Tulip Season (3 page)

Or maybe Kareena's eyes and judgment only worked for others, not herself.

She'd always seemed to have known when Mitra was heading down a bad path with a man. Two years ago, she'd warned Mitra against a date who would be later arrested for fondling a woman on a plane. A few months after that, Kareena had thrown a bash in honor of Subhas Jha, a visiting Indian film director, whose new offering,
Shadows
, had just opened to wide acclaim at the Seattle International Film Festival. For that occasion, Kareena had asked Mitra to provide the centerpiece. Mitra spent hours preparing an all-white lily arrangement. She didn't mind the expense. Clad in a beaded white ankle-length dress, holding a wine glass in her hand, Kareena fluttered among the guests. It pleased Mitra to see that Kareena frequently stopped to sniff the white lilies spilling out of an urn like a milky waterfall. She smiled at Mitra whenever their gazes met. Mitra had worn her best black pants and a white weskit blouse but, seized with shyness, stood alone in a corner, nursing a Crystal Geyser.

A member of the film crew, a 6′6″ giant, approached her and asked if she'd like to go out with him for drinks. She said no. He kept insisting, pushing his bulky body closer and closer, until he shoved her against the wall. “I know what your problem is,” he said. “You haven't had a man in awhile. But I'll fix that for you.”

Mitra tried to angle away, but he grabbed her arm. Kareena, who must have been watching from across the room, rushed over and glared at the offender. “You have to get out right now,” she
commanded, pointing at the door and snatching a cellphone from her purse. “Or else I'll call the cops.”

The man's shoulders bunched, his gaze darted to the door, and he scurried away. Mitra took a few choppy breaths.

Kareena poured her a drink. “Fight, Mitra, fight. Don't let a man ever harm you.”

At her urging, the very next day, Mitra had signed up for a weekend workshop on personal safety and self-defense training for women. She was one of the first in her community to do so.

Letting go of that memory, Mitra prayed that Kareena hadn't been in a position where she needed to fight to keep a man from harming her.

Upon returning home from her visit with Veen, Mitra picked up her cellphone. She didn't know the protocol for calling the police. Nonetheless, she punched the number of the Seattle Police Department. Struggling to keep her voice calm, she asked for the officer assigned to Kareena's case.

Oh, God. She was a case, a number in the police computer system, her Kareena.

FOUR

MITRA ANSWERED A SERIES
of routine questions from the investigating officer. Usually, she smiled whenever she thought of her closest confidante: now she felt as though a sharp knife were threatening her. The officer cleared his throat.

A peek through the draperies revealed a bruised, swollen April sky. “What happens from here?” Mitra asked.

“Call everybody who knew her. The more eyes that search, the quicker you'll get results.” The officer informed her that Kareena was last seen at Soirée with an Indian man, as confirmed by a waitress there. He suggested starting out from Soirée, the primary search area, then radiating out in widening circles. “Also check the jails and hospitals.”

The officer should offer help with a bloodhound, a search-and-rescue team, and state police helicopter. “Jails?” Mitra said. “She's never been in trouble. Aren't those your responsibilities? What kind of priority are you giving to this case?”

“Sorry, we don't go out looking for missing people, unless it's a minor. Your friend could simply have run away. It's not illegal for adults to go missing. In 99% of the cases, the person is found. They've just dropped out. Without evidence of abduction, violence, or even a threat, I can't requisition resources. We have only two detectives assigned to all missing persons' cases.”

Mitra drew in a troubled breath. Even though she understood the reasons, she still couldn't accept them. “Kareena was named the top DV counselor in her office. She's an important person in our community. You're saying you can't do anything?”

“We haven't found a body.”

Mitra's heart fell. She wouldn't disclose her suspicions to the authorities about Adi. It was only a gut level feeling that he'd given Kareena the bruise.

The officer encouraged her to call back if she ran into any new information. After hanging up, pumped by adrenaline, Mitra Googled “Missing Persons” and telephoned the National Center for Missing Adults.

“There are privacy issues,” a representative said. “An adult who goes missing might wish to keep their locations anonymous. We ask people to wait thirty days. Missing adults often turn up in that length of time.”

“Thirty days?” Were they crazy
?
This was Kareena they were talking about, her best friend, her comrade.

Mitra cut off the conversation, astounded to discover her tax dollars were not being used properly. She punched Kareena's cellphone number, only to find it had been switched off. Well, Mitra could try one more thing. She dialed Kareena's office and left a message for her supervisor.

Then Mitra worked the situation around in her mind, like breaking up packed soil to allow planting. But she couldn't get anything to line up. Even the cushioned chair didn't feel cozy.

She walked outside, over to her side yard. Blue bells were pushing up from the winter-hardened ground. An apple tree spread its skeletal arms studded with nascent buds. White clumps of mushrooms popped up here and there over the dark mulch. Mitra noticed a slug, picked it up, and deposited it on a safe spot.

Her career focus in art and botany—the study of the physiology of new growth, the awareness of color and light, and harmony of arrangements—hadn't prepared her to confront a situation like this. She looked up to the sky, out of a gardener's propensity to check the weather. The blue infinity helped her to see beyond the immediate, and provided her with an approach.

In her home office, she grabbed a notepad and a pen and began scribbling a list of friends and acquaintances she could call upon, not stopping until the page was filled. The Indian population in the Puget Sound area had recently been described as a “model community” in a feature article in the
Seattle Chronicle
. Its academic and professional accomplishments were “as lofty as Mount Rainier.” Mitra was troubled by such laudatory phrases, being well aware that it had its fair share of warts and blemishes. According to Kareena,
the rate of spouse abuse among the community's dignified doctors, elite engineers, and high-powered professors equaled, perhaps even exceeded the national average. Still in a crisis, this was a community that came together.

Mitra consulted her watch. It was pushing 10 o'clock, an hour when everyone was up and about. Adi would in his office, Adi who professed to be “furiously, stormily, achingly” in love with Kareena. “Every millisecond, wherever I might be, and whatever I am doing, I dream of you and you only,” he had gushed in a birthday card Mitra had once seen pinned on the memo board in their kitchen. Still, the fact remained. They'd been married nine years, but didn't have any children.

Mitra relived a moment that had transpired a few months ago. She and Kareena were spending an afternoon at Soirée, when an enormously pregnant woman waddled past their table. Mitra shifted her chair to let her pass. Kareena put her fork down, wiped an invisible crumb from the corner of her mouth, and gazed with fascination at the woman.

In a teasing tone, Mitra asked, “Could that be you?”

“Adi doesn't want kids,” Kareena said, her voice sad, low. “He says, ‘I like it the way it is, just the two of us.’”

“I'm not married,” Mitra said, “so couldn't offer you advice. But couldn't you discuss it with Adi? Maybe try to change his mind?”

“Adi's a good husband. He buys me everything I want. You have to understand the dynamics of a marriage, Mitra. There are personal limits you must respect. I try to be understanding of Adi. I don't push him about having kids.”

“Why not, may I ask, if the issue is so important to you? Why make such a huge sacrifice? Wouldn't you some day regret—?”

Kareena butted in. “Hey, we came here to have a good time. I get gloomy issues from my clients all day long.” She eyed her plum-almond tart, picked up her fork, and took a bite. “Just the right sweet-sour balance.”

Her left wrist sported a pearl-studded bracelet-cum-watch, an expensive present from Adi, his way of “buying” her affection, or so Mitra conjectured. He stared at her, Mitra had noticed on numerous occasions, as though she was an
objet d'art
which had cost him no small sum.

And yet, on that day Mitra had seen the crack in their marriage, as clear as the broken branch on a young dogwood tree outside the café window. She couldn't quite put the puzzle pieces together.

It was time to visit Adi. Under normal circumstances, he loved to talk about himself in his Oxford-accented, popcorn-popping speech; this self-obsession might give Mitra a chance to tease information out of him, however distasteful the process might be, however dangerous.

As Mitra drove toward Adi's office, she almost saw Veen's words inscribed on a billboard:
When a woman goes missing, nine times out of ten it's the husband.

FIVE

ON THE WAY TO ADI'S OFFICE
, stalled in traffic on the I-90 Bridge, Mitra ruminated—she couldn't avoid it, her mind was on overdrive.

Three years ago, she'd met Adi for the first time at a dinner he and Kareena had hosted to celebrate Diwali. Mitra had known Kareena only about a week then. It had surprised and pleased Mitra to get an invitation.

A tanned man of medium height and broad chest, handsome with an Indian overtone, approached Mitra. “I am Adi.” He shook her hand, his eyes straying elsewhere in the room. “Short for Aditta. Kareena's other half.”

Kareena joined them and they began discussing their connections to India. Kareena had been raised in Mumbai and New Delhi; Adi hailed from the state of West Bengal in Eastern India, like Mitra. Even as she greeted him, “
Parichay korte bhalo laglo
” (“How nice to meet you,” in their shared Bengali tongue), the name Aditta somehow brought to mind another word,
dhurta
: crook. The two words sort of rhymed in Bengali. Mitra never mentioned that to him or Kareena, but she couldn't help musing about the two words as she watched the indolent way Aditta flicked his gold cigarette lighter, the angle of the Marlboro between his lips, the shroud of smoke around him.

He informed Mitra that his company, Guha Software Services, was solidly in the black and that he'd recently purchased a deluxe beach cottage on the Olympic Peninsula.

Eventually, he finished bragging about himself and asked Mitra, “What do you do with your time?”

“I have a garden design business, Palette of Color.”

“Are you a tree-hugger, too, mademoiselle?”

She laughed his question away, as well as the use of French. It might be the mocking tone of her laughter or her immediate turning away, but a chill had hung between them ever since.

“Two strong personalities,” Kareena would maintain in the years to come. She also warned Mitra that Adi could be blunt. A nice way of saying “jerk,” Mitra assumed. Or that his charm was in the budding stage.

Still thinking about that first meeting with Adi, Mitra parked her car a block from his office and crossed the street in a hurry, the light turning red.

A passing motorcyclist yelled at her: “Get out of my way, you fucking idiot!”

Surely this was an overreaction in her usually polite city. Still, it bugged Mitra. She arrived at Adi's office building with a sense of discomfort, marched through a large lobby, signed her name at the guard's desk, went past a row of workstations, and entered a lavish office, all leather and mahogany.

Thank God, Adi wasn't there. She needed a moment. She drew up a chair and studied the room. A number of award plaques lined one wall. The desk held a black-and-white photo of Kareena that Adi had snapped on vacation in the Greek Isles. Dolled up in a camisole and gypsy skirt, she leaned against a tree and smiled.
Kareena
—
where are you?

Next to that photo rested their wedding picture from nine years ago in a gold-tone wood frame. The bride and the groom both wore their wedding gear; a red silk sari and gold jewelry for Kareena, and an off-white brocaded
sherwani
and contrasting black
churida
r for Adi.

Kareena had once told Mitra the story of Adi's family. Adi was an only son, heir to a fortune. Growing up in New Delhi, he had intelligence, if not good behavior, and bagged many academic honors. His mother spoiled him, the God Krishna incarnate, as Indian mothers of that generation were accustomed to do. Even on the day he'd punched a sickly classmate at school, she treated him to sweet rounds of besan laddoos.

In his late twenties, Adi had met Kareena. By then, a successful executive, he fell hard for her. Adi's wealthy family didn't approve of their relationship. “Her mother is low class,” they'd said, “practically a whore. How can the daughter be any good? Just wait and see—she won't stick around.”

“They were so petty,” Kareena had told Mitra in a strained voice at the time. “How can they speak like that about my mother? She's a respectable woman. She has her own mind, so they don't like her.”

Adi had decided to marry Kareena against their wishes and given up his huge inheritance for her sake. His family disowned him. Not only that, his uncle sabotaged his efforts to obtain a coveted position with an electronics firm by taking the job himself. Adi endured a year of that type of humiliation before giving up.

Eight years ago, Adi and his new bride had left India and flown to the opposite side of the world, as far away from his family as he could possibly go. He settled in the Pacific Northwest, where he found a plethora of opportunities. Before long, he formed his own software outfit. There was a price to be paid: long hours, constant travel, and worry about finances. In spite of this, he persisted and ultimately succeeded. He created “value” for his customers. He had “recurring revenues.” Even though a success, he was still pariah to his family. Rumor had it that these days, although he often jetted to India on business and phoned his family from his hotel room in Mumbai, his mother would not take his call.