by Leah Franqui
No, the only thing that still happened sometimes was in the one area of her life she couldn’t control. Her dreams.
The night after the shopping trip, Swati dreamed. She was dressed in the new dress that Rachel had encouraged her to buy, the one that made her feel elegant and lovely. In her dream, she was looking at herself in the mirror, just as she had done in the dressing room, only she wasn’t in the dressing room anymore, because all around her were beautiful golden lights. Swati stroked the material of her dress and realized to her delight it was soft, so much softer than it had been in the shop. She couldn’t stop petting herself, running her hands all over her body in the beautiful dress, because she was beautiful, too, the soft dress was making her beautiful. She looked at her own eyes in the mirror, and they were huge.
Then, without warning, a man’s hand joined her own. She should have been shocked, she knew, but it felt good, even better than her own hand, large and calloused, sliding over the dress, the heat from it penetrating her body. The hand was joined by another, and then Swati was touching herself and being touched everywhere, chills and warmth both spilling out from each stroke. Swati leaned her head back and inhaled, smelling the skin of the strange man’s neck. Only he wasn’t a strange man, not really. His face in the mirror was suddenly clear, and it was Arjun, Bunny’s son. She should have felt shocked, upset; she didn’t even like Arjun. But her body did.
His eyes were dark with desire, the kind of look her mother had warned her about, the kind Rishi had had so meltingly in the movie, but instead of running away, Swati sank deeper into his arms, her body tense with anticipation as he enveloped her, his hands reaching down into that part of herself where all the anticipation, all the tension, gathered into a single point. His fingers lingered over her flesh, rubbing it gently, then harder, harder, until that swelling, that event, that path Swati had never let her body follow for years and years, finally had a chance to lead to something, to a release that left Swati boneless in Arjun’s warm arms.
Swati woke up in the morning with her fingers between her legs and her mind racked with shame, a feeling that fought through a cloudy mass of contentment that had left her body dipped in honey. She had done so many bad things she could hardly believe it. She had imagined having sex, for one thing. Swati had had sex, of course, as a necessary step toward having Dhruv, but this was different. There had been no babies to be made in her imagination, only pleasure, the dirty pleasure her mother had so feared. And then with Arjun, even as an act of imagination, Bunny’s son, a child. Closer to Dhruv’s age than her own.
There was a knock at the door.
“Are you all right, Swati? You never sleep so late.” It was Rachel. Rachel. If she hadn’t made Swati buy all that clothing, that showy clothing, they wouldn’t have run into Arjun, none of this would have happened.
“I’m fine,” Swati said, her voice froggy with sleep and—and the other thing. Had she moaned in her dream? Was her voice clogged from sighing and moaning? Had Rachel heard her? The shame made her face red and hot.
“I didn’t make tea,” Swati said, half to herself.
“That’s okay, I hate the tea you make,” Rachel stated baldly, making Swati laugh despite herself. “It’s so sweet that you make it, but please stop. Listen, I have to go run some errands, but, Geeta left, right? So I’ll cook tonight, if you want. You can tell me what you want, I’ll try it. What do you think?” There was something in her voice that was almost hopeful. Was Rachel lonely? It seemed impossible that a person like Rachel, who was so self-assured, who could do so many things for herself, could be lonely.
“I will teach you how to make my baingan ka bharta,” Swati offered.
“That’s the eggplant? Great, I love that. Thank you. Tell me what you need, you can text it, I’ll pick it up.”
“Dinner will be very nice,” Swati said to her door.
“See you later.”
She heard Rachel walk to the door and let herself out, and then she flopped back onto the bed, her head aching with her own tangled thoughts. She knew she should wash herself, punish herself, hate herself. Part of her did, really. But another part of her, a new voice in her head, said, Well, now at least I know what all the fuss is about.
Carefully dressed in one of her new outfits, the one she felt was the most subdued of the lot, Swati walked into the kitchen hours later, the sun setting in the sky, to find Rachel had returned.
“Do you want some coffee?” Rachel said, looking up. “Oh, wow, I’m sorry, I thought you were my mother-in-law, but instead, it’s Meryl Streep!”
“Who is that?”
“Oh, she’s, well, who’s a film star you like?” Rachel asked. Her morning errands seemed to have revived her.
“Vidya Balan,” Swati said with a smile, smoothing her tunic down over her hips.
“Okay. Ms. Balan, a pleasure to have you here today,” Rachel said, gesturing to a chair. “Won’t you sit?”
“Thank you,” Swati said, trying to move with the gliding step the gorgeous star had in films. Rachel set a cup of coffee in front of her, and for a moment she inhaled the fumes. “I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?” Rachel asked, her head tilted to the side, clearly curious.
“Oh, well. A whole cup. It is not good for me.”
“Oh, do you have acid reflux or something?”
“It raises your heart rate.”
“I think that’s the idea, actually,” Rachel said, smiling, sipping from her cup.
Swati looked at the coffee, a thin layer of Technicolor oil floating on the top. It smelled like her father used to smell, but better. It was better coffee, she supposed. He had drunk coffee every day. Strange, she hadn’t thought about her father in years; how odd to find him in her daughter-in-law’s coffee cup. She took a sip.
“I love coffee,” she said reflectively.
“So why not drink it? You had some earlier, we traded, remember?”
“Yes, but now I don’t deserve it. I have traded nothing for it.”
“Of course you do. Everyone deserves coffee,” Rachel said, her tone matter-of-fact. Swati took a sip. The coffee was perfect, although it came with a twinge of guilt. She knew she should be having tea.
“I got some things for the eggplant. I think it’s everything you asked for,” Rachel said, gesturing to the counter, where plump eggplants, spices, tomatoes, ginger, and garlic lay piled up neatly.
“Very nice,” Swati said approvingly. They set about making the dish, Swati showing Rachel how to char the eggplant over the open flame on the gas range. Watching the flames attack the purple skin, turning it brown, then black, Rachel smiled, shaking her head.
“What?” Swati asked, curious.
“This truly is a country with no concept of safety,” Rachel said as the open flame danced around the vegetable.
“We are very safe people! Very careful!” Swati protested. Just then, the towel she had been holding in her hand to shield her skin from the flame caught on fire. Rachel reached over her and grabbed it by a non-flaming end and threw it in the sink, turning on the water swiftly.
“I can see that,” Rachel said, deadpan.
“Chop the garlic,” Swati said, making a shooing motion with her hands.
“So this is a Marwari dish?” Rachel asked as her fingers swiftly peeled the cloves. Swati would say this for the girl, she was good at the tasks of cooking, the cutting and peeling.
“Punjabi, really. But popular all over the north. I like it.”
Rachel pouted at Swati’s words. “I thought I was learning family secrets here.”
“You would have to be in Kolkata to do that,” Swati said lightly, but she felt her own words like a stone. Her family had been in Kolkata for three generations, since her great-grandfather had moved from Rajasthan in 1903. Would she ever go back? She didn’t know, and the thought saddened her.
“I guess we can ask Dhruv,” Rachel offered.
Swati smiled. “I wonder how he is. He doesn’t tell me much.
I guess he thinks it will hurt me to say.”
“He’s busy,” Rachel said, chopping garlic finely.
Swati studied her from the corner of her eye. Something was off there, something between Rachel and Dhruv, but Swati didn’t know what it was. “He’s working very hard, isn’t he?” Swati asked in what she hoped was a neutral tone. “He has stayed longer than he thought.”
“He has,” Rachel agreed.
“I hope it’s been . . . nice. To be with his father.”
“He said it has,” Rachel said softly. Swati nodded once, unsure. “He said he has some plan to make everyone happy.” Swati wondered what that meant. “He’s used to finding solutions to things. That’s his job.”
When had her son become a whole person, with a whole life she didn’t understand, a job that didn’t make sense to her? It was like children woke up one day as people. How did that happen? And what did this mean, a plan to make everyone happy?
“He hasn’t told me what it is,” Rachel said, as if she could read Swati’s thoughts.
“Sometimes men mean happiness differently than we do,” Swati offered.
“I think everyone means happiness differently than everyone else,” Rachel said.
Swati smiled. “We need ginger, too. You can peel that,” Swati said.
Rachel nodded.
“Has Dhruv’s work gone well?” Swati asked.
“I guess so. He seems to like it. That probably means more projects like this, more travel. I’m sure that’s good for him, though,” Rachel said in a fake cheerful voice. Swati had always thought Rachel was so expressive, so American, in the way she just said everything she felt. She had thought, meeting her, here was a person who never hid anything. But Rachel’s face, so ruthlessly bright, her voice, so forced and tinny, made Swati wonder if perhaps Rachel hid in a different way than Swati was used to.
“The onion next. Small pieces. It must be hard, for you. Being here. When he is not,” Swati said. What would it be like to want one’s husband around? To miss him?
“Oh. Well. I have you, don’t I?” Rachel said, her voice calm but bitter around the edges.
“You do,” Swati said sincerely, meeting Rachel’s angry gaze, her eyes soft and understanding. Rachel looked away, and Swati realized to her shock that there were tears in Rachel’s eyes.
“Are you . . . upset?”
“It must be the onions,” Rachel said, her voice thick.
Swati had not seen Rachel cry when chopping onions before. But Swati knew what it was to want to protect yourself. So she said nothing and turned off the flame under the eggplant, which had charred.
“How is it for you? With Dhruv there?” Rachel asked.
Swati felt frozen. “I don’t understand.” She was playing for time.
“Is it strange? To think of them living in the same house but you aren’t?” Rachel persisted.
“Add the ginger and garlic now to the pan” was Swati’s only response.
“Do you want to talk about it? We haven’t, and if you do, I’m here,” Rachel said.
Swati wanted to roll her eyes. Any fool could see that she didn’t. “Oh, I’m sure Dhruv has told you all about staying with his father and how it feels,” Swati said, trying to avoid the issue. She suddenly felt very tired. She wanted to fall into her bed and sleep for a thousand nights, and in each one of them Arjun would be there to teach her something new about her body. And she would never have to wake up to the shame and the light of day and the real world, waiting to mock her, to misunderstand her, to force her to explain herself.
“I would still like to hear your version,” Rachel said simply. Swati opened her mouth to refuse, to cite age and frailty, and then closed it again. She had never spoken about this with Rachel, hadn’t spoken about it in depth with anyone, really.
“I was very young when I was married to Vinod. Did you know that?” Rachel nodded her head slowly. “You see, well. The way I grew up, I— There were just facts that existed. Getting married was one of them. I don’t think that is so wrong. But this love-marriage nonsense, these new things, they have changed what people want for their lives.”
“You don’t think most people in the world always wanted some things? Like love?” Rachel said, her voice tentative.
“I have never been in love with anyone. I don’t know what it feels like, this love.” Swati looked away. Had she ever said that to anyone? She had never had to, really. She just thought people knew. “Ten years ago, Vinod and I had some anniversary party. Not ours, someone else, and I wore a Banarasi silk sari with my diamond solitaire, I was looking very nice—”
“I’m sure you were.” Rachel smiled. “Do I add the eggplant back in now?”
“No, first the onion. Then the spices. Not too much garam masala. There, that’s right.”
“Go on.”
“Well. Vinod was looking smart, he was thinner then. Dhruv will become fat if you aren’t careful,” Swati said warningly. Rachel sighed and rolled her eyes, gesturing for Swati to go on. “Well, he will, all that outside food—”
“Swati!” Oh, how Swati’s own mother-in-law would have died if she had called her by her name. How Swati had paled and trembled the first time Rachel did it. But now it was comforting. She said Swati the way Swati herself used to say Bunny. Like she was speaking to a friend. Perhaps that was what they were now.
“He will. You watch him. We were at this party, anniversary party, and we were watching the couple, the husband, make some speech. These speeches, they come from movies, I think, people are inspired by some movie, making a copy, I don’t remember speeches growing up, people standing and making fools of themselves. That man, the husband, he thinks he is a very smart person, and he had written his wife some poem, something about their love is like gold. And then at the end of the poem they kissed, there in public. I had never seen someone kiss in public in this way, someone Indian, and I was very— It was a very strange thing. But Vinod turned to me and he did the same thing. Very embarrassing, people were watching. Things have changed so much, these days, and all our husbands, it’s like they want to change, too. But why can’t we be like we were? Later, in the car, he told me I am like gold to him, too. And I realized that perhaps he really felt that, it wasn’t just the pegs of whiskey he had had. And for a while I thought, well, maybe this is what love is. Someone you know who tells you they love you, and what choice do you have but to love them as well? I didn’t love some other person. So maybe I loved him. I didn’t know what love was like, so . . . I thought, maybe it is this.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No.”
“But, how did you know?” Rachel asked, curious.
“Because I saw Dhruv,” Swati said simply, looking into the depths of her coffee. She could feel it speeding up her heart, or perhaps that was her confession.
“You saw Dhruv?” Rachel asked, confused.
“With you. The way you are together. That was when I knew I could not stay with Vinod. I saw my son, so happy, and I knew I did not feel that way for Vinod. I did not feel any way for Vinod. Maybe there is something very wrong with me. Many couples find love together. But if I have not felt that in so long of being together, I don’t think I will feel it now. Do you?”
“Swati, I—I don’t know what to say. I didn’t even know that was something you wanted.”
“You think I am just some idiot Indian housewife. That I can’t want things the way you do,” Swati said, realizing, and rearing back her head.
“No, no, not at all, that’s not— I just . . . you are part of this. You grew up with this. That’s what you said, everyone wanted the same things, everything was like this. I thought it was what you, what you expected. What you wanted in your life.”
“Those are not the same thing,” Swati said.
“No. They aren’t,” Rachel agreed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have conflated them. I don’t know much about this, I shouldn’t have assumed that I did,” Rachel said.
“That must
be hard for you to say. You seem to like being right,” Swati said, a little cruelly.
Rachel smiled. “Yes.”
Swati looked at her. She was stung at the idea that Rachel didn’t think, or hadn’t thought, her capable of wanting things for herself, things beyond what she had been given. But then, weren’t there so many things about Rachel that she didn’t understand, couldn’t know? She knew, in that moment, that she could reject Rachel for her ignorance, her assumptions, or she could share with her what was in her mind, and they could learn what they could know of each other. She could demand that Rachel change the way she thought, or she could actually give her a reason to do so.
“I do not know if I want love. But I do want to be separate. To be myself. To know what that might be. If I cannot have love, I want to be on my own. I thought maybe I could live apart from Vinod in our home, live as strangers, but I knew, that will not work, it is too easy to be the way you have always been. This is why I left.”
“To be yourself.”
“To be myself.”
Rachel looked at her. “That is so . . . brave. You are really brave, to do that,” Rachel said, then winced. “I’m sorry. I hate that word. People say that to me a lot, about being here. That I must be really brave.”
“You are. You came to a new place, very different from what you knew from before,” Swati said.
“I don’t really feel brave. In some ways, coming here, it means I haven’t really had to make any real decisions for myself. Dhruv does it all,” Rachel said, her brow furrowing.
“Oh.” Swati didn’t know what to say to that.
“Isn’t that strange?” Rachel asked, a bit bitterly. Swati looked away. Strange, not strange, she didn’t know. Husbands made decisions for households, they made money and made decisions. She had thought Rachel and Dhruv were different, but perhaps not. It made her uncomfortable, the idea that Rachel might be unhappy with Dhruv, and she tried to ignore the thought.