Home > Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3)(9)

Incense and Sensibility (The Rajes #3)(9)
Author: Sonali Dev

It’s how India had learned that adults, even teachers, didn’t always know everything. To India, their family was how families were supposed to be. Many years later, when China was in her rebellious phase, she had asked Tara why she had felt the need to adopt children from three countries.

I took a lifelong vow of celibacy. How else was I supposed to have children? That had been Tara’s answer.

“India?” her mother said, bringing India back to the present.

India was sitting on her mother’s bed massaging her feet. Chutney, their pug, was squeezed into Mom’s side snoring in long whistles. She barely stirred as Mom moved her so she could sit up.

Now that Mom was awake, India scooted closer and lifted one foot into her lap and started to massage in earnest.

Tara moaned a long, satisfied sigh. “That feels wonderful. You have magic hands, baby girl.” She shifted her stance and India could tell her back was hurting.

“Did you take ibuprofen this morning?”

“I drank the turmeric milk you made me.” The whites of Tara’s eyes were almost as yellow as the turmeric milk, and she looked exhausted. Anyone who knew Tara would know how terrifying that was.

“That was hours ago, and it’s not going to stop the pain.”

“Why don’t you rub some of your eucalyptus oil blend on my back? That usually brings the pain down,” Tara said as though speaking to a class full of students.

The next thing India knew, Tara was elbows-deep into a story of how her guru in India had brought down someone’s fever by hanging onions from their ears.

India smiled. All had to be well with the universe so long as Tara was telling her bizarre stories, right? Nodding along, she handed Tara a pill and some water.

“Great men cured fever with onions, we have little white pills for aches.” Tara’s sigh was deep, but she took it, which was telling.

“The doctor’s office hasn’t called with results yet,” Tara said. “I know you’ve been obsessing over it all day and dying to ask me. Wouldn’t I tell you if they had called?” She took India’s hand. “You’re a silly girl to come running back from Costa Rica to take care of a mother who is fully capable of taking care of herself.”

But Tara hadn’t taken care of herself. India wouldn’t have had to come home if Tara had gone to the doctor herself, or if China weren’t so wholly preoccupied with Song right now. China had barely spent a half hour with India since she’d returned. Plus, there was the feeling that had flared inside India after she’d heard about the shooting. What exactly it meant, she didn’t know. She wasn’t even sure if it was the shooting or Mom, but something had told her that she had to come back home.

“Once we get the results and figure out what’s going on, I can still go back for the corporate retreat if I want. The organizers have a substitute, but they want me to try. There wasn’t anything to do there this week anyway except attend some dinner parties.”

“And see one of the most beautiful countries on earth, at someone else’s expense.”

“I go every year, Mom.”

“You’ve only gone for the past two years. Because of the renovation. And you’ve barely stepped out of the hotel to see anything. This was your first chance to. How is Sid the only one of my kids who has any interest in seeing the world?”

India picked up Tara’s other foot and started massaging it, gauging the tightness of the pressure points so she could loosen them. “You made us love our home too much.”

Tara sighed and gave her a too weak smile. “My sweet baby girl. What did I do to deserve you? Well, I recognized the shape of your ears.” She reached over and stroked India’s ears. “Even as a baby your lobes reminded me of the Buddha.”

They sat there like that for a while. India massaging Tara’s feet, Tara stroking her ears and reminiscing about her babyhood. It was heavy on the diarrhea stories, because Tara was Tara. But for all her love for the gross and the macabre, she never talked about the surgeries. With three children with cleft lips, there had been a lot of surgeries in those early years. Tara just never touched those memories.

Tara’s phone buzzed. She made no move to pick up, so India reached for it.

“Leave it. It must be someone trying to sell us something again. Or threatening to send us to jail if we don’t send money to the fake IRS.”

Tara knew perfectly well that the doctor’s office was going to call today. When India answered, all Tara did was sigh heavily and lie back against her pillows.

It was the doctor’s office. They wanted Tara to come in for the results, and they happened to have an opening in an hour.

“Why would the doctor want to give you the test results in person?” India asked, helping her mother get dressed.

Tara was trying hard to hide it, but her dragging movements were impossible to conceal given her usual energy. Even her vibrant green aura had turned muddy brown.

From the rideshare, India called China, who was with Song.

“We’re on our way,” China said without a second of hesitation. “See you there.”

Tara and India smiled at each other as the car made its way down the short stretch of palm-lined road to Stanford Hospital. If you could call deep worry manifesting as a lip stretch “smiling.” A little like how gas manifested as smiles in babies.

China had barely ever given a relationship the time of day. Even the family knew to give her space or she got crabby. Now she was joined at the hip with someone 24/7. And that someone had a life waiting for her almost six thousand miles away in an entirely different country.

“Maybe Song will figure out how to risk her career for China,” Tara said, stroking the thick silver braid slung across her shoulder.

India was all about trusting people to do the right thing, but she was not given to flights of fancy. Celebrities were ambitious and the ambitious always put their goals before everything else.

“China has the high forehead of the blessed. It signals that she’s going to find her soul mate.” Tara said that about India too, and about Sid. It was her motherly hope finding anchor in superstition.

When India didn’t respond, Tara patted her clasped hands. “Or maybe they’ll enjoy what they have for now and move on as richer people for having experienced love, even transiently.”

If it was transient, how could it be love? Nonetheless, Mom was right, every experience did make you richer. That’s what India told herself when she couldn’t get a relationship to last more than four or five dates. It always felt transient, and that wasn’t what India wanted.

She was pretty sure China wasn’t feeling transient with Song.

“China has three friends,” India said. “She still drives the first car she bought straight out of college. She sleeps with the quilt she slept with as a child, in the bed she slept in as a child. She’s changed jobs once, and you know how hard that was for her.” Her sister was not given to moving on. She had never moved on from anything in her life. To her, love and loyalty were absolute.

When they made their way to the consultation room, China was already there, Song by her side. As soon as she saw Tara, she ran to her and wrapped her in a hug. “Mom! You look terrible. Why didn’t you tell me it was so bad?”

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