Rahil stretched his arms out and looked down at his iced latte. “The thing is, I actually felt sorry for her mother, because, well, she knew.”
One day, a year into their affair, Sara’s mother had caught his hand when he was leaving to go back home. “Take her and go, she needs to see the world, Rahil.”
Rahil shook his head in disappointment. “I took her out of the house, lived with her in another city, but I couldn’t show her the world. The thing is, Mira, Sara already had too much of her parents in her by then. But I loved her. Even her mystical shit, I loved it all. I still do.”
I didn’t interrupt Rahil, didn’t probe him or direct his answers. I wanted to let the afternoon drift into the evening, let sunset bleed into midnight. I wanted him to tell it his way, every little detail. And as Rahil spoke, my heart swelled with a new affection for him, one that hugged the aches of this man, one that appreciated the amount of thought and consideration he had taken to unravel Sara.
There was something missing from the moment they got married and moved into their new two-bedroom home in the new city. Sara was frightened when he left for work, and she was anxious until he returned in the evenings. She did not want to work; she didn’t need to work. She obsessively read what Rahil referred to as pseudoscience blogs. But even in her utter passivity there seemed to be something potent within her. She was a being that had outside knowledge, the knowledge of human futility. Rahil admitted there were moments he believed in an intelligent awareness. If “God” was present, the evidence was Sara herself. Most of the time, though, he questioned if she was just depressed and self-centered.
For five months she successfully tutored four children in the apartment building in elementary social studies. That was the pinnacle of her happiness, because she had a rhythm to her day: four P.M., when the children would come, and six P.M., when Rahil would come home. She had to fill only the hours between nine and four. There had to be more to her banal domesticity. He’d felt it the moment he had met her.
One day he came early from work to surprise her with lunch from Thai Basil, but also because he’d grown worried about her. He could hear the music from outside the house, at least six notches higher than when she played it at home when he was around.
He opened the door and walked toward the bedroom, the music loud, daunting, throaty. She was lost in dance, her hair splayed in all directions, sweat glistening off her narrow, delicate face. A white T-shirt and a long blue denim skirt wrapped her intense thrusts. He watched her for minutes, but she didn’t notice. He had to turn the music off for her to snap out of her trance. Only then did she look right up at him. The odd thing was her lack of embarrassment.
“There was my answer: she was more than just sick and depressed. I knew then, in order for Sara to be Sara, I couldn’t witness the moments that made her. Moments like this where I had no place.”
She had invited him to dance with her, held him close, and whispered, “Feel the utter pointlessness of this world, submit to love, Rahil.”
He didn’t dance with her. He asked her if she needed anything, told her he had come just because he had a bad feeling. “I am fine,” she said, smiling. And he left awkwardly back to work. In the evening the music was softer, sandalwood candles burning in the living room, and Sara stirring daal in the kitchen.
My pasta had arrived and so had his pizza. We picked at our food; we looked into each other’s eyes, bravely, intimately. How could one person and his story tear down all my senses of social boundaries? All I knew was that I could look into this man’s eyes silently. And he could meet my gaze without awkwardness. Our staring shared the mystery of a woman who centered our world.
“Rahil, what did Dr. Mudra say to you?”
I couldn’t help myself now, I knew we couldn’t sit here forever, and I didn’t want to lose Rahil to something as silly as him having to go back to work. Rahil let out a playful “aaaaaah” from his mouth and ended it with a grin. A grin, I’ll admit, that tickled my chest. “You know what Dr. Mudra and I have in common?”
“What?”
“We’re both not psychiatrists.” He chuckled into his remaining iced latte.
My face must have revealed only a violent impatience, because Rahil looked back at me and put his hands up in defense.
“Okay, okay, it’s just that I’ve never said anything about Sara to others, but with you it’s easy.”
“So you think it’s because of the way she was raised—all of her issues?”
Rahil picked up a crumb of pizza crust from his plate. He looked at the crumb as if it would answer my question.
An inexplicable rage was rising. I wanted Sara, but at the same time I wanted to shake her, I wanted to tell her she was stupid, annoying, fake, and a liar. And in that moment I wanted to shake Rahil too, for being so inconsistent with me. Flipping between talking about Sara’s real issues and then flipping back to validating them. And then I wanted to shake myself, because none of these feelings made any sense. I looked at Rahil again, his lips still parted: sad, happy, intimate. I reached across the table and held his hand.
“How far is your place from here?” His voice cracked when he said it and my body lit up. I’d thought men who asked women to sleep with them so candidly existed only in the movies, American movies.
“Twenty-five minutes.”
And I’d thought women who said yes with such confidence, at the spur of the moment, were only in the movies too.
X
My apartment felt different as soon as I entered it. Bringing in the potential for sex with a man can reimagine the architecture of your home. My old brown coffee table in the center of my living room was now a brand-new wooden table that Rahil saw before he had sex with me. My bedsheets, no longer old elephants on cotton, but plush white fabric where Rahil’s naked buttocks rested. Where my face rested as he stroked me from the back of my head to the tips of my toes. My chipped red cups were no longer for coffee, but for the cold water we sipped after we had made love, had sex, fucked. And my rug in the kitchen wasn’t just where I stood to cook anymore; it was the printed mat that Rahil stood naked on as he looked around for the chipped red cups.
The sex was needed, our bodies warmed and wanting, but the deed itself was perfunctory. We were searching for something else. Sex was the only way we knew how to look together for it. And we looked for hours. We withheld on intercourse for the longest time, knowing well it would last only minutes and signal an end to the longing, the hands in the hair, the pause in time. After cold water, we sat on my veranda in silence. My cell phone rang—it was Appa. I talked to him in front of Rahil, telling him I had just finished with school and had started teaching a history class. He started to talk about the Indian army’s role in World War II, but I cut him off, promising to visit during the weekend.
Rahil had been staring intently at me as I talked on the phone. I wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. That was the thing about Rahil—he seemed like a self-aware person. But did self-aware people blatantly stare? Or was it just his way of telling me he was interested in my life?
“Your father seems nice.”
“He is.”
Rahil shrugged his shoulders, stood up, and walked toward the living room. He started to gather his things off the coffee table: wallet, cell phone, coins. We didn’t make any promises of secrecy; it was implied. We didn’t make any talk of this being a one-time thing or even if it might be an every-chance-we-get thing. Our confusion but ready acceptance of the moment was implied.
Just as I thought he was about to say he was leaving, he sat back down on my sofa. He fiddled with his wallet, opening and shutting it. There was something endearing about him when he sat expressionless. It was only when he talked about Sara that his face looked focused and in control. I didn’t know whether to sit with him or to encourage him to leave. Did he want to leave? Was he sitting around to make sure I didn’t think it was only about a quick fuck? I walked closer to him, closing the veranda door behind me.
&nbs
p; “Are you tired of taking care of a sick person?”
I wasn’t quite sure what I thought I was going to get from asking this question. It wasn’t because I wanted him to spill his frustrations with Sara. That would be too much of a betrayal—sleeping with her husband and then taking that opportunity to talk about her. If I remember correctly, my tone indicated that my question was not in fact a question. It was an offer. Because I can switch out with you, Rahil. I can take your burden. I can take care of Sara.
He looked at me and shook his head. “I think you should reframe that question, because you don’t seem to understand that I love Sara very much.”
“Right, that’s why this is happening.”
He raised his eyebrows at me. I felt unsure.
“I assume you care about Sara very much too. Do you?” Rahil asked with an unsettling amount of firmness.
I nodded.
He shrugged. “Right, Mira, so that’s why this is happening.”
I knew what it meant and I had no idea what it meant. The language of forbidden love has no common book. It’s a series of coded sentences, its meaning created in the head of an individual and choked out to the other. Words that dangle between lovers, each of them finding the meaning they want to hear at that time. And what I wanted to hear at that time was that it was okay to love Sara. It was okay to love her and to find support and sexual intimacy with her husband at the same time.
When he left, I felt relief. I had needed him. But I also needed him to leave. Now, I could concentrate purely on Sara.
The following Friday was a government holiday, and school was off. Rahil was at work, and it was the first time I saw Sara after I had slept with him. I wasn’t ashamed of what I had done with Rahil, so there was no guilt to show on my face. Sara talked only about her knees and about her parents wanting to come visit her. She then confided, “Rahil hates them, I know this. He thinks he plays it diplomatic with me, but I know.” She chewed on a grape. Her fingernails were painted white and she wore a sky-blue linen kurta over white cropped pants. Even though I knew why Rahil hated her parents and even though I knew they were overprotective nuts, I felt an irrational anger rise in support of Sara. How dare Rahil hate her parents?
We made lunch together: daal with quinoa and cucumber salad. She was convinced quinoa would reboot her digestive system.
After lunch we listened to her music. Without a trace of hesitation I reached for her hair, stroked it, pulled her closer to me. She didn’t resist, her musky rose bloomed into the air. Thick. Wanting. Hoping. It’s not hard to make love to a woman, and it came easily to me. I had never really thought about a woman in bed before, but when I held Sara in my arms, hovered my hands over her nipples, and traced my index finger over her clitoris, I wondered why the idea hadn’t consumed me before. Our kisses were often sloppy and always long. Different from the needy, thrusting tongue of a man. I could have kissed her for hours; I could have meditated sucking gently on her tongue.
“Isn’t it all so outrageously silly, all of it?” she whispered into my ears. It was similar to what she had said to Rahil the day he found her dancing wildly at lunchtime. We dressed quickly when we realized Rahil would be home in an hour. When he came, we all went out for a stroll around the block, returning after twenty minutes when Sara complained of weakness. We ate dinner together, like three old friends, each one with a secret of their own.
A few times over those weeks, Rahil came to my house. Once when it was raining and he had been drenched from riding his two-wheeler, his thick hair plastered on his forehead, his eyes pleading. My heart ached for Ketan right then, and I found myself pulling Rahil in, taking his clothes off, and wrapping his body in two of the largest towels I had. He had pulled me close to him, naked underneath those towels. But I wanted him to wait. I needed to make him a cup of tea and calm the ache for Ketan in the minutes it took for the water to boil. By the time I got back to my sofa, Rahil’s shoulders were covered by a towel and his boxers were back on. I set the cup down and Rahil put his arms out, offering me the warmth of his chest again. I rested my cheek on his stubble. I buried my nose into his neck. I hated how good it felt. How safe. How Ketan-like. He was the opposite of unstable Sara. Without him, Sara and I were waves of water crashing into each other. The tea stayed untouched as we made love on the couch. I imagined how good we must have looked: his body on mine, my left leg dangling off the sofa, my hair exploding onto the square Rajasthani print pillow. Like in the movies.
“What about Sara?” It was a question to myself, and I realized I’d said it out loud only when Rahil responded.
“She’s fine with us, it’s not like she won’t sense it either.”
I flung him off me. “What do you mean? She knows about us?”
“Sara’s not that predictable, you know. I mean, I know she gets into her moments, but she might be more open-minded than you think.”
I fixated on a hair on Rahil’s leg, one strand caught in the spotlight of the sun. My eyes traveled to his eyes and I felt the rise of an unmistakable fear. Whatever trust that sex created between two individuals evaporated. Rahil’s eyes had the ability to meet your stare back with an uncomfortable sharp focus. Like he had trained himself to stare back with confidence no matter what you said, what you questioned. At least in this moment he was. Whatever he was saying, he was manipulating me. I just couldn’t say why.
“I would have killed my husband if he had slept with another woman.”
Rahil laughed, his upper lip quivering. “It’s obvious, you know? That you are attracted to Sara too.”
I am not sure if he saw it, but I felt the panic shoot right into my eyes. I was quick, measured, my voice didn’t crack. “I don’t know what you are talking about. Sara is an amazing friend, and one that I don’t ever want to hurt. But I understand that she is different and that you have—”
“Chill. Don’t overexplain anything. You don’t owe explanations to everyone. Be in the moment, Mira. That’s something I’ve learned from Sara.”
He started to nuzzle my neck again, his tongue whipping the side of my ear. I fell back; we tried to make love again, but lazily settled into each other’s arms instead. I was secretly relieved, like I had won one over. No sex again, Rahil, till I know what you’re up to.
“What does it feel like to keep trying to make Sara happy when she’s so sick?”
He was quiet for a long time. He reached out for the tea that was stone cold. I reminded him it was undrinkable. He took the cup anyway and took a sip of the cold tea.
“It’s nice to have someone who needs you all the time.”
There. Now I’ve told you the truth, the meaty hiccups that had kept me from telling you my story straight. Every story is a matter of perspective, but to get perspective of any kind you must be able to tell your story with both subjectivity and objectivity. Your words must be thorough, ironed, inspected, and then catapulted into the arms of the world. Only then will the universe know what to do with you.
The fact that I had talked to Dr. Mudra weighed on me. The fact that he had not been clear with me about anything made me want to tell Sara in rebellion. The fact that Rahil and I found safety in each other? That made me want to run back home and pretend I hadn’t walked into this new strange life. There were evenings when I
sat between Sara and Rahil, tea and sweet whole grain biscuits spread in front of us. I imagined them hiding smirks in between conversations. I could swear I saw half-smiles directed at each other. Like they knew. They knew that I belonged to them, in different capacities. Most times it felt good enough, like I was cared for. That I had backup. Other days, I felt insecure in my own inabilities. I was able to get them to love me, but not enough to threaten their marriage. On rare days, I felt guilty about wanting to threaten their marriage.
It was a Sunday and Sara was drinking chamomile tea out of a white cup that I had never seen before. Rahil was out buying groceries and the quiet in the house made me restless. What makes a relationship enough? Why
couldn’t I just let things be as they were?
“I didn’t tell you something.”
I stuffed half a fennel-spiced biscuit in my mouth, wanting to take my sentence back. Sara’s eyes looked right into mine. I covered my mouth with my hand as I chewed.
“Oh, about Rahil?”
Acknowledging anything about Rahil with Sara scared me more than what I wanted to tell her. Scared me more than what I wanted to provoke, but I could already feel the words push against my lips as they tumbled out.
“No, about your health.”
She pursed her lips. “Oh, I thought you wanted to talk about Rahil.”
She smiled, challenging me. Even if she did know about Rahil and me, why the hell was she smiling? I fought back.
“No, about your health. I talked to your doctor.”
She sat up straight, alert. Her brown hair shook to the left. “Dr. Mudra? You talked to Dr. Mudra?”
Why did I enjoy her discomfort so much?
“Yes, I bumped into him at the hospital canteen. You had just left, and he mentioned that your health issues, you know, they might be more psychosomatic.” That was a stretch of the truth, but it was the only thing that would provoke her enough.
“Are you calling me mentally ill? What did he say? So much for doctor-patient confidentiality. That old quack, I am going to report him.”
“I am not saying you don’t feel pain, but maybe it’s caused because of stress, you know?”
Sara’s face relaxed. “Is that all he said?”
“Yeah.”
She half smiled. It’s true Dr. Mudra hadn’t told me what he really thought. But he’d made it quite clear that he did think something. I had never wanted to know so badly. I had never wanted to use her mystery as a weapon to hurt her. Until now.
“Maybe you imagine it, Sara.”
The Body Myth Page 7