Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Read Free Book Online Page A

Grandfather. Heart attack. Unconscious. Must come soon.
    Mrs. Bose disconnects the phone and hands it to Shikha. She looks longingly at the stage in the front of the room, a gorgeous construction of silks and crystal beads, from which the family is to offer toasts. Pia has been practicing her speech for days, raising a champagne flute filled with apple juice with a jaunty flourish. The apex of the evening—and now it’s ruined. Oh, why couldn’t the old man have given them one more hour!
    Shikha holds the phone, waiting; her eyes glisten intently as she watches Mrs. Bose. Mrs. Bose suspects Shikha knows what is going on inside her head—the girl understands her even better than her husband does. Ever since Mrs. Bose discreetly helped out with a certain situation that Shikha’s unmarried younger sister had found herself in, Shikha has been bulldog loyal to Mrs. Bose. She pauses a moment, wondering if she could ask Shikha to bring back the phone after the toasts are done so that Mrs. Bose can pretend she just received the call from the hospital. Shikha would certainly comply. No one would ever learn the truth. Imagining the look of disappointment that will crumple Pia’s face if her toast is canceled, Mrs. Bose is tempted. After all, the old man is already unconscious. What difference would it make to Korobi?
    But Mrs. Bose can’t do that to her. The child is devoted to that difficult old man. She draws in a deep breath, pulls herself up tall, makes her decision with some regret.
    “Inform Mr. Bose of what has happened. Tell him he should ask the guests to begin dinner. Then have Asif bring the car to the side entrance. I’ll go and find Korobi.”

    I protest as Rajat pulls me into the seductive darkness of the terrace. “Stop! We have to go back to the guests. What will your parents think?”
    “It was pure self-defense. Didn’t you see all those aunties, closing in on us like barracuda?”
    I can’t help laughing. That’s one of the things I love about him—he makes me laugh more than anyone else ever has. As though it were a signal, Rajat begins kissing me. I give myself over to the pleasure of those kisses—I’m not sure for how long. Those rash piña coladas have skewed my sense of time. But slowly I begin to feel that something’s different. Rajat is more aggressive; his tongue parts my lips expertly and explores my mouth. His hand caresses my breast, and it’s as if I were driving fast along a road that has suddenly, sharply dropped out of sight. Even as my body responds, I’m disconcerted. Something has changed between us.
    I remember the kiss that had begun our courtship. It was a couple of weeks after we’d met at Mimi’s. Rajat had been in a pensive mood that evening, perhaps because of the rain falling around us, misty, silken. We were walking in the Victoria Memorial gardens among the white roses, almost alone because of the weather.
    “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said. “Look at your clothes, your hair—soaked.”
    I told him I didn’t mind.
    “That’s what I love about you. You’re so easygoing.” Then he kissed me.
    Later, Mimi said that he must have been thinking of Sonia, who never liked the outdoors, not even in good weather, and could you blame her? The outdoors was infested with spiders and wasps and snakes, everyone knew that. But Mimi was wrong. Rajat couldn’t have been thinking of another woman, not when he kissed me like that.
    He had pressed his lips to my forehead, just below the hairline, the gentlest gesture, as far from passion as a sunset is from fire. He kept them there for a long time. I held my breath. I could see him kissing me likethat when we were old. That was the first time I was able to imagine a future for us beyond what the girls in college whispered about, gorgeous trousseaux and movie-style honeymoons. That vision had made me fall in love.
    This change tonight—is it because we’re so close to getting married? Or did seeing Sonia