Sophie looks at Maggie, confused. Maggie rises from the small dining table and heads to a built-in bookcase that is filled with cookbooks and photos, and brings one of the frames to Sophie. It is a high school graduation picture, and she sees a young man with the beginnings of a mustache smiling at the camera. He is standing with Maggie and a handsome man with emerald-green eyes. The boy is wearing a square, flat cap with a tassel, and the people around him are beaming.
“This is Vijay at his high school graduation. We were all so proud of him.”
Sophie stares at the picture of an older boy than what she had seen before, searching Vijay’s face for signs of Nita, and she sees the resemblance in his eyes remains. Even with the tan, his skin is lighter than Sophie’s, but it is still possible to identify their common parentage. The boy in that picture looks like he is surrounded by a loving family, and there is no reason to shatter that idea. Sophie wonders if she made a mistake, intruding on the life that was built and reflected in that photo.
“Do you know where I can find him?”
Maggie reaches out a hand to Sophie and squeezes her forearm. “If I were a betting woman, I’d say he’s probably upstairs, glued to those video games he’s always playing.”
Sophie’s eyes widen. He’s here?! In this house that I’ve been sitting in?
50
Maggie knocks on the closed door that leads to Vijay’s room while Sophie holds her breath. She hears loud music from behind it.
“It’s sometimes impossible to get him to pay attention,” Maggie says ruefully as she raps harder on it. “Vijay! Open the door,” she says sternly.
There is some stirring inside, and then the door cracks open and Vijay’s head pokes out from behind it. He is wearing thickly padded headphones and has pulled one side back so he can hear her.
“What is it? I’m playing a game with my friends online,” he says in the irritated tone that young adults have when dealing with parental figures.
“Take those off your ears,” Maggie orders, and Vijay drops the headphones around his neck. Maggie steps to the side so that Sophie is in view. “We have a guest I’d like you to meet. Turn off your game and let us in. The world will not end if you return to it later.”
Shoulders slumped, he opens the door wider and kicks some clothing on the floor to the side so Maggie and Sophie can enter. The room is cluttered with comics, clothes, and stacks of papers. The only hint of neatness is that the bed is made, and Sophie suspects that Maggie had more to do with that than Vijay. It is a far cry from the sparse bedroom that Sophie grew up in, where there was never a thing out of place. Vijay’s room would have been so different if Nita had made it back to India like she had intended. His entire life would have been different. She wonders if he even knows there was an alternate plan for him, or if he was too young to understand at the time.
Vijay stands near a beanbag chair that is against the wall near his desk, atop which is a large computer monitor and a controller. On the screen is a fighter jet game, and Sophie sees planes using lasers to attack a large robot. Maggie and Sophie enter and stand near him.
Maggie gestures to Sophie. “Vijay, this is Sophie. She’s traveled all the way from India to meet you.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Why?”
Sophie wrings her hands as she approaches him.
“I wanted to meet you because”—she struggles to find the right words—“well, because I just learned I am your sister. I mean, we have the same mother. Or did, I should say. She died many years ago.”
Vijay’s face hardens, and he stares at the carpet. “I know. I’m the one who found her on the bedroom floor.”
His voice is laced with venom, and he doesn’t seem surprised or curious about the fact that he has a sister and that she is standing in his bedroom only a few steps away from him. There is none of the excitement Sophie had felt when she learned of his existence, and instead there is only tension and irritation. He has the same look in his eyes that Nita used to get when she was angry. The same one she had when she caught Sophie with the bangles.
Maggie looks at him sternly. “Let’s have better manners for our guest, who has traveled a long way to see you.”
He plops onto the beanbag chair and crosses his arms.
Sophie says, “I’m sorry to have come unannounced. I just learned about you a couple days ago, and I only had this address to try and find you.”
“How did you find me?” he asks.
“It wasn’t easy.” Sophie manages an uncomfortable laugh to ease the tension in the air. “My—our mother had a friend named Dao who had saved the envelopes and pictures of you that Simon had sent over to her. I tracked Dao down while I was trying to find our mummy.”
Vijay nods. “Yeah, I remember Aunt Dao. She used to drop around our apartment in Paris before we moved here. She was a friend of Dad’s.”
Sophie is intrigued by his use of “dad” and wonders if he’s referring to Simon or Mathieu.
“Did you ever know about me?” Sophie asks.
Vijay shrugs. “I guess so. You were in India, right?”
Sophie nods.
“Yeah, I guess I did know. Maman would occasionally mumble something about a sister in India. It just didn’t seem like a big deal. I hadn’t really thought about it again after she died.”
Sophie flinches at his callous attitude. This is far from the reaction she’d been expecting. He knew about her, probably always had, and had done nothing to try to find her, so perhaps that explains his behavior. He’s not as interested in having a sister as she is in having a brother. He has a new family in America and does not seem to yearn for anything more.
Sophie takes a different tack. “Do you remember much about her? I was young when she—when she left. My memories are fuzzy, and I am just now learning of her life in France.”
Vijay’s eyes go dark again. Sophie feels Maggie’s arm on her shoulder, and, in a soft voice, Maggie says, “Vijay has a hard time speaking about his mother. It seems things were quite rough for him during his early years in Paris.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cause you any distress,” Sophie says to him.
He pretends to shrug it off, feigning nonchalance.
“I’m not sure what you want me to say?” Vijay says to her. “The woman was an addict. She was high all the time. Talked about some fancy life she had in India only to give it up and chase drugs down the streets of Paris. Seems like a bad trade, if you ask me.”
Sophie feels a lump form in her throat. She agrees it was a bad trade, but as she looks at Vijay standing before her, she knows that without that trade there would be no Vijay and this moment she is having with him would not exist. It hurts to see how much animosity he has toward Nita because Sophie’s memories of her are not filled with any of that turmoil.
“To me, she was nothing like that. To me, she was a beautiful woman who always smelled of rose and sandalwood, and hummed while she brushed her hair, and creased her brow when she was concentrating intently on a painting she was working on.”
Vijay looks surprised, clearly not knowing this side of Nita.
“Maybe I will leave you two alone for a minute, and you can catch up?” Maggie says it more to Vijay to gauge if he feels comfortable with that.