The Object of Your Affections

by Falguni Kothari

  Deven stood up and began pulling on the rest of his clothes—shirt, leather jacket, a fancy large-buckled belt, a sporran. All the while, he stared at me. I refused to flinch.

  “Yer worried that someone will find out if they dig deep enough?”

  “My brother-in-law may know. I’m not sure. He keeps insinuating things...threatening me.”

  “Ye don’t trust him.”

  I barked out an ugly laugh. “Not a bit. Neither did Kaivan. No, Vinay knows...or maybe he’s just guessing, but I couldn’t take a chance. I gave him control of everything, and now I have nothing left except for the trust that I didn’t want to touch in the first place.” I’d inherited the money by murdering my husband—how could Kaivan think I’d use it without guilt? Without dying every single day?

  “He’s blackmailing ye?”

  “Not overtly, but yes.” In front of the world he’d become a saint because he was taking care of his helpless, widowed saali, his wife’s sister.

  I asked Deven not to tell Neal because he’d tell Paris. “She’ll never understand. She’ll never forgive me for my compliance before and after. Please, I have no one else left in this world.”

  He promised to keep my secret safe. And he told me not to worry as he doubted anyone would come for me in New York. Then he gave me a quick peck on my cheek and left the room. And just like that our one time was up.

  part two

  The Tri-Mess-ters

  chapter fifteen

  Paris

  I was glad the surrogacy was out in the open. But, if I’d hoped that the collective negativity generated by our decision would dissipate over distance and time, I’d been sorely mistaken.

  When we landed back in New York, Lily took over the baton from Minnie, and called every day, several times a day, to kvetch over my Big Idea.

  “Don’t poke a sleeping tiger. Don’t complicate your life,” Lily said in dire tones when I divulged the name of our surrogate.

  I rolled my eyes, took a sip of morning coffee. “Is that from today’s horror-scope? I thought you liked Naira. You definitely liked her more than you cared for me ten years ago.”

  Lily had no comeback for the truth.

  In cahoots, the mothers only wished to talk some sense into us—at least they were fair and distributed their badgering equally between Neal and me. But the more they made a nuisance of themselves, the more adamant I became.

  “I don’t get it. What’s so unconventional about our decision? How is it any different than the crazy combinations of extended families populating society these days? For God’s sake, the world at large worships the Lannisters and the Targaryens! How is that normal? A show both our moms watch, by the way. After GoT, no one should be weirded out about surrogacy,” I railed one evening in mid-January.

  “There’s no harm in waiting a wee bit,” said the family panderer.

  I threw down an ultimatum. “I’m already injecting myself with hormones, and Naira may move to London. It’s now or never. You decide whether you want to make Mommy happy or your wife.”

  I hated myself for saying it, for making him choose between Minnie and me. If he’d said something like that to me, I’d have walked out the door. I was making this into a competition when it wasn’t, when it didn’t need to be. But then, so were they.

  Neal did walk out the door the next morning, and spent an entire week in Japan. I drowned my sorrows in Girlfriend Cocktails with my girlfriend.

  “He hasn’t called. It’s been three days.” I sipped my drink glumly. “Why do I always put my foot in my mouth?”

  Naira hummed in response. Her eyes were closed and her head rested against the back of the booth. We were at Liam’s Bar again. We’d come here every night this week. I’d head over to Naira’s after work, she’d cook for us, and we’d head down for a drink.

  “You haven’t called him, either,” she pointed out, eyes still closed.

  “Will it seem too needy if I do?” Ugh. That would be mortifying. Neal adored my strength, my nonclinginess. He’d broken things off with his ex because she’d been needy and flighty, and because she’d repeatedly caused conflict between him and his family. And I’d recently compared his mother to one of the three witches in Macbeth. My mother being the second and Helen the third.

  Again, Naira only hummed in answer. She was falling asleep on me. Her days had become as busy as mine. Possibly busier. She juggled interviews, business meetings, Skype calls all day. Sometimes until late into the night if the clients or associates were from the dark side of the world. She’d even started dressing in business suits, looking all businesslike. She’d been different since Scotland. Less weepy. I narrowed my eyes, looking at her closely. She was different, less waiflike. Her cheeks were rounder, and the shadows under her eyes had disappeared. Of course, she was wearing makeup so that didn’t prove anything.

  “What’s up with you?” I was intrigued enough to be diverted from my own woes.

  “Hmm?”

  Her posture was better—shoulders straight, back gracefully arched like a dancer’s and not hunched like a heap of soiled clothes. The grieving widow had taken a back seat and the old Naira was back in the driver’s seat. Almost.

  I backpedaled my recent memories of her, wondering when the restoration had happened. Then I remembered what Neal had said at Thanksgiving.

  “Are you...having a thing with Dev?”

  Naira didn’t hum this time. Her eyes popped open and she went red in the face.

  “Ack!” I screamed, scaring her and several of the patrons at the bar. “You are!”

  “I can’t have a thing with him, he signs my paychecks,” she denied quickly. Then made puppy eyes at me. “Please, don’t make a big deal.”

  “But, it is a big deal if you are or want to. I think it’s great, honey.” I meant it sincerely. It didn’t look like I’d need a surrogate anytime soon, if ever, so why shouldn’t Naira have fun? Move on with her life.

  I flinched as I finished the thought. Move on with her life? Meaning I was keeping her from doing so?

  “No, really. It’s not like that. It was one time. Just once on New Year’s.”

  “You had a one-night stand? Why you hussy,” I teased in delight.

  Her lips curved into an odd combination of shyness and pride and excitement. “It was amazing. And fun! I used to wonder what you got out of hopping into beds so casually. Now I know. And, Paris, it’s so liberating.”

  “Better late than never, kid,” I said, feeling as proud as a dame whose ingenue had finally learned the correct way to shtup.

  Once upon a time, I’d been just that liberated. But I was a one-man receptacle now. Neal had spoiled me for good.

  I let go of my pride and called my husband that night. When he came back to me, we were both a little less mad. He brought up the surrogacy this time, not me. I’d like to believe I would’ve backed off if he’d still been reluctant to proceed without his mother’s approval. Thankfully, I wasn’t put to the test.

  “All right. Let’s go make ourselves a family,” he said as I jumped into his arms as soon as he walked in the door.

  I had to underscore. “Let’s go make you a daddy.”

  In vitro fertilization was approximately a six-week process from start to finish, during which I was pumped full of hormone stimulants that I had to inject into my body daily. That was the good part.

  The bad part was that I was highly and intensely hormonally stimulated not just in body but in mind too. I felt completely, out-of-my-head crazy. Every sensation, every feeling was enhanced, and it was unnerving.

  I wanted sex all the time—which, okay, wasn’t all that abnormal for me and Neal. Until, one night, after about ten days of morning, night and weekend sex-a-thons, Neal gripped my wandering hand by the wrist and firmly pulled it away from his dick.

  “It needs a rest, hen. I�
�m chaffed.” Then he proceeded to make love to me with his hands and mouth, and I didn’t even care that he hadn’t come or that he didn’t want to. That was how out of my head I was.

  We decided to go with a boutique IVF clinic in Manhattan that came highly recommended by the Wilsons’ doctor. I was at the Angels of Mary every other day after the first two weeks for various tests that monitored my hormones and ovaries until they were ready to be harvested. Naira also liked Dr. Stanley, our fertility specialist, but she still needed to choose an ob-gyn for the term of the pregnancy and the delivery. Naira was way less picky than I was and happily agreed to see my gynecologist who was also an obstetrician.

  Once the doctors were sorted, we went through the finer points of New York’s surrogacy laws more for Naira’s sake than Neal’s or mine. “We can’t draw up a surrogacy contract. Well, we can, but it’s void and unenforceable in New York State and therefore moot.”

  Our options were a preconception agreement or a coparenting agreement in which we could map out every single event in the bairn’s life we could think of from conception to adulthood, and allocate the adult responsible for that event.

  “And a default parent, or set of parents who’d get custody of the child in case something goes wrong.” I ignored Neal’s thunderous expression and Naira’s stricken one. They might think I was a heartless bitch now, but when shit came raining down, they’d thank me. “It’s just covering bases, people. Things happen, accidents, death. If it’s all neatly written down and spelled out, less chance of misunderstandings and broken hearts.”

  I was in my element during this weeklong phase, being naturally pedantic about lists and laws and fine print. I refined every detail of our agreement. I also encouraged Neal to have his lawyer look over everything on Naira’s and his behalf, or hire a surrogacy lawyer to do the same. He didn’t care for it, but he did it—more for Naira’s sake. All of Naira’s medical bills and expenses accrued during the pregnancy, and some after, would be our responsibility as the intended parents—well, Neal’s responsibility. Naira protested when I added taxi rides to and from the doctor’s office, if she ended up going by herself if or when Neal or I were unavailable to take her.

  “It’s hardly an expense. Get rid of the stipend for clothes and groceries too,” she argued, her cheeks red in embarrassment.

  But, I held firm. “Anything you do for the baby will be listed here and will be paid by us. You’ll need a pregnancy wardrobe and shoes when your feet swell up. And we’ve decided to go organic through the gestation. Organic groceries are expensive.”

  “Have you decided on your lactation options?” I asked after noting down the expenses.

  Dr. Stanley had strongly suggested we consider breastfeeding, if Naira was receptive to it. Studies showed it benefited the baby’s immunity and well-being. Minnie, who was now resigned that this was happening, had also requested we consider it.

  I’d completely understand if Naira didn’t want to breastfeed. Seriously, who’d want to be a cow for however many months it took a child to build his or her immunity? Dr. Stanley had also intimated that it was possible to stimulate my mammary glands into lactating, if I wanted to breastfeed the child myself. Ick. I hadn’t said it out loud—my crazy stopped there. But I think my expression had been sufficiently eloquent.

  Neal had flared his nose up—a look I found both irritating and unhelpful. Besides, how dare he judge me? All he was doing was sitting on his throne like a sultan while his harem scrambled to fulfill his wishes.

  “It’s perfectly fine if you don’t want to,” I reiterated, wondering if it was possible to stimulate a man’s breasts into lactating. I made a mental note to email Dr. Stanley. Let’s see how Neal liked that as a tit for tat.

  “I...would like to,” Naira said hesitantly, as if she’d agreed to do something illicit and unscrupulous, even villainous.

  “Great. Let’s add that in.” I jotted it down, deliberately ignoring the censure wafting off my husband. It was best if we kept our focus on the details of the process and not our subjective feelings and opinions of the process. We were never fully going to be on the same page on anything.

  “Next question is how?”

  Would she prefer pumping the milk and refrigerating it, so anyone could feed the bairn—that way she’d be free to get back to work and travel if she needed to—or, would she rather do it in the more traditional way?

  While Neal’s disapproval came off him like a heat signature, Naira’s awkwardness drowned us in a deluge. Was I the only sane one here?

  “Um. I...need to think about that.”

  “Fine,” I said briskly to save us all from unnecessary mortification. “If you do decide the traditional way, then I figure it’ll be best if you stay with us after the baby is born. Perhaps even consider moving in before?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Naira said reluctantly.

  “Will we require a baby nanny? Or can you and Naira manage everything?” I turned to Neal who’d been drumming his fingers on our dining table for the past fifteen minutes.

  “And what will ye do when we’re doing all of this?” he growled instead of answering.

  Was he kidding me? He was pissed at the way this was playing out? The sultan with his harem?

  I flicked him a coy look. “Why, my love, I have pumped myself full of bat-shit crazy hormones to make your dreams come true. Technically, my work here is done.”

  The shocked silence in our high-rise aerie was deafening. More so because it was snowing outside and the dense atmosphere cocooned us from all the usual sounds of helicopters and birds and the rare low-flying planes.

  “Chill, people. Learn to take a joke.”

  Only, it wasn’t a joke. Not really.

  * * *

  My egg retrieval was a resounding success except for one annoying glitch. I reacted badly to the epidural and was left with a blocked nerve or two in my back, which shot spasms of pain through my lower back, upper back and sometimes all along my spine. I wasn’t in pain all the time, but when it came, it was acute. The damage might be temporary or not so temporary. The anesthesiologist couldn’t give me a more definitive answer since medicine wasn’t an exact science and different people reacted differently to anesthetics. The risks had been written in bold on the medical waiver, so I couldn’t even threaten to sue the doctor.

  I’d been prescribed painkillers to take as needed, and had been advised to rest, which wasn’t possible. I’d taken more than enough half days and late days and holidays since December, with more half days coming up this week for Naira’s insemination. I couldn’t take any more days off work. I was falling woefully behind on all my cases except the task force. I could actually imagine my nemesis dancing around the corpse of my case files in glee.

  I’d scheduled my egg retrieval for a Friday afternoon, thinking I’d have the weekend to recover and would be able to bounce back into work on Monday. Well, it was Monday and even if I couldn’t exactly bounce, I’d still popped a cup full of pills and dragged myself to work.

  I’d hauled my tuches home only an hour early—seriously, I deserved a commendation from the mayor for my fortitude—to find Lily waiting for me in my living room.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked as soon as I closed the door behind me.

  I was in too much pain to physically or mentally register surprise at her presence or object to it. I registered one thing though. Her pale fine-boned face briefly contorted into an expression I’d seen on it a million times before when confronted by my latest shenanigans.

  Must you always cause trouble, you silly, stubborn child? Tsk-tsk.

  I. Could. Not. Deal. Not today.

  I dumped my winter coat, bag, shoes on the bench in the foyer and tried not to crawl into my bedroom, where I lay down on my side as unjerkily as I could and moaned. I heard Lily tsk-tsking away in the hall. The closet opened and closed, followed by ot
her shuffling sounds before silence reigned. It was too optimistic to think Lily had left the apartment, now that she’d seen me and knew I was alive, though hardly kicking. I’d have to rejoice in the fact that at least she was leaving me alone. Just her presence was a trigger. I resented the fact that she was cleaning up after me like I was a child. I could never do anything right in her eyes.

  I nodded off, my brain and body simply shut down. When I came to, Lily was beside me, brushing my hair off my face.

  “Sit up a bit. You have to eat something.” She rose, picked up a tray from the foot of the bed and placed it close to me. It was laden with hot tomato soup, a couple of slices of toast and a cup of pills—all fancily arranged on flowery china. Naira’s doing, I guessed. There was a single purple orchid in a small flowerpot in one corner of the tray. The purple matched the drapes in my room.

  “Your doting man has left instructions that you finish all the soup and take your pills. Come on, honey. Up you go.”

  Lily helped me sit, stuffing pillows between my back and the padded mauve-colored headboard. I was hungry, so I dug in. Lily sat on one of the armchairs by the windows. The day was dreary and sunless, so there was no need to draw the curtains. I ate the soup and the avocado toasts, relishing whatever magic Naira had concocted in the kitchen. I wondered how her tests were going.

  Lily fidgeted with the South Sea pearls around her neck, the ones Neal had given her for her birthday. She looked nice in them, and in her suede pants and knit pullover. Was she meeting Charlie after or had she met him before? She kept fidgeting in her chair, waiting for me to finish so we could talk.

  I. Could. Not. Deal. If she read out our horoscopes and segued into strange cautionary tales and metaphors, I’d strangle her. Or myself. Or Neal. I got that he didn’t want me to be alone since he was with Naira at the Angels of Mary, but couldn’t he have found someone other than one of the witches of Macbeth to babysit me?