Some of that disinterest had been there even when Karthik was a child. Making his father proud enough to justnoticehim had been the goal of his childhood. But nothing he’d ever been able to do had accomplished that. And the day he’d told his father he was going to be an engineer and not a doctor had been the final nail in the coffin. Any tiny bit of interest his father might have had in him had vanished. It didn’t matter that he was good at his job. Or that his colleagues respected him. Or that he was up for this huge promotion. His father didn’t care about any of that.
Karthik took the raita from Meghna and added some to his ownplate. “Meghna’s an excellent teacher,” he said, trying to change the subject. “And she’s also a playwright.”
“Aspiring playwright,” she said, slightly flustered. “It’s just something I do for fun.”
“You teach English, right?” his mother asked softly.
“I do. And theater.”
“I didn’t know that,” Karthik said, turning to look at her.
She gave him a small smile. “It’s pretty new. We never really had the budget for a full-time theater program for our kids, but I did musicals all through school and college and wanted my students to have the same experience. The school finally agreed and gave us the funds, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s our first time putting on a fall play.”
They spoke about how rehearsals were going, and she told them her students were performingMy Fair Lady,which happened to be one of his mother’s favorite movies. The two of them started talking about some of the other movies his mother liked, and Karthik snuck a glance at his father.
He sat stoically, his face blank and almost vacant. He’d probably checked out the second they had stopped talking about medicine, which suited Karthik just fine. In his mind, the less his father interacted with Meghna, the better. His mother was still talking, deep in the middle of a detailed plot summary of a classic Tamil film from the eighties, when his father stood up abruptly.
“I have to go check something at the office,” he said. “Meghna, it was a pleasure meeting you.”
Meghna seemed a little taken aback that his father would be going into work on a Saturday night, but Karthik didn’t bat an eye. This was standard operating procedure for his father. Honestly, he was surprised that his father had stuck around this long.
“Are you sure you have to leave now?” his mother asked.
A tense moment of silence followed. Karthik had never heard his mother question his father in this way. His father came when hewanted. And left when he wanted. Karthik and his mother were quite used to it.
“I have to go in to work, Shanti. You know how it is.”
His mother’s eyes widened, but Karthik saw a determined glint in them that he had never seen before.
“I do. But I think you can wait to have yourmeetinguntil our dinner is over.”
His father’s face took on a ruddy complexion. “I’m a mentor, Shanti. The students are busy, and I have to make myself available to help them.” He gestured in Meghna’s direction. “As a teacher, I’m sure you understand,” he told her. “Of course, the stakes here are even higher. These are future doctors. Not children.” A smile crept across his face, slightly cold and condescending. “We can’t all dress kids in costumes and play make-believe.”
The warmth on Meghna’s face faded.
“That’s enough,” Karthik said crisply. “We understand you’re in a hurry. We don’t want to hold you up.” He looked pointedly at the door.
His father left the house without further fanfare. His mother offered quiet apologies, but Meghna waved them away, guiding the conversation back to his mother’s excellent food, asking for recipes for everything.
“Just so you know,” Meghna told him when they were in the cab on the way back to her hotel. “If I hadn’t been playing the role of a dutiful fiancée tonight, I would have ripped your dad apart for saying that.”
Karthik almost snorted. Little did she know that he would have paid a good amount of money to see that.
“And he would have deserved it,” he said. “In the future, please feel free to tell him whatever you want. Though hopefully you won’t have to meet him again.”
“Hopefully,” she muttered. “Is he always like that?”
Karthik sighed. “He’s usually better behaved when guests are around.” When they weren’t, he could be much, much worse. It used to frighten him as a child. Now it frightened him for a different reasonaltogether. Karthik had his father’s face. His father’s temper. And he was sure he had all of his father’s other failings too.
He wanted to be different. To be patient and honest and kind, like his mother. To have some control over his emotions so he wouldn’t hurt others with his angry, rash words. But despite his best intentions, he ended up hurting people anyway. Becoming like his father felt unavoidable. Inevitable.
Meghna’s phone pinged with an incoming text message. Karthik didn’t mean to invade her privacy, but her screen was large, and he could read it from his seat right next to hers.
Seth: Call me ASAP. Need to finalize hotel arrangements for Miami!!
Her phone pinged again. Seth had followed up with a string of emojis: confetti, a dancer, the ocean, and a bottle of champagne.
“He seems to call you a lot,” Karthik said in a neutral tone, even though a strange streak of hot energy had coursed through his body when he’d read the text. He adjusted the air-conditioning vent in the back of the car. He was probably overheated. This month had been unseasonably warm.
