by Sonya Lalli
“What kind of party is this?” Ainsley asked hesitantly. I looked up, noting the tone in her voice. I could see her bikini top through her pale cotton cover-up, which had questionable-looking stains on the shoulder—even though I knew it was MacKenzie’s morning oatmeal.
Oh well. There was no turning back now. At least this way, no one would look twice at my mom wearing a salwar kameez.
I told Ainsley not to worry about it as I grabbed my shoulder bag from the backseat, and we started walking toward the front entrance. We rounded a corner, and up ahead in the clearing, we saw the party. There was a white tent set up and people milling about. From fifty feet away, everyone was simply tiny specs of color against a lush green lawn. As we drew closer, the specs turned into people—the Hartshornes’ fancy friends, servers in penguin-like outfits scurrying about with trays of god knows what, bottles of fermented grapes costing god knows how much. (I never understood humankind’s fascination with wine. Grapes, in their simplest form, tasted so, so much better.)
“Ah, the one percent,” Ainsley said dryly.
“Ainsley.”
“Sorry.” She brushed my arm with hers, and I grabbed onto it, laughing.
Once inside the tent, we got our confidence back, and Ainsley seemed to revel in the looks we were getting from the other guests. No one was rude about it, no one gawked, but we were definitely noticed.
“Hello,” she said brightly to seemingly everyone we passed. “Nice to see you.”
“I’m obsessed with your fascinator,” she said to another. “Is it couture?”
Meanwhile, as I searched for Mom, I grabbed a glass of fizzy lemonade from a passing waiter and did my best to avoid eye contact with everyone in case one of them remembered me from the wedding. Briefly, I spotted Natasha and Mark around the other side of the house, sitting side by side on some patio furniture. Her belly had nearly doubled in size, and she wasn’t sitting normally. She looked uncomfortable, pillows propped behind her and padding her right side. Mark was to her left, and he had his arm wrapped around her. He said something that made her frown.
She looked upset, and I could tell that Mark was trying to cheer her up. A part of me wondered what was going on or if I could help, but a bigger part of me knew better than to put myself out there again.
“Mr. Singh, hey!”
My stomach dropped as I heard Ainsley’s voice. I shifted slightly and looked in the direction she was waving furiously.
It was Dad.
He was wearing a Lacoste polo shirt he would never have picked out himself, surely a gift from Natasha. I wondered where Mom was.
Ainsley gently pushed through the crowd toward him, and reluctantly, I followed. He beamed at her, and when she leaned in for a hug, he awkwardly placed his left arm across her back.
Lots of Indians I knew were weird about hugging, especially with the opposite gender. Even family members who hadn’t seen each other in decades, at the airport, seemingly never got more than an awkward, side-facing, one-armed pat that looked more like a country line dance move than a hug.
I sipped my lemonade and mercilessly chewed the ice cube that had slipped into my mouth. I couldn’t remember the last time Dad had expressed any sort of affection for me.
“Hi, beti,” he said, smiling. It seemed forced, but I smiled in return to be polite. It had been a while since I looked at him straight on, and I hadn’t noticed how many wrinkles he’d gotten; how his beard and eyebrows were fading from gray to white.
“So good to see you, Mr. Singh!” Ainsley said.
“You, too, dear.”
“Some party, huh?” Her eyes skirted over the lawn. “Where’s Mrs. S?”
“She was rounded up by Mark’s mother. I think she is giving some of the ladies a tour of her new exercise room.”
Ainsley nodded, turning to me, as if prompting me to participate in the conversation. Avoiding her eyes, I took another long sip of my lemonade.
“Where’s little . . .” Dad paused. “Macaroon?”
Ainsley laughed. “Close. MacKenzie. He’s with his dad and Beck—”
“So where’s this exercise room, Dad?” I interrupted, cocking my hip against Ainsley’s in annoyance. Dad didn’t know Becket existed. There was no reason for him to.
“I am not sure,” Dad said. “Should we go find her?”
I shook my head, looking away again. The way he put his words together was oddly formal, tense. Forced. I suppose I spoke to him in the same way, when I managed to say something to him at all. I cleared my throat, wishing he would leave or that I could leave, but Ainsley kept chatting away with him.
Ainsley was telling Dad all about Nikesh and how his dirty chai wasn’t all that “dirty” when one of the penguins waddled up to us. He straight up looked like one of the servers from the banquet room in the Titanic, where Kate and Leo eat the night the ship goes down. He crinkled his nose at the three of us.
“An impromptu tasting, anyone?” Without waiting for us to answer, he continued, “The pinot noir is from Côte d’Or. It’s to die for. Medium body but bold. You can really taste the cherries.” He took a breath. “And then we have a dry Riesling from the Clare Valley. New-world wines are—”
“Sure,” Ainsley interrupted, grabbing a glass of white indiscriminately from the tray. “Thanks.”
“I’m good,” I said quietly, so the penguin turned to my dad. I held my breath.
“Sir?”
“Why not,” he said without skipping a beat. Dad had also been drinking the lemonade and set his glass down on a nearby bar ledge. “I’ll try the”—he cleared his throat—“pinot noir.”
The penguin smiled, lifting the tray up no more than an inch in Dad’s direction. Half the glasses had red wine; the other half had white. Dad was meant to select it himself, and I knew he had no idea which one was the pinot noir.
I saw him hesitate, and I opened my mouth to say something, but then I closed it again. A beat later, Dad reached for a glass of the white.
“That’s the . . . Riesling, sir.”
My heart sank as I looked at my dad’s face. His cheeks colored, and his lips trembled, and then a moment later, it was all gone.
“It was closer,” Dad said, making a joke of it. He brought the glass to his lips, taking a very small sip. “Yes, of course. Well, this is very nice.”
I could tell that he didn’t think it was nice at all. Dad was never a wine drinker. He set the glass down on the ledge, smacking his lips. Ainsley laughed.
“Our hosts’ sommelier selected it on her most recent trip to South Australia. Can you smell the citrus?” The penguin bent over his tray and did a yoga inhale over one of the glasses. “There’s a hint of pineapple in there, believe it or not.”
“A sommelier,” Dad said, “Why do they not call it a smell-ier?”
Ainsley cackled, while the penguin smiled condescendingly and then moved on to another group of guests. “Smell-ier!” Ainsley said, still laughing. “Fantastic dad joke, sir.”
“What is a dad joke?” he asked, picking back up his lemonade.
“Dad jokes are cheesy jokes that dads make.”
“Then, aren’t all my jokes dad jokes?”
“Are all your jokes cheesy, Mr. S . . . ?”
They kept going on like this, and my stomach knotted. Is this what Ainsley had meant at the gender reveal party when she told me that my dad was hilarious? The kind of joke that made Natasha laugh so hard she cried, always when I was in the other room?
Smellier. I smiled, sadly. It was a great dad joke, and if he wasn’t the one who had told it, I probably would have laughed.
“I’m going to go say hi to Mom,” I said to them both, before quickly walking away. I pushed through the other guests on the lawn. These were the sorts of people I had to sell products to every day, analyze their psyche to convince them that my client’s stuf
f was what belonged on their wrists and ears, in their kitchens and stomachs. I’d learned to rub elbows and nod and smile and say the right things so I could pretend I was one of them, but I really wasn’t. And I didn’t want to be.
A much friendlier penguin on the patio pointed me in the direction of the new home gym. I followed the corridor until I reached a flight of stairs, turned left at the bottom, as instructed. I could hear voices now, laughter. I inched forward down the hall. They were just around the corner.
“Look at you go, Sandeep!” someone exclaimed. It sounded like Mrs. Hartshorne.
“You’ve never tried this before, really?” another voice said.
“She’s a natural.”
“I am, right?” Mom exclaimed, laughing. Her voice rang out, vibrantly, and it shook me. I had never heard my mother laughing like that.
I chanced another step forward and peeked around the corner. Beyond the workout machines was a large flat-screen TV playing an aerobics class, a young, peppy bodybuilder squatting and cheering and kicking. Mom, Mrs. Hartshorne, and a few other women were in front of the TV copying her, facing away from me, fully clothed in their party attire.
I stared at them, incredulous. At her. She was bouncing around like a young woman, the loose pants of her kameez swishing as she followed the steps on screen impeccably. Her arms were graceful, her neck like a swan, her loose ponytail hanging beautifully down her back.
“You’re going to have a tight booty tomorrow, Sandeep,” Mrs. Hartshorne said, elbowing Mom. “Just you wait.”
“Uh-ho. I already have a tight booty, Carol!”
The other women exploded in laughter, and breathing hard, I retreated so they couldn’t see me.
I’d never seen Mom dance before. I’d never seen her do anything.
I didn’t know she could.
26
Thirty minutes later, we were back at Rock Creek. The picnic grounds were busier than before, and it took a few minutes to find the guys. The shade had moved, and they’d relocated to a new spot down by the sand. Becket was on his back on a blanket, my backpack wedged beneath his head, a book propped on his stomach. Nikesh and MacKenzie were in the shallows of the water nearby, building a castle in the wet sand.
Seeing my family had drained me entirely. Since Ainsley had driven, I’d even dozed during the ride back. I plopped down next to Becket without saying anything as Ainsley walked farther on to her family. I smiled, watching the way MacKenzie squealed in delight as he saw her, toppling the castle as he darted into her arms.
“He’s adorable, isn’t he?” Becket asked me, leaning his head against my shoulder. “I’ve been watching him more than reading.”
I glanced over at his book. It was my copy of the crime thriller I’d read for book club. The book club that kicked me out for dissing the author.
“I borrowed it when you were in the shower the other day.”
“What do you think?”
“I think the carpenter did it.”
“Maybe he did.” I let my eyes close and tilted my face up toward the sun. “Maybe he didn’t.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
I shook my head, smiling. “Not a—”
“Oh my god, look at him.” Becket laughed, cutting me off, and it made me open my eyes. MacKenzie was bobbing up and down, plugging his nose with his fingers, as if he was trying to plop down beneath the water. He looked like a little rabbit, and it made me giggle, too.
We both watched him for a while, and it struck me that Becket and I were both being silent about the elephant in the room. (Or in our case, the beach.)
Children.
It was an important question, and one that I’d been asked in every single romantic situation that went past a few dates. It was a question that could define or end a relationship. It was a question Ainsley still thought I needed to ask.
“Becket.” I sat up cross-legged, stalling for time as I worked up the courage to face him. “Can we talk?”
I had never said those words before, at least not to a guy I was seeing. I had spent more than a decade avoiding those three little words like the plague, and I couldn’t believe that I was the one saying them first right now. Maybe seeing my parents had thrown me for a loop.
Or maybe I wasn’t going to let myself get away with avoiding everything anymore.
“Do you want to have children?” I blurted. “I mean, I see the way you look at MacKenzie. The way you talk about him.”
Becket squeezed my hand. I could hear him breathing. “You look at him the same way.”
“I love him, yes,” I said, my voice filling with emotion just thinking about Ainsley’s little boy. “But I need to be clear about the fact that I don’t want children of my own.”
“You don’t?”
“Do you?” I glanced up, and from the look on his face, I could tell that, indeed, Becket did want children. That our relationship was about to come to an end.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I thought you knew.”
“I didn’t know.”
“But, you were the one who encouraged me to go out and make friends and regain a social life. You remember the reason, right?” I paused. “It was because almost everyone I know had gotten married, had kids—”
“Yeah, but I thought . . .”
“That I was just jealous of them?”
He didn’t answer. Of course that’s what he thought, and I didn’t blame him, because it’s what everyone thought.
“I never pushed you to talk about this stuff, or to meet your family, because I know how independent you are.” He scoffed. “I thought we’d get there eventually, you know?”
“Becket . . .”
“I’m such an idiot . . .”
“You’re not. It’s my fault.”
He reached for my hand, and I squeezed it. Our limbs were entangled now, and I could feel his heart beating. Unexpectedly, a tear dripped down my cheek, and I caught it with my wrist. We’d had a good run. Our relationship had been good, but it wasn’t enough. Even if both of us wanted children, if we had the exact same vision for our future together, it still wouldn’t have been enough.
“You said you thought we were going to get ‘there’ eventually,” I said after a while. “Why did you think that? I’m asking honestly.”
“You’re a catch, Serena.”
“You are, too.” I laughed.
He smiled, sadly. “So what’s the problem then?”
“You don’t love me, Becket.” I turned to him, pushing my feet farther into the sand. I didn’t need to point out that after six months, I didn’t love Becket, either, or that, with Jesse, it had only taken us a few weeks to declare our feelings for each other.
“I like you a lot, though,” Becket whispered. “You’re . . . perfect.”
“Untrue, but thank you for the compliment—”
“You’re ambitious and thoughtful, hot—”
I laughed.
“—who wouldn’t want to settle down with you?”
“You can’t just ‘settle down’ with me because we’re getting older, Becket.”
He didn’t answer, and I wondered if I’d hit the nail on the head. A lot of his friends were married with children, too, at a totally different stage in life than both of us. Had Becket felt the pressure, too? Had he decided he was ready for something different and gone along with a relationship with the next woman he found? Me?
“You’re right,” he said finally. “This wasn’t meant to be. I mean, the truth is I don’t even know you that well.”
What he said was true, but it didn’t feel good to hear those words out loud. Six months and he didn’t know me, but it wasn’t his fault. I’d never let him in.
* * *
A couple of hours later, I woke up to the sound of MacKenzie crying and, a beat later, Ainsle
y’s voice from the front seat of the car.
“Serena, could you?”
I nodded, sleepily gathering myself. I undid my belt and scooted into the middle, nearer to MacKenzie.
“There, there . . .” I whispered, gently stroking his cheeks. “I hate traffic, too.”
“We all hate traffic,” Nikesh muttered. He sounded irritable, which made sense because he was the one stuck behind the wheel in the traffic jam as we headed back into the city.
Becket had taken an Uber home immediately after our breakup, even though I had insisted he didn’t need to leave the picnic early. I think all of us wished we’d gone home when he had. Not only had a major accident caused some of the worst traffic, the breakup seemed to have put everyone in a bad mood, especially MacKenzie, who had been whining or crying nonstop for hours.
It was well past his bedtime by the time we got back to Columbia Heights, so I insisted Ainsley drive straight home and told her that I would walk back to my apartment. By foot, it was only fifteen minutes away. Nikesh hugged me goodbye and then took MacKenzie upstairs. I helped Ainsley unpack the car, and silently, we put away the toys, blankets, and dishes they’d brought along.
With seeing my parents, and now my breakup with Becket, the whole day had thrown me for a loop, but I didn’t want to dwell on any of it. I didn’t have the time. In just a few days, I was off to Richmond.
“I think that’s everything.” Ainsley gently shut the trunk. Yawning, she leaned her weight back into the car. “Are you sure you don’t want a ride home?”
“I’m sure. I could use a walk.”
“How are you feeling?”
I worked the toe of my flip-flop into the pavement. “It was to be expected.”