14. #Sisters, December 2017

Castlegrove suburb of Greater Toronto had houses with the same grey roofs and off-white vinyl sidings, the same handkerchiefs of front lawns, and pale green utility boxes as the Heatherton Heights in Calgary. The only difference was that they had prerequisite maples instead of the choke-cherry trees in their front yards.

Shanti got up to refill Daya's cup with tea. Her bare feet with scarlet nails moved expertly through the minefield of Rajni's Sweet Polly dolls, and Veer's LEGO pieces. Her sister's twins filled every inch of the available space with their stuff, even when contained in their bedrooms for the night. Kids are like that.

Unlike Daya, Shanti cut her hair to shoulder-length and used an industrial-strength curling iron every morning to turn the ends into a glossy wave. She wore a loose tunic, scarlet on the sleeves and at the hem-line, beige in the middle, with diamonds of curly patterns in ink-black. She kept the dangling earrings and wire-thin bangles on for the pleasant sound they made, but took off her make-up after her day in the office. Her face needed a breather, she said. In her domestic half-finery she managed to look both comfortable and picture-perfect.

In her yoga-pants, and with her fish-bone braid, Daya always felt like a frumpy schoolgirl next to her sister.

"You look brilliant, Shanti." She tugged her braid. Maybe she should get a hair-cut too.

"Thanks, kiddo," Shanti said, inserting the hot mug into Daya's hands. "But don't deflect. Did you really go in your Bluebeard's room?"

Daya stared guiltily into her tea. "Uh-huh."

Shanti fussed in her armchair, to refold her legs under her and leaned forward.

Daya kept silent.

"And?" Shanti prompted. "What was there?"

Daya also leaned forward to fix her sister with a stare. "A shrine with lady's jewelry and a wall of newspaper clippings about the murder victims."

She breathed out slowly, listening to the I have this feeling, someone is watching me... play in her head, adjusting her facial expression to match the music.

Shanti rocked back in her chair, both hands to her mouth. "Noooo..."

"You are too cute!" Daya burst out laughing. "And too clever by half to fall for it."

Shanti kicked her a few times. When that was not enough, she added pounding with an embroidered cushion. "Da-ya! What. Was. In. His. Room!"

"Enough, enough, I'll tell you!" Daya wiped her tearing eyes, feeling absolutely splendid. "Lots of books. That's all, I swear, just floor to ceiling shelves full of books."

Shanti tucked her legs back under her and pouted. She pouted often, because it brought attention to how full her lips were even without the lipstick. "I don't know if I am relieved or disappointed."

"That's exactly how I felt too," Daya said, but she lied.

She had never expected to find mummified victims, Satanic cult objects or fake passports in Mike's room. Nothing this exciting.

Her humble hope was to discover a bit of a mess. A discarded sweater on the floor, a forgotten glass of water, an abandoned book in the bathroom — something out of order, left in haste... whatever. She'd even told herself that she was checking his room out because she wanted to tidy up before the cleaners' visit. Not to snoop on Mike.

Definitely not because solitude hollowed her out on her drive from the airport. I'll just peek inside, she told herself, just to check.

Alas, her cover story got blown the moment she stepped over the threshold.

The room was as neat as the rest of his apartment. A precise hand straightened the bed-covers. Closed the curtains. Centered the pillows. Freed the floor of any garments, inner or outer. Heck, even dust, what little there was of it, seemed to be judiciously placed specifically for the cleaners to have something to do. Mike was a perfect tenant, and his whole life was just as orderly...

She should have stepped back the moment she'd realized that she'd goofed up, that she was intruding for no good reason, but something she saw on the dresser made her breath catch in her throat.

There was something out of place.

"Oh, Mike..." she murmured. Her legs crossed the room automatically, despite her best intentions to leave.

The LEGO model of the castle, the one that Mike had said used to be in her room on the coffee table, now occupied most of his dresser.

It was so large, that he had to push a bunch of framed pictures to the side destroying what must have been a perfectly symmetrical arrangement to accommodate it.

Daya turned a little crank at the castle's side, and one of the towers moved up.

"Oh, Mike, I miss you..." She shook her head, fighting back a smile, then remembered that nobody was there to see it and grinned as wide as she wanted.

About a third of the model's base was still waiting for the LEGO bricks to stack up into the bits of the castle.

There was no way he could have carried Winterfell across the hall on crutches. To shelter her, Mike must have broken it down, scooped bits and pieces into the plastic bin sitting next to the dresser...

Okay, so it was just a toy, but it was a toy that took time and mattered to him enough to rebuild after he took it apart to let her move in.

Did it mean anything? She slid her eyes to her braid—she was getting as bad as Mike with the hairband. Does he love me? Loves me not?  And would he tell her one way or another?

She knelt by the model for a bit, walking her fingers over the walls before picking up and replacing each of the pictures. She'd already trespassed, might as well finish this amateur detective crap. But she did not find out anything she did not know already. His mother was a stunning beauty, and he was gawky, freckled and red-headed as a kid, with a hint of the future tummy.

***

Shanti's spoon jingled against porcelain when she splashed some milk into her tea from a silver creamer, interrupting Daya's trip down memory lane.

"Just books?" She said squinting at Daya. "Hmm? Are you telling me everything?"

"Well, there were some pictures too. In matching frames... he is like that. Orderly."

Shanti stirred back to attention. "What kind of pictures?"

Daya shifted uncomfortably in her comfortable armchair. Shanti's marriage hit the rocks when her sister discovered pictures no wife wanted to see on Sameer's phone. Seven years of trust went down the trash bin from there, and just like that things imploded.

"Mike's family, his mom and dad, I think, him and his dad. His hair was brighter than carrots when he was a kid, but other than that..." She made a little wave in the air with her mug-free hand, indicating nothing special.

"He sounds like a nice man." Shanti stirred her tea more vigorously. One would have thought it was oil and water in her cup, not milk. "But appearances can be deceiving."

Daya sighed. Gods know, she was doing a lot of that lately, and if anyone had a cause for sighing, it was Shanti. "I'm so sorry about Sameer and you... I still can't believe it."

Shanti shook her glossy curls. "No, kiddo, when I look back at it, there were plenty of signs, but I closed my eyes. I'm better off, and that's that."

We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together—too obvious of a song choice for this moment perhaps, but that's how Shanti sounded to Daya.

"And the twins?" Daya asked quietly.

"Oh, he loves them. I don't doubt that. It's the crux of the problem, he loves too easily, rather than not enough." Shanti looked directly at Daya, then slurped her tea. "I am fine."

"Good to know."

"Daya? Do you remember that day when mom left me to watch you at that skating birthday party because she had to take Nihal to the hospital?"

Daya was not sure what it had to do with Sameer, but she nodded. "First time I put on skates. Funny thing, you keep telling me how I've ruined some poor kid's birthday, and I don't remember any of it."

She wasn't completely truthful. She remembered the consummate happiness when her mother told her about the skating lessons. It must have been quite a party...

"Ruined some kid's birthday, ha! You wish..." Shanti chuckled. "You drove me bonkers. First you screamed that you did not want the skates on, nearly sliced my nose off with the blade. Then you screamed that mom was supposed to take you, not me. And that's after mom stuck me with a bunch of five-years olds and their boring parents for two hours. So, I pushed you on the ice with all the strength of an infuriated twelve-year-old. I thought landing on your face will do you good, but you somehow landed on your feet... Right on your feet..."

Shanti shook her head, still in disbelief. "Apparently, I just gave you the momentum. You whooshed down the ice. You darted all over the rink, laughing like crazy, not listening to me screaming my head off. One of the staff had to chase you down because you were messing up a class they had going on in the second half of the rink. I nearly died of embarrassment."

Daya squirted some tea through her nose, an unpleasant thing for sure, but she could not control herself. It was too funny imagining the unfortunate rink monitor chasing after a brat on skates. "I sound like a menace."

"You were. But it was at that moment that I knew it. You had it, the thing you wanted. You, a pint-sized menace, had it."

Daya squinted at her sister. "Shanti?"

"Everyone seemed to want something back then, except for me. Dad fought to have his qualifications from Punjab recognized in Ontario. Mom struggled with Nihal's epilepsy and took night classes to re-qualify as well. My friends in school wanted to be rock stars or whatever. Then you found your thing, and you were seven years younger than me."

Daya did not know what to say. She felt like she should apologize, but what for? For being five and being good on skates when other kids cried and clung to the traffic cones they put on ice for the beginners or the boards?

"Thank you," she said at last. "Thank you for taking me to that party and to all the practices and the competitions after that. Now that I think of it, it was you who sank the most time into my skating. Not even mom did that much..."

"I told you, mom had Nihal to nurse to health, and her work..." Shanti said. "So, I've got your back."

"Thank you," Daya said again. She hoped that repeating it would not wear the sentiment off, but multiply it, make it match the gratitude she felt. "Better late than never, eh? Sorry for being a diva who took gifts for granted."

Shanti shrugged. "It's what children do..." Her face lit up with an unexpected mischievous smile. "Can't say I did not want you to fall on your face once in a while when you would not shut up about how awesome your precious axel was."

"And guess what, I did," Daya said with a renewed wave of melancholic feeling. "Big time."

It felt uncharitable to add does it make you feel better?

If she did, Shanti would know how to hit back with hurtful words. One had to be careful with relatives, it was too easy to shatter hearts when you know so much about one another. And none of it would be for real, but it would cut deep. So, Daya kept her mouth shut and let Shanti talk. Her sister earned hours of speaking her mind with all the years of peerless sisterhood.

"So did I," Shanti said. "You see, I decided that my personal thing was winning at life. Good grades at school, a respectable office job, high pay check, a pretty house, and a man from a family who knew our family to marry. A good safe life, not one wrong choice. Ever."

Shanti went to refill the kettle and set it to boil again.

"It wasn't all bad, was it?" Daya asked.

Shanti smiled. "Of course not. I lived well half of my life, maybe more than half. The right half. The house and the kids, and the job—I'm keeping it..."

Daya took a careful look around. Freshly painted in warm colors, with wooden carvings and pottery brought over from trips back to India, the heavy drapes in red-and-gold, the spicy smell of cooking in the air, and that omnipresence of cherished kids... Shanti's house was worth keeping.

"But from now on, I want to live that sliver of life I'd been afraid of living before. Making mistakes, impulsive choices, finding out what I've skipped over."

"You are doing it a bit backwards, no? Usually you sow some wild oats, then straighten out," Daya said.

"Maybe I don't care?" Shanti lifted one shoulder dramatically.

"Don't go too crazy, promise?"

A snort was her reply. "Daya, please. I am still me, so I am not going to bare my chest on the street corner calling for attention. Or drink myself to a stupor as tempting as it is sometimes. I will just... follow through on the opportunities."

Curiosity bubbled up a bunch of questions in her throat. What kind of opportunities? Had you missed any? What was it like?

But Shanti smiled a Chesire's cat smile and sipped her tea. Silence stretched its wings over them until Shanti spoke up again. Alas, it was not a story Daya was hoping for, a story about a near-affair full of romantic tension starring Shanti.

"What are you keeping, Daya?"

Daya blurted out, "My skates!" then had to set her mug on the coffee table. She needed both hands to grab her braid like it was a rope thrown overboard to save her from drowning.

"I think Mike had been right. I could buy some ice time with the club, train up a little, maybe do a local competition. I'll look like a grandma with all the teens at this level, but why the heck not? Why should kids have all the fun? I mean, men play hockey all the time, till they are a hundred and ten, and they are not in the NHL exactly."

She narrowly dodged another embroidered cushion aimed at her chest.

"Hey, hey! If you are a grandma, what does it make me?!" Shanti twisted in her armchair to search for more missiles, but even her cozy den could not fit as many cushions as she needed to deal with relatives.

Returning to a sober mood, Shanti tilted her head to one side. "And Mike, are you keeping him?"

Daya's braid fell apart, covering her face and shoulders with a tickling, hot curtain of hair. "I don't think Mike is mine to keep, Shanti."

Shanti saluted her with her newly refilled cup. "Yet?"

Daya wished she could laugh and say you bet!, but for now all she had was an earnest, I have no idea. And a sigh that came with it.