bait_backup | A girl in the world barking up the wrong tree, a creature conditioned to employ matrimony

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A girl in the world barking up the wrong tree, a creature conditioned to employ matrimony

*Let it never be said that Esmerelda Rosier does not know how to throw a wedding. With a month to arrange everything, she swept her schedule clean, let the business languish, and began placing orders almost as soon as Evan and his bride-to-be left the estate. Her wandwork is not quite as deft as it once was, but she refuses to see a healer, and she doesn’t need wandwork to tell the florist that the roses were to be red, true red, not this flaccid pink, and to send a Howler to the baker demanding why the red velvet cake tasted like sweetened ashes, and to harangue the seamstress why the bride had not been even scheduled for her third fitting of the white dress Esmerelda had negotiated her into, as clearly the first two fittings had failed to demonstrate to her that everything needed to be taken in at the waist. Whatever the guests of this affair might think or gossip about, they’ll get no bump in Amrita’s abdomen to prove it.

She can hear Evan pacing outside the dressing room, and has to go out to tell him--repeatedly--that he cannot see her before she walks down the aisle and he should go kill the squirrels outside or something, anything to get him out of the way so she can personally finish buttoning the thousand and one buttons that go up the back of the dress. But the last time she lectures him on this, he catches a glimpse of the bride in the mirror over her shoulder anyway and grins.

“You’re beautiful,” he says over Esmerelda’s shoulder.

“Out, it’s bad luck,” the bride orders, and then, and only then, does he obey.

When she finally takes her seat in the very front of the chapel, Esmerelda’s chin is high but she clutches Dearborn’s hand fiercely. The ceremony begins, and it’s finally all out of her hands.

The door to the chapel opens and the light is blinding even though the forecast predicted rain over the reception, and there she is, shimmering like a vision, painted with the charmed designs of her culture on her hands, wearing enough skirts and petticoats and undergarments that Esmerelda had to resist the urge to catalogue them individually in a spreadsheet. Everyone turns to watch the bride proceed but Esmerelda’s gaze sweeps the crowd and then, finally, lands where she knew it would: on Evan.

He is standing there, hands held before him, frozen in the process of being wrung. His knuckles are white. There’s a tiny bit of hair sticking up at the back of his head, the part she always charmed firmly down when he was as boy, and suddenly her vision goes blurry. She looks up and blinks once, twice, pulls out the bright red handkerchief out of her bright red handbag sitting on her bright red skirts. It is acceptable to cry, she supposes, but she doesn’t want to. Not for this, the thing he manipulated her into doing, this ruinous match. But the look on his face--

When Evan was five, she took him to the hall that holds the Rosier family tree. She pointed to herself and Dearborn on the tree, how other families intertwined, and how he, someday, would marry someone who also had a tree like this one and have children, and when he did, the tapestry would grow further up because it had been enchanted very long ago to do so. All this was his, and he belonged to it as much as it belonged to him. He gave the whole thing a wide, encompassing look, finally resting his little palm next to his own name as if to cover a hole, and then turned to her and asked, “Why isn’t she here already?”

And Esmerelda smiled, and told him that she would come along in due course, that he might meet her on his own or they might introduce her to him, but what was most important was the fact that she would become family, and that he should care for her as well as he cared for her or Dearborn. That is what made her worth putting up on the tree.

Looking at him now, watching this woman come up the aisle, there is so much of that boy in him that, for the first time in all of this, Esmerelda is willing to allow that perhaps it will not all end in calamity. Perhaps they will grow old and happy together as she and Dearborn have, and the grandchildren birthed from surrogates will still be grandchildren. Perhaps they will love each other until they both rot.

The ceremony is beautiful, and Amrita is radiant, and they don’t have eyes for anyone but each other, and when they kiss at the very end, it is a brazen, full kiss, and when he finally pulls away, his mouth is smudged with her lipstick. He ducks his head to murmur something into her ear as the audience rises to its feet, and she laughs and runs her thumb over his bottom lip to try to rub off the lipstick, and they leave the church together, arm in arm, so boldly and arrogantly in love that even Walburga can barely muster a scandalized little sigh.*

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*Watching them, Jyoti recalls the stereotype that the rich cannot give love, and it hurts her. Surely for their grandchildren...*

Eck minute, sasur. Please, mera -

*She stops. She had been about to start into Hindi, but they speak Marathi at home. Even though she's sure they speak it too, she doesn't want to widen the gap. Trying to suppress her chi-chi accent, she tries again.*

Please, we would like for the girls to know their grandparents.

*It's not true, Rajiv would not. But he already made it clear that for Jyoti, he would tolerate it - in very small doses.*

Then our son should not have broken from us as he did.

We're childless, now. And you presume too much.

*It comes out bitter and angry, but not as malicious as it could be. Baldev looks, mostly, tired, and every bit of his almost sixty years. He turns to leave, and Aarshati turns with him, sparing a brief and unfathomable look over her shoulder.*

*Some things can be broken beyond repair, Jyoti knows that. But nonetheless, her parents told her terrible stories of her grandparents, who were always nothing but good to her; it's a common that broken families can sometimes meet again for grandchildren. She had hoped that this could be one such case, that there could be a way to make good on hers and Rajiv's mistakes. Rajiv could never admit it, but he even wants it too, to stop the cycle they're all trapped in. From how she understood the one time he told her the story, the night Amrita was bitten was the night they both lost their places in their family.

To Jyoti, the whole family is a broken mess of miscommunication, contempt, and pride. And if it weren't for the last one, all of them could have been spared the first two.

As she watches Evan join the fight, Jyoti finally understands that her daughters will grow up only knowing their maternal family during the wedding season in Delhi.

Picking up her girls, who are still tailing their grandparents, Jyoti finds the nearest chair and sits. For all the loveliness - real and superficial - around her, she starts to cry quietly.*

*And that seat happens to be directly next to Bellatrix, who has contented herself with more drinks and a quiet place to watch the drama unfolding--drama that, for once, has nothing to do with her. How novel.

But now the brown little woman is crying, what a curious development, and Bella does the only thing that makes sense: she holds out a flimsy handkerchief of fine black lace and plasters on a vaguely sympathetic, slack sort of expression.*

I always cry at weddings.

*Jyoti hadn't even noticed anyone at the table, she's not one to cry in public. But the offering of the handkerchief hurts her a little bit, makes her cry a little harder. She wants it to be Rajiv here and instead he's mid-row with Evan and Amrita.

Smiling weakly, she dabs around her kohl.*

Thank you. I'm sorry - it's been a very long day.

Poor little lamb. Chin up, now, darling.

*Bellatrix gives the woman a bracing little pat on the shoulder, just a bit too hard, before indicating the bride with an elegant lift of her chin. In truth, she's still quite a bit tickled at what seems to be developing into a scene--a quiet, discreet, blink-and-you'll-miss-it scene, but a scene nonetheless. Schadenfreude and good champagne do go so well together.*

Trouble in paradise, it seems.

*Jyoti winces at the touch, then at Rajiv's behaviour. There's nothing to do but lie as the hungry girls start to fuss.*

I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding.

*At least the woman isn't crying anymore.*

It always is. Anything good, you think?

*The words don't process at first. Jyoti's busy trying to get the girls to settle and drink some tea from a dainty teacup and not slosh it on themselves. But then the words come through and her head jerks up.

The woman - what's-her-name? - is grinning. It's toothy and clearly at their expense. She decides to deflect her attention.*

I...could you help me? With the two of them, it's so difficult.

*Bellatrix summarily ignores this, which is easy enough considering she is slightly past tipsy now and well into drunk. Unconcernedly, she sips her drink--it's virulent green, with what look like small opalescent pearls drifting at the bottom of the glass.*

Are you sure it should have tea?

*It.

Jyoti has no idea how to take that. Is it racism? Classism? Maybe the over-sized dresses aren't large enough clues to her daughters' gender?

Setting her jaw and struggling to keep Padma from going into a complete meltdown, Jyoti answers delicately.*

I don't see anything better.

Nonsense. Here.

*She rapidly drains her cocktail, and once she sets the empty glass on the table she raises a hand and actually snaps her fingers (somehow, from her, the gesture seems perfectly ordinary). A white-uniformed caterer materializes at her elbow as if Summoned, and once she's done crunching the little pearls between her teeth she speaks to him quickly, in an undertone.

He disappears as quickly as he came, fear written plainly on his face, and Bellatrix gives a little sigh--making no move whatsoever to help the woman with either of her daughters.*

Oh, the little spat seems to be over.

*After a pause, she adds a bit of transparently feigned concern.*

I hope everyone's all right.

*Jyoti has lost all interest in the woman and would have made her excuses earlier, if it wasn't for Rajiv.

Looking down at the girls rather than at the pampered witch, Jyoti tries the tea again.*

I'm sure it's nothing.

Yes, well.

Ah, there it is.

*The man has returned bearing a tray of food of the mushy just-for-babies variety, and Bellatrix makes a little moue of distaste and looks away. And what does she see but a new development, one that brings a mildly amused smirk to her lips.*

Mm, is your husband always this surly?

Thank you.

*Jyoti says it explicitly to the man, smiling at him as gratefully as she can as Padma's fist smacks her face and Parvati kicks her leg. Rearranging them so that their arms are pinned, Jyoti starts feeding them until Bellatrix's last question.

And there's Rajiv, glaring Bellatrix down. Jyoti immediately tries to stand up, almost spilling the girls.*

Rajiv -

*Rapid Hindi bursts out of him as he picks up Padma and starts feeding her jerkily. But Jyoti quickly reassures him that the eagerly watching aristocrat has not said anything rude, but is treating them like her own personal dinner show.

Rajiv looks down at her for the first time, eyes narrowing.*

What?

*And then there is some shouting back and forth in Indian, or whatever it is, and then the surly one staring down at her in an intimidating sort of way. And isn't that precious.

Bellatrix has found herself another drink in the meantime, and doesn't feel much like rising from her seat, so she only makes rather a show of looking behind her, as if looking for the object of his anger. Finding none, she smiles mildly up at him.*

Mm, can I help you?

*The first time Jyoti met Rajiv, he was 18 and just out of Hogwarts. In that time, she has seen him cranky, frustrated, and annoyed in public, but never once has she seen him angry and it freezes her.*

*By nature, Rajiv is generally very self-conscious; feelings and outbursts are not his way of expressing what is going on. But today has been his lowest point since the summer he left home, and he cannot stand being the ethnic entertainment.*

Yes. You can move.

Oh, I'm quite all right where I am, thank you.

*Her self-satisfied little smile only widens--is he really trying to tell her what to do, glaring down at her like he's somebody? This is getting to be almost excellent.

Bellatrix has always had a razor-sharp intuition for troublemaking, a predator's instinctive and immediate grasp of weaknesses and soft spots. With an elegant little lift of her chin, she indicates the happy couple on the far side of the party. Her voice is velvety-smooth, but it's a deliberate goad.*

Congratulations, by the way. You must be very proud.

*Her instincts are spot-on, and Rajiv tenses at her words. If she wasn't a woman, he would curse her.*

Jyoti, chalo.

*The inflections around the little nonsense word are unmistakable, and Bella gives a cheery little wave goodbye.*

Lovely meeting you.

*Watching Jyoti's eyes dart between him, Bellatrix, and the new Mr. and Mrs. Rosier, Rajiv puts his hand on her back to move her along and sneers at Bellatrix.*

Chutiya. Go to hell.

*Bella's only response is a delighted laugh--it starts off posh and pretty and ends up uglier, just a bit too loud. There's even an unladylike little snort in it somewhere.*

*Jyoti reflexively winces at the sound, it almost sounds vulgar, like laugh that was perverted into something dark.

With Rajiv's hand on her back, they leave. She won't harp about his behaviour and his language, not here. It isn't until they are back in their own tiny house that she starts.

Putting the girls into their high chairs, she begins to get their dinner ready.*

Why did you do that?

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A girl in the world barking up the wrong tree, a creature conditioned to employ matrimony

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