All Eyes on Her by Poonam Sharma Page A

remarried less than two years after his death. Despite my father’s having taken it so personally, at the time my mother spoke out in defense of Malika Auntie. In her words, no one had the right to judge her for not wanting to be alone.
    We were not raised to be comfortable with being alone, she had explained to me while we were folding clothes. We went from our father’s homes to our husband’s homes, and we assumed that by the time we were widows, our children would be grown, so we would grow old in their homes in the traditional Indian style. Like our parents did. Old age was full of family and friends and life, so there was no need for a companion. But life in America is different. No matter how much community we have here, it cannot be the kind of community which will compensate for Malika being alone for the last forty years of her life.
    No love or relationship can ever be perfect; if it could then we would have nothing to fight for. Growing up in the state with the highest divorce rate in the nation, and probably the world, that fact could not have been more clear. Although, there’s always the exception because somehow the idea that she could not make room in her heart for another man made me love my mother even more. As much as I wanted her to be happy, I was deeply content with the freedom to believe that their love would outlast even his life.
    The problem was it also made me shudder at the total vulnerability of marrying for a love like that of my own.
     
    Why anyone presumed my luck would be better than most at talking Lydia down off an emotional ledge was curious. Why Lydia’s agent had my cell phone number on speed dial was questionable. Why he summoned Jonathan and myself to a dilapidated boxing ring way out in East Los Angeles in the middle of the following afternoon was anybody’s guess.
    But then there were the billable hours.
    “Someone better get that goddamn preppy outta my face!”
    A cup of dark liquid came flying out of Lydia’s makeup trailer, milliseconds after I pulled open the door. Following closely behind the mess was a mousey-looking production assistant, who ran smack into Jonathan as if running for his life.
    “I don’t care if you have to drive three hours to find a goddamned Starbucks this time,” Lydia yelled after him. “I want it soy, and I want it HOT! ”
    “May I?” I asked, before daring to enter.
    “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she said, plopping back into her makeup chair and swinging around to console herself with her reflection in the mirror. “F-ing ivy-league interns. That kid’s from Yale and he can’t even get a goddamn latte right.”
    “Lydia,” I said, and stepped inside, waiting until Jonathan shut the door behind us. “The deficiencies of an ivy-league education notwithstanding…why are we here?”
    “Because my client needs to be made to understand the definition of a contract,” Lydia’s chubby-cheeked, beady-eyed, suit-but-no-tie-wearing manager answered for her. He smoothed back his remaining piece of hair and kicked away a Chinese divider screen where he must have taken cover.
    He held out a pair of pink rhinestoned boxing gloves, which Lydia promptly smacked right out of his hands.
    “And my agent needs to stop talking to me like I’m an idiot,” she snarled, “before I fire his ass.”
    “Is there something objectionable in your contract for this photo shoot?” Jonathan asked.
    “Not technically,” the agent replied, bending down with some difficulty to retrieve the gloves from the floor. “But certain events could not have been foreseen. And we cannot reneg on the contract, no matter how ironic the event may seem at this point. We could be sued.”
    “It’s not the event, Marvin . It’s the title.” Lydia turned to face me.
    “You know that my name is Martin,” he corrected her, and then advised us, “My name is Martin.”
    “Well, since my last album put your kids through college, I think I’ll call you whatever I want,