The Object of Your Affections

by Falguni Kothari

  Lavinia and Juan were already waiting for us. The newly married glow hadn’t waned from either of their faces. It looked good on them. We got to talking about college, as we always ended up doing when our girl gang met. The men wanted to know how we’d met each other.

  With Lavinia and me, it had been our common South Asian heritage. We both joined the Indian club and the Indian dance group and hit it off. Eventually, I’d persuaded Paris to join the clubs so she could experience the Indian culture firsthand, which had been a feat on my part. But before that, we’d met first in our freshman dorm on move-in day.

  “I’d been expecting to room with an Indian American girl from Florida whose lifestyle and—” I paused, drew imaginary quotation marks in the air “—‘values’ were deemed appropriate by my father. He chose my roommate for me.”

  If I “had to be stubborn about studying in the culturally bankrupt West” and living with vetted extended family in New Jersey wasn’t an option for freshman students, my roommate would have to pass muster, he’d said.

  “Then, out of nowhere, there’s Paris, throwing clothes inside her closet—her idea of unpacking—when my mother and I lumber into the dorm room, dragging three large suitcases and an assortment of storage boxes in our wake.”

  We’d gaped at Paris for a full five minutes before I could speak. She’d been wearing rumpled, shabby chic clothes, defiance beaming out of her every pore. She’d had badly cut bangs—a home job—and thick black eyeliner around her eyes. Her black razor-sharp lips had slanted into a genuine, welcoming smile that had quickly turned chilly when my mother turned her back to her and began bombarding me with questions in Marwari. It had been obvious we were discussing her. Paris had sneered at us, her nose ring quivering in disdain. It had taken me a whole month to win her trust back.

  My mother and I had thanked God that my father had decided against joining us in New York, or things would’ve turned ugly pretty fast. My mother had extended her trip for an extra month just to make sure Paris didn’t murder me in my sleep. Although, how she could’ve prevented it from her hotel room, I had no clue.

  Paris told her side of the story. “I persuaded the floor RAs and Naira’s would-have-been roomie to exchange rooms with me on move-in day. I’d gotten it into my head to learn about India and wanted someone fresh off the boat to teach me.” She grinned, remembering the shenanigans we’d gotten up to. “I think we were both surprised that we hit it off. Perhaps we’d bonded over our aesthetically different, yet conceptually similar, nose rings.”

  I laughed, touching my nose where the hole for my diamond nose stud had long since closed. Paris hadn’t pierced her nose at all. She’d worn a fake black metal ring for show.

  Nothing else about her had been fake. Paris had achieved every goal she’d set for herself. Be it making the dean’s list every semester, or finagling a date with a guy she’d crushed on but who hadn’t given her a second look, or convincing my father—my staunch and overprotective father—that the trip to Cancún during our junior year spring break was for a research paper on the Mayan civilization. Never mind that neither of us had even one history credit between us all through college.

  If Paris had learned about the Indian culture from me, she’d opened the door to a daring non-Indian world for me. Comparing our lives, I began to understand myself, my boundaries, my privileges and my shortcomings. I became more than the timid younger daughter of Baldev and Anjum Manral. More than a spoiled little princess who’d thrown a tantrum one day and gotten her father to grant her wish to study abroad. I realized I didn’t have to toe every line, and that no lines were set in stone. That I could juggle a career and be a hostess with the mostess. In fact, I could be whatever I wanted to be. I could and should choose my own husband—if I was crazy enough to marry, that is—albeit from the list my parents had provided. I wasn’t that daring, I’d realized too. I’d often wondered since then, if Paris hadn’t unlocked those changes in me, would I ever have caught Kaivan’s interest?

  I’d envied Paris in every possible way in college. Now, watching her laugh at our college stories while leaning against her husband—a man I was coming to adore—I realized I still envied her.

  The conversation took a surprising turn as my dessert arrived. I shouldn’t give in to my sweet tooth, especially because of the baby, but I hadn’t been able to resist ordering the strawberry shortcake listed on the menu.

  “We have news.” Lavinia’s eyeballs ping-ponged between Paris and me. Her smile was so magnificent that I feared her jaw would dislocate.

  Then I knew. I just knew. I jumped up and hugged her, squeeing. “Oh, my God, congratulations. When?”

  “October,” she answered gleefully and there were more congratulations, some backslapping between the guys, and a tiny bit of grumbling from Paris about overpopulation and the Human Agenda.

  “We’re expecting too in November. So, woo-hoo!” said Paris.

  I was startled that she’d told when I’d expressly told her not to tell anyone until we crossed the first trimester. I wasn’t being superstitious, but things happened. Until we heard the heartbeat or Dr. Kapoor said everything looked perfect, I didn’t want anyone to know. I hadn’t even told my parents—but that was for another reason altogether.

  It was Lavinia’s turn to scream and jump up and hug Paris until Paris set her straight by pointing at my belly. “The kid’s not in here. It’s in there.”

  I wanted to bury my face in my hands. Oh, Paris. When would she not shock the world? I raised my shoulders and hands in a “Surprise” sort of gesture and waited for Lavinia and Juan to school their expressions of shock and for the questions to pour out.

  Paris didn’t even wait for the questions. “You know my views on procreation. But Neal has a different philosophy, so does Naira. So, woo-hoo. Everyone’s happy.”

  I kicked her under the table, telling her to shut up. She’d done the same thing at one of our surrogate-intended mother group meetings. She’d been exactly this flippant and it had not gone down well. Many of the intended mothers in the group had gone through hell, literally, before taking the surrogacy path. Some had tried to get pregnant for years, miscarried multiple times, had battled health issues or issues that no doctor could figure out. The point was that most heterosexual couples chose surrogacy when all other doors had been shut to them. Unless they were quirky celebrities and did it for quirky celebrity reasons. So, it was in exceedingly bad taste when Paris said she’d chosen this path even though she was perfectly capable of bearing children, and had gloated about it.

  That wasn’t true. She hadn’t gloated, but when she talked about pregnancy and motherhood with all her eye-rolling, it sounded awful.

  I accepted Lavinia’s congratulations. She didn’t seem as shocked by the news as the group women or Juan, and no wonder. Lavinia knew and understood Paris as well as I did. Excitedly, we began to exchange notes about weeks and stages and sonograms and morning sickness.

  “Baby showers!” Lavinia exclaimed at one point.

  Paris groaned on cue. “No. Oh, my God. No one’s spending money on baby showers. Not when there are children—”

  “Starving in the world,” we chorused along with her.

  Yes, Paris was idealistic and a draamebaaz and she worked hard to make the world a balanced place, but her candidness hurt sometimes. Couldn’t she be happy and show excitement even for a minute? Did she have to bring up everything that was wrong in the world and compare it to our situation?

  I caught Neal’s eye and he winked at me, and I realized he and I were excited enough for all three of us. I didn’t need Paris’s endorsement.

  Neither did Lavinia. “It’s not up to you, darling,” she told Paris and then turned to me. “You throw me a shower and I’ll throw you one. Or wait! Let’s plan one huge bash together.”

  “Um, okay,” I said over Paris’s louder groans.

  “Let’s loc
k in a date. Does early September work?”

  Okay, this was running away from me. I wanted to do this. I wanted to celebrate the baby. I was in a mostly positive frame of mind. I’d even bought a dozen socks with the slogan Think Positive on them and planned to wear them throughout the pregnancy. But I didn’t want to tempt fate.

  “Can we decide that after I cross into the second trimester?” I crossed my fingers for it to be so. I’d only just completed five weeks.

  Paris mumbled something like kinahara, and I shot her a steely glance. That better not have been a curse word. I was not happy with her today.

  “Awesome! And we’ll send out the invitations naming Paris as our host,” Lavinia added cheekily.

  I burst out laughing. “Deal.”

  * * *

  I went home to Liam’s alone, declaring I wanted to nap. I needed some space from Paris and Neal and they from me. I set my gym bag on the floor of the bedroom and took off my hoodie. Then I stripped off all my clothes and stood in front of the mirror. There was no change in my body, not yet. Nothing to indicate that I had a life growing inside me.

  Please, God, let it be so. I was so afraid. Let me just survive the next couple of weeks. I’d miscarried between my tenth and eleventh weeks. Just get me through it, please.

  When I was twelve, a woodpecker had nested in a copse that bordered my building complex. For three whole weeks it had plagued my existence, pecking at the trunk day and night until I’d called the building manager and demanded that he do something about the incessant rat-a-tatting. He’d hopped to it because no one dared to question orders from the Manrals, not even from junior Manrals. The manager had not only gotten rid of the nest, he’d chopped the whole copse down. Never again would a woodpecker dare to make his home next to our building.

  When my grandmother heard about it, she’d taken me to task, explaining the tenets of karma to me. “You caused harm to a life or several lives, choti, little one. That was not a nice thing to do.”

  I’d argued that the manager had promised to shoo the family of woodpeckers away before taking down the nest. She said that it made no difference.

  “Your intent was to cause harm to their home and, even if inadvertently, to their lives. In karma, intent is as bad as action, choti. Ahimsa means we do not harm in any form or any being, not even the lowest of life-forms.”

  Once an ant colony had sprung up in our holiday estate in our ancestral village in Rajasthan. My grandmother had fought and won against my father who’d wanted to call exterminators to get rid of the eyesores right in the front lawn. My grandparents, all four were gone now, wouldn’t even drink milk because it came from an animal, and on certain days of the year, they wouldn’t eat fresh fruits or vegetables either because even those had life in them.

  After the talk with my grandmother, I’d been mired in guilt. I’d done such an awful thing and for what? So I could chat with my friends in peace? I was an avian mass murderer, I’d sobbed in my grandmother’s lap. She’d prayed with me for the woodpecker and his babies as atonement, and I’d done community service at her temple for a year.

  But karma didn’t work like that, I realized as I grew older and understood it better. What goes around, comes around. I’d destroyed a woodpecker’s home and family, and so karma had taken mine in return.

  I didn’t know how many baby woodpeckers had lost their home or lives because of my thoughtless action. I’d wondered when I miscarried if my long-ago actions had come back to haunt me.

  I got down on my knees by the bed and prayed that karma was finished with me now.

  chapter seventeen

  Paris

  “Ms. Fraser! Paris!”

  Taking my finger off the elevator button, I looked back to see—with some surprise—the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York striding toward me purposefully.

  Jeff Chang was bald, short—for a man, though he was my height—and had the best poker face a lawyer could have. You’d never be able to tell what he was thinking, which was fantastic in a courtroom or negotiation. It was awful in my case, as my mind scrambled about trying to figure out what he could want with me. We weren’t exactly friendly enough to exchange pleasantries every day, though we had been working closely on the factory workers case for several months now, but on different aspects of it.

  “Thank you for waiting,” he said politely as he came to stand in front of me as if I’d been waiting for him and not in fact for the elevator. “I wanted to thank you also for the work you’ve done here. I saw the deposition tapes from December with the female workers. You were great with them. And I understand you’ve been preparing them for court this whole week?”

  I shrugged off his thanks. “Yes. They’re ready.”

  Or, as ready as anyone in their positions could be. I didn’t need to clarify. Jeff would know. The six women who’d been selected from a pool of three hundred to give grand jury testimonies had been working in the clothes factory since the beginning and had witnessed the most ugliness. They’d suffered the most too.

  Jeff nodded. “I don’t wish to hold you up, or beat around the bush. So, would you consider applying for a job here at the USAO? We could use more attorneys like you.”

  “Huh?” was my scintillating reply.

  That had come flying out of left field. Apply for a position as assistant US Attorney? Well, sure. It was my goal for...after a couple of years. I’d thought I needed more experience, both in and out of the courtroom, for it.

  “Think about it,” he said when the doors to the elevator slid open. He held them open for me as I scraped my jaw off the floor and tried to give him a better, more dignified answer.

  “Um, well...uh...hmm.” That was about as intelligent as I could manage to sound, apparently. What I wanted to do was kick up my heels and scream.

  He chuckled. “I asked Lance about you. He thinks it’s a good move for you too.”

  What the what? He’d asked my boss, the DA of Manhattan, about me? Shit. This was serious. I cleared my throat. “I see. Um, I’ll definitely sleep on it. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Mr. Chang, I...”

  “Jeff.”

  “Right. Jeff. Thank you.”

  Then he let go of the elevator doors, and I was on my way down with a moronic smile on my face.

  * * *

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry!” I burst into the ultrasound room at Dr. Kapoor’s clinic.

  While I’d been getting headhunted by the freaking USAO, Neal and Naira had been heading over to the doc’s for the six-week ultrasound. Today, we’d hear the bairn’s heartbeat for the first time.

  Naira was sitting on the bed, which meant the doc hadn’t come in yet or...

  “Is it done?” I quickly peeked at the wall clock to check just how late I’d been. Barely twenty minutes. Dr. Kapoor was never on time.

  “Not yet.” Naira gave me a wobbly smile.

  Neal, however, pointedly looked at the clock, his jaw muscles ticking. Guess he was pissed. He’d sent me three messages: first, when he’d left the house; second, when he’d picked up Naira; and the third one had been fifteen minutes ago from the clinic: Where the fuck are you?

  Damn it. I had a job. A damn freaking important job serving this city. I couldn’t keep hopping all over town for ultrasounds on my lunch break. The two of them could have handled the appointment, but no, Naira had insisted I come. So here I was.

  I set my office bag on a chair and went to stand by Naira. She wore an elastic-waist skirt and a loose top so she wouldn’t have to change into a hospital gown for the belly ultrasound.

  I was dying to tell them about the potential job offer, but I’d wait until everyone was happier. It was too tense in here just now, and I didn’t want to fight again or sound self-absorbed.

  Naira had turned into a worrywart over the past few weeks and I hoped the mishegas would stop today. She was d
riving me bananas. I kept telling her this was not like her previous pregnancy. That Dr. Kapoor also seemed happy with the way everything was progressing, and we’d taken a million steps to ensure the baby was perfect, hadn’t we? Frankly, I was getting a little sick of Naira’s doomsday moods that switched at a drop of a hat into effervescent joy. Couldn’t she pick a mood and stick to it? Or just be normal about the pregnancy?

  “It’s going to be fine. Chill.” I hoped I sounded reassuring and not as exasperated as I felt.

  Then Dr. Kapoor came in, all smiles and hugs for all of us. She’d been my gynecologist for a long time now, and knew us well. She asked Naira to lie back. The ultrasound machines were already humming. Dr. Kapoor did her thing, moved the transducer all over Naira’s gel-smeared lower belly, explaining everything we were seeing on the ultrasound screen. Then she stopped talking. Moved the wand this way and that, making Naira wince since her bladder was burgeoning as that was how the best pictures came out.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. Neal sucked in a breath behind me. He moved closer, placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing hard. I guess wrong was the wrong word to use.

  Naira’s eyes squeezed shut, but tears were already leaking out the sides.

  Shit. Fuck. Fuuck!

  Don’t react, I told myself. Don’t fucking react. It does not help for everyone to freak out. Keep it technical. Clinical. Light. No big deal.

  “What’s going on, Doc?” I swallowed hard. The thing was that I couldn’t not react, at least inside. My heart was beating like a jackhammer.

  “Nothing. Sometimes six weeks is too early to detect the heartbeat,” Dr. Kapoor reassured.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. There, simple explanation. But Naira wouldn’t quit looking terrified, and it undid all my good intentions. I started asking questions. I needed better answers. Explanations.