Chapter 14 — Spring

March brought the cousin's wedding in Indianapolis, which was everything she'd predicted: enormous, loud, full of relatives who greeted her with the careful warmth of people who had collectively agreed on a specific emotional approach.Her aunt Savita — her mother's sister, who had strong opinions delivered with great affection — pulled Inaaya aside in the coat room within forty-five minutes and said: "Who is he?" with the directness of someone who had watched Inaaya arrive with Arjun and made a complete assessment within ninety seconds."His name is Arjun," Inaaya said."Mehta." Savita had already gotten his surname from someone, which was — efficient. "His family is Bangalore, yes?""Yes.""He looks at you," Savita said, with the specific emphasis that meant: the good way."I know," Inaaya said.Savita looked at her for a moment. She was sixty-one and had been married for thirty-five years and was not sentimental about anything except, it turned out, her nieces. "You look like yourself again," she said. She said it simply, without fuss.Inaaya stood in the coat room and felt this."I think I am," she said. "Mostly.""Mostly is enough," Savita said. "Come. The paneer is better before the rush."Arjun handled the wedding with a grace that she hadn't doubted but was still glad to observe — warm and easy with her family, genuinely good with her younger cousins, able to be in a room full of people without needing to be the centre of it. He found her father in the corner and they ended up in a twenty-minute conversation about structural engineering and Mumbai's infrastructure problems that her father later described as "very sensible man, Inaaya, very sensible."Her mother found Inaaya at the dessert table and squeezed her hand and said nothing, which was her mother's version of saying everything.On the drive back to Chicago — they drove, four hours, which turned out to be its own good thing — she sat in the passenger seat watching the flat Illinois highway and said: "That was good.""Your family is wonderful," he said."They're a lot.""A lot in a good way." He glanced at her. "Your father taught me three things about Indian road infrastructure I didn't know.""He has strong feelings about Indian road infrastructure.""He is correct to have them." He drove for a while. "Your aunt Savita told me I looked like a person who paid attention.""That's the highest compliment she gives.""I'm aware. I could tell." He paused. "She loves you very much. In the specific way of someone who has been worrying about you and is relieved."She looked at the highway. "I know."They drove in the good kind of quiet — the kind that was comfortable rather than careful. At some point she fell asleep against the window, which she didn't mean to do, and woke to find they were in Chicago already and he had turned the heat up because she'd fallen asleep."You could have woken me," she said."You needed the sleep." He said it without making it into a point about anything.She thought: this is what it looks like. Someone who turns up the heat and doesn't say anything about it."Can I ask you something?" she said."Yes.""Are you happy?" She asked it directly because they'd been doing direct for four months now. "Right now. In your life."He thought about it, the way he actually thought about things. "Not in the uncomplicated way," he said. "I'm still dealing with things. The divorce is still something I carry. I still have sessions where I leave my therapist feeling like I've had surgery." He paused. "But underneath the complicated things — yes. I'm happy. In the way that's built on something real, not on circumstances being easy.""Yes," she said. "Me too."They pulled up to her building. He walked her to the door, which he always did."Stay," she said. She said it the way she said direct things — without performance, just the fact of what she wanted.He looked at her."Yes," he said.