2. Meena
2
Meena
Spring was on Meena’s mind when she opened the fridge in her kitchen and felt the cool air strike her face, gentle and fresh. She shoved the milk from the supermarket inside and stood for a moment, sushi container in her hand. Should she eat now or later? Was she hungry or was she bored? Were her days now sprinkled with answering such mundane questions?
She sat down at the kitchen table but didn’t open the container. She figured she wasn’t hungry after all. A mischievous thought entered her mind, of calling Owen out of the blue. He was at work, but she would tell him to find a quiet meeting room, and then she would pull down her top and show him her breasts just like she had all those years ago, in the midst of a cold and brutal February in London.
It was Owen who had FaceTimed her that afternoon, returning her text. She had been expecting his call and quickly positioned herself on the couch in her small studio apartment in Clapham, at the same time pulling down her bra strap. Before swiping to answer, she turned the camera towards her left breast.
‘Meena, I’m at a Costa’s!’ were the first words out of his mouth.
‘Uh, so?’ she’d replied, blinking at the camera. She tilted the phone back up towards her face, laughing. ‘C’mon, enjoy the moment.’
Owen’s face said he very much wasn’t enjoying the moment. His eyes darted nervously around the cafe.
‘Why so serious?’ she teased, still feeling playful. ‘I could help turn that frown upside down.’ She winked at the camera, or at least tried to. The video quality was so grainy she wasn’t entirely sure if he saw the wink or thought she had something stuck in her eye.
‘Meena,’ he said, leaning towards the phone and speaking in a low voice, ‘I’m surrounded by people having flat whites and taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi. This isn’t ... ideal.’
‘Oh, come on. No one’s paying attention.’ She bit her lip, but the screen froze. Owen’s face was stuck mid-sentence, mouth half-open, looking like a strange mix of confusion and horror.
‘Owen, are you there?’ she asked loudly.
‘What?’ came the distorted voice.
‘Maybe connect to that free Wi-Fi you were talking about. Your phone network isn’t that great.’ Their banter was moving from flirting to tech support.
The screen flickered, went black. Then Owen was walking, his face bouncing up and down, as he searched for better reception. ‘I’m moving! I think the Wi-Fi’s better over here.’
She sighed, pulling her bra strap back up.
‘How about now?’ he asked, his voice louder. As if shouting would help him reconnect with the internet gods.
Meena closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘Perfect,’ she said, though his face had once again frozen. This time, he was stuck with one eye squinting suspiciously at the screen.
By the time Owen came back into view, any trace of romance had evaporated. At least he’d found a seat.
They might as well move on. ‘Is there something else you’re forgetting?’ Meena asked.
Owen groaned softly. ‘Oh god, what have I missed now?’
‘Valentine’s Day,’ she said, trying not to sound too disappointed, though judging by the way his face twitched, she wasn’t hiding it very well.
‘Well, shit,’ he muttered.
‘It’s okay. We can order in,’ she said, with forced cheerfulness. ‘I’ll open a bottle of wine.’
He nodded. ‘Uh, okay,’ he said, clearly relieved to have a solution. ‘I just need to wrap up a few things at work first.’
‘Great,’ she said, trying to inject some enthusiasm. ‘And then, you can spend the night.’ She gave him her best attempt at a seductive smile, though it was clear from the way he shifted uncomfortably in his seat that the mood was long gone.
‘Actually,’ Owen said, scratching the back of his neck, ‘maybe I could head over now? I can finish up the work stuff later.’
‘Sure.’
The screen flickered once more before freezing again, leaving Owen stuck with a painfully awkward half-smile. She sighed, hanging up and tossing the phone onto the couch.
An hour later the buzzer rang.
‘It’s me.’ His voice crackled on the speaker as she buzzed him up.
She quickly adjusted herself in the narrow full-length mirror beside the sofa that transformed into a bed that sagged in the middle, which she’d promised herself she would ditch soon, as she was now thirty and needed to have proper adult things. Perhaps she should have opened up the sofa into a bed, in preparation for Owen’s arrival? At the same time they’d never been fussed over a bed before, having done it all over her small studio in multiple positions.
Her reflection stared back at her. She was still in the lace bra but now she was also wearing the matching panties. She felt good. She slid her thumbs into the band of the panties and hiked them up a bit further just as Owen knocked on the door.
She held the door ajar, letting him get a full view of her, but he was horrified.
‘For fuck’s sake, Meena, the neighbours!’ he said, quickly closing the door behind him.
That wasn’t what she expected him to say. ‘You never cared before,’ she said.
He shrugged, avoiding her gaze as he peeled off his jacket. He looked around, a sense of restlessness in his body. His eyes settled on the incense sticks sitting in a holder in the corner of the small dining table that also served as her workspace. Smoke wafted upwards as bits of ash fell onto the fake pine wood.
‘Sandalwood again?’ he asked, his voice distant.
‘It’s supposed to help with stress,’ she said.
Owen took a deep breath, then shook his head. ‘Yeah, well ... I think it’s going to take more than that.’
‘Maybe we need industrial-strength incense then,’ she said attempting to laugh. A strained sound came out of her mouth.
He smiled weakly. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, his shoulders slouched, the weight of something unsaid pulling him down.
‘What’s wrong?’ She stepped towards him. ‘Something happen at work?’
Owen met her gaze for a moment, but then looked away. ‘It’s not that,’ he said, his voice tight.
‘Then what is it?’
For a moment it seemed like he wouldn’t say anything at all. But then he looked at her with sadness.
‘This isn’t working, Meena.’
She felt like she couldn’t breathe. She turned away, crossing her arms over her chest, as if that could protect her from what he was about to say. ‘No,’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘Don’t say that.’
She walked over to the cupboard and pulled out the first things her hands touched – a jumper and a pair of shorts. She tugged them on, the fabric rough against her skin.
Owen followed her with his eyes, a slight softening in his expression as she moved. ‘Meena ...’
‘No,’ she said again, walking towards the kitchenette.
She pulled out a mug from the cupboard and filled the kettle with water as she loudly hummed to herself. The sounds of the old electric kettle powering on and her own humming almost blocked him out, but still she couldn’t stop hearing him.
‘It hasn’t been working out for ages, Meena. We can’t ignore it.’
Her back stiffened.
‘What do you want me to say?’ she asked, turning around to face him. ‘That I spent the last five years with you because I had nothing better to do? I had no other options? You think I would be here, living like this, if I didn’t think that we were close to moving on with the next stage of our lives?’
‘We’re still young—’ he started.
‘I’m thirty now! You’re telling me to throw away what could have been the most fun years of my life and start all over again?’
He tried to interject but she wasn’t finished.
‘I could’ve been partying, sleeping around, having some of the best sex of my life, and instead I spent it with you. I stayed in this shitty small place with bad plumbing and damp on the walls because I figured soon we’d get out of here and find somewhere bigger and better. Together. Like you said.’
More than once her friends had commented how odd it was the two of them hadn’t moved in together. The unspoken part of what they were saying was, Isn’t that what couples do after they’ve been together for that long ? But a couple of years ago he’d mentioned, off-the-cuff, that he had a special savings account where he occasionally transferred money ‘for a house we can buy together’. And when he said that, a flower had bloomed in her chest, and it felt so precious and rare that she could not tell anyone about it. So even when her friends made snarky remarks about her relationship or when Owen made his ridiculous excuses, she remembered the precious flower and knew that one day her dream of them together in their special house would come true.
‘You can still move,’ he said quietly. ‘Find a sharehouse or something?’
A sharehouse? She couldn’t keep it in. ‘Seriously? You choose to do this on Valentine’s Day of all days? What kind of man does that?’
The electric kettle clicked off. She poured the water into her mug over a round Tetley tea bag. He watched her silently for a moment. As he looked at her, she got out a second mug and poured another cup of tea.
She handed him the mug, their fingers brushing for a second.
‘You did have some of the best sex of your life, though,’ he said after a while, a small smile on his face. She felt the tension lift a little.
They settled on the couch, mugs of tea nestled in their hands. Owen’s eyes were focused on his tea. ‘You made it just the way I like it,’ he finally said.
‘’Course,’ she replied. ‘White with two sugars and the tea bag left inside.’
‘I know you love me very much,’ he started. ‘And I love you too. Of course I do.’
‘So then, what’s the problem?’
‘I just – I can’t be the only one who thinks this isn’t how relationships should be? We fight all the time.’
‘Everyone fights! We’re just passionate!’
‘I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m actually not that passionate about much,’ he said drily.
‘Maybe you need to be!’
Owen sighed. ‘See, that’s another thing you do. You’re always trying to change me.’
‘I’m just trying to make you better.’
‘I’ve never been good enough for you.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘It is! You’re trying to mould me into someone I’m not sure I am.’ He finally met her gaze with furrowed brows. ‘I mean, look at you and look at me. I get it, I’m punching way above my weight. But maybe it’s okay for me to be who I am.’
She set her mug down on the coffee table and turned towards him.
‘Owen, I believe in us, in how good we work as a couple,’ she said, her voice calm. ‘We just need to ... try harder.’
‘But don’t you think that’s the problem? We shouldn’t have to try this hard in a relationship?’
Meena sighed, impatience and anger surging in her. ‘We just can’t give up that easily. And you’ve got to admit, you tend to do that. If I didn’t know how bad some couples had it, then do you really think I’d work as hard as I do to keep us together? Even your dad, Owen, told me you give up too easily. You could’ve been a football star, he said—’
‘Don’t start—’
‘But it got too hard, didn’t it? Things worth fighting for are hard. Love is hard. Going for your dreams is hard.’
‘Damn it if I don’t have to hear about that football story every second of my life. I broke my toe, did he ever mention that? I could have had a permanent injury if I hadn’t eased up on the training. And anyway, if we’re bringing up stories from our childhood, then what about you? What about when you were five?’
Meena felt her heart racing. She flinched as she moved away from him on the couch.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘That was a low blow.’ He reached out and grabbed her hand. She let him hold it.
For a moment they sat there, neither one sure of what to say next. Slowly they turned towards each other, holding each other’s gaze for a moment before closing the distance between them with a searching kiss.
After a few moments he pulled away from her.
‘All our conversations can’t end like this.’ But she had other ideas in mind. She took off her jumper and let him take in the sight of her in her bra.
‘Admit it, I was the best sex of your life too,’ she said, as he put his hands just below her breasts, her back arching as he did. He could act like the most annoying jerk she’d ever met, but as soon as his hands were on her, there was an electrical pulse running through her body. She couldn’t help reacting to him the way she did. There was no logical explanation for it. She knew it was the same for him. His face could try and lie but his body couldn’t.
His hands moved around to her back and undid the clasp on her bra, before sliding it off. He moved his face towards her breasts but she stopped him.
‘Tell me that when you saw me at Costa’s you wanted me.’
‘I wanted you,’ he said before plunging headfirst into her cleavage. But she pushed him back.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me how much you wanted me. Even though you were acting like the biggest prick in the world, you wanted me.’
He sighed. ‘You know the answer to this,’ he said, looking her in the eyes. ‘It’s why I can’t, why I find it ... You know how much you turn me on. Every time I see you I want to ...’ And he stopped talking, throwing her down onto the couch as he climbed on top of her, his face burying into her breasts while he pulled down her shorts.
It was in the midst of the delirium he caused every time he was literally inside her that she remembered she was taking a break from the pill. It made her break out and she’d read somewhere that it could cause hormonal imbalance in some women. She was about to tell him to use a condom, if he even had one, but then he thrust so deep she lost the power of speech, and after that there was no going back.
When they were done, they pushed the coffee table out of the way and pulled out the sofa bed. It took him a solid two minutes before he passed out. She, on the other hand, fished out a pack of cigarettes from her bag and lit one. On the ceiling a blob of brown damp was changing shape and gaining tentacles, becoming an octopus, or perhaps a jellyfish. Now that she thought about it, it definitely had more jellyfish qualities, the tentacles longer and trailing along the cracks in the paint. When she had told the landlord about the growing patch he had grunted at her and done nothing.
She watched as the grey smoke from her cigarette wafted towards the patch. The colours came together well. They were the colours of London. Brown and grey on an off-white landscape, like the slush that coated the footpaths in winter and which she had repeatedly slipped on during her first few winters in the city. She stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on the floor and gently roused Owen. ‘Don’t you have to get back to work?’ she asked him.
‘Mmm-hmm,’ he mumbled back. This was the problem with Owen; he either worked hard or hardly worked. There was no middle ground.
‘You said you had a lot of work to do,’ Meena said, pushing him. ‘Now get up and get back to work.’
‘Or what?’ Owen asked sleepily. ‘You’ll leave me?’
‘You wish,’ she responded with a lightness in her voice, though she felt a clenching in her chest at the comment.
The sofa bed creaked as Owen slowly got up.
‘Is it okay if I shower?’ he asked.
‘Sure,’ she said, surprised at the question, but understanding in the moment that this was how it would end. That the sex they’d had was perhaps the last time they’d be together.
She turned over in bed, sinking into the saggy middle of the mattress as she did. Perhaps being single again at thirty wouldn’t be as big a disaster as she thought it would be. Perhaps it could even be freeing.
She drew the covers over her body and closed her eyes, feeling a warmth spreading through her bones, while inside her, changes began to take shape.
Do you really think I’d work as hard as I do to keep us together? The question she’d asked him ten years ago rang in her mind. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been presented with other options. Better options. There had definitely been a few interested men in the PR agency, even though hooking up with a rich older man felt like a cliché to Meena. But in hindsight, who wouldn’t want the life of a rich man’s wife? Drinking champagne on yachts, getting massages in the afternoon, while he worked hard to keep his bank balance healthy. And he would be away a lot so she wouldn’t have to shag him that often. Maybe once a month?
A short laugh escaped her throat. She couldn’t imagine it. One of her most favourite things in the world had been shagging the man who had become her husband. And she’d gone through enough drama to get her parents to accept him in the first place.
About two years after she’d met Owen, Meena returned to Sydney to attend her older sister Asma’s wedding. In typical perfect oldest daughter fashion, Asma was marrying her first boyfriend, Osman, who she had met in medical school.
‘If that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about Asma, then I’m not sure what will,’ she’d told Owen then.
‘Well, I know she’s not as half as pretty as you,’ Owen had replied. Meena had laughed and told him he didn’t need to lie.
‘I’m not,’ Owen answered, suddenly serious, and she pulled him towards her for a kiss. ‘And if your family give you grief about whether you’re also going to get married you can tell them I’m thinking about it.’
‘Are you?’ Meena shrieked, unable to hide her delight as she kissed him another time.
‘I did say thinking about it,’ Owen said, laughing.
‘I’m not sure I’m going to be telling them much about you. We’ll need to break it to them gently,’ she said, stroking his hair. ‘Anyway, back to Asma. All I’ll say is we’re not very much alike.’
‘You’re both with guys whose names sound similar, though,’ he’d replied.
That’s where their similarities ended. Osman was a driven, ambitious man who was training to be a heart surgeon. Asma meanwhile had switched from specialising in obstetrics to a more managerial path in hospital administration. The money was good, she’d explained, plus it meant that when she had kids there would be more flexibility in her work so she could combine her career with being a more present parent. That’s what her sister was like, always thinking five to ten years into the future while Meena barely thought five months ahead. From the time Asma started high school, she knew she wanted to get into medicine at uni, so she worked towards that goal and achieved it with ease. Asma made everything look easy, while Meena constantly felt she was the floundering, far less successful younger daughter. It was one of the main reasons why she had left Sydney for London as soon as she graduated university. Armed with an arts degree and her savings from working part-time as a retail assistant at a store that sold overpriced pyjamas, she made the journey that seemed like a rite of passage for almost all young Australians. Her mother had cried when she’d told her; her father initially gave her an outright no, there was no way she was going to bring shame on the family by moving to London by herself. Who did she think she was, a gori? But he also knew that there was no getting in the way of his younger daughter. If she set her mind to something, she was going to get it.
As she was leaving, her father comforted her crying mother by saying, ‘Don’t worry, she will be back in six months.’ Did he think she was going to be that much of a failure?
He didn’t realise that the words would light a fire inside his daughter. She swore to herself she wouldn’t return until she was some kind of success.
When she finally came back six years later for her sister’s wedding, she told them about all the places she’d been to with work, about the chateau in Paris where her client had hosted such a lavish party it felt like she’d been transported back to the time of Marie Antoinette (some of the PR girls had delighted in giddily saying ‘Let them eat cake’ to each other as they drank champagne from crystal flutes). But her parents hadn’t seemed that impressed. They had a hard time altogether understanding what she did for work: ‘public relations’ wasn’t as easily a digestible concept as ‘doctor’.
Asma, of course, was bathing in the glow of being the clear success in the family. She’d found a good Muslim boy, also a doctor, they had made a down payment on a house in a suburb with good schools – she had her whole life in order. While Meena was still flouncing around at parties.
‘Have you even slept with anyone other than Osman?’ Meena had asked Asma at the bachelorette party. It was, she thought, the only upper hand she had on her sister.
‘I haven’t even slept with Osman,’ her sister responded, like the chaste virgin princess that she was. Meena tried hard not to roll her eyes.
‘Well, good luck then. You have no idea what you’re in for. He could be a—’ Meena, falling into childish ways, raised her right pinky finger and waved it in front of her sister.
Asma huffed. ‘I may not have slept with him, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m dealing with down there. And I can tell you, he’s well endowed.’ Asma looked away and Meena could tell by the way Asma’s friends laughed that she had made a face showing everyone exactly what she thought of her younger sister.
‘Well, I haven’t told Mum and Dad yet, but Owen and I are probably going to get engaged soon,’ Meena said loudly. ‘He’s just won a big client at work, and the retainer he made from the deal will probably allow us to buy a flat in Notting Hill. You know where that is, right, Asma? I forget how you haven’t travelled much.’
‘I travelled enough as a kid. Sorry you couldn’t be there,’ Asma said. As soon as she said it, she looked a bit appalled at herself. ‘That was a bit shit of me,’ she added quickly.
‘It happened ages ago,’ Meena said, though her heart ached every time she remembered how they’d left her behind.
‘You know it was probably for the best, right?’ Asma’s tone was different now. She was serious. ‘Like, we lived in this tiny apartment, and the school I went to had these strict teachers who hit us with rulers.’
‘Yeah. You told me.’
‘You would’ve hated it. Anyway, why are we even talking about this right now?’ She shouted across to one of her friends to ask the DJ to put the music up. Not long after, a bunch of them got up to dance while Asma cheered them along.
But by then Meena had had enough. She left the party soon after, and spent the rest of the night sulking in her old bedroom in her parents’ home. She felt like she was fourteen again and all the feelings of inadequacy she had tried so hard to lock away in a box came pouring back out. Of course she knew she wasn’t as good as Asma. She could never be as good as her sister. Her parents had made it obvious which sister they’d preferred from the start.
The morning of the wedding, after Asma had got ready for the big day, her hair and make-up done, the heavily brocaded red gown and scarf that had been shipped especially from Pakistan pinned to her body, Meena told her parents that she was in a relationship with a white boy called Owen and that they were planning to get married. And she made sure to tell them this just as Asma was about to step into the living room, bridesmaids in tow.
‘You what?’ her father asked, as Asma stood blinking in the doorway, looking exactly like the lead in a Bollywood movie.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
‘Meena just told us she’s planning to get engaged to some white boy in London,’ her mother responded, a hitch in her voice and blinking back tears.
Checkmate, bitch , Meena wanted to say to Asma.
‘Okay, but can we just focus on me for a second?’ Asma said, ignoring Meena.
‘You look beautiful, beti, very nice,’ their mother said, casting a brief glance towards her older daughter. She turned back to Meena. ‘How long have you been with this boy? How do you know him? What does he do? This is too much for one day!’ She fanned herself as she sat down on the couch.
Meena smiled at Asma before replying to her mother. ‘Oh, you’ll love him, Ammy,’ she said, in an appeasing voice. ‘He’s so smart and he’s doing so well in the finance firm he works for. He just landed a big client. I think we’re going to buy an apartment together.’
‘Stop. This is ridiculous. You’re going to marry a boy we have yet to meet? And he’s a gora? I’m assuming he’s not Muslim,’ her father started.
Asma languished in the doorway, looking as if she was going to cry. A couple of her friends made soothing noises to make her feel better, but the damage was done. Meena had come along and found a way to steal her thunder on the biggest day of her life, and she had done it all on purpose. Asma avoided Meena’s eye for the rest of the day.
It was, Meena justified to herself, a nicer thing to do than to light a match and burn the whole place down, as she so often felt like doing when she was around her family. She’d never been able to stop herself. A part of her seemed stuck at five years old, saying goodbye to her parents and sister for what she thought would only be a short time, as she stayed behind with her aunt. It had turned out to be more than two years.
All these years later, thinking about her family still angered Meena. She got up and threw the contents of the uneaten sushi container in the bin. It was as she was finishing rinsing the plastic lid that the phone rang. She took a breath and calmed herself, carefully wiping her hands on a tea towel before picking up.
‘Ammy,’ she answered. ‘Assalaamu alaykum.’
‘Wa-alaikum as-salam. Did you see my text? You will come for lunch on Saturday?’ her mother asked. ‘Asma will be making samosas,’ she added. The anger rose inside Meena’s chest, ghosts of the past rising up.
Why did you leave me, Ammy, all those years ago? I cried every day. These were the words she wanted to say.
‘I don’t know,’ she said instead. ‘I think Sasha has dance rehearsals.’
‘We hardly see you,’ her mother said, her voice cracking as she spoke.
For good reason , Meena wanted to say.
‘I’ll think about it.’ Both she and her mother knew that was a polite way of saying no.
On the other end her mother sighed, but all she said was, ‘Okay.’