At the end of the table, there’s a purple pillbox, the kind with tiny compartments for each day of the week. Simran thought Nani took only the one blood pressure medication Mom ships to her.
“What do you want to do today?” Nani asks after they’ve been eating for a few minutes.
Simran shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Whatever you want. Maybe we can go to the school.”
Mom told Simran her geriatric patients’ lives always eventually revolved around their health. Appointments. Bowel movements. Memory loss. Simran could never picture Nani living that way.
Nani’s hands shake as she brings the saucer to her lips. “Let’s decide in an hour. The girls will be having lunch then. And so will the teachers, so nobody can bother us.”
They talk about the girls: which ones are keeping up with their reading assignments, which ones are falling behind, and which one’s parents can afford after-school lessons, an essential component of passing the year-end exams.
Simran shows her pictures from the engagement party, including family portraits where, at a quick glance, they look content.
Nani’s servant, Kavita, a fifty-year-old woman who has been coming to her house for three decades, takes their plates and refills the chai cups. It doesn’t matter how many times Ronak and Simran visit India; they’ve never gotten used to the idea of servants. Even their parents have trouble adjusting to that now.
“It’s so different being here alone,” Simran says. “Quiet.”
“Of course,” Nani says. “Are you talking to your family yet?”
“You know what happened?”
“I think everyone in India and America knows. You made quite the show,” she says. “Your mom called.”
Simran rolls her eyes. “I don’t even want to know what she said.”
Nani smiles. “She’s just worried about you.”
“No, she isn’t. None of them are. They just want me to live like them, instead of doing what I want.”
“And what is that?”
Simran wraps her fingers around her teacup and absorbs its warmth. “To do something that’s authentic to me. Have a sense of purpose.”
“How do you plan to do that?”
“I have no idea. All I know is that I need to read and learn more right now. See where I can contribute to something. Twenty-six was supposed to be the year I had everything figured out. Instead, I just feel like I’m wearing some strange version of myself.”
Before Simran met Neil, Nani was the only person she could tell that to without being judged.
“Oh, Simi,” Nani says, shaking her head in the same way she did when Simran was in third grade and cried to her after Matt Fowler yelled about her “stinky Indian food” to the entire cafeteria.
“I know. I know,” Simran says. “It’s just that for my entire life, I thought I did everything I was supposed to do. But maybe I was some insufficient combination of rebellious and risk-averse, and now it’s all catching up to me.”
Unlike Neil, Simran was never strong enough to accept anyone’s disapproval or any job without guaranteed health insurance.
“I was bored with school for a long time, so I wasn’t giving it my all,” she tells Nani. “I saw it as this thing I was told—pushed—to do. And I thought it would work because it was about knowing people. But it wasn’t enough. I didn’t like collecting data and making experiments out of human nature. I only liked that people approved of it. Understood what I was doing.”
“So do something else,” Nani says.
“That’s what I tried to explain to everyone at home. I told them that I could maybe give journalism a thought. Research some topics for articles. They didn’t get it. Mom was the worst out of everyone. I can’t do anything properly in her mind.”
“That’s not true. She just doesn’t want you to make things harder than they need to be, the way she did.”
“The way she did? She’s always done what she’s supposed to. At least, until now. Did she tell you about how she’s thinking of leaving Dad? Moving away?”
Nani looks out the window, toward the potted basil plants in her garden. “You should let her explain that to you, when the time is right.”
Before they can continue on the subject, Nani asks, “How is Kunal?”
“I don’t know,” Simran says. “He’s leaving for Costa Rica in a few days. He told me he doesn’t know who I am anymore or how to be around me. He’s never said anything like that before. He’s always said that we balance each other out. He’s practical, I’m emotional. He’s a straight shooter, I meander around everything. But I’ve never heard him question anything between us, about us, like that. Not that I blame him. But . . . our relationship has been through so much, and I don’t know if this entire mess is because we’re supposed to be tested on whether we can make it through.”
“So that was the last contact you had with him?”
Simran nods. “We agreed to take a little time to think, get some space, since we’ll both be out of the country. We set a date to talk about everything after he’s back from Costa Rica. August 20. Exactly ten months before our wedding date.”
“I see.” Nani nudges another plate of chakri toward Simran. “Am I allowed to ask if you are still in touch with Neil?”
Simran pictures Neil’s head shot alongside his latest column, which she might have read a dozen times on the flight. “I thought all of this would make it easier to stop thinking about him, but it hasn’t. In a way, I think he’s the only person who would understand why I had to do what I did. But right now, it’s better for me to have some space from everyone.”
“Simi, what happened to you?”
Simran props her hands under her chin. “What do you mean?”
“You used to be so much more—what’s the word?—brave. Regardless, now you’re just so ‘Oh, my life is hard’ and ‘I’m just going to sit here and feel sorry for myself.’”
“No, I’m not!”
“Sure you are,” Nani says, giving the table a light slap. “Of course, I guess I should be glad that you aren’t handling your problems by drinking scotch or dating too many people at once or sleeping at work and not caring about family.”
“Are you referring to me or the characters in Mad Men?”
“Ah, right,” Nani says, as if it’s perfectly reasonable to confuse her granddaughter with Don Draper.
Nani reaches across the table and puts her cool palm over Simran’s. “Now buck up. Stop being such a weakling. You have some difficult things you need to figure out, choices you need to make. And the way to do that isn’t to cower. You’re better than that.