My Last Love Story

by Falguni Kothari

  Fantastic example of parenthood, I’d have said sarcastically, if I thought it would have any effect on him in this state.

  “No, thanks.” I raised my eyebrows at Zayaan. “What’s your excuse?”

  His smile was no less Halloween at midnight, all uneven teeth and bookish nose. “Whatever we do, we dogather…thoo gether…too feather—fuck.” The poetry-spouting octo-linguist gave up on basic English pronunciation and guffawed.

  As did Nirvaan, so hard that I was jostled off his lap. I couldn’t help but laugh along with them. They looked giddy and happy and ridiculous. I took a page out of their easygoing biographies and adopted the attitude.

  It was easy to forget the world when it was just the three of us in our cottage in Carmel.

  “You guys are crazy,” I said, stifling a yawn and the urge to ruffle the hair on their heads, little or abundant. “Okay, I’m going back to bed. One piece of advice, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “Do…do…do…do…do…do…” Abruptly, Zayaan stood up and loomed over me, swaying slightly, his languid eyes round like dollar coins.

  Nirvaan fizzed with laughter at the theatrics. “Do…do…what, chodu?”

  Sometimes, getting high had this effect. You’d get stuck on a word like a broken record.

  I slapped my hands on Zayaan’s cheeks. Shock therapy might work. It did.

  He stopped saying do and started saying, “Simi…Sim…Sim…”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t leave them like this. Well, I could’ve left Nirvaan. He was used to getting high—and not always medicinally. But it was obvious that this was a new experience for Zayaan. The bitchy part of my soul wanted to take a video and send it to Gulzar Begum with the caption, Friends, drugs, and rock and roll.

  “Up! Both of you,” I ordered, pulling Nirvaan to his feet and wrapping a hand around Zayaan’s bicep.

  Whoa. His muscles were hard as tensile rope, and his skin was as warm as Surat in the summer. It took all I had to keep my palm where it was and not travel up the curve of his shoulder and down the hills and valleys of his succulent chest.

  “Let’s go for a walk.” I herded them down the deck and hoped to God that the fresh air and exercise would help all three of us.

  Our ménage settled into a different kind of rhythm in the following weeks.

  When we were teenagers, the guys had been like parallel lines on a train track—running in the same direction yet maintaining autonomy. I’d squeezed in—first, as a third parallel line and then as the bridge between them, reveling in a sense of purpose when our lines began to curve and bend and merge. Three lines had turned into a single circle with no beginning and no end and no rough edges.

  We didn’t form a circle anymore. Nor could we go back to being parallel lines. I guessed we’d shaped ourselves into a triangle—three distinct lines joined at three sharp-edged points. If you shifted one from its place, the other two would tumble.

  The IVF took over my life. On day three of my period, I had to go into the clinic for an ultrasound and blood work for a reproductive suppression check to make sure my cycle hadn’t gone rogue. My ovarian stimulation, or stim cycle, began the next day.

  From then on, I had to go into the clinic every other day for blood work and an ultrasound, so Dr. Archer could closely monitor my hormone levels and egg growth.

  Twice a day, I’d inject my body with gonadotropins—hormones that would increase egg production and assist with ovulation. At the same time, overstimulation of my system was a no-no, and to counter it, I had to continue injecting the hormone-suppressing drug. The injections were administered subcutaneously into my stomach and were not at all painful, except one of them always burned when I pressed the plunger.

  The guys escorted me to all my appointments. My umbrage on Nirvaan’s radiation day had worked. He hadn’t dared to play his separatist games with me again.

  Zayaan could’ve chosen to stay home or wait in the car or in the lobby of the building. He didn’t. And I didn’t ask him to. Nirvaan certainly wasn’t going to. Our threesome attracted some pretty inquisitive looks—never from any of the professional staff though.

  An incident had happened today that struck me as unbearably funny.

  As Zayaan was on the phone when we drove into the parking lot of the clinic, Nirvaan and I’d gone in first. The receptionist welcomed us as a couple, like usual, and we waited in the reception area for the ultrasound technician to come get us. Several couples, the women pregnant or potentially pregnant, waited with us, and we all exchanged those shy, blushy smiles patients would trade in such waiting rooms.

  A goodly number of the potential dads had to give fresh samples of their semen, and at one point, there was a line outside the room demarcated for the deed. The looks on their faces were priceless when they came back into the reception area and their amused and/or anxious waiting wives.

  I didn’t remember Nirvaan’s state of mind when he’d gone through the same process some years ago. I only knew we’d been filled with hope about so many things then.

  To defuse the awkwardness of the whole act, one or another dad would invariably crack a joke and say, “Trust you did good?” or, “Had fun, did you?” And the room would burst into chuckles.

  And on that note of merriment, Nirvaan and I were ushered into the ultrasound room.

  After my tests, Nirvaan was escorted back into the reception area while I was taken into another room for my scheduled acupuncture session. I relaxed on a massage bed for forty-five minutes with needles stabbed into my forehead, stomach, and feet to open my chi and allow for better blood flow through my body, especially my uterus. It was calming with scented candles lighting the room and soft rainy music filling the air. Once the needles were off, the acupuncturist massaged balm into my skin and sent me on my way. This was the only part of my IVF ritual I thoroughly enjoyed.

  The guys waited for me by the coffee machine in the reception area, talking to a couple of the other men. I reached them, smiling and relaxed from the acupuncture.

  As I slipped my hand in Nirvaan’s and he bent to kiss my lips, one of the guys said, “Ah, good to see you again. Oh—”

  It took me a moment to recognize the man. It was the little girl’s dad from the other day, the one who’d seen me with Zayaan and assumed we were a couple.

  To say a pin dropped around us was an understatement. The man—his name was Ryan, as I found out—stared at me and then at my hand clasped in Nirvaan’s with his mouth agape. He eyed Nirvaan, side-eyed Zayaan, and returned his bemused gaze back to me.

  I shouldn’t have laughed. But I was loose, body and mind, from my spa treatment. At the same time, I was itchy and wound up because of the ultrasound, which wasn’t a great experience when your uterus was swollen with hormones. Laughter was a great de-stressor. I began wheezing. Nirvaan joined in only seconds later, but Zayaan and Ryan didn’t. They wouldn’t even meet our eyes.

  Some of the people in the waiting area were on the same stim cycle as me and had been watching us for days, clearly wondering what was going on. Was I with this guy or that guy or both?

  I’d never understood why civilized society tolerated, even accepted as human nature, extramarital affairs or rampant promiscuity as long as it was hushed and tacked on by appropriate amounts of remorse, but it wasn’t okay for three people to openly love each other.

  That was our naked truth. The three of us loved each other—without reservation, without malice. I wanted to know why it was wrong. Why were we kinky and deviant and different for accepting what was in our hearts and not trying to fit the mold? Life was enough trouble without shaming yourself and denying your nature, wasn’t it?

  The debate raged on into the evening.

  “The same argument won’t work from the other end of the spectrum,” said Zayaan, throwing two candies into the ante pot.

  It was poker night—in other words, stay-at-home night. We’d been out practically every evening for the past week, and I was ready for some downti
me where I wouldn’t need to dress up and wear high heels. I chilled in my pajamas, never mind that I looked three months pregnant already.

  The fertility drugs were giving me terrible gas. Tonight was especially bad, and I blamed it on our dinner of vegetarian sizzlers—too much cabbage and broccoli. I kept moving out of range to relieve myself, but I was up to the point of not caring whether the guys heard me or not. It wasn’t as if they’d care if I did something so totally organic in front of them. They did it in front of me and without apology all the time. But ladies didn’t pass gas in public, was one of my mother’s etiquette rules.

  “You wouldn’t want a serial killer to use that justification, would you? ‘It’s my nature to kill, and I can’t control it,’” Zayaan pointed out.

  “I hate it when you make sense.” I wrinkled my large nose at him.

  “On the other hand,” said Nirvaan, upping the ante with four candies for the second blind round, “yes, we should control the worst parts of ourselves, but why do we need to control the best? Aren’t humans supposed to strive for and achieve the best within themselves?”

  I flipped my cards face up—an ace and two tens—and beamed. “Exactly. That is why I married you and not him,” I exclaimed unthinkingly. I froze and then scrambled about in my head for some excuse and... Oh, to hell with pussyfooting around this topic. I gave Nirvaan an impudent grin. “Great minds, and all that jazz,” I said instead.

  “That is also why I married you and not him,” Nirvaan deadpanned, flipping his own cards face up.

  I burst out laughing.

  Zayaan, as usual, mumbled something rude, unamused to be the brunt of our jokes and his rotten luck at poker. I scanned the cards. Nirvaan had a king and two tens. Zayaan had the worst cards of the game. I was the candy queen.

  Woot! I did a tiny twerk while sitting down.

  “Let’s play strip poker,” suggested Nirvaan.

  “Oh no.” I shook my head at my husband. “Not when I’m bloated and ugly.”

  Nirvaan argued that I wasn’t bloated or ugly. Zayaan chimed in. I refused to thaw. Somehow, the strip got stripped from poker, and suddenly, Nirvaan was all for skinny-dipping.

  “We’ve never done that,” he wheedled. “It’s on the Titanic Wish List.”

  “You’ve never skinny-dipped?” I called bullshit, scooting back in the lounger and crossing my arms over my stomach. For heaven’s sake, I hadn’t even shaved my legs since the birthday bash. Ugh. I was a hairy-legged farter. I was practically a guy.

  “I have many times,” he proudly claimed. “But you haven’t.” He waggled his brows, daring me.

  Zayaan collected the cards and began shuffling the deck like a pro. “She has. With me,” he said without looking up.

  The statement left Nirvaan momentarily speechless, and I had to laugh at his gobsmacked expression.

  “You’re not the only daredevil here, you know. He’s joking though. We went dipping, not skinny-dipping. We had underwear on, top and bottoms. Besides, I’ve gone real skinny-dipping with you. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten Ibiza?”

  A few years ago, during a holiday in the Balearic Islands, Nirvaan and I had spent a day on a nudist beach. In most beaches in Spain, certainly most around the Mediterranean, nudity was commonplace, but Aigüa Blanques was an official nude beach.

  It had been an edifying experience, to be sure, to come to the realization that whether a woman was fully covered, half-covered, or stark naked, only a sick man would look at her in judgment and think of her as fair game. I would not say lust because I loved it when my husband lusted after me. I loved it when Zayaan’s heated gaze warmed me in places gone cold.

  “That was daytime. This will be night-dipping,” Nirvaan quipped, swiftly recovering from Zayaan’s admission.

  Thinking of Aigüa Blanques heated me up in cold places, too. Sex had still been on the table back in Ibiza.

  I snorted. “You, my honeybun, will say anything to get your way.”

  In most things, Nirvaan was like a bulldozer. He’d just steamroll your objections flat. Yet when it came to our sex life and my inhibitions, I didn’t recall a single moment when he’d forced me to do something against my will. He’d taken time to change my mind. He’d persuaded me to his way of thinking with such tender nudges that I hadn’t felt pressured. Most of the time, I hadn’t even known I’d given in until it was done, like the nudist beach. Given in or opened up to possibility? I wondered now.

  “Stop trying to convince her, chodu. There’s a time for debate and a time for action.” Zayaan put the deck in its box and set it aside.

  I stretched luxuriously. “Finally, someone’s on my side. But don’t let me stop you. In fact, I insist you check it off the list without me. I’ll be the designated videographer for the event.”

  If I’d thought Zayaan was on my side, I was so wrong. Too late, I noticed the unholy gleam in his eyes. And before I could even think to shut my own, they both leaped to their feet and stripped naked. They’d only been wearing swimming trunks, so it wasn’t even some elongated striptease that I could’ve taken as a warning and looked away. One yank, and there they were, bare as the moment they were born.

  “Oh my God,” I squeaked, burying my face in my hands. I desperately wanted to peek through my fingers, but I guessed I was a chicken tonight.

  I shrieked again as Zayaan plucked me from my seat and threw me over his shoulder without even grunting while Nirvaan shouted encouragements.

  I kept my eyes squeezed shut. “What is this? A reenactment of the barbarian and the captive? Put. Me. Down.”

  He didn’t, of course. I felt like a sack of potatoes as he ran down the beach with me draped over his shoulder. Nirvaan whooped and hollered by our side. I opened one eye and caught a glimpse of his moonlit buttocks as he raced ahead of us and dived into the ocean.

  Zayaan threw me in a second later.

  The fun and games provided an asylum for the secrets we kept from each other.

  We became the kind of people I’d always abhorred and hoped we’d never become. On the surface, we smiled and teased and laughed, but if we peeled the shine away, our demons would come out and play.

  Trips to the fertility clinic or the hospice for Nirvaan’s tests and consultations became a daily afternoon ritual. The radiosurgery had gone well. The tumor had shrunk considerably, and it was a good bet it would keep shrinking. But Nirvaan’s headaches had become frequent, and the doctors wanted to make sure no new tumors had formed anywhere. They changed the dosages of his medications, and he became sluggish and irritable. It wasn’t an avatar of Nirvaan’s I hadn’t seen before, but my own hormone inductions made me far less sympathetic to his plight this time.

  It seemed Zayaan did have a function in this house, besides being a thorn in my side.

  My stimulation cycle was at its peak, and the hardest parts of the IVF process were about to start. I’d had an ultrasound the previous day to check if my eggs were ready to be harvested. Dr. Archer had supplied me with enough information, including live demos and instructional podcasts, that I felt ready to open up a fertility consultation business.

  “You’re up for the HCG shot tomorrow, honey. Don’t worry. It’s not as bad as it looks. Just remember to relax and breathe.” Martha had tried to soothe me with some insider tips and motherly advice yesterday.

  Human chorionic gonadotropin was an oil-based hormone meant to fool my reproductive system into thinking it was ready to ovulate. Essentially, it would artificially trigger the production of progesterone in the uterus and encourage the stimulated follicles to detach and attach to its lining.

  I’d have laughed at the ironies of my current life—where not only me, but also my organs were in a pretend state. But even laughing had become uncomfortable these days. My ovaries were fairly blooming with eggs, and my lower abdomen felt like a hot-air balloon about to take flight.

  “One of you needs to help me with this,” I said, carefully preparing the trigger shot as I’d been instructed.


  Attach the sterile needle to the plunger. Swab the drug vial with alcohol. Unscrew the needle cap. For a few moments, gaze in horror at the one-and-a-half-inch needle about to be inserted into my hip/butt area.

  The HCG trigger was an intramuscular shot, meaning the drug had to be released into my muscles and not my belly fat, as with the fertility drugs. I hadn’t needed help with those injections, and after the first stomach stab, I hadn’t even been nervy much.

  When I looked up with the freshly prepared syringe in my hand, I found both Nirvaan and Zayaan staring at me in shock.

  I took a deep breath and blew it out, trying to relax my body. “It’s simple. Just stick this in somewhere within the circle Martha’s marked on my muffin-top area and slowly press the plunger.” I stood up from the kitchen stool and held out the injection. “Oh, and as in the demo, pull back the plunger a bit first. If you see blood, then you’ve hit a capillary or something. Take the needle out, and stab it somewhere else.”

  “Stop saying stab…stick…blood and—fuck, I can’t do it,” said Nirvaan, shaking his head. “I can’t do it. My hands are shaking.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Zayaan, daring him to be brave. He looked at the syringe with acute distaste.

  “Fine, wussies,” I said, shaking my head at the pair of chickens. “They showed me how to do this on my own. It’s awkward, and I might hurt myself, but I can do it. Or I can inject it into my thigh, which they say is bloody painful.”

  Zayaan still looked constipated but took the injection from my hand. I turned around and leaned against the kitchen counter, sticking my butt out. I pulled my yoga pants down a couple of inches to reveal a smiley face. Martha had a great sense of humor.

  Nirvaan’s automatic, “Woohoo! Striptease,” sounded out of place and flat. He wanted all the fun and none of the pain. Typical.

  “I think you should lie down,” said Zayaan. He’d snatched a couple of alcohol swabs from the injection kit, and he was already moving toward the sofa.

  I followed him. Nirvaan followed me. I lay on my stomach on the sofa, my head turned toward the open patio doors. The ocean sang its daily song. I focused on the call of the waves, the seagulls, the dogs barking close by, the tinkling chimes on the deck, the susurrating trees.