Page 25 of Married in Vengeance

“Be gentle, Chinna,” she said, her gaze on her magazine.

He glanced down at her downbent head. His beautiful, completely disassociated from life mother. She loved her children, unexpectedly showed up for them, but more expectedly, observed their lives with a benign disinterest. He supposed they’d all chosen their paths to survival in this home and this was hers.

“I’ll try,” he said, unwilling to make a promise he wasn’t sure about keeping. “You’re okay?”

She looked up at that, her eyes unexpectedly sharp and perceptive. “Are you?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

She patted his cheek gently before looking back at her magazine. The latest Cosmopolitan, he noted. Par for the course with his mother.

He moved towards the stairs, just as another earsplitting shriek of laughter rent the air. Wincing, he placed one foot on the bottom stair, hand on the balustrade, gathering himself before going upstairs to face whatever was going on.

“Ram?” his mother said from her place on the couch.

“Yes, Amma?”

“Every time you do something that isn’t you, a piece of you dies.”

He turned to look at her. She still wasn’t looking at him, one finger carelessly turning a page.

“When too much of you dies, Chinna, you’ll become your father.”

His hand tightened on the marble railing. “I’m fine, Amma.

“Are you?” She laughed, a soft, light sound. “Well alright, if you say so.”

Ram forced himself up the stairs, the loud music seeming to throb in his bones as he strode closer to the madness.

Just as he neared his room, the door slammed open and then shut again. What in the world was up with that?

He pushed the door open and found himself standing in complete chaos. There seemed to be an innumerable number of women in his bedroom, all in varying stages of dress or undress as it were. Empty alcohol bottles rolled along the floor, ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts and joints, some of them still smoldering.

His hard gaze swept the room, looking for his wife and finding her sprawled on the bed, her arm around another girl. They appeared to be splitting a cigarette between them. A bottle of beer stood on the nightstand beside her.

One giggling idiot kept tapping the light switch on and off squealing, “Disco lights baby!”

Ram picked up the remote to the home theatre system and turned the music off, the sudden silence strangely disorienting.

“Aadhya!” Her name snapped out of him like the crack of a whip in the quiet of the room and for a moment, everyone stilled.

And then Aadhya smiled, “Hello Darling. Welcome home.”

The languid drawl told him more than any words could. If they were at war, his precious bride had just blown the trumpet that signaled the start of battle.

She uncoiled herself from the bed, the tiny yellow dress she was wearing barely reaching mid-thigh. One sleeve slipped off her shoulder, baring warm, brown skin that made him ache to put his lips to it.

He pressed his stupid lips together and glared at her.

“I wanted you to meet my friends,” she said, her eyes dancing with laughter at his repressed rage.

“This is Pooja, that’s Nidhi over there by the lights, Pranitha in the corner. And over there on the bed, is Gayatri, my bestie from school days.”

He glanced at her ‘bestie’ who flashed him an apologetic look. She got off the bed and came to stand beside them.

“We met at the wedding, but I doubt you’ll remember,” she said, still looking discomfited by her role in whatever was happening.

“It’s a pleasure,” Ram gritted out. “Are you all having fun?”

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