by Sonya Lalli
Serena, you ended it with him.
Serena, that wasn’t the life you wanted.
Suddenly furious with Natasha, at Jesse, at everyone, I walked faster and inadvertently missed my turnoff. When I finally realized how far I’d gone, I was at the farmers market, and my stomach growled as I caught a whiff of something baking. I stopped. I still hadn’t eaten breakfast.
Despite the rain, which was starting to die down, the stalls were open, and dozens of people were milling about. Hesitantly, I walked toward it. It was my favorite market in the city, and I tried to go every weekend and shop locally as much as possible. Even though I lived and breathed a corporate consumer world during the week, I often found myself here on Saturdays, buying my fruits and vegetables from organic farmers who lived in the region. Kale. Beetroot. Baskets of blackberries and strawberries. Leeks. There was a baker who made excellent croissants and savory tarts, and a stall that sold dirty chai—my favorite—which was coffee and Indian tea brewed expertly together.
I pulled a crumpled tote bag from the bottom of my purse and picked up a bag of peaches and a chocolate croissant, stuffing the latter in my face in record time. I thought that maybe my emotions were running high because I was hungry, but I still felt crummy afterward, so I made my way to Dirty Chai. It was run by a guy named Nikesh, who was the only Indian guy I’d ever met with a man bun. I’d grown to know him a bit after years of patronizing his stall. He was younger than me, and my affection for him had grown to be quite sisterly.
“Serena!” he called out as I approached.
I smiled at him as I walked up toward his stall, hoping there was no evidence of embarrassing tears on my face. “Nikesh. Good to see you.”
“Medium, no foam?”
“You know it.” I took in my surroundings as he ground the coffee. Besides dirty chai, he also served regular chai and coffee, sometimes a specialty drink of the day with kombucha, cinnamon, or mint. My stomach growled again.
“Anything to eat back there?”
He smiled as he screwed the portafilter into the machine. “Funny you mention that. I took a baking course about a month ago. And pretty soon Dirty Chai will be serving dirty muffins.”
“Yowza.”
“I’m thinking cardamom, fennel seeds, walnuts . . .”
“Honey?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” he said, nodding. “I like it.”
“Your wife must get to do all the taste testing, huh?”
“You bet. Although she’s—”
“—standing right here,” a voice finished. I turned to the side.
Ainsley was standing right next to me.
Nikesh’s wife—whom I’d heard about for years—was my colleague Ainsley?
“Oh my god, hi!” I exclaimed. “So you’re Nikesh’s wife? What a coinci—”
“Are you hitting on my husband?”
I froze.
“Uh, no, I’m just buying some—”
“Dirty chai. Right. That’s what they all say.” She turned to Nikesh, her voice getting shrill. “Nicky, how could you do this to me?”
“He wasn’t doing anything. I’m so sorry, Ainsley. I wasn’t—”
“One minute ago you were trying to break us up, and now you’re trying to save us?” she snapped back at me.
I pressed my lips together, my eyes drifting from Ainsley and then back to Nikesh. He seemed nonplussed, his face deadpan as he finished making my drink and pushed it across the counter ledge. I breathed out, shaking my head.
“You’re fucking with me.”
Ainsley grinned. “I had you. I had her, Nicky, didn’t I?”
“Ainsley fancies herself an actor. A failed actor,” Nikesh said flatly, although I could tell he was trying not to smile. “So I take it you two know each other?”
“We’re coworkers.” Ainsley leaned against the counter. “Serena’s the one who’s too busy to have a drink with me.”
“I’m not too busy—”
“Too much of a big shot to have a drink with my wife, huh?” Nikesh said dryly. “Maybe I won’t give you any muffins.”
I laughed, rolling my eyes at both of them. Ainsley winked at me, and I found myself lightened, somehow. Jesse, Anadi, and the whole “gang” were still on my mind, but at that moment, my concerns didn’t feel so terrible.
“Hey, I forgot,” Ainsley said. “I left my kid on the playground. Will you come get him with me?”
My eyes bulged. “You forgot?”
“All right, fine. I left him with one of the other parents.”
I tried to pay for my drink, but Nikesh just smiled and waved away my cash. I thanked him and then followed Ainsley into the park behind the market. I rarely came back here. It was typically littered with children and dogs, but it wasn’t too busy today. There were a few kids climbing on the jungle gym, pulling themselves up the ropes and ladders and down the slides and poles. I spotted Ainsley’s son immediately. He looked just like Nikesh, with his dark hair and skin. But he had Ainsley’s eyes.
“How old is your son—it’s MacKenzie, right?”
Ainsley nodded. “Two.
“He’s adorable.” I smiled, watching him play. “And I love his name.”
“It’s my mother’s maiden name. I said to Nikesh, ‘Sure. The kid can have your last name. But then the first name needs to be Scottish.’ ”
“Sounds fair to me.”
“Tell that to my father-in-law.”
We reached the edge of the playground, and Ainsley smiled at one of the adults nearby as she squatted down next to MacKenzie. “How’s my little McNugget, huh? Cold?”
He didn’t answer, fixated on a rock between his feet. His cheeks were so pudgy I had the almost irresistible urge to reach out and pinch them.
“Do you want to say hi to your Auntie Serena?”
“Hi, MacKenzie.” I smiled at him, trying to remember the last time I’d interacted with a child. A friend’s baby shower, likely, the summer before. I’d held the child for a mere second before she started screaming, and one of the grandmothers came to her rescue.
“Hi,” MacKenzie said. He looked at me shyly, moving his lips around like he was sucking on candy. “Play?”
“Play,” Ainsley repeated, and we both sat down next to him. “He’s really into rocks these days.”
“Cheaper than an iPad.”
“No kidding.”
Suddenly, MacKenzie stood up on his wobbly little feet and then sat down right next to me, so close that I could feel the warmth of his back against my calf. I held my breath as he babbled about something incoherently to himself, to the rock. Inexplicably, that picture of Jesse on the patio slipped back into my mind.
I’d heard that he’d married her, but our mutual acquaintances hadn’t told me that they’d had children or that he still lived in the area. Neither of these things were surprising, and deep down, I must have known them to be true. So why was the news suddenly shaking me up so much?
“So,” I said to Ainsley, determined not to think about Jesse. “How come I’ve never seen you around before? I’ve been coming to Dirty Chai for years.”
“Nikesh is the primary caregiver while I’m at work, so I stay home with Mac on the weekends while he works the markets.”
MacKenzie bashed two rocks together, a weird, well-timed spitting noise escaping his lips as his toys collided. I laughed out loud, surprised by how entertained I was watching a child play. It was kind of like Netflix. But at least when you got tired, you could switch off your screen.
“But the business is growing, so now we’re going to come in and help sometimes. Right, buddy?” she asked the baby. He giggled in response.
“I don’t know how you guys do it,” I said, unsure if I was speaking out of turn. I didn’t really know her that well.
“What do you mean?”
>
“You’re both either working or parenting all the time, right?” After she shrugged, I continued. “So, when do you ever get time for yourself?”
“I often don’t. It’s really fu—” she stopped, spotting MacKenzie. “Flipping hard. It’s really flipping hard sometimes.”
“I don’t think my sister has figured that out yet. Right now, I imagine all she’s thinking about are the cute little onesies she’ll get to buy.”
“You should tell her about all the vomit and poop that gets all over those cute little onesies.” Ainsley paused, reaching for a rock MacKenzie had cast aside. “Yes, it’s hard, sure. There are lots of compromises. More than you can ever imagine. But I do think most of us know that going in. And you’ve just got to adapt, because it’s worth it.”
I didn’t respond, so she added, “For me, at least. For me and Nikesh it’s worth it.”
I was tempted to tell her about Jesse, about my thoughts on marriage and children, but wasn’t sure how to segue naturally, without offending her. In the past, if I was forthcoming with my views too quickly, sometimes people assumed I was being judgmental of their own more conventional choices. Or worse. Kidding myself.
“It sounds like you two have it all figured it out,” I said finally.
“We both compromise, and both put in the effort. Equally. We’re in it together.” She sighed. “So yeah. I think so.”
I looked over at Ainsley, reading between the lines. “But your father-in-law doesn’t?”
“How could you tell?”
I found another rock and handed it to MacKenzie. “I don’t know. I suppose the way you mentioned him a moment ago.”
“Well, it’s no secret that he’s a hard man to impress.”
I didn’t need to know Nikesh’s father or the details of the situation to know what was hard for Ainsley. She had married into an Indian family, and all the cultural expectations and burdens were now fully on her, too. Whatever she was doing to impress him, it wasn’t enough, and it never would be, but I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that.
“Cold,” MacKenzie said.
“You’re cold?” Without thinking, I leaned over and picked him up, placing him in my lap, and wrapped my arms around him. “That better?”
He looked up at me, smiling, and I found myself smiling back.
“Auntie Serena,” I heard Ainsley say.
My stomach knotted as I thought of Natasha and the child she was carrying.
“When’s your sister due?” Ainsley asked.
I smiled, wondering how Ainsley had read my mind. “Oh, not for a while. She hasn’t passed the three-month mark yet, but she told me because . . .” I trailed off.
Because she’s my best friend. Because we’re close.
That’s what I wanted to say. But I didn’t know if that was true anymore.
“Are you excited?” Ainsley asked.
I shrugged, and then realizing that wasn’t an appropriate social response, I exclaimed, “Super excited!”
Ainsley laughed, and I turned to her irritably.
“What?”
“You’re not excited! Look at you. She’s your younger sister, right?” Her stare was unnerving. “You don’t think she’s ready to have a baby.”
I grimaced, wondering how Ainsley had figured it out—or at least part of the truth—so quickly.
“Natasha’s only twenty-eight.” I twisted my hands. “Sure, it’s a bit young, but it’s their decision, right?”
“Right.”
“And so what if they only just got married, if they live with Mark’s parents—”
“His parents?”
“—they’re financially secure. They’ll have help. They’re . . . prepared.”
“Parenting is not something you can prepare for,” Ainsley said, after a moment had passed. “To be honest, I didn’t know how to be a mom until he fell out of my vagina.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “You’re so . . .”
“Vulgar?”
“No. Truthful. I’ve never heard anyone speak about motherhood like . . .” I didn’t finish the sentence. Growing up, I saw so many women who, like my own mom, were mothers. And it’s what they were expected to be. Women who put their families in front of everything, themselves, even their own personalities. They transformed into someone different from who they were before motherhood.
Not all women were like that. I knew this rationally, but sometimes it was hard not to jump straight to the judgment, or assume that a woman like Ainsley—happily married and in domestic bliss with a toddler—would be totally unrelatable to me. I bit my tongue and wished I’d accepted her invitation for a drink at the Fox when we first met. I’d been totally wrong about her.
“Just so you know,” I said, bumping her knee with mine, “I wasn’t flirting with Nikesh before.”
“Oh, I know.” She waved me off. “I’m sorry about teasing you. But seriously, do you know how many people I catch flirting with him? Sweet Nikesh, with his big, dreamy Bambi eyes? His man bun?”
“I like the man bun. He pulls it off.”
“Everyone likes his man bun.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“I like strangling him with it.”
I burst out laughing, my dirty chai nearly spewing from my nose, and then one thing led to another. We started talking about her and Nikesh’s (kinky) sex life, my sex life, and then, well, Jesse.
I hadn’t meant to tell her, but it came up like word vomit. I told her about brunch. Natasha’s morning sickness. Downloading Facebook. Jesse and his picture-perfect marriage and family.
It felt good to talk out loud about how upset I felt, although I wished it didn’t. I would rather have breezed past it, the way I had anytime nostalgia unexpectedly bit me in the ass over the past twelve years, but today it felt nearly impossible.
“I don’t even think about him anymore,” I said to her, sipping on the dredges of my drink. “It was a lifetime ago, and I was the one who didn’t want to get married.” I shook my head. “I’m sorry. This is all so embarrassing.”
“Nothing about this is embarrassing, Serena. It’s human.” MacKenzie had started whimpering, so she took him from me.
“Jesse was a big part of your life, and you literally haven’t even seen a photo of him since. Plus, you saw him jogging recently, and that got the juices flowing. Anyone would have reacted the way you did. You’ve never had to picture his life without you.”
Was that the truth? I supposed it was easier to pretend that Jesse existed only in my memory. I wondered if, after today, I’d still be able to pretend.
A shiver ran down my spine as the rain started up again. Ainsley and I stood up, MacKenzie in her arms, and we started walking back toward the covered area of the market.
“I’m five years older than Nikesh. And I was divorced. Did you know that?”
I shook my head. She hadn’t brought it up before.
“I love Nikesh to bits, and I don’t give a crap about my ex anymore, but I don’t want to stumble across a picture of his not-so-virgin-Mary’s birth announcement, do I?”
I opened the door to the market, and we blustered through, the wind pushing us in from behind.
I smiled. Ainsley was . . . awesome. She was down-to-earth. Fun. Clearly kind and empathetic, considering she had spent the bulk of her Saturday morning outside in the drizzle listening to her colleague drone on about her ex-boyfriend. And from the little I’d learned so far, I could tell her life was full to the brim. On top of her family life. On top of her thriving career.
What did people see when they looked at Serena Singh? A busy, career-driven woman, sure, but what else?
We made our way back to the Dirty Chai stand, and then I said my goodbyes and headed home. There was a stack of paperwork on my end table that needed doing, but there was more than tha
t, too. If I wanted to widen my social circle, if I wanted to live my life to the fullest, I had a lot more work cut out for me.
Spring
10
I spotted Mark’s black BMW as it pulled up to the curb. The city was full of black BMWs, but I always recognized his by the giant #StillWithHer bumper sticker Natasha had slapped on the rear windshield.
I took a deep breath and, walking up to the car, prepared myself to see Natasha. I hadn’t reached out to her after she’d blown me off for brunch, just like I promised myself, but that was more than a month ago. It was now April. The only reason we were seeing each other now was because Mom had guilted me into coming home for a family dinner, and Mark offered me a ride.
“Hey, guys,” I said, keeping my voice cool as I dropped into the backseat. “How was the Bahamas?”
“It’s just me,” I heard Mark say.
My stomach dropped as I looked up. The passenger seat was empty.
“Natasha is already out there. She took the day off.” Mark craned his neck around and gave me one of his big, dorky smiles. “Come sit up here.”
I nodded and walked up to the front seat.
Talk about anticlimactic.
The roads were congested, and I helped Mark navigate through the thick of the traffic. When I was younger, DC felt like a different universe, even though it was only across a bridge. We never came in as a family, so until I started commuting to George Washington during my first year of university, I’d only ever been on school trips to Capitol Hill or one of the Smithsonian museums. So many of my college friends who didn’t grow up in the area had been drawn to the city by politics, the hustle and bustle they’d grown up watching on CNN or The West Wing, and were confused why I’d studied and then stayed in the city only to go into advertising.
I couldn’t imagine leaving.