Vanished (12 page)

Sunday morning
, Neela woke up to Sree howling in the bathroom.

“Sree, I'll be fast,” Mrs. Krishnan said over his whining voice.

“No, no, noooo…”

Neela put her pillow over her head. Not again, she thought. She tried to ignore them, willing herself back to sleep. But the harder she tried, the louder Sree's voice became. Would the two of them ever stop? Finally Neela rose from bed. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to do, but by the time she reached the bathroom and saw the lollipops all over the floor, she had made up her mind. She held out her hand. “Give me the scissors.”

Mrs. Krishnan stared at her. Behind them, Sree lay in a quivering heap on the ground.

“But you don't know anything about…” her mom started. She looked down at Sree. “Honey, if you just had a lollipop and…”

Sree cried even harder.

By now, Mr. Krishnan had stopped by the bathroom, too. “Neela wants to help? Grab the chance!”

“But she's only eleven,” Mrs. Krishnan said, alarmed. “Can we really trust her with the scissors? He moves around so much and—”

“She'll be fine,” he said.

Neela closed the bathroom door behind her. After a moment, she heard her parents clattering their mugs in the kitchen. Her mom said, “How can we have coffee while she might be in there puncturing his face?”

Great, Neela thought. She was glad her mother had so much confidence in her. She looked down at her brother. “Get up,” she said.

“No,” he cried. He curled up into a smaller ball.

“I'm not cutting your hair,” she said.

He looked up at her. “You're not?”

“No. At least not the way Mom wants.”

She could see the gears turning in his head:
Where was the trick?
“No tricks,” she said.

He sat up. “Are you cutting out my brain?”

“Of course not.” She looked around the bathroom. Then she saw something that gave her an idea. “Sit on the toilet, Sree. With the lid down.” From the shelf behind him, she picked up a bowl of seashells, dumped them into the bathtub, and dusted off the empty bowl. Then she put it upside down on his head.

Sree started squirming, then giggling. “What are you doing?”

“I'm protecting your brain. I'll only cut whatever is sticking out of the bowl.”

He thought about it for a moment. “Promise?”

“Yeah.”

Then he sat still as she carefully snipped the ends of his hair around the edge of the bowl—along his forehead, around his ears, and then behind his neck.

Halfway through, Sree looked up at her. “I hate lollipops,” he said.

Neela nodded. “I know.”

That evening, Sudha Auntie came for dinner. Mrs. Krishnan made it a point to invite her over a few times in the year so she and Mr. Krishnan could suck up to her. At least, that was how Neela saw it. Sudha Auntie arrived promptly at six o'clock in a mustard-colored sari and matching blouse, carrying a bag of oranges, which she gave to Mrs. Krishnan.

Everyone settled down in the living room, including Sree, who was still happily fingering his new haircut. He had liked it so much, he said he wanted it done with a bowl every time. When Mr. Krishnan saw Sree, he said something like, “Look, it's the fifth Beatle!” But mostly he and Mrs. Krishnan were relieved that nothing had been punctured or shorn and that Sree ended up looking half decent.

Sudha Auntie began by talking about growing up in Thanjavur, a city in India famous for art and music. “It's a place where music lives and
breathes
. All the leading instrument-makers reside there; even Guru did.”

When she heard Guru's name, Neela sat up. Would Sudha Auntie say more about the
maya veena
? Neela had studied the picture of Hal and the photocopy of the embroidery what seemed like a hundred times, but so far, she had come up with nothing.

But today her teacher was more focused on her own roots. “My family, for three generations, have all been musicians. When I was only six years old, my mother began teaching me the veena. So you can just imagine how my family of musicians living in Thanjavur reacted when I said I wanted to be a veterinarian.”

“What did they do?” Neela asked.

“They married me off, of course. At sixteen. My mother said girls from good families didn't become animal doctors.”

Sixteen! Neela couldn't imagine getting married that soon.

“But I wanted to be a vet,” Sudha Auntie continued. “I grew up with a Pomeranian. She was so sweet. She did not bark at anybody. So after I married, I made a deal with my husband's family: I would play the veena, but I would also go to vet school.”

“Why did they care if you played the veena or not?” Neela asked.

Sudha Auntie turned to her. “My family were very noted musicians. My husband's family wanted me to continue that tradition. But they were open-minded and sent me to vet school. On our first day, we had to do dissection.” Sudha Auntie made a scissoring action with her hand. “On dead animals. That day it was a fetal pig. Well, I took one look at the guts of a pig, and my vet career was over. I decided that playing the veena wasn't so bad. What do you say?” She tweaked Sree's cheek. He gave her a horrified look before darting behind his mother.

“The world is lucky because of that decision,” Mrs. Krishnan said, covering up for Sree.

“Well, times are different,” Sudha Auntie said. “You don't have to be so traditional to be a veena player. Heck, you don't even have to be Indian anymore.”

“Like Tannenbaum,” Mr. Krishnan said. “We were amazed by how authentic he sounded that day. Right, Lakshmi?”

“Very authentic,” Mrs. Krishnan murmured.

Neela had an idea. “What about Veronica Wyvern?”

“Veronica Wyvern?” Neela's mother repeated. Her eyes flashed.

“She's an American player,” Neela said innocently.

“Lovely musician.” Sudha Auntie smiled widely. “Trained entirely here in Boston.”

“Did you ever hear her?” Neela asked. “In person, that is?”

“A few times,” Sudha Auntie said. “We were friendly.”

“You were friends?” Neela asked, trying not to look too excited.

“I said we were
friendly
, not friends,” Sudha Auntie corrected. “Why do you seem so interested, Neela? Is there something about her you wanted to know?”

Neela paused. There
was
something she wanted to know ever since she first talked about Veronica with Pavi over the phone. It was the one mystery element that stood between the veena belonging to Veronica, and then to her. “I wanted to write a report about Veronica Wyvern,” Neela said slowly, thinking as she spoke. “And it's always more interesting to include quirky information. Like, did she own a million veenas, or just one?”

“That's what people want to know?” Sudha Auntie said. “Humph. How about how she had mastered hundreds of
ragams
by the age of twelve? That would be more relevant.” Then she saw Neela's impatient expression.

“Oh, all right,” Sudha Auntie continued. “I think she owned only one. Most players own at least two or three. Not her. And”—she scratched her head thoughtfully—“I'll tell you how I know. It might be the kind of ‘quirky' information you're looking for. One day I went to the grocery store in Cambridge, when I ran into her in the parking lot. We stopped and chatted for a few minutes. Her hands were full of grocery bags. She opened her car door to pile them into the back. I spotted her veena. ‘Off to a concert?' I asked. She said no. ‘Master class?' No. Then, if I wasn't so nosy, I'd have kept quiet. But people rarely carry around their veenas, so I had to know where she was going with it. I pestered her some more, and she told me she was going nowhere but the grocery store. ‘I always take my instrument with me,' she said. ‘No matter where I go.' ‘Every day, everywhere?' I asked. ‘Rain, sun, and snow?' She said yes, and I thought this was the looniest thing I'd ever heard. Especially when she told me it was the only veena she owned. But I guess that's dedication for you. And
quirky
.”

Neela listened intently to Sudha Auntie's story. It did sound strange to take your veena to the grocery store. But maybe Veronica had a reason? “Did you ever see her veena?” she persisted. “Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

“Neela, why this morbid curiosity in a dead musician's instrument?” Mrs. Krishnan said.

Sudha Auntie nodded. “I don't recall what it looked like. I guess I was too busy listening to her play. Poor lady. She met an untimely demise.”

Mrs. Krishnan said, “Maybe we can change the subject to something more cheerful?”

“What happened to the pig?” Sree suddenly asked.

“Pig?” Sudha Auntie asked.

“He means the fetal pig you had to cut up,” Neela said. “Who cares, Sree? That wasn't the point of her story.” She couldn't help sounding cross. It seemed with every chance she got, Neela's mother was steering her away from her grandmother's veena.

Still, Sudha Auntie had managed to answer Neela's question. A woman who carried her only veena with her everywhere she went would certainly have had it with her when she was on the train that crashed in India. Case closed. So where did that leave Neela?

Sudha Auntie gave a wink at Sree. “Would you believe that fetal pig was reincarnated as a little boy? Ha!”

Sree shrank back behind his mother again, and Neela caught her parents exchanging looks as if they thought Sudha Auntie was a very strange woman.

After dinner, everyone returned to the living room.

“You have to do the honor of playing something for us, Sudha,” Mrs. Krishnan said.

Sudha waved her hand. “You don't want to be subjected to my playing on an evening like this.”

“Are you joking?” Mr. Krishnan asked. “All our friends will say,
You had Sudha Rajugopal at your house and you didn't hear her play?
It would be a hard thing to live down.”

Sudha Auntie grinned. “That is a nice thing to say, even to an old donkey like me.”

Neela listened as her teacher and parents went back and forth. She knew this pretense of Sudha Auntie not wanting to play, and her parents insisting, was all just an act. It was only a matter of time before Sudha Auntie “gave in” and did what she had been hoping to do all evening long. At last her parents “won,” and Mr. Krishnan got out the student veena.

“Glad to see it's still here,” Sudha Auntie quipped.

Neela bit her lip. Would she ever hear the end of it from her teacher?

Sudha Auntie gestured to her. “Neela plays first.”

Neela started. “No, you can go ahead.” She hoped that would be enough to avoid playing.

Sudha Auntie was adamant. “All musicians play. Besides, we want to hear you.”

“Go on,” Mrs. Krishnan said gently.

Mr. Krishnan smiled encouragingly. “How about the recital piece?”

Neela sighed, seeing she had no choice. She sat down next to the student veena. It seemed she had been practicing the recital piece for so long. But she had been getting better. Even Sudha Auntie, who used every opportunity to harp on all the things Neela was doing wrong at their lessons, had been criticizing her less these days. Still, practicing was not the same thing as performing. When you performed, you didn't stop in the middle. Unless you messed up.