Tulip Season Read online

  TEN

  HOW MITRA WISHED she had raised a little more money. $7,000 wouldn't do it. Yesterday, on day six, wanting to raise enough money to offer a reward for information on Kareena's return, she and the task force had held a benefit auction. Mrs. Talukdar, a community elder, contributed her wedding silk sari worked with gold threads. Another community member gave away a pricey rosewood throne. Mitra donated five gardening consultations and her entire sari collection, many gifted by relatives back home, thus parting with many sweet childhood memories.

  She had to dip into her savings to come up with the amount needed to announce a reward for Kareena's safe return: $10,000.

  She continued her search this morning. One other place to try: Aunt Saroja, a cousin of her late father. Mitra would never have met Kareena if not for this aunt. All the more amazing when you consider that she'd maneuvered such a feat from New Delhi, thousands of miles away. She knew a few of Kareena's relatives and might be able to provide Mitra with information she wouldn't otherwise get.

  As a child, Mitra had a special affection for Aunt Saroja, a wise woman, willowy and well groomed. She called her Masimoni, Jewel of an Aunt.

  When Mitra went to college in Alaska, Masimoni, wrote often, speaking her mind on pale lavender pages, her script firm. After graduation, Mitra was trying to decide on where to settle when Masimoni suggested in her usual direct style, “Why don't you give Seattle a try? I hear it rains constantly there, but that should be ideal for growing plants.”

  Much as Mitra adored her aunt, she stayed in Alaska for nearly four years, taking a job on an organic farm in the Matanuska Valley. Eventually, the winters got to her. She pulled up stakes, moved to Seattle, and got hired by the Seattle Parks Department. At that point Aunt Saroja wrote again: “My friend's cousin's daughter lives in Seattle and likes it. Her name is Kareena. You two are alike in so many ways. I think you'll really hit it off. She'll help you get situated.”

  A month later, Mitra picked up the phone, called Kareena, and introduced herself. She did this more for Aunt Saroja's sake than out of any personal desire. Kareena sounded lively and approachable and suggested having coffee the next day. During their long coffee session, they shared everything about themselves and also their memories of home. Kareena said she was undergoing a periodic episode of homesickness for India, the country she'd left behind, but not entirely. Mitra, too, experienced the same longing from time to time. Her country was always there, soft-edged like breathing, hard-edged like crunching ice between your teeth. She didn't usually talk about it, but in Kareena's company she did. It was as though her voice had freed up.

  Three weeks later, Mitra moved from her apartment into this house she'd just bought. On that day, it was snowing heavily and she lived on a hilly street. She'd have stayed put but her lease was up and someone else was moving in. Friends who promised to help didn't show up and she didn't blame them. Then the doorbell rang. Kareena stood there, perky in her corduroy slacks, wool hat, and boots, all in matching black. What a relief. Kareena immediately took control, called Adi and a friend. The roads were slick and stalled cars blocked traffic. It took them the whole day to get the move done, but Kareena was just as cool at the end of the day as when she came in.

  “You've introduced me to an angel,” Mitra said to Aunt Saroja on the phone later that evening.

  A month later, in another conversation, she further told Aunt Saroja that Kareena was who she wanted to be. Kareena dressed well, entertained fabulously, had a wide circle of friends, and was always ready to lend a hand when a friend needed it.

  “We have a splendid time whenever we get together, you know,” Mitra told Aunt Saroja. “I'm really comfortable with her. It's like we've known each other forever. There's nothing I couldn't discuss with her.”

  “I am just so pleased,” Aunt Saroja said.

  In the months to come, with Kareena's encouragement, Mitra opened a landscaping business of her own, and that shifted her life for the better. What a joy to be your own boss, even though the hours were longer. She'd been thankful to Kareena ever since. Kareena, who had an extravagant taste, often asked Mitra to provide flower arrangements for her parties. Mitra did so free of charge. The gigantic bouquets she supplied often cost her several hundred dollars each, but she didn't mind.

  They got together on most Fridays. Day would turn into twilight as they relaxed over drinks, gabbing, laughing, and trading opinions, oblivious to the time. As the years passed, all through the days and nights and springs and summers of their friendship, Mitra thanked Aunt Saroja silently and in her letters. She, suffering ill health, answered only sporadically.

  “You're always there for me,” Kareena once said to Mitra, “more than any other friend. If I were ever in trouble, you'd be the first person I'd call.”

  But she hadn't.

  On this day, the seventh day after the vanishing of her friend, sitting in her living room, Mitra punched Aunt Saroja's number.

  She came on the line. “So nice to hear from you, Mitoo,” she said, calling Mitra by a nickname only she used.

  Mitra gave her an account of Kareena's disappearance and the shadowy events surrounding it.

  “A lovely person disappeared into thin air like that? How terrible. There's a cause. I smell something.” Aunt Saroja paused. “I know how much she means to you. I still remember one of your letters. You talked about your time with her so poetically that I memorized it. ‘We don't parse our friendship. It just is. We scatter the gems of our hours freely, then retrieve them richer in value.’”

  “You knew Kareena through her relatives long before I met her. What can you tell me about her?” Mitra asked.

  The line went silent for a moment. “There's something I can tell you, my dear Mitoo. In fact, it's been on my mind a long while, also something of value.”

  “What is it, Masimoni?”

  “Will you promise to keep it to yourself and not say a word about this to your mother? The poor woman has a weak constitution and I wouldn't wish to disturb whatever peace she has in life.”

  “I promise.”

  “Well, dear, Kareena is your half-sister, your father's child from his first marriage.”

  Mitra jumped up from her chair. “Half sister? How can that be?”

  “Well, it might shock you, but here it is.”

  Mitra's stunned ears absorbed the disclosure: Her father Nalin had taken a job after college as a technician with a film studio in Mumbai. At the studio, he fell in love with a sexy struggling young actress and married her. In the fifteen months the marriage lasted, they had a child, Kareena. After their divorce, Nalin, shattered and disillusioned, packed his bags and took the train back to Kolkata, where he met Mitra's mother. They were married within a year. Nalin's ex-wife never allowed him any contact with his daughter.

  Kareena was Mitra's half-sister. She was family. That felt so right. Mitra's cheeks burned in joy.

  “Are you happy that I've told you?” Aunt Saroja asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Mitra said. “What a surprise that'd be for Kareena. I don't believe she knows. I've never mentioned father's first name to her. And Basu is such a common surname in India. Do you know what puzzles me? My mother has never mentioned father's first marriage to me.”

  “Your mother had a hard time accepting that marriage. Remember, it was over thirty years ago. Divorces were considered a matter of shame and acting wasn't a respected profession, not to mention the low reputation that an actress had. Relatives who had the knowledge didn't consider it proper to talk.”

  “So Mother wasn't told about father's first child?”

  “Never.”

  “Why didn't anyone tell me sooner?”

  “There's much in my long life I regret,” Aunt Saroja said. “This is one of them. Ultimately, your secrets drag you down. The longer you wait, the more monstrous they get. They eat at you, they make you frail.” Her voice broke.

  “Are you okay?” Mitra asked.

  Aunt Saroja assured Mitra that
her health was sound and that she'd check with her large circle of friends to see if anyone had heard from Kareena. “God, who knows what's behind it? We won't waste a minute.”

  After cradling the phone, Mitra stayed seated for awhile pondering the irony. A distant cousin did once whisper to her something about her father's first wife. She didn't believe it then.

  She would have to track Kareena down even more urgently and confide in her what she'd learned. They shared a father. God Vishnu be praised, they had blood connection—their lives were forever joined. The sisterly closeness they felt was just as it should be. Kareena would stare at her in wide-eyed silence, then embrace her with a cry of joy.

  ELEVEN

  STILL THINKING ABOUT THE SECRET spilled by Aunt Saroja, Mitra plunked down at her home office desk. The phone jangled. Robert Anderson-Haas, Gardening Editor at the Seattle Chronicle, reminded her she'd missed the deadline for her twice-monthly gardening column.

  “Could you give me a little more time?” Mitra said. “My best friend has gone missing and I've been involved in the effort to locate her.”

  “Get back to me by the end of the day.” Robert paused. “You said somebody disappeared? You know I started out as a crime reporter. I also know a detective with the SPD, if you care to speak with him.”

  “Yes, please.”

  “His name is Nobuo Yoshihama. He used to live in my apartment building, then bought a house and moved out. I gave him a hand when he moved. He owes me.”

  Mitra jotted down the particulars. “How do I work with him? I know so little about police protocol.”

  “Just be open with him. Nobuo is a little hard to figure out at first. A little on the shy side, but he's a good guy. He might be interested in talking with you about gardening, too. He often complains about having to manage a yard all by himself. He works long hours at his job.”

  So the detective was single. Mitra laughed to herself. No, Robert, I don't need a date right now. I want to find Kareena.

  “Since you have connection to crime reporting,” Mitra said, “might you be able to give me any suggestions about this case? If it doesn't take up too much of your time, that is.”

  “Is there any proof she's been kidnapped? Or is there a chance she's run off?”

  “Wish I could tell you.” Mitra related her fears and concerns, but couldn't answer Robert's questions.

  “Actually, since she's your friend, I'd like to dig into the case. Nobuo can update me. Believe me, it's not extra work on my part. I like to read true crime reports in my spare time. Methods and motives fascinate me. I have a tough stomach, you might say.”

  How interesting, Mitra thought, a garden editor who read bloody crime stories to amuse himself. She saw a glimmer of hope, however. After hanging up, she left a voice message on the detective's cellphone and waited in vain for a few minutes, pacing up and down the living room, for his call back.

  Then, sitting in front of the computer, she positioned her fingers on the keyboard. Facing up to writing the gardening column was exactly what she needed. It'd transport her back to her familiar world where plants ruled, events made sense, the day ran according to an order, and confusion didn't hang like a cloud cover. She stared at the opalescent screen, which stared back with glee, as if delighted with its own resistance. She glanced out the window and saw a few buttercups—weeds. The topic she opted for was weeding.

  WEEDING: A Somewhat Holistic Approach

  A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.

  James Russell Lowell

  She heard the tiptoeing of a noun, the whisper of an adjective, the aggressiveness of an adverb, and eventually the whistle of a sentence. She pecked away at the keyboard, trying and failing and trying again to hold together a proto-idea. Finally, a paragraph became whole.

  A start, but Kareena wouldn't leave her thoughts.

  About this time last year, on a balmy weekend day, Kareena had stopped by to visit. She watched from a nearby wicker chair as Mitra crawled around on her hands and knees, pulling out grass and dandelion from a flowerbed.

  Mitra showed Kareena a patch with grass tendrils shooting every which way. “See these creepers? The season has just begun and they are already so aggressive.”

  “Weeding looks like a lot of dirty work to me.”

  “But it's therapeutic. And you do get joy out of it in the long run when you see your flowers blooming sooner.”

  Kareena stirred her glass of green ice tea. “You know, on second thought, I envy your healthy life-style. Wish I could be spending hours and hours outdoors, surrounded by beauty, color, and fresh air. That's not possible with Adi. He wants me to look perfect, not with dirt under my nails.”

  Was she trying to tell Mitra something? She'd long suspected Kareena had marital challenges. Pulling and digging might give her an outlet.

  “Why don't you try weeding with me, despite what Adi says?” Mitra asked. “See how you like it?”

  “Yeah, I'll give it a shot.”

  And so Kareena had her first try at yanking out dandelions. After half-an-hour, she complained that her back got sore. An obnoxious yellow jacket harassed her. And she chipped a French-manicured nail trying to swat it with the shovel.

  “I'll leave you with it, Mitra,” she said with obvious relief. “I have a charity luncheon to go to.”

  Mitra's gaze returned to the computer screen, to her column-in-progress. A thought emerged. Suppose Kareena had shown more interest in chasing weeds. Then perhaps she'd have grasped the underlying principle: one must let go of that which no longer served a purpose in one's life, or that which threatened one's existence. As a result, she'd have weeded Adi out. She'd given up her life in India, given up all she'd ever known, to be married to him. That marriage didn't turn out the way she'd have expected. Adi had been choking the bloom of her happiness, or so it seemed to Mitra.

  TWELVE

  THE NEXT MORNING Mitra decided to pay a visit to Glow Martinelli, her adopted grandmother and a septuagenarian sprite. Mitra had turned to her in the last week, even though she was one of the few people ambivalent about Kareena. They'd met once at Mitra's house, exchanged niceties, then gravitated to opposite ends of the room. Mitra could feel an icy chill between them. Just chemistry, she'd assumed.

  She had another reason for this visit. Grandmother's ex son-in-law, Henry, worked for the Snohomish County Sheriff's office and she'd promised Mitra on the phone to speak with him about the Kareena situation.

  As she snatched her purse and keys and headed for the garage, Mitra recalled how she'd met Glow. About six months earlier, Glow had trekked to Zoka in Wallingford for an afternoon cup of espresso and stepped on Mitra's business card. It'd probably fallen from someone's pocket. Mitra's “Palette of Color” business name described the way Glow pictured her garden, so she phoned Mitra, even though she had already gotten bids from two landscapers.

  The next day, Glow showed her a messy weedy yard in need of attention and “healing.” Though the task appeared to be challenging, Glow's open face and inclusive manner heartened Mitra. She offered some initial ideas for design such as, closely planted annuals anchored by longer blooming perennials and islands of ornamental glass. She suggested cleaning the debris and doing much of the site preparation before the rains started, but holding off on planting until early spring.

  Without commenting on her suggestions, Glow invited her to a glass of fresh pear cider. They grabbed canvas chairs under an Asian pear tree and chatted over the sweet cider, the conversation soon gravitating to the topic of India.

  “From what I've seen in movies and read about India,” Glow mimicked the affected British manner, pronouncing it as “Inja,” and adding, “Women seem so companionable with each other over there.” She described a scene from a Bollywood film depicting women in their inner courtyards. Flowers blossomed, children and grandchildren played, relatives dropped by, and servants plied everyone with trays full of tempting sweets, all happy, hectic, and connected.

  A bree
ze had whispered over their heads. Mitra gave Glow a synopsis of what her childhood had been like. She and her mother hadn't had a courtyard. Their relatives, most of them barely getting by, were notoriously unsociable. When a classmate complained during the autumnal Durga Puja celebration that her parents had to buy presents for ten cousins, Mitra wished her mother had the same problem.

  “And my mother never seemed happy,” Mitra put in.

  “Even if Indian women aren't completely fulfilled,” Glow replied, “and indeed how many of us can hope to be, they don't seem to mind the limits and responsibilities placed on them. And they don't need champagne to cheer themselves up.” Then she added that she'd go with Mitra's bid, even though it was higher than the other two, because she liked her suggestions.

  Mitra had barely finished expressing her gratitude when Glow said, “Perhaps it's destiny that has brought us together. Each of us has scores of destinies preplanned and stored away like pretty boxes lined on a shelf, or so I believe. You are free to lift the box that catches your fancy and carry it home. You, the enchanted buyer,” she cautioned, her eyes twinkling, “beware.”

  Trained to respect her elders, Mitra didn't argue. Nor did she mention that she'd left the oppressiveness of destiny back in India along with her saris, bangles, and elaborate earrings. Clearly, something had clicked between her and Glow, even though they belonged to different generations and her dependence on destiny rubbed Mitra the wrong way.

  The next day they went to Mollbak's nursery to purchase new gardening tools. There they selected a round-point shovel, turning fork, garden spade, pruning shears, and a utility cart. In the checkout line, a snooty woman gave Mitra a look and Glow introduced her as her granddaughter.

  That evening, Mitra's phone trilled. “This is your Grandmother.” Glow gave out a laugh—a happy, natural one. “Am I disturbing you?”

  Grandmother? The strain of the day vanished for Mitra, replaced by an unexpected flush of happy sentiments. She attributed it to her Indian upbringing. She had always appreciated the older generation who provided support, steadiness, continuity, and humor. Both her grandmothers had passed on before Mitra was born, but here was Glow, just the right age, slipping easily into a corner in her life.