When Bishan married Balwinder, she did so with an IUD already inside her. Tej brought her to the obstetrician to have the procedure done, telling neither family about it. "She's marrying before she's ready," Tej explained, "and the last thing I want for your little sister is to be saddled with kids right away, especially if Balwinder's going to be on the road for days on end, unable to do his half of the parenting."
Sunny could have argued his mother would be on hand, but he kept his mouth shut. These were liberated times, at least according to TV. Dads were expected to change diapers and give late night feedings, and generally see to it the mother got her share of sleep and time to herself. Sunny fully expected to do so whenever they got around to having kids, which wasn't yet. Sunny was just so busy in the early stages of being a lawyer, first with articling long hours six days a week, then busting his ass as an associate, taking the shit cases no one else wanted, that he was almost too tired to have sex at the end of the night, whenever Tej wasn't already asleep, much less contemplate spending the hours after he got home being up with a teething kid.
For her part, Tej was in no hurry. She was still building her reputation as a realtor. She'd started out at Re/Max, but already she was grumbling at the trade-off of smaller commissions for being associated with a big name and getting more commissions. She was working a lot for little return, and wondering when she could go into business for herself. Sunny worried at the instability of such a venture, but he quietly encouraged her, and when she said she would be able to make her own hours that way and devote time to a family, suddenly the possibility of children became real.
Mom and Dad were certainly encouraging them. They wanted grandchildren as soon as possible, and the hope on their faces broke his heart. Tej stayed on the pill, keeping her prescription discreetly hidden in a drawer in their ensuite bathroom, away from his parents' prying eyes, while publicly lamenting that the creator just wasn't blessing them with children for now, but there was always next month, and the one after that, and so on...
Bishan didn't want the pill, because she didn't want to have to explain herself if Balwinder found it. An IUD was out of sight, beyond scrutiny, up where no one would discover it. When she was finally ready to have children, she would have it removed, discreetly, in the obstetrician's office.
"Balwinder's a traditionalist," she explained once when they were alone together. "We're not having sex until our wedding night, and we're marrying to start a family, in theory anyway. I don't know if he's even done it before. What if he's terrible? I can't risk conception from terrible sex."
Sunny always marvelled at how openly his sister discussed the birds and the bees with him. What was it about him that made him so approachable in her eyes? He certainly never talked about his sex life with her. Still, he would rather she feel free to bring any problems she had to him, because he was still her older brother, still her protector.
"Do you think he'll know you're not a virgin?" he asked.
"I'm going to act like it's painful the first time," she said. "I'll cut myself somewhere discreet and make a little blood for the sheets."
"Jesus, Bishan! That's a little more than I needed to know."
She stuck her tongue out at him like she did when she was small.
"So," he said. "Do you miss Jordan?"
She shrugged. "We're still friends."
Sunny blinked in surprise. "What does that mean?"
"Just what I said. After he proposed at your wedding, I knew I'd have to make a choice soon, and his proposal made my choice easier. I didn't like how he did it there. It wasn't respectful to you or to me, and he could have caused a lot of damage. The fact that Mom and Dad were gracious enough to see past that and be receptive to me having him in my life actually made me resent him a little for putting them in that position."
"To be fair, kiddo, if you told them at the beginning, you wouldn't have been in that mess. Balwinder wouldn't even be in the picture."
"But now I can't actually see myself bringing Jordan around. It's just not appealing to me, having him at dinner, talking marriage with the folks."
"You're kidding," Sunny said in disbelief. "So, what, he was only exciting when he was illicit?"
She didn't choose to answer that. Instead, she said, "Plus, I couldn't break Balwinder's heart. He really is in love with me."
"What about you, Bishan?" he asked, a little irritated. "Whom do you love? Isn't that what all this is about?"
"I love Balwinder enough. He's a good man, gentle and generous. Jordan is... he burns bright hot, and I admit it's great when we're together, but we'd burn out too quickly; marriage and kids with him, I just can't see it. Most likely we'd divorce in a few years."
"So, you're playing the long game. Jordan's good for a romp in the sack, but Balwinder's the one you want to marry."
"In a nutshell."
"If only you could have both the passion and the security."
"Brother, the two rarely go together. You hit the jackpot with that wife of yours."
He had. Bishan was right about that. "But Jordan's still around? You still communicate?"
"Yeah, but not as much as we used to. He's working now, long hours at tech startups, developing new Internet services. It's a really crazy sector; companies spring up and collapse within months, investors either hit the jackpot or lose everything, because all of their value is on paper. Everything these companies offer is in the services they provide, the innovations they're predicting people will need in the future that the Internet will facilitate. There's nothing liquid in their companies; their headquarters are nothing but buildings filled with computer workstations and server farms."
"Server farms? That sounds ominous."
"They're just rooms filled with computers stacked on top of each other, which handle all the requests for service from computers throughout the World Wide Web. The room has to be heavily air conditioned because there are so many of them; they're always on and they get hot from all the processing they do."
"Sounds like he talks a lot about his work."
She shrugged. "I like hearing about it. As an economics major, it fascinates me, seeing a case study in action. All of these startups are little bubbles; investors pour money into these companies on hardly more than word of mouth about what services they provide and what value they'll have after a certain amount of time. There's no physical product to show them, no real value, no projection of profits over time. The bubble inflates with all the investment cash, but what happens to a bubble once it inflates past the point of stability?"
Sunny made an exploding gesture with his hands. Bishan nodded. "And Jordan is fine working in this unstable work envrironment?" he asked.
"Are you kidding? He loves it. He's on the ground floor of something world changing, at least in his eyes. He doesn't mind the inconsistent income because he still lives at home, and his family has money."
"And you? You wouldn't want to be married to that lifestyle?"
Bishan shrugged. "Feast or famine never really appealed to me. At least Balwinder's work is relatively consistent. People always need to move things around."
"What about you? Are you going to work?"
She'd quit her job at McDonald's, having reached the position of crew chief, after she and Balwinder had gotten engaged. Balwinder wasn't opposed in principle to his future wife working, he said, but he didn't see the point of her working in a soul crushing job if it didn't add significantly to the family income. Sunny thought more likely it was because Balwinder was subtly encouraging Bishan to think about starting a family by clearing the way for her to stay home without guilt.
Looking back, he should have seen it for what it was, the first assertion of control over Bishan's life, but Bishan seemed cheerfully unconcerned at the time. "Economics degrees aren't the passport to the working world that the school counsellors claimed they were. I'm still applying for things, but now I have the luxury of being more picky. There's no point going back to a service job."
"Just... keep your feet in the water, okay?" Sunny said, suddenly feeling the chill of foreboding. "Maybe when I'm more established and can hire my own staff, I can hire you. Or Tej can have you as an assistant for staging or other administrative duties."
Bishan's face softened, and she touched his face tenderly. "Thanks, Sunny. You're always looking out for me."
"I made that promise when you were born. I don't intend to back away just because you're getting married."
The wedding went much the way Sunny's did, only the Parhars hosted the Sangeet, and Sunny stood with his family to welcome Balwinder into Gurdwara Sahib Sukh Sagar on Wood Street in Queensborough. Jordan didn't show up to this one, to Sunny's relief; maybe he wouldn't have been able to stand watching the love of his life marry another.
It didn't take long, though, after the honeymoon was over, for Bishan to start calling home.
"I'm boooooored," she whined into Sunny's ear. "It's just me and his mom here. Sometimes his sisters come around and bring their kids to be looked after while they go to work, so now I'm a daycare employee all of a sudden."
Sunny chuckled. "Was this something you didn't predict?"
"I knew he had sisters, but, I don't know... I thought their in-laws would be looking after their kids." She lowered her voice when she said, "I've discovered I don't like kids all that much."
"Oh, goodness. Good thing you took preventative measures, so to speak."
"I know. And of course his parents are already pushing for grandkids."
"What about Balwinder? Is he pushing?"
Sunny could hear the smile in Bishan's voice when she said, "I don't know. I think he's still in honeymoon mode. Our first time... you know... was as awkward as I predicted, but I trained him quickly, and now he thinks he's married a sex goddess. I don't think he's in a hurry to get me pregnant and break the spell."
"Bravo," he muttered, pulling at his collar. "You successfully inveigled him into believing you're a virgin turned porn star."
"Ew!" she protested. "Sunny, don't tell me you watch that stuff."
"I won't." He'd never be able to work up the nerve to walk into an adult movie rental store, anyway. This was in the days before Jordan's promised Internet revolution provided the service of free porn to every household; that was one bubble that never burst. His only experience with that stuff was the occasional glance at a friend's magazine hidden under a mattress, or the odd stag party for their wedding. Tej provided all the stimulation he needed.
"Well, now he's on the road again, but I don't think he wanted to leave this time."
"Just imagine how happy he'll be when he returns. And you, too. He makes you happy, doesn't he?"
She took a second too long to respond. "Yeah. Yeah, I like being with him, when he's around. It's just these long absences, you know. I'm sorry, I'm just bored. I must be boring you too."
"You never bore me, Bishan. Boring is never a word I'd use to describe you. Call whenever you want, or come by, we're right across the bridge, you know."
"I know. Is Tej there? I'd love to talk to her."
He got Tej on the phone, knowing the two women shared a special bond just being women and only a few years apart. As fortunate as he felt being close with his sister, he knew there were things she'd only tell Tej, and he was fine with that.
He treasured those calls, though, but it never occurred to him that his sister, who never shied away from telling him even the most personal details of her life, was holding something back from them all, so he never felt the need to worry, and it was to his misfortune, and to hers, that by the time he should have started worrying, he was a new father and had the least time and attention to devote to making sure she was safe.
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To return to Lauren and Rachel in the present day and see who they meet at the police station when they go to bail out Joe, click on "Continue reading."