by Sonya Lalli
But Theo didn’t have to be one or the other, did he? Could she let him just be tonight?
He moved his hand up her arm and then turned her to face him. Eyes already closed, he leaned in, planted the most gentle of kisses just below her ear.
“I’m not sure about . . . myself.”
Her whole life, she had been proud of her modest, even prudish ways—but what had controlling her urges ever accomplished?
Theo’s eyes moved to the fire, and slowly he backed away from her. She wished he wouldn’t. She wanted him. Right then she was hungry.
She reached for his hand. She got up on her knees, crept toward him, and sat back down.
An entrepreneur, a traveler, a free spirit.
She kissed him softly at first and then harder, and his hands came up to her face, gently guided her closer. One knee over his legs, and she was straddling him. He was hard against her, his hands tugging through her hair, circling her neck, her waist, her ass.
She was a heroine in her own right. A risk-taker. A woman, Anu realized, who was about to hook up with a total stranger.
chapter sixteen
NEIL: Glad to hear you’ve arrived safe. I’ve promised Kanu that we’ll take lots of videos of the holiday concert for you. The set looks great, by the way. I didn’t realize you made it until Ms. Finch told me.
NEIL: I hope you’re having a nice trip. You deserve it, Anush.
I can’t believe we fell asleep.”
“It’s OK, Anu, really.”
“It’s really not OK.”
There was a group of teenagers smoking outside the pastry shop. They looked like stage actors—young faces caked in makeup and odd, ill-fitting clothes. One of them was also of South Asian heritage, and she was twirling her long black hair with one hand, texting and smoking with the other. Her coat was too small, refusing to cover her flat brown belly and pink crop top.
For the love of God, it was winter. If Kanika ever tried to leave the house like that in December, Anu wouldn’t try to stop her; she’d laugh.
“Anu?”
She didn’t answer, instead watching the group shuffle down the road to perch by another storefront. Anu had been sitting in the passenger seat of Theo’s car for the past five minutes watching them, trying to work up the courage to get out.
Did they ever simply not go home some nights? Were they that stupid?
“I had a lovely time with you.” He was gripping the steering wheel, and Anu could tell that he wanted her to leave.
“Me, too.”
She’d had a lovely time with her Jude Law look-alike. They’d made out like teenagers, and when she couldn’t bear that any longer, she’d slept with him. She hadn’t regretted it the night before, and even now, she didn’t exactly regret it.
She just wished she hadn’t done it in plain view of her parents.
“So . . .”
He was watching her now. She was annoying him.
He killed the car engine and didn’t muffle his sigh—as she was sure he intended. “Look, Anu. You’re thirty, are you not? Don’t you have a kid?”
A kid. The way he said it made motherhood sound so impersonal. Last night, maybe that was the way she had made it sound.
“You’re visiting your parents for the holiday and thought you’d have a bit of fun. I do not see a problem.”
She turned to face him. There were bags under his eyes, and with a day’s stubble, he suddenly looked much older than thirty-four.
He didn’t see a problem because he didn’t know her—yet intimately he knew her in a way only two other men ever had. In a way that, she realized, didn’t even matter.
“Theo, I’m Indian.”
“That’s crap. A lot of people are Indian.” He smiled. “There’s a billion of your lot. You honestly believe you’re the only one having a shag?”
She smiled back at him, trying to figure out whether what he said was funny—or if it offended her.
“You’ll be fine.” He leaned over and planted a dry kiss on her forehead. “Now, off you go.”
Standing there on the curb like a fool, she watched him drive away. When she turned around, the teenagers were at the far end of the block, waiting for a streetlight to change. One of the guys had tucked his hand into the jeans back pocket of the South Asian girl, who was pretending not to notice, huddling arm in arm with one of the other girls.
When Anu was that age, she’d been proud of the fact that she was a virgin, that she had yet to even kiss somebody. She was saving herself, she thought then. She was better than her friends, her peers, because she had the discipline not to be tricked and then trapped by those urges, those instincts.
It all sounded so ridiculous now.
The door was unlocked, and upstairs she found Kunal reading the paper in an armchair. Anu wondered if he’d been there the whole night, if he had waited up like he used to—tutting at his wristwatch when Neil brought her home more than five minutes late.
“Hi, Dad.”
He let the paper drop a few inches. His wrinkled brow appeared and then the top of his reading glasses. “Hi, beti.”
Was she still his beti? Did he still think of her as his good little girl? Did she need him to?
She flopped down on the couch opposite him, and he set down the paper on the coffee table.
“Your mother is studying in the kitchen.”
She could lie to her parents outright, just like Monica used to before she met Tom and took a stand. Before Tom, if Monica wanted to stay out all night or meet up with a guy she was seeing, she’d tell her parents she was sleeping over at a friend’s or working late for a client who didn’t exist. She’d come up with elaborate excuses about cars breaking down, her phone running out of battery or data. Once, Monica had told them she was late because she’d helped a nurse deliver a baby on the train that was stuck underground between the Waterfront and Burrard Street stations; the next day, she’d even pretended to be surprised when she didn’t see herself on the local news.
“Hungry, Anu? We have already had breakfast.”
“No . . .”
But she didn’t know how to tell a lie like that. She had never tried.
“Lucky, sweetie,” Kunal called out. “Ohhh, Lucky. Anu is home. Aaja.”
A beat later Lakshmi appeared around the corner—a glass of water in one hand, a textbook in the other. She didn’t greet Anu or even look at her as she sat down next to Kunal. “Have you eaten?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Hah.”
But the truth was, she did lie to them. Not the way Monica used to: Anu’s lies were fewer and farther between. Subtle and more by omission.
Good idea, Dad. I should be a nurse. It is a great career for a wife and mother.
We’re trying to save up for a new house right now, OK, Mom? That’s why we haven’t had another baby.
I’ve asked Neil to move out. I don’t love him anymore.
That last lie had been the hardest to tell. How else did you explain divorce to a generation who largely didn’t get to choose whom they married, overwhelmingly stayed together regardless of love? Where families picked their children’s spouses from a lineup, chose their future based on horoscope, height and weight, skin color and caste?
Why hadn’t she ever told them the truth? She loved Neil; she always would, but Anu didn’t want to be his mother, his caretaker, or his housekeeper. She didn’t want a life like Lakshmi’s or Priya’s: the life of an Indian housewife, in which everyone and everything mattered but her.
She wanted a life for herself, and her parents needed to accept that.
“I slept with Theo.”
Anu watched her mother’s face as she spoke, and for a long, deep moment, no one said a word.
“Did you guys hear me?”
Slowly, Lakshmi set her textboo
k on the end table. “What is there to say?”
Kunal reached for Lakshmi’s hand. Was he trying to stop her? Prompt her?
“I will say that Neil called us this morning. That Kanika is missing you very much.”
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“Do you have reason to feel guilty, hah, Anu?”
“Neil goes to three or four conferences a year, and you say, ‘Oh, Neil, you work so hard,’” Anu says, imitating Lakshmi’s accent. “‘Stay on a few extra days and relax, nah? Have a holiday.’ Mom, do I ever get a holiday?”
“Take holiday, Anu. Nobody is stopping you. But abandoning your child—”
“I did not abandon her. I’m taking some time away.”
“For Theo?” Lakshmi spit. “For Ryan?”
“For me.”
“Enough fighting for now, hah?” Kunal looked between them. “Perhaps we are, as the kids say, all a bit hangry?”
Lakshmi started at him in Punjabi. Anu didn’t catch what she was saying.
“Say it in English, Mom. Would you please just say what you’re thinking?”
“Anu, you must understand,” Kunal said, interrupting them both. “Your mother and I realize times have changed. It is different. But we are still getting used to this change, hah, beti? You must be patient.”
“When Kanu is grown, then Anu will learn this patience business. You will understand when your daughter hurts you like this.”
“How am I hurting you? Mom, this is about me—”
“When Kanu is old enough to realize what is happening, what will you say?” Lakshmi asked, her voice hard. “Who these men are? Why she was raised in broken home?”
“Crazily enough, Mom, I might just tell her the truth. Maybe unlike you, I’ll have an honest conversation with her before she’s thirty.”
“Unlike me?”
“Anu,” Kunal snapped, “enough.”
“Yes, unlike you. I’m sorry my life choices are so very hard on you, but they are my choices. And I’m proud of the fact that I was brave enough to leave an unhappy marriage and try dating someone else and go traveling by myself, to start a new business—”
“What business?” Kunal was glaring at her now, too, his arm wrapped protectively around his wife’s shoulder.
Anu grimaced and sat up on the couch. “I . . . I am running a yoga studio. I took over a lease—”
“Kya? When?”
“Last week.”
“Last week.”
Now he wouldn’t look at her, either; and she fumbled through an explanation: meeting Mags, the feeling of completeness, her plans for the business—as vague as it still was. The longer she spoke, the more Kunal seemed to withdraw.
“You say you want a divorce,” he said after she was finished. He seemed to be chewing his words, considering their taste and texture. “This costs money. Traveling, this costs money. Tell me, was this business so important that you will risk your family’s financial security?”
“Dad, it’s going to be fine. . . .”
“You were hiding this from us?” A pause. Kunal unwrapped his arm from Lakshmi and dropped it to his lap, palm facing up. “Like you are hiding your relationship with . . .” He trailed off as his hand clenched into a fist, as if he were physically incapable of saying his name.
“It’s Ryan, Dad. And that relationship is over. It’s been over for a while.”
“You left this Ryan character. Just like you left Neil?” Lakshmi said. “So suddenly. Like you weren’t even thinking.”
“Don’t you understand? Separating from Neil was the first time I was thinking,” Anu said, trying to keep her voice calm. “That I did something for myself. Mom, I did everything you and Dad ever wanted. I came home early. I never drank or dated around. I chose my career because you said it was ‘fitting for a mother—’”
“Nah—”
“And Neil and I only got married so young because it’s what you and Priya wanted us to do. You wanted a wedding to plan, grandkids to babysit—”
“And why do you think I came to London?” Lakshmi’s face was red, and she threw Kunal’s pleading hand away from her lap. “To finally complete an education, years after my child? Your father says times have changed, nah? Just for you? For women your age? I am a nani and therefore half-dead? Can I not do as I like?”
Anu’s cheeks burned. “Sure, but—”
“Being a mother is hard, Anu. You cannot make snap-snap decisions and think there will be no consequences for Kanika!”
“I’ve only ever thought of her. I’m a good mother.”
“If you are so good,” Lakshmi said evenly. Slowly. “What exactly are you doing here?”
Twenty-four hours ago, sitting on this very couch, she’d asked herself the same question. Finally, she had the answer.
“I’m here,” she said, taking a deep breath, “to tell you that I now run a yoga studio. That I slept with Theo. That I dated a man named Ryan for three months, and that from now on I’m going to start dating whomever I want.”
She caught Lakshmi’s eye, daring her to keep speaking.
“I’m here to tell you that I’m going traveling for a while and that I don’t know when exactly I’m coming back. That from now on, I’m going to live my life, for me.”
“Mothers do not have such luxuries.”
“Well, maybe I . . .” She trailed off, but her words had startled them all. Of course she wanted to be Kanika’s mother.
But right now the responsibility of it—the weight of her whole damn life—was just too much for her to shoulder.
“Anu . . .” Kunal’s voice cracked. She’d hurt them. She wasn’t used to this, and so she stared at her feet as she stood up from the couch.
“I’m going to go,” she said to her toes, to the Persian carpet. She looked up. “I know I’ve disappointed you. But I’m not sorry about my decisions.”
chapter seventeen
Twelve years earlier
Next, two Scotch on the rocks,” Anu said, handing out her tray of drinks to a group of uncles. One drink remained, and she turned to her dad. “And Scotch neat?”
“Thank you, beti.” Kunal took a gulp, and Anu’s stomach churned just watching him. It smelled foul. She couldn’t even imagine how it tasted. “Excellent. What brand is this?”
“Brandon said it’s called . . . Glenfiddish?”
“Glenfiddich, hah.” Kunal scanned the lawn, shielding the sun with his hand. “Brandon is here? I have not yet been introduced.”
“Yeah, he’s been here the whole time.” Anu gestured behind her toward the porch, where Auntie Jayani had set up a bar beneath the awning. Her eldest daughter, Sonia, was newly engaged to a fellow doctor she’d met in the emergency ward, a white guy. Sonia wasn’t the first of her family friends to marry a non-Indian, but close to it, and watching some of the aunties and uncles react and process the news had made this particular engagement party a bit more interesting.
There was a spectrum of families in their community—from Auntie Jayani and her husband, very modern, sometimes even criticized as “too modern,” to Monica’s parents at the other end, who were traditional and religious and would probably have disowned Monica if she’d ever dated someone white. Or dated anyone at all.
Anu followed her dad’s eyes around the lawn, past the house—where most of the women were busy cooking—and toward the bar.
“So where is this Brandon? I should go rough him up a bit.” Kunal smiled. “You know, be an uncle. Should I tell him I am policeman?”
Anu rolled her eyes. “He’s that one. With the black polo shirt.”
“Kaun?”
“Him.” She pointed harder. “Right there. He’s pouring a glass of red wine.”
“That is the bartender.”
“Dad, that’s Brandon.” Anu giggled. “Auntie
didn’t hire a bartender.”
“No.” Kunal gasped. He tapped the uncle beside him, pulling him close. “Prem-ji, did you know that is Brandon?”
“Kaun?”
“The bartender.”
“Bartender? I thought Sonia was marrying doctor.”
Anu laughed silently as she watched her dad and his friends realize and exclaim over the fact that the white guy who had been pouring their drinks all afternoon was the man they all had come to the party to meet. She wondered if it was also occurring to them that he was also the only man at the party actually helping out.
“Thank you for the drinks, beti,” Kunal said, as if dismissing her. “Does your mother need help?”
“Do you want to help her?” Anu mumbled as she walked away, although not loud enough for Kunal to hear her.
It was hot for early July. Only the week before, on Anu’s eighteenth birthday, she’d had to wear a thick sweater and a raincoat—and now suddenly it was summer. It was even warmer inside, and she found Lakshmi, Auntie Jayani, and the other aunties scrambling around the kitchen—frying samosas and pakoras, serving up subjis into crockery, setting out chutney. Monica was bent over the sink, elbow deep in dishwater. She’d already been caught.
“There you are,” Lakshmi said to her.
“I was serving the uncles drinks. Do you want one?”
Lakshmi shook her head, and a bead of sweat rolled down her temple.
“Are you sure?” Lakshmi hovered over the stove, and Anu was hot just looking at her.
“No time.” Lakshmi gestured toward a stack of china plates. “Jao.”
Swallowing a groan, Anu carried a high stack of china plates across the large kitchen, through two sitting rooms—empty—and into the dining room, where Auntie Jayani always served lunch. As she set down the plates on the table, piled high with desserts, she noticed a tall boy her age lurking at the opposite end.