The Matchmaker

Chapter Three

Three

I step out of the car and take in Khala’s house. I’m in and out each week for Friday dinner—but with Azar coming over tonight, I linger in her cobblestone driveway, seeing the two-story stucco home with Spanish tiles through his eyes. Overgrown ivy tangles around the brick mailbox. Clumps of clovers and daisies litter the once perfectly mowed lawn. When did the shrubs lining the windows dry up? Khala had mentioned her landscaper retired last fall, but it didn’t occur to me that no one had replaced him.

I glance at Azar’s immaculate home across the street, a trail of freshly planted petunias lining his walkway—his old walkway, I correct myself. His parents have long since retired to Pakistan. How did Khala let it get this bad? And even if it had slipped her mind, what about Nina? Nina has her hands full, I remind myself. She’s going through a lot. But she moved in to take care of Khala, so couldn’t she actually take care of things? I make a mental note to call around for lawn service quotes tomorrow.

The house smells like my aunt’s favorite lavender-scented candles when I step inside. I set my purse on the ottoman in the foyer. At least the interior of the home hasn’t gone to shit quite yet—it still looks exactly like it did when I was growing up. The walls are gray and there are framed art pieces by Jamali that Khala purchased at various auctions through the years. Handwoven Persian rugs decorate the dark hardwood floors in every room.

I hear the pitter-patter of small feet. My cousin Nina’s four-year-old daughter, Lilah, emerges from around the corner. She’s wearing a tiny apron tied at her waist, and wraps her arms around my leg.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthdaaaaay, Auntie Nura, happy birthday to you!”

“Wonderful rendition!” Lilah’s springy curls tickle my face when I give her a kiss.

“Me and Mama are making you a cake, but it was my idea.”

“It smells delicious!”

A door creaks down the hall and Khala emerges from around the corner. She’s wearing a turquoise shalwar kameez. Her silvery-gray hair is swept up. She looks as graceful as ever.

“Happy thirty-two, beta.” She gives me a peck on the cheek. “I had not heard from you in a few days. I was beginning to worry.”

My aunt’s newest pastime: worrying about me. “Sorry, Khala. Didn’t you get my texts?”

“I need to hear your voice to know all is well. How is everything at work?”

I tell her about the wedding last weekend. Saba and Abid’s nuptials. Tidbits about some of our latest clients.

“You are balancing so many different things.” She pats my arm. “Perhaps it’s time to scale back the personalized matchmaking a bit? That app of yours is enough to keep a team of fifty on their toes.”

“We do have a remote team of nearly fifty people who handle the app side of things,” I remind her.

“Nevertheless, the ultimate responsibility falls to you.”

“Khala—”

“It is merely a suggestion,” she says gently. “Life is short. Look at me—health can turn on a dime, can’t it? You deserve girlfriends and brunch. Vacations. I can’t help but worry.”

A stonelike sensation lodges in my stomach. Not this again. How casually she tells me to scale back what we’ve worked so hard to grow. The part of the work which makes us…well, us . It’s not supposed to be like this.

I can still smell the antibacterial hand wash in the hospital room I’d raced into after her first stroke. I’d had to summon all my professional skills to stay calm. My once formidable khala with her designer shalwar kameez and gold bangles, diminished to a small frame in a thin cotton gown beneath starched sheets. It was like watching a superhero shed their costume.

“She’ll be all right,” the doctor had said. “As far as strokes go, this one was minor.”

But the minor strokes continued over the next few weeks and months without rhyme or reason. Then came the diagnosis: stage three vascular dementia. Suddenly, I was thrust from being her partner at the agency to the only one in charge.

But instead of telling me she’s proud of me, instead of being relieved that I’m carrying on the work that connects us from Atlanta to the flatlands of Punjab where the work began, she thinks I should stop. She means well. I know she does. But each time she makes suggestions like these, they land like a punch. My cousin Nina is to blame. I’m sure of it. All these little mentions of pulling back from our work began soon after she moved in.

“How is my dear Gertie doing?” Khala asks.

“Ridiculous as always.” Thankful for the change in conversation, I pull out my phone and swipe through the photos of Khala’s senior Siberian forest cat, who’s taken up residence with me since Nina arrived. Nina’s allergic to cats. She’d probably say she’s allergic to me as well, but I’m not about to be shaken out of Khala’s life quite so easily.

“Gertie’s getting the finest treatment any feline has ever received,” I assure her. I wasn’t exactly in the market for a pet, but Gertie’s family, and the sweetest cat to boot.

“I would not have trusted her with anyone else.” She glances at the front door. “Is Azar still joining us for dinner? It has been ages since I last saw him.”

“He’s running a little late, but of course he’s coming. He’s my closest friend.”

“More like one of your only friends,” Khala corrects me.

I’d protest this, but she’s right. She knows better than anyone that this job requires complete devotion—outside of office hours, there’s really only space for Azar. It’s not as though her calendar was stacked with casual brunch dates while I was growing up. The only vacations we ever took had doubled as work trips—mornings watching cartoons with room service in a plush hotel room in cities like New York, Chicago, even Tokyo once, while Khala headed to intake meetings, after which we’d hit up a local zoo or museum. I can’t get too worked up, though. She remembered my birthday. We’ve had an entire conversation without a single memory slip. I’m grateful for good days. There have been more and more of them lately. Maybe things are getting better.

“Can you help me with the crystal?” she asks. “I can’t reach the glasses in the top cabinet in the kitchen and I want to make sure the dining table is all set up before Azar arrives.”

“Am I already being put to work? Isn’t this my birthday celebration?” I tease.

“I thought you loved helping your khala?” She winks.

As I entered the open and airy kitchen, the happy feeling fades when I see Nina.

“You’re late,” she says.

She’s at the kitchen island in front of opened bags of flour and sugar. Her dark hair is newly pixie-short. Her slender shoulders are squared back, her jaw set firm. She looks so much like Khala that sometimes if I glance at her absentmindedly, I feel a jolt to my system like I’ve traveled back in time. Like I’m looking at my aunt when I first entered her life at the age of seven. They have the same curved nose. The same doe-like brown eyes. If only she acted like my khala in any way. Lilah climbs onto the stool next to her mother.

“Work got busy,” I tell Nina. “And Friday traffic was a monster.”

“A monster?” Lilah’s eyes widen.

“Yep. A ginormous snake that stretches for miles and miles!”

Lilah squeals. Nina acts like I haven’t spoken at all. She opens a cabinet and pulls out cocoa powder. Grabs the teaspoons from the drawer by the sink. She’s been here four months at this point, but it still surprises me when I see her riffling through the kitchen. Like it’s her house or something. It is her house, I remind myself. This is her mother’s home.

“Are you all caught up with client intakes?” Khala asks. “The last time we spoke, you had mentioned quite the surge in applications.”

“Wedding season is definitely causing a bigger spike than usual. I’m racing to catch up,” I tell her. “I had five back-to-back appointments today.”

“Someone needs to get better with those boundaries,” Nina mutters under her breath.

She’s baiting me. She knows there are no weekends or holidays in a job like mine. A job that pays the mortgage for this house, the water and electricity bills, and sends Lilah to Bishop Academy for a cool $2,300 a month. I don’t see her complaining about any of that, do I?

Nina is currently on an “indefinite break” from her job as a curator at the Portland Museum of Modern Art to take care of Khala. A job she didn’t need to leave, as I’d told her numerous times. Before she unceremoniously arrived, I’d started moving Khala’s things over to my place. Some of her agency-related boxes stuffed with old notebooks, confidential documents, and the dated tape recorder she used to dictate notes are still wedged in my hallway closet. Then Nina stepped in and that was that. Now she’s the one with the final say. She chooses the doctors. Decides which medicine is preferable and which physical therapist is best. I’ve learned it does not matter that this woman raised us both. At the end of the day, Nina is the daughter. I’m just the niece.

I grab the dusty crystal glasses from the top shelf of the cabinet. Flipping on the faucet, I rinse each one before patting them dry. Why is Nina even bothering to make me a cake, anyway? Her feelings about me are written all over her face. I tuck a strand of dark hair behind my ear. Even if she eggs me on, I’m not going to snipe back. We’ve had enough skirmishes to last a lifetime.

“Not those glasses, Billi. I meant the gold-rimmed ones behind them.” Khala lifts and examines one of the drying stems.

Billi. My chest tightens at the nickname. My mother’s nickname. My mother, who has been dead for over twenty years. Nina stops mixing the cake. Lilah looks up from her perch.

“I—I’m not Billi,” I manage to say.

“Of course, Bilqis, ” she replies, smiling. “You are far too old for silly nicknames, aren’t you? But no matter how old you get, you remain my little sister. Don’t you forget it.”

“Well—”

Before I can figure out what to say next, Khala gasps. Clasps a hand to her mouth.

“Nura. Oh, my sweet Nura.” Her eyes fill with tears. “I am so sorry.”

I rush to reassure her. Slipups happen. I try to keep my voice neutral and calm. To not show her how unmoored I suddenly feel. It’s not as though she chose to forget me. Her memory lapses are minor enough—this one came and went in a matter of seconds, didn’t it? But it’s still a hard thing to witness. This shift in someone you love who’d once stood before you as sturdy and unshakable as a mountain, slowly coming undone.

Shakily, she sits at the kitchen table. I hand her a glass of water. She takes a sip. “Your mother is never far from my mind.” Her gaze meets mine. “Look at you—you’re the very image of her. On your birthdays, I think of her a bit more, I suppose. She would have been so proud of you.”

I pull out the correct crystal glasses. I’m not about to contradict her, but I’m not so sure of how proud my mother would really be. I don’t have as many memories as I’d like of her. Her almond-shaped eyes and oval face have faded to hazy outlines with the passage of time, so I cling to the few memories I do have, including the one conversation I can still recount word for word.

When my mother was tucking me into bed a few days after my seventh birthday, I’d asked her why we never visited Atlanta. My father had died of an aneurysm while my mother was pregnant with me. Khala and Nina were our only living relatives, and I hadn’t seen them since I was two.

“Your khala and I…we don’t see eye to eye on most things,” she said, patting my arm. “It’s better to keep our distance.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Honey, you’re too young for all the details.”

When I insisted on knowing more, she simply said, “Honey, she’s so busy with her work, I doubt she would even have time for us if we visited. Her job completely consumes her. It’s not healthy.”

“She’d make time for us,” I told her. “Can’t we at least try? I want to see her. I want to see Nina.”

My mother’s expression softened. She leaned down and kissed my forehead.

“Let me think about it,” she finally said.

Neither of us knew that in two weeks’ time an atmospheric river would descend upon the Bay Area, causing her car to careen over a cliff on a wet and windy night. Suddenly, I was yanked from our one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Mission District and placed in a sprawling six-bedroom home set on half an acre in Atlanta, Georgia. Suddenly, Khala became my legal guardian and life as I’d known it was over. I look down at my silver bracelets. My mother’s bracelets. Etched with flowers, they’re worn with time, but they’re all I have left of her.

“Mom has a two o’clock this Tuesday with the neurologist,” Nina says, pulling me back to the present. “Can you take her, or maybe arrange for someone to take her? It overlaps with Lilah’s pickup time.”

“I can take her.” Lowering my voice, I ask, “Did you ask Dr. Pang about the clinical trial at the last visit?”

“Nura, we’ve talked about this. She’d have to travel back and forth to New Mexico for years, and she might be in the placebo group for all we know. Mom and I discussed it, and she agrees it’s too much for her.”

“It’s not a surefire cure, but isn’t it worth trying everything we can?”

“She’s getting older, Nura. That’s how it is. You can’t fix her.”

“So that’s it? We give up?”

“Nura, please. I don’t want to relitigate this.”

The oven beeps, preheated and ready, warming up the kitchen. Nina turns back to her mixing bowl. I jot Tuesday’s appointment into my work calendar. I’m glad I’ll be the one taking her to the doctor next. I’ll see what Dr. Pang thinks. If he agrees with Nina, I’ll get a second opinion. A third. There’s got to be a way to help Khala get better. She’s my aunt in name, but in all practical senses, she’s my mother. I can’t lose her.

I watch Nina pour the batter into the baking pan. Nina and I were both raised by the same woman. She should be more sister than cousin—instead, she feels like neither. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re twelve years apart. By the time I arrived, she was at Stanford, as geographically distant as she possibly could get, visiting for the occasional Thanksgiving holiday. I once thought her coolness toward me was because I’d taken on the family business instead of her. But she turned it down long before I entered the picture. She hated how all-consuming the work was. She derided it as archaic. She’d adamantly told Khala she wanted no part of it. Still, the only explanation for the way her eyes flash toward me when she thinks I’m not looking is jealousy.

The doorbell rings. When I open it, Azar is standing at the doorstep holding flowers. Seeing him, I feel my jaw unclench.

“Happy birthday.” He kisses my cheek.

“Azar! Beta!” Khala embraces him.

Even Nina cracks a smile when Azar retrieves a vase from beneath the sink for the flowers. He pulls a miniature stuffed Pikachu from his pocket and presents it to Lilah for her collection.

Dinner, a few hours later, is lovely as usual. Khala ordered a veritable feast: Haleem with sliced ginger and serrano peppers. Mouth-watering goat biryani. Pan-fried shami kebabs. Later that evening, when I blow out the candles on the red velvet cake—which, I grudgingly admit, tastes moist and delicious—I start to relax.

Lilah hands me a card. Stick figures of the two of us and an enormous pink heart that takes up the entire page. Nina surprises me with a cream wristlet wallet with red trim. Khala hands me a wrapped box, which I assume is a necklace or earrings—her favorite go-to gifts—but tonight’s gift isn’t jewelry.

“A smartwatch?” I hold up the smooth white box.

“I bought one for myself a few months earlier—you really need one with how busy work is. Frankly, I am shocked you don’t have one already.”

Nina scoffs. That’s exactly what I need, she says without saying. More ways to be connected to my work. She doesn’t get it. Matchmaking isn’t just a job for me; it’s a calling. A part of who I am.

When I look at the cake she went to great effort to bake, I could almost convince myself she’s trying to bridge the gap between us, but then the scoff and headshake—we are no closer to any meaningful connection at all.

“The watch buzzes when someone rings you, so no more missing my phone calls,” Khala says. “We can also keep track of one another’s steps. I hit ten thousand even on a bad day.”

“Why does this sound more like a gift for you?” I tease her. “I love it, thank you.”

When I open Azar’s envelope, I gasp. It’s a four-night stay at a Sofitel resort in Cartagena, Colombia.

“You’ve been wanting to go since college,” he says before I can speak. “Plane tickets included, of course, but I figured we’d get to that once you’ve picked your dates.”

“Azar…this is too much.”

“You’d already gotten yourself a Moccamaster, so what was I supposed to do?”

“I can’t go!”

“Why not?”

“Because…” I sputter. “It’s…it’s wedding season.”

“Wedding season will pass,” he says. “When’s the last time you’ve been on vacation?”

“When was Italy?”

“Italy was three years ago, Nur. You’re overdue.”

Three years ago? I count back. He’s right. It was right around the time he moved back. After we’d cleared up our years-long misunderstanding. Before Khala’s most recent stroke. Before my life became quite this hectic.

“You’re going to come with me to this one too?”

“Well, duh.”

“What a thoughtful gift, Azar,” says Khala. “I was just telling Nura she needs to take some time off and travel. Do something fun.”

Azar could have plucked me a bouquet of dandelions from the lawn, and Khala would have declared it the perfect gift. Still—I look at the gift card—this was thoughtful, and I could definitely use a vacation. And uninterrupted one-on-one time with Azar—what’s not to love about that?

My mouth is full of cake when Nina asks Azar, “Are you still her decoy?”

“Azar is her plus-one,” Khala corrects her.

“There’s steak next weekend,” he says. “Oyster bar too.”

“You should let Nura get started on matching you, Azar,” Khala tells him. “Isn’t it about time you found the one?”

My heart does an involuntary flip, but I go along with it. “Say the word. I’ll even give you a hefty discount.”

Azar laughs. Color rises up his cheeks. It’s not as though I really would have. He knows we don’t match the people we’re close to, and he would never have actually taken me up on the offer, anyway. Serial dater Azar is too much of a ladies’ man to settle down.

“Not everyone wants their lives engineered for them, Nura,” says Nina.

I exhale. Nina can’t let a visit go by without getting a dig in, can she? Before I can say anything, a hand glides over mine under the table. Azar’s not looking at me, but he squeezes gently. Let it go, he’s saying. It’s not worth it.

I squeeze back. He’s right. I’m here because of Khala. Because traditions matter to her, and so they matter to me. There’s no point in getting into a slugfest with Nina.

“Can I work at the agency too, Auntie Nura?” Lilah asks.

Nostalgia tugs at my heartstrings. I’d asked my khala about joining the agency when I was still in grade school. I was mesmerized by her. Her perfectly polished nails. Her hair done just so. In the early days, as I navigated my grief, she let me follow her everywhere—her shadow, she’d teasingly call me. She didn’t usher me out of the room when I eavesdropped on her conversations in the home office. The kids at school would talk about Disney movies, but what interest could they hold for me when I was living with a real-life fairy godmother? Time and again I’d see clients go from downtrodden and desolate to exchanging vows with their perfect partner a year later. When I’d asked to help, she’d gently tried to steer me away. She knew my mother hadn’t approved and she was firm on honoring her wishes for me. Go to college, she’d told me. Find your passion. Except this was my passion. Eventually I wore her down. She saw that I wasn’t only good at the work, I was born for it. Slowly she let me answer calls and transcribe notes. Over time, I helped her expand the business. We went from an exclusively desi clientele to serving a diverse and inclusive group of people. I still honored my mother’s wishes and went to college. I gave it my all. Ran cross-country for Emory. Double-majored in psychology and business, and graduated with honors. Then I joined the agency and never looked back.

Before I can reply to Lilah, Nina sets her drink roughly on the table. “Not a chance, kiddo. You are going to have a balanced life, and you will definitely not be carrying on old-fashioned traditions that should have died out long ago.”

Khala’s expression falls.

“What is with you?” My voice rises, and even Azar’s hand pressed against mine can’t quell my frustration. “We’ve evolved with the times just like everyone else. You wouldn’t know that, though, because you don’t know anything about what we do.”

She cocks her head and looks at her mother.

“Nura’s right. I have no clue how any of this works, do I? Maybe you could enlighten me sometime about the godsend that is Piyar, the place where true love is guaranteed?” she says mockingly.

Khala fixes her gaze on her half-eaten cake slice. Her lower lip trembles. Anger rumbles through my core. Nina is jealous, isn’t she? I lean forward to give her a piece of my mind. To let her know that if she looked down so deeply on us, she could pack up and be gone and leave us be. Just because her life hasn’t worked out like she imagined doesn’t mean she can take potshots at the one her mother and I have worked so hard to build. But from the corner of my eye, I spot Lilah. Her shoulders are hunched up to her ears. Her eyes water. My anger evaporates like steam.

“Sweetie,” I begin.

“You won’t believe what happened today,” Azar interrupts. He looks directly at Lilah. “Did I tell you about the patient who came in this morning because he swallowed twenty-five pennies?”

Lilah sniffles. “Not for real?”

“Completely for real.”

He mimes the steps he took to help the improbably hapless patient. A metal detector. A fishing rod. Magnets. His antics do the trick. Soon, Lilah is howling with laughter.

I lift my fork. Only then do I realize my hand is trembling. But it wasn’t because of our argument. And while upsetting Lilah disturbs me greatly, that wasn’t it either.

It’s the look.

The one Nina gave to my aunt. The wordless exchange that passed between them. The quiver of Khala’s lower lip. The expression that crossed her face for the briefest of moments: fear.