by Saumya Dave
Simran rearranges the books that she knocked onto the floor last night: Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Awakening, This Side of Paradise, and some yellowing Judy Blume titles.
She looks around her one-bedroom apartment. It’s small even by New York standards. But it’s become the perfect place to be when she doesn’t want to socialize with people, when Netflix, flannel pajamas, and a fluffy blanket are all she needs. The living room only fits one love seat. Her wooden coffee table is a discard from her parents’ basement. She shoved a tiny white IKEA desk against the window. Framed postcards from the Met are hung on the walls.
Her parents are paying for her rent and tuition until she graduates. In a matter of months, she’ll have to make sure she has some kind of income.
Stop dwelling, Simran.
She lowers the blinds in her bedroom and living room. She needs darkness. She stumbles into the kitchen and plugs in the coffeepot. It starts to gurgle.
“Nani, I’m still not clear about why you can’t come to the party. What exactly did the doctor say was wrong?”
“I haven’t been feeling well for the past week. Nothing serious. He just wants me to be cautious. All that time in the air can be dangerous for someone my age, flying alone, trapped with everyone’s germs.”
“But you’ve done that plenty of times. Why is this any different?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does. You never tell us if anything is going on with you.”
“Because I don’t want you to be concerned about me.” Simran hears Nani turning down the volume of a Fair and Lovely commercial, the kind that used to convince she and her friends that they could be hot if their complexions were ten shades lighter. She wonders how much money and time Indian women have spent in pursuit of fairness.
“You have your own life,” Nani says. “Your brother’s new marriage. Your wedding. Your parents. And I’m fine. More than fine. I couldn’t ask for anything else. Everything’s perfect.”
“But it won’t be the same without you,” Simran says.
Simran takes out a Styrofoam bowl and plastic spoon for cereal. Anything to do fewer dishes. Her future mother-in-law would be so proud.
“I know. I wish I could be there. And no, not just because I wanted to dance to rap songs that I can’t listen to here,” she says, referring to her newfound love for American hip-hop or, specifically, to “that talented artist named Cardi B.”
Simran writes a mental note to herself: Look forward to becoming an old lady so I can say whatever I want and it can’t be held against me.
“But you’re okay? In general? How is everything going with the girls at school?”
Nani goes to the all-girls school near her house every afternoon to read stories to the students about the Indian goddesses. Some of the teachers at the school found her ideas too “progressive” and stopped her from coming during recess, so now she goes after the last class.
“Yes,” she says. “Just, you know, the same nonsense from the principal but the girls themselves are doing well. I think they’re learning a lot. I never feel as though there’s enough time with them, but everything has limits. It’s more than I could do when I was married, so I can’t complain.”
She chuckles, and her voice seems lighter than usual. Simran thinks back to what both she and her mother have noticed over the past month with Nani. Unanswered phone calls. Her being out of the house more. The lightened mood.
“Oh my god,” Simran says, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“What?!”
“Sorry, you just sound so zen.” She actually wants to tell Nani that she sounds high. “And you’ve been distracted. Tough to reach. Something’s going on.”
“And you think it has to do with a man? Please, Simi. You know I loved your nana very much, but men can’t take care of themselves. They need someone picking up after them, cooking for them, everything. They’re babies. I paid my respects as a widow in the way I was supposed to. What’s the phrase? Been there, done that.”
“Okay, I was wrong. Sorry,” Simran says.
“It’s fine. Just fine,” she says, in a way that’s not fine at all. “Anyway, enough about me. How is Kunal?”
“Okay.” Simran leans against the kitchen counter and splays her toes on the cool, smooth tile. “I think we should take a break from wedding planning.”
“What?” Simran can see Nani sitting up, placing a wrinkled palm over her mouth. “What break? What does that even mean?”
“It means that I wanted us to get through this smoothly, and I know he did, too. But things aren’t going the way I thought they would. And we need to change the way we’re thinking; otherwise, this process is going to ruin us. So maybe taking a step back from wedding planning would be helpful. I mean, we still have about a year until our actual wedding date, so there’s time. . . .”
She doesn’t tell Nani the rest of what she’s thinking. Maybe taking a break from them would be helpful. She can’t let herself complete that thought even in her own mind.
But Nani reads through Simran’s words. “Simi, running away isn’t the answer. Nobody said this would be easy. And you’ve been . . . friends for so many years.” (Nani still can’t say the words “boyfriend,” “girlfriend,” or “dating.”)
“That’s the thing, though. We’ve been with each other for such a long time, and practically grew up together. And through each new phase, we just kept going and going and going. It’s as though I’ve dated five different guys along the way because of how much we’ve both been through. But now, with the wedding, all these things are coming out from both of us that we didn’t expect. And everything is a mess. Things just don’t feel . . . right.”
“So? You think the answer is to just walk away? When your wedding is in almost one year?” Nani asks.
“It’s not walking away at all. It’s just taking a second to think. He and I really need to talk. We have so many things to discuss, really discuss. There are things that we need to establish. And things we both have to work on. I don’t want to be quiet or passive about what doesn’t feel right in my life. And if putting off our wedding date for sometime, for a while, will be better for us in the long run, then we should do it.”
Simran opens a bottle of Aleve and shuffles the tiny blue pills among her fingers. She imagines herself going to Kunal’s StuyTown apartment right now, walking up the five flights of narrow stairs, and telling him about what happened with Neil.
“Putting off your wedding date? Please tell me your mom doesn’t know about this,” Nani says.
“No. There’s no way I’d tell her right now. She’s been so stressed lately, even more than usual.”
“She’s dealing with a lot. You all are. I know there were some things she wanted to talk to you about soon.”
“Well, she isn’t telling me anything.”
“Do you think she’s happy? She constantly seems distracted. Maybe she’s always been that way and I never noticed.”
When Simran thinks of her mother, she has a vision of her cooking rotlis at four a.m. for her dad’s family. Every day the same combination of rushing, folding, tucking, pleasing emerging from the pliable contours of her memory.
“She needs to take it easy for once,” Nani says, as if reading Simran’s mind. “Not that I can tell her that. She takes anything I say so personally.”
“Same here.”
Mom often says Simran should have been Nani’s daughter. Nani was struggling with major depressive disorder when Simran was born. She couldn’t sleep at night, so Nani would wrap her in a hand-embroidered Indian blanket and walk through their house for hours. There’s a picture of two-month-old Simran screaming while Nani clutches her, a proud smile stretched across her face.
“I know how overwhelming it is to have your husband’s family around all the time. When you
have to constantly be diplomatic, put on a polite face, it changes you over time,” Nani says. “How could it not? Why else are the women in India, the ones in joint family households, so exhausted? You’ll see, when you and Kunal are married, even though you don’t have to deal with the same things we did, things will be different. You’ll feel different.”
“It seems like that’s just what marriage does,” Simran whispers, wondering if there’s a part of yourself you simply have to give up before joining someone else.
When Simran was younger, she and her female cousins would fast for one week a year in the hopes of finding a good husband. The idea never made sense to her, the idea that a woman had to sustain on less in the present to gain more in the future.
“I should get going,” Nani says. “And remember, don’t worry about anything. I’m fine. And everything’s going to work out.”
“Right. I know that,” Simran say, unsure which one of them she’s trying to convince.
* * *
— —
Cognitive dissonance: the discomfort and mental stress experienced by someone who has contradictory beliefs at the same time. Simran’s professor writes the words on the whiteboard in bulbous, cursive letters that seem to dance.
“Individuals want their expectations to align with their reality,” Doctor Griffin explains. “In the right position, anyone can justify his or her behavior. This is nothing more than a defense mechanism to preserve one’s identity.”
After class, Simran sits in the lab and soaks in the sound of fingers diligently hitting keys. Undistracted, focused fingers. She’s surrounded by people who are compassionate, insightful, and willing to do whatever it takes to become therapists. She wishes she could be like them. Instead, she thinks about the dumbest things. Her mind wanders like it’s a self-made Wikipedia maze.
She pushes her chair back and walks down the hallway, arriving ten minutes early for her meeting with Dr. Bond.
She takes a deep breath. Despite the multiple times she’s rehearsed the words in her bathroom mirror, she needs to muster up this final push of courage. Spit it out, Simran. Just spit it out.
“Do you know why I wanted to meet?” she asks Dr. Bond after she’s sat down and declined a cup of Earl Grey.
He nods. “So you can tell me why you missed the deadline for, well, everything and see what we can do about it. I have no idea whether you’ve even prepared an application for a job or PhD.”
When Simran doesn’t answer, he says, “What exactly is the problem, Simran? It’s as though I just can’t get through to you. You know a master’s in psychology isn’t enough these days to get a good job, yet, you still do nothing about your situation. You’re about to start the summer semester. Your last one. And if you’re still planning to graduate at the beginning of the fall, these things should already be figured out.”
She clears her throat and steadies her hands. This conversation has to happen. Now. “I know. I’ve tried to do what it takes, I really have, but there’s a disconnect. And it’s been there for longer than I’ve wanted to admit. That’s why I had to meet with you.”
She can’t pinpoint any particular emotion on his face. He doesn’t appear angry or surprised or even irritated.
She wishes he’d just yell at her. She glances at a picture of him with his kids at the Jersey Shore, with red buckets and a sandcastle in the background. Maybe this is how he disciplines them, by allowing them to wallow in their own disappointment. A direct contrast to how Indian parents freely express their dismay.
“I want to tell you a story,” Dr. Bond says. “There was a student here six or seven years ago. Smart. Charismatic. The kind people opened up to and leaned on. A lot like you. She had so much potential. But for some reason, she kept doubting herself. That led to her not completing her assignments on time or speaking up in class. She just never gave it her all. And of course, then some faculty members told her she wasn’t cut out for this. They spoke about her to others, discussed the way she was perpetually at the bottom. Hopeless. Not good enough.”
“The way they’ve said that about me?” Simran asks, picturing everyone talking about her in the stuffy faculty lounge that always smells like bread.
Dr. Bond doesn’t answer her question, which is an answer on its own. “After some time, it became clear that her heart just wasn’t in it.”
She doesn’t look at him. She can’t. She never thought she would become that type of student. That type of person. She pictures herself drifting from the present to the future like a dandelion seed.
Dr. Bond continues. “It wasn’t because she couldn’t, which is what everyone else and she thought, but rather, because she wouldn’t. I realized that she had come straight from college, just like you. Had never seen anything outside the classroom.”
She has no idea how she’d be outside a school building. This place has been her home for the last year and a half. She’s stepped in and out of these doors for various reasons, and she knows everything there is to know: which water fountain has the strongest blast, what time the coffee stand on the first floor runs out of cream, when the lounge is empty and peaceful.
“What happened to her?” Simran asks.
“She took a leave of absence—after a lot of paperwork—worked in the outside world for a little bit, and came back refreshed. Now she’s one of the top child therapists in Manhattan.”
He nods at her. Simran nods her head back to mirror his gesture, so he thinks she agrees with what he’s saying.
“Just like that?” she asks, picturing this girl and the plot points in her happily-ever-after career story.
Dr. Bond shrugs. “She needed to get away to realize what she was missing. And perhaps it would do you well to engage in some, what do you call it? soul-searching.”
Soul-searching. The phrase conjures up images of vast beaches, solitary bus rides through western Europe, or days filled with luxury carbohydrates and literature, like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love. What Simran really needs is a vacation from her life.
“Look,” he says. “We can try and work around you missing the deadline. I’m going to be honest and tell you, this type of setback might change your graduation date, but there’s always a way if you’re willing to make it work.”
Simran takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut. “You’re right.”
He nods. “Okay. Then let’s ju—”
“I’m not going to do it,” she blurts. “Any of it. At all.”
There. The words she rehearsed all morning. As soon as they escape, their truth becomes palpable. She can’t be the type of person who lives from happy hour to happy hour, dreads Monday mornings, and counts down the years until retirement.
“What does that mean, Simran? Do you not see yourself as a therapist?”
Simran settles on the image she used to have of her future self: wearing a chic black dress and leaning back in a light gray armchair as she listened to a variety of people tell her their darkest secrets.
“I used to, but now I don’t. I’ve realized that the part of therapy that excited me the most was being able to listen to other people’s stories. But now I know that I also want to share things I’ve learned from others. And explore their lives and issues in a way that’s not so clinical. This”—she points around the office—“isn’t the right fit for me. It’s just not working. It hasn’t been for a while. And I should have done this a long time ago.”
Dr. Bond leans back in his chair and rubs his forehead. This is harder than she thought it would be.
Although a part of Simran wants to disappear, a larger part of her feels a sense of relief. Is this what it’s like to be honest with someone? With herself?
She tells Dr. Bond it’s not his fault. It’s all hers. It’s her unhealthy relationship with achievement. The parasitic nature of expectations. The way she’s somehow become okay with slipping tasteless, poison
ous lies into her coffee.
Simran sighs. “You have every reason to be upset with me.”
He folds his hands together and looks at her. “You came here to get an education for you, not me. The last thing I’d ever want for you is to be here out of obligation. That’s not fair to anybody, especially you.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says, biting her bottom lip. She will not cry. “I don’t know what’s been wrong with me lately. Or maybe this was always an issue and I’m only facing it now. But either way, this is the right choice. I know it is.”
“Have you thought about what else you could do as a career?”
“No . . . maybe I could be . . . a journalist,” she says, her voice trailing off as she pictures her unfinished articles.
“Do you have connections in the field? Opportunities in mind?”
“No.” She shakes her head. “But I can start learning what it even means to be a journalist. And maybe in the meantime, I’ll find a job somewhere. I guess this is really the first time, ever, that I don’t have a plan.”
I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a plan. I don’t have a plan.
He uncaps a black Montblanc pen. “And you’re sure you aren’t deciding this because of other shifts in your life?”
Simran gives him a swift nod but considers his question on the inside. Is anyone ever entirely sure when they decide to let go of something big?
“Whether or not this is influenced by the other shifts, I know this is what I need to do.”
She stays in Dr. Bond’s office for over an hour, and they dissect her feelings behind why she picked psychology, why it isn’t the right choice. Thattagirl, Simran. End your time here like a real therapy patient.
“Your parents will understand one day,” he says at the end.
Yeah, right. For her entire life, she’s been taught that professional success equated to acceptance. It told their community that her parents had done well, that she was worthy of respect. Maybe all of that should be enough for her. She almost wants to call her parents and tell them how much she loves them and still wants to make them proud.
