Archive of Our Own

The minute they enter the house—the minute they come home—she’s struck by the quiet. No cousins run around, no rifles fire in the woods, and no lilting songs fill the hallways. She feels relieved and empty all at once. Raj’s father is pulling bags out of the boot, and they have a moment to themselves. This is the first time she’s felt like she can relax since Switzerland; since they missed that train, and all they had were moments alone. She turns to Raj, who’s staring at the doorway.

“I didn’t do it right,” he blurts out.

“What?”

“I didn’t—I should have carried you over.” The knot of panic in her chest begins to loosen, and she laughs.

“I don’t think we’ve ever done things in the right order. Why start now?”

“Let me fix this,” he says lowly, his mouth quirking up as his eyes go soft. “Let me do this right.” He takes her hand in his and traces the bumps of her knuckles, and his father is still camped out by the bags, so she turns on her heel and heads out the door, letting him follow behind her. She twirls around to face him once they’re on the stoop, throwing her arms out in presentation. He slips one arm under her knees and the other across her back, and her hands wind around his neck when he tugs her close to his chest. Across the yard, Pops lets out a loud laugh, but Raj doesn’t take his eyes off hers as he takes one large step across the threshold and they’re in the house, for good this time.

“You’re right. That was better.” He’s still carrying her, and there’s a hot flush of blood to her stomach as she wonders if he means to take them all the way to the bedroom. She raises her chin to look at him, but she’s suddenly hurtling toward the ground. She tightens her hold and he’s laughing, and she peeks out of his shoulder to find that he’s still got her, that he just felt like having another joke because her husband is incapable of being serious.

“You’d better not drop me. I still haven’t forgiven you.”

“I wouldn’t, señorita.” His eyes go solemn despite his smile. “I won’t let you fall.”

She’s out with her study group at the pub when she starts to notice it. They’re snacking on peanuts as they laugh over their professor’s eccentricities, and it’s getting late, so she excuses herself with a simple remark—my husband’s waiting for me. She can see the shift in their eyes, the subtle raising of brows.

I can’t believe you’re married so young, they all say, and to be honest, Simran can’t believe it either. The weight settles in her body, the unease.

She enrolled at university to study literature. It certainly didn’t feel real when she was sitting with Raj at the dining table to fill out the applications; it was only a bit more tangible when the offer letters came, but it wasn’t until her first day walking into the lecture hall that she began to believe it—that she was Simran Singh, a first-year studying literature.

If anything, Raj wants her to experience it all more than she does: a job, classes, friends who aren’t her mother. Sometimes he comes to see her at the bookstore she works at before he heads to the office, and he gives her lavish and unbelievable compliments when her manager is within earshot.

He’s trying so hard, her manager had laughed. You should let him down easy. When Simran told her they were married, she had gone quiet. But that’s what it is, really: they have to keep trying to win each other, keep trying to learn each other, because they started with marriage and now they’re working backward to the rest of it.

Maybe someday, she’ll tell them the story. Maybe she’ll just keep it for herself.

The newspaper lands in front of her while she’s halfway through a paratha. It’s open to the ads and marked up with hot pink highlighter. Raj slides into the seat across from her.

“Pops agrees about a flat closer to the university, at least somewhere where you can take the tube to class. I’ll have to drive for work anyway, but there are some really nice places I found.”

She scans the page quickly and bites her lip at the rent prices.

“How can we afford this, Raj?”

He meets her eyes and she knows nothing has changed since their last conversation. As much as she likes the idea of having her space, she doesn’t want to take any more money from Pops. Either they will stay with him and help around his house, or they’ll pay their own way in a new flat.

“He wants to help, Simran.”

“He’s already done so much.” The guilt begins to settle in her stomach as it always does when she thinks of everything Pops has done for her, even when she was a stranger to him.

“It’s not like that,” he soothes. “It’s not like—like there’s anything attached to—“

“You just don’t understand!” she bursts out. “You just take whatever your father gives you, and… and God, Raj, he trusts you so much.”

He blinks, taking her in, and she has to wonder what she looks like to him right then. “You know, you’re right,” he finally says. “I don’t understand! I don’t understand how a father can just refuse to—“ He cuts himself off with a sharp breath.

“What?” He shakes his head, the slightest movement. “What, Raj?”

“I have to go to work,” he says quietly, avoiding her eyes.

You work for your father, you can be late. She bites the words back and follows him to the door, grabbing his coat out of the closet. He slips it on and grabs her shoulder as she turns away.

“Let’s talk about this later?”

“Yeah.” His hand is still on her shoulder, and after the briefest hesitation, he kisses her. He never leaves the house without kissing her, and for a moment, she leans into his mouth and tries to stop thinking, tries to pretend they were never fighting at all. It doesn’t work, and he’s out the door too soon.

“Ma?”

“Oh, Simran,” her mother sighs, her voice practically slipping through the phone to settle on her shoulders. “I never asked, have you settled in London all right?”

“Yes, ma. The flight was good. You would have liked the meal.”

“All this, and she’s talking about the paratha. Simran, I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there for the wedding. I wish…”

“I know, ma.” It seems ridiculous to think that any of her family could have come. Simran was never one to think about marriage growing up, because it would all be done for her; really, she spent most of her time thinking she had more time, that she could run just a bit longer. She never could have brought herself to imagine the quick elopement in Delhi before the flight, the rings Raj’s father brought, the romance and the fear of it all. “But it was just a wedding.”

“Ah, and I suppose the engagement was enough to make up for it.” Simran blushes at that, how all of their scheming went wrong. “Still, these things are hard for a mother to miss. You’ll see.” A little shock of fear goes through her at the idea of a family. She’s barely a woman herself.

“Not for a long while, ma."

“Of course, Simran, I didn’t mean to…” Her mother sucks in a breath over the line. “I meant it, that I want you to make your choices.” Simran bites her lip. “Well, what do you think of marriage?”

She doesn’t quite know what her mother is looking for, but it’s not much different from life before, and at the same time it’s a different world.

“I’m glad that it’s Raj,” she says finally, and a smile comes to her face at the thought itself, even when she half wants to shove him for his attitude yesterday.

“Oh, Simran,” her mother says again, and she’d roll her eyes if they weren’t so full up with tears.

“We had a fight,” she admits. And she explains it all, the flat and the money and the way it felt like more than any of that, like something was just wrong and she couldn’t find the words for it. Her mother makes a strange choked noise, and she realizes—

“Why are you laughing?” She feels strangely betrayed. “I’m worried, ma.”

“No, it’s—I’m not laughing at you. I’m just happy, happy that you can fight with him. That you have that kind of relationship.”

She wonders if they’re thinking of the same thing, of a hand around her mother’s wrist, let her cry.

“You’ll figure it out, beti. Don’t be afraid to take your parents’ help. We’re here to help you.” Her mother pauses, perhaps seeing the incredible irony in it, but she soldiers on. “But you’ve always been so good. So independent.” So good at living on the lines, neither inside nor out. “And Raj’s father will be so close anyways.”

“Yeah,” Simran sniffs, pressing her sleeve to her eye until it’s caught all the tears.

“I’m proud of you, Simran. I never could have done what you are doing.”

Yes, you could have, she wants to say, but even she can see the futility in it. Even she was lucky in all of it, lucky to have Raj who followed her to India, who never wasted her trust, who tried every trick he had to let her come peacefully.

Lucky to have Raj, who’s a little right and very annoying about it.

“Thanks, ma. I miss you.”

“I miss you too. I miss you so much.” She’s speaking so quickly. “Maybe you can go back up to the house and take some things. I’ll have your father mail the keys; I don’t know what he’s planning to do with it.”

She imagines taking Raj there, letting him see how she grew up, telling him the story of every mark on the wall and every scuff on the floor.

She imagines her father putting the keys in the envelope and sealing both their fates; he’d never come back.

“Sell it, probably. If you can, it’s all right. If you can’t, it’s fine too.”

“Now that’s not like you, Simran.” Her mother doesn’t press the issue further; the wound is still too raw for them to go poking around in there. She hopes the keys never come.

Raj slides up behind her while she’s brushing her teeth, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “I shouldn’t have called you irrational,” he says.

“When did you say that?”

“Oh.” She snorts at his sheepish look. “Anyway, we both know I’m the irrational one between us.”

“I won’t argue with that.”

“My father would do anything for us, Simran. And I don’t plan on abusing that.”

“I’d never think you would.” How could anyone, seeing the way they are with each other? He rests his head on top of hers, and she ducks down to rinse her mouth. When she comes back up, he wraps her in a hug.

“What’s really wrong, Simran?”

She sighs and puts both her hands on the vanity, staring at the water swirling in the basin. “I just—I worry that… that we’ll take his money and we’ll disappoint him and then we’ll… I don’t know, owe him in a way.”

She could never be independent because her father did everything for her: he gave her a home, loved her, gave her an education—and in return, she would do anything for him, because he was family. And in the end, it wasn’t enough to hold them together.

It’s hard for her to believe that nothing Raj could do could make his father turn from him.

“Oh, meri jaan. This is different,” he murmurs. “We‘ll make mistakes, I’m sure, but—I know I can’t convince you. I know it’s something I can’t understand. I wish I could.” He pauses. “Do you trust me?”

“More than anything.”

“We’ll be okay. Even if…” He takes a deep breath. “Even if Pops ever disapproved, we’re in this together.” She purses her mouth in thought, and Raj cocks his head. “How about just partially? Pops pays for whatever we can’t cover on our own. And only until we get settled and we can take over the rest.” It’s better, even if she doesn’t fully feel convinced. “Just think about it?” He gives her that look, with liquid eyes and a toothy smile, and she can already feel herself melting.

Her sister sounds older this time, if that’s possible, the precise clarity of her voice having mellowed into something deeper like she’s grown into it. She imagines her standing in the main foyer of the house, pressing the handset delicately to her ear, her lips set in a little pout and her braids swinging with every tilt of her head. Simran clutches the phone like it’ll bring her near, like she can pull Rajeshwari through the cord over miles and miles, and stretch her out a little as she’s delivered onto their rug that still smells of factory chemical.

“How are you, Chutki?”

“I’m well,” she responds. Well! She’s well, Simran mouths fondly, wrapping the word in her mouth. “Babuji has signed me up for school and I’ll start next week.”

Briefly, Simran wonders if her sister will have to go through the same thing she did, a life of dreaming only to have it all abruptly snatched away. Maybe her rebellion has made it worse on her now that Simran is not around to bear the responsibility—or maybe it has opened a door, one thing broken down and leaving her parents shy to try a second time.

The idea of her sister repeating this history sends a terrible shock of panic through her, and she pushes past it. “That’s wonderful! Is there anyone like your Miss Lucy there?”

“Well, I won’t know until I begin classes, didi. But it appears promising.” Simran has to laugh at this. “It’s not the same without you, Simran. I have no one to dance with.” Her sister has always been strong, but she can hear the strain in her voice, and it breaks her heart.

“You can come visit us anytime, Chutki, I promise. Raj and I will keep a bedroom just for you. I’ll fill it with books, and put a few posters on the walls. Maybe the Backstreet Boys… and you can paint it any color you want.” Better this than to keep it for a child, something the realtor kept bringing up even as the two of them kept shrugging her off, because the thought is still terrifying to her.

“Just one thing, didi?”

“Anything.” Without an ounce of bitterness, she sees it in that word: that Chutki will always have what she didn’t, an older sister, someone who traveled the road and made it, someone who will always shield her when she needs it and push her when she doesn’t. She will protect her sister.

“I like TLC better,” she whispers. They both dissolve into laughter. “I will expect it!”

The letter from her father comes in a faded blue envelope like the one that started it all. Simran’s first reaction upon seeing it is fear, as if the last few months never happened at all, as if they were just another one of her dreams. His writing is thin like he barely let his pen touch the page.

You’ll do the Griha Pravesh. It’s an auspicious time for it.

Simran barely knows about the housewarming puja. No one they knew here moved while she was growing up, and all she can remember is to boil the milk until it overflows. His letter contains thorough instructions as if he’d like nothing more than to set it up from miles away.

Armed with Babuji’s barrage of instructions, the two of them make a very confused entrance into the flat: Simran is holding a coconut and she barely remembers they have to break it before they go in, but the hammer is inside already, so they give up on that and resign themselves to a hit of bad luck. They step with their right feet first and Raj nearly trips. The only thing that goes right is that the milk bubbles up and cascades onto the stovetop in record time. They don’t even have a priest, but they have their friends, have Pops, have each other.

Rocky is busy flirting with Sheena, whose shocked laughter almost frightens Simran into scalding herself with the milk, and someone’s brought a bottle of wine that half of them refuse to drink and half of them overindulge in. All in all, it’s a terrible housewarming, but much like the rest of it, it’s what they’ve cobbled together and something she couldn’t bear to change.

Everyone trickles out as the night comes to an end, even Pops after a long hug and many sighs, and it’s just the two of them left standing in the kitchen, all the lights switched off in their hurry to save on the bill. She and Raj look at each other, their faces sharpened by the shadows.

“I have something for you,” she says before she can lose her nerve.

“I don’t think we have to give each other gifts,” he teases. She reaches into her pocket for the poem, the edges worried away from the repeated touch of her fingers.

“Just listen.” She smooths out the paper and ignores the fluttering in her stomach. She stutters at first, but the words are so familiar that they fall off her tongue. When she finishes, she can’t look up, caught in the quiet of the moment. She finally meets his eyes to find them wide and soft.

“God, Simran,” he whispers. “That was amazing.”

“Really?”

“You’re amazing. You’re—“ His eyes catch on the paper, her careful print, her clean and crisp final draft. “You’re a writer.”

“I just write sometimes,” she protests.

“You’re a writer.” Standing with him in the dark, their eyes shining, she believes it.

Simran puts a disc into the player—Madonna, The Cranberries, The Goo Goo Dolls, she’s squirreling them away with a little part of each paycheck.

Maybe once a week, she’ll put on one of her old tapes, something swing, or one of her father’s songs—she listens to them for only half a minute or so before she has to switch them off, and only when she’s alone, only when she can put the hurt away for later. She can never seem to hide these things from Raj. She only has one tape from her father, and it's been in the box long enough it's beginning to gather the lightest layer of dust.

Raj comes through the door just as the soft chords of “Linger” filter into the air, dripping water into the entryway. She can imagine him standing on the mat, beads of water on his coat catching the hallway light as he slips out of his shoes, and it’s all a poem: the rolling thunder underscoring the music, the fat drops rolling down the leaves and pouring from their waxy surfaces—

—right onto her face, and she opens her eyes to find Raj grinning down at her, his dimples on full display as a trickle of water disappears down her blouse.

“Chi—“ she scolds him as she pushes his head away, “I’ll have to clean all that up—“

“I’ll mop it,” he promises, folding one hand over hers where it still rests on his face. He presses his cheek to hers and she can smell his cologne, shivers at the cold dampness of his chest pressing into her back as she lets her eyes fall shut again.

“Come here,” she gently urges, tugging at his hand until he circles the sofa and sits next to her, and then until he lies down with her, both of them hopelessly wet now and bringing the upholstery down with them.

“How was it?”

“It was good,” she whispers, enjoying the soft puffs of his breath on her skin. “I liked the passage they picked.” She came home straight after the exam, the rain discouraging her from any larks to a cafe or the library.

“I was going to stop by the bakery on the way home, but this is an even sweeter surprise,” he says in a syrupy voice. She scoffs even while her chest flushes with warmth.

“Do you want me here waiting for you every day?” she teases.

“As nice as it would be to be greeted by the moon herself every night,” and he brushes a kiss across her cheek as she laughs, “Never. I’d never want to take you from school like that. From your life.”

“You’re my life, too.”

“Not like that,” he says, his voice so fond that she feels she could do anything right now and he’d not have a word against her. “Do you want to order in for dinner?” And he’s off to the latest banal concern, and she’ll never quite get used to how he sees the world, flipping through matters of such gravity and the smallest things like flicking on a switch.

“It’s not Friday.” Can we afford it, will we be good enough to cook Friday instead—

“We can swing it,” he says. “You like Indian?”

She tosses her pillow at his head.

After the kitchen and their bedroom, the first thing they set up was the office. It’s a charitable description for their desks, one on each side of the room and immediately recognizable as its owner’s. Raj sits by the door with a briefcase from his father by his leg, and Simran sits by the window with a copy of Sense and Sensibility and a half-written essay on legal paper. On a break, she twists back in her seat to peek at Raj, who appears to be leaning back in his chair and counting the cracks in the ceiling.

“Do you really want to work for your father?” He startles and bends backwards to look at her, hair flopping down from his head.

“I want to be able to buy you CDs whenever you want. Maybe even tickets some day.”

“But do you want to do this every day? The meetings, the reports—there’s nothing wrong if you do, but…"

“I’m more interested in what you want to do, señorita,” and she takes it as the diversion it is, some small hint that she’s gotten through to him, that the question has taken root under his skin and will resurface when they least expect it.

“I know I was talking about being a professor the other day. But it’ll be a lot of work to get there, and I don’t know if I have the patience… so maybe publishing instead.” She changes her mind every month, it seems, overwhelmed with the possibilities.

“A job where you get to read all day,” he murmurs, getting up to look over her shoulder at the page.

You could do anything. Your father would let you do anything. When she looks at Raj, she sees nothing but possibility. “Have you ever thought about going back to university?”

“Maybe we’ll make you a library instead. But we’ll need to buy a lot more books to get there.” He picks up the novel and flips through it, sliding two fingers inside to mark her place. Briefly, her mind goes blank at the sight. He glances back at her and smirks, and she flushes. “Is that what you want to do, señorita?”

“I want to finish this paper,” she protests weakly, and she’s sure all of the neighbors can hear his laugh.

They’ve taken up the idea of traveling again, maybe Italy, just going for a week, eating rich pasta and sitting in the sun; he’ll drink wine and she tart soda, and they’ll be young and pretend nothing has ever happened to them. It seems like everyone she meets knows exactly what they want to do, and Simran is no closer to understanding herself, choosing to engage in idle fantasy instead. They’ve been chatting about it each night in bed, and she comes home from a hard day of class one evening to find her husband pulling pans out of the oven and letting curls of steam fill the room.

“It’s proper Italian, yeah?” He gestures across the table with a flourish, at the cheesy pasta and the bread, the scavenged table settings and the jar full of flowers.

“It’s like I’m there already. Please don’t do the accent,” she pleads, already recognizing the glint in his eyes. She shrugs off her coat and slides it onto a hanger. “Pops isn’t coming?”

“He wanted us to have this. He’ll be here this weekend.”

“It looks wonderful.”

“And…” He gestures to the fridge. “Tiramisu.”

“You made it?”

“What do you think?” he drawls, pushing his hair back as he reaches for the matches. “Candlelight dinner, my lovely lady… I used all my energy on this.” He pulls out the chair for her and sweeps her hair over her shoulder, before leaving a kiss on her skin.

The meal is wonderful, but she’s not been able to shake her mood all day. “We will go, won’t we, Raj?” He pauses with his fork halfway to his mouth, eyes wide like he can’t believe her.

“We have time. Nothing but time, Simran, we’ll go. With all our friends if you want. How about when your term ends?”

“I don’t know if the others can make it. They might all be staying with family,” she says quietly. His eyes soften in understanding.

“Then we’ll just go. I want us to have this. Let’s take the train like last time. We can fall in love all over again,” he says with a wink.

“I’d like to skip a repeat of everything after, if you don’t mind.”

She must still look a bit glum after dinner, because Raj is looking at her the way he always does before he launches into some scheme to cheer her up. She’s about to beg him off when he disappears and comes back with his mandolin and a sheaf of papers.

“Just listen,” he says, before biting his lip and sitting criss-cross on the tile, where she comes to join him. He tunes the strings and taps his foot against the floor.

With a deep breath, he begins the song for her, and she sits back with her eyes closed, listening to his lilting voice, the melody wrapping around the words—her words, she realizes. It’s the poem she wrote, and her eyes fly open to meet his, his shy smile growing as she grins.

She kisses him there on the kitchen floor, giddy with love.

“Cheers to Simran!” Sheena’s glass sparkles in the light. It’s the first time she feels things are going completely right, surrounded by their friends, her glazed gaze catching on anything that glints in the light, from Sheena’s earrings to the silverware to Raj’s cufflinks.

It’s late by the time everyone goes home, but if she stays up just a bit longer, she can catch Chutki before she goes to school and tell her the news. She and Raj sit by the phone, him on the floor leaning against her shin as she gently strokes his hair. He’s still tilting his beer back and forth, watching the light.

She takes her time dialing the exit code and the country code, and then she counts the rings hypnotically, expecting her sister, but it’s her father’s voice that greets her instead.

“Hello, Babuji.” She wants to bite the words back as soon as they leave, strangely formal and stiff and hanging between them. Raj raises his head off her lap and gives her a concerned look. It’s okay, she mouths. After a moment, he jerks his head toward the bedroom and she nods gratefully.

“Simran,” her father finally says, just as Raj shuffles into the other room. “It must be very late there. Why are you up?”

“We had friends over.” In his silence, she can hear so much that she can’t quite read; she never thought she was an expert on her father, but the older she grew, there was always a growing sense that she hadn’t fully revealed him. Like she never knew which side of him she’d get. “We were celebrating. I got a new job.”

“I see. Congratulations. What is it?”

“Well, it’s an internship. At a publishing company, mainly copy editing. To see if I like it,” she adds uselessly.

“Will you have time for school?”

“Yes. And it’ll help me understand what jobs I can do later.” Her father hums in understanding.

“And how is your school going?” She drops her shoulders. This is simple, this is easy, this is family.

“I really like it. I have a wonderful professor this term, and I feel like I’m learning a lot.” She goes on for a little while, barely cognizant of time passing or her father’s presence on the line.

“Good. Very good. You always loved to read.”

“How’s dadi?”

A pause. “She’s well. She misses you.” She feels a twinge of guilt, for surely there’s more behind his hesitation. "Are you eating well?”

“Yes. Actually, Raj made dinner last night.” She waits for it, can I speak to him? She doesn’t know if she wants him to ask or not, but he doesn’t. “He went to bed just now.”

“Then you should go, too.”

“I’m not very tired,” she says. Something she’d never say to her father if she were truly awake.

“Sleep, Simran.” For a moment, he sounds softer, more understanding, like he did when she was six or seven, and she’d lie with her head in his lap, and he’d tell her all about what his country was like when he was her age. He tried so hard to bring India alive for her.

“I’ll talk to you later, Babuji.” He says goodbye and she barely hears it, too full of the weight settling back between her shoulders, that sense that she’s sliding back toward something awful. Raj sees it the moment she walks back into the bedroom, and he stays blessedly quiet as she crawls into the bed next to him. He doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t cry, and he just holds her as they stare at the ceiling.

In October, her first poem is published. They give her two copies of the magazine for her own use and a modest payment by the line. She shows everyone she knows, but first, as always, is Raj.

“Simran Singh Malhotra,” he whispers, tracing the imprinted byline on the paper. Underneath it on his desk, she catches a glimpse of UCAS papers, and she smiles to herself.

They buy a frame to place it in and he hangs it up by the bookshelf in their little office. He passes out copies to his father’s friends. She hardly needs an agent when she has her husband.

That night, Simran slides one copy into an envelope and writes out the address of the house in Punjab in her shaking Punjabi. It always pleased her father to see her writing in Punjabi, especially when she copied out translations of other works for him. It’s fitting that the first poem she published is one she originally wrote in Punjabi; when preparing it to send to publishers, she painstakingly tried to preserve every bit of meaning with the translation, moving the words from one language to another like carrying water in a sieve.

She knows her mother will call her to have her read it to her; the words are always sweeter spoken aloud. But for now, they sit on the page sealed away in the envelope, an offering of sorts. She drops it into the postbox the next morning; the weight leaves her hand and settles in her stomach.