All Eyes on Her (23 page)

A
CCORDING TO THE ANCIENTS, SONS BELONG TO THEIR PARENTS,
while daughters are only on loan. At the end of any traditional Hindu wedding the bride’s family will collapse into mourning over what is seen as the literal loss of their girl.
May your new family treat you so well that you never think of us again,
they sing, in the hopes that they have entrusted her to the right hands. Off to a new home, with a new family, in a new village perhaps hundreds of miles away, a village girl of my grandmother’s generation could expect to be renamed and to remain with her husband’s family for the rest of her life. Depending on the day, the lighting and the position of the moon, the relationship between a mother and her daughter can resemble anything from prisoner and captor to sister and sister to master and marionette. But common among all these variations is the fact that no matter how far apart they may seem to have grown, mothers elementally understand their daughters.

When I was about four years old, my mother discovered me alone in our kitchen one afternoon. Surrounded by a mountain of shredded tissue, I stood tall, pulled in my chin and pierced her with a defiant stare.

Monica,
she asked in a warning tone,
who made this mess?

I don’t know.
I dared her to contradict me. Being knee-deep in the evidence proved nothing.

Monica
. She stooped down to meet me at eye level.
You are going to have to clean up this mess.

Your kitchen,
I answered after the world’s most intense staring contest,
YOU clean it.

What was a mother to do? Raise her voice? Slap her child? Send her to her room?

She got down on her knees, dragged the wastebasket between us and placed one scrap of tissue into the bin. And then she waited. Soon enough, I was cleaning the rest on my own.

Thwappp! Thwappp!
I awoke to the swift clapping of my mother’s hands beside my head.

“Hello?” she said, as if I were on the other side of a door. “Hello, hello?”

“Mmmmmmhhhhhhhh,” I moaned in protest, hoping it might scare the crazy lady away.

“Monica?” she asked as if she wasn’t sure it was me. “Monica, what are you doing?”

Why do mothers do that? I forced my eyes open and twisted to face her for long enough to let out an extended yawn and another growl.

“I’m sleeping.”

I must have looked like a zombie given the way that she recoiled. And I have to admit I found it more than a little bit satisfying. Snapping my tongue against the paper-dry roof of my mouth, I sat up and got a better look at myself in the massive mirror opposite my bed.

Which,
as I had explained to my mother,
was only there so that I could get dressed while…standing on top of my bed.

I really was a sight. My mascara had mushroomed into a cloud of gray around my eyes, made murkier by the globbed-together patches of once-creamy gold-and-glitter eye shadow. My hair, while pouffy on the top, curly in the back, and dried to straw at the tips, still managed a particularly aggressive showing of bed head. And my lipstick, I imagined, was still making its way through Luke’s small intestine. Basically, it looked like a cosmetics bomb had gone off, and the focal point had been my face.

Somehow I had managed to swap the backless blouse from hell for a thin T-shirt, but had fallen asleep with my skirt still on. By now, of course, it was more like a belt around the middle of my belly and was threatening to cut off my air entirely.

Good times.

“You are obviously not sleeping. You are awake and you are talking to me. And darling, you shouldn’t sleep in such thin shirts,” she said. “Anybody can see your…your
parts
.”

“Who’s anyone, Mom? You’re the only one here.”

“But it is not decent at all to sleep like that.” She tightened the belt on her housecoat.

“Mom, did you really wake me up to talk to me about the indecency of my breasts?”

“Don’t say it like that,” she winced. “It’s vulgar.”

I lay down and pulled the covers back over my face.

“I thought you were awake,” she defended herself.

Sure, Mom.
And the only things inside my bedside table are a copy of the Mahabarat and a jar of multivitamins.

“I don’t want to talk right now, Mom. Can I please go back to sleep? Please?”

“Monica.” Her voice was stern enough to make me think that perhaps after all these years she was finally getting ready to give me the sex talk. “Monica, I was not trying to listen yesterday, but I overheard your argument with Raj.”

I pushed the covers down around my shoulders and let out a very long breath to indicate how little interest I had in where this thing was headed. She took one close look at the damage to my face and winced again: “Oh my God, Monica. Get that gunk off of your face. Here, I’ll get you a tissue.”

And in that instant when she reached out for the top drawer of my bedside table, I considered letting her go through with it. Feast your eyes on the contents, Mom! Body chocolate, flavored condoms, sexual dice and various lacy thongs sporting slogans like It’s Not Gonna Lick
Itself!
She would have gone immediately blind and hopped the next mule, puddle-jumper or rowboat back to London.

But as much as I wanted her to leave, I didn’t want to give her a massive coronary.

“Mom,” I said, and held the drawer shut. “I don’t need anything.”

“Yes,
beti.
I am sure that you know what is right for you.” She sat on the bed and looked down at her hands. “You don’t need my advice. You never did.”

“Mom, do we really have to…”

“Listen, Monica. I just want to give you my opinion. I know that you are an adult. Can I just give you my opinion? And you can do whatever you want with it?”

No matter what she had done, she always managed to make me feel like the guilty one.
Brava, Mother,
I thought, while I hung my head and awaited her advice.

“I know that when Daddy died, I could have…or I
should
have been stronger for you. And maybe you would have felt more secure at that time in your life. But you see, I have never felt that being emotional is a weakness. I always thought, even when you were a little girl, that if I showed my emotions, then my daughter would see how liberating it is. To let these things out so that they cannot control you.”

I fingered the gunk out of the corners of my eyes. “Mom, I have no problem with the way that you live your life.”

“Yes, you do,
beti.
But that’s okay. All daughters judge their mothers. But the more you react against me, the better I understand you,” she explained, smiling warmly. “You are a very strong person, and you are your own person. You always have been. Yet Monica, you are not your own mother. I am. Please believe me when I tell you that sometimes it is good to soldier through. However, in the long term, if you keep your feelings inside, they do not disappear…they will emerge at some later time, in a way that you cannot control. Whatever it is with you and Raj, you should discuss it. You should
talk.
”

“I understand that, Mom.”

“Good,
beti.
Good.” She rose to drop the shades before she headed for the door. “Now I will let you sleep all day, like a schoolchild,
na?
”

“So you want me to make it work with Raj.” I turned on my side, wrapping myself in the comforter like a nasty, hungover, champagne-and-hint-of-regret-soaked pig-in-a-blanket.

“I don’t remember saying that,” she said, before closing the door behind her.

Any other day, the Santa Monica beachfront overlook on Ocean Avenue would have been invigorating. But that morning the combination of crisp air and orange light was only oppressive. I raised a hand to block the sun from my heavy, tired eyes. There was something about being surrounded by chipper joggers and power-dogwalkers that made me feel like a degenerate. It was possible, I thought, that I had suggested the location deliberately to chastise myself. It was also possible, I reasoned, that I had wanted a location conducive to my breaking into a dead sprint in the other direction in case Raj wasn’t willing to accept my apology. No, neither I nor my vulgar breasts could have bared that.

I knew that I wasn’t at my best that day, but I felt as if it just couldn’t wait. I hadn’t even been brave enough to call him; I just sent a text message laced with hidden meanings that only he would understand.

(Meaning: I’m an idiot with a hangover who is too ashamed of herself to call you right now. I fear that you will read my stupid behavior in my voice, and choose never to speak to me again. Also, I don’t want to confuse the issue of my general stupidity with my particularly classy behavior last night. Nobody needs to know except me and God and the elevator-security-camera screeners at The Mondrian. Is there a convenient time for you to sit back and watch me grovel?)

(Meaning: I am not correcting your grammar merely to imply that the few years I spent in England have made me more articulate. I am correcting your grammar to be snide. I’m aware that you are an idiot and I am glad that you realize it. In fact, you are such an idiot that I am not entirely convinced you are capable of a rational conversation with me. And even if you are, I’m not sure that I’m interested. But maybe if you grovel a little more through text messages, I’ll consider it. Like, for example, if you admit in writing that you were wrong.)

(Meaning: I’m sorry. I was wrong. But I think we need to talk. Maybe today?)

(Meaning: Your groveling pleases me, but your behavior was so atrocious that it has rendered you unworthy of the effort it would take for me to text you in full sentences. I am meeting you only on the condition that you understand you are terrible. Where?)

(Meaning: Agreed.)

I leaned against the guardrail. Two power walkers with their SUV strollers and healthy complexions passed me by, while a homeless man came out of the public restroom, shook his fist at the sun and walked off, pushing his shopping cart. I still had no idea what I was going to say.

“Hey,” Raj called to me as he came down the winding dirt path. Even in his favorite jeans and that sweatshirt I had worn so many times, he could not have looked less recognizable. That was when I knew it might actually be over.

“Hi.” I bit my lip, unsure of what else to say or do.

He leaned over the railing facing opposite me, both of us unsure how to greet each other. Moving backward on the spectrum of affection always feels so unnatural.

“So should I take the way that you look as an indication that you’ve been up all night crying your eyes out over me?” he asked wistfully.

Meaning: Please tell me that you’ve been crying your eyes out over me all night, because even though I know this isn’t the ideal for either one of us, I’m not sure I’m ready to walk away.

“Raj.” I swallowed, feeling my face get hot. “I…I’m not sure that we’re in this for the right reasons anymore.”

As I said it, it occurred to me how true it was. The thing that felt like it had changed the night before had actually been a long time coming. Despite how wonderful he was, and how good we had been for each other for all that time, this was the end of the road. I could see that he knew what I was thinking.

He looked back out over the water, and nodded. “Is there…someone else? Is it…Is it Alex?”

“No, Raj. No.” I shook my head, gnawing at the inside of my lower lip. “It’s that…I’m not the end of your story.”

Meaning: You’re not the end of my story.

“You know I always wondered if on some level we began just as a salve for your relationship with him,” he stated, rather deliberately, not in the form of a question. “There was just a part of you that I never reached.”

“But that part of me was not with Alex,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t think it has ever really been opened with anyone.”

“I hope you can find someone to open it up to, Monica,” he told me, while an in-line skater zoomed past.

It was strange to hear him say my name that way. Almost as if I had been demoted to a more formal circle of acquaintances.
Already?
But I knew he was doing it as much for my sake as for his own.

“Can I ask you something?” I said, after a while. “Inga. The umm…the redhead. Did anything ever happen with her?”

“No,” he said quickly, and then thought about it. “She put it out there, while we were in London. But I never touched her. I just…I needed to know where we stood first.”