First Love, Take Two

That night, I went home with my parents and settled Mummie into bed.

“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat or drink?” I asked her.

She shook her head and closed her eyes. Her meds had kicked in.

“Good night. I’m going to crash in my room. Let me know if you need anything. I’m right here.”

“Thank you, beta,” Mummie mumbled as she fell asleep. Papa sat beside her and ran a hand over her head.

I closed their bedroom door, went to my room, and fished through my dresser for something to change into. It wasn’t unusual for me to leave clothes behind or sleep over once in a while at my parents’ house. My childhood bedroom and bathroom were just as I’d left them.

Pulling out an old college T-shirt and shorts, I struggled out of my gown, removed my jewelry, and laid everything reverently on the bed. It all had to go back.

I took a long, hot shower, but it reminded me of Daniel. I touched my fingertips to the smooth, cold tiles, remembering all too vividly when I had my bare back pushed against the apartment shower as Daniel devoured me with kisses.

Water pounded down on me from overhead like a million tiny knives, my skin hypersensitive and burning beneath the soaring-hot temperature. Water masked my tears, the shower drowning my sobs as anxiety reached across the expanse of my mind and took its hold.

Somehow managing to get out and dressed, I took my anti-anxiety medicine and reached out for the ibuprofen PM. I stopped myself, my eyelids heavy and puffy. No. I needed healthier ways to cope. I had to stop using these meds as a crutch, and the anxiety medication itself made me drowsy enough.

I crawled into bed, remembering way more of tonight than I wanted. I didn’t want to remember anything, to think of anything. I just wanted a head full of nothing as I turned on my calming app.

My insides were on fire from the embers of disillusion, stoked to flames by grief until the searing blaze burned from the inside out. It was a crippling pain that had me bowed over until I curled into a ball and dry-heaved.

The great thing about my anxiety medication was that it actually worked. Between the meds and exhaustion, I was out in a matter of minutes. The claustrophobic thoughts and memories and pains and realities came to a halt as I fell asleep.

And I slept for a very long time.

*  *  *

The first thing I did in the morning was check on my parents. Then I called into work, sent Daniel and my girls a quick text to let them know how Mummie was doing, and drove to the corner pharmacy. I returned home and placed Mummie’s meds on the counter, along with a few other items.

“What’s all this?” Papa asked.

“You’re almost out of milk. I can make some cha for you.”

He gave a soft smile. Yeah. Making cha was pretty easy; even I could do it, although mine wasn’t the best. Nonetheless, he always drank it and made me feel like a star chef.

“And some snacks. A lot of chocolate,” I added, pulling treats out of the grocery bag and displaying them on the counter for quick access, my hands trembling until I balled them into fists.

“What’s wrong, beta?” he asked as he pulled out the cha saucepan, the one with a little pour spout designed for spill-free transfers.

A startled, incredulous laugh left my lips. “What isn’t wrong?”

“Your mummie will be okay.” Papa rubbed my back and tears stung my eyes, my lips quivering before I cleared my throat and poured milk, water, loose Indian black tea, sugar, mint, and cha masala into the saucepan. I could barely see the rise of bubbles and darkening liquid from behind this veil of tears.

“What do you need to tell me?” he asked.

“It can wait.” My hand shook as I placed the strainer over a porcelain cup, preparing it for the pour.

Papa turned down the gas and took my hands in his until I was forced to face him. “Life is too short to keep holding back. Is that how we raised you?”

“Um. Yes.”

“Oh…well, then that was our doing and things have to change. You can tell us anything. You can tell me if you don’t want to stress Mummie, but we know what’s on your mind.”

I bit my lower lip. “I never wanted to hurt you or disappoint you.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded. His eyes glistened and, dang it, now my tears fell! He pulled me into him and hugged me as I quietly bawled against him.

He said, “It wasn’t an ideal situation. We always envisioned you would keep close to us and your roots. The only thing left was marrying a man of the same religion to fit into our family and community. Someone who could take the lead at mandir and know how to prepare for all the observances and raise children to one day do the same. Someone who makes you happy and takes care of you.”

“Yuvan isn’t that person,” I mumbled. “He doesn’t understand me, Papa. I tried to like him, but he gets upset because of my touch aversion, thinks I should be the perfect cook and maid, doesn’t plan on helping with the household work, thinks what the fois do is dismissible, doesn’t seem to care about what happened with Liya, and his mom—ugh. I can’t with her, either. When they look at me, all they see are shortcomings. I’m never going to be that perfect, religious, obedient, drama-free wife and daughter-in-law.”

He ran his hand down the back of my head the way he often had when I was a kid and needed comforting.

“Are you upset?” I asked.

“No. I need you to be your best, and Yuvan isn’t going to help you be your best.”

“I broke it off with Yuvan a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t tell you. If I had, none of this with Mummie would’ve happened.”

He pulled me into him. “This isn’t your fault.”

Of course it was. I pressed my forehead into his shoulder and muttered, “I still love Daniel.”

He sighed into my hair. “I know. It’s not hard to see. And we know why you love him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Daniel is a good man, kind. Educated and able to take care of you. He loves you and treats you well. After you stopped seeing him years ago, he called us. He was worried.”

I pulled back. “Really?”

Papa nodded. “What happened between you two was between you two, so I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t know everything. I told him that was for you to discuss with him. You wouldn’t talk to us about him. But Daniel and I had many chats, sometimes about you, sometimes about your mummie, sometimes about Harvard and architecture. I wanted to know who this man was.”

I shook my head, trying to understand. “Wait. What did you tell him about Mummie? And why didn’t you ever tell me about this?”

He pressed his lips tight and his gaze flitted to the counter. It was his telltale sign of regret, and it broke my heart. Not just because he’d kept this from me, even though I didn’t know if it would’ve made a difference back then. I knew now that I hadn’t been ready for all of this then. But my heart broke seeing my dad show remorse, because that meant he felt it deeply.

He replied, “I told him that Mummie was sick, but not why. He visited her at the hospital.”

“What? H-how?” I stuttered. “I never saw him.”

“He didn’t want to use the situation to push you into a corner.”

I blinked back tears, my chest aching. I remembered spending as much time with Mummie as possible when she was admitted, and then when she was sent home. I remembered stressing out over her health and then over her medical bills. I tried to take them over, to pay little by little, but Papa said they were taken care of. I looked Papa in the eye and asked, “Did Daniel pay for Mummie’s hospital visit? Is that why the balance was suddenly zero?”

“It was an anonymous donation, but my guess is that yes, Daniel paid.”

Tears streamed down my face and Papa gently wiped them away, pulling me back into his chest. “Shh. Don’t cry.”

“All I had to do was talk to him, to talk to you.”

He didn’t respond, which was an affirmative answer in itself.

“I keep messing up.”

“We all make mistakes. Including myself. I didn’t speak up, either, at the time.”

“I’m sorry that I can’t be the perfect daughter.”

“Never apologize for being who you are, huh?” He pulled me back as I wiped my cheeks. “You are the perfect daughter because you are you.”

*  *  *

“Do you want to come out and talk to Yuvan and his parents?” Papa asked later that day, closing my bedroom door behind me.

“Not particularly. I just want them to go away so I can take care of Mummie,” I replied, folding laundry. I had to clean the house, go grocery shopping, make dinner…

“You have to speak with them soon. Yuvan, well, he wants to keep the engagement.”

Eh? I made a skeptical face.

Papa sat beside me on the bed.

“Because he doesn’t listen,” I mumbled.

Even though my shirt was big and my sweatpants loose, the clothes felt too tight.

My mind was full. Cramped, really. My brain throbbed against the hardness of my skull with each pounding, inundating thought.

Papa said in a stern voice, “You have to move forward.”

“What?”

He released a long-pent-up breath. The nervous energy between us thickened, shimmied into a tangible existence. “I want you to think about yourself and what you want, what you need. No parent wants to sit around and watch their child shrivel from sadness. We want the best for you and that is all we’ve ever desired. We want you to have an easy, stress-free, happy life where you want for nothing and are filled with joy. If you’re happy, then so are we.” Papa watched me, an expression full of longing and understanding and something that I recognized as pain because I was in pain, too. “Do you want me to tell you to suck it up and do the right thing?”

I froze.

“Because that’s what I’m telling you to do. The right thing is being with the one who you love and who loves you and makes you better, happy, fulfilled.”

“Do-do you mean be with Daniel?”

He replied in a soothing voice, “Yes. Because I’m your father. I know when my daughter is sad, when she isn’t herself, when she’s having struggles.” He watched me carefully. “I know when her heart’s breaking. And her heart has been breaking since she left her only true love.”

Tears stung my eyes as I cursed them. Don’t fall. Don’t cry.

He touched my hand, which sat shaking on my lap. “I know my daughter. I might not have carried you in my belly, but I lulled you to sleep at night, I cradled you when you were sick, I held you when you fell, I wiped your tears. I know the sound, the look of pain in you. And it has not gone away since you left him. Six years, Preeti. Six years you denied yourself Daniel and suffered, and for six years we let you. What do you want?”

“Daniel.” I wanted to be with Daniel, to love him forever, to marry him, to have my family whole. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from bawling.

“What kind of a father am I to let you hurt, and for so long?”

Oh, there went the tears down my cheeks. “Papa…”

There was a deafening quiet consuming us, the kind that thrummed and rang deep in my ears. My mind went blank and my entire being dove into keeping my emotions together.

I stared at our hands. They turned into ambiguous blobs of color as tears flooded my cheeks. I froze into place to keep from convulsing and bawling. But when Papa wrapped an arm around me and drew my shoulder into him, the ugly-crying started.

“Shh, shh,” he cooed.

I clenched my fists in my lap and struggled to grasp on to some sort of control. I hated crying. I really did. There was no sense of authority over my own body. While pain could last for years, crying was swift, albeit brutal. The passage of time warped. Maybe I’d cried for seconds or minutes or hours. All I knew was that there was no one other than me and my parents in this moment. The rest of the world didn’t exist. Maybe that was why crying felt as wonderful as it was miserable.

When my sobs subsided, when my heaving stopped, when I managed to move, I pulled away and desperately wiped my tears with the tissue Papa handed me.

With a final dab below my tender eyes, I sucked in a shaking breath and finally looked at Papa. His eyes glistened and a light shade of pink crossed his cheeks. It pained me to see him like this, to see him as anything but joyful.

“What do you want to do about the guests in our living room?” he asked.

I shook off the trepidation and emotions. “I’m going to tell them what they already know but apparently won’t accept.”

“That’s my Preeti. But, as your Papa, I’ll speak to Yuvan and his parents.”

“No. Thank you, but this is my mess, isn’t it?”

“I will never leave you to suffer or stand alone, beta.”

I nodded.

He dragged in a long breath before releasing it. “Besides, it’s my duty as the parent to let Yuvan and his parents know. You don’t face them by yourself.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but he went on, “And with us here, they won’t turn their anger toward you, or lash out at you. They’ll come for us.”

I swallowed hard. “That’s exactly what I don’t want to happen. You don’t deserve for anyone to be mad at you.”

He patted my head. It was his sense of duty, to deflect harm from me by absorbing it himself.

Mummie knocked and entered the room. “Challo, beta. Company is waiting.”

Words tumbled over one another on my tongue, fighting to form a coherent sentence. I prepared to break the news to her. But with Papa’s presence behind me, I knew that no storm could take me down, and that included the torrential downpour of my poor mother’s distraught dreams.

My hands shook like unstable rocks in an earthquake, with uncertainty, not knowing if the ground would open up and swallow me whole or if this was just a minor tremor.

“Mummie. I have to tell you something, something that I should’ve told you weeks ago,” I began.

She blinked a few times, her expression warm. “It’s okay,” she said before I could explain. “I know. We discussed this morning after you made cha,” she clarified, her eyes shimmering.

“Are you upset?” I gulped.

She gave a slight shake of her head.

“Are you sure?”

She took both of my hands into hers and squeezed. “I only want what’s best for you.”

I clenched my eyes for a second, then nodded. “Are you disappointed in me?”

Mummie slid her hand down the side of my head, caressing my hair with that motherly, tender affection, and kissed my forehead. We were both blinking away tears as she said, “You, my beta, will never be a disappointment. How can you be? Look at you.” She hiccupped on those last words.

“Mummie…” I hugged her tight and never wanted to let go.