by Saumya Dave
And despite everyone’s warnings about how marriage was hard work and the first year was the most difficult, theirs so far is like the rest of their relationship. Effortless. Fun. Tender. From the beginning, they split housework equally, which was so different from what Suhani saw with Mom and Dad. Zack made it clear that Suhani’s career was as important as his own.
Whenever she’s taking a break at work between writing patient notes or calling insurance companies, she finds herself daydreaming about the day-to-day details of their life more than she thought was possible. Everything about it seems special, even the mundane parts: the buzz of their electric toothbrushes, colorful stacks of Zack’s boxer briefs and bow ties in their tiny dresser (their first non-IKEA piece of furniture), John Legend’s latest album blasting through their speakers, Zack’s natural, citrusy scent on their plush sheets.
Suhani’s thoughts are interrupted by Mom’s rambling. There’s no point in trying to stop her.
She’s on a roll, Suhani’s best friend and co-resident, Vanessa, would say. Vanessa, an only child whose parents got divorced when she was ten years old, loves hearing about the never-ending Joshi family drama. Tell me the latest thing your mom said, she often asks Suhani during hospital rounds. Give me the updates on Natasha’s exciting life.
“She’s never going to learn.” Mom shakes her head in disbelief. “I must have gone wrong somewhere. Really. I’ve always told you that and now I’m convinced of it.”
“You’ve always been convinced of it. And it’s never been true. Natasha is her own person and has the right to make her own decisions.” Suhani ignores the cramping in her feet. Why is she wearing four-inch Louboutin heels tonight? Only chic television doctors can get away with shoes like that. They’re way too painful for real life. She thought they’d be the ideal complement to her Huda Beauty smoky eye makeup and beaded black gown from Rent the Runway. The dress, shoes, and makeup were supposed to make her feel like a modern, sultry Princess Jasmine. Princess Jasmine if she was sleep deprived and had a histrionic mother.
“Okay, I think we need to change the topic,” Suhani says five minutes later.
“What? Why?” Mom’s eyes widen.
“Because, like I told you for the millionth time, we’re at an event where I’m getting an award, you can mingle with Dad’s coworkers, and everyone should take a break from the Natasha situation,” Suhani says. “You know this is the first time Zack and I have been able to even come to this because I had to work in the emergency room during my first and second years of residency.”
Suhani motions to the massive white banner that’s hung across the stage: celebrating our doctors. Every July, Atlanta Memorial Hospital hosts a reception to welcome new interns, give out faculty awards, and share upcoming news about the hospital. For this one night, doctors change out of their scrubs and into tuxes and gowns, drink champagne, and pretend they don’t have to be back at the hospital early the next morning. Dad and Mom have been coming to the event for the past fifteen years, since Dad started working at the Atlanta Memorial psychiatry clinic.
Mom gives a polite wave to one of Dad’s coworkers, a bald old white man who always wears a single gold earring and walks with a sterling silver cane. Mom nicknamed him “Mr. Clean with a limp” years ago. She always provides the most vivid descriptions of people: “that brooding man who doesn’t know how to shave” or “those sensuous women who men like getting massages from” or “that poor boy who always looks like he just licked a lemon.”
Now Mom points to a group of doctors in the corner of the room. “That woman in the front there is going through a divorce. Her son is a med student who wants to go into orthopedic surgery, but nobody knows if he’ll match. And that other woman behind her is a rheumatologist. Maybe you’ve seen her in some of my Instagram posts? She helps so many women at the temple with their arthritis. The man behind her just moved here from China. Someone in one of my WhatsApp groups told me he’s single and apparently a very good cook, so if you know anyone available . . .”
Finally, Suhani says to herself. She’s calming down.
“It’s always so nice, being around all these doctors.” Mom runs a hand over her brown silky hair, which she recently had trimmed to chin length. “So much purpose and satisfaction. Everyone should have that. I always told you that, remember?”
Of course she remembers. Mom first told Suhani that when Suhani was five years old. Mom was boiling chai on the stove for ten guests who were visiting from India that week. Something about her—her furrowed brows, the drop in her shoulders, a heaviness behind her eyes—told Suhani that she was stressed.
“What’s wrong?” she had asked. “Do you need help with the tea?”
“Not at all. This is my job, beta.” Mom shook her head.
“Then why do you look so sad?”
“I’m not sad. I’m just thinking.” Mom kept her eyes on the pot.
“About what?” Suhani asked, oblivious about the far-off look on Mom’s face until she’d revisit the memory years later.
“Just . . . life.” Mom gripped the edge of the counter and turned to Suhani. “If there’s only one thing you ever remember me saying, please let it be to work hard and build a career for yourself, something nobody else can take away from you, so you’re never dependent on anyone else. Anyone. And don’t worry about that being too much for some man. It’s not your job to make a man feel comfortable.”
It took years for Suhani to realize how complicated women’s relationships with ambition and money were. Whenever she told her friends about Mom’s words, they’d often say, “Your mom told you that? Mine would never give that type of advice.”
Just when Suhani thinks they’re finally moving on from Natasha, Mom’s nostrils flare. “I forgot to tell you that on top of all this, Natasha quit her job. Your sister thinks she’s too good to work! Isn’t that nice? To just wake up and decide you’d like to relax forever? Did she tell you?”
“Uh . . .” Suhani puts on her best I-had-no-idea face. Natasha told her she was fired two months ago. I hated that boring job anyway, she said. And now I can work on my stand-up comedy.
“I’m sure she plans to work again soon, maybe in a job that’s more suitable for her,” Suhani says, careful not to give away any details but still provide reassurance. No wonder she went into psychiatry. First-born daughters are live-in therapists for their entire families. “And she’s going through a tough time. We should be supporting her.”
“Please! She’s fine.”
“Karan said she’s been crying and unhappy. What if something is really wrong?”
“Something’s always wrong with Natasha,” Mom says. “That’s no reason to act like a child. She has to grow up and make decisions now—real, adult decisions—instead of just running away at the first hint of responsibility.”
Even though Suhani wonders why Natasha wouldn’t say yes to Karan, she won’t say that out loud. There’s an unspoken agreement between Suhani, Natasha, and Anuj that they’ll never throw each other under the bus to their parents.
“She always has an excuse for everything,” Mom adds.
Suhani shrugs. Mom does have a point. Natasha is always equipped with a reason for why something didn’t go her way. The teacher didn’t like her and gave her a bad grade. The landlord lost her check. Her alarm clock stopped working.
“What she needs is a reality check,” Mom says. “She should go back to Karan, apologize, and make things right. She has no idea how many people she hurts with her rash decisions. How are we even going to explain this to anyone?”
“I don’t think we should be focusing on anyone else’s feelings besides hers. Maybe we should have her see a therapist,” Suhani says, careful to not reveal that Natasha was seeing a therapist until she lost her health insurance.
“Talking to a stranger isn’t going to change anything!” Mom says.
Despite her h
usband and daughter being psychiatrists, Mom still thinks of mental health issues in the same way so many people from India do: as something “you just get over” and “move on with.” Dad used to say that the stigma toward mental illness in India was one of the reasons he went into psychiatry: Everyone told me not to work with “crazy” people, and at some point, that stuck with me. I knew I had to fight for the people who are misunderstood and overlooked.
Mom stares at her tiny cocktail plate. For a second, her face softens. “She has no idea what being depressed even means. She really doesn’t. If only she knew how bad it could really be.”
“What do you mean—”
“Hey!” Zack says as he slides his hands around Suhani’s slim waist. The only benefit of wearing these painful heels is that she can kiss him without stretching her neck. At six-three, he’s exactly a foot taller than her.
When Suhani pulls away from Zack, she catches some of the conservative, silver-haired attending physicians glancing in their direction with puzzled expressions. For a second, she considers pointing them all out to Zack. See? They’re surprised my husband isn’t Indian.
But it will only lead to yet another argument. It’s taken a day for them to get over the most recent one, which started when she told Zack about a patient who needed a psychiatry consult. The patient refused to talk when he saw Suhani but, seconds later, was all words when the white male medical student came in the room. Zack insisted that while it might have been about Suhani’s race, it also might not have been. Not everything is sexist and racist, honey. Suhani stormed out of their bedroom, which, now that she thinks about it, was a pretty anticlimactic move in their tiny apartment. She had to turn right back to grab her phone.
“What were you and Mom talking about?” Zack has a mixture of curiosity and anticipation in his eyes. He can gossip with Mom for hours if given the chance, something Dad and Anuj never do. Zack is the same way with his mom, Barbara, maybe because she and Mom share so many similarities: an emotional warmth that makes strangers want to tell them their darkest secrets, a need to make sure everyone is always fed, a tendency to know everyone’s business in a way that’s more curious than mean-spirited.
“Oh, you know, the usual.” Suhani gives Zack a look that says, Don’t ask anymore.
“I see.” Zack senses Suhani’s tension and hands her a skinny, spicy margarita, her favorite drink. “Sweetie, your colleagues are so fun. Shrinks are definitely the most interesting doctors around.”
“I’m biased, but I have to agree,” Suhani says. Only her husband can effortlessly mingle with a group of doctors who are obsessed with talking about their jobs. On their third date, Zack told Suhani he was always fascinated by doctors and believed this stemmed from his own dad, a family medicine physician who struggled with alcoholism and left Zack, Barbara, and Zack’s sisters when Zack was in elementary school.
“I threw in some therapy terms and they were impressed,” Zack says. “A little bit of ‘she sounds like she has some real self-sabotaging behavior’ and ‘his pathological narcissism seems to cloud his judgment.’ Pulled it off pretty well, if I say so myself.”
Suhani laughs. “Of course you did.”
She’s reminded of how she ended up with a guy who is fun. Fun! During his undergrad years at Dartmouth, Zack Kaplan went to parties, did keg stands, and cheered at sports games, while Suhani spent most of her time at Emory in the library.
“So, what’s going on? Are you getting excited about your award?”
“Eh, sure, not really.” Suhani shrugs. “It’s nice to have my work recognized but not a big deal.”
“Ah, my beautiful and humble wife. She just doesn’t know how to take credit for her accomplishments.”
Taking credit isn’t how Suhani got to this point in her career. Sheer hard work and discipline pull her out of bed every morning. This is how she has always been, obsessed with achieving the next thing, as if at any moment, it can all be taken away from her.
“Hey, I met some of the plastic surgeons and dermatologists. They told me to let them know when I’m ready to make a Botox appointment, which I took as a hint.” Zack points to the faint lines emerging on his forehead.
“I love your face. You don’t need to get anything.” She runs her manicured hand over his sexy two-day stubble and then across the pressed collar of his light gray suit jacket. Zack always knows how to look effortlessly polished.
He leans into her as Mom starts talking to Dad’s former boss.
“I’ve gotta do whatever I need to do to keep up with you. You look so sexy in this dress.” He moves his hand below her waist and gives her butt a quick covert squeeze. “I can’t wait to take it off later.”
“I know,” Suhani says. “It’s been way too long. I’m so worn out by the time I get home.”
She recently read an article about the “normal” number of times newlyweds had sex. Are those people not working? Was nobody else in residency? Or simply exhausted? By the time she’s done with twelve hours at the hospital and forty-five minutes at a Pure Barre class, she barely has enough energy to scarf down a boxed salad.
“Well, let’s see what we can do about that,” Zack whispers. “You’re mine as soon as when we get into our apartment.”
Suhani is about to tell him she’s especially tired today but decides it’s better not to. She has to be the woman Zack had just two months ago on their honeymoon in the Seychelles, when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other for ten days. They spent every waking hour with their limbs intertwined on the plush king-size bed that overlooked the Indian Ocean. The entire trip was a blur of smells: cocoa butter lotion; champagne; sweat; and warm, salty air. Suhani wished she could bottle them all up, preserve them forever.
“Ha, I knew it!” Mom shoves her cell phone into Suhani’s and Zack’s faces. There’s a text message from Anuj: Natasha and I are going to a bar soon. We’ll be back late so don’t wait up.
“Knew what?” Zack asks.
“I knew Natasha would get Anuj to take her to a bar,” Mom says with the satisfaction of a detective solving a crime. “She always pulls him into whatever fun she wants to have. I can’t even remember the last time my sweet Anuj Babu went to a bar when he was at home. And within days of being with his sister, he’s going out drinking.”
“Who cares? He’s in college. You know, around alcohol all the time. If he really wants to drink, he can,” Suhani reminds her. “And they’re both old enough to make their own decisions, right?”
“Your sister might be old enough in age, but that’s where it ends.” Mom scans the room and spots Dad. “I’m telling your dad we need to leave. Now. Before they go out.”
“But they’re starting the award ceremony in a few minutes. Can’t you wait?”
Mom pauses as if to consider this but then glances at her phone again. “We are very proud of you, but we have to get home before your sister takes your brother to get drunk and do God knows what else. She might be fine screwing up her own life, but I’m not going to let her corrupt my innocent baby. You’ll be fine, beta!”
Zack stifles a laugh. Anuj is far from innocent. The entire family knows that he and his roommate at Cornell experimented with all sorts of drugs, but, of course, Mom won’t point that out.
“Okay, well, good luck.” Suhani knows there’s no point in arguing. Throughout her life, Mom and Dad have focused their attention on Natasha. When they were younger, they skipped Suhani’s parent-teacher conferences to meet with Natasha’s guidance counselors. Later, they would spend all of dinner asking Natasha about what she wanted to major in in college or how she would apply for jobs.
Suhani has a mixture of admiration and envy for her sister’s ability to always say, “Fuck this, I’m going to do what I want.” It would be so freeing to live that way. Growing up, aunties told Suhani to “take it easy like your sister” while they told Natasha to “work harder like yo
ur sister.” She wonders now how that constant comparison shaped both of them.
“Just let them go,” Zack whispers as he tilts his head in Mom’s direction. “If they stay, they’ll be worrying the entire time. I’ll send them pictures of you getting your award.”
He has the same don’t-worry look in his eyes that he had on their first date at Sotto Sotto and then again during their wedding ceremony, when both of their moms tried to control every part of their Jewish and Hindu fusion ceremony.
Suhani nods and ignores the tension building in her neck and shoulders. Before she met Zack, this incident would have resulted in her fuming for hours. Maybe she’d even have an imaginary argument with Mom in her head.
Twenty minutes later, Suhani’s co-residents cheer when she gets the award for Resident of the Year. Her program director, Dr. Wilson, discusses her “in-depth research and advocacy for women’s mental health,” along with her “commitment to the field of psychiatry” and “hours mentoring junior doctors.” She avoids the gaze of hundreds of doctors and focuses on a spot in the back of the room with the same concentration she gave Scantron tests in high school. Every time Dr. Wilson mentions her accomplishments, the first thought in her head is: I don’t deserve this. They must have made a mistake. She hears Mom’s voice commanding her to sit up straight and look gracious, then Zack’s telling her she needs to not be afraid to take credit for her work.
“Way to win that and stick it to the man,” Vanessa says when Suhani returns to their table. “We’ve got to stop the boys’ club that is all of medicine.”
“This is a middle finger to the patriarchy!” Suhani raises her plaque into the air.
“Yes, fuck the patriarchy!” Vanessa sticks both of her middle fingers into the air as a show of solidarity. The gesture is an endearing contrast to her ivory Sachin & Babi gown and delicate pearl drop earrings. Her dress has one of those plunging necklines that can only be pulled off by someone who can go braless.
