by Anne Cherian
“No. Never. My parents made me promise I would return home and get married. I cannot disappoint them.”
“My parents think that I am going to marry their best friends’ daughter. It’s one of the unsaid expectations, like getting a First Class in every exam. They would yank me home right away if they knew about Frances. I mean, she’s a Catholic. Not to mention a Goan.” Jay knew that Vic would understand what he was saying. Though Vic hadn’t said much about his own family, it was obvious they were Hindus, from a small village, which meant they saw Catholics as outsiders. And even illiterate villagers would find something laughable about Goans. Like Anglo Indians, who touted their English connections, Goans were ridiculed for hanging onto a Portuguese lineage that had taken place centuries ago and was no longer relevant.
“So either way, one girl will be disappointed.”
“What would you do if you were in my place?” Jay had been confused enough to ask. He had not spoken about Frances to anyone. His friends back home kept asking whether he was dating blonde chicks. His parents believed he was studying hard all the time. His American friends thought his relationship with Frances was like the ones they had. He had never told them that he hadn’t gone all the way with her, because he feared their ridicule. How could he expect them to understand that Frances, without having sex, or moving in together, or even discussing marriage, expected him to propose? But he could feel her anxiety, her sadness, every time they met. He didn’t know why he felt weighed down at the thought of marrying her.
Vic rested his chin on his fingers and looked around the smoky, student-filled room.
Finally, he said, “Maybe I am not the right person for you to ask. I am not like these people around us.”
“And you think I am?” Jay had always felt more American, more modern than Vic. Yet he wasn’t like the others in the bar who had probably slept with at least six partners, and who would not feel obligated to marry someone just because they were dating.
“For sure you are like them. When you were in Delhi, you, too, were a seedha rasta and did not go out with any girls. We both know that any hera pheri in India leads straight to marriage. But when you came over here, you asked Frances to see films and other such things. I did not change just because I had dollars in my pocket instead of rupees.”
For the first time, Jay had envied Vic. Vic knew himself so well. And Vic had stuck to the seedha rasta, to the plan he must have formulated when he was in Kharagpur, attending the Indian Institute of Technology.
Vic had started his own company, and, based on what Jay had read about computer firms, he was probably a millionaire many times over.
Jay had asked Frances to marry him as they were walking back to her apartment after seeing a movie. He hadn’t gone down on one knee, he didn’t flip open a small box containing a diamond, he simply articulated, “How about we get married?”
He knew that Frances accepted his proposal as the expected finale to their years together. She had no idea about the earlier phone call from his father that had propelled him to say those words.
Papa had quickly done away with the obligatory “How are you?” and asked him outright if he had a 4.0 GPA.
“Papa,” Jay had laughed, glad that years of dealing with his father had left him prepared for such questions, “no one asks a graduate student for his GPA. It’s only relevant for undergraduates.”
“Sheer nonsense,” Papa had dismissed him. “You did not go to Oxford as I told you, and since American universities are easier, I expect you to get that 4.0.”
Papa was never going to forgive Jay for breaking family tradition by choosing UCLA over Oxford. From the time he was young, he had been groomed to attend Oxford’s Balliol College. Papa had even taken him to Oxford one year, walking the grounds as though the entire place were a church. Jay admired the old buildings but was more aware of the rude waitress who had to be asked three times for water, the sudden silence when they entered a pub. He never knew if it was real or imagined, if the waitress did that to all her customers, if the men in the pub were pausing before carrying on in their conversation. But he sensed the same dislike he had picked up on the roads of London, where a passerby called them Pakis.
Jay decided that he would be the pioneer in his family and keep going west. The farthest place was Los Angeles, and UCLA had a good business department. He didn’t tell Papa, just as he didn’t tell him that he hadn’t sat for the Oxford exam. Papa’s eyes got hard, his veins bulged, but Jay refused to stay home another year in order to try for Oxford.
Papa had reluctantly agreed to fund “the foolish endeavor,” but created all sorts of opportunities to remind Jay of where he should have gone.
“No matter,” Papa waved away his earlier question. “I have arranged a good job for you when you return. It is in Delhi, and your mother and I have decided that December is a good time for you to marry. Geet’s parents are also in agreement. So get that degree and get on the first plane home.”
Jay imagined arriving home—Papa asking to see his MBA diploma, Mama telling him that Geet had grown even more accomplished since he had been in the United States. Papa hadn’t just gotten him a job; he had also found a room in another friend’s house where Jay could live until he was “on his feet.” Jay knew exactly what that meant. He was meant to rise quickly, like yeast. When Jay heard Papa’s “yeast” explanation of success, he had laughed and asked, “But doesn’t that mean getting into hot water?” Papa had been furious and told Jay to “stop being ridiculous. I want my son to rise higher than me.” Papa would call weekly, Mama would want to know how things were going with Geet—in other words, when was she going to become a grandmother? He had no idea whether Geet wanted to marry him or whether she, too, was appeasing her parents.
That evening he had proposed to Frances. His parents had been furious when he phoned them to announce the fait accompli. He had angered them even more when he said he was going to stay in America.
“How can I tell my friend that you don’t want the job he has arranged?” Papa demanded, then asked, “What about Geet’s parents? They have wanted an alliance with our family ever since she was born.”
“She can marry my brother,” Jay suggested.
“Shall I also give the land to your brother?”
“Why not,” Jay had reacted magnanimously to Papa’s threat. This would get Papa off his case, and he was sure that he was going to be among the successful immigrants in the United States. His brother’s future wasn’t exactly promising. He had got a Third Class in school and consequently was doing his BA in a small, unknown college, still getting poor grades, which meant that there was no way he could get into Oxford. It was one of the many reasons Papa had put such pressure, such hope, on Jay.
Frances’s parents too, had been upset, not because she had chosen her own husband—normal for Goans—but because he was a Hindu and they had had a civil marriage. They calmed down, however, after she promised on the Bible that the children would be raised Catholic.
The collective anger from across the ocean had made them closer. Jay and Frances assured each other that this was the right decision. “Most people say marriage is hard,” Jay told their friends, “but for us, getting married was the difficult part. The rest is going to be child’s play.” Having already gone against their parents’ wishes, they planned to sculpt their own lives, unfettered by tradition and continuous expectations.
They began the process of becoming Americans long before they changed their passports. They didn’t want to be like other Indians who were already worried about their retirement portfolio and refused to spend money on fun activities because they were saving for a house.
“We’re too young to think that far into the future,” Jay had dismissed such thrifty foresightedness. He came from wealth, and, given his MBA degree, expected to make money. So they took advantage of every three-day weekend to drive up to Napa for mud baths, or to go down to Baja to take parasailing lessons. They even considered investing in a times
hare in Mammoth but changed their minds when Frances became pregnant. Suddenly a house was essential.
Frances didn’t need to convince him to give their daughter a Western name. Amanda was going to grow up in this country, and he didn’t want her to have a name that she would either change or shorten, as he had done, to make it easier for Americans to pronounce. Lily came along seven years later, and he convinced Frances to try for a son. He knew that Papa was probably regarding the two daughters as punishment for his marrying out of their faith and community. Jay himself was Indian enough to want a son to continue his name, and he had been thrilled when the ultrasound showed a penis.
“See that?” the doctor had pointed to a section of the moving mass in Frances’s uterus. “That’s definitely a boy.”
Sam was born the same year they stood in a large room with all sorts of other immigrants and pledged allegiance to the American flag. Frances suggested they name the baby after Uncle Sam, and Jay agreed, though he insisted the middle name be Suresh, after his father. Papa had been quiet over the phone, but he sent Sam a silver plate and spoon.
They had a wide assortment of friends—American, English, Turkish—and continued to keep in loose contact with the burgeoning Indian community in Los Angeles. Most Indians were engineers or computer programmers, and Jay enjoyed being the anomaly. But the varied professions created differences, compounded by the fact that Frances did not have much in common with the other wives, all of whom had come from India as arranged brides. Many, like Vic’s wife, Priya, preferred speaking in Hindi, a language Jay spoke well but Frances had barely passed in school. It always amused him when she cursed in Hindi, because she never used that language for anything else. The wives were equally uncomfortable with Frances, not sure what to make of her short hair and jeans. The social disparity was cemented by physical distance when they decided to buy a house in Sherman Oaks, which was filled with Jews, not Indians.
“The Jews are like us,” Jay rationalized. “We both believe in family and education.” It also suited them not to live in an Indian ghetto, for why come to America if they were to live among their countrymen?
Jay got a kick out of shocking Indian men by announcing that of course he would allow Mandy to date. “I, myself, had a love marriage,” he reminded them. “My daughter can marry whomever she chooses. And the added benefit is that unlike you bozos, I won’t have to save money for a dowry.”
He had said that to Vic the day they met for their yearly lunch, expecting to get the usual lecture on how Indians must not give up their traditions. Instead, Vic had warned him that girls can get pregnant.
“I think that is what God intended when He gave them uteruses,” Jay had joked.
“It’s better to be strict,” Vic had advised. “Soon our children will want to pull away, so we as parents must ensure that we exert control over them while they are still young.”
But he had been so sure that he and Frances, not the Vics of the world, were doing the right thing as parents. Especially when Mandy was able to hold her own in conversation with adults, and Nikhil, older than she, squirmed with discomfort when asked about his swimming medals and grades.
Yet Nikhil was graduating from MIT, and Mandy was—still not doing well in school.
He had assured Frances that Mandy was just going through a phase. He wanted to believe that, didn’t want to jump all over his daughter the way Papa did to him the one time he got 59 percent in Hindi. Papa expected him to get above 60 percent in all his subjects. Jay wanted to be like the fathers in his office who shrugged off their children’s peccadilloes, sure that things would turn around as soon as their teenage years were behind them.
Perhaps Vic was right; they ought to have been stricter with Mandy.
He suddenly worried that he should have gone into her room to check up on her. What if she was signed on to one of those chat rooms, conversing with a strange man, planning to meet him in some motel? This was a fear shared by many fathers.
He slipped out of bed and padded quietly down the corridor. Sam was making soft noises, a sure sign that he was asleep. His baseball trophies were neatly arranged on the chest of drawers. A huge poster of Kobe Bryant, Sam’s favorite Lakers player, was barely visible in the moonlight that slipped through the blinds.
Jay peeked into Lily’s room. Her bed was against the wall, and there was just enough space for a bookcase. It was small for a bedroom, but Mandy had pointed out that all her friends had their own rooms, so they had acquiesced. As compensation, Frances had allowed Lily to choose a deep purple duvet, a color she disliked and that she claimed made the room look smaller.
Jay stood outside the closed door of Mandy’s room. He had started calling it the Greta Garbo room after Mandy put up the enter only if invited sign in ninth grade. “Leave me alone,” he had said, imitating Garbo, and Mandy had smirked. The younger children wanted to know what was funny, so he had explained that the famous Swedish actress had stopped making films at the height of her career and lived like a recluse in New York, hiding from the media.
“Why did she do that?” Lily had asked.
“I don’t know,” Jay had answered in his fake Swedish accent, while Mandy said at the same time, “Because she was gay,” and he was glad that the children had not heard her.
For a short time after that, whenever Mandy went to her room, Jay would tell his younger children that their sister was channeling Greta Garbo.
When he had held her fragile, newborn body, he had rejoiced in imagining all the opportunities she would have because he had decided to stay in America. But these days she had forgotten about being a neurologist, and she only left her room for meals and school.
Was Mandy on the computer? Had she been in a chat room all this time?
He turned the brass knob and heard shuffling, movement.
Prepared to begin a lecture, Jay was stunned to see his daughter in bed, struggling to sit up.
“What are you doing?”
“I was reading.”
“Without the light?”
Mandy raised the blue flashlight they had given her for her twelfth birthday. She had gone through a phase of reading spy novels and had briefly considered giving up being a neurologist to work for the FBI. He wasn’t surprised that she still had the flashlight. “The one benefit to her not cleaning up her room is that she will have everything we ever gave her,” he used to tell Frances.
“Why?”
Mandy didn’t answer. He waited. He wasn’t like Frances, who rushed in to fill the gaps.
Then Mandy yawned and said, “It reminds me of when I was younger.”
His heart broke. He had just been regretting how much she had changed from the young girl who got straight A’s. Was she, too, wishing the same thing?
“Want me to set up the tent in the backyard?”
“Oh, Dad, that would be too ridiculous. I’m tired. Goodnight.”
Had the invitation made her go back in time to when she was clearly better than Nikhil?
“Did Uncle Vic’s invitation upset you?” Jay asked.
“Why would it do that?”
“Nikhil is graduating from MIT,” he said, stating the obvious.
“So? Why should I care about that? I’m not even going to the party,” she said, pulling up the covers.
“Of course you have to go.”
“I’m not going, Dad,” she yawned again, and Jay wondered whether it was to get rid of him or because she was truly tired. It could also be a sign that she was anxious. When the school counselor had told them that Mandy seemed depressed, he had read a few books on the subject. Yawning, one author asserted, was a great way to relieve tension.
Jay understood well the tension that came from comparing oneself to another person who is more successful.
“We’re going as a family,” Jay said firmly.
“Why? I don’t know him.”
“You knew him when you were younger. His parents are our friends.”
“God, you and Mom are
such hypocrites. You hardly see them anymore, and yet when we receive an invitation, you suddenly say they are your friends.”
“Why don’t you want to go?” Was she, too, embarrassed about her grades? Did her “I don’t care” attitude hide her shame?
“Because I don’t know him. I won’t know anyone there. How can I have a good time? I’ll have more fun just sitting at home.”
“You can stay close to us,” Jay offered, a little taken aback that her refusal was so—banal.
“God, Dad, you are so lame. Indian parties are the worst ever. People I don’t know will come up and ask me questions, personal questions. I just hate that,” Mandy asserted.
“They’re interested—,” Jay started, then stopped as Mandy interrupted loudly.
“Come on, Dad, they don’t even know me. They don’t even know you,” she said. “Mom and you hardly ever go to Indian events.”
“We used to go all the time,” Jay fudged the truth. “Now it’s inconvenient because we live so far from everyone.”
“I wish this party were inconvenient, but no, you have to go.”
“Yes, we do. I met your Uncle Vic when I first came to America. Don’t you remember we used to visit them when you were younger? You thought their pool was very strange.”
“Oh, yes, they had the lap lane,” Mandy remembered. “Their son was very quiet.”
“Sons,” Jay corrected. “Yes, Nikhil seemed to have taken after his mother more than his father. Though perhaps he is like his father. Vic talks, but only when he’s comfortable.”
“Wasn’t he the one who kept asking me about my grades?”
“That’s Vic’s way of showing an interest in you. So you’d better be prepared.”
“There was some old woman we once met who got very angry that I had a higher GPA than her son.”
“You don’t have to worry about that now,” Jay said lightly.
“Dad, Mom’s already been on my case today, okay?” She turned her back to Jay and said, “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” Jay said, closing the door.