“I fail to see how respect has anything to do with it,” Rachel said.
“It takes time to understand things,” Swati said, magnanimously, to her mind. Rachel looked away, inhaling deeply and letting out the air in a long, thin stream. Swati wondered if that was some sort of Western way of breathing. Rachel looked back at her, inhaling again.
“Why are you breathing like that?” Swati asked, curious.
“It’s yogic breathing. To calm myself.”
“I see,” Swati said, bemused. What did Rachel know about yoga?
“Do you want to talk, perhaps? About all this?” Rachel said, her tone strained with the effort to sound cheerful and helpful. Talking was the last thing Swati wanted to do. Why did people want to talk about things all the time? She had made her decision, she had left, what else was there to say? She was here now. That was all.
But Westerners were different, she had heard. Rachel looked at her like she was owed an explanation and Swati sighed. She would give the girl something; that should quiet her down. She racked her brain, trying to find something she thought Rachel might understand, or at least like. Flattery never hurt; didn’t everyone want to feel that they had influenced others?
“It was because of something you said. About happiness,” Swati said.
“What did I say?” Rachel said.
“You don’t remember?” Swati was surprised.
Rachel shook her head. “I talk a lot,” she said by way of explanation.
Swati couldn’t imagine talking so much that you forgot something you’d talked about. How odd, she thought in disapproval. She looked away, marshaling her thoughts.
“I thought my son would have a life like mine, and it would be a good one, because mine was good. There would be happy things here and there, good moments, and that would be enough. But when I see Dhruv now, he has something more. You said that happiness wasn’t a finite quality. That you had thought it was. But being with Dhruv had made you feel as if it wasn’t. I can see that in him, too. How his life is more than just a few happy moments. But my life is not. So I left. Because now I can see there can be more, and that is what I want. That’s all there is. There is nothing more to talk about,” Swati said. Surely that would be enough for Rachel, it had to be. It was the longest speech Swati had ever given about her emotions in her life.
“So, you are looking for happiness?” Rachel asked, her face skeptical.
“I suppose so,” Swati said. Put that way it sounded stupid, but it wasn’t; it was like buzzing in her blood, something that had pushed into her body and moved her out of the house and onto the plane and here, to Mumbai, to a new life, letting her world crumble behind her, knowing she could never go back to it.
“Swati, are you sure this is what you want? Because it doesn’t seem like you. Not that I know you well, but . . .”
The words, the doubt on her face, made Swati feel like Rachel had slapped her. What did she know of her? What did she know about anything? Did she think that Swati would do this, destroy everything, if she wasn’t sure? Swati stood suddenly. “I would like to go to bed now, if you don’t mind.”
“Oh, but it’s so early! Would you like something for dinner first?”
“No, thank you.” Swati deliberately placed her water glass on the table. She, at least, did not break things. “Where should I sleep?”
Rachel led her to a room that looked like a disaster zone, and they both looked at it, from the threshold.
“That’s our spare bedroom, but it’s not really . . . okay, here, you take our room tonight and we’ll get this ready for you soon, okay? I just have to grab some things.”
They turned, and Rachel opened another door, this time to a room that looked decently clean, if not as spotless as Swati’s own in Kolkata. Still, it was better than the alternative.
Rachel grabbed a few things, a pair of pajamas, a book, as Swati stood uncertainly in the center of the room. This was the bed her son shared with his wife. Swati felt uncomfortable and hoped Rachel would change the sheets.
“My suitcase?”
Rachel nodded and wheeled it into her own bedroom. They hadn’t decorated the bedroom much, or at all. The one piece of furniture in the room other than the bed was a bookcase, and that was quite full, but otherwise there were a few objects scattered along the windowsills, an aloe plant craning toward the sun, and nothing else.
“Do you need anything?”
“New sheets?” She would have to do it herself, then. Should she ask Rachel to change them? But before she could, Rachel was making the bed with a new set.
“I think you should tuck them in more,” Swati pointed out helpfully.
Rachel looked at her, her face grim. “I’m sure you can adjust them to your needs when I go.”
Swati’s mother-in-law would have slapped her if she’d said that to her. She drew herself up proudly. “Thank you. Good night.” Swati shut the door as Rachel left and leaned against it, breathing hard.
How dare Rachel ask her if she was sure this was what she wanted? Did she think this was so easy, leaving one’s husband? Perhaps it was in America, because everyone knew that marriage didn’t mean anything over there. But here, where people had good values, marriage was life. Swati had turned her back on a good life, left it behind to come and guide her son and daughter-in-law, given up her own household and marriage, and Rachel had asked if she was sure. As if there was anything else that she could possibly have been.
What was wrong with the girl? Didn’t she know anything at all?
Three
What was wrong with her mother-in-law? Rachel wondered, looking at the closed door of her own bedroom. I have come to stay with you and Dhruv. And that’s all there is to say about that. It simply wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Parents didn’t just come live with their children.
Here they do, Rachel’s mind reminded her, and she wished she could slap the voice in her head. But people did do that here, they did it all the time. Or really, the other way around. People lived with their parents until their parents died, and by that point they were the parents, living with their children. Everyone just stayed layered on top of each other like a parfait until the parts ran together and life all tasted the same.
She was going out of her mind. Swati could not live with them forever. She tried to calm the rising tide of panic moving up her body. Panic made her vomit, and she didn’t want to do that. She checked her phone and saw Dhruv had texted her. Dhruv. Of course. Her husband. She had almost forgotten that he existed, and of course he would come home and they would talk and figure out what to do about this. Of course he wouldn’t allow this to happen. He would know what to say to Swati; they would figure this out. He always knew what the right thing was, especially here in India; he would know what to do now. She had a sudden desperate need to hear his voice, to tell him all about this, and she called him, but he didn’t pick up. It was fine. He would be home soon. They would talk. They would “sort it,” as he’d say. It would be done and dusted in no time.
Rachel drank deeply, finishing her glass of wine. She would have to order more. There, that was something she could do, something she could focus on. What was the wine store that delivered? Dhruv usually does it for me, she thought with a grimace. Here he had all the phone numbers, and he spoke Hindi, was even learning Marathi himself to get by. It was so easy to let him do things. He liked doing things, liked being in control, and Rachel, who had felt less and less sure of her life with every year, found immense comfort in Dhruv’s certainty. When Rachel thought of her younger self, she did not feel jealous of her skin or her weight or her ability to shrug off hangovers, but she did long for her previous certainty. It was so easy to be sure of things when you were twenty. Rachel had turned thirty just before they had flown to India and she was certain of nothing, except how nice it was to be with someone—Dhruv—more sure than she was.