by Sonya Lalli
October crawled by. I jumped whenever I heard a British accent in the corridor at work, and checked my e-mail fifty thousand times a day. I trolled through the bulletins posted by HR checking to see if his start date had been announced, needing to confirm that he really was transferring. In his e-mail, Dev hadn’t mentioned what day he was coming, or how long he might be staying—and I didn’t know how to ask.
Was it his choice to move to Toronto?
Then there was that other question that I always typed out, and always deleted.
Are you moving here for me?
I hadn’t seen him in two years, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Of course he was supposed to move here. I hadn’t spent the happiest years of my life with a man just so we could break up. And relationships like that—like the one Dev and I had—were never just a relationship. It was a love affair with a screen of its own on the Central Park lawn. The heartbreak had to be worth it, and suddenly, I knew that Dev was going to be my happy ending.
A sputter of oil escaped the pan, and I noticed that Nani was watching my face.
“Do you want to watch a movie after this?” I asked her. “Shah Rukh Khan has a new one out, doesn’t he?”
“Do you not have other plans tonight?”
Other plans. Nani’s code words that suggested I should be out on another date, trolling the streets, bars, and temple for another suitable Indian.
I thought maybe she’d lay off after I’d exhausted the list. Stupidly, I’d assumed that it would be over—and that I could wait for Dev in peace—once I’d met up with (or ruled out) everyone on her list, and she’d realized her arrangement just didn’t work. But she continued to push, pulling eligible Indian bachelors out of some sort of magical hat. A new list she hadn’t given me access to. I wasn’t even sure where she was finding them—and whose sons, nephews, or cousins they were—but they wouldn’t leave me alone. She’d started to give out my phone number, and now I couldn’t go more than twelve hours without receiving weird texts from guys named Billy or Harpreet, voice mails from mouth breathers who’d forget to leave their name.
Each time my BlackBerry lit up, I’d hope it was Dev, and get that sinking feeling in my stomach when it wasn’t. He’d be here soon, wouldn’t he? Surely, all of this would be over soon.
“No, I don’t have plans,” I said to Nani after a moment, trying to sound firm.
“Did Neil not call? He sounds very promising—”
“Please. Not today?” I gave her a pleading look. “Work has been really busy, and right now I just want to cook and hang out with you.”
Nani nodded slowly, and then kissed me on the cheek. “Well, you are natural cook. I am very proud. Your mother was never good like this.”
“She liked to cook?”
Nani sneered. “Manu liked to do a lot of things.”
“It’s so relaxing,” I said after a moment. “I never realized that before.”
“Aacha. When you have time, yes. But when cooking for hungry customers, hungry children—it is not so relaxing.”
Nani rarely spoke about the past, and I thought about pressing her. How had she felt about leaving her parents, one day suddenly packing her things and moving in with a husband she barely knew? What was it like getting on a plane for the first time in her life, crossing into a new country—cold, barren, and raising children in a land you knew nothing about?
I reached up to the spice rack and grabbed a small glass jar full of methi. I pinched some between my fingers, and then carefully sprinkled it over the pan. With a wooden spoon, I folded it in, another rich wave of aromas escaping.
“Was it hard?” I finally asked.
“Do you know I still am not sure the English word for methi?” I felt her beside me, watching me as I cooked. “Yes, Raina. It was very hard.”
“Zoey said her grandparents were immigrants, too,” I said. “From the Ukraine, but still.”
“You spend a lot of time with Zoey, nah?” She paused. “Is she—”
I heard the front door open and, a moment later, slam shut. My eyes locked with Nani’s as we heard a jingling of keys, the rustling of the hall closet. Nani’s lips were pursed as she watched the kitchen door.
“Mom?” I called out.
Footsteps dragged across the hardwood in the other room, and a moment later, a deep voice. “It’s me.”
Nani’s shoulders relaxed as Kris opened the kitchen door. His hair was wet, and he had at least a week’s worth of stubble on his face. He sat down heavily at the kitchen table, tossing his gym bag in the corner.
“I didn’t know you were coming,” she said without turning around. “Not with Serena today?”
“No.” He sat down at the table. “We broke up.”
Nani leaned forward against the counter, and massaged her temples. Eyes closed, she inhaled deeply, and then exhaled like she did while meditating. It was only the week before that I’d overheard Nani and Auntie Sarla gossiping in the living room—calloused feet on the coffee table, plates of sweets on their stomachs—speculating on who, after Shay, would be the next in the community to get married. Kris. They’d been confident. Kris and Serena were the right age, and had established careers. What was he waiting for? Auntie Sarla had wondered aloud.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said finally. Beside me, Nani was still crouched over, slowly shaking her head. “Nani, do you want to sit down?”
She whimpered.
“Ma, stop being so dramatic. We weren’t even together that long.”
“But why, Krishna?”
He winced. He hated it when Nani called him by his full name.
“Serena was nice girl—”
“All my girlfriends were nice. Maybe it’s not—”
“Your auntie Sarla has practically planned your wedding. And now?”
“And now you tell your beloved Sarla to cancel it.”
“What will I say? That you—again—have broken up with a girl for no reason? This time with that lovely Serena? That my Krishna is refusing to settle down? Just like Manu, never considering others—”
“That right there,” yelled Kris, staring at me. He stood up from the table and reached for his gym bag. “That’s why I never fucking come home.”
* * *
Nani didn’t say another word after Kris walked out. She went upstairs, and after a few minutes, I realized she wasn’t coming back down. I tried to finish cooking alone, but I was frazzled, uneven, and ended up burning half the dishes.
I scraped the tray of blackened chicken into the garbage, trying not to focus on the way Kris had just left like that. I managed to salvage the biryani and one of the subjis, but I didn’t feel like eating any of it. I put the food away in Tupperware containers, washed and dried the dishes, and scrubbed down the stove top and kitchen surfaces I’d splattered.
When I was done, I found my way into the living room and slumped into the couch. I glanced up at the cuckoo clock. It was early evening, and it was already getting dark. I had a lot of catch-up work to do before the end of the weekend, but I didn’t want to leave Nani alone. Not yet.
Her tablet was on the coffee table, and I grabbed it. I’d discovered the year earlier that she didn’t like using the desktop computer I’d bought her because the den was too cold, so I’d given her my tablet. She’d been an infuriating student, wanting to play with it like she had with my old Nintendo before I’d even taught her what meant what, but eventually, she’d learned. Now she used it to Skype her sister in India, and send e-mails to her friends about temple gatherings and her charity projects. I’d even seen her playing games on it, which she’d taught herself to do.
I keyed in her password—1 2 3 4—and spotted in the bottom right-hand corner that the e-mail icon displayed thirty-eight unread messages. I clicked on it, determined to set up a spam filter for her.
But when the e-mails appeared, all of them—every single one—was from IndianSingles.com.
My mouth dropped.
I stared at the screen; was I imagining this? I blinked hard, but the words didn’t change. Hesitantly, I clicked on one of the e-mails, and I could feel the blood pumping through my stomach, my throat, my ears.
A welcome message appeared that was addressed to me, and it said I had another “suitor” interested. I scrolled down, and a profile appeared.
Pradeep. 35. Accountant. Toronto. Hindu, olive skin, 5’9.5”. 80k salary per year, looking for educated, fair-skinned <30.
I exited the e-mail, and without thinking, clicked on another.
Neil. 32. Dentist living in Oakville. Jet-setter and avid reader. Open to meeting the love of my life.
And then another.
Nish. 27. Computer science geek, Taurus, 5’8”, searching for grl w/ good values + vegetarian chef.
I clicked through each of the e-mails. One after another. Jeetu. Vinod. Baljit. Ajay. Gopal. Amar.
Nani had made a new list, given out my number to men on the Internet, and hadn’t even told me. Had I exhausted all the single men she knew? Now she had to go online to pawn me off? All this effort to make sure I found a husband before I turned thirty?
I clicked through the link in the final e-mail, and the web browser flashed to life. IndianSingles.com, it read: “An online destination for Indian singles living abroad searching for that special someone.”
I scrolled down, and there I was. My very own profile. My entire life summarized. Everything a man would ever need to know.
Raina. 29. Works at investment bank in Toronto. Nice Hindu girl in search of husband.
I felt the bile rising in my throat. In search of husband. Is that all that mattered about me?
And what about after I’d found a husband? Who was I then: A wife? A mother? Eventually a grandmother? Is that all an Indian woman would ever be? Could ever be? Someone defined by her relationship to others?
I stared at the photo Nani had used in my profile. She had taken the picture when I wasn’t looking, at a café in Southwark during her one visit to London. I was wearing a leather jacket, a cream and poppy red scarf we’d bought that morning on Portobello Road. My hair was combed back into a ponytail, and I’d worn makeup that day. Mascara, black-blue liner. Even lipstick. The canvas tote bag on my shoulder was full of honey-cinnamon cashews and a piece of German chocolate cake that we’d bought at Borough Market for Dev, before we realized that he wasn’t coming to meet us.
He’d been called away to Zurich. A merger on the brink of collapsing. I didn’t see him for three weeks, and Nani never saw him at all.
* * *
I found Nani upstairs meditating by the foot of her bed. She sat cross-legged, her eyes closed on the grape-jam purple yoga mat I’d bought her for her last birthday. Her glasses were off, and there were clumps of balled-up tissues on the floor beside her.
After a moment, she opened her eyes. They were red. “There’s my sweet.” With her left hand, she tapped on the floor next to her, and I obliged.
I lay down on the mat and rested my head in her lap. She stroked my forehead, brushing the hair out of my face, as I looked up at her. From that angle, I could make out the faint lines in her neck and at the corner of her lips. Her broad cheekbones, the roundness of her small, delicate nose.
“How is chicken? I smell burning.”
“That’s because it’s burned,” I said curtly. Her face fell, and I was immediately filled with regret.
Nani playfully pinched my nose, looking down at me. “Well, I would have eaten anyway. I will eat anything my Raina makes for me.”
I could feel the tears forming. The lump in my throat. A heaviness in my chest. I wanted to reply, but what was there to say?
Your son is angry with you, just like Mom is, but maybe you deserve it? Maybe it was you who pushed them away?
I thought about the list of men in her inbox waiting for a response. My marriage ad she’d posted online without telling me.
Nani loved me. I was her whole life. But why couldn’t she see that she was pushing me away, too?
I rolled toward her, closing my eyes, breathing in her scent. Baby powder. Ginger. Paprika. I started shaking, the tears forming, and I felt her arms wrap around me.
“Don’t cry, my Raina,” she whispered. “We have each other.”
Nani and I would always have each other. But as I buried myself against her, I’d never felt so alone.
Pradeep. Neil. Nish. Jeetu. Vinod. Baljit. Ajay. Gopal. Amar.
Not in a million years.
MAY 20, 2016
Twenty-seven and alone. Twenty-seven, and starting over. She watches marathons of Degrassi and James Bond. Golden Girls and Star Trek. She cries most of the day, and then again as she lies in bed trying to fall asleep. She stares at the fading star stickers taped to the ceiling of her old bedroom, thinking how, at twenty-seven, her nani ran both a business and a household in a country that wasn’t hers.
How at twenty-seven her mother had had an eleven-year-old daughter and the vivid life of a flight attendant. How even Shay, not quite twenty-seven, is a doctor—and has just moved in with her boyfriend.
And what do I have? Raina thinks to herself.
She has a new condo that she’ll get the keys to the following week. She has her old job at the Toronto office, one that they are anxious for her to resume. She has Nani. Shay and her other friends. But the thing she wants most of all—what she must relearn to live without—she has lost. And she has no idea what to do. Raina has no memory of the woman she was before she met Dev, or how that woman managed to function. She barely eats, and moves listlessly from bed to couch. Couch to bed. She is heartbroken and unkempt. She is carelessly adrift.
Nani bakes a cake for her birthday, and in the evening Shay arrives, still gowned in her mint green scrubs. Raina can hear them talking about her in the kitchen.
“This is not depression,” she hears her nani say. “This is a breakup. She will be fine.”
“She’s stopped running.” Shay’s voice lowers. “I’ve never seen her like this before.”
“Time will heal her. It heals all of us . . .”
Raina rolls her eyes and turns up the sound on the television. She is tired of them. Tired of hearing how that much passion was unhealthy, about their rage for the “asshole” who hurt her. But Dev was not an asshole; it was Raina who walked away, and as she stares blankly at the television, she thinks maybe she shouldn’t have.
Was she asking for too much?
Marriage. Kids. Love. A life with Dev. She had grown tired of the bits and scraps he left for her to gather up, scavenge for between work hours and out-of-town meetings, between 12 and 6 A.M. when they lay in his bed, half undressed, beaten down from exhaustion. But did she need him to propose? They weren’t that old, and it’s Nani that wanted to see her married, was it not? It was Nani who really wanted the lavish Indian wedding; the weeklong celebrations and the showing off. The expense and traditions. Raina didn’t need it, and as she feels acid spark in her stomach, she regrets having asked Dev for it.
Had it only been three weeks since she left? One day they had been lying next to each other, their ankles intercrossed, deciding whether to make Earl Grey or honey lemon tea. And the next?
She plays their breakup scene over and over again in her mind, rewinding and fast-forwarding. Agonizing over every word, every look, every pause.
She had surprised him with plane tickets and a hotel reservation: a two-night stay at a resort in Tuscany for their anniversary.
“You didn’t even ask,” he had said, not looking at her.
“That was the point.” She sat down next to him at the kitchen table. His head was on his hands, and she watched him stare at the surface—shiny, varnished—that neither of them ever ate on.
/> “I told your assistant not to book any meetings, and even Raymond was—”
“You asked my boss?” He scoffed. “Jesus, Raina, don’t you know how unprofessional that is? This is my career—sometimes I don’t get a choice about when I have to work.”
“It’s always a choice—”
“It makes me look bad enough I’m dating a coworker.”
She stood up, tears threatening to spill, and slammed the bedroom door behind her. He came into the room seconds later and cradled her, held her until he made her believe he didn’t mean it.
Then she had asked him, for the first and last time, the questions that were—and still are—constantly on her mind. Was she ever going to come first? Would he ever meet her nani?
Would he ever ask her to marry him?
When she thinks of what came next, she feels the entire world buckle around her. She was the one to make unreasonable demands, force him to talk about the future, their plans. She had triggered everything, pushed and pulled, molded their relationship, their unhappiness, until there was nothing left to do but leave.
And even though he didn’t stop her, she knows it was all her fault.
She reaches for her laptop. With trepidation, she begins typing on the keyboard, drafting an e-mail without knowing what she wants to say, or what purpose it would serve. She is clicking at the keyboard, more furiously now. The pads of her fingers type and clack, and then she hears a floorboard creak.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Raina snaps the computer shut. She turns around, and Nani and Shay are standing behind her, trays of tea and cake in hand. They are glaring at her.
“Were you e-mailing him?” Shay shoves a cup into Raina’s hand, and hot tea spills onto their fingers.
Raina sets down the cup, wipes her hands on her shirt. “No.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Shay turns to Nani. “They’ve been talking still. They text all the time, and e-mail, and—”