Chapter 32
After two straight weeks of Iyer House being packed to the gills, returning to an empty, silent home is disorienting.
The family gets back from the hospital in the early evening, the lights strung across the house a jarring sight.
Inside, it looks just as it should after the whirlwind of the last few days: Things are strewn everywhere, another of the plastic covers has come off the couch, much to Veena perima’s annoyance, and even the house seems tired, creaking and groaning, as if it needs a recovery period as much as the family who lives inside it.
Simran walks upstairs, carefully balancing the unwieldy object in her hands. She steps into the room, watching as Veena perima fusses over her husband, insisting his water bottle should be right within reach.
“Peripa, I thought you might enjoy some music,” Simran says, setting the record player down on a side table.
She holds up the album choices she brought with her, and her uncle points to the one he wants.
Putting the table close to him so he can easily change the records, she drops the needle and “Mere Sapno Ki Rani” starts playing.
Motioning her to come close, her uncle pinches her cheek gently between the knuckles of his index and middle fingers.
There’s a lump in her throat and she hears a quiet but distinct sniff as her aunt fluffs her uncle’s pillow one last time and they go downstairs.
Like a mildly deranged Energizer bunny, Veena perima busies herself with tasks, cleaning up the mess of boxes and paper, making chai, going upstairs every fifteen minutes to check on her husband.
When Rishi offers to help, he is shut down with an illogical, “No, you rest. You’re going to have a baby. ”
Geeta pulls Rishi by the arm down next to her on the sofa. “Don’t bother. Errands are therapeutic to Amma; she needs to keep busy. It calms her down.”
“At least she seems okay with the baby now,” Simran says, sitting on the armchair across from Geeta.
Geeta waves her hand. “This is how it always goes. When I was younger, I used to freak out every time we fought, like the world was ending. But then, slowly I realized—she’ll come around.
Maybe she won’t agree with me, but eventually, we come to some sort of peace and either forget about it or move on. ”
“You’ve had fights like this before?” Simran asks. Veena perima always seemed so pleased with Geeta and her every achievement.
“So many,” Geeta says, her jhumka earrings jangling.
“When I wanted to be an ob-gyn instead of doing cardiology, when I went to MIT in Boston instead of Princeton a train ride away—oh my god, the fight we had when Rishi and I moved in together!” She shudders.
“In the beginning, she didn’t even like that I was with Rishi. She wanted me to be with a Tamil guy.”
“Well, you know Veena perima’s criteria.” Simran counts off on her fingers. “From our community, lives close by, and has a good job. Two out of three ain’t bad, Rish.”
Silence hangs in the air as Rishi and Geeta exchange a glance. “Not quite,” Rishi says. “I’m quitting my job when I get back from the honeymoon.”
“To quote Keanu: Whoa,” Simran says.
“It was killing my soul. Geeta actually loves what she does and someone’s going to need to take care of the baby, so …”
“You’re going to be a stay-at-home dad?” Simran asks. The wideness of both their grins tells her it’s absolutely the right decision.
“We’re waiting till we’re back from our honeymoon before we tell the parental units,” Geeta says. “They weren’t even supposed to know about the baby yet; they can only handle so much at a time.”
“It’s not their fault, not really,” Rishi says. “I mean, we could have told everyone about the baby when we first found out, instead of hiding it.”
“Come on,” Simran says. “You think they would have reacted better to you bad children?”
“I do,” Rishi says fervently. “We could have given them time to process it, rather than add it to everything they were dealing with in the middle of their kids’ wedding!
They probably still would have freaked out but that’s okay.
As Geeta said, they would have come around.
They always do. We didn’t give them that option.
The more you withhold from people, the less of a chance you give them to connect to you. ”
A series of clangs emanates from the kitchen and, though she’s not heard it in a while, the sound is familiar to Simran: Kavitha is loading the dishwasher.
In the hands of her cousin, this has always been a strangely violent task and it’s comforting to find that hasn’t changed.
Simran gets up and goes towards the noise, standing at the sink and turning on the water.
“You don’t have to rinse beforehand.” The worry of Ashok peripa’s hospital visit has receded and Kavitha has reverted to petulance. “The dishwasher is designed to take care of it. You’re just wasting water.”
Simran turns off the tap. She hands cups and spoons and plates to Kavi, who loads them without speaking. Kavitha’s attitude is annoying but also how Simran knows she still cares.
“I’m sorry,” Simran says, turning to face her cousin, resting a hip against the counter.
“For what?” Kavitha asks, abandoning her task and straightening.
There’s several answers to this question, Simran realizes. “For saying you should come out before you’re ready. That’s always your decision. And I’m sorry for …” She swallows. “For being so ready to leave again.”
Kavitha sags back against the counter. “Why do you and my mother operate like bumper cars around each other?”
Simran bites her bottom lip. The thousands of grievances she’s built up over the years—the way her aunt bulldozes her way into Simran’s life, her machinations because she thinks she knows best, her firm belief that her children aren’t owed space or privacy—swirl around but ultimately seem insignificant after this afternoon.
All except one. “I told you. She never talks about my parents. It’s like they were erased. ”
“So tell her,” Kavitha says, voice gentle. “Don’t leave. Work it out. Fight it out, even.”
“Kavi, come on,” Simran says. “Your mother is like a hurricane.”
Kavitha raises one eyebrow. “You’re no wilting flower, Sim. Convinced you’re right and others just don’t get it. Thinking you’re protecting people but just making decisions for them.”
“I hear you,” she mutters.
“I don’t think you do. You and my mother?
Cut from the same stubborn, protective, loving cloth,” Kavitha says.
“The main difference is that you express it in one language and she uses four. But she’s trying to change, even though she doesn’t really know how.
Give her a chance to.” Simran’s not even sure where to start.
But she will try, even if she also doesn’t really know how.
Those few hours in the hospital, standing once again on the precipice of uncontrollable loss—she halts her thoughts before they spin out.
She knows better than most that life will take what it’s going to, when it’s going to.
Nothing can stop that. But she doesn’t have to give things up before it is their time to go.
“As for the other thing …” Kavitha says. “You’re damn right. A person only has to come out when they’re ready. But you were also right about me.”
Simran blinks. “I was?”
“I’ve been waiting,” Kavitha says. “To find someone so I could, I don’t know, give myself permission.
To be proof that I am who I think I am. My mother’s obsession with marriage has turned being single into this terrible, scary thing.
It’s not. Our parents just don’t know what to do with a woman who is over thirty and unattached.
But Paula Cole and our beloved Dawson’s Creek gang were correct: I don’t wanna wait for my life to be over! I want to live it. Starting now.”
Right then, Veena perima comes into the kitchen, oblivious to the epiphany unfurling in her older daughter. “You girls finished loading the dishes? Good. Rest now, you must be tired.”
Simran can hear the shakiness in Kavitha’s inhale, the tremor in her voice as she speaks. “Amma, I need to tell you something.”
Veena perima is sorting through the mail that has collected on the kitchen island and doesn’t look up as she asks, “What is it?”
Simran reaches across the countertop and threads her fingers through Kavitha’s. She is with her cousin for this, for anything, for always.
“Amma, I’m gay.”
Veena perima goes still and Kavitha squeezes Simran’s hand so tightly her fingers start to go numb. The cicadas’ noisy song fills the kitchen as Veena perima looks up. Simran wants to shush them, ask them to respect the importance of this moment.
“You’re gay?” Veena perima repeats. “As in …” She doesn’t continue.
“As in … if I get married, it will be to a woman,” Kavitha says.
Veena perima is all circles—eyes round and wide, mouth open in a slight O of surprise.
Only her eyebrows, furrowed and crowding low on her face, give relief to the curves of her expression.
Then, one by one, her features straighten.
Her brow goes taut and her mouth forms a tight line. Simran braces herself.
“Eh! What are you saying?” Veena perima asks. Kavitha and Simran exchange a tense glance. “If you get married? Are you going to be a spinster?”
“That was just a turn of phrase,” Kavitha says, stumbling over her words. “But I am gay, Amma. You’d have a daughter-in-law, not a son-in-law. A marumagal, not a mappillai,” she adds in Tamil, as if to make sure her mother understands.
“Tsch, I understand what becoming gay means, Kavitha.”
Kavitha holds a hand up. “No, Amma, it’s not ‘becoming gay.’ You are gay.”
Veena perima cocks her head. “Okay, but if you don’t become gay, how can you be gay?”
“You just … are.”
Veena perima frowns, but it’s different than her disapproving one—a little more pensive, her mouth soft instead of stern. “All right. So you are gay or you are not gay.”