“And if God gives us cancer, we still get treated, don’t we? We don’t sit around and think this is God’s will,” Keertana said. “This is the same thing.”
Despite her harsh demeanor, Asha was starting to really like Keertana. She seemed not to have any moral or emotional issues with being a surrogate. She was doing it for the money, plain and simple, and she didn’t think there was anything complicated about that.
Her philosophy was simple: she wasn’t going to win the lottery—this was her lottery. So she had to put in a little effort to get the prize; it was worth it.
Revati announced that Charu had given birth to a healthy baby boy after seven hours of labor. Everyone clapped and Revati distributed ladoos to mark the occasion. Charu would come by the house to get her things in two to three days, after which she’d go back to her family and they would probably never see her again.
“Poor Charu,” Gangamma said. “She really liked being here. Someone to cook and clean, and now she has to do it all by herself.”
“As we all will,” Keertana said. “I say enjoy this time; it will be over soon enough.”
“I like cooking and cleaning,” Narthaki said. “And I at least do it better than that maid Rangamma.”
This would become a pattern, Asha realized. She would make friends with these women, and one by one, they would leave and new women with new pregnancies would join them. And then it would be Asha’s time to leave the house and go back to her life. And what would that be like?
CHAPTER NINE
“I miss my children. Every day I see them, I feel they have grown up,” Asha had told her. “But I’m happy here. It’s very nice.”
Priya had put down the phone feeling like a monster.
“She misses her kids,” Priya told Madhu unnecessarily. He had been part of the conversation over the speakerphone in their study.
Madhu sat down on the office chair and sighed.
“You feel bad, too,” Priya said. She stood up and started to pace up and down the small study.
“But our baby needs to be safe, and it isn’t for the rest of her life, just a few months,” he said.
Priya nodded.
“And it’s for her safety, too,” Madhu added.
Priya nodded again.
“But I still feel like shit,” Madhu admitted.
“I can just hear Sush say we’re exploiting the poor.” Priya stood in front of him for a moment and then started to pace again.
“We’re helping her give her children a better life,” Madhu said. “We’re making sure her family has a better future.”
Priya shook her head. “We’re rationalizing. This pretty much sucks. All of it. Our baby is growing halfway around the world while we sit here. Every time I drink coffee or a glass of wine, I feel I shouldn’t be doing it because we’re pregnant.”
No matter what she did, Priya couldn’t shake a feeling of inadequacy—that she should be pregnant, that she was somehow a lesser woman because she wasn’t. She had even considered buying a fake belly and putting it on . . . just around the house to feel some connection to the pregnancy that was going to result in her and Madhu’s child.
Her back wasn’t hurting. Her feet weren’t swollen. She had no nausea, and she could drink like a fish if it pleased her.
“We are pregnant,” Madhu said. “But I feel it, too, the strangeness of this.”
“But I’m the one who would’ve been pregnant, who should’ve been pregnant,” Priya said. “I’m the one who outsourced this.”
“Not because you had a choice, and don’t use that word,” Madhu said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“Hard on myself? I think that I’m being way too easy on myself,” she said.
They sat silent for a while, and then Priya gasped. “Oh my God! We’re going to have a daughter.”
Madhu grinned. “Yeah.”
Doctor Swati had told them the sex before they had talked to Asha.
“Oh my God,” Priya repeated and looked wide-eyed at Madhu. “What if I have the same relationship with my daughter as my mother has with me?”
Madhu sighed. “You are not your mother, sweetheart.”
“No, seriously,” Priya said.
“Yes, seriously,” Madhu said. “You’re not your mother, and our baby is not you. Whole different set of people, whole different chemistry.”
“You know, I’ve been worried about the whole baby being a girl thing,” Priya said. “I mean . . . a boy is never going to come home at age fifteen and say someone knocked him up.”
“Woman, you need to calm down,” Madhu said.
And I even know her name, Priya thought. Ayesha—alive; she who lives.
“Do you sometimes wish we’d adopted? Wouldn’t that have been easier?” Priya wondered aloud.
“That isn’t a picnic, either. I did the research and it’s tough. Remember Sandeep, who went to New Jersey to work for Accenture? They went through the whole thing, even had a picture in hand and were then told the baby wasn’t theirs. His wife was completely broken after that, and Sandeep swore never to try adoption again,” Madhu said.
Priya took a deep breath.
“We’ll get through this; you know that, right?” Madhu said. “As long as you and I are together, babe, we can move mountains. We just need to not lose our minds for the next few months.”
But as the weeks progressed, that was exactly what they did. They did nothing on Friday nights but wait to call India and talk to Doctor Swati and then Asha. And then they spent Saturday and Sunday doing nothing but talk about the baby and how horrible it was that they were here and their baby somewhere else. They talked about the same things over and over again, going in circles.
Priya constantly worried the baby would die—and when she convinced herself the baby wouldn’t die, she obsessed about everything from hygiene at the Happy Mothers House to the labor.
“What if something goes wrong during the birth?
“What if she gets toxemia?
“What if she gets ringworm?”
Madhu tried to calm her, but Priya was spinning. The absolute last thing she needed now was a visit from her mother.
“If it isn’t French, sweetheart, it isn’t really wine,” Sush declared as she sipped a Napa Valley Merlot.
“That’s not true, Sush,” Madhu said. “Maybe we’re not wine connoisseurs like Andrew and you, but California wine is as good as the wine you get in Europe.”
“Not all European wine is good,” Sush said. “I know people get all up in arms about the German Riesling, but I’m a red person—something bold, like Bourgogne.”
“Italian reds are pretty good,” Priya said, even though she knew this was not a discussion she could win. She wasn’t a wine person. She didn’t care if it cost five dollars or fifteen or fifty—some tasted good and some didn’t.
She should’ve anticipated this and served French wine, Priya thought as she pushed a piece of duck around her plate.
Madhu had cooked dinner, because Priya was not able to figure out what to cook for Sush that wouldn’t elicit toxic criticism. Indian? No, Sush would immediately launch into how she cooked Indian food much better. French? Hell, no. Sush would demolish the food. She was such a Francophile. Italian? That might be too simple. Sush might say something about carbs and pasta. It was always so complicated.
They had discussed whether the best recourse would be to take Sush out to a restaurant, but they knew she would complain about having to eat out yet again when she had been eating out for nearly a week during the conference she had been attending in San Francisco. After spending the week at the Hilton, she was going to stay the weekend with them.
They wished there were some way of getting out of it, but there had been no polite way of saying, “No, don’t come, we’re stressed enough as it is.”
Both Priya and Madhu (and probably even Sush) knew that the wine talk was going to be short-lived. Sooner or later Sush was going to launch into a discussion about their baby
. And after three glasses of even a substandard California Merlot, Sush would not hold back, or would, as she called it, speak from her heart.
“How was the conference?” Madhu asked as he attacked his duck breast. He had decided to stick with his specialty, duck à l’orange. He did it well, and the last time he had made it for Andrew and Sush, they had raved. Of course, then he had served it with a good French Bordeaux.
“These save-the-world conferences are a waste of time,” Sush said, pushing her plate away. She had not complimented the food, but both Priya and Madhu noticed that she hadn’t insulted it, either.
“Then why do you go?” Priya asked, and put her cutlery down. Sush killed her appetite, had been doing it since she was a child.
“Because in my position, I’m expected to,” Sush said, and smiled. “When you reach my level in the NGO business, you have to show up for such conferences and speak; otherwise when you have something important to say, no one will listen.”
Priya and Madhu quietly sipped their wine.
“And if I don’t continue to network, I’ll be out of a job,” Sush said. “I’ve worked my entire life for nonprofits, and now as I turn sixty . . . anyway, you get older and people stop listening to you. You find that what you have to say is not as important. I feel like I’m being shoved aside. I’m not young enough to warrant attention. You have to be Angelina Jolie these days to get anywhere.”
“No one is shoving you aside, Mama,” Priya said, feeling sorry for her mother. Her career had been everything to her, and it wasn’t easy to accept that she would soon have to retire, whether she was ready or not. And Sush wasn’t exactly sixty, more like sixty-five. But Priya knew her mom liked to fudge her age here and there.
It always amazed Priya that despite working for NGOs—working for the poor, as her mother put it—Sush was steeped in vanity up to her ears. Someone who worked for the poor shouldn’t be bitching about California wine! Someone who worked for the poor should be grateful that there was food and wine on the table.
“How are your jobs? Secure?” Sush asked.
Madhu shrugged. “As secure as can be.”
“The economy is a disaster,” Sush said, and emptied her glass of wine. Madhu promptly refilled it.
“It’ll get better,” Priya said.
“Layoffs in your company, Priya?” Sush asked.
Priya nodded. “We had a round, and we’ll probably have another if business doesn’t pick up.”
“You should be careful, both of you. I don’t know what you’re thinking, having a baby in this economic climate,” Sush said.
And here it came.
“If you were just having a baby yourself, that’s one thing, but spending all this money to have one is insane. If you have so much money, you should give it away to charity.”
Priya sighed.
Madhu took a deep breath, as if preparing himself for the argument that would probably follow.
Sush looked at both of them. “It’s selfish to have a baby like this. I don’t approve.”
Priya rose and picked up her plate. “Guess what, we don’t need your approval.”
That led to another interminable discussion about Priya’s lack of respect for her mother. If only she didn’t get so riled up, Priya thought. If only she didn’t turn into an angry teenager every time her mother came around, maybe then Sush’s visits wouldn’t be such a disaster.
They lay quietly in bed, listening to Sush putter around the guest room. When the room fell silent, Priya turned to face Madhu.
“Is your job secure?” she asked.
Madhu strangled another sigh. Sush had hit a home run. She planted these seeds of doubt, and they thrived.
“Like I said, as secure as it can be; the world economy is in the toilet.”
“If both of us lost our jobs, how would we manage?”
“We have savings.”
“And what would we do about health insurance?”
Madhu put a hand on Priya’s cheek. “We’d get on COBRA. I can always find a job. Something, anything, to get us through. We’d manage, I promise.”
Priya’s eyes filled with tears. “I see these stories about people being homeless, and I get scared. What if it’s us next? What if . . . what if our house got repossessed? What would we do?”
“Move in with Sush and Andrew?”
“Haha. Very funny,” Priya said.
They were silent again and Priya said quietly, “Madhu, I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. I’ll take care of you.”
Madhu was old-fashioned when it came down to it. He believed that the man took care of the family. He never begrudged Priya her career, but Priya often wondered if he’d be one of those jealous husbands if she started to make more money than he did.
“In any case, Calvin has assured me that there will be no layoffs. We’re still in the black. We’re not going to lay people off,” Madhu said.
“I’m just looping because of her,” Priya said.
“She has it down to a science, she does,” Madhu said. “The minute you’re happy about something, Sush makes sure you have some reason to be down.”
“But it’s my fault. I let her,” Priya said.
“A mother’s voice is powerful,” Madhu said. “You never had a choice, sweetheart.”
“The hell with her,” Priya said.
“That’s the spirit,” Madhu said. “I’d hoped we could have sex tonight, but I’m worried that if we do and she hears us, she may comment on my technique.”
Priya laughed.
The next morning, they went to a nearby South Indian restaurant for breakfast. Sush had left behind most of her Indian ways, but she still enjoyed an idli with sambhar and coconut chutney on a Saturday morning.
“Do you want Madhu to drive you to Redwood City tonight?” Priya asked as they waited for their food to arrive.
Sush had been invited to dinner at a friend’s house that night, and both Madhu and Priya were relieved that they didn’t have to entertain her for yet another evening.
“If you don’t mind,” Sush said. “Actually, Heidi told me that you’re both very welcome as well.”
Heidi and Sush had gone to Berkeley together years ago. They had remained friends even though Heidi had gotten married to a heart surgeon and now spent her days worrying about her antique furniture pieces and her kids, in that order. When Priya was young, they had gone on family vacations together. But as Heidi’s daughters and Priya grew older, the joint family vacations were limited to the parents. Heidi’s husband, Mike, had died a few years ago. Sush and Heidi would now occasionally take a long weekend at a spa, getting facials and seaweed wraps. As a teenager, Priya could never understand how Sush and Heidi got along. Heidi had no career and talked mostly about her fitness trainer, while Sush talked about saving the world—but as she had grown up, Priya had figured it out: Heidi didn’t threaten Sush. Heidi was just a housewife who looked up to Sush as some kind of superwoman. And Sush loved it.
“Like I said, Madhu and I have this thing . . . so . . . ,” Priya said, kicking herself for not having planned a better excuse. We have a thing? Could she have said anything lamer?
Sush’s eyebrows shot up.
“It’s been tough for both of us at work lately,” Madhu interjected. “And we were planning on a quiet romantic evening. At least, I have been planning an evening. I had it all set up before you said you were coming.”
“So what are your plans?” Sush asked suspiciously.
Madhu grinned. “It’s a surprise for Priya.”
Sush nodded, but she didn’t buy it, which resulted in her being in a crappy mood for the rest of the day. She even turned down Madhu’s offer for a ride and instead got one of Heidi’s sons-in-law to come all the way from Redwood City and pick her up.
“So what are the romantic plans?” Priya asked.
Madhu shrugged. “Being a vegetable in front of the television? And drinking some—pardon me—California wine. And if there’s nothing good o
n TV, we can have sex without worrying about your mother commenting on my sack style. What do you think?”
Priya grinned. “It’s a good plan. Can we wait with the sex? Krysta said she wanted to come see me.”
“Bad breakup?” Madhu asked.
Priya nodded.
It was a pattern with Krysta. When she was dating, they didn’t see her, but when she broke up she would come over for dinner regularly.
“But it’s a good breakup this time. She was dating a married guy,” Priya said.
Madhu shuddered. “Aren’t you glad we have each other? It’s a bloody jungle out there if you’re single.”
“Sometimes I feel like such a fraud when I talk to Krysta, handing out platitudes. What do I know? We’ve been together for so long that I can’t even remember being single,” Priya said. “And she’s thirty-five. She’s scared she won’t meet someone.”
Priya and Krysta watched Pretty Woman on TNT while Madhu holed up in the study, working.
“So where’s my Richard Gere?” Krysta said.
“We should’ve watched The Fast and the Furious,” Priya said, and sighed.
“I could do Vin Diesel,” Krysta said, then shook her head. “You know what, though, I don’t think I can do anyone anymore.”
“Well, it’s good to take a break sometimes,” Priya said.
Krysta shook her head again and drank some wine. Suddenly tears were rolling down her face.
Priya consoled Krysta the best she could, but all she had were words and hugs. And Kleenex. Lots of Kleenex. Krysta was still there when Sush came back home, now convinced more than ever that Madhu had not planned a romantic evening, not when he was in the study and Priya was with Krysta in the living room.
“Hello, Krysta,” Sush said when she came in with the spare key Madhu had given her. She looked at her wristwatch in a dramatic gesture and then at Priya. “If you didn’t want to come to dinner at Heidi’s house, you just had to say so, not make up lies.”
“Hi, Sush,” Krysta said, standing up. “I guess I’d better go home.”
A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel Page 13