Oleander Girl (14 page)

I’m touched at being taken into Maman’s confidence. Flattered, too, I admit it. She doesn’t let many people in under that elegant guard. But I’m also worried. A woman such as Maman rarely asks for assistance; if someone turns her down, I suspect she doesn’t take rejection well. I want to help my future family, these wonderful people who have been like parents to me already. But if I give up on my father, it would be a further betrayal of my mother, who has been so terribly wronged. Confused thoughts battle inside my head. Maman is smiling at me. Part of me wants to collapse against her strength and let her make the decisions. Everything would become so easy then. The Boses take care of their own—they would protect me, and Grandmother, too. Rajat would be delighted by the early wedding. I remember the firmness of his palm against my back as we danced, and it is so sweet a memory that I almost say yes.

But I can’t. It would be cowardly, for the sake of security, to relinquish this chance to find and to know the man my mother loved so deeply that she couldn’t give him up though it tore her heart in two. It would be a betrayal of myself to go through life pretending to be what I’m not.

Maman is smiling already in anticipation. I take a deep breath, hoping she will not hate me for what I’m about to say.

“I’m sorry, Maman. I can’t stop my search. I owe it to my dead mother. If Mr. Desai finds a lead, I will follow it to America. But neither do I want
to be a trouble to you. I understand how much of a problem for you my heritage has become.” I swallow and clear my throat. It’s hard for me to say the next words. “If it is so important for your business, I’m willing to release Rajat from the engagement.”

Maman’s face turns white. “What are you saying? You don’t want to marry Rajat?”

“Of course I do, Maman! But I’m a liability to you at this time, I can see that. This way you can tell Mr. Bhattacharya that you broke off the alliance because you found out about my father not being a Hindu. That should please him and make him want to invest with you. Once the investment goes through, and some time has passed, Rajat and I can get back—”

But Maman isn’t listening to me. A cold, closed look has descended on her face. “Rajat would give his life for you—and you’re prepared to throw his love away like this?”

“I’m not throwing away his love!” I cry, trying to hold back my tears. Oh, why won’t she understand me! “Don’t you see? I’m offering to do this for him and for you!”

Her nostrils flare with suppressed anger. She goes on as though I haven’t spoken. “It’s best you discuss this matter directly with Rajat.” She presses the buzzer on her desk to indicate the visit is over.

Shikha shows me out in frigid silence. Everything I wanted to say has come out wrong.

Although it is only 4:00 p.m., Mrs. Bose has left the gallery. She sits on an old marble bench across from Rose Aylmer’s tomb in the Park Circus cemetery, trying to calm herself as she waits for Rajat.

After Korobi’s visit, she couldn’t concentrate. She forced herself to meet her next appointment, a potential buyer for a high-end restaurant, but she was too distracted to make an effective presentation. Mortifyingly, she had to plead ill health and hand him over to Shikha. She canceled the rest of her appointments—something she had never done—and called Rajat to say they had to talk.

“Right now? Mother, I have a lot of work. The billing has piled up over the last two weeks, and—”

“It’s urgent. Meet me at the cemetery, where we won’t be overheard.”

“It’s that girl, isn’t it, causing trouble?” Shikha said with a frown as Mrs. Bose left. Mrs. Bose didn’t answer; she didn’t have to. Shikha always knew.

Mrs. Bose has chosen the cemetery because it’s halfway between the gallery and the warehouse, and because the tales of untimely death etched on the crumbling tombstones usually put her own troubles in perspective. But today they don’t help even though it is quiet and cool in the shadows of the palms, beside the worn path lined by moss-encrusted mausoleums. Impossible to sit still any longer! What on earth is delaying Rajat? She paces up and down, startling pigeons into flight. By the time Rajat appears, apologizing about traffic snarl, her patience is at an end. She launches into a tirade even though she knows she shouldn’t.

“Why didn’t
you
tell me about Korobi’s father? I shouldn’t have had to hear it from her—”

He sighs. “I’d hoped to get her to keep it to herself. I didn’t want to worry you with one more thing on top of all the problems you’re handling right now.”

Mrs. Bose forgives him immediately, even though he has caused some of those problems. It’s always been this way with her firstborn, brought up in those early, difficult days when she had so little time to give him. Her mother would put him to sleep long before Mrs. Bose returned home, but somehow, no matter how quiet she was, he would hear her and lurch from his bed, rubbing his face into her neck with his smell, a mix of milk and earth and sweat, clinging to her. The memory of that embrace, a balm on her aching mother-heart, would keep her going all next day.

He looks so tired, she thinks now with a pang. He’s taken on a lot recently. In addition to handling their failing finances, he’s offered to be in charge of the warehouse operations while Mr. Bose is traveling. Lately a spate of incidents have occurred there—small, like ant bites, but enough over time to wear one out. He must also feel guilty about the losses at the New York gallery—he had urged them into opening it. And Korobi—she’s been a weight on him ever since her grandfather died. All
this time, Mrs. Bose has tried to sympathize with Korobi’s sorrow, to be patient about how for three weeks Rajat hasn’t been home once for dinner. But today, in the gallery, the girl had pushed her over the edge.

Calm down, Joyu,
Shanto would have told her if he were here now instead of in Bardhaman, checking on an overdue order of weavings.
Wait and see how the two of them work things out
. Mrs. Bose imagines it: She could say,
It’s okay, Son. We’ll handle it somehow.
Then Rajat and she could walk the grassy pathways, reading their favorite memorial inscriptions aloud to each other, the poem Walter Savage Landor wrote to his too-soon-withered Rose. They could buy brightly colored ices from the vendor outside the gate, the way they did when he was a boy. They would remember the afternoon only for the way the clouds draped themselves like gray shawls above the pipal trees, for the pair of shalikhs that scolded them from the top of Hindoo Stuart’s tomb.

But a part of her will not let things be—the bulldog grip that has led her all these years to succeed when everyone else was waiting for her to fail. She describes the afternoon meeting in passionate detail: how she had put aside her shock at Korobi’s news to express her sympathy; how she had confided their difficulties to her; how she had thrown her pride by the roadside and requested her help. The girl had fixed those wide eyes on her and stated, without a trace of hesitation, that she would rather break off the engagement than not go to America.

“She said that?”

“That’s right. As if you mattered less to her than this stranger who might not even want to meet her.”

Rajat’s face is pale and stricken, sharp lines bracket the corners of his mouth. He’s taking it harder than she expected.

“Maybe it’s best this way,” she says consolingly. “You’ve only known each other a few months. A clean break will hurt for now, but it’ll heal fast, and then you can both be free to—”

“But I don’t want to be free of her! She’s the most precious thing in my life. And she doesn’t care? She doesn’t care at all for my love?” His voice breaks on the last word.

Mrs. Bose’s heart constricts. She can’t stand to see her son suffer like this, not even for the good of Barua & Bose.

“Maybe she didn’t mean it quite like that,” she says, putting an arm around her son. “We were both overwrought. Discuss it with her tomorrow. Come home with me. Pia must be back from school already. We’ll order pizza and sit around the table and chat. Put aside our problems for a while—”

Rajat declines. He has to get back to the office, he says curtly. He left some urgent business unfinished there. But at least he sounds calmer.

In silence they walk back to the entrance, past the ironic, ebullient orange of the Gulmohur trees.

“Take the car if you’re going to be late,” Mrs. Bose says. “I’ll catch a cab.” From the taxi, she calls Shikha to tell her she’s going home. “I don’t think I’m up to doing any more work today. Can you handle things?”

“Not a problem, madam. I’ll take care of it all. You rest. Maybe take a long soak in the tub with those Yardley bath salts Sir bought you for Valentine’s Day.”

“I’m so glad I can count on you, Shikha,” Mrs. Bose says gratefully.

“It’s nothing, madam.”

Then, as Mrs. Bose is about to hang up, Shikha adds, “Miss Korobi never did fit in with our family.”

Mrs. Bose’s body jerks upright in surprise. Why, it’s the very thought that has been swimming through the dark part of her mind that she doesn’t want to acknowledge.

“Enough, Shikha,” she says, but without heat.

“Forgive me, madam. It’s just that it pains me to see you upset.”

Mrs. Bose is touched, though she doesn’t respond. It isn’t appropriate to discuss family matters with retainers, no matter how loyal. But Shikha’s words have sparked a new thought inside her. As much as she had begun to warm to Korobi, bringing her into the family confidences, the child is clearly not as dependable as she had thought. Perhaps allowing Korobi to go away to America might not be a bad idea after all. If the girl does find her father and decides to remain there, perhaps it would be for the best in the long run.

Late at night I’m jerked awake by a loud, confused commotion. I push up reluctantly through viscous layers of sleep, still exhausted by the events of the day, by the argument I had with Grandmother upon my return from the gallery.

“You told her
what
? You want to break off the engagement and go to America? Are you crazy? Don’t you understand how lucky you are that Mrs. Bose is willing to go through with the marriage even after knowing about your father? You should have accepted her offer of an early wedding.”

I should have held my tongue. Grandmother looked so distraught. But I was feeling frightened, and so I shouted, “I’m tired of people treating me like a charity case, acting like they’re doing me a great favor by having this wedding take place. I’m not ready for it, anyway!”

“Not ready?” Grandmother’s mouth fell open—in surprise or outrage, I wasn’t sure which. “You’re talking as though we forced you into this engagement! I remember the day you came to us, all shiny-faced, begging us to let you marry Rajat. Didn’t you say you were surer of your love for him than of anything else in your life?”

I reached back, trying to recapture the feel of that day, but the memory came to me in dim sepia, leached of emotion. I felt sad for the innocent girl I’d been then.

“I’m sorry for causing you so much grief. I’m no longer sure about anything. Except that my mother would have wanted me to find my father. That was what my dream meant, Grandma, I’m sure of it.”

Rajat didn’t come for dinner. We waited for him until the curry was cold and the rutis hard and dry, but he didn’t even call.

The commotion is louder now, someone shouting, someone pleading. It’s coming from the entrance. I don’t want Grandmother to wake—she has a hard time getting back to sleep. I throw a shawl over my nightgown and hurry to the stairs.

I recognize Bahadur’s voice, then Asif’s.

“Please, Rajat-saab, it’s very late. You’ll wake Ma.”

“Saab, let me take you home. You can talk to Korobi-memsaab tomorrow.”

“No. Now! I’m going to talk to her right now! How dare she say she wants to break off the engagement? That she doesn’t care about me?”

Rajat’s voice is loud, his words slurring. He pounds the door with both fists. In all these months, I’ve never seen him drunk like this. I rush down the stairs, aghast. Oh, Rajat! What have I done?

Cook, cowering at the foot of the staircase, tries to hold me back, but I move her aside and unbolt the door. The blood pounds in my temples, but I must face Rajat. I owe him that much. I’m shocked by his face, splotched with red, his unfocused eyes. His clothing is rumpled. I force myself to take him by his upraised arm. Faking a confidence I don’t feel, I tell Bahadur and Asif, who look distraught, that I’ll take care of him. I pull him into the house and shut the door. Rajat follows me, surprisingly docile. But just when I let out a relieved breath, he grabs my shoulders. His nails dig into my flesh, making me cry out, more in shock than pain.