Born Confused (54 page)

—And just because mine
isn’t
intact doesn’t mean I am, she replied.—I’m not some independent powerhouse, Dimple. I mean, I have to be for a lot of people. But I need to feel I can lean on some
one sometimes, and I always counted on you for that. Like you could count on me. At least, I used to.

—It didn’t seem like that lately, I said.—For my clothes or my mom’s recipes, yeah. To borrow my cousin, to get a mehendi. But it’s not even really about that, Gwyn. I mean, you always just come and go. It’s like you get so wrapped up in your romances, but as soon as the boy’s out of the picture you’re back in my life, wanting to sleep over, to be supertwins. How do you think that makes me feel?

—But that’s what friends are for, right? To be there for each other no matter what.

—But you were always getting beeped and celled. You were always too busy for me. If I’m so important to you, how come you let a boy get in the way?

—And if I’m so important to you, how come you let that matter enough to get in the way?

That had me thinking, but to be honest I wasn’t really sure who was right, where the truth lay.

—Well, getting in the way or not, I think you understand why I was always doing the family thing, I said.—I don’t know why you’re always so condescending about it. Maybe it’s not as glamorous as having a boyfriend with an apartment in the Village, but that’s part of my life.

—Condescending? said Gwyn, seeming genuinely stunned.—I never meant to be condescending. I just wanted to be included. Or, if I couldn’t be, to have you with me.

Now I was stunned.

—To be included?

—Dimple,
you
are my family, she said softly.—You know, you’re not just an accessory. You’re the something I rely on to keep a little sanity in my world. You’re the only history I’m not ashamed of,
the only thing that makes me feel the future might be bright. And if I think you’re going to be disappointed in me for doing the things I do, or turning out the way I have, then…Well, then I’m lost.

—I’m hardly ashamed of you, I cried. I couldn’t believe it.—In fact, the opposite! I had no idea I was making you feel—

—Believe it or not, Dimple, but your opinion really matters to me. And it put me in a bad spot from a ways back—to know how you were judging me for sleeping with Dylan, or maybe not even figuring it out, I had to stop telling you things. I was…embarrassed. I mean, you treat me like this invincible love goddess and he was humiliating me, and what was even worse was I couldn’t stop letting him. I so needed to talk to you—but how could I? When I think of how much I want you to approve. And I was scared you would just write me off for being fool enough to keep going back to him—I mean, you’ve already said a million times how I deserve so much better and all. I was afraid of your—your unspoken sentence.

This was news to me: that even in my passivity I was being judgmental; without realizing it I was playing more of a role in our falling-out than I’d ever imagined. I’d always thought I was just a wallflower, a camera-carrying observer. I’d always thought I was the victim—but maybe I’d created that stance myself.

I wanted to touch her but, despite all the words that were being spoken, she still seemed miles away.

—Gwyn, I said.—I never realized. I guess I was too busy worrying that I wasn’t cool enough to be hanging around with you.

—And me, I felt like I always had to play cool with you. When what I wanted most was to be the real thing. Like you.

—You are the real thing, I said.—You don’t have to keep trying on other people’s identities—frock, see for yourself, we hardly know which way’s up, half the time. Just be yourself.

—So it’s that easy?

—No, actually, I suppose it’s not.

I looked at the tabletop set for two, the fading poetry around the rim. How simple it had been to be princesses and pirates when we were little. How it had never seemed like we were not being us, but more like we were slipping on exciting extensions of ourselves. Why was it so complicated now, all the things we did so easily when we were children? I saw Gwyn was looking, too, rubbing a verse clear with her forefinger.

—What do you suppose we were playing at? she said quietly.

—I have no idea, I said.—But it looks like it must have been fun.

I ran my thumb along the teacup handle.

—God, Gwyn, remember when we used to come here? Before we kissed boys, before we even thought about them. Part of me wishes we’d just stayed here, the two of us, and kept right on drinking our sugar water. Safe and sound behind our password—what was it again?

She just shook her head. And there was a finality to it.

—Why can’t it be like before? I whispered. The teacups were full of dust now, I saw.

—I don’t know, she said finally.—I have to think about it, Dimple. It’s not so easy. Too much has happened; I don’t know if we can ever really trust each other again.

—Nothing has happened with Karsh, if that’s what you mean, I said.—If you want me to stay away from him, I…I will.

I was praying she would say no, though. And she did shake her head, but before my sigh of relief was fully out, she made me choke on it.

—But I just need some space. I need to be alone for a while. And time. I need time.

—Space? Time? So, aren’t you going to the club tomorrow night?

—I…I’m not sure, Dimple. I think maybe I’d like you both to stay away from me for a while.

She was standing now, her head crooked against the ceiling.

—Oh, no! I cried.—I can’t stay away from you. A world without you would be—

How could I put it, the way these last few weeks had been? No matter what the positive moments, they were only a fraction of what they could have been had I been able to share them in some way with my best friend. And the negative moments were accentuated even more by the gaping hole her absence had left in my life. Gwynless. I had been there before, briefly, as a child, and it was an awful place to be. It was like sunless.

—Please,
she said. And I knew she meant it.

And then I knew, too, what the password had to be now, though whether it would make a door swing open was doubtful on a day such as this.

—I’m sorry, Gwyn, I said.—I’m really, really sorry.

She looked at me now, from the other side of the doorway. Sans any high-maintenance getup and not a trace of makeup on her, she was softer, more beautiful than ever, as if I were watching her through a lens with a bit of stocking pulled over it. The blues of her eyes smudged bluer, the shape of her upper lip seraphic as it began to bud forward over the bottom one. Vulnerable. In the end, I suppose she’d just been looking for love like everyone else. And I hadn’t given it to her, not the way she needed it. Now I thought of the glitter, the bindi, the sipping through the teeth. The sunglasses always within reach. And it struck me: Maybe she was just afraid of being ordinary if she showed herself. Like I had been. Of not being that something special. Even though she was.

Her face was naked and when she spoke her words were, too, and I knew they came straight from her hurt heart.

—I’m sorry, too, she said.

On the outside it sounded like the beginning of a reconciliation. But on the inside it felt more like something truly precious was ending.

The night of Flashball I actually felt like I fit in my clothing for the first time. Not because I had lost weight or anything. Simply, I suppose, because I
was
wearing my own clothes, of my choice. I’d bought a new pair of jeans and they were the closest thing I could get to vintage without actually waiting a few years and going through a few tussles to rip ‘em up myself. These were faded blue bell-bottoms with velvet roses embroidered all along the edges; it was the first time in a long time I’d found a pair of pants that fit so perfectly. On top I was in a black tank, the dupatta from my birthday outfit wrapped around my shoulders. Down below: red and neon orange trainers (mine) on my doubly ankletted feet (however mismatched; I’d double-wrapped a necklace around one).

But on the inside I was a hotpot, a melting pot, of emotions. Still, these emotions seemed to go together, despite how wildly varied they were. The sad part of the hotpot was, of course, all about Gwyn; I still wasn’t sure whether she would make it tonight. But my fingers were crossed that maybe she’d have a change of heart, and it was my hope for this, as well as my hope that a certain other someone’s heart had
not
changed that had brought about my decision, ultimately, to go. I couldn’t just sit and watch this one out.

And my heart. Beating. Trying to beat-match. It was a lone tabla, longing for its other half. Karsh was already at the club setting up, as Radha had informed me. So I hadn’t seen him. At all, in fact, since the delivery of the tempestuous tape. And I was nervous. Make
that a very. Would he be angry at me for my distance? What if he had changed his mind? What if he’d never made up his mind, and Gwyn had misunderstood the whole thing? What if he didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t be with me?

What if he wasn’t angry. Hadn’t changed his mind. Had made it up.

Did. Could. Would.

This was the moment, tonight. It could go either way. It could go no way at all. But no matter what happened, it had come a long way already from June, from July, from much of August, even. From that first turned-around birthday.

It was hard to imagine that had been him, that khakied pleated piano-benched foyer-photo boy in our living room that day. Startling to imagine that had been me. Returning to that afternoon now in my mind, with this accumulated level of emotion and information, everything seemed different. It made me wonder if all the signs had been there even then, but I had been so out of touch, so turned against myself I’d missed them. Or if it had transmuted into this aweinspiring affair of the heart in retrospect—when it became part of a context, a story: communicable.

I was moments away from seeing Karsh. I placed his sneakers now, tenderly, as if they were a living thing, into my bag, zipping them into safety.

When I came out of my room, my mother and Radha were in the living room, primping then preening like flared peacocks. The two were dressed in matching maharajah robes they’d bought on a shopping excursion together, my mother in forest green and Radha in burgundy. They were giggling like girls as they styled each other’s hair; the semipermanent was entirely out of my mother’s by now, and she’d returned gracefully strand by strand to silver-lined blackness. My father, of course, was in his suitable-boy-meeting outfit.
They were to be joining us for the first part of the evening—to my initial horror Karsh had insisted for some reason, at least according to Radha, who seemed to be operating as our go-between lately—then they were going to head out for dinner just the three of them. I’d probably be holding off on the punch till that exit!

—Don’t worry, you will not even know we are there, my mother had assured me.

But I could hardly imagine that would be the case: Already the two emperorial ones were engaged in some kind of moonwalking Macarena dance sequence, all the while shrugging with bhangric fervor.

—Bollocks, yaar, let’s get some Gujju moves in there as well, cried Radha, as if over very loud music, one hand then the other going to her hips in time with my mother.—Got any Garbha up your sleeve, Rohitbhai?

My father shyly joined in and then very unshyly demonstrated a harvest-happy upsweep and toe-touch.

—Come and join us, beta, my mother shrugged at me. She missed not a single unheard beat as she spoke.—We are just warming up our moves.

I stepped in. I was feeling more together than usual, but still, the idea of my parents…dancing in public?

After a couple minutes of all of us hopping in sync (and me secretly enjoying it), Radha suddenly finger-whistled.

—Bus bus, yaar, I think we’ve got it. Now to the car, we don’t want to be late.

But my mother still had one thing she wanted to do.

—You all go on out, she commanded, herding them towards the front door.—We will be right with you.

Once Radha and my father were safely shoed in the drive, my mom drew me to the Krishna temple in the kitchen, where a low
flame was burning off one of those waxy rounds that float through punchbowls at holiday parties. The temple with its Sai Baba pendant and lottery ticket and jar of hand-sewn silk roses, a gift from Hush-Hush Aunty. The incense holder, and of course, the magnificent ivory-encrusted Krishna. And in the corner the tiny silver pot of tikka that my mother’s own mother had pressed between her brows the day she left for America, so many years ago.

My mother opened it now and before I knew what she was doing dabbed a bit between my brows; the pulverized dust crimson clouded my eyes a moment and was gone, and she was before me with an expression of such tenderness I felt my bones go loose.

—I thought you were saving it, Mom, I whispered.

—There is no point in saving things, said my mother.—I realize that now.

—But I’m not leaving for another country or anything.

—You are beginning a journey, she said, blowing out the candle now and picking up her purse.

The moment we crossed the bridge I felt the pulse. And when we pulled up to the club and parked in the already dimming day, a simmering sense of anticipation filled me. The night was ours. I could feel it, rearing up in my hand, a bucking diamond. It was one of those moments of pure possibility, like when you wake from a nap and the sun is still shining, or you find it snowed all night and no one in the wee-hours world has realized it yet but you. But here, now, the night was young and so was I and I had a dazzling flash where I felt it: My whole life lay ahead of me, and it was all going to take place tonight.

It was HotPot all right, but that was about all there was in com
mon with my last and first time there. Take entering, for example: no ID required tonight—which was fortunate, considering I’d tossed the legal-age illegal one in Mirror Lake.

As we walked inside, Radha leaned over and brushed my hair out of my eyes.