A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel (12 page)

They were watching television late one night, sprawled on the couch, when Priya told him.

“What?” Madhu asked.

“You didn’t hear me the first time?” Priya demanded, irritated by his tone.

“I heard you fine,” Madhu said, turning off the television. “Pregnant? Again?”

“Madhu, we have unprotected sex; there is a chance we can get pregnant,” Priya said.

“I know that, but . . . I just didn’t expect it,” Madhu said, slowly grasping the meaning of what Priya had told him. “When did you find out?”

Priya paused, contemplated whether to lie, and then told him the truth.

“You waited six weeks?”

“Well . . . yes.”

“Why?”

Priya shrugged.

“That’s not an answer,” Madhu said, his voice getting hard.

“Well, this isn’t exactly the warm response I expected,” Priya said, getting defensive, standing up to leave the living room.

“You waited six whole fucking weeks to tell me that we’re going to have a baby. Why?”

Priya had tears in her eyes. “Just because. You’ve been traveling and . . .”

Madhu shook his head. “You wanted to wait and see if you’d lose it. And then what was your plan? Not to tell me at all?”

Priya stared at him in disbelief. “How can you say that? Of course I’d tell you.”

“I don’t know, Priya. Right now I don’t know what the hell is going on. Why the hell are we even still getting pregnant? Why the hell are we trying again and again? I don’t want children. Can’t you understand that?” Madhu yelled.

“I didn’t trick you into getting pregnant. You could’ve worn a condom if the idea is so repulsive,” Priya yelled back.

“Why did you tell me today?” Madhu asked.

“I thought it was time,” Priya said.

“So you decide when it’s time?” Madhu said, nodding. “Right, because this is your baby. I’m just the fucking sperm donor.”

“That’s not true, Madhu,” Priya said, exasperated. “I didn’t tell anyone I was pregnant. I’m scared of losing the baby. I just didn’t want to say anything.”

Madhu looked her in the eye and softly said, “I’m scared of losing the baby, too. We could’ve been scared together. But I think you should be scared alone this time. I’m done worrying about this shit.”

They were still angry with each other the next morning, and Priya had used that as an excuse not to ask Madhu to come to the ultrasound with her.

But she should’ve called him when the doctor told her there was no heartbeat and recommended a DNC. She should’ve called and asked him to hold her hand. By not calling him, she had wounded their marriage more. On the other hand, he packed up and left when she told him she had lost the baby again, so in retrospect they were even.

Krysta had driven Priya home. Madhu wasn’t there. Krysta had stayed for a while, but Priya had wanted to be alone; it hurt too much—her body, her heart, everything—and it hurt more to have a witness to her pain, her grief, her ultimate inadequacy as a woman.

“You OK?” Madhu had asked when he got home, coming into the bedroom, his hand on his tie. He usually didn’t wear a suit, which meant he’d probably been meeting clients that day.

“No,” Priya told him. Did he think she was OK? Couldn’t he see the tears? The pain? Couldn’t he see anything?

“You lost the baby,” he said matter-of-factly, like he was telling her that she had burned the rice again.

“Yes,” Priya said, her face cracking, her arms lifting ineffectually like she wanted a hug but didn’t know how to ask, knew that he wouldn’t give her one.

He shook his head. “I knew it.”

“You knew it?” she demanded, dropping her hands on her lap. “You didn’t think the baby could survive?” She wanted to blame someone, and here he was. He didn’t believe it would last, and now she’d lost the baby.

He shook his head again. He didn’t come near her. He stood by the door like she had a plague, a horrible, contagious disease he was afraid of catching.

“Yes, I knew it and so did you,” he said. “That’s why you waited to tell me you were pregnant. You were waiting for the miscarriage to happen so that you never had to tell me.”

“No, that’s not why I waited. But is that what you wished for? That I never told you?” Priya demanded.

“Yes,” he said, and surprised her. “Yes. I wish you didn’t tell me you were pregnant so that I didn’t have to know that we lost yet another baby. I wish . . . you’d stop getting pregnant altogether so that we can stop losing babies.”

“How can you say that? Don’t you want a child as much as I do?” Priya asked.

“No,” Madhu said. “No. I don’t want a child. I don’t want a dead baby. I don’t want any of this. I just want us to have a normal fucking life where we can go for a movie, go out, laugh a little, enjoy life. When was the last time we had a good time as two people?”

“We’ve had plenty of good times,” Priya said, her insides churning because he was telling the truth. The past year had been a nightmare. She had been depressed, disinterested in everything and everyone. But it wasn’t like he had tried to cheer her up or get her out of her rut.

“There have been no fucking good times since you got on the damned mommy bandwagon,” Madhu said, screaming now, tears rolling down his cheeks. “Why the hell can’t you just give it up? Just give up. We can’t have children. Now let’s get on with our lives. OK?”

“No,” Priya screamed in response. “I want a baby. I don’t want a life without a baby.”

“You have me,” Madhu said. “Or is that not as important?”

Priya waited a long second before saying the worst thing she could have. Looking back, she couldn’t really be blamed, not when her hormones were running crazy and her head wasn’t screwed on straight.

“No, you’re not as important as a baby to me,” she told him calmly. “Nothing is more important to me than having a baby. I want a child.”

“Well, then, have your baby. You’ll just have to do it without me,” Madhu said.

He had packed his travel suitcase then, right in front of her while she lay in bed, seething, still bleeding, unable to believe that he was leaving.

He couldn’t be leaving, could he?

No. He was just being stupid.

Well, then, let him be stupid.

“I’ll pick up the rest of my stuff later,” Madhu said, and left.

Priya heard the door shut, heard his car roar away. And then she was alone.

She was alone for three weeks.

Priya hadn’t been able to find him. He hadn’t answered her calls and she had too much pride to start calling his friends or show up at his work to look for him. If he wanted to be gone, then so be it, she had told herself. She was the injured party here. She was the one who’d had a miscarriage—how dare he have a temper tantrum while she was bleeding and weak?

But after the first two nights of his absence, Priya worried that this wasn’t a temper tantrum. He was gone, probably for good.

“Go to his office, corner him, and ask him what he wants,” Krysta had suggested when she came to check on Priya over the weekend.

“I can’t go to his office,” Priya said. “I . . . do you think my marriage is over?”

“He did pack his bags and leave,” Krysta said thoughtfully, and then, seeing the devastated look on Priya’s face, patted her hand. “But marriages go through stuff like this. He just needs to get some distance. And so do you, Priya. It’s not all him. You need to think things through, and so does he.”

“And then he’ll come back?” Priya asked, terrified that he wouldn’t. She didn’t know how to go about her life without Madhu. She didn’t know how to wake up and live her life without him. She couldn’t sleep well when he traveled. She didn’t cook if he wasn’t at home. She didn’t laugh without him.

“Sure, he’ll be back,” Krysta said. “But . . . just in case, you do have your own bank account, right?”

Priya shook her head. “No, we have a joint account.”

Krysta’s eyebrows rose into her hairline.

“Come on, we’ve had a joint bank account since we moved in together in school,” Priya said. “He isn’t going anywhere with our money.”

“Go to the bank and set up your own bank account, and then transfer half your savings there,” Krysta recommended.

Priya couldn’t fathom separating their finances like this. It would be a signal to Madhu that she didn’t have faith in them.

“Don’t be stupid, Priya,” Krysta warned her. “Those women on
Oprah
are just like you and me.”

“Madhu isn’t a thief, Krysta,” Priya said.

“This isn’t about moral values or what you believe in. Divorce brings out the worst in people. At least you guys don’t have children to fight over,” Krysta said pragmatically, unaware of how insensitive that sounded.

Priya had not gone to the bank. She refused to give up hope. But she had also stopped calling Madhu’s cell phone. If he was going to come back, then he was going to come back, but not because she called him five times a day.

She told no one about his leaving. He was on a business trip, she told her parents when she spoke to them, and she had the same answer for their friends who called. She would lie: “I’m not sure where he is. Dallas, or was it LA?”

She said it to so many people in such a short period of time that she started to believe it herself. Madhu was on a business trip; he hadn’t walked out on her.

The loneliness was bitter. It was acidic, this feeling of being just one person in mind and body. There was no one to reach out to in the night, no one to turn to and comment about the news, no one to share a joke with or bitch about traffic. She was alone.
This is what it means to be divorced and single,
she thought. It was one thing to have always been single—then you didn’t know what you were missing—but it was another to have been so deep into a marriage, into a relationship, and then find that part of your soul ripped out.

She lost weight, nearly eight pounds in two weeks. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t feel. She checked her messages, her cell phone, her e-mail, incessantly. He would be back, wouldn’t he? Yes, he would. It was a mantra she repeated.

In the evenings, she picked up takeout for herself from the Indian place or the Chinese place or KFC. One takeout meal lasted two evenings. She sat in front of the TV and ate, unable to sit alone at the dining table. It felt like a farce to sit there. There was no one to eat with, no one to light candles for. She thought less about her miscarriage this time around. She worried about Madhu.

He came back on a Sunday, nearly three and a half weeks after he had left. She didn’t even hear the car in the driveway, though she had been listening for it for days now. She had been working, trying to keep herself busy with a design project she’d acquired the previous week.

She’d had her iPhone earbuds jammed in her ears. She didn’t hear the door open over Maria Callas’s voice.

She’d been in the study, deep in concentration, her fingers tapping on the keyboard, moving the mouse, her eyes scanning the InDesign file open on her laptop screen. And then she’d smelled him.

Afraid she was finally losing it enough to imagine things, she turned and saw him standing at the doorstep.

She wanted to run to him, jump up and down, and cry with joy, “You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!” But she wasn’t sure if he was back to be back with her or just to pick up the rest of his stuff, as he had promised.

“Hi,” he said. Priya only nodded, unable to get words out of her throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Priya nodded again, and when he held his arms open, she walked into them and they both wept for the baby they had lost and for the way they had almost lost each other.

He apologized for his desertion. He said he would make it up to her with vacations, flowers, presents . . . anything she wanted. He was sorry and Priya had forgiven him. She understood when he told her that he had been frightened. She believed him when he promised he’d never leave again.

“This baby is important to me, too. So we’ll work on this together. But you have to promise to make room for me, and I’ll promise to make room for the baby,” he had said.

“When you left, I didn’t even think about the baby,” Priya confessed. “I only worried about you. Without you, there’s no me and there’s no baby.”

It was the worst thing that had happened in their marriage, and the best thing. The lessons learned were important ones. They didn’t leave things unsaid. They didn’t shrink away from telling each other how they really felt. They didn’t mind disagreeing. They had become a closer team than they’d been before—more honest, more comfortable with the truth. They had seen what life could be like without each other, and they had both recognized how much they loved each other. Maybe Priya wanted a baby more than Madhu did, but he was by her side all the way. And maybe Priya was baby crazy as he accused, but she wasn’t giving up on their marriage or making the baby more important than him, than them. They had gotten better at balancing themselves and accommodating each other. They felt they were on their second marriage, and this time around they were smarter and wiser, healthier and happier.

Priya had always believed happy couples agreed on everything, but now she realized that healthy couples learned to respect even when they disagreed. It wasn’t how much you fought; it was about how good you were at making up. It was about trusting each other and the relationship to have that fight, to get it out there and have the love to heal the wound, temper the argument, and laugh about it. And they both learned that makeup sex could be an awesome healing thing.