A Friendship Spanning Bombay Prep Schools and Connecticut Strip Malls
An excerpt from Every Happiness by Reena Shah
Though Ruchi needed the job, any job, her first impulse when Deepa finally called was to say no. Deepa talked as if no time had passed, like she hadn’t avoided Ruchi’s calls since the housewarming in August, like it wasn’t now January 1985. Deepa went on about Sanjay’s medical suite, the new lady OBGYN. “A Wellness Center, she calls it. As if it’s something fancy,” Deepa said, and Ruchi thought “suite” also sounded fancy. Deepa explained that Dr. Sharma needed an office assistant. Someone good at filing and organizing. Someone fine with a little extra work on Fridays. “It was Sanjay’s idea,” Deepa added. “He gave your name.”
“I called,” Ruchi said. “You never called back. I tried so many times.” She hated the obvious hurt in her voice.
“Don’t become upset,” Deepa said. “I wanted to call. I did.”
And yet she hadn’t. “I’ll have to think about it. I’ll have to see.”
“What do you have to see? Did that neighbor give you some salon job?”
Ruchi considered lying just to hear Deepa cajole. “Nothing like that.”
“You’ll learn quick. You always have.”
It was only flattery, Ruchi reminded herself. It meant nothing. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Sanjay begged me to manage his own practice,” Deepa said with a laugh. “You know I was never an office type. You’ll be much better than me.”
Empty flattery. And yet it warmed.
For work, Ruchi bought long accordion-pleated skirts in geometric print that she thought looked smart with the lab coat Dr. Sharma gave her. The doctor showed her the three exam rooms, the nurse’s station, and the small storage closet that she used as her own office, all of it as flat and unadorned as the waiting room with its bare walls and cushionless chairs. “You can use my Mercedes,” Dr. Sharma said, since on some days Ruchi was expected to deliver samples, collect medical files, and fetch results from other labs and hospitals. “You do know how to drive?” The doctor spoke in an upper-class accented English that reminded Ruchi of Cathedral Prep girls with their hemmed skirts and buckle shoes. Girls who became doctors and actresses, housewives with staff. Dr. Sharma wore fabric bangles on her wrists that didn’t make a sound.
Ruchi nodded. She’d be very careful. “Yes, yes.”
Dr. Sharma didn’t ask about a license, which Ruchi still hadn’t gotten. After the housewarming, she’d hoped Deepa might still follow through on her promise to help her study for the driving test. The activity could’ve restored their equilibrium. The housewarming remained raw in Ruchi’s mind, the rough grain of Deepa’s towel in her fist and the cold that rose off Deepa’s body like steam. The thoughts hurt, wrapped as they were with what came after, which Ruchi blamed on the dress. She’d felt clownish and wrong-footed until she’d washed and folded the ugly dress and tucked it in the back of her closet.
Ruchi drove Dr. Sharma’s Mercedes with care. The seats were navy leather and the windows automatic. It smelled of spiced lotion. She enjoyed handling the samples, urine that sloshed in the biohazard bag, rows of blood vials pressed into a foam case. She double-checked the labels and made sure the black marker was legible, though it wasn’t expected of her.
When she wasn’t delivering or collecting, Ruchi worked at reception. She always wore her lab coat to distinguish herself from the actual receptionist, one Mrs. Gerb, a prim white woman of indeterminate age who sat at the opposite end of the long desk and took her time with every task. The wall behind their desk was a puzzle of pastel green and yellow file cabinets that Ruchi neatly labeled her first week, just as she organized the pamphlets on the counter above their desk where patients checked in. Glossy trifolds about pap tests and period management and polycystic ovaries that Ruchi read cover to cover because it was her job to know more than their patients.
“Aren’t you a thorough one,” Mrs. Gerb commented after two weeks of observing Ruchi’s tidy corner, the ordered stack of patient files, the model ovaries regularly dusted. Mrs. Gerb had offered to drive her to TriCity after work where she waited in front of People’s Bank for Naren to pick her up, but Ruchi preferred to walk. “Call me Pauline,” the woman said. Ruchi felt it too informal, so she used “Excuse mes” and “Ums” and questions that required no direct address.
Because Naren dropped her off before heading to his office Ruchi was perpetually early. Sometimes she’d see Sanjay in the office lobby, though he didn’t see her. He was generally in a rush. She thought she should speak with him; they were, after all, connected. His office was on the second floor, a corner suite with a mauve color scheme, a shelf of miniature cactuses, and ocean landscapes on the walls. Deepa’s touches. Ruchi made a mental note to tell Dr. Sharma about her green thumb and the benefit of plants in the waiting room, or maybe a succulent rock garden, objects pleasant for staring.
“I’d like to speak with Dr. Jain,” Ruchi said to the woman behind the desk. She noticed the quantity of folders not yet filed. Handwriting illegible.
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m not a patient.” The woman blinked at her. “His wife’s friend.”
“His wife’s,” said the woman and frowned.
“I’d like to say hello,” Ruchi said. Ruchi had left her lab coat behind and wished she hadn’t. It was early, the waiting room empty. She could’ve said she wanted to thank Dr. Jain for recommending her, but she had no intention of doing so. She didn’t want him to feel overly important, overly helpful. She’d never asked for charity. No, what she intended was to make her presence known, to show that she could speak to him, that he was no better than her, that she was someone of consequence in his life, regardless of whether he thought so or not. She knew his wife. Even now she cared for her.
“I’ll let him know.” But she didn’t get up. She stabbed at a ledger with her horrible handwriting. Ruchi had time. She sat in one of the chairs that Deepa had picked out, both plush and sleek, though it wasn’t as comfortable as it appeared. At last, the woman rose and went to the back. She stayed for several minutes and returned alone.
“He’ll be out in a moment.”
Ten minutes passed, and Ruchi almost left. Then Sanjay burst through the doors with his characteristic smile, a stethoscope draped elegantly around his shoulders. He stood over her with hands on hips, the way he might stand over a patient. “How nice of you to stop by, Ruchi,” he said.
Ruchi stood, but he didn’t invite her to chat in his office. This was both a relief and a slight. She’d only ever seen this man with Deepa, and she realized now that they’d never spoken beyond forgettable pleasantries, though she’d observed him enough to find Naren lacking in confidence and style in comparison. Bitterness coated her throat, though Sanjay had done nothing but what he was supposed to do, and had done it well. He’d made Deepa comfortable, if not satisfied. “Thank you,” she said in a small voice. “For the job.”
“No need! Deepa made the suggestion.”
It was Sanjay’s idea. Deepa had lied on the phone. A small, unnecessary misrepresentation that proved that Deepa needed her. “Give her my thanks, then.”
Deepa and Ruchi’s phone calls became regular again after Ruchi started working. She didn’t understand why but accepted it and fell into a routine of calling Deepa from the bedroom after dinner while Naren watched sitcoms and Moksh retreated to his room. She lay on her bed, lights off, as she told Deepa about the improvements she’d made with new plants and magazines and the special forms patients had to fill out to qualify for free services, which many grumbled about.
“It’s ungrateful to be so bothered about filling out an extra form when Dr. Sharma gives the best possible care,” Ruchi said. “It’s not Trivedi’s Government Clinic where they didn’t even use gloves.” She’d had her first exam a week before marriage. Dust motes cascaded from the ceiling as she lay on the rubber gurney and a clerk-like doctor inserted the cold metal clamp. No, Dr. Sharma’s patients didn’t know how lucky they were. She was the kind of doctor Ruchi might have been.
“I hear you’re diligent,” Deepa said. “Hardworking.”
“Did Sanjay tell you that?”
“Sanjay. Some friends.”
Always some friends. “How can they know?”
“You think people don’t talk? Everyone here is connected.”
Were they? Ruchi had no idea. Mostly, she felt alone. She picked at the flaky, dry skin of her heels, a habit she warned Moksh against though she couldn’t break from the sensorial comfort herself.
“It’s all good things, Ruch.”
“I wish you worked at the office. It would be fun to have lunch together sometimes. Gossip properly.” She said it as if coaxing a shy child out from behind her.
They would have something together, and it mattered less and less what it was.
“You’d outshine me at office work, and I’d be jealous.”
“Don’t be silly,” Ruchi said, but she knew it was true.
“I could do nothing all day and life would pass.”
“Don’t say that.”
“You take everything serious. I’ve found a place for our little cultural center.” Deepa described the empty storefront. “Just a dream,” she said, as if that were true. Maybe this was the plan. Ruchi would learn about administration and budgets while Deepa designed and decorated the space. They would have some endeavor together, and it mattered less and less what it was.
Ruchi brushed the dead skin off her bed. “We have to name it something good.”
The last Friday of the month, Dr. Sharma performed abortions. “I assume you don’t have any objections?” Dr. Sharma had asked during the interview. “We follow the law.” Ruchi saw no reason to object. “We keep this part of the practice quiet. No need for Dr. Jain to know,” Dr. Sharma said, and Ruchi honored the secret, though she wanted badly to tell Deepa, because she considered the work important, perhaps the most important work she did at Wellness. The women, both young and old, cried quietly or twirled their hair on a finger or shared tips with each other. The loud talkers had done it before and tried to reassure the others, but it came out like bragging that put no one at ease.
In the time they were with her in the waiting room, Ruchi offered them care. She fanned out the newest magazines. She clipped brown leaves off the weeping fig and trimmed the spider plant. She spoke in tones meant for theaters and funerals. When it was time for the ultrasound, then the counseling session, then the procedure, Ruchi called names in a low, tender voice.
The skittish men, the ones who came, had to stay behind in the waiting room. They relaxed in the women’s absence, then tensed each time the door opened. Even the meanest-looking ones who smelled of old grease and syrupy cologne were vulnerable then, their faces lost on themselves. The women returned limp and bowed, though Dr. Sharma said that the pain was minimal. “It’s the mind that makes the pain.” Ruchi thought of another office, brown, no windows, and the split second, a second broken in half, less than that, when she’d not wanted her baby. She looked at the women with daya, becharis emptied of what they’d brought.
On paydays, Ruchi deposited her earnings in their account at People’s. A month later, it was gone, like throwing her money down a well. This summer they would need to pay for camp. Ruchi didn’t like to leave Moksh home alone, not just for the usual dangers of home invaders and exploding toasters she’d seen on the news, but also because he would bury himself in solitude.
“You need your own account,” Deepa said. “All women do.” But the minimum balance was too high, and Ruchi feared the fees. She cashed the next paycheck and received hundred-dollar bills. The quantity seemed meager so she exchanged them for twenties, adding a satisfying weight to her purse.
She hid the money in batches in her drawers and behind large glass jugs of rice and lentils in the pantry. She kept careful track of her hiding places and the growing amount in a slim yellow notebook. If Naren noticed that she was no longer making the deposits, he didn’t let on. It was so little, much less than his own deposits. Though that, too, wasn’t much. He remained an assistant despite the new developments that continued to crop up everywhere, as if farmland were in endless supply. Summer came and Ruchi was thirty-five, Naren thirty-six, in the prime of life, living in a still-growing economy. Ruchi read about 8 percent raises and investments that doubled one’s money and felt far outside of it, like she was staring at a wall with rows and rows of identical buttons making it impossible to find the one that might let them in.
But her bundles of cash grew. She paid for camp and dreamed of a second car. After five months of working for Dr. Sharma, Ruchi told Naren, “I need to be able to drive.” They were walking in the summer evening, a new habit, silent but together with their arms pumping and armpits wet with salty crescents.
“You need lessons for that,” Naren said. They walked briskly around a cul-de-sac where the houses were bigger split levels that cut off their view of the setting sun.
“You never have time for lessons.”
“Don’t I drive you to your job? Don’t I pick you up?”
She hated to spend one more minute waiting for him outside People’s at TriCity. The tellers leaving for the day gave her odd looks, like she was there to steal. “Should I not have a license? Deepa got one right away.”
He walked faster to leave her a step behind. “You don’t need to be like Deepa.”
A twinge of satisfaction tickled her skin. No, she didn’t need to be like Deepa, but that wasn’t the point. “I can drop you and pick you up. No need to deal with the TriCity traffic. It’s too much hassle.”
Naren didn’t speak for the rest of the walk, but that weekend, he made a show of driving them to the empty school parking lot and explaining how to reverse and the different speeds of the windshield wiper. Ruchi feigned confusion and did better than anyone expected. She could’ve told him about the lessons with Deepa. He wouldn’t have stopped her. But she hadn’t wanted to.
“Not bad, Ma,” Moksh said and met her eyes in the rearview.
“It’s much harder when there are cars everywhere,” Naren said, but he let Ruchi drive home in the dark. They hadn’t had dinner, and Naren called for pizza, not minding that he had to pick it up, not minding the sudden thunderstorm. Moksh was hungry for once, pleased with the pizza, and Ruchi took pleasure in being the source of his enjoyment, that she had succeeded in making their lives lighter.
She got her license on the first try and a warmth settled into the house. She dropped off Naren at work and Moksh at camp through the summer. She felt more at home among the Cutlass’s detritus than in Dr. Sharma’s Benz. When her piles of money grew too fat, she made new piles. Summer turned to fall in a single day, but she didn’t care. She bought a new Revlon foundation in True Beige that was a better match than her usual, cheaper Maybelline. She surprised Moksh and Naren with sneakers from the Foot Locker in Manchester. Moksh had wanted Nikes that weren’t on sale, and she said it was fine. There was enough. For a full day he wore them in the house, hopping up and down to break them in. At the start of fifth grade he was as tall as her, which neither of them had expected. Tall and wiry. She made plans in her mind—the promotion Naren would ask for next year, maybe a trip, or a trip back, which they’d never done, which they never discussed anymore.
At night, Ruchi checked the piles like they were seedlings. Then she cradled the receiver to her ear in the slatted moonlight, and it didn’t matter what Deepa said or didn’t say. Ruchi wrapped one arm under her breasts as Deepa described her future business with the same energy she’d had about the beach house. On and on she went about the special permits that a commercial space required, the teen patti tournaments they’d play while their kids took Hindi classes, the garbas around Navratri, barbecues for the Fourth with separate grills for meat and vegetables. “Once the place has a full renovation, of course,” Deepa said. “I’ll even add one room for threading and waxing.” She sounded girlish and sweet and Ruchi didn’t ask when she could join, when they’d become partners, like Deepa had promised, like she’d promised so many times before. But it would happen. This time was different. This time was what mattered.
In bed, once she was sure Naren was asleep, his body sinking into the mattress, Ruchi took out her new novel, skimming until she arrived at the part where the hero touched the heroine, taking his time with his fingers. Ruchi let herself imagine the fingers as separate entities detached from the hero on a real woman with uneven breasts and fat deposits in her belly. She let herself think of Deepa in the shadows of a bamboo grove, her tongue flicking at Ruchi’s lip.
She let herself think of Deepa in the shadows of a bamboo grove, her tongue flicking at Ruchi’s lip.
She reached for herself tentatively. First through the cloth before stretching it aside. She thought she wouldn’t know what to do, but she did, she knew herself, she knew where she needed to touch, how much and how fast. The simplicity was shocking, a simple act of imagination, though she stopped right in the middle, afraid Naren might wake or that some djinn might be watching. Or because of the old shame and misgivings, a disgust she couldn’t help. She tiptoed to the kitchen where she scoured the offending hand with Comet and hot water. She got back in bed and rolled to her side and tucked her arm under her cheek.
Every day, Dr. Sharma depended on Ruchi more, trusting her with urgent blood samples and the handling of complicated, last-minute schedule changes. At the Manchester lab Ruchi removed the neat trays of cold blood from the bag with its peeling orange hazard symbol. “We never have problems with yours,” Nurse Magda said, as if the samples were Ruchi’s own blood, her own urine. “Don’t tell me you have nothing to do with it,” the woman said slyly. Ruchi knew better than to accept the compliment too readily and tempt bad omens.
Dr. Sharma added billing to Ruchi’s responsibilities. “Pauline can do more at the front desk,” she said. “I know you cover for her.” She sent Ruchi down the hall to learn about coding from the central billing department. Central billing was one of the unique perks of Connecticut Specialty Suites because it supposedly saved paperwork, which meant it saved time and money. Three women showed Ruchi how to code services to get the most from both insurance and the government. “Make sure you’ve done it right before you send it off to us. Corrections mean time, my time,” one of the women said, her wide, freckled jaw tensed, her blue eyes scowling at Ruchi’s lab coat. “We’ll take it from there.”
“I can also do the filing. To save you the work,” Ruchi offered.
“Oh, what a dear. But what would we do if you did our jobs for us?”
“No, no, not possible,” Ruchi said with a smile. “You are specialists.” But even these women she’d prove wrong. Even these women would realize she was valuable.
On some days, Ruchi took her time delivering samples, driving through soupy black puddles with her window down. She meandered through errands. Images to pick up, mail to be sent, reports to be dropped off. She dialed through stations before switching to AM and listening to traffic reports, the cadence not unlike the priest who had performed her wedding. Each word ran into the next.
After Labor Day, she ate her lunches—chutney and cheese sandwiches that she cut into crustless triangles—in the courtyard behind the building where Sanjay supervised the digging of a pond. She sat on a bench at the far corner and assumed he didn’t see her. Otherwise he would’ve said hello. Over the phone, Deepa judged the pond a ridiculous expense. “All because Anu mentioned she likes pretty fish,” she sneered. “That girl will be spoiled.”
“You’ll never allow it.”
Ruchi drove by Deepa’s cultural center. Their cultural center. Ruchi still imagined they’d name it together and unveil a large sign to hoist in the air and stick over the faded outline of #1 NAILS. She liked seeing Deepa’s Lexus, the taillight fixed, parked in the lot. The Whiskey Store, Coin-O-Mat, and Dress Barn had their own boldfaced signs, happy children shouting their names. Deepa had decorated the windows with orange marigolds and white carnations.
One day a Volvo and BMW were parked next to Deepa’s. Ruchi hesitated before pulling in to the lot. She walked down the concrete plaza that smelled overwhelmingly like detergent. The windows were taped up. Ruchi opened the door without thinking. Inside it was dark and a chemical smell stung her nose. The space was bigger than the outside suggested, a wide, raw space with rows and rows of speckled taupe tile. Light came from a room off to the side, the door ajar to what might have once been a waxing spa. Deepa sat behind a desk talking with her hands. Two women sat across from her, their backs to Ruchi. No one had noticed her. She approached slowly, as if they were a flock that might fly off. At the door, Ruchi cleared her throat.
“Ruchi?” Deepa said, eyes wide, hands in midgesture.
Could it be that they hadn’t seen each other for a year? Since the housewarming? The phone calls made it feel like less. The other women turned in their folding chairs and appraised Ruchi.
“I was in the area,” Ruchi said.
“You haven’t bothered to stop by.” Deepa stood up but didn’t make a show of air-kissing as she had at the party. There was an expression on Deepa’s face that Ruchi couldn’t place. Unsettled, perhaps. Her hair was swept up into a banana clip, revealing the delicate lines of her neck. A thick, hot nostalgia made Ruchi light-headed.
The two women wore crisp kurtas over jeans, one with a stylish headscarf. Ruchi recognized the other as Sonal who had answered the door at the housewarming, that long, creamy arm. “Sonal and Amal are helping with the center.”
Deepa had never mentioned them, not once in all their calls. Ruchi waited for Sonal to recognize her, but she knew it wouldn’t happen, just as she knew that Deepa would fail to introduce her to Amal.
“We’re looking for donations,” Sonal said. “We’re asking all the doctors.”
Deepa pulled at the sleeve of Ruchi’s lab coat. “Oh, this!” It was playful but Ruchi flushed, sweat beading her upper lip. She worried that her new foundation was still off a shade but also noticed that Deepa’s cheeks were pink with irritation. Maybe she’d been using the acne patches too much, or too little. Or maybe it was shame. Sonal and Amal cocked their heads in curiosity, and Ruchi was reminded of footage of the queen on a dais inspecting an elephant tusk carved into the Qutub Minar.
“I’m not a doctor,” Ruchi said. Though both she and Deepa knew she could’ve been. Once upon a time it had been possible.
“But one of the best receptionists,” Deepa said.
“Office assistant,” Ruchi corrected.
Deepa knew the difference. Of course she did. It was just her habit of belittling, of pulling Ruchi down, a habit that would’ve made another friend angry, another friend turn away. But Ruchi forgave her too much. She was too loyal in her unspeakable need.
“I handle the files and specimens. And billing.” The women continued to smile, but Ruchi could feel their interest waning, sapping her own energy. “I should go,” she said.
Deepa sat down again. “How nice you stopped by.” She didn’t ask Ruchi to stay or join them for lunch. Ruchi couldn’t, regardless. There was work to do, and she hadn’t wanted to hear about donors who gave money like it was sport.
She tried not to let disappointment and anger taint the evening and spoil her husband’s extended good mood or Moksh’s old sweetness, newly returned. But her own family seemed lacking to her now, which in turn heightened her rejection. Here they were striving, but for what? They could only just make their mortgage payments and clipped coupons for groceries. How silly it had been to dream, not one dream but many, the multiplicity of dreams that she’d gathered over years into piles as meager as her piles of cash. She’d always lack something, brutality perhaps, a willingness to pursue an end at all costs.
When they spoke that night, Deepa talked about her usual frustrations with the Coin-O-Mat, the pungent, citric detergent they used, her plan to buy it out once she had enough funds, as if Ruchi’s visit that day had never happened. As if it had never been “our project.” Ruchi wasn’t surprised.
“Can’t Sanjay pay for the renovation?” Ruchi asked. “Can’t he buy the Coin-O-Mat? Like he bought the beach house?”
“We aren’t made of money,” Deepa said, but Ruchi could hear a twinge of self-consciousness in her voice, a twinge that only Ruchi would understand, that same twinge she’d known since the day the nuns picked her over Deepa, like her throat was full of paste. It betrayed her doubt and fear.
“Are you not? The medical suite is doing so well. Sanjay is building a pond. I do Dr. Sharma’s billing,” Ruchi said. “I see how everything is handled.”
“Not everything is about money, Ruch. Many things, but not everything.”
It was true. And also it was not.
The end of September brought a second summer, and weather anchors tracked a hurricane over the Atlantic. Gloria, they called it. On slow days, Ruchi listened to the radio while she arranged the magazines and snipped the baby shoots in the pots. Mrs. Gerb pored over Cosmo, licking her thumb between pages. It was unnecessary to keep her for the phones. A waste, really. Ruchi could manage on her own; often she had to remind Mrs. Gerb of what to say, which insurance they took, which needed referrals. The woman was always thankful and smiled solicitously. They were probably paid the same.
Ruchi thought there’d been some mistake that Friday when Sonal appeared at the check-in desk with her daughter, the girl as tall as her mother with an open face, like she would show you anything if you asked. She held her mother’s hand. Mrs. Gerb fiddled with her collar and gave Ruchi a sideways glance as if to say that these people were Ruchi’s responsibility.
“Ruchi, hello,” Sonal said in her cool South Delhite accent. She peered down at Ruchi sitting at the desk.
“Hello,” Ruchi said.
She leaned on the counter and the cord of her neck tensed enough to break. “We have an appointment.”
“We?”
“My daughter. We are here for my daughter.”
The daughter, whose hand was now clasped to her mother’s chest, was glass-eyed. Ruchi could see the veins pulsing along the underside of her forearm, blue like the robin’s egg shells around the dogwood, the last flowering plant still alive in their yard. The hydrangeas had died years ago from too much shade.
“How old is your daughter?”
Sonal pulled at Bhavana’s hand, and the girl startled, as if woken abruptly from sleep. “Tell her how old you are.”
“Fifteen.”
“I see.” She was three years older than Moksh but it was as if Ruchi had never witnessed so young a girl in her life. As if she herself had never been that age. The girl wore shorts that revealed scarred knees.
Sonal slid her insurance card across the counter. It was not one they accepted, and the daughter certainly wouldn’t qualify for federal assistance. Ruchi had learned that the government knew nothing about what the money was for. Dr. Sharma had Ruchi code the procedure as antepartum care or postpartum care or post-hysterectomy care. Reagan had decided that the government should never give money for the procedure. Which meant Dr. Sharma hadn’t been completely truthful about following the law, though Ruchi considered such deceit smart rather than willful. Helpful rather than harmful. The lie of a good person.
Sonal and Bhavana conferred over the confidentiality agreement and the waiver that wouldn’t hold Wellness responsible for future scarring or excessive bleeding, uncommon side effects. Bhavana had to let go of her mother’s hand to sign. The two men left in the waiting room stared at their laps.
Ruchi prepared to turn Sonal and her daughter away. She’d find them somewhere else to go. She, too, was good. She, too, was smart. There were other places that offered services like Dr. Sharma’s. No one saw anyone for free.
“I’m sorry but we don’t accept this,” Ruchi said.
“No?”
Bhavana slipped off her shoes and pressed her heels onto the lip of the hard chair. She had long, veined feet that didn’t match the rest of her. “I can help you find another provider—”
“No need. How much is the service? I’ll pay cash.”
A slim, quartz colored purse hung from Sonal’s wrist. She opened the gold clasp and took out her checkbook. Ruchi told her the amount, and Sonal wrote it in small, perfect cursive with glossy blue ink.
“We will need to call the bank to verify the sum,” Ruchi said. Sonal Mansingh had her own account at People’s and the bank was happy to verify, like it was such a small sum when compared to the balance that its absence wouldn’t be noticed. A sea of money that could swallow whole any eventuality and return to its original, placid form. A sum that Ruchi would never carry in her purse, a sum she could only stow away and keep safe.
Sonal smiled at Ruchi. “I’m sure you’ll not mention this to anyone. Deepa is a dear but a gossip.”
“Of course not. By law it’s confidential,” Ruchi said, but there was something she didn’t understand. Everyone talks. “Why come here? There are other clinics that—”
Sonal reached across the counter to take Ruchi’s hand. “Because,” she said, squeezing hard, “we want the best.”
