I stared at her, not sure what she was asking.
She continued, “You both are very close. It gives your father and me some peace, to be honest. He will only listen to you in this type of situation.”
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“He can’t go back to Chicago without Dipti. It’s too much strain for them. That type of action cannot be undone.”
I didn’t disagree with her. I thought about my failure to go with Alex when he first asked me to move to New York and knew that was why he had moved on. But I couldn’t tell her any of that. The saving grace in all this was that I hadn’t told my parents that I had quit my job and decided to go back to Alex, so they didn’t know that for a second time I’d been prioritizing Alex above them. The relief that my mother would never know numbed some of the pain.
“I’m not sure what I can say to change his mind,” I said, wishing I did have the answer.
“Maybe you both can stay together,” she said, her eyes hopeful. “You can miss a few more days of work, right?”
My stomach sank as she mentioned work. The old me would have lied to her. Carrie had convinced me I should try to get my job back anyway, and I had convinced myself to again repress feeling like an outsider at the firm, so she would never be the wiser if it all worked out. The air-conditioning unit in the window wheezed and sputtered, a sound I had become accustomed to in the past couple weeks, but I still turned my gaze toward it so I could look away from my mother and gather my thoughts.
“I can’t miss more work,” I said finally.
“Why? You never take any days off. Surely your boss can understand this has been a serious family matter.”
I took a deep breath. “That’s the thing . . . I need to go so I can get my job back.”
“Back?”
I nodded. “I quit my job last week.”
“Why did you do that?” Her eyes grew as wide as thalis.
“Because I couldn’t be there and here!” I said in a hard tone, instinctively ready to verbally spar with her. “It was either be here with the family or be there at work. Nothing else.”
Her face registered a range of emotions. I could see she was surprised I had stayed and sacrificed my job for the family, but I could also see she was terrified of me not having a job. It was the same range of emotions I had felt myself, so we at least had that in common.
Forcing a softer tone, I said, “I should be able to get it back. But I need to return to LA for that.”
My mother nodded, knowing that while she needed me to be in two places at once, a hemisphere apart, I could only be in one.
“I don’t want you to have the hardship we had in America.” Her gaze was steady.
“Believe me, none of this was planned,” I said, referring to more than she could ever know.
She sighed. “I don’t know what we will do about Neel and Dipti. But we will find a way.” Her expression turned resolute. “You cannot throw away your career.”
I looked at Neel’s closed bedroom door across the hall and feared the worst. In the half day I had left in India, I had to find a way to help him and Dipti. In the past couple weeks, I had realized their marriage was more than the biodata match I had always assumed it to be. They had a foundation and understanding for each other that was balanced in a way that my relationship with Alex probably had never been, and it took all this pain, including Carrie’s harsh but necessary words, for me to see that. I couldn’t bear the thought of them letting go of something that people, including me, spent their lifetimes searching for and often never found.
That evening, Neel still had not emerged from the room and had refused all food offers during the day. My packed suitcase sat in the hallway, yellow rope tied around it to ensure no one at the airport stole anything from it, ready for Gautam to take it downstairs.
I knocked softly on Neel’s door, and when he didn’t answer, I turned the handle and opened it enough to poke my head inside.
“I’m leaving soon, and I wanted to say bye,” I said.
Neel was lying on the bed with an arm slung across his eyes to shield them from the fluorescent light that was mounted above the bed. He rolled himself up to sitting.
“Any chance you can trade your ticket with me so I can leave tonight instead?” he muttered.
“I’m not sure airline regulations work that way.” I made my way across the room to sit on the edge of the bed. I turned to him and said, “You can’t go and leave Dipti here.”