“Vinnie!” I literally had tears in my eyes. “Have you seen yourself?”
“No,” Vinnie said. “But it feels good,” she added, and gingerly walked a step or two in the not-too-high heels I had put out for her. “But how does it look?”
“Okay, wait, first let me fix this. Turn around!” Masi ordered, then laced up the back of the choli properly and started to drape the red scarf over Vinnie’s head.
“Wait! Put this on first!” I set a blue velvet jewelry box down on the bed.
“Oh, right.” Masi put down the scarf and snapped open the jewelry case. “I had forgotten about this. Oh, look at this! It’s Megha’s design!” She lifted the gold necklace reverently. The gold glittered in the light. “Just look at this!” She clasped it gently around Vinnie’s neck as I held up my sister’s glossy black hair (shoulder-length now, thankfully). Masi held out the earrings and Vinnie put them in. I pinned the maangtika into place so it dangled high on her forehead, and Masi arranged the cranberry-red scarf over her hair.
“Remember, with your hair and makeup styled, you’ll look even better,” Masi said.
“Just look, Vinnie,” I said, and turned her around so she was facing the full-length mirror on the back of my door.
“Wow, that’s me?” Vinnie gasped.
“Sure is!” I said.
She turned this way and that. “Manish is not going to believe this,” she said. “I look amazing!”
“Okay, let’s show Dad!” I said, steering her out of the door and downstairs. “Dad, get a load of this!”
“What?” Dad said. He was wandering around with an open plastic cup of low-fat yogurt in one hand and a spoon in the other, oblivious to the excitement upstairs.
“Put that down first!” I said, taking the yogurt from his hand and dumping it in the trash. “It might get on the dress. Okay, Vinnie, come through!” I opened the door to the kitchen. “Ta-da!”
Vinnie floated in, smiling happily.
“Vinnie!” Dad was suddenly all smiles. “You look like a million bucks!”
“Doesn’t she?” Masi said. She pulled out a fifty-dollar bill and waved it around Vinnie’s head before putting it in the slot of my MSPCA collection box. “Nazar na lage!”
“What are you doing?” I asked. “All that waving thing?”
“Warding off the evil eye!” Masi said. “Vinnie, come! We have one more outfit for you to try!”
“I don’t need another outfit!” Vinnie said.
“It’s for the reception!” Masi said. “Mini, go get it!”
I knew what it was, of course—but we had not told Vinnie about finding Mom’s lehenga. I followed them upstairs and grabbed it out of my closet, where it was hanging shrouded in a plastic dry-cleaning covering.
Vinnie pulled the plastic off. “No way!” She had tears in her eyes this time.
“Way!” I said. “Masi fixed that too. Go try it on!”
We waited for her to get into it, and then she was back, encased in the raspberry-pink-and-silver outfit.
“How does it look?” she asked.
“Brilliant!” I said.
It was very vintage—like something Madhuri Dixit would have worn—but Vinnie’s fresh young face updated it immediately. There was a lump in my throat. It wasn’t that she looked like Mom exactly, but there were flashes of Mom in the way she moved and smiled and sounded, even. And with that lehenga on, there was no mistaking it.
“Do that thing with the evil eye, Masi,” I said. “Do it immediately!”
If we were lucky, it might turn the storm that was coming into a bit of light rain.
“It’s very grand!” Ragini Aunty said. “It will be beauuutiful, Padmini. Beauuutiful.”
“I didn’t even know this was here,” Manish said. “Vinnie played field hockey and soccer here, Amma.”
It wasn’t time for the wedding rehearsal—that was on Friday—but most of the immediate family was here now, so we brought them to River Bend anyway. Vinnie and Manish, Masi, Beeji, Bauji, Bade Bauji, Dad, Ragini Aunty, Venkat Uncle—and me.
“The mandap will go here,” Vinnie said. “Shoma Aunty will be draping it in rust and dark red sheer fabric, and there will be flowers above the mandap on all four sides.”
“Will there be banana trees, and a kalash with mango leaves and a coconut on top?” Ragini Aunty asked. That was the traditional configuration—Vinnie didn’t love it, so we had nixed it—but how to tell Ragini Aunty that? Vinnie looked uncertain, so I stepped in.
“Of course there will, Aunty,” I said. It wasn’t a lie, precisely. There would be mango leaves and coconuts and a stack of shiny brass pots—just not front and center. We’d bury it behind the orchids that Vinnie liked so much. That would keep them all happy.
“Group photo!” Manish said. And everyone arranged themselves into two lines in front of the graceful marble fountain—they finally had it working, thankfully—and smiled dutifully for the camera. Ragini Aunty in her bright red Kanjivaram sari, Beeji in a very Punjabi lace salwar kameez, Bade Bauji in his homespun cotton kurta, and the rest of us in jeans.
“Let me,” Jen Courtney said. Manish explained the way the camera worked and then took his place in the family lineup, his arm around Vinnie in spite of the presence of all the parents and grandparents and a great-grandparent. To their credit, they took it in stride.
Everything looked perfect, even the clear blue sky.
“Say cheese!” said Jen.
We were invited to Beeji’s for dinner. I was on the phone the whole way, trying to get hold of the remaining two bridesmaids who did not have sari blouses as yet. With less than four days to go! I left messages on the phone, via email, on their FB pages, and with their mothers. “Please call today!” I said into the phone. “Otherwise you won’t have a blouse to go with your sari for the wedding!”
“We’re here!” Dad announced, and we
