A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel (9 page)

Priya met her friends alone in cafés and restaurants, but Madhu tended to meet his with their wives and children in tow, which meant, unfortunately, that she had to endure them as well. If it were just the men, friends mostly from Madhu’s engineering-college days in India, she would probably be fine, despite their right-wing politics. But their wives? No one should have to endure these women.

“You know, I never ask you to spend time with Nina and Jordan, do I?” Priya used the line as an opening salvo.

“You don’t have to come,” Madhu said. “I’d like for you to; otherwise they’ll gossip that we’ve gone splitsville. But besides that . . .”

Ugh.
Priya could hear them loud and clear.

“Maybe they’re splitting up,
yaar
,” Aditi would say in her deeply accented English.

“Yes, yes, she never comes with him for our parties, like she doesn’t care about his friends,” Farah, who was married to Madhu’s best friend, Athar, would say as she nodded, the way Indians did when they spoke, and then she’d stroke her belly. The woman was perpetually pregnant. She was on baby three or four now; Priya had lost count.

“I never liked her, Miss ABCD, always thinking she is better than us,” Priya mimicked Simran, Brijesh’s wife.

Madhu grinned. No one liked Simran. Brijesh used to be a normal guy, but then he met Simran and became this weird, money-obsessed, ball-less husband. Madhu’s friends talked about Brijesh as BS, Before Simran, and AS, After Simran.

“You know, you might actually have fun,” Madhu said as he slipped into a half-sleeve white shirt.

“Do we even have a present for JoJo?” Priya asked. JoJo was short for Jasmeet, who was celebrating her fifth birthday.

“I picked up a Barbie something that Brijesh suggested at Toys ‘R’ Us. It’s in the car already,” Madhu said.

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Super Prepared?” Priya said.

“At your service, babe.”

Priya narrowed her eyes.

“I promise wet, wild monkey sex if you come,” Madhu offered.

Hmm. “Fine, but no baby talk,” she forewarned him. She didn’t want to discuss her surrogate with the very fertile wives of Madhu’s friends.

“Of course.”

“What? Have you told any of them?” Priya demanded.

When she told something to her friends, they kept it to themselves. When Madhu said something to his friends, they told their wives, and the wives made sure Priya knew that they knew.

Madhu had once made the stupid mistake of telling Athar about the problems they were having with fertility treatments, and wouldn’t you have it, at Karthik and Latha’s tenth wedding anniversary party, everyone told her how sorry they were before moving on to discuss fertility horror stories they had garnered from other friends and social media. If it wasn’t infertility stories, then there was the whole,
Children are great, but if you don’t have any, it doesn’t mean your life is any less
. Only people with children said that. People who’d already had their biological fix could say that this wasn’t so important, and you could be happy even if you didn’t have a family.

Priya had been embarrassed and had felt inadequate.

“I don’t need to see this on Facebook, OK?” Priya said.

“Just relax, no one cares that we’re using a surrogate,” he said, not looking at her.

“Have you told Athar?” Priya asked point-blank.

“No,” he replied right back.

Priya didn’t believe him.

Brijesh and Simran’s lovely house in Milpitas was decorated up the wazoo for JoJo’s birthday. Priya made a gagging sound when she saw the pink flowers, pink balloons, and general pink décor of the front garden.

“Jesus, it looks like someone threw up Pepto-Bismol all over the place,” Madhu said.

“Why do adults have to be invited to a child’s birthday party? I’d never invite JoJo to my birthday party,” Priya said, stepping to the side to avoid being crashed into by JoJo and her posse.

“And who the hell calls their kid JoJo?” Priya demanded as they stepped into the doorway, fake smiles plastered on their faces.

“Celebrities and weirdos,” Madhu whispered in her ear, and Priya had to control her laughter.

“Oh, you came,” Simran said, like she was actually surprised, even though Madhu had said they would a month ago when the invitations had been sent out via mail, e-mail, and as an event invitation on Facebook. “You can put the present on that table.” Simran pointed to a table that was piling up with gifts. “She’s going to be so spoiled with all these presents, but you only turn five once.”

“Right,” Priya said.

“And you look so lovely, Priya,” Simran said, her hands on Priya’s shoulders. “What I wouldn’t give to have that pre-mama body. Once you have children, everything goes to hell—the tits, the stomach, everything.”

Well, then, good thing I can’t have any,
Priya thought to say, but only smiled and nodded and glared at Madhu, who put his arm around his wife.

“How about a drink, Simran? I could really do with a cold beer,” he said, propelling Priya out of Simran’s zone of attack and into the living room, which was decorated with pink balloon animals hanging from the ceiling.

“We almost decided not to serve beer . . . it is, after all, a children’s party,” Simran said, and then smiled. “But Brijesh put his foot down. You know how he loves his Sam Adams.”

Madhu and Priya nodded and made the right sounds as they sat down on a sofa, crushed between the armrest and Farah.

“How are you, Priya?” Farah asked, giving her a hug, her huge belly between them. “And Madhu, you look wonderful. Here Athar keeps growing wider; at least I have an excuse,” she said, stroking her belly, “but you look tip-top.”

Madhu looked bashful. Athar was slightly overweight. He was fine except for that protruding belly, which had, in all honesty, always been there, even ten years ago when Farah had married him.

“
Arrey yaar
, Madhu, you go to India, you come back and no call, no hello. What’s up, man?” Brijesh cried out from behind them.

“Just been busy with work,” Madhu said, shaking Brijesh’s hand.

“
Kya
, work-
shurk
,” Brijesh said. His voice was slightly slurred; as Simran had said, Brijesh did love his beer. It was five in the evening and the man was already a six-pack down, from what Priya could tell. Simran had managed to change a lot about Brijesh, but she couldn’t quite get the frat boy out of him. He still drank like a fish, went out with the boys, and wasn’t all that involved in his children’s lives.

“Raising the children is Simran’s business. Bringing home the bread is mine,” Brijesh was fond of saying. Priya found that insulting, but Simran didn’t seem to mind. Who knew, if Madhu had been a partner in a software company that went IPO in the nineties and avoided the Internet bust, maybe Priya would be too busy admiring her Chanel tennis bracelet to mind.

Priya knew that Madhu sometimes felt like the failure among his friends. They had taken advantage of the booming nineties, made money and built businesses or cashed in stock options, while Madhu steadily advanced at Oracle. He had a stable job, a decent career, but he wasn’t about to become a millionaire. Even Karthik, who had a regular job like Madhu, had cashed in well when the start-up company he was working for was bought by Microsoft. Now he and his wife, Latha, had the money to buy a beautiful house in Los Gatos and invest in real estate back in India.

Madhu cared about these things. She didn’t. Success was measured in dollars for him. It was an Indian thing, Priya had realized. She would always ask Madhu if he was happy and challenged in his job—the rest, she believed, would follow.

“I’m still waiting for the big payday,” Madhu liked to say. “But I don’t think it’s coming. You don’t become rich working your way up in a multinational. You become rich by starting a company and taking it IPO.”

Priya wasn’t part of that Silicon Valley crowd. She had a different academic and professional background. Even Latha, Karthik’s mostly dim wife, could talk fairly intelligently about the Internet boom, the Internet doom, and the stock market.

“I got him to get our money out, and it was the right time,” she said. “You should’ve seen him then, screaming at me, but now he appreciates what I did. If we’d left the money there longer, we’d have lost fifty percent of it. Right, Karthik?”

“Right,” Karthik said. “My wife is a financial genius.”

“So when’s the baby due, Farah?” Aditi asked.

Aditi and Tarun had one son, Dhruv, a five-year-old, and they had decided not to have any more. Dhruv had had many medical problems, and now he was finally getting better and not falling as sick. It had meant that Aditi, who used to be a consultant with Ernst & Young, had had to give up her career—and Priya felt she was bitter about it.

“April,” Farah said. “And I can’t wait. And this is it,
bhai
. No more children. Three is more than enough.”

“Come on,
memsaab
, how can I have a cricket team if you stop at three?” Athar joked.

“You’ll have to have the rest with your other wives,” Farah quipped.

The conversation was cut short when seven children came into the dining room adjoining them, and the cake cutting and song singing began.

“Promise me we won’t have parties like this when our kid turns five,” Priya whispered into Madhu’s ear.

“Promise,” Madhu said, his eyes widening when JoJo shoved her little sister away as she clamored to have a piece of cake.

“It’s my birthday,” JoJo cried.

“Bebe just wants a slice of cake,
beta
,” Simran said patiently.

“She should stay away from my cake. It’s my birthday,” JoJo yelled defiantly.

“And promise me that our children will be nicer than theirs,” Madhu said, and Priya nodded, her eyes wide, as well, as JoJo pushed Bebe away again. Her parents didn’t reprimand her but just carried her screaming younger sister away.

Everyone got cake in the end, even Bebe. They had samosas and
pakoras
, mutton
biriyani
, and plenty of candy for the kids to devour.

Except, of course, for Dhruv, Aditi’s son.

“
Arrey
, Aditi, a little chocolate won’t hurt him,” Simran said.

“No,” Aditi said, taking a mini Mars bar away from her son’s hand. “You know, Dhruv—no candy.”

Aditi then looked at Simran, her eyes angry. “Simran, he’s only allowed candy on Fridays, and one piece at that. In this day and age, we can’t take chances with our children eating all this processed sugar and . . . well, there is the weight issue.”

She looked pointedly at JoJo then, who, for her age, was probably carrying more baby fat than she needed to.

“I can’t stand her,” Aditi said to Priya when Simran walked away, angry at the backhanded comment Aditi had made about her daughter being fat.

Priya only nodded. She wasn’t about to say anything about anyone to anyone in this crowd. They might bitch and moan about one another, but they were best friends in the end. She, on the other hand, was an outsider.

“I’m so sick of these stupid parties,” Aditi said. “I’m so sick of staying at home. You’re lucky, Priya, no children, no nothing. You can actually have a social life, a career, and sex with your husband without worrying about who comes into the bedroom.”

“Well . . . ,” Priya began, and then shut up. She would trade all of that for a baby, she wanted to say, but she realized that Aditi wasn’t talking about Priya; she was venting.

“My first job at Ernst and Young, in two years I was a manager, pulling six figures,” she said. “Now, I spend my time worrying about when Dhruv will fall sick and when I need to clean up vomit. His life”—she nodded toward her husband—“on the other hand, hasn’t changed. Tarun has a career, the six-figure salary, and a social life. He could even be having sex with someone on the side, and then life would really be perfect for him, wouldn’t it?”

Priya put an arm around Aditi and led her onto the patio out back, away from the kids eating inside.

“What happened?” Priya asked. It was obvious that this level of outburst was new.

“I started to apply for jobs,” she said with a rueful smile. “I thought it would be easy. But damn it, it isn’t. They wanted to hire me as a program manager at Sun for fifty thousand a year. Fifty? I made more when I came out of business school. Now I’m worth fifty.”