It has been fifteen years, yet I never once lay with my husband—until I stumbled upon a conversation between him and his closest friend.
The gas cylinder man, the maid, the delivery boy in our Gurgaon housing complex (on the edge of New Delhi), still believe that my husband and I are an ideal office couple: leaving together in the morning, returning at dusk, throwing out the trash on the right day, arranging shoes neatly by the entrance, watering balcony plants on Sundays, ordering spicy masala noodles. None of them realize the only true fact inside that ninth-floor flat: for fifteen years, our two pillows have never touched.
Our bedroom has no lock. The door swings like the kitchen’s, like the one to the balcony. Yet the mattress is split by an unseen river. His lamp stands tall with a harsh white glow. Mine is soft yellow, covered with a thin cloth shade. On stormy monsoon nights, I curl on my left, listening to rain pound the tin roof. He turns on his right, back against the wall, breathing lightly as the water rushes down.
I carefully hang his shirts, fold his socks, place the toothbrush at a forty-five-degree slant in the cup. I also recall too clearly the smile that never touched his eyes whenever relatives teased:
— When will you let your parents cradle grandchildren?
His reply was always:
— The company is handling a major project.
We married in Sawan, the rainy season of North India. It drizzled faintly that wedding night. After the feast, my mother-in-law removed her hairpin and told me:
— It is the daughter-in-law who keeps the household fire burning.
But the flame within me dimmed, like an oil lamp running dry. That first night, he spread fresh sheets, set my favorite book by the headboard and whispered:
— You’re tired, rest.
He pulled away the quilt and turned aside. I bit my lip when I heard a pin drop onto the tiled floor.
Only the first night, I thought. Yet on the second, the tenth, the hundredth, each time I moved closer, he withdrew. Never cruelly, only as if skirting a stone he already knew by heart.
He remained a dutiful husband: mixing bottles early at dawn, remembering my mother’s death anniversary before I did, during the epidemic circling Delhi’s Dawa Bazaar to buy medicine. My mother would praise him:
— You are truly blessed.
I smiled bitterly: Blessed for whom?
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