He shrugs, which is probably as close to a yes as she’s going to get, and she takes her cue to step outside of the room while saying, “I will be downstairs if you need anything.”
Vijay traces a circle on the carpet with his foot, avoiding eye contact with Sophie.
“I’m sorry if this is hard for you,” Sophie says. “I only just learned about you because, well, I was in Paris trying to find her, and—”
“You didn’t know she was dead until now?” Vijay asks, staring at her.
Sophie sighs. “Yes and no, I suppose. Do you mind if I sit?” She gestures toward the bed.
Vijay shrugs, and Sophie sinks onto it, her body feeling weary.
Her voice quivers as she says, “My papa died a couple weeks ago. He was my whole world.” Her tone is soft and low, as if she’s mainly speaking to herself at this point. Then she meets Vijay’s gaze. “He raised me alone from the time I was six years old. I came home from school one day, and he told me that Nita had gone to the village she was from to care for my ba. I didn’t think anything of it. And then a couple weeks later, I came home and found Papa sitting alone at our dining room table, waiting for me. That’s when he told me she had died in a car accident.” She wills her tears not to spill, fearing that will make Vijay more skittish and uncomfortable than he already is. “So, for most of my life, yes, I thought Nita had died when I was a little girl. And I only just learned that when I thought she had died, she had in fact only moved to Paris and left Papa and me behind.” She keeps her eyes on him and sees he is rapt with attention. “When I was cleaning out his closet after he . . . well, after . . . I found some letters Nita had written to him, and they were a few years after she had left. I had just lost my only family, and I thought Bhagwan was sending me a sign that she was still out there. That I wasn’t really alone. So, I went to find her, using an address on the letters. It’s silly, I know. But I had a feeling that this was the answer. But then I learned that she had really died, even if it had happened several years after I had thought. And I was back to being alone again. Until, that is”—she smiles shyly at him—“I learned about you.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your dad,” he mumbles. “My dad died too.”
Sophie senses Vijay thinks of Simon as his father and does not want to bring up Mathieu. “Yes, your grandmother told me about Simon. I’m sorry to hear that. Do you know how he and our mother met?”
“I know Simon’s not my real dad, if that’s what you’re asking. I was old enough to remember that jerk Mathieu by the time I moved in with Simon, but Simon’s the only real parent I’ve ever had, so he’s the only one who matters.”
Sophie cannot even imagine what happened in his childhood to have caused this rancor in his voice in speaking about Nita and Mathieu. She has never felt anything but love for her parents, even after she learned Nita had left them; she was angry, but underlying that was still the love she’d felt as a child. But she can see that his childhood was very different from hers.
“You’ve had a better life here?” Sophie says. “With Simon?”
Vijay scoffs. “Easily. Dad was great. My grandmother is awesome. The weather is amazing. Dad taught me how to surf when we moved here.”
“How old were you when you came to California?”
“Six,” Vijay says. “I was four when I found Maman dead on the bedroom floor.” He lifts his gaze to meet hers. “So, I guess I don’t have to wonder if she’s really dead, like you did. Mathieu was out. Probably getting more drugs. That apartment was a used-needle haven by that point. Dad said it was a miracle I didn’t stab myself to death. Just got needle sticks when I was a kid, goofing around and not realizing that one of them had dumped one under the bed or in the closet or whatever.”
The way he speaks so indifferently about his childhood makes Sophie cringe inwardly. How could the mummy she knew have ended up raising a child in that environment? Sophie’s upbringing in India had been idyllic in comparison. The most she’d ever worried about had been a scraped knee from running too hard when playing cricket.
“I’m sorry she wasn’t a better mother to you,” Sophie says.
“It doesn’t sound like she was a very good one to you either.”
Sophie tries not to flinch. While she has always loved Nita, the fact that she was abandoned by her hasn’t fully woven its way into her consciousness. “It’s complicated because before all of this, I thought she was a great one. Do you have any positive memories of her?”
Vijay shrugs again. “I guess she had some stretches where she was lucid and had her shit together. Right before she died, she had a stretch that lasted a few days—maybe a week. She was clean and yelling at Mathieu all the time to get the drugs out of the house. It was so loud. One of the old neighbors kept coming down and telling them to be quiet, but she was kind of a nuisance anyway, so they never listened to her. There was food in the fridge every day because she wasn’t off on those benders and losing track of time. She kept talking about going to India and what a great life we would have there. Saying it never snowed or got cold. That I’d have a big sister to take care of me. Guess that was you.”
“What happened then? If she had a plan to come back?” Sophie is desperate to learn every detail of why Nita and Vijay never made it back to India.
“Who knows? She and Mathieu had some big fight, and he stormed out of the apartment. She was shaking and agitated and said I needed to take a nap while she relaxed. I woke up and was hungry and kept trying to wake her up. No one else was home. After I couldn’t wake her for a while, I was so hungry that I went to the neighbor across the way and asked him if they had any bread or cheese I could eat, and then he followed me back and called the police. They came and stuck her on a stretcher and carried her out. Mathieu had come home around that time and was wailing about her being gone and telling me that it must have been something I did to cause her to take too much. Maybe I had been crying too loudly or whatever. That she knew the right dosage, and I must have distracted her.” The disgust and pain on his face are evident as he speaks of Mathieu.
“I’m sure it was nothing to do with you,” Sophie says quickly, already feeling a sense of responsibility toward him. “It sounds like she was in a bad place. Maybe even before she left India. But it wasn’t anything to do with you.”
“Yeah, maybe. She was an addict, so maybe it was silly for her to think she could ever have gotten clean. Dad kept trying to tell me all this good stuff about her, but all I could remember was her being an addict.”
Vijay tries to make light of the heavy subject, but Sophie can see in his expression that he has thought often of this time in his life and has many demons surrounding it.
“How did you end up with Simon?”
A wry smile crosses his face. “Mathieu only lasted for a few months as a single parent. And even then, Dad took care of me most of that time. Sometimes Aunt Dao helped, too, but mostly just Simon. One day Simon packed up my things and said I was going to go live with him. I was so happy to get out of there, I never questioned it. I think Mathieu was high when we left, so maybe he didn’t even remember it happened. I saw him every now and then after that. He came by the apartment a few times and yelled at Simon. Once, he tried to convince me to leave with him, but I knew better. And Simon wouldn’t have let him take me, anyway.”