“We’ve been looking for this everywhere!” I said. “In the garage, in the attic, in all the storage boxes at home. I didn’t realize she left it here!”
“They lived with Vinod’s parents the year they got married, right?” Masi said. “Before they bought a house. I guess she must have given it to Beeji for safekeeping.”
“Do you think it’ll fit Vinnie?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Masi said. “If it needs any fixing, I can do it. I designed it, after all. I was so proud of it! You’re looking at the very first Mallika Motwani, Mini. And I wasn’t even a Motwani then!”
“You made Mom’s wedding lehenga?” I asked.
“With input from her, of course,” Masi said. “Megha was great at it, but Nanaji didn’t let her study design. There was no future in it, he said. But when I finished class twelve, NIFT had just opened in Delhi a few years earlier.”
“National Institute of Fashion Technology?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Masi said. “It opened in 1986, and Megha talked them into letting me apply. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d have been doing a Bachelor of Commerce at Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi University, like your Mausa! Hey, will Vinnie wear this for the reception if we fix it?”
“Yes!” I said. “That’s why I was looking for it! I’ll have it dry-cleaned and then we can fix it. She’ll be so surprised and thrilled!”
“Speaking of surprises,” Masi said, “I wanted to ask you about a wedding present for her.”
“She has a wedding registry, Masi,” I said.
She waved a dismissive hand. “Not anything from there! No, I had the recordings I have of Megha reading books out loud made into an audiobook for you two.”
She what?
“How do you have recordings of Mom reading?”
“Arre, she used to call and put the phone on speaker and just let me listen too. You know in the last months… I recorded them and I’ve been playing it to the boys. Ari and Avi are just the right age for Percy Jackson, and I thought you girls would like it too.”
“Yes.” I gulped. “That would be just perfect.”
“Okay, let’s finish up here!” Masi said, clearly done with housework.
It was still light as we drove home.
“So, I’m thinking of the ready-to-wear line again, Mini,” she said over the music station I’d turned on to discourage conversation. In spite of the thaw that had definitely set in since she told me about Mom’s audio recording, I was still wary of warming up to her completely. “I haven’t thought about it for a while, but after six years, the time seems to be right again.”
“What happened last time?” I asked. “Why did you pull out?”
“You remember that?” she asked. “You were so little!”
“Remember?” I asked—she thought I’d forgotten? “Of course I remember. I was really excited about going to India, you know.” That had to be the understatement of the decade. “Vinnie helped me shop when she came home for Thanksgiving. I bought gifts for Ari and Avi with my allowance. And then you canceled.…”
I could feel her eyes on me but kept mine firmly on the road. “Vinod said you took it well,” she said finally.
“What does Dad know?” I said. “The pea coat you saw in my closet—Vinnie bought it for me as a birthday present, for that trip.”
“It looks brand-new,” she said.
I shrugged. “I was so disappointed about the trip that I never wore it.”
“Okay,” she said. “That’s just tragic. You would have looked so cute in it, Mini.”
“It’s too late now,” I said, keeping my eyes firmly on the road.
“I don’t think I ever saw you for more than a day after that,” Masi said. “You were always off to summer camp or something when I visited.”
“I didn’t…” There were tears glinting at the ends of my lashes but I didn’t brush them away. Maybe it was time to have it all out. “I didn’t want to see you. Before that, I thought you were the only person who got me. Dad and Vinnie were always on about engineering and medicine and stuff. You were the one creative person in my life, and you clearly wanted nothing to do with me.”
“But I did!” Masi said. “I came the next summer, but you weren’t there.”
“I just couldn’t…,” I said, “… you know, get excited about doing stuff with you only to have you bail on me—again. That’s why I signed up for summer camp. And it was great!”
“I was disappointed about that trip as well, Mini,” Masi said.
“Then why didn’t you come?” I flung at her.
She said nothing.
I waited in bitter silence. What possible reason could she have?
“You want to know?” she said. “Okay, I’ll tell you!”
Oh, this ought to be good!
“That November—they found a cyst in my mammogram,” she said. “A large one, and it was irregular so they were afraid it could be something more.”
No! The word screamed in my head. My knuckles were white, I was gripping the steering wheel so hard. Of course! The hushed phone conversations with Dad that I tried so hard to overhear—that’s what they had been about. How bad had it been?
Meanwhile Masi was going on explaining—how it changed her priorities, how she put her business on the back burner, let her nanny go, started packing lunch for Ari and Avi with her own hands, how she made sure she picked them up after school, spending every moment she could with her family, and how she made sure she had checkups every few months for years.
“The first time, they put me through a bunch of tests, including a biopsy. It looked like it might be cancer…”
My heart was pounding. Please, not that!
“They removed it, but it turned out not to be malignant. But that’s why I canceled the trip, the deals, and your holiday. It wasn’t even a year from the time Megha passed. I didn’t want you to know—it would have scared you. Vinod agreed.”
Oh, crap, was there
