My Last Love Story

by Falguni Kothari

  I hadn’t discussed the failed IVF with my husband at all. I’d gone to the clinic for my blood test, and when it had come back negative, I’d told Dr. Archer and Nirvaan that I never wanted to go through it again. I didn’t have the strength. End of discussion.

  I supposed it was Nikita and Armaan who’d brought children back on Nirvaan’s mind. They were sweet kids but a handful, and I was tired and petulant from constantly picking up after them. Nisha was used to an untidy, kid-friendly house. I wasn’t.

  On their second afternoon in Carmel, the kids, Zayaan, and Nisha’s quiet and stalwart husband, Aarav, were off Jet Skiing, leaving the odd triangle of Nirvaan, Nisha, and me behind. I had just finished setting the living room to rights when Nisha told me I shouldn’t have bothered.

  “It’s just going to get littered with toys again. You should leave the cleaning for the evening when they are tired and will fall into bed,” she said as she brewed a pot of tea for herself, trailing a different kind of mess around the stove and sink in her wake.

  Of course, it aggravated me that she’d said this after she’d seen me slop it up for the past half an hour. Leaving aggravation aside, did she not see that if I didn’t bother to clean up, her brother, who couldn’t see as well anymore, might trip over the toys and land on his head on one of them? Was she stupid? I also didn’t mention the potential of spreadable infection in an unhygienic house and that we couldn’t afford even one dirty dish lying in the sink, attracting germs that might or might not attack Nirvaan’s compromised immune system. I held my tongue in all ways. She was Nirvaan’s sister and I didn’t want to fight with her.

  But when Nirvaan said, “You’ll need to show Simi how to be a mother, Nish,” I just lost it.

  What did he think I’d been to him for the past five years, for I sure as heck hadn’t been his wife? I realized he might have said it in jest, but I was in no mood for pokes or jokes.

  “I don’t need to be shown any such thing. Picking up after you has taught me well. And, for the record, I’m never having children, Nirvaan.” There. It was out in the open. The peek he wanted into my heart wasn’t so pretty, was it?

  “Oh? The IVF didn’t work?” asked Nisha, as if she hadn’t known, as if she couldn’t see that I wasn’t pregnant. Why did she hate me so much?

  She came to sit on the sofa, sipping her tea, while Nirvaan and I faced each other down across the coffee table.

  I was on my knees, checking under the sofa for wayward toys. Nirvaan was sprawled on the sofa opposite me. I waited for Nisha to bring up the trust fund that had been set aside for the child and me—child being the operative word. I hadn’t asked Nirvaan if he’d sold Bapuji’s land. I didn’t want to know. I planned to refuse any and all financial help from his family once he…when Nirvaan was no more.

  Nisha didn’t bring it up. Instead, she said, “I think you need to try two or three times before an IVF works.”

  Nirvaan pounced on that immediately. “Exactly. They said the same thing at the clinic. We should try again.”

  “No, we shouldn’t,” I said firmly. “You said it was up to me. And I’ve made up my mind.”

  Needless to say, Nirvaan didn’t appreciate my honesty so much. And he flayed me with his meanness. “It’s probably your negative attitude that made you miscarry. You never wanted our baby.”

  “It’s not called a miscarriage if the zygote didn’t attach to my uterus at all!” I shouted, outraged that he’d say such a vile thing to me.

  I would’ve stopped there, but Nirvaan made an exceedingly distasteful comment next.

  “Oh, baby, baby. Why yo womb reject my love, baby?” he rapped like a punk, hiding an accusation behind a joke. Everything was reduced to a joke or an order with him.

  His words made my heart bleed, and I wanted to hurt him back.

  “Maybe it was your deficient genes that made an imperfect, chromosomally abnormal zygote. Maybe it’s your sperm that can’t do its job properly, so stop making me the villain when it’s your own inadequacies that have failed you.” Oh God, I hurt him.

  An hour later, when the jet riders came back home, we were still fighting. The general consensus was that I needed a break. I’d wound myself too tight. Nisha suggested I go visit my brother while she was in Carmel.

  “I’ll hold the fort down here, so don’t worry,” she offered generously.

  I dug my heels in. I would not be separated from Nirvaan. What if something happened to him while I was gone? What if I never got to fight with him again?

  I refused to go until Nirvaan made me.

  “We both need a break, Simi. It’ll do us good,” he said, making me bleed even more. He was giving up on me. He couldn’t stand me anymore.

  “Fine, I’ll go. But a day is plenty to clear our heads,” I said.

  The next morning, I gave my husband a Mean Girl wave before driving up to San Jose. I was adamant to be back by nightfall the next day.

  Let me be the first to admit that the break had been a great idea. I’d wound myself too tight in the last few months.

  Sarvar’s townhouse was as spotless as mine, so I had no need to run about, brandishing a vacuum hose. I didn’t need to cook as we ate out mostly. And it was the weekend, so Sarvar devoted all his time into knocking sense into me.

  “I was relieved when the IVF failed,” I confessed to my brother. “I don’t want a child, so why do I feel so upset?”

  We were having dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant, which always struck me as incongruous. If you thought about it for a minute, a country known for poverty and mass deaths of its citizens by starvation had its own food culture. I guessed it was a God-has-a-dark-sense-of-humor type of thing.

  “I like this restaurant. Ethiopians might starve, but their cuisine flourishes on other continents,” I said, pushing the platter of food toward Sarvar.

  Ethiopians shared their meals. They dug their fingers into a common platter and ate it together, like certain sects of Muslims. Like Zayaan’s family had done on special occasions. I’d shared the thaal, the common platter, with them once. I’d loved the intimacy of the act, the laughter that had ensued when hands bumped into each other as you accidentally reached for the same food.

  “I feel awful about the failed in vitro. That I’ve failed Nirvaan, failed to accomplish the one thing he asked of me.” I was grieving for a baby I hadn’t wanted. I took a deep breath, counted to ten. I was grieving for a life that was no longer mine. “I don’t want to want Zayaan. I don’t want him. I can’t have him. So, why can’t I stop thinking about him? Stop wanting him?”

  It didn’t matter that Nirvaan had given his blessing. It was wrong to want Zayaan. It felt wrong.

  Sarvar swirled his glass of wine and took a sip. “Is it wrong because of what people will say, or do you feel you’re being unfaithful to Nirvaan?”

  “Either. Both. Khodai, I don’t know.” I sat back in my chair with a heavy sigh. I couldn’t seem to gather the energy to go into the restroom to wash my hands. I’d eaten with my fingers, desi-style. “I never felt guilty for wanting them both before. I didn’t care what the world would make of it. I’d wanted them both, and I went after what I’d wanted.”

  It had been more than some childish want or daring act. More than love even. I had been hurting when I met the guys. The loss of a parent could destroy you. Being an orphan changed you. I’d been so close to my mother. To fill her void, I’d latched on to the guys like a puppy to a teat. I’d grown closer to Zayaan because we’d both been in Surat—accessible at any time. And if I was being completely honest, Zayaan and I’d connected in a way that Nirvaan and I never had, never did. If I allowed that connection to form again, would it mean I’d used Nirvaan simply as a means to an end? That I’d trapped him with my lies and then killed him?

  The nest of vipers in my belly hissed at me. I felt sick.

  “Simeen, look at me, love,” Sarvar’s quiet request broke through my thoughts.

  I grimaced because I knew what he was going to
say. He’d been telling me the same thing for years.

  “Talk to Nirvaan. You know you must come clean about all of it. It’s the only way you’ll stop feeling like shit.”

  When you’d fashioned your whole life around a secret, it wasn’t so easy to give it up.

  Every day, I made excuses for not baring my soul to my husband. First, there was Nisha and her brood. Then, my in-laws came to stay. How could I disrupt their family time by monopolizing Nirvaan? This was not a conversation we could have in passing. I needed time with him. Time alone with him to explain, to defend my actions, and to beg for his forgiveness.

  Two days after my in-laws and Nisha had left, the vipers continued to writhe. I found a million things to keep us busy, so I wouldn’t have to tell him the truth.

  We spent the day at a museum, looking at the vanished world of the Mayans. Some of the artifacts predated the birth of Zarathustra himself. I couldn’t help but compare the time-tested stone figures—now chipped and ravaged but still there—to my husband. I wondered why God hadn’t given stone a soul but had given fragile man one.

  On our way home, Nirvaan asked Zayaan to pull the Jeep into a roadside viewpoint on a cliff. We got off to take in the vista of water and sky, cliffs and beach. All familiar. All similar. A thousand other places across the world had the same view, but it didn’t stop us from admiring it. I took pictures of a bunch of surfers riding five- to six-foot waves with pizzazz but not a lot of skill.

  “I know Nirvaan surfed in his college days at Malibu beach,” I said, training the camera on the guys now. “Have you?”

  Zayaan shook his head. “Have you?”

  I shook my head, feeling a smile blooming on my lips.

  “You guys should,” said Nirvaan. “If you can keep yourself on the board, riding the waves feels glorious. But if you slip, its like you’re Pinocchio being swallowed up by a whale of a wave.”

  He slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans that were much too big on him now. He’d gone down two sizes, and he wouldn’t let me buy him new clothes. I didn’t want to think about why.

  “Want to try it, baby?” he asked, half-heartedly.

  “There are some things strictly meant for my starstruck observation…like surfing and Stephen Amell’s abs,” I replied, trying to lift Nirvaan’s increasingly pensive mood. Something was bugging him since morning.

  He smirked, as I’d known he would. He pulled me flush against him, and together, we watched surfer after surfer try to break a wave. Only some managed. And when it happened, we hooted and catcalled, and the guys whistled in appreciation.

  “I’m going to miss this,” Nirvaan murmured. He tilted his head to the sky and inhaled in a long breath. “Do you think I’ll be able to see all of this from up there?”

  I sharply turned my head to look at my husband, but the wind whipped my hair into my face. Suddenly, I didn’t want to smooth it away, scared of what I’d see on his face. I did it anyway—not because I was brave, but because I was determined to capture every one of his expressions. I didn’t remember my parents’ faces anymore, not fully, and I had such few pictures of them. I would remember Nirvaan’s face forever.

  He seemed calm, happy even, gazing at the world. The sockets around his eyes were prominent, despite its steroid puffiness—because of the angle of his head or weight loss, I didn’t know. He had a rash of acne along his bony underjaw. I stretched up to kiss his cheek.

  “Fuck, I’m going to miss this life. Miss my wife. Miss this chodu, too.” He elbowed Zayaan in the stomach, making him grunt. “Miss the starry skies and seething oceans…the first hissing flavor of Mummy’s undhiyu casserole on my tongue. Miss the pain of an ingrown toenail.”

  “Nice,” said Zayaan.

  The two idiots high-fived each other, making me roll my eyes.

  “Miss squeezing a pair of double-D silicon melons and—”

  “What?” I squawked in shock, interrupting my husband. “Whose fake breasts have you squeezed, and why don’t I know about it?”

  “No one’s. And, now, I never will,” he bemoaned.

  I slapped his arm, hard. He’d joke even in death.

  He yelped. “Shit. That hurt.”

  “Good. And if you’re done kidding around, I want to go home.” I turned toward the car, but Nirvaan caught my arm and stopped me.

  His bony face was alight with life and hope and a thousand unfulfilled promises. “Promise me, you will laugh every day. Fight every day. Do you know how beautiful you look when you’re angry?”

  “Nirvaan…” Pain squeezed my heart. I wanted to die.

  “Promise me, you’ll learn to cuss, learn to love again. Live again. Promise me, you won’t give up on each other,” he said with urgency now.

  Nirvaan hadn’t pitted Zayaan and me together since the night I’d asked him to choose me.

  My voice full of sorrow, I promised my husband what he’d asked of me, knowing full well I would break my word.

  We went home, and by evening, the wind was howling, and waves were crashing onto our shore. Rain wasn’t expected. It hadn’t rained at all this month.

  Nirvaan remained unusually quiet. He didn’t have a headache. He wasn’t tired. He simply didn’t feel like yakking. Or playing video games or strip poker or teasing me or doing anything Nirvaan-like.

  It was too squally and chilly to sit out on the deck, and for the first time in many weeks, I closed all the windows and doors around the house and lit the fireplace. The sky was a cloudy dark mess, and the sun was completely hidden. There was a lighthouse a few miles south of us, and if you looked closely into the stormy gray ocean, you could see the faint cast of its light over the water. Perhaps, it was a lifesaving beacon for the daredevil surfers who’d be out riding the waves.

  Our phones had beeped the standard emergency warning not to go into the water until after midnight tonight. Along certain sections curving the Monterey Bay coast, the warning said not to even venture on the beach, especially nearer the surf. There was a strong possibility of sneaker waves sucking people miles into the sea.

  I switched on the TV after an early dinner to watch a Law and Order marathon. Nirvaan stretched out on the sofa next to me and rested his head on my lap, shutting his eyes. I drew my fingers over his stubbled scalp, pressing acupressure points for migraines and sinus headaches. Behind us, Zayaan had spread his paraphernalia across the breakfast bar and settled down to do some work. For anyone looking in from the outside, we made a pretty domestic picture.

  Nirvaan’s sudden melancholy worried me. It wasn’t as if he’d never sounded off before, but I decided to call Dr. Unger and apprise him of the change. Maybe it was a reaction to his new medication.

  Halfway through the episode, just when a second murder victim had been discovered in a dumpster, Nirvaan sat up. He rose to his feet, stretching.

  “Do you need something, honey? Want to go to bed?” I asked, watching him closely.

  He answered with a shake of his head, his eyes on Zayaan. A chill ran down my spine as his features congealed into and imitation of the mask-like Mayan stone figures we’d seen that afternoon.

  “I have one last favor to ask of you,” he said in a clear, solid tone.

  No, no, no, no, no! I shouted in my head. What did he mean by, one last favor? What did he think was happening to him?

  “Anything for you, chodu,” Zayaan answered promptly.

  But his voice sounded tense to my ears, too. I didn’t look at him to confirm it. I couldn’t. I couldn’t take my eyes off my husband.

  “Nirvaan—” I began, only to be shushed. He couldn’t mean…

  “I’ve made a living will and given you power of attorney,” said Nirvaan, blowing my fears to smithereens.

  Was it selfish of me that my first thought about this new form of morbidity my husband had introduced me to was to thank God that it wasn’t me he’d chosen as the executor?

  “I don’t want to live on a respirator. I don’t want to live in a vegetative state. I don
’t want to live in a fucking wheelchair with drool dribbling down my face,” said Nirvaan, walking toward the kitchen where Zayaan sat.

  I slowly got to my feet and finally turned to look at Zayaan. I’d expected him to get angry, and he did. He argued with Nirvaan for some time. His face grew flushed and not just because of anger. Tears fell nonstop from his eyes.

  For the first time, it occurred to me how badly Nirvaan’s terminality was affecting Zayaan. I’d purposefully kept my distance from him, allowing my guilt and anger to build a wall between us. But the thing about triangles was, there were three bases and three combinations of points coming together in an apex.

  Tonight, Zayaan and I made the apex—we had the common ground of grief holding us together—and Nirvaan was our base.

  “You can’t ask this of me,” Zayaan choked out, his voice hoarse and devastated.

  Tonight, I realized how little my husband had asked of me.

  “Who else? I don’t trust my family or Simi with this.” Nirvaan shot me an apologetic glance. “They’ll get emotional, and I won’t suffer for their sentimentality. I need someone who will ask the right questions of the doctors and make a good judgment. A humane decision. I need you, man.”

  Zayaan kept shaking his head. He pressed a fist to his mouth and stopped a howl from spilling out.

  Tonight, I realized how free I was. Free to cry. Free to grieve and rage and bitch and moan at Ahura Mazda and Nirvaan and fate. I was free.

  And Zayaan was not.

  “I’ll try to die on my own, man. This is just in case I don’t do a good job of it. I know. Shocking, huh? Me? Not doing a good job with something?” Nirvaan tried to make a joke, but his words hitched on his own sobs.

  He reached for Zayaan just as Zayaan stood up, and they both met each other in a fierce hug. Crying and cursing each other.

  I stayed where I was, imprinting the sight of them into my brain. They were beautiful, my two guys. I had no doubt I would love them until the end of time. Just as I had no doubt that they would always break my heart.