Diana dumps her tote bag on a chair and takes a seat at the oval kitchen table. “Celine Dion?” she asks, gesturing to Lakshmi’s phone.
“Of course, Celine. I keep telling Ramesh we have to go to her concert in Las Vegas, but he’s not as big a fan as me.” Lakshmi turns down the volume on the music and hands a cup of steaming chai to Diana. “Celine lost her husband, too. She took some time off from performing afterward, but thankfully she’s returned to the stage.”
Diana holds the mug up to her face, letting the chai’s steam warm her skin as she inhales its luscious ginger-and-cardamom scent. “I’m afraid I’m not up to speed on the ins and outs of Celine Dion’s life.” Hoping to change the subject, she points to the corner of the room, where a canvas sits on an easel in front of a north-facing window. A profile of a person is sketched in the center, the lines tentative, as if the artist is still formulating her idea. “A new piece?”
Lakshmi crosses her arms as she examines the easel. “I’m trying to paint Ramesh. Capturing him is hard, though. He’s too impatient to sit for me. I thought I could do this from memory, but I may have to refer to a photograph. Or maybe I have to give up and start another project.”
That’s the secret of painting, Diana has learned from Lakshmi: If you don’t like the direction of a new piece, all it takes is a paintbrush to wipe it away so you can begin again.
Begin again.Diana lets that thought roll around in her mind until it’s close to the surface. What if she could begin again? What if she could relive all the years with Tom? How would they be different now that she knows he had a secret so significant he kept it from her until he was gone? That he withheld part of himself? That he didn’t trust her? She pushes away these thoughts from their hold on her and returns her focus to Lakshmi.
“Does Ramesh want you to paint him?” She considers what it would be like if Lakshmi asked to paint her. She’d be flattered. And nervous to have her friend look that closely at her.
“He doesn’t have a choice,” Lakshmi says, grinning. “I’m the artist, after all.”
Lakshmi hasn’t always been an artist. Before painting, she was associate general counsel for a tech company in Boston. One late night at the office, her boss hit on her, and when Lakshmi turned him down—“as kindly as I could,” she explained to Diana—he retaliated. Her office was reallocated without explanation, rumors spread that Lakshmi slept around, and she was blamed for a colleague’s mistake when all the evidence was to the contrary. With her reputation and career in jeopardy, Lakshmi sought Tom’s help. When her company learned she was willing to forgo the public embarrassment of a lawsuit for a quiet, yet lucrative, settlement, Tom made sure the matter was speedily resolved.
Afterward, Lakshmi enrolled in a painting class to lift her spirits, and she turned out to have a natural inclination for matching color and light on canvas. She now teaches the class that ignited her interest and finds herself busy with commissions and pieces of her own.
Lakshmi takes a seat next to Diana. “How are you? I’ve done all the talking since you arrived.”
“Work is hectic,” Diana says. “I miss Tom all the time. It’s like I’m not remembering him as much as I’m imagining.” She runs her tongue along her teeth, trying to clear the sourness that fills her mouth when she speaks of her grief.
“Imagining?”
“What life would be like if he was still here. Or what could have happened. It’s as if my future memory bank can’t turn off. I see him at Duncan’s high school graduation or walking Phoebe down the aisle at her wedding or holding our someday grandchildren. He’s there, part of our lives, not only in our memories.” Tears roll down Diana’s cheeks and onto her scarf. She wipes them away with the chunky fringe. “You’dexpect I’d be better at responding to a simple ‘How are you.’ It’s been eighteen months, after all.”
Lakshmi puts her hand on Diana’s forearm. “It’s all right, I’m the one who asked.”
“You did. It’s your fault.”
“Yes,” Lakshmi says, smiling. “It’s all my fault.”
Diana returns Lakshmi’s smile, and the two women fall into a comfortable quiet. They’ve been close since Diana and Tom moved in next door, their friendship an unforeseen boon no real estate agent could have predicted. In the days after Tom’s death, when Diana felt herself drifting, unable to function, she listed the people who were still in her life, saying their names over and over, like a mantra: Phoebe and Duncan; her parents; Andrea, Evan, and Noah; Camille; Lakshmi, Ramesh, and Mira.
Lakshmi clears her throat. “Can I make a suggestion? What about trying therapy again? Maybe it might help this time?”
Diana tried therapy once, joining a grief support group after Tom died. It met on Sunday nights at Saint Florian’s, a church in a town where she knew no one, sharing space with AA meetings. An untouched box of sugar wafer cookies sat on the table in the center of the room, and paintings by the church’s nursery school students lined the walls. The group was run by a social worker whose voice sounded like an oboe, wistful and expressive. It was clear from the way the members diligently attended, always on time, that many found the group beneficial. Slowly, though, what was supposed to be a tool to lift Diana up became an albatross, weighing her down.
Listening to those other people talk, Diana learned everyone carried some kind of grief, and her pain wasn’t special. The commonness of the shared loss repelled her. She stopped attending the meetings and never returned the social worker’s follow-up phone calls. Maybe quitting was a mistake; maybe she would have found solace in that group like the others had. She’d never know. Since then, she’s worked to forget the stories she heard in that room, sitting on the metalfolding chairs around the untouched box of cookies. Sometimes, usually late at night, they come back to her, adding to her own grief and expanding her pain.
“It’s not for me, Lax.”
“What about a therapist? One-on-one with someone?”
Diana shakes her head.
“Will you at least tell me what’s going on? You’ve been doing so well. Has something changed?”
If she tells Lakshmi about the letter, she will never be able to hide from the fact Tom did something terrible and kept it from her.
“Diana?”
Diana meets her friend’s kind, worried eyes. She came to Lakshmi for help. She can’t get that help if she keeps this story to herself. She has to trust someone, and there’s no one better than Lakshmi. With shaking hands, Diana removes the letter from her tote and places it on the table.
“This is a letter from Tom. He wrote it before he died. I just found it. Will you read it, please? I could use some advice.”
Lakshmi nods. A moment into reading, she reaches for Diana. Diana laces her fingers between her friend’s, Lakshmi’s cool skin against her own. She examines the paint on Lakshmi’s hand—mustard yellow, black, flecks of gray, a little spot of pink on her thumb.
