“Mom, I—”
She held up a hand sticky with potato chunks. “You deserve it.”
“Wait, what?” That was the last thing he expected his mother to say.
She wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist and let out a huff when she transferred a smudge of flour. “You’re my only baby, but you hurt my poor bahu.”
“She’s not your daughter-in- . . . you know what? Never mind.” Prem sat in silence for a few minutes, watching his mother move around his kitchen like it was her own. She grabbed a rolling pin and began pinching golf-ball-size pieces from the dough ball she’d created. Like a pro, she stuffed the dough with potato mixture.
Kareena would love these, he thought. She would probably love his mother, too.
The problem was that she also loved him.
She loved him, past tense. How could she possibly feel something for him after the engagement party?
Prem leaned against the countertop, arms folded. “Can I ask you something?”
“What is it, my beta,” she said as she put a flat tava on the front burner and added some ghee from a small container that he’d left in the back of his fridge.
His heart began pounding like when he was a kid, and he was about to have a serious discussion with his parents. “How come we don’t say ‘I love you’？”
She stopped flipping the parantha back and forth between her palms and stood blinking wide-eyed. “What in the world is this bakawas garbage, Prem? Why would you ask that?”
This conversation is going well, he mused. He stood from the island and went over to the corner cabinet to pull out some ibuprofen. After popping two pills and swallowing them dry, Prem leaned against his counter and faced his mother.
“Rina wants a love marriage. Bells, whistles, all of it. We have rising divorce rates, and mounting studies out there that talk about how love can actually cause heart damage. That it can be a fleeting emotion, and it’s not enough to sustain a long-term relationship.”
“Prem?” She said his name as if expecting him to continue, to go on.
The sticky, raw conversations were always hard to talk about with his parents even though he was lucky enough to always have their support. “You and Dad had a love marriage, didn’t you?”
“Of course. We told you that. Your father’s witch of a mother didn’t like me. But now she’s finally dead.”
“Mom!”
She flicked a hand at him again like he was a gnat, and a small puff of flour clouded the air at the end of her fingertips. “Everyone hated her. It’s fine.”
“You and Dad are like polar opposites, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say ‘I love you’ to each other. What makes you stay together? Convenience? Me? The community?”
This time, his mother flipped off the stovetop and turned a full ninety degrees to look at him. “Love! And I do say it. Every day.”
Prem snorted. “No, you do not. I’ve never heard those words from you before. Not to Dad, not to me, not even to the extended family.”
“That’s because I don’t say them with my mouth. I feed you your favorites, I put your Superman socks in the dryer so when you get out of the shower they’re toasty warm—”
“No,” he said, cutting her off for a second time. “Not actions. The words. Why haven’t you ever said them?”
His mother turned back to her parantha and began rolling out the stuffed dough. He waited, watching as her hands moved quickly, but she took the time to gather her thoughts. “Sometimes,” she started quietly, “the words are hard to say, because you’re so scared that something will happen to the person you care about if you say them. And the longer you go without saying them, the easier it is. Our parents never said the words, and honestly, we never did either because it was more comfortable for us to just show you.”
Her words rocked Prem to his core. He moved to the closest counter stool and sat.
That was exactly it. His heart, bruised and sore, ached as he first thought of Gori, and how hard it was for him to survive her death. How could he possibly survive losing Kareena?
“Words are important to her,” Prem finally said.
“Do you love her, my beta?” His mother added oil to the pan.
It took a moment for Prem to respond, even though he didn’t have to look her in the eye to say it since she was busy at his stove. “Rina’s what’s been missing, what I’ve been waiting for. From the moment I saw her at Bunty’s restaurant. It’s as if my center of gravity shifted.”