Serena Singh Flips the Script

by Sonya Lalli

  I made a note to go seek her out later and reconnect. When had we grown apart? The details were blurry, and it pained me to realize that, whatever the reason, I’d been at fault, too.

  More guests were arriving by the minute. The invite had stated that the grand reveal would be at three p.m. sharp, and now we were only seventeen minutes away. I scanned the room for Mom and Dad but couldn’t find them. I hoped they’d arrive soon; the Hartshornes ran a tight ship, and I wasn’t sure they’d delay the reveal.

  There was a joke the younger generations liked to tell about the “aunties and uncles” who always showed up late, sometimes hours late, that they still ran on “Indian Standard Time.” I mentioned this to Ainsley, which made her laugh so hard that it woke up MacKenzie, and she had to go into the other room to change him.

  Ainsley declined my offer to help, so I waved to the few people I knew there and mingled with Natasha and Mark’s friends, even some of the Hartshornes’ friends. They were all very nice, down-to-earth people, and I felt bad for having felt so judgmental about the party, about this world. Working in advertising, I had to think of target demographics, commonalities, but the truth was people were all different. Just because Mrs. Hartshorne was a stone-cold WASP (I could sell her anything if I tried) didn’t mean all of her friends were.

  There were children everywhere: well-behaved ones dutifully sitting or standing by their parents; rambunctious children, on a mission to seek out any possible household object that could present danger; sleeping children all over the place, a few—to Mrs. Hartshorne’s visible annoyance—even on the floor.

  “He’s so tired today,” Ainsley said, coming up to me just as I was excusing myself from a conversation with one of Mark’s frat bros. “He wants to sleep on me. Not anywhere else. Serena, my neck is killing me. Would you try holding him for a bit?”

  She instructed me to sit down in an armchair, gently placed MacKenzie in my arms, and then tucked a cushion behind my back. I leaned into it, as MacKenzie nestled into me, wrapped his chubby little legs and arms around my body. His eyes closed immediately, and his weight felt good on me, like I was cold and in desperate need of a wool blanket.

  “You’re a natural.”

  I didn’t answer, my eyes not leaving MacKenzie.

  “Oh, hey. I met your parents.” I could tell she was grinning by the tone of her voice. “And you wanted to keep our friendship casual . . .”

  “Ainsley the comedian,” I said, pausing. “So they’ve arrived. Good. I was worried they’d be late.”

  “Your mom is very sweet. So sweet. And your dad is hilarious, oh my god! My father-in-law barely looks me in the eye.”

  My body stiffened as she spoke.

  “They’re so lovely, Serena. I wish I’d married into your Indian family.”

  “I doubt it . . .” MacKenzie was dreaming. I could tell. He was gently wriggling in my arms, and his eyelids and lashes were fluttering rapidly. What was he dreaming about? Wherever he was in that moment, I hoped he was safe. I hoped that I could protect him.

  “Where are they?” I asked after a while, looking up. Ainsley gestured across the room, and I followed her gaze. Mom and Dad were now wedged awkwardly on the love seat, posing for a photo with Natasha and Mark. You could never tell by the look of pure joy on Mom’s face that she was upset with Natasha, even though I knew she felt wronged and hurt for being excluded. You could never tell with Mom.

  Dad was also smiling, and for a moment I let myself study his face, the crow’s-feet that were now set in. His dark gray hair, still thick on the top of his head, a slightly lighter shade than his beard. He said something, and everyone in his vicinity laughed. A part of me wanted to know what he said, how he felt. Anything.

  Suddenly, he looked up. He held my gaze, and I in turn held his. He looked so sad, and I hated him for it. He tilted his chin ever so gently, a movement that would have been imperceptible to anyone else in the room, but I knew what it meant.

  Come take a picture with the family.

  Come here. Please? Come back to us.

  I swallowed hard and looked down, pretending I hadn’t noticed the look. Pretending, like I had my whole life, that I hadn’t noticed anything.

  I couldn’t help it as the water welled in my nose, my eyes. A single tear dropped, splashed onto MacKenzie’s little earlobe, and I quickly wiped it away.

  A moment passed, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ainsley crouch down beside me. Had she seen it, too? She leaned in and pulled out a tissue from her bra.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she whispered. I pressed MacKenzie into me, his sweet, warm breath against my chest, and shook my head.

  Summer

  20

  Jesse: You like banh mi, right? Be at our bench in ten.

  Our bench? I shook my head, stretching my hands upward as I stood up from my desk. I would have to remind Jesse of the ground rules for our friendship. It was not “our” bench. It just happened to be a wide, two-person seat in front of the National Geographic Museum, where we met once in a while to eat lunch now that the weather had turned warm. He sat on his side of the bench, and I sat on mine.

  I invited Ainsley and Tracy to join us as I headed out the door, but both of them declined, as they had remembered to bring their lunch that day. (The fact that it felt perfectly normal to invite others along to our lunches felt like validation that Jesse’s and my friendship was nothing other than completely appropriate.) I took the stairs down the few flights, smiling as I pushed open the door, and swapped out my wire frames for my pair of prescription aviators.

  I loved early summer, when it was hot but not oppressively so, and there was still a certain energy to the city. A rhythm I could feel while waiting for a walk light. Running up the stairs from a Metro station. Staring out the south-facing window near my desk. And I felt different, too. I finally felt settled into my job and was gaining confidence with my pitches, my clients, even my coworkers.

  Ginger Spice clearly still hated my guts, but since I’d put her on probation, at least she was trying to hide it better. I now spent the day largely enjoying social interactions with my coworkers and felt lighter leaving the office each evening rather than worn-out. I spent evenings and weekends hanging out with Becket, on FaceTime with Mom while she gave me cooking tips, and increasingly, with Ainsley. We had started walking home together after work, too, and often took turns going to each other’s houses for dinner. (I always invited along Nikesh and MacKenzie to my apartment, although sometimes Ainsley insisted she needed a night off and wanted to come alone.) And then there were my weekly lunch dates with Jesse, who was turning out to be a really great friend.

  My job had become no less demanding, and there were still the same number of hours in a day, but I’d discovered that I did have time for a fuller life. Because it was other people that made life meaningful.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said cheerfully, as I approached the bench. He was already there, seated, two brown paper packages laid out next to him.

  “Chicken or tofu?”

  I hesitated and then arbitrarily picked the one closest to me.

  “That’s the tofu.”

  “I love tofu.”

  Jesse grinned, reaching for his own sandwich. “You’re in a good mood.”

  “What’s not to feel good about? It’s summer. And,” I added, remembering that we were about to have a few days off work, “it’s nearly the Fourth of July.”

  We started eating and, mouths full, updated each other on the past week since we’d last met. My updates largely revolved around Ainsley, work, or my latest attempt at Mom’s recipe for baingan bharta or daal in the kitchen. And most of Jesse’s were about his children, Maya and Ajay.

  “Hold on a second.” Jesse set down his sandwich, fishing his phone from his pocket with just his thumb and pinky—the other fingers being covered in sriracha. With his littl
e finger, he swiped on the screen, and a moment later a smile appeared on his face.

  I closed my eyes, a memory appearing that I didn’t want to be reminded of.

  Jesse smiling, exactly like that, as he flipped open his old Nokia to show me a text.

  Serena? Check it out. Your dad just invited me over to watch the Washington game. Can you believe it? I’m in!

  “Serena?”

  Jesse’s voice snapped me back to the present, and I opened my eyes. He was looking at me, holding his phone outward to face me.

  “I said, do you want to see?”

  I nodded without knowing what I was agreeing to look at. The sun was bright, and I blinked as the screen came into focus.

  It was a video of Maya and Ajay, sent by their mother earlier that day. Maya was sitting at a kitchen table with her sunglasses on attempting to beatbox while her little brother banged on bowls with a spatula and a wooden spoon. It made me laugh.

  “Funny, right?” Jesse grinned, tucking his phone away. “Maya’s got talent. I’ve shown you the video of her choir concert, haven’t I?”

  I nodded. He’d shown me twice.

  “I think she could be the next Ariana Grande. I think she could be . . . anything she wants.”

  My breath caught, so I ripped off a huge chunk of my banh mi with my teeth. The tofu was spicy—Jesse always ordered food extra hot—and it burned my mouth. I chewed fast, and within a few bites it was all gone. I wiped the sauce from the corners of my lips with a napkin, trying to ignore the pulsing in my stomach.

  He was a good, loving father. I knew that already, but each time he talked about them, the realization hit me like a shock wave.

  I’d kept my head down during school and university, always focusing on the next exam or goal. Until Jesse, boys were just a fun distraction. Until Jesse, I hadn’t actually considered what I wanted my future to look like. If that future included children.

  It turned out it didn’t, and until recently, I didn’t even enjoy being near children. They downright annoyed me on planes and in restaurants, and I couldn’t handle how coddled some of them seemed to be these days. But lately, I didn’t mind them so much. I still didn’t want kids of my own—that I was sure about—but the first thing I did whenever going to Ainsley’s house was to seek out MacKenzie. Hold him, play with him, volunteer to feed him or even change his diaper. (Gross. But also kind of sweet?) And I was even beginning to feel myself getting attached to Maya and Ajay, just by virtue of Jesse talking about them so much.

  I’d told myself I’d lost touch with so many people when they became parents because they were busy. And that’s true. But maybe I’d also accepted their excuses and longer and longer gaps between visits because I didn’t want to be included in their new life. A life I couldn’t imagine.

  My stomach hurt, but not from the spice of the banh mi. Natasha was having a boy. Everyone had celebrated when she and Mark had cut into the blue cake. (Including Mrs. Hartshorne, even though I noted her Botoxed mouth momentarily falter into a frown of disappointment.) And as we all cried and cheered and hugged, inside I’d felt a sick, sinking feeling at my very core.

  Some would call it biological, my ovaries screaming to me that if I wanted this, too, that I’d better hurry up. But I knew myself better. I wanted to know this little boy the same way I was craving to know MacKenzie, or Jesse’s children. If the parent meant something to me, then the child would, too. But would I get to know my nephew if I didn’t mend my relationship with Natasha? I hadn’t spoken or heard from Natasha since the gender reveal, and if we could fix it, I wasn’t even sure how to go about it.

  “Are you going to finish that?” I heard Jesse say. He leaned in so close I could smell his aftershave.

  I pushed his face away. “Yes, I am.”

  “I went jogging this morning. I’m hungry.”

  “I’m hungry, too.”

  “But I gave you the bigger one,” he whined, pulling on it.

  I tugged it back. “Sucks to be you, bro.”

  I looked up at him just as the sun dipped behind a cluster of trees, and his face became more visible. He hadn’t shaved that morning. His stubble was thicker than usual, and I couldn’t help but wonder what he’d look like with a full-grown beard, the way a lot of Sikh men wore it. Most clean-shaven Sikh men, like Jesse, grew out their beards for their weddings, for religious reasons, but also because it looked good in photos with a turban, fancy kurta pajama, and kirpan. I quickly scanned Jesse’s face, wondering if he had gone full beard for his wedding, too, when I spotted a zit on his cheek.

  “What?” he asked me.

  I stared at his face just a beat longer. It was massive, and I wondered how I hadn’t noticed it earlier. Had I not looked at him directly this entire time?

  “Fine,” I said. “You can have it.” I lifted the remaining half sandwich from the sticky paper it came in, and a second after handing it to Jesse, it was gone. As he chewed, I snuck another glance. The pimple was pink, like a flesh wound, and white at its volcanic tip. I shivered. It was staring at me.

  “Why you being weird?” he asked.

  “I’m not being weird.” I leaned my head back until it rested against the bench, and the sunlight beamed down on my face. “Ah. This is heaven.”

  “Being here with me?”

  “Oh, quiet down.”

  I sat up straight, and in my peripheral vision, again, I saw the zit. It had grown larger. Gargantuan. I leaned slightly away, in awe of it, ready for my escape. It had taken on a new life of its own and was coming for me.

  “Serena, seriously,” I heard Jesse say. “We need to talk.”

  “Huh?”

  I couldn’t stop myself from staring. It was taking up my whole field of vision.

  “Serena, you can’t do this. We can’t be friends if . . .” He trailed off, and I forced myself to look away from the zit and into Jesse’s eyes. He looked genuinely stressed, and I had no idea what about.

  “We can’t be friends if I what, exactly . . . ?”

  “If you keep looking like you want me!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You were just looking at me like you’re longing for me. All that Pride and Prejudice crap.” He threw his hands up, exasperated. “We can’t, OK? You have a boyfriend. And I’m still in a weird place. We wouldn’t be a good idea right now—”

  I burst out laughing, cutting him off. I laughed so hard my lungs hurt and tears poured from my eyes.

  “What? What is it?” I heard him ask over and over, increasingly annoyed as I tried to control myself. “Jesus, why are you laughing?”

  “You think I want you, Jesse?” I shook my head, wiping my eyes. “I don’t want you!”

  “They why do you keep looking at me?”

  “I’m not looking at you. I’m looking at him!” I pointed at it and laughed as Jesse touched his face and found it for himself.

  “Ouch!” He said, recoiling. “It’s huge.”

  “It has its own gravitation pull.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Remember those turmeric masks I used to put on your face for acne?” I asked.

  “I do remember,” he said gruffly. “They used to stain my cheeks yellow.”

  “That’s because you’re such a gora.”

  Sulking, Jesse grabbed the packaging from our banh mis and started walking toward the recycling bin on the other side of the path. He thought I wanted him? The giggles returned as I watched him shoot our refuse like a three-pointer, miss, and then pick it up off the ground.

  We wouldn’t be a good idea right now.

  My skin prickled when I remembered what he’d said, and the laughter subsided. What did Jesse mean by that? Did he mean he thought “we” might be a good idea eventually?

  “Would you rather I have not told you about it?” I asked him when he returned. I gest
ured to the zit on his face but kept my gaze neutral. My thoughts, too. Surely, Jesse had misspoken before, and I needed to brush past this.

  “I have an important conference call this afternoon. Shit.” Jesse sighed. “I guess I’ll just keep the camera off.”

  “Will your zit have its own call-in number?”

  “Serena Singh,” Jesse said, a smile creeping over his lips. “Will you cut it out?”

  * * *

  The office was quiet when I got back. Ainsley was alone at her pod, her noise-canceling headphones plugged in, her hair in a carefree yet stylish knot at the top of her head. Despite my temporary freak-out, I was still in a good mood, so I tiptoed up to her and, when I was just inches away, swiveled her chair hard around toward me.

  “Boo!”

  “Aghh!” She screamed, her keyboard and mouse flying to the side. I burst out laughing, and when the panic subsided and her face returned to normal, her cheeks glowed beet red.

  “Shit, Serena! You really scared me.”

  I cackled and helped her find the mouse, which had scattered beneath a neighboring desk and luckily hadn’t been broken. She was quiet and not jostling me or threatening to retaliate like I would have expected, and for a second I wondered if I had gone too far. But this was Ainsley. We did shit like this to each other all the time. There was no going too far.

  “That it?” I asked, as she connected her keyboard. “Sorry if I interrupted your flow . . .”

  She smiled weakly. “No. I wasn’t even working.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head, and I sat down in the chair next to her, dragging it forward on its wheels to be closer.

  “What’s up?”

  “Look at this,” she whispered, gesturing to her screen. Ainsley was logged in to what must have been a personal e-mail account, and there was an e-mail from a Mr. Jason Hernandez, a recruiter. My stomach twisted as I scanned the rest of the e-mail, the phrases popping out at me.