My Last Love Story

Zayaan’s mother had a knack for making me feel like shit, but I’d strive to be polite for my own mother’s sake.

“How are Sofia and Sana?” I asked in return.

Zayaan’s sisters were several years younger than me, and I got along just fine with them. They were open-minded, honest women, more like Zayaan than their mother.

“Are they around?” Say yes, so we can quit this absurd attempt at a conversation, I mentally urged her. Why didn’t she hang up?

Why didn’t I?

On the dawn-tinged deck, Nirvaan performed a series of twisty torso stretches. He had on a full-sleeved orange swim shirt and black wetsuit-style shorts and was obviously champing at the bit to try out the Jet Skis.

I flapped my hand to catch his attention. Save me, my hero.

“No, beta. Sofia went out with friends straight from work, and Sana is getting ready. We’re having dinner at Waseem’s house.”

Zayaan’s youngest sister, Sana, was engaged to Waseem Thakur, the prescreened, fully approved—by Gulzar Begum—Khoja from East London.

“That’s nice,” I muttered.

She began a familiar lament about her remaining two children who refused to bring her similar solace. She’d blamed me for Zayaan’s single status for a long time, even after I’d married Nirvaan. She’d blamed me for a whole lot worse twelve years ago. I’d believed her then. I’d been too young, too frightened and too confused not to succumb to the authority of an adult, and she’d taken advantage of it.

I wasn’t that naive anymore. If I chose to blame myself now, it was in full cognizance of my own actions.

Nirvaan came into the kitchen, grinning like a shark, as if he enjoyed seeing me tortured.

Dog.

On cue, Zayaan’s mother brought up Marjaneh, the perfect bride for her perfect son, and I pounced. A dog was so much shark fodder.

“Oh. Here’s Nirvaan, Auntie. He’s dying to talk to you.” Grinning, I shoved the phone into his hands but not before I heard the gasp.

Narrow-minded, judgmental creature that she was, I’d shocked her by my word choice. Too bad, but I’d quit dancing around the word death and its variations a long time ago. When cancer lived in your home, inside your husband’s body, there was no avoiding the word or state.

“What the hell, Simi?” Nirvaan whispered as he pinched my butt. He was a trooper, though. He pressed the receiver to his ear, and with innate flair, he began to charm the devil out of Zayaan’s mother.

My husband could sell fur to a bear for a profit without much effort. I left him to it and resumed the breakfast preparations.

“You’re coming for the party, Auntie. No excuses,” he said after a whole lot of rubbish conversation.

Hearing him, I wilted like a week-old rose. Much as I’d hate Gulzar Begum raining on my parade, I’d have to suck it up. After all was said and done and forgiven or not, she was Zayaan’s only living parent. Sure, guilt was the forerunner in that relationship, and she took immense advantage of her son’s feelings. Zayaan’s father and brother were dead. Zayaan was the only male left in his family. His mother knew just where to drive in the screws. But I also knew Zayaan loved his mother and thought the world of her. He’d want her at his thirtieth birthday bash—and Marjaneh, too.

I wilted some more.

Zayaan came into the house, a prayer book pressed between his arm and torso. He went into his room, and within seconds he came out empty-handed. He gave me the evil eye, letting me know that, deep in conversation with Allah or not, he’d heard every word I’d said to his mother, and he was aware of every negative vibe flowing between here and London.

I wasn’t sorry for any of it or for the way things were between us—they couldn’t be any other way—yet an apology jumped to my lips. I bit it off and poured yellowy batter onto the heated waffle plate instead.

Fifteen minutes later, the mama’s boy hung up the phone and joined us on the deck to consume three ice-cold waffles. He ate them without complaint.

Nirvaan wouldn’t have been so obliging. He would’ve fed the floppy waffles to the seagulls and demanded a reorder from the house chef. And because Zayaan hadn’t complained and he always defended me to his mother, I brewed him a consolation cup of double espresso. As apologies went, it was unremarkable, but it made him smile.

A long time ago, my whole existence had revolved around Zayaan’s smile.

I took a deep breath and, on a ten-count exhalation, I let the past fade from my mind. I leaned over to kiss my husband. He was my life now.

Next order of the day, the guys dared me to a Jet Ski race, and lots more pixels were added to the Jaws album.

6 (#uc240ec44-79e7-51c5-8b24-037e096f0417)

Kamlesh Desai was a one-man riot with a deep-chested guffaw he was unafraid to overuse.

It was easy to see where Nirvaan had gotten his energy and charm even though the father-son duo looked nothing alike. My father-in-law was a small, spare man with a big mustache and a full head of hair. Even as he pushed toward sixty, it was a natural jet-black. He swore that the daily application of a hibiscus-infused coconut oil was the secret to his hair’s health. He kept it parted to the left and combed it several times a day in an offhand unconscious manner with a small maroon comb he carried in his wallet at all times.

I loved my father-in-law’s little quirks. I could watch him for hours and never get bored. For such a petite man, he had a king-size personality and an even bigger heart.

Compared to her husband, my mother-in-law was a mouse. She was quiet and serious but in no way timid. My in-laws were equal partners in life and in business. You picked up on it immediately from the moment you met them. They reminded me so much of my own parents that I sometimes found it impossible to be around them without getting emotional. But the same also made it easy for me to love them.

I used to tease Nirvaan that the only reason I’d married him was because I was madly in love with his father. And since I couldn’t have my main man, I’d settled for his gene pool.

“Your uncle just can’t sit still,” my mother-in-law muttered, shaking her head at her husband who was expelling his inexhaustible energy rather loudly into a karaoke mic.

Smiling at my gyrating father-in-law, I winced when the surround sound suddenly blared off-key and filled the house with shrill maniacal bleats. Besides enthusiasm, he had zero aptitude for singing.

It also amused me that my mother-in-law never addressed her husband by name, not directly, not even when she spoke of him in context. It was always “your uncle” or “your daddy” or “Mr. Desai” or “my husband” or “that man,” if she was angry with him, but never simply “Kamlesh.” It was an old Indian custom—I supposed, a sexist one in the guise of respect—which forbade a wife to call her husband by his given name. I had no idea why my mother-in-law still practiced it.

She was a modern woman. She wore Western clothes, even shorts on occasion, though never for community or religious functions or in India. She was a workingwoman, had been for most of her life. My in-laws had come to America, leaving their six-year-old daughter and two-year-old son with their parents, to build a better life for their family than the one they’d had in India. They’d come in search of the American Dream and found it.

Kamlesh Desai had worked at gas stations and grocery stores while Kiran Desai had cleaned houses and cooked for people until, between them, they’d saved enough money to invest in a California highway motel. Still, they’d worked three jobs each, pouring their savings into their first motel and then another and another. Eventually, they’d quit the other jobs and focused their energies on expanding their motel business. Once their green cards had come through, they’d brought their teenage children to LA and settled down there.

My in-laws were self-made, hardworking people, even now.

So it baffled me that my mother-in-law still held on to an antiquated custom in a country she, too, refused to call home. My own parents had addressed each other by name and a whole slew of endearments, including bawaji and bawiji, which most simplistically translated to “Parsi man” and “Parsi woman.”