She was magnificent. Tall, curvy, dark hair but light enough to glimmer in the sun. Expressive with her face. Everything about her was, some might say, perfect.
And he felt it too. Watching her from his favorite street side tea vendor, he observed her; the perfect woman, shopping for clothes, without a care in the world - that in her world, she was the definition of an outcast.
When did this happen? When did he turn into the kid that was ogling older women, dissecting their every move? He swore this wasn't the way his mother raised him.
Ah, there it was. His mother. His sweet, delicate, doting mother who was a formidable woman in her own right. She'd done everything a mother, a wife, a woman in their society, was supposed to do. And she excelled at it all. So what had changed? When had this woman that he'd known all his life turned into a mystery?
~~~~~
He'd just come back from his evening tutoring session for A Level Chemistry, found his parents' door cracked, wanted to go in and announce his arrival. But the words he heard, no, it couldn't be.
Following the rushed escalation of the reveal, they had even forgotten to close the door. There wasn't any time, for when a marriage- their marriage- is crashing down around them, who had the time to think about closing a door?
~~~~~
She sat them down around the dinner table; they never sat down at the dinner table. The pain that followed rippled across the glass surface, amplified within the confines of the beautiful 2000 sq. ft. living space, echoed through the halls that led to the bedrooms.
Three siblings sat upright, collapsing. The belief that theirs was the unit that was so solid, so well-defended, that nothing could shake it, nothing would leave the 5 of them, because nothing would ever need to.
He heard the words but didn't believe them. A fable, a ridiculous prank. If this was so serious, where was dad? Dad wasn't even there. This was a joke. A really bad one, at that. There's just no way that their mother, whose favorite pastime was cleaning the house, cleaning her house, would leave that house. Ridiculous.
He didn't get it but his sister was crying. Why was she crying? Goddamn stop crying this isn't really happening. His mother sat down beside his brother, begging him to understand.
He left the room. Typical. Flair for the dramatic as always. Why couldn't he just go along for the ride, let their mother have her fun for once in his life?
His mother went to his sister next. Asking her, in her typical mom way, if this could be made easier in any way whatsoever. The crying got more hysterical, screechier, with these words, and she took the perfectly folded napkin that her mother handed her and crumpled it up with her tears. She too, retreated to her brother's room.
He heard his brother yelling at his sister to stop crying, heard her yell at him to cry. The reality was hitting in measured, rhythmic waves. The look of panic on his mother's face. Her scrunched up face, her determined face as she willed her tears to not drip, determined to be strong for her children in her weakest moment.
She came to him last, because he was her friend. He could take it. He could be there for her, and his siblings, and her, and his father. In her eyes, he was superman.
She sat beside him, and caressed his silent tears. He took her hand, and they stayed there in silence, if only for a fleeting moment- as all the moments following were going to be, now that their peace had been silently disrupted by her declaration.
"You can understand me, can't you?"
"Yes," he said, running his fingers through her slightly frizzy hair. "I love you mom."
~~~~~
“She talks about you, you know? More than the others.”
He had been waiting on a bench in the courthouse, dreadfully waiting for the rest of his family to get there so they could follow through with the legalities of the divorce.
“Her eyes light up when she talks about your friendship. She’s a special one, your mom.”
“I know,” he murmured, the only words he could muster in the presence of such an ethereal beauty. Confidence oozed through her posture, her phrasing, her gestures. It was obvious why someone would have a hard time resisting her advances.
“We didn’t want to- actually, I wanted to, how could I not? She didn’t want this to happen. Not this way. But what we have... Have lunch with us, you need to see it to believe it.”
He was simultaneously astonished and impressed at her candidness, albeit also a little offended. How dare she, on this day, invite him to lunch with them?
“Does she talk about him?” Out of the many things he intended to ask his mother, this was one he couldn’t bring up with her. It was too painful. He figured there was no harm in asking her, a lady that seemed devoid of understanding subtlety in emotional discourse.
“All the time. The way their communication lacked, but nothing their love couldn’t make up for. The way he held her hand through the pain of two rounds of chemo, even when she hurled insults at him constantly. The way only discussing their children could match the high of watching a game together and dissecting it. More good than bad. More for the purposes of educating me on the love she left behind. They’re here.”
“Thank you.”
~~~~~
The papers had been signed. They were all in the room, the family lawyers hurling legal jargon at them, ultimately saying almost nothing at all. There was no custody battle. They couldn't do that to their children, they would never. Joint custody was the only acceptable solution.
Once the lawyers left, his sister traded her seat for a spot on the floor- the stone cold floor against the off-white wall in the square room that was only furnished by a table, the chairs around it, and steel cabinets that sorted who knows what kind of files.
Soon she was joined by the rest of her family- no, not a family anymore. A collection of individuals somehow connected by blood yet not a family. Not anymore.
In the subtle touches, the deep breaths, the hushed sniffles- they all felt like one, perhaps for the very last time. In a rare display of affection, his brother took Dad's head onto his shoulder, and played with his hair, resembling what Grandpa would have done if he was still alive.
His family was whole. Nothing was wrong. Here they were, all feeling the same type of way, helping each other heal through this conflict they themselves had created. Even in this courtroom office, their worries were theirs alone, and they were dealing with it the best they knew how.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw her, in a pantsuit, sitting patiently on that bench waiting for the rest of her life to start. He prayed nobody else would notice her, but of course, they did, and the moment was gone.
~~~~~
She wasn’t there anymore. He came home from tutoring to find his father and his siblings in the kitchen, getting ready for the "Thursday night dinner and a movie" tradition. There was popcorn for him, of course, in addition to roti, daal, omelettes, and halua (his sister's first attempt at making the dessert).
"What are we watching?"
"Magnificent Seven," his brother replied.
"Now before we start have you all talked to mom? She has an early day tomorrow."
"Doing what, creating her hippy art?" grumbled his brother.
"She's a writer now, haven't you heard?" his sister added to the slander.
"Will you two just shut up. She's trying. She's trying, okay? Start trying."
"Stop bickering and call your mother."
His siblings left to carry out the laborious task of conversing with the woman who they once knew so well. He stayed behind, noticing his father’s tense back muscles as he hunched over the sink, eyes shut closed, taking a moment to reflect on the events of the past few months.
He placed a hand on his father's shoulder. This interaction seemed to draw out a tear. “I’m going to go see her tomorrow. Is there anything you’d like me to say?”
“Tell her I’m okay. We’re okay. Tell her to live.” And with that, he hugged his younger son, and started howling through the tears.
~~~~~
"Come in, maa. I'll get you some tea."
He walked into the apartment that felt like it existed in an alternate reality. The apartment was small compared to what he was used to, with virtually no walls except the ones that separated the kitchen and the bathroom. There was a balcony off of the kitchen, where the laundry machines and a small garden rested.
Inside, everything was quaint, quirky, unique. Filled with various memorabilia, each decorative element told a different story, equally as wonderful as the next. In front of the bed over the TV, there were three life-sized portraits- his brother on the right, him in the middle, his sister on the left.
One of the corners of the bedroom area was set up as a study, every book and magazine in its place on the bookshelves, no clutter on the table except for the electronics. The wall behind the bed was a soothing orange, with bedsheets to complement it. More pictures, of their family vacations, of selfies, of her.
"Do you like it?" His mother's eyes glimmered with a mixture of hope, happiness, and fear.
"It's everything you've ever wanted," he realized out loud. "She's everything you've ever wanted."
"You'd like her."
"I'm sure of it."
"Stay. Stay for dinner, she makes the best aloo parathas. You'll like them better than mine."
"I told Baba I'd be home by dinner."
"How is he?"
"You know how he is. You always do."
She did, and she knew the unforgivable burden she had placed on his shoulders, to outweigh all the rest that had accumulated over the years. She knew that without her, his every breath was labored, every decision was harder. She knew that his bed felt empty, even though their bed was so big that they seldom touched when she used to sleep next to him. She knew that even though he should hate her, he would do everything in his power to defend her honor to any naysayers- because he did, he loved her. Still.
"Do you think he could ever forgive me?"
"He has."
~~~~~
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