Chapter 35 #2
Casey, sweetheart. I know his mother is sending you something.
I've seen her binder. She showed me swatches on our calls. They’re very nice swatches.
They’re also completely wrong for a summer wedding, but I didn't say that to her because I’m a polite woman and I’m choosing my battles.
I’ve enclosed my own suggestions. You’ll notice they’re practical and don’t require a degree in interior design to understand.
The cake will be lemon. This is decided.
I don't care what her caterer says. The venue will be discussed, but I want you to know that the lakefront pavilion is available and it seats two hundred and the sunsets are better than anything in Toronto, and I’m not going to lose my only son's wedding to a woman who thinks a tailor needs to train in London. I love you. I love Arjun. We’re going to do this MY way, or at the very least we are doing this OUR way, and our way includes pie, and a dock, and folding tables from Home Hardware if necessary, and it’ll be perfect because both my boys will be happy. Love, Mom.
P.S. Meera mentioned on our last call that she’s bringing her own tailor to Toronto, just in case.
He’s apparently named Tarun, I don’t know if you know of him?
I want you to know that your Uncle Ron still has his sewing machine and made a very nice suit for Doug's retirement party in 2019.
Just putting that out there. The plaid swatch on page three is my favourite. It would look wonderful on you both.
I’m sitting on the couch with a binder in my lap and tears running down my face, and Arjun is sitting beside me with his mother's binder in his lap and an expression that is cycling between horror and something that looks, against all probability, like tenderness, and Oliver is between us trying to eat the pressed wildflower. The apartment’s very quiet except for the nature documentary, which is currently explaining that octopuses have three hearts, which feels thematically appropriate.
“Two binders,” Arjun says.
“Two binders.”
“One from my mother, who has planned a full-scale military operation with forty-three fabric swatches and a tailor she disapproves of.”
“And one from my mother, who has planned a backyard wedding with folding tables from Home Hardware and a cake that’s already decided.”
“Lemon.”
“Lemon. This is not negotiable. She knows it’s my favourite.”
“The seating chart in my mother's binder accounts for the chutney incident of 2019.”
“The seating chart in my mother's binder is one table that seats twelve.”
“My mother is arriving July 15th.”
“My mother can be in Toronto by Tuesday if I call her right now.”
We look at each other. We look at the binders.
We look at Oliver, who has given up on the wildflower and is now eyeing the fabric swatches with the measured, calculating expression of a dog who is determining which textile will be the most satisfying to destroy, and also the most financially devastating at the veterinarian’s office.
“They're going to meet, in person,” I say.
“They are going to meet.”
“Meera Kapoor and Brenda Welling. In the same city. Planning the same wedding. With competing binders.”
“This is not going to be a wedding. This is going to be a territorial negotiation between two apex predators who have both decided that they are in charge, and we are going to be standing in the middle of it holding fabric swatches and trying not to get eaten.”
“Your mother has forty-three fabric swatches.”
“Your mother has a gel pen and a pressed wildflower and the unshakeable conviction that a backyard wedding is sufficient for any occasion.”
“My mother once organized the entire Huntsville regatta in forty-eight hours because the original organizer broke her hip.”
“My mother once reorganized a state dinner in Rajasthan in under three hours because the Home Secretary changed the menu.”
“They're going to be incredible.”
“They are going to be cataclysmic.”
“Same thing.”
“Entirely the same thing.”
I put my mother’s binder on the coffee table.
Arjun puts his mother’s binder beside it.
The two binders sit side by side, artisan-crafted leather and Staples plastic, gold embossing and gel pen, subdued aristocratic rose and “the green one,” and they are, in their completely incompatible, utterly irreconcilable, beautifully opposite ways, the most perfect pair of objects I’ve ever seen.
Because this is what our wedding’s going to be.
Not one world or the other. Not the palace or the lake.
Not the heirloom silver or the folding tables.
Both. All of it. The magnificent, chaotic, impossible collision of a family that serves biryani from bone china and a family that serves pie on the dock, and somewhere in the middle, a neurosurgeon who is learning to stop performing and a paediatric generalist who is learning it’s okay to step away for a moment, so long as you come back to him, and a goldendoodle who will absolutely eat something he shouldn't at the reception and puke it up at the worst possible moment.
Arjun leans his head against my shoulder. I rest my cheek on his hair. Oliver settles across both our laps with a sigh of total, contented surrender.
“We're going to survive this,” I say.
“We survived a fake engagement, the Home Secretary of India, a corrupt astrologer, and a four-day separation. We can survive two aggressive mothers with binders.”
“That might be the most optimistic thing you've ever said.”
“I am growing as a person. It is extremely uncomfortable.”
I laugh. He laughs. Oliver's tail wags once, thumping against the couch cushion. The nature documentary informs us that octopuses can change colour to match their environment, which is a skill that’s going to be extremely useful when Meera Kapoor arrives in Kensington Market and encounters my, no, our, apartment for the first time.
My phone buzzes. Priya.
Mother has sent the binder. I saw the shipping confirmation. I am so sorry. Also, I am not sorry. Also, please film her face when she sees your apartment. I will pay real money.
Also Karan says he is coming to Toronto for the wedding and he is bringing the handshake and he expects to be seated at the head table.
Yash says congratulations and he will be there.
Daadi says she is too old to fly to a country that serves coffee as a beverage rather than a punishment, but we both know she is lying and she will be on that plane. Kavita is already packing her spices.
I show the text to Arjun. He reads it. He closes his eyes. He takes a breath.
“Our entire family is coming to Toronto,” he says.
“Our entire family is coming to Toronto,” I confirm.
“Kavita is packing spices.”
“Kavita is packing spices,” I affirm.
“My mother is going to walk into this apartment and she is going to see the state of our kitchen and she is going to have opinions, Casey. She is going to have opinions that will reshape the geography of this apartment.”
“My mother is going to arrive with pie.”
“Pie will not save us.”
“Pie has saved civilizations, Arjun. We've been over this.”
He opens his eyes. He looks at me. Those intense green eyes in the afternoon light, warm and scared and completely mine.
“I love you,” he says. No clinical language.
No strategic framework. No leather notebook.
Just three words, simple and clear, the way he’s been learning to say them for four months, the way they sound when they’re not a performance or a defence or a carefully structured emotional assessment but just the truth, offered without armour, in a cluttered apartment in Kensington Market with two binders on the coffee table and a goldendoodle on our laps and a future that is terrifying and beautiful and entirely, completely, ours.
“I love you too,” I say. “And we’re going to need a bigger apartment.”
He laughs. I kiss him. Oliver tries to eat one of the denim swatches.
Somewhere in Rajasthan, Meera Kapoor is finalizing her travel arrangements and rehearsing her opinions about Canadian tailoring. Somewhere in Muskoka, Brenda Welling is testing lemon cake recipes and has already called Doug about the folding tables.
And somewhere in between, on a couch in a cluttered Kensington Market apartment, two men who started with a lie and ended with a ring are sitting in the wreckage of competing binders, holding each other, laughing at the chaos that is coming, and knowing, with a certainty that is absolute and non-clinical, that they have survived everything the world’s thrown at them and are still here, holding hands and choosing each other, and that whatever comes next, they’ll face it the way they face everything.
Together. For real this time.