“How would she know?” she asked, trying not to let the defensiveness she felt creep into her voice. Chiti sighed and let go of her clasped hands.
“Because she was not,” she said. “And I imagine she thinks you are more alike than she lets on.”
Avery saw it then, the color of Chiti’s grief. It was the deepest indigo, dark enough to be almost black, like the farthest parts of the ocean. It was an ancient grief, old as indigo itself, and like that age-old dye, its origin was in India. Chiti’s mother was not a loving mother. Chiti had talked many times over the years to Avery about her wish to raise a child differently, to lavish her baby with all the attention, wonder, and affection of which she had been deprived. Now Chiti had chosen the very thing she had been trying to escape, a partner who did not want to be a mother in the place of a mother who had not wanted to be one. The realization weighed heavy as a stillborn in her arms.
Avery stayed on the bed next to her wife. There was no anger in them anymore; they were left with the sadness that always lay in wait beneath it. Avery would have preferred shouting to this leaden, heartbroken silence. She took Chiti’s hand.
“You will be a mother,” she said. “You will.”
She was saying it, she knew, in part to ease her own guilt, but she also believed it, she had to. Chiti squeezed her hand.
“I wanted to do it with you,” she said.
“I know.”
Chiti raised her head hopefully.
“And you’re sure you can’t?”
Avery nodded.
“I’m sure.”
Chiti also nodded slowly.
“I always felt that the way we started…It was a hard foundation to build a relationship on. The shame has never left me.”
Avery looked at her in surprise.
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. Therapists date clients. Shit happens.”
Chiti shook her head sadly.
“You can’t take away my shame, just as I can’t yours.”
They sat together as the home they had created released its sundry moans. The floorboards beneath the bed creaked. The curtains sighed. A pipe downstairs clanged. Outside, someone walked past chatting loudly into their phone. They never had gotten around to getting the windows up here double glazed, Avery thought.
“I’m sorry,” said Avery. “About Charlie. About everything. You never deserved that.”
“You’re right,” said Chiti. “I didn’t.” She shifted slightly to face Avery. “And I’m sorry for what I said about Nicky. You couldn’t have saved her. No one could have. You know that?”
Avery nodded. It was time to speak, to find a way to communicate with Chiti what she had been feeling, not because it would change anything, but because it was what Chiti had asked for.
“I miss her and I miss her and I miss her,” she began. “And I wait for the feeling to end because every other feeling has ended, no matter how intense, no matter how hard—but this won’t. There’s just no end to the missing. There was life before and there’s life now. And I can’t seem to accept it. I can’t accept that I’ll have to miss her forever. There will never be relief. There will never be a reunion. And I wish I had a God. I wish I believed in an afterlife or something, anything. But when I try to talk to her in my head, there’s no response. I can’t hear her. And I can’t feel her. All I have is this missing. And part of me is glad it won’t end because it’s all I have to connect me to her now.”
Avery rubbed a hand over her face. She had been waiting a long time to say this, and now she was here there was no point holding back.
“But I’m not strong enough, Chiti,” she said. “I thought I would be, but I’m not. So I keep trying to cut the missing off. And, yes, I’ve been smoking and I’ve been stealing. I betrayed our marriage and I lied to you and I…I ruined our life together. I know I should have handled everything differently. I can’t understand why I didn’t. I thought I was one person before Nicky died, but it turns out I’m not. I know you said you have been losing me for a year, but I have too. I lost her and I lost myself. I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”
Chiti put her hand on Avery’s and looked into her eyes. Avery searched for forgiveness, but she saw only resignation.
“Maybe that’s because you are becoming someone new,” she said.
—
An hour later, Vish came to pick Chiti up in his beat-up Mini Cooper. Avery stood on the top step as a bright sun climbed the morning sky and watched as he and Chiti packed his car with her bags. Vish shot Avery a look full of confusion and hurt. She swallowed the lump in her throat and resisted the urge to call out to him. She was losing him, too, she realized.
After they left, Avery wandered around the large empty house. She glanced into the bedroom, where the bed was still imprinted with the shape of Chiti’s sleeping body, then retreated to the kitchen. She plugged in the kettle to make tea, smiling ruefully to herself; it was exactly what her mother would have done. But before the water boiled, Avery decided to leave. She couldn’t stand the silence. She pulled on her swimsuit and a pair of sweatpants, then flung open the front door, heading toward the Heath. Ever since moving to London, she had always wanted to swim in the Hampstead Ladies’ Pond. Today, she would do it.
As she entered the park, a handful of emerald-green parakeets shot out from the trees above. They called to one another in an excited chatter, filling the air with their squawks. When she first moved to the city, Avery had marveled at the sight of these bright birds flying free in the heart of gray, muted London. It was Chiti who told her the urban legend that Jimi Hendrix was responsible for their outlandish presence; allegedly, he had carried a birdcage to Carnaby Street and, without fanfare, unleashed a breeding pair of ring-necked parakeets named Adam and Eve. Now, they could be spotted anywhere from Croydon to Crouch End, but many favored the wild abundance of the Heath. Avery watched as the birds flew north. She watched until they were nothing but a tiny spot of green in the pale blue sky, until they were nothing at all.
It had just gone seven, early enough that the pond was empty save for a cluster of gliding mallards and a lone elderly woman swimming slowly, her neck jutting forward like a determined turtle. Avery left her things in the changing room and padded out onto the wooden dock. The cool air whispered around her skin. Around the pond, a leafy canopy of trees sighed and rustled as if politely rearranging themselves. She grasped the metal handrails and descended into the water beneath. A sharp, involuntary exhale escaped her as coldness encased her to her neck. She bobbed, her hair fanning around her, and caught her breath. Then she slipped beneath the surface of the water, of the world itself.
Down below, everything was quiet. Pond water, silken and thick as oil, slid over her skin. Liquid gulps and hisses curled around her ears. Tiny glistening bubbles pearled her skin, then drifted away like thoughts. Cones of light pierced the water above her head. She propelled herself deeper, the light retreating behind her. Swaying reeds brushed her toes as she pushed toward the cooler depths. Below was a dark floor of mud, a place the sun reached for but could not touch. She laid herself horizontal and let her body sink to the coolest depths. Mud sucked at the back of her legs and spine as she fell softly onto the bed of the pond. She closed her eyes and exhaled air.
Avery had taught all three of her sisters to swim. Stood in the shallow end, hand under their bellies holding their thrashing bodies aloft. Even as they gulped and spluttered, eyes red with chlorine and tears, she had not let them stop. She needed to know they could keep themselves safe. Of all of them, Nicky had become the best swimmer. Avery could see her now, streaking beneath the water’s glistening surface, a pale blur of limbs, her hair a serpentine thread. She could hold her breath longer than any of them, disappearing for such lengths that Avery would feel her heart squeeze with panic. But always, after that long stretch of silence, would come the sound of her sucking in breath, the exultant sight of her slick head bursting forth. She saw her sister now, far away across a glittering expanse, smiling and waving, amazed at herself, turning to see if Avery was amazed too.
What had Nicky thought in her final moments? Had she known? Was it a relief not to have to fight anymore? Not to feel? The water pressed around Avery, insistent and beckoning. Up above, Bonnie and Lucky were safe. Could she leave them now? Could she be free? Avery opened her eyes. Pale light danced far ahead. Her lungs ached. It was too much, this love. Then she felt it, her legs kicking out beneath her, turning her upright. Her soles sank into the mud, then pushed off. A thousand dark tugging tides pulled her back as she propelled herself, but she did not stop. Her palms thrust water aside, as though flinging open heavy curtains to let in the day. It grew warmer as she drew closer. She kept swimming. She was almost there. Light broke over her head like applause. She breached the surface, gasping for air.
Epilogue
Ten years later, the sisters came from north and south. In Morningside Heights, a few streets from the Columbia University campus where she was now teaching, Avery slipped out of bed and kissed the sleeping figure beside her. The woman stirred and murmured.
“Is it happening?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep.
“I’m going to see her now,” whispered Avery. “Keep sleeping.”
The woman lifted her cheek from the pillow.
