. The muscle in his jaw jumped to life. He turned back to the road and kept his eyes there for the rest of the drive, not saying another word.

Silence settled between them again, edgy and thick, making the echo of the name she hadn’t called him in ten years that much louder.

15

T
he sprawling hospital buildings came into view and Ria’s jitteriness turned to full-blown panic. Ria hated hospitals with a vengeance. The first time she’d been in a hospital, she’d been beaten within an inch of her life. The last time she’d been in one she had lost her father.

The memory of her broken body mingled with the memory of Baba’s blistered face. Maroon-tinged gauze on his cheeks. White wads of cotton stuffed up his nose. More than anything else she had wanted to wrench that cotton out of his nose.
He can’t breathe. It’s suffocating him. Take it out, he can’t breathe.
But she hadn’t been able to say the words. They had laid him on the pyre just like that: white sheet, white gauze, white cotton. It had taken the orange flames seconds to paint all that white black before consuming it.

She wished that wasn’t the last memory she had of him. She should’ve been with him, doing something to help the pain. Just like she should’ve been with Uma today. Instead, she had been with Vikram both times, dreaming impossible dreams instead of accepting her destiny.

She couldn’t think of Uma lying in a hospital bed.

Vikram pulled into a parking spot and jumped out of the car. He ran to her side and opened the door. “Ria.” He took both her hands in his, she was shaking. “Hey, listen, we’re here. And I promise you, Uma’s okay. Can you look at me? Please.”

She looked at him.

“We’re here. Let’s go see her, okay?” His voice, his eyes, all of him was calm and sure.

She nodded, and followed him out of the car.

The redbrick building loomed in front of them and nervousness bloated in Ria’s belly again, filling it up like a balloon. But she didn’t stop until they reached the lobby. Awful antiseptic hospital smells assaulted more memories out of her, dragging her back through time. Vikram’s hand cupped her elbow and pulled her back to the present.

They found Jen and Nikhil in the waiting room. Nikhil took one look at her and wrapped his arms around her. “It’s just a muscle pull, drama queen. Relax.”

“You’re sure?” Ria asked, studying his face.

“No, it’s a random guess. Of course I’m sure. Ten years of med school, remember?”

Relief washed through her, and she pressed her face into Nikhil’s shoulder and refused to cry. “Where is she?”

“They’re getting some final vitals on her. Dad, Matt, and Mindy are in there with her. We were waiting out here for you. Seriously, stop looking like that. They didn’t even do an EKG. Dad just brought her in because it was the left arm—and because she’s been so stressed out. I shouldn’t even have called you.”

“Are you crazy, Nikhil? I’ll kill you if you ever hide something like this from me.” She glared at him.

“Okay, then I promise to call you every time anyone we know pulls a muscle.”

Nikhil was right, Uma Atya was fine. So fine in fact that she couldn’t stop biting Vijay Kaka’s head off about having forced her to come to the hospital.

“What kind of doctor are you,” she kept saying, “if you can’t even tell the difference between a pulled muscle and a heart attack?”

“No one can tell the difference, Aie. That’s why it’s so dangerous,” Nikhil said in his best physician voice.

Uma slapped his arm. “There is no need to defend your father. He just wasted an entire day on golf and the hospital—six days before the wedding!”

“It’s Vijay, Uma,” Vikram said. “Sounds like his dream day.”

And, because it was Vikram who said it, Uma smiled.

 

Nikhil and Jen had a few more errands left to run before they all met up for dinner at one of the auntie’s homes. Matt and Mindy left to drive to the city to meet Mindy’s sister.

As Vijay and Uma went through the long, drawn-out checkout procedure, Vikram and Ria waited for them in the waiting area. It was huge, but it made Ria claustrophobic. The restless worried faces closed around her. Now that she knew Uma was fine, all she wanted was to get out of the hospital.

Vikram stood. “Let’s go wait outside, get some fresh air.”

Wordlessly, she followed him through the revolving doors. The early evening chill hit her face like a splash of cool water, and she soaked it in.

Vikram pointed to a bench in the small garden across from the patient drop-off area and they walked toward it. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. She reminded herself that he was just being civil, just like he had promised. Nothing more.

“I’m fine. It’s just that I hate hospitals. They make me so bloody uncomfortable,” she said without thinking. If she wasn’t careful all the memories crowding her head would come spilling out.

“Yeah, me too.”

She stumbled and looked up at him. It was the oddest thing for him to say. “What are you talking about? How can you not like hospitals?”

“Oh, I hate them. They completely freak me out. I can’t believe I ever wanted to be a doctor.”

The entire behemoth hospital complex spun behind him and kept on spinning. Blood drained from her face, her limbs, her feet.

It took Vikram a moment to notice she’d stopped. He turned around, his eyebrows drawn together as he took in the expression on her face. One muscle at a time, understanding dawned on him.

“You didn’t know?” His lips moved, but the din in Ria’s ears was so loud it made the words soundless.

She watched the pieces click in his head. Her own head had gone completely blank, like the buzzing white light on a malfunctioning screen. Blank.

Blank.

Blank.

“You didn’t know,” he said again. The words formed this time. He pressed his fingers into his forehead, hiding eyes that had turned stone cold. “Of course, you didn’t know.”

She brought her hands to her cheeks. They were on fire. Her throat was on fire. “But you—Oh God, Vikram, that can’t be. How could you—”

“How could I what?” His voice was still so soft she could barely hear him. But it sliced through her like a scream. “How could I what, Ria? How could I not go on like nothing happened? Like everything was normal?”

All the gentleness, all the warmth from before drained from his body. “Did you really believe that? That everything just went on as before? Back to life. Back to business as usual?” A mirthless laugh burst from him. “Is that how it worked for you? New day, new dream?” Patterns of pain, raw and immutable, swirled in the blue gray of his eyes.

I’ll never have a chance like this again, Viky. It’s like a dream come true. How can you get in my way?
That’s what she had said to him after Ved’s bodyguards had tossed him on the pavement. This was exactly how his eyes had looked then.

It had been the only way she knew to make him go away. To force him to leave her so he could live the life he was supposed to live.

Vic is destined for greatness.
In that one thing she had agreed with Chitra Jathar. And she thought she had given that to him no matter the price.

Only he hadn’t gone back to that life.

She pressed her hands into her cheeks. It couldn’t be true. He had worked so hard to make it to med school, it had been all he’d ever talked about doing.

“You loved medicine. How could you have—”

“Quit? Oh, it was easy. I just couldn’t go back. It wasn’t what I wanted anymore.”

How could he say that? How could a dream just have disappeared like that?

And yet she had expected him to let the dreams he’d shared with her disappear, without giving him a choice.

Not that she herself had had a choice. Not that she had one now.

“Why?” But she already knew the answer.

The streetlamp glowed behind him like a halo, casting his face in shadows. “Because I wasn’t that guy anymore. The one who thought he knew everything. The one who had his entire life planned out. He—he died when you left him. I couldn’t go back to his life.”

Her tears blurred his beautiful face. “Where did you go?” she whispered. This was what Uma had been talking about that day at breakfast. This is what Nikhil had meant about him disappearing into thin air. And she had blocked it out.

He looked at her tears and his face softened. He dug his hands into his pockets. “Everywhere. Anywhere. Where no one knew me. I had just been to Brazil, so I went back there first. But I had to keep moving. Brazil, Peru, Columbia, all the way up to Costa Rica. Anywhere I could get by, get high. Anywhere I could find work that stopped my brain from working. Construction sites mostly, but oil rigs, fields, factories. You name it.”

Horrible, distorted images formed in Ria’s mind. Vikram, who cherished family, who basked in their love more than anyone she knew, all alone. Vikram, who had known nothing but privilege, punishing his body with labor. She thought of all the awful things she herself had done. Things that made her skin crawl. And it had all been worthless. Tears choked her. She couldn’t swallow, couldn’t breathe.

He watched her cry, his body inches from hers. All of him absorbing her pain. A heart-wrenching moment of complete understanding passed between them.
Oneness.

Finally he moved, wiping the tears off her cheek. “You know what finally brought me back? I was in Lima at a restaurant getting hammered after work. There was an Indian family there on vacation. They had a magazine with you on the cover. It was the first time I had seen you in five years.

“You were dressed like a bride, draped in these shimmering clothes, decked out in jewels, your eyes lowered, your cheeks blushing. ‘Bollywood’s Favorite Bride,’ they called you. There was something about your face, the way you were looking away from the camera, something about that picture, it made me so mad I wanted to kill someone. I got in a fight. I got beaten so bad that day that the guy I worked for freaked out and called Nikhil. He was in Africa. He flew all the way from the other side of the world to get me. He brought me home and knocked some sense into my head.”

“He never told me.” Her words were sandpaper in her throat, his fingers silk on her cheek. “How could he not have told me?”

“He’s never told anyone. Not Uma, not Vijay, not my parents. I don’t think Jen knows either. I never gave him any details. He never asked. That was our deal. It was the only way I agreed to come back home and stay. Like everyone else, he probably thinks I was in Brazil living with a woman I met there. They thought I was having my rich brat identity crisis, trying to find myself. Which I was, come to think of it.” A sardonic smile touched his lips and pain twisted Ria’s heart. She wanted to grab his fingers and hold them to her cheek. Instead, she pressed her fist into her chest to keep from doing it.

“I’m sorry.” It was the most insufficient thing to say. But she was sorry, so very sorry.

For a long while he didn’t respond. Emotions sparked in his eyes like stars in a cloudless sky, too many to separate and identify. She didn’t know when she closed her own eyes, or when his lips moved close enough for his breath to caress hers. Every inch of her body recognized the intimacy and reached for him, waiting for him to close the distance, to take her lips. It had to be the only way to ease the pain, to make sense of the madness. She reached up. It was a whisper of a movement, but he backed away from it as though she had shoved him with all her might.

She stumbled forward into nothingness. Cool air slapped her cheeks where his fingers had been.

He didn’t stop until he had put several feet between them. “I don’t want your apology, Ria. I don’t want your guilt.” His chest rose and fell as if he had sprinted a distance. “It wasn’t you who ran away. I did that. I hurt the people I love. I put my family through hell. It was me, not you. I had never lost anything, never not got what I wanted. I had no idea how to handle failure.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed her eyes against the pain in his voice.
You didn’t fail, Viky. I did. I broke my promise.
All these years her guilt had been a constant burden, but she had carried it knowing it was punishment she deserved. But the punishment he’d taken was so unjust, so wrong, she couldn’t bear it.

“Say something, damn it. Don’t just stand there and look at me like that.”

The raw pain in his voice reached into her and demanded words she could never say. “I’m sorr—”

“No. I said I don’t want your guilt and I don’t want your pity either.”

“Then what do you want, Vikram?”

“I don’t know.” He raked his fingers through his hair. But he took a step closer and his eyes couldn’t follow through on the lie.

She wanted to go to him, wrap him in her arms, disappear into him. But she stepped back, because how could she take any more from him?

He looked like she had slapped him.

He dug his hands into his pockets again, his jaw working, and let out a breath. “All I know is that we have to get through this. Nothing else matters until the wedding. Jen and Nic need us and they deserve to enjoy their wedding without having to worry about us.”

“I know that,” she said softly. “That’s what I want too. I just want to be here for Jen and Nikhil and then I’ll leave.”

“Good,” he said gently. “Because Nikhil can’t seem to do anything without you anymore.” A small lopsided smile quirked his mismatched lips. “He asked you to stay away from me, didn’t he?”

She wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and smiled back. “My talons seem to be making everyone nervous these days.”

His eyes got serious again and so intense they engulfed her. “Can you blame us? Any man would be a fool not to be nervous around you, Ria.”