Family was the most important thing in your life, and that family didn’t have to be blood. Only one person had been Richard’s family for the past five years. Mary, the receptionist at the HOA office. She was the one who deserved his rage money, and Bindu had given it to her.
If Richard had left Mary the money himself, she would have been the one to deal with his family’s anger and the ugly names in the media. Maybe that’s why he’d left it to Bindu. Because he thought she’d know what to do. Or maybe she was giving him too much credit.
Lee’s love felt easy. Light on her skin, fresh on her tongue, the first drizzle of the monsoon, and just as dependable. It felt fueled by itself, not a mold he wanted to pour her into like molten silver.
Oscar had been able to love her without reservation because he knew he could never have her. Who was it that said, “The only kind of love that lasts forever is the unrequited kind”？
Rajendra had been able to love her, so long as she put parts of herself away except when they served him. He’d had to re-create her so she wouldn’t be shameful for him to claim publicly.
Her love for both men had come from a place of self-loathing. From a belief that she wasn’t like everyone else, like she didn’t fit. She’d believed their loving her despite her differentness was the gift they gave her.
But was that even love? What she’d felt for herself for so many years had barely scratched the surface of the love she was capable of.
She turned on the film again, and love gripped her, so intense that she had to breathe through it. It was the kind of love she felt for Cullie, and Alisha, and Ashish. A love she’d portioned carefully for parts of herself. Today, now, she let it all out. She let herself love the young body that the camera had captured in all its lush, unabashed glory. She loved the spirit that had reveled in the camera, let it in, trusted it enough to show the depth of her pain and pleasure without a single boundary.
She wanted that camera on her again.
She called Lee. “Want to come over?” she asked as she watched herself on the screen, risking everything to get what she wanted, and waited.
In a few minutes she heard the front door open.
“You’re beautiful,” he said over her shoulder.
She didn’t need to ask if he meant her or the girl on the screen. They were one and the same. So she said, simply, “Thank you.”
For a long while they watched in silence. A parijat-laden queen in ecstasy.
“That’s not all it is, you know,” he said finally as Poornima dropped her robe. “Your beauty. That’s not the only reason I love you.”
She turned the movie off and faced him.
“I mean, you’re not that beautiful.” He smiled, his lopsided Lee smile. “Fine, I’m lying. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. But my point is, that’s just one part of it.”
“Tell me what the other part is.”
“I’ve never met anyone so complete in her own skin, someone who sees everyone else as complete too. I feel free around you, a deep, true freedom to be me. I’m sixty years old, Bindu, and I’ve never felt this way around anyone else in my life.”
She wrapped her arms around him, and he pulled her close. It was a perfect fit.
“Is that not enough?” he asked.
“It’s more than enough,” she said. Then she pulled back and met his absurdly green eyes. “I love you too.”
And then she told him everything. How losing Oscar had crushed the life out of her. How losing her father had stubbed out what was left. How she hadn’t known how to work around the grief and guilt. Maybe she’d punished herself for letting it happen. She’d told herself that she’d already had it all, lived, and now whatever life gave her was payment for that.
She told him about her marriage. Even the parts that she still didn’t understand. Why that level of submission had felt both wonderful and terrible.
Her marriage, like every other marriage on earth, had been several parts: one part good, one part difficult, but in more parts than both those put together, mundane. Like life itself. A habit that became more security than a burden. His marriage had been much the same. Solid, but abundant in both disappointment and comfort. Blessedly uneventful for the most part.
Bindu had only ever been able to share all the things she was thinking with two people. Her grandmother when she was a child, before something inside her started to rebel and become like no one else around her. And Oscar.
Her grandmother had always been gleefully proud and maybe a little afraid for her. Oscar had been dazzled by the power of their feelings. Lee listened to her words for what they were.
“Now what?” he asked finally as they sat down with cups of chai.
“Do you ever have a sense that everything you’ve ever wanted is within reach, but you’re afraid to reach for it?”
He looked at her in that way he had. Her skin prickled with the awareness of it. She felt at once young and timeless. “From the very first time I saw you, I’ve had that sense. As though it’s all right here. If I reached out, I could touch it.”
“Is that why you called me trouble?”
“I called you trouble because I thought my boring life was about to be upended. I was terrified.”
“That I did do, didn’t I? You look battered.”
“I was a fool. I’m the opposite of battered. I’m filled up, replenished.”
“I am too.”
He took her hands and stroked her fingers. “If you don’t reach for what you want, you’ll never have it. I know sometimes that feels safer than reaching for it and finding you were wrong. Or even worse, finding you were right and then losing it. Whatever it is about doing the documentary that you’re so afraid of, the only way to not let it win is to walk through it. You can’t walk around things without missing what’s most important about them.”
She picked up her phone and video-called Cullie. “Is your young man with you?”
“Binji, did you watch it? What did you think?” Cullie moved her body so Rishi appeared on the screen too. They were lying on the beach, her head on his chest, the ocean loud around them.
“It’s every bit as beautiful as Rishi said it was.”
He grinned, Oscar’s eyes flashing joy like floodlights in his face.
“Thank you for restoring it.”
“Thank you for watching it.” He teared up, and Cullie kissed him.
They were beautiful, those tears. Filled with his love for the celluloid he’d built back cell by cell, for Oscar, for his own art. Then he’d risked it for her granddaughter, whose preciousness was a gift.
“Rishi Seth,” Bindu said, hope racing like a drug through her system. “Let’s make that documentary. But you better make sure it wins us an Oscar.” Because Bindu Desai was ready to be a star.
Life.
You blink and it’s gone.
The passion. The boredom. The moment lived. The moment lost.
In the end, they’re just crumbs stuck in the creases of memory. Remnants of tastes left on your tongue.
Poornima knew this. She knew that she’d have one chance.
As the queen to an impotent king, she’d have this one chance before he took another queen.