Coda

coda \Co"da\ (k[=o]"d[.a]), n. [It., tail, fr. L. cauda.] (Music) A few measures added beyond the natural termination of a composition. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1998.

"Let's go out tonight," says Sanjay.

I look up from my finance textbook, in which I have been doodling Devanagari characters, to see Sanjay leaning against his bedroom doorway, his hands clasped together as if he is standing in church. He is wearing the same outfit he has been wearing for the past four days: cotton kurta pajamas and a baggy gray sweater. His feet encased in leather chappals, black stubble against his pallid skin, he barely resembles the stylish dot.com entrepreneur I met a year ago. In the winter he passes for Italian, and this winter he has hardly left the house. "In India, fair skin is considered more attractive," he told me once when I pointed out the contrast of the skin on our arms.

"If we go out," I say, "you'd have to change."

"It's been a week since I stepped out the front door," he says, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

"I know. I noticed. I've been worried."

"Why didn't you say anything?"

"I'm saying something now. I think you need some help." I decide to go even further, "A therapist." I've said it.

"Sometimes I wonder whether you care for me," he says with no particular emphasis.

I straighten myself on the sofa, set the finance book aside, cap my pen, lean forward. "I care, I do. I'm here. I feel like I'm always here. What can I do besides be here for you, to listen?" He makes no response, offers no solution.

"When do you want to leave?" I ask.

"I'm taking you somewhere you've never been before. It's a secret place I don't take many people. I don't want all of Boston to know about it."

He strokes his stubble with his right hand as he shuffles off to the bathroom, his woven leather chappals dragging along the hardwood floor. He takes one of his trademark half-hour showers, combs his hair fragrant with coconut oil, and applies carefully rationed Aqua di Gio, my present from a recent visit to Heathrow Duty Free. I keep him company during his ablutions, sitting cross-legged on the toilet lid. I know my Mom doesn't find him handsome--fair skin or no--and Asha says he is not her type, but as I let our chatter wash over me my only desire is to stroke, to kiss, to hold. He changes into black wool trousers, an ironed shirt, and polished Chelsea boots.

"You were wearing those shoes when we met," I say.

"I only wear them for very special occasions."

"Oh, come on. You didn't know that you would meet me that night."

"Yes, yes I did."

"What are you talking about?"

"Your friend Sonil, from business school. He set us up."

"What kind of set up was that? You wouldn't even talk to me that night at the Third Eye."

"That's not true. I was following you the whole evening."

"With your eyes maybe. When you were deejaying, I went up to request a song. You met my eyes through the window on the deejay booth door, but when I knocked, you turned away and continued to play that crap bhangra music."

"You love bhangra!"

"No. I don't. You just play it all the time. I've grown accustomed to it, like elevator music. Only with all that drumming and frenzied singing, it's impossible to tune out." I stick my tongue out at him when he meets my eyes in the bathroom mirror. "Later, when you took a break, you came and talked to Sonil and when he introduced us, you barely said hi."

"I'm a shy guy."

"You're a shy guy? You deejayed for hundreds of people every week."

"I didn't have to talk to them, did I? Besides, didn't I ask you out for 'cold tea' in Chinatown when the club closed?"

"But you asked Sonil as well! I don't think the three of us constitutes a date. And you didn't laugh at any of my jokes."

"So then, how did I manage to charm a girl like you?"

"That's a question I've been trying to answer myself. Ow!" I flinched as he flicked a wet towel at me. "Seriously. Besides your stunning good looks, I think it was because you were so different from the men I'd been meeting at business school. You built an internet company and you still deejayed every week; you didn't let your work rule your life. And all that time you've spent in India--you're in touch with being Indian in a way I'm not, but want to be."

"And you found all this out that first night?"

"No, I hated you that first night. I think it was just over time, as I kept bumping into you. I think I ran into you too often for it to have been coincidental."

"Sonil. He kept me well apprised of your movements."

"Great. You're a stalker to boot."

"Not me. Sonil. He said I was perfect for you. And look at me now. I've folded the company, Third Eye has shut down, and--"

"--you're applying to business school, where you'll no doubt distinguish yourself next year. This is just a transition. This is not who you are."

Sanjay runs a comb once more through his hair, regarding himself in the mirror without comment. After we reach the car, he insists I put on a blindfold, saying "I want this to be a surprise, and you know Boston too well. Car keys, please." He pops in a CD--"the mix you asked I make you, I hope you like it."

"Thank you, DJ Sanjay," I reply in third grade singsong.

We drive for two full songs and a bit of a third when he parks and removes my blindfold to reveal the Hyatt Hotel. I cock my head to one side, "Oh, the Hyatt. The pyramid building. It's always been one of my favorites."

"Upstairs there's a revolving restaurant. You haven't been, right?" he asks.

"Noooo, never," I reply. "Your surprise is safe with me."

He smiles.

We take the elevator to the top floor where the hostess sits us at a table for two by the window. Below us the Charles flows past, its dark surface reflecting riverfront lights and the hellacious Citgo sign. The restaurant completes a 360-degree rotation every 45 minutes, which is slow enough that you have to benchmark against a landmark to realize you are moving at all.

We sit across the table from each other, our arms outstretch to cradle our drinks, our hands not quite meeting.

"I wanted to ask you about this trip to India," he says.

"What about it?"

"Are you going to be introduced to suitable boys?"

"No! What do you mean? No. I don't think so. It's a family vacation."

"Come on, you were joking about it last week with your sister. But I don't think it was a joke."

I drop my eyes to my coffee. Sanjay never drinks coffee, he prefers tea. Herbal tea or real Indian chai, made fresh with loose tea leaves, milk, sugar, cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon, all raised to a roiling boil on the stovetop, then drained through a sieve to steam in stainless steel cups. At Spinnaker Revolving Restaurant and Bar, he is drinking Celestial Seasons Sleepytime Tea, not that he needs more sleep. The waitress scowled when I ordered coffee, he ordered tea. The menus stipulate a $10 minimum per table on weekends. But today is Thursday.

As he pours a packet of sugar into his tea, he says, "I feel I have a right to know. What's going to happen on this trip."

"What do you want me to say? Do you want me to tell my mother I don't want to be introduced? Go up against her like that?"

He regards me silently.

"It's not like we have a commitment," I continue, "I mean, we're not engaged." It's his turn to look away. I wonder what he sees in the view of Cambridge before us. A future for us, together?

"I just don't think she takes our relationship seriously. I don't think she takes me seriously. It makes me feel less."

"Less of what? What are you, exactly, to me?"

"I'm your boyfriend."

"And what do you think that means to her?"

"Nothing."

"Can't I just go along with what she wants? What's the harm in it?"

"It's not fair to them."

"To them?"

"To the men you'll be meeting. And their families."

I roll my eyes. "Why do you care about them? You don't even know who they are."

"You'll be meeting them under false pretenses. I know how it works there. Listen to me." He places his upturned fingers on the underside of my chin and tilts my face toward him. I feel myself, despite myself, blossoming under his touch. How I crave Sanjay. "You may not take the introductions seriously, but they do. You're playing with their emotions."

"How can they feel anything for me? They don't even know me." His fingers fall away, and I resist the urge to grab them.

"You don't know how it is."

"And you do? You haven't lived in India for more than 10 years now."

"I went back--"

"I know, to visit. For several months, for sure, but still just to visit. You've spent most of your life here. Like me."

The waitress comes over to ask if we want anything more, and over Sanjay's shoulder I see an elderly Caucasian couple staring at us, the husband turned around in his seat. When I meet the husband's eyes, he immediately turns around and pulls his chair close to the table. I take a deep breath and resolve to speak more quietly. I glance up at the waitress, gray peeping boldly from her Shirley Temple orange hair, fine lines creasing her down-turned mouth, and a cracked plastic nametag declaring her name to the world. I'll pay you $20 just to go away, I want to say, but what I actually say is, "We're fine, thanks."

"Do ya wanna refill?" she asks.

"No, thanks," I say.

In the wake of the waitress, he is silent. Somehow this is worse than his words. I want to ask, what are you thinking, but I just can't bear becoming the cliché of the girlfriend who asks such things.

"Sanjay, you can't have it both ways. You can't have me and not be committed to me."

"What do you want from me?"

"I agree we're not ready to be engaged," I find myself saying, although he hasn't offered this alternative, and even though I would marry this man in a heartbeat despite the faults that I count like sheep during sleepless nights when I wonder what I am doing with him at all. But for each step forward I take, I feel him retreat two or three into himself. A year into this relationship, and I feel that we don't share our lives, but that I have assumed his life. I spend every free moment I have at his apartment, to the point where his roommate has asked whether I really go to graduate school. I arrange my schedule so I have Thursdays and Fridays off, and I spend these days editing his business school applications and cooking our meals while Sanjay downloads music from Napster and plays online computer basketball. Two people in one life is one too many--there isn't space for him or me. I hardly recognize the person I've become. In the place of all the activities, all the interests, I used to pursue scant months ago, there is only him. He is my project.

I continue, "We've been dating barely a year, that's not long enough to know whether we should spend the rest of our lives together." Oh god, with each word I feel him slipping further away. Who mentioned marriage? My stupid, alternative personality? I'm in deep water and in my typical reckless, talkative, thoughtless manner, I strike out further from shore when it probably would be better to retreat. But I'm hostage to my need to voice the things I think while he sleeps. "What I'm trying to say is, unless we have a definite commitment, I don't feel like I have the right to tell my mother I don't want to meet the men she wants me to meet."

In his dark brown eyes, eyes so dark it's difficult to distinguish pupil from cornea, I feel I can read his thoughts: but if you go through with this, it's like saying you don't believe in us, you don't trust that this relationship is going in that direction, and if you're trying to force me into a declaration, you won't get it.

Aloud, he says, "I told you from the start, I'm years away from marriage."

He's gouging my heart out with his stained teaspoon, splatting it down on the table before us, clinically watching to see how long it will keep beating, how long I can remain standing without it. I realize I am standing now, and over his head the elderly couple are staring again.

"I thought that would change. Once we dated. When we fell in love. Aren't you in love with me?" I ask.

"I love you."

"Then how can you talk like this?"

He raises a hand, palm upturned, and says, "Sit down."

"No."

"Please sit down. Please."

I sit and I taste salt on my lips. I press the back of my hand across my face and stare dumbly at its glistening surface.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please don't." He's stuttering as he rubs my face with a paper napkin. We do not speak as I struggle to quiet myself by staring at the city circling us, diverting occasional glances at Sanjay, who doesn't meet my eyes.

"Do you mean you're not ready for marriage?" He doesn't respond. I say, "I don't believe that you aren't ready. I think that's just an excuse people use when they realize that the person they are with is not the person they want to be with. God. Am I that person? Sanjay? Just give me an answer."

We used to keep each other up all night with our whimsical, hilarious, insightful conversations--suddenly he has nothing to say to me. I stir my cold coffee vigorously, my spoon ringing the sound of enlightenment against the earthenware mug.

"Look, I spoke to my parents. When I went home a few weeks ago," he mumbles into his cup, slurping the cold brew.

"And?" I ask.

He raises his arms, hands extended, palms up, like Jesus in Da Vinci's Last Supper.

"What did they say?" I ask, although my stomach already knows the answer.

He doesn't say anything.

"Why won't you talk to me?"

"Your mother--" he begins.

"I'm not talking about my mother, I'm talking about your mother. I've never even met her. And your father! I thought he liked me."

"You're not going to like this."

"Tell me anyway."

"Look, I'm too young now. I haven't even got an MBA. It's all my parents want for me: a master's. And to be honest, it's a problem that you're Catholic."

"I don't buy any of this. All these obstacles are surmountable if we want to be together. I'm not a religious Catholic, I am all for bringing up children Hindu. I'm learning Hindi now, and--"

"You can't convert to Hinduism. It's not that kind of religion--it's not your kind of religion. And it's not fair for me to ask you to give up your faith."

"But I'm faithless!"

"That's a problem too. I believe in God."

"I believe in God!"

"But I thought you said you're faithless."

"I believe in the existence of a higher power. I just don't subscribe to any particular faith."

"But I do. I'm not comfortable in a church. I never want to go. Ever. Wouldn't that bother you?"

I'm quiet.

"You're not northern India. You're not Punjabi," he says.

"Why does that matter? Aren't we all part of a united India now, Goans and Punjabis alike? Why should it matter that I'm not from Punjab?"

"The fact that you don't even know why it matters--that's why it matters. Look, it's not fair for me to hold you. You're going to India. You're going to meet those men."

"I won't meet them if you give me reason not to."

"I won't go against my parents. I told you that."

"Why are you letting your parents rule your life? I don't believe this." Even in the midst of my distress, I wonder if my pupils are diluting with the shock of my sudden realization, like a cartoon character. I wonder what I must look like, now, at this moment. "Are we breaking up?"

He is silent.

"We're breaking up, aren't we?"

He sighs. "I hadn't planned it, but it looks like it."

And if I expect that the world will end, it doesn't. If I think that Spinnaker will pitch itself off its revolving axis to drown in the Charles, it doesn't. I'm shaking my head and turning the cold porcelain mug around in my hands. Around and around. "There's no way out, is there? You won't commit, you say you can't commit, not now, not ever. What changed? I'm still the same person you started dating months ago. You knew I was Catholic. I deserve to know why we're breaking up. Please."

"I don't have an answer for you," he says.

"I can't become Hindu or Punjabi or whatever. It's not my fault, my birth. Why are you punishing me for something beyond my control?"

"I'm not punishing you."

"The hell you're not."

"Look, I didn't bring you here because I thought we would break up. The thought never entered my head, I swear."

"Well, what can I do? After this conversation. If I have any respect for myself, I have to leave you. I can't stay in a relationship I know is not going anywhere. Why did we have to have this conversation now? Why couldn't we wait until June, when I graduate, and then we could have moved on gracefully. It would've been so much easier."

"I don't know," he shrugs his shoulders.

I suddenly wonder when this whole sad sorry mess will end. Sanjay sits across from me, a man whose company failed, who spent three months studying for the business school entrance exam only to get a mediocre score, and who missed all the deadlines for the first rounds of admissions. He tries to buy his parents' affection by presenting his mother with a new car while he drives a '71 Nova, financing their trips to India, and sending a tithe of his salary home each month. Even now when he's unemployed, they accept his cash contributions. What kind of family does he come from? After I introduced my mother to Sanjay, she said, "I'm sure he'll do well in his own limited sphere." Later that night, she asked my sister, "Priya isn't serious about him, is she?" Clearly he was depressed and developing agoraphobia; he never went out and his circle of friends was narrowing alarmingly.

"Don't leave," he says, and I realize I am standing again. I'm taking my coat off the chair and swinging it onto my shoulders. I'm above myself, looking down, I swear it's a real out-of-body experience, and I think, Priya is not having a good time. Priya should get out of here. Aloud I say, "You've given me no reason to stay." I'm downstairs in the lobby when I realize he still has my keys. I call him on his cell phone and before he has a chance to say anything, I say, "I don't believe this, but you still have my car keys."

"I'll be right down."

When he presents the keys to me in the lobby, our hands meet, and I realize he might as well be the valet for all we have to say to one another. I realize I can walk away--with tears and unsteady hands, it is true--but I can walk away, and I do.

In the car, on the vacant passenger seat, lies the bandana that he used to blindfold me. My lips twist at this soap opera. As I pull out of the parking lot, I look up once at the Hyatt, and then take the right onto Memorial Drive, keeping pace with the inky Charles as I drive myself homeward without incident, my thoughts as black as the river.

An hour later, I'm home sitting in my living room, staring out my floor-to-ceiling windows at the Charles below and the business school beyond, when I realize I have left my casework for the next day at Sanjay's apartment. Not to mention my wool slippers, green silk negligee, toothbrush, tampons, hairbrush. These things are not irreplaceable, but they are my things, and now that there is a distinction between him and me, I want them back. Now. I take a deep breath and exhale slowly, just as I have learned in my yoga class, but I don't feel as if I have "taken in the good and expelled the bad" as my guru would say. I pick up my car keys and head over to his house.

Neighborhood characters pushing brimming shopping carts, braided children playing kickball on the dead-end street, and arguments that are punctuated by the arrival of a paddy wagon led Sanjay to dub his place "The Crack House." It is owned by a middle-aged Chinese bachelor who lives in the basement and rents out the upper two apartments. No matter the weather, he wears plastic thong flip-flops. He sports a bristled chin, tufted ears, and stains down the front of his shirt. Around the first of the month he parks himself on the front stoop from the dark hours of the morning. There's only one exit from the building, so in a few days he pretty much catches everyone who owes him rent. He attempts to tempt his lodgers into buying the building from him for $600,000, but so far there have been no takers. His English isn't great but he definitely understands money; I'm sure the Crack Landlord is a millionaire. Hoping Sanjay has paid this month's rent, I sit on the doorstep, breathing in the crisp shards of December air. I don't have keys to his house. I did for three days, back in September, but then he said his roommate complained when I entered early one Saturday to watch a movie.

"I have to respect his wishes; I mean, I wouldn't want just anybody to have access to my house either," Sanjay had said. "You have to give the keys back. It's not fair to him."

I had complied, but insisted that Sanjay keep the keys to my apartment. "I don't like to be there when you're not there," he had said.

"Just keep them," I insisted, "I may need you to water my plants."

I concentrate on my breathing as I wait for Sanjay's arrival. Today is Thursday and my first final exam is in two days. Inhale, exhale. The condom broke yesterday. Inhale, exhale. The condom slipped off the day before that. Inhale, exhale. I put my head down between my legs to stop the world from spinning.

"Priya?" Sanjay coughs into his hand.

"Don't worry, I don't want to get back together. I'm just here for my stuff," I address my knees.

I read a ghost story once where the protagonist could feel the presence of an unseen ghost, could tell where the ghost was through her sixth sense. Even without looking, I can sense Sanjay's movements. He is in front of me at the base of the steps, observing me for a few moments, he passes me walking up the stairs, I hear the key turn in the lock, and after a moment he proceeds down the hallway to unlock the door to his apartment. He waits for me again, and then I hear his steps receding. When I can't feel him any longer, I get up and walk inside, leaving the doors ajar. Air. I'm just concentrating on breathing now.

"Do you have a plastic bag? Like a grocery bag?" I ask. Our hands do not meet as he hands me one.

When gathering my things, I work around him as if he's a poltergeist--or I guess maybe I'm the poltergeist. Surely we are both ghosts in each other's lives now, no longer living, active participants. Over the next few months, I'll simplify our life together into anecdotes for the amusement of friends over a bottle of Chianti. He'll be a boyfriend, one of many, not the one I would have married. And by speaking, I will hope to exorcise his memory. By pretending I don't care, maybe one day I won't.

In the bathroom, my toothbrush sits on the cabinet shelf in its case, not in the toothbrush holder by the sink. Sanjay had said his roommate didn't want to share his toothbrush holder with me, although he would share it with Sanjay. "It's not fair to him, it's his toothbrush holder after all," Sanjay had said. I take the toothbrush from the shelf and put it in the plastic bag, noting that nothing else on the shelves was mine, and when I close the cabinet door I stare at myself in the mirror. I don't look so bad, considering. I blow my nose and wash my face. I look around the bathroom and realize that not one other thing there belongs to me.

Sanjay follows a pace behind me like a security guard in a department store. He is once again in his all too familiar outfit: baggy sweater, kurta pajamas, chappals. In the living room, I gather up my books and papers, pens and calculator, and file them neatly away in my backpack. A quick sweep of this room reveals that it is clean. I try to pretend that Sanjay's ghost is not with me, but his presence and his shuffling consume my attention. I'm afraid I'll forget to breathe; I try to focus on inhaling, exhaling. In the kitchen, the plastic bag is the recipient of a number of spices: curry, cumin, coriander. Nothing else here, either. Sanjay doesn't follow me into the bedroom, but hovers at the door. I overturn his laundry hamper onto the floor and pick out my underwear from his, I toss hangers from the closet until I find my negligee, I open the sandalwood box I gave him to take my apartment keys, and then take the box as well, and I get my hairbrush and hairclips from the mantle.

"Where are my tampons?" I ask.

"You want your tampons?" he asks.

"Do you?"

"All right, but you have to leave the room."

"Come on."

He doesn't say anything, so I add, "Just tell me where they are."

He wins the standoff and he shuts and locks the door after me. I take the pepper grinder off the counter and put it in my bag. It's not mine, but he only bought it at my insistence. Let him go back to stale pepper dust. I retrieve my wool slippers from the floor.

Sanjay comes out with a box wrapped in a plastic bag. I can't believe this is all that I have here, after a fairly lengthy time at his apartment. I'm like a Native American who has been taught to tread lightly on the land, to leave nothing behind.

"Well, there's just one last thing I want us to do together," I say.

"What?"

"The condom broke, remember? I want us to take a pregnancy test together."

"You're not pregnant."

"Easy for you to say. It's not your body."

"It's not easy to get pregnant."

"What's the worst possible thing that could happen now? Can you imagine if I found out that I was pregnant after we broke up? Do you want to get that phone call from me in a few weeks time? I'm Catholic, remember?"

"How could I forget? Let's go."

"Have you paid your rent?"

"No."

"Of course you haven't."

By some miracle, we don't encounter his landlord as we leave the apartment. At the end of his street there is a 24-hour convenience store fortified by steel cages on the windows. I never realized how long Sanjay's street was: seven blocks. Usually we walk hand in hand, but there's an electric fence between us now. He has shoved his hands deep in his pockets and he walks hunched over as if into a stiff wind. I thread my arm through his, and although I don't enjoy the sensation, I leave my arm there. Knowing this may be the last time I ever touch him prevents me from breaking the contact, however unpleasant. We jostle each other as we walk out of step, the space between us contracting with a painful crunching of elbows every now and then. His woven-leather chappals and thin cotton kurta offer little insulation from the cold, but he doesn't complain.

"What did I do wrong?" I ask.

"You didn't do anything. It's not you, it's me."

"I can't believe you just said that."

"I'm serious. You're perfect. Stop beating yourself up. It's painful for me to see you like this."

"It's painful for you? For you?"

He doesn't answer and we continue in silence to the store. It's about ten o'clock but at least six people mill about the corner store, which is also a pharmacy. I wonder whether the owner receives a lot of fake prescriptions like "please dis-pense ten pounds of Mo-fine." Sanjay and I wander the aisles looking for the pregnancy test. We pass the display of condoms and my throat constricts.

I say to Sanjay, "To the other people here, we must look like a couple. We could be hoping for a positive result. We could be a young couple about to embark on a life together." We could sprout wings and fly.

We can't find the pregnancy tests. "Maybe they keep them behind the counter," says Sanjay. He doesn't make any move toward the counter, so I stand in line and when it's my turn, ask the pharmacist to recommend a test. I follow the pharmacist to a back corner where the condoms are kept. There are two brands on the top shelf quite near the ceiling; he climbs a stepladder to reach them. "Well," says the pharmacist, "there's not much difference between these. This one is fifty cents cheaper, I'd just go with it if I were you."

"Fine," I say.

"I forgot my wallet at home," says Sanjay.

"Fine," I say.

I pay for the pregnancy test myself, aware of the eyes of strangers on my back. They follow me as Sanjay and I walk past the line that stretches to the door. I don't make any effort to touch him on the way home and no matter how slow I walk, he walks a half-step slower.

I take the test alone in the bathroom and when I come into the kitchen I say, "It will be ready in ten minutes. Can you set a timer?" I notice the garlic press I gave him in the dish rack and while he sets the timer on the oven to 10 minutes, I put the press in the back pocket of my jeans and tug my sweater down. He starts doing the dishes, which are piled up higher than the faucet. He has to take some out of the sink just to make space for washing. I take the dishcloth off the oven and dry for him.

"I thought your father liked me. When we went out to lunch. Didn't he have anything to say in my defense?"

"Priya."

"I'm just saying. I thought we had a nice time."

"What about your mother?"

"What do you mean?"

"She hates me. The next time you bring a boyfriend home to meet your family for the first time, make sure it's not the double wedding anniversary of your parents and grandparents."

"Well, when else could I have taken you home? You never wanted to go."

"No wonder. I felt so uncomfortable. It wasn't a big party, it was your immediate family eating at a restaurant. I didn't have a place at that table."

"That was the whole idea. I wanted you to have a place at that table."

"You can't force things like that. I think you ruined their anniversary."

"Thanks, Sanjay."

"You did. When did you call your mother to tell her I was coming?"

"That morning."

"And what did she say?"

"Not to bring you."

"Did you tell me that?"

"You know I didn't. What is the point of all this? To prove that I brought this on myself?"

The timer beeps. I offer Sanjay the towel and he dries his hands. This is the last time we would do dishes together, I think. Everything we do tonight is the last: the last trip to the corner store, the last walk arm in arm, the last date, the last drink, the last dish. I follow him into the bathroom and we stare at the strip.

"What does one stripe mean?" I ask.

"Negative," he reads off the package.

"Negative?"

"You're not pregnant Priya. Just like I said."

We leave the bathroom and I open the door to leave his apartment. Then I ask, "If I had been pregnant what would we have done?"

"I have no idea. You're not pregnant. It doesn't matter."

"Would you have wanted to keep it? Would you have stayed with me?"

"I don't know how I would've felt."

"We could've had a baby."

"We aren't having a baby."

"Well, I guess that's it then. All wrapped up. No loose ends. I have all my stuff, I'm not carrying your child, you'll never have to see me again."

"That's not what I want."

"What do you want?"

"You can always call me. Always."

"Great. That's just great. I'm sure I'll take you up on that."

"Don't go away like this." He follows me down the hallway to the outer door. We stand on the front stoop together.

"I can't believe this is it," I say. "I never thought we would end. You had my whole heart. Why wasn't that enough?"

"I'm sorry." He leans to kiss me goodbye, but I push him away with a flat hand on his chest. I run down the stairs to my car, and when I open the front door, I turn and say, "Remember two weeks ago when I was going to London to interview? You walked me to my car through the snow just wearing socks--you said to prove how much you loved me."

"I remember."

"It's funny how quickly things change."

"I'm not laughing."

"But you're not crying, either."

"That's unfair. This is not easy on me, either."

"It seems easy for you, though."

"Not true."

"Remember that this was your choice, not mine."

I step into the car and drive away without waiting for the engine to heat. When I get home I throw the plastic bag from Sanjay's apartment down the trash chute. As I turn the key in the lock, I remember I still have the garlic press in my back pocket, so I trudge back down the hallway and throw that out too. As I stare down into the trash chute, I realize I have thrown out the spare keys to my apartment as well.

After class the next day, I go to my doctor for my annual check-up and Pap smear. She treats my grandmother, my mother, my sister, and me: our family doctor modernized for the HMO era.

I place my feet in the metal stirrups, goose bumps pimpling my flesh. I grip the table on both sides with my hands.

"Further down. And try to relax your legs."

"Well, actually, there was one thing I wanted to ask. The condom broke."

"When?" she asks. "This is just my hand." She places her other hand firmly on my stomach. I imagine that it matches her other hand, inside me, in its circular movements.

"A few days ago. We took a pregnancy test, so I'm OK, right?"

"Try to relax. This will just take a minute. Let me think. If your period ended a week ago, you should not have been ovulating, so it should be fine."

"That's what I thought. It's hard to get pregnant."

"Not really. Eighty percent of women who try to get pregnant, get pregnant within a year. Those tests measure a hormone that is released when you are pregnant; a few days is not enough time for the hormone to build up to a point where the test would be accurate."

"You mean I could still be pregnant?"

"OK. Now I am inserting the speculum. I'm using the smallest one we have. I doubt you're pregnant, judging from where you are in your cycle."

"Well, I just made up the date. I don't keep track of my period."

"Please relax. You're making this harder than it has to be."

"Sorry." I start counting the men I have dated, the men I have slept with, and the men I have loved. Each subsequent list is a little shorter. I don't remember the names of all the men I've gone on dates with; I remember them by the stories I tell about them to my friends. Boyfriends' names I remember, of course. Under my breath I count the number of men I have slept with: "one, two, three..." I turn my head to the wall when I get to five.

"Good, count. That's working. OK, we're done here." The doctor says. She scribbles on a jar and puts it in a tray. She wipes me off with paper towels, which she then throws in the trash along with her rubber gloves. "It's not that hard to get pregnant. You only ovulate for one day, it's true, but a man's sperm can live inside you for four days. So the window is pretty large, especially since your ovulation day changes from month to month." She removes my feet from the stirrups and I sit up, swinging my feet around to the long side of the table. "I think you'll be fine, but if you don't get your period this month, give me a call. And good luck with the marathon! I'll send you that check."

"Thanks," I say as she leaves the room. Once the door clicks shut behind her, I collapse on my back on the table. I look up at the ceiling, which, unlike the walls, is cracked and in need of paint. I place my hands on my stomach and imagine his child inside me. I close my eyes and extend my arms to receive my baby from my doctor's hands. Perhaps the only part of Sanjay I will ever hold again.

I compose in my head the phone call telling Sanjay I'm pregnant. If I choose my words carefully enough, maybe he will be there when they deliver the baby. And maybe he will linger; as the baby grows up, perhaps we will grow together again. I jump off the table and as I pull on my clothes, I smile.

Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Webmaster. Last modified Thu, Oct 18, 2001.