My Last Love Story

by Falguni Kothari

  To shut him up, I kissed Nirvaan harder than I’d meant, and our teeth clashed. “Don’t. Don’t you dare say such a thing. Don’t you dare measure and compare your love.”

  “It’s the truth, baby. And you love him more than you love me. And here’s another truth. I don’t mind. I love that about you. I loved how bold you were at fifteen. How willing you were to step outside the box. Zayaan used to be like that, too. Don’t you remember?”

  Our eyes clashed as our teeth had. I knew what my husband was asking. I wanted it, too. I always had.

  “Used to be, Nirvaan. You said it yourself. We were children. We didn’t know whether we were coming or going.”

  “But we’re adults now, and we do know what we want.” Sometimes, Nirvaan was like a predator, calmly hiding in the bushes, and when his prey drew close, he’d pounce.

  Was a threesome what he truly desired? Why wouldn’t he just come out and say it? Why was he driving me crazy with innuendo?

  “Fine. If that’s what you really want,” I said as I withdrew from him.

  His mouth fell open at my sudden capitulation. I was thrilled by his unsure reaction and had to clench my jaw tight not to laugh or even smile. Not so gung-ho now, was he?

  I strolled out of the room, and I would’ve whistled had I known how. I had my answer, and I knew what I had to do.

  My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness of the living room. Sure enough, Zayaan was standing in front of the patio doors, looking out at the wakening beach, his prayer book in his hand.

  As well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, my father would’ve said.

  “Zai,” I softly called out.

  His shoulders stiffened before he slowly turned around. Tension wafted off him in such thick waves that I could’ve sliced it off with a butcher knife. I’d never been more grateful for the dark. I couldn’t see his eyes or expression. I didn’t want to know if they held curiosity or hope or arousal or all of it. It was enough that I felt it all. It was enough to scare me solid.

  “Can you please pray later?” I asked of him. “I want you to go for a walk. Don’t come back for two hours.”

  I didn’t wait to see if he went. I knew he would.

  I went back to my husband and explained something to him. “Imagine I’m an ocean. You are the bright sunlit part of me, and Zayaan, the darker depths. I need you both to be who I am. I love you both. Always have. Always will. But, Nirvaan, you are my last love story. I don’t want another one.”

  Then, I pushed my husband down on the bed and stripped off my nightgown.

  Maybe it was our confessions. Maybe it was that I’d clearly chosen Nirvaan when I could’ve had both. Maybe we both knew time was running out. Whatever it was, for the first time in years, our lovemaking was free of expectation, free of ghosts, and therefore, it was spontaneous.

  I explored my husband’s body, slowly and thoroughly. His body wasn’t a surprise to me. When you’d nursed a man through an illness, his body wasn’t a secret from you. I had bathed Nirvaan in showers and in tubs, sponged him off when he was too weak to lift a finger. I’d fed him food, cleaned his sores, wiped his bum, and buzzed wild hair from his nose and other places. So, yes, I knew his body intimately.

  But sex was a different kind of intimacy. It wasn’t one-sided. It was pleasure, given and taken. A mutual gratification of love and promises, shared and renewed.

  Except for the first few times we’d made love, Rizvaan’s ghost had never climbed into my marriage bed. Zayaan had. I’d thought he always would. But he didn’t come into my mind this morning. Or, he came but he didn’t stay. Nirvaan loved me so thoroughly that I had no room to think of anyone else. My senses could only moan and demand and gasp.

  “Again,” I begged. I was utterly spent, I could barely talk, but greed was something that could never be satisfied. There was a time limit to my greed, so I was ravenous.

  My husband said nothing. Did nothing.

  I opened one eye. It was all I could manage. The wicked, wicked man sat cross-legged by my hip, grinning down at me.

  “You’ve always liked that, haven’t you?” He raised a rakish brow up, looking very much like a pirate in front of a treasure chest.

  “Again. Please?”

  My good husband didn’t make me beg a third time. He swooped down, and ever generous with his pirate’s bounty, he gave me what I needed.

  I left Nirvaan sleeping to get coffee. I’d slept, too, and woken up with a pounding headache. Orgasms could cause headaches—the good doctors said so—but I thought mine was due to caffeine withdrawal.

  I filled my Eeyore mug with coffee, took a couple of sips, blew on it, took a couple of more sips, and felt partially human again. The sun was up. The day had dawned. We’d not exactly seen the sunrise, but we’d done an in-depth study on the variegated effects of sunrays on body parts. I grinned and took another gulp of coffee. We planned to make it our morning ritual.

  My eyes fell on Zayaan’s prayer book discarded on the lounger and I sighed, my grin fading. I supposed I owed him an apology. I shouldn’t have come out in all that state and thrown him out of the house. He wouldn’t have dared come into the room after peeping in once. But I’d wanted to make a bold statement. I hoped I had.

  But why wasn’t he back? I’d asked for two hours of privacy. It was now past three hours.

  My eyes scanned the beach and caught his windblown figure standing thigh-deep in the waves. There was something about the stark picture he made—his posture, his banishment—that tugged on my heart.

  Before I knew it, I’d set the mug down on the coffee table, and I was flying down the beach, my robe flapping at my ankles.

  “Zayaan, what are you doing?” My gut pushed an apology to my throat, like the waves pushing at the sand beneath my feet. Quick as a wink, it receded—the wave, the sand beneath my feet, the apology stuck in my throat.

  He turned to me. He was wet from his head down, his white kurta pajama transparent against his body.

  “Did you go swimming with your clothes on?”

  Zayaan was a strong swimmer. He’d swum out to the lighthouse and back once, the whole expedition taking a couple of hours, while Nirvaan and I’d trailed him on Jet Skis.

  I shook my head in disbelief. Zayaan was pragmatic, not stupid. He wouldn’t have gone swimming without a chaperone. So, why was my gut writhing like snakes again?

  He pushed through the lapping waves, coming at me. The sun hit him full on the face, flaming him up. I should’ve run. I should’ve broken his pursuit of me—and it was a pursuit even though I was standing still. If it wasn’t broad daylight, if I didn’t know Rizvaan was dead, I might’ve panicked. Zayaan looked fierce. Enraged. I wanted to run.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  The second he got close, Zayaan pulled me into his arms and kissed me like a man starved. He didn’t give me room to panic, to think. A steely arm banded around my waist. An unyielding hand palmed my head, holding me immobile. Tongue, mouth, lips were all I could feel of us. His stubble abraded my skin.

  Zayaan was passion and fire, for all his stoicism and calm. Nirvaan was tenderness and finesse, despite his zest for life. I’d always marveled at their differences, within and without.

  I would not be ashamed or lie that I kissed Zayaan back.

  I knew what this kiss meant for both of us. It meant good-bye.

  He thrust me away before I had a chance to memorize the taste of him on my tongue, the warmth of his skin against my mouth, the strength of his shoulders beneath my hands, or the solidness of his body against mine. We were both breathing hard when he stepped away. My heart felt battered and fragile. Unreliable.

  He looked at me with a face devoid of expression once again. “We’re done,” he said. Then, he stalked past me and into the house.

  I wrapped my arms over my stomach and wheezed out a cry, a laugh, a sob. I didn’t know what.

  “Oh, Zai, we were done twelve years ago,” I whispered into the breeze.

  I had a
full month of what I would always remember as the second wind in my marriage before Nirvaan lapsed into a comatose state.

  It’d happened gradually even though it felt sudden to me.

  “He was fine just this morning,” I sobbed into the phone when I called his parents from the hospital.

  If fine was a thirty-year-old man spending more time in his pajamas than out of them…

  If fine was not remembering his name and not caring he didn’t…

  If fine was sleeping for so long that his wife had to shake him awake just to make sure he would wake…

  I considered all those scenarios fine because once those bouts of lethargy and confusion were over, Nirvaan still looked at me with his wicked rascal eyes and smiled.

  Everyone came that very afternoon or soon after—my in-laws, Nisha, Aarav, Ba, Sarvar, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. The Desai clan laid siege on the hospital waiting room, and though we spoke in hushed whispers, the sheer number of us made it sound like an infestation of cicadas on hot summer days. They’d all come to be with Nirvaan even though only a handful of us were allowed to go in to see him.

  Nirvaan was in the intensive care unit. The pressure in his brain that had caused the coma had been relieved immediately. He was breathing on his own. Praise Khodai. His heart was beating strong. He was connected only to a catheter and an IV.

  We all waited for him to wake up…or die.

  As most things in life, comas were a gray area, and Nirvaan’s doctors could not predict what might happen with any certainty. It all depended on the patient.

  Leaving their children with grandparents, Surin and Parizaad flew in, too. For me. I cried when Surin bumbled into the waiting room, his eyes wide behind his thick, boxy spectacles, searching me out. I ran to him, and when he enveloped me in his clumsy bear hug, I blubbered into his chest. I clung to him, this man who was my parent by default. This man who’d promised he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me ever again the night our parents had died. Surin’s was the last hug I accepted or gave back willingly.

  As the first week stretched into two and the unpredictability and uncertainty surrounding Nirvaan’s condition showed no sign of relenting, the crowds began to thin. But I’d already begun to freeze them out.

  I realized most people meant to offer comfort when they said stuff like, “Whatever happens, happens for the best,” or, “It is God’s will,” or, “Have patience, dear,” or, “At least he isn’t suffering.”

  I especially hated when they patted me on my shoulder, as if that brief stranger’s touch was going to spread eternal sunshine through my soul. It took all the strength I had not to jump up and shout, Nothing bad happens for the best. And best for whom, assholes? And there is no God. If there were, He wouldn’t do shitty stuff like this. And are you suddenly a neurologist because how in the fuck would you know Nirvaan isn’t suffering?

  There was a lot of cussing going on in my mind all the time. Cussing was a liberating franchise, and at the same time, it was to the point. No wonder Nirvaan loved to cuss so much.

  I felt a sudden urge to see him then. I’d already had my turn that morning, but I asked my father-in-law if he wouldn’t mind waiting a bit more for his turn. It would’ve been his right to refuse me. There were six of us who sat with Nirvaan for an hour each in rotation, and he’d not seen his son today. But I’d long since stopped being surprised by Kamlesh Desai’s generosity.

  The intensive care unit was one large room divided into twenty smaller patient rooms with glass doors and a fully staffed monitoring station right in the middle. I disinfected my hands and waited in front of Nirvaan’s patch of the barren white ICU meadow.

  Nisha was inside. She was singing to her brother or praying, but I couldn’t hear her at all out here. We tried not to leave Nirvaan alone, except at night when hospital rules wouldn’t allow us to stay.

  Even when they fed him, Zayaan stayed with him. I couldn’t. I didn’t even attempt to be brave about it. I didn’t want to watch the attending nurse insert a funneled pipe into Nirvaan’s mouth or nose, alternatively to avoid internal lacerations, and pour a thick liquid down his throat. They would do this twice a day.

  Nisha noticed me, and after only a mildly questioning look, she kissed Nirvaan on his forehead and came out. She touched my shoulder as I removed my shoes, and she wore hers. I stiffened, but I nodded, acknowledging the commiseration, and then I didn’t think about her anymore.

  He looked as if he were sleeping. As if all I had to do was shake his shoulder or blow in his ear, and he’d grab me with strong hands and pull me down on top of him, tickling me till I screamed for mercy.

  “Please, baby. Please open your eyes and look at me. Grab me. Tease me. Tell me I look ugly when I cry.” When he didn’t answer my summons, I picked up his hand and pressed it to my lips. “Fine. You don’t want to answer, then let me update you on the latest gossip. It’s about your cousin Rekha’s husband…”

  I relayed the scandal and some other choice stories that had been making the rounds in the waiting room. It amazed me how resilient life was regardless of death, ill-health, trauma, or terror. Here, Nirvaan was in a coma, fighting for his life, and out there, a bunch of women from his family were tittering over how a husband had given an STD to his wife.

  “Fucking morons, all of them. Your aunts, Rekha, her fucking husband, and the bimbo he’s fucking. Oh, by the way, I know why you curse so much. I’m getting rather fond of several four-letter words, too. Mumsy’s going to be quite disappointed in me…but I’d rather her than you.”

  His hand felt warm on my cheek, and it made me feel better. Extremities getting cold wouldn’t have been a good sign.

  “They keep a wide berth from Zayaan. He’s not doing well, baby. He doesn’t talk much. Doesn’t eat until Ba or Mummy forces him to. People are wondering why he’s the one in charge. Why the doctors speak to him first, even with Daddy and Mummy around.”

  Not that Zayaan had left any of us out of the loop. But the extended family couldn’t fathom why he had power of attorney. They’d continuously make sly and snide comments about it.

  “He’s Nirvaan’s brother from another mother,” would be my standard reply.

  If they thought I was being facetious, it wasn’t my problem.

  “They aren’t all awful, you know. The women are always bringing food. The guys, especially Manish and Deeps, have been running all over town—doing grunt work, making sure the cars are gassed up and the house is in order, and taking care of the rest of the clan spread out in hotels from here to San Jose. I didn’t think much of them for a long time, you know. I hated the way your friends had abandoned you when you fell ill. I thought very badly of them then. But they’re here now. Do you hear me, Nirvaan? Everyone is here for you. Everyone is waiting for you to wake up. Please, baby, wake up.”

  I had to stop talking and look away for a bit. I pressed my fingers over my eyes and took deep breaths in and out, in and out, until I was composed once again.

  “Oh, before I forget, one of your aunts made the Surti undhiyu you love so much. Now, she’s trying to convince the nursing staff to puree it as your next meal. Would you like that, honey?”

  I talked until my father-in-law came to relieve me. I didn’t want to say good-bye to my husband, but I had to…just in case I never saw him again.

  That night, I felt Nirvaan’s finger twitch. No, I wasn’t being fanciful. I might seem like a person whose head floated in the clouds, who wasn’t there in the here and now, but I was solidly grounded in reality. If I weren’t, I couldn’t have survived all the traumas I’d faced. If I wasn’t, I would let Zayaan back into my life.

  At first, I thought my own nerves had made the finger twitch. I didn’t think my hands had stopped shaking since we brought Nirvaan to the ER two weeks ago. But when I felt the tiny pressure of his pinkie nail on my palm, I jerked in shock.

  I had the nurse page the attending ICU doctor. Dr. Rhonda checked the monitors in the room and Nirvaan’s eyes
for a cognitive response. She tickled his foot and held his hand but nothing. We sat vigilant. I was aware of her pitying looks, but I knew what I’d felt. She left after a bit, and Nirvaan’s finger didn’t twitch again.

  But the incident was a thorn under my skin and kept me awake all night. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell the family, the doctors? What if I was mistaken? What if I was being fanciful? I couldn’t raise everyone’s hopes for nothing. But how could I not say a word? My God. What if Nirvaan had really moved?

  I cursed him then, for trusting in Zayaan and not trusting me to act in his best interests. I cursed myself for even thinking to take a backseat in this. Yes, I would probably be emotional about Nirvaan’s health, his life. If he’d thought Zayaan would be any different…ha. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t speak up. But what if I was wrong? Fuck.

  The next morning, I willed Nirvaan to move his finger again but to no avail. I spoke to another staff doctor at length, and then I made sure he spoke to Nirvaan’s doctors, so they’d do whatever tests needed to be done. Every day, they monitored his brain functions with EEGs and CT scans and functioning MRIs. The point being, he was still exhibiting brain function. He was breathing on his own. His nervous system was functioning without external aid. He was doing really well under the circumstances. The only question was, how long would it last?

  Zayaan sought me out while I lunched with Ba and Nisha in the hospital’s atrium. He pulled me aside. “You felt him move?” His eyes bored into mine.

  I would’ve walked away if he’d sounded even remotely skeptical or given me a she’s-gone-crazy look. He didn’t. He listened to my explanation. His face gave nothing away. When had he learned to master his emotions so well? Or had he always been like this—unreadable, unreachable—and only Nirvaan and I had been privy to the real him?

  I demonstrated what I’d felt. I placed my pinkie nail on his palm. “I was holding his hand in both of mine. His fingers were straight, and then his little finger curved into my palm. I swear, I’m not making this up.”