He gave me a quick, inquiring look over his shoulder. But when I said nothing more, he loped off down the corridor to the master bedroom where he now slept, calling, See you in a bit. In a few minutes, through the closed door, the cacophonous pounding of hard rock filled the house.
Dinesh had moved into the master bedroom a few days after the divorce papers were served. In a way, I’d been happy that he wanted to. I’d hoped it meant that he was beginning to accept the situation. The room had been lying empty, and it gave him a place to set up his musical equipment. At times I wonder, though, what he does in there when he’s not playing his CDs or practicing his electric guitar, when I don’t hear the rise and fall of his voice on the phone, the short, self-conscious laugh that means (I think) that a girl is at the other end. The nights when sleep eludes me, I sometimes stand in the passage and watch the thin strip of light that shows from under the door he always locks religiously behind him. I picture him lying awake on the big queen bed that used to belong to his father and me, and I want so badly to knock that my arm aches all the way from my fingertips to my shoulder.
I put the pizza in the oven and began rummaging for salad material in the refrigerator, where several plastic wrapped vegetables displayed various stages of fungal growth. After a search, I managed to come up with a quarter of a tired-looking lettuce, some radishes shriveled to half their size, a passable cucumber, and a couple of tomatoes that slid around only a little inside their skins.
That wasn’t bad at all. Since Mahesh left, I hardly cook anymore, specially Indian food. I’ve decided that too much of my life has already been wasted mincing and simmering and grinding spices. I’m taking classes instead at the local college, not something fluffy like Quiltmaking or Fulfillment Through Transpersonal Communication but Library Science, which will (I hope) eventually get me a full-time job at the Sunnyvale Public Library where I now work afternoons.
The last two quarters I’ve been taking a fitness class as well. I’d like to believe this has nothing to do with Mahesh leaving. I enjoy the class. At first I’d been out of breath all the time, my body a mass of clumsy, aching muscles. But now I can do them all, the high kicks, the jumping jacks, the more elaborate routines. At night in bed I run my fingers with bitter satisfaction over the trim new fines of calf and thigh, my flat, hard stomach. A pleasant tiredness tingles in my palms, the soles of my feet. It helps me sleep, most nights. If sometimes I miss those hours in the kitchen, the late afternoon light lying golden and heavy over the aroma of garlic and fried mustard seed, I would never admit it to anyone.
I wonder if Dinesh, too, misses the curries and dals flavored with cumin and cilantro and green chilies, the puris and parathas rolled out and fried, puffing up golden brown. Nowadays he mostly eats at Burger King, where he has taken a job. Perhaps he just has more important things to miss. I don’t know. We don’t talk that much since his father moved to San Francisco, to his new life in an apartment overlooking the Bay, where he lives with Jessica, his red-haired ex-secretary.
Recently when I think of Dinesh I have a sinking feeling inside me. I tell myself that I shouldn’t be too concerned about his clothing or hairstyle, or even the long hours when he shuts himself up in his room and listens to music that sounds furious. That they’re just signs of teenage growing pains made worse by his father’s absence. But sometimes I call his name and he looks up from whatever he’s doing—not with the irritated what, Mom, that I’m used to, but with a polite, closed stranger’s face. That’s when I’m struck by fear. I realize that Dinesh is drifting from me, swept along on the current of his new life which is limpid on the surface but with a dark undertow that I, standing helplessly on some left-behind shore, can only guess at. That’s when I fix salads, lots of salads, as though the cucumbers and celery and alfalfa could protect him from failing grades, drugs, street gangs, AIDS. As though the translucent rings of onions and the long curls of carrots could forge a chain that would hold him to me, close, safe forever.
When the phone rang, I didn’t bother to stop slicing. I knew Dinesh would pick it up. All the calls are for him anyway. But then I heard him open his door and yell, above the din of the stereo, “It’s for you, Mom.”
“Ask who it is,” I shouted back without interest. I’ve cut myself off from most of the friends of our married days. At first I tried attending a few affairs, dinners and pujas and graduation parties for children going on to Stanford or Harvard. But I’d be the only woman in the room without a husband, and the other wives, even those too well bred to whisper, would look at me with pity, as though at something maimed, an animal with a limb chopped off. Behind the pity would be a flicker of gratitude that it hadn’t happened to them, or a gleam of suspicion because now I was unattached and therefore dangerous.
It’s probably another real estate agent, I said to myself as I started chopping the rusty edges off the lettuce, asking if we wanted to sell the house. They must subscribe to some kind of a divorce gazette, the way they’d descended on me in droves even before the legal settlements were complete, all of them speaking in exactly the same pinched-polite voice that makes me tense up even now. Those first couple of months, after the third or fourth call of the day, I’d be in tears. Remembering, I brought the knife down hard on the lettuce and watched with satisfaction as brown pieces flew out.
Eventually, of course, I will have to let the house go. The alimony payments from Mahesh are fair, and there’s my part-time job, but the money’s still not enough and every month I have to dip into my savings. “Why don’t you move to an apartment, Asha,” my supervisor keeps telling me. “It’d be a lot cheaper and you wouldn’t have to fight the memories.” She’s right. But Dinesh has lived in this house all his life. I feel that if I can hold on to it until he graduates, a year longer (eleven more payments, to be exact), I will have made up to him partly for my failure to hold on to his father. But perhaps once again I am mistaken in thinking that this matters to him.
“It’s someone called Marina-something. You going to pick it up or what?” Dinesh sounded irritated. He dislikes anyone disturbing him when he’s listening to his music. “Says she’s calling from England.”
I didn’t know a Marina. I didn’t know anyone, in fact, who lived in England. But I hurried to the phone guiltily, the way I always do when I know it’s long distance.
“Asha!” The woman at the other end sounded tantalizingly familiar. She spoke with the clipped British accent of affluent Indians educated at convent schools run by foreign nuns. “It’s Mrinalini!” She paused, confident of being recognized. Who … ? Then it struck me. How could I have not known, even for a moment, even though I hadn’t heard her voice in years? Because it was Mrinalini Ghose, who had been my classmate and best friend and confidante and competitor all through my growing-up years.
“Mrinal!” I whispered into the phone, and a mix of happiness and sorrow swept over me, making me dizzy. “How are you? What are you doing in England?” I spoke in Bengali, stumbling a little over the intimate tui I hadn’t used for so long. Were scenes flashing through her head, the way they were through mine? Our secret visits to the Maidan fair where we’d gorge ourselves on the fried onion pakoras that I could smell even now. All those nights I’d slept over at her house, in the big mahogany four-poster bed with the curved lion paws, both of us whispering and giggling for hours after the ayah turned the lights off. (About what? I couldn’t remember. It seemed unbelievable that once I’d stayed up half the night just to talk.) Every year before our final exams, we’d meet at her house—which was larger and quieter than mine—to study. We’d recite the names of the major rulers of the Mughal dynasty to each other, or list the metaphors in Hamlet’s To be or not to be speech, while the cook brought up yet another pot of ginger tea which she had brewed specially for us because it was supposed to clear the brain. “I can’t read another line,” I’d tell her when I left. “I’m going to get a good night’s sleep.” But once home, I’d force myself to stay awake and study some more becau
se I wanted so much to beat her. Most times, though, she ended up with the higher rank. Maybe she was just smarter. Or maybe she too stayed up and studied after I left.
She had been sent by her computer firm in Bombay, Mrinal said, to attend a technology transfer conference in London. She was coming to another one in San Francisco next week. That’s why she was calling.
“We’ve got to get together, Asha! I haven’t seen you in ages. I’m dying to meet Mahesh, too—the time I saw him at your wedding was so brief, it doesn’t really count. And your son—so handsome, just like his father. Of course, I’ve seen so many photos over the years I feel I know them already. …”
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cold white of the wall. The traditional Indian words of hospitality crowded my mouth. It’ll be so wonderful to see you after all these years. You must stay with us, of course. I knew they were what Mrinal expected. But I couldn’t say them.
The day my marriage had been arranged, halfway through my second year of college, I’d called Mrinal. I remembered it perfectly, a dim monsoon afternoon with gray-bellied clouds grazing the tops of the tall office buildings in the distance, and a salty, sulphur smell in the air, like lightning. Excited, I’d stumbled over the words as I told her how handsome my husband-to-be was, what a good job he had, how I would be moving to California to live with film stars. Under the excitement had been a secret triumph that I’d been the one to be chosen first, that I, who everyone said wasn’t as pretty, was going to be married before Mrinal.
Mrinal had listened in silence for a while. Then in a quiet voice she asked, “Is this what you really want, Asha? It’s a big decision. You don’t even know him—you’ve only met him once.”
“What’s all this westernized nonsense about only meeting him once?” I snapped. Part of my anger came from disappointment. I had wanted so much to impress her with my news. “This is how it’s always been done, especially in traditional families like ours.” My voice sounded prim and pinched and terribly old-fashioned. I knew Mrinal was thinking of all our rebellious conversations about love and romance and choosing our life partners. But they’d only been foolish adolescent fancies, with no connection to our real fives. “Your mother got married this way, and so did mine. And they’re perfectly happy.”
“Yes, but our mothers didn’t even complete high school. Times have changed, and so have we.” Mrinal spoke in a maddeningly equable voice. “I wouldn’t be in such a hurry if I were you.”
“Oh, really?” my growing temper made me sarcastic. “And what would madam do?”
“I’d wait awhile, finish college, get a job maybe. Don’t you remember how we always used to talk about the importance of women being financially independent?”
“No, I don’t,” I lied.
“Ashoo!” Mrinal said reproachfully. Then she added, “And you write so well, too. Professor Sharma always says how you have the makings of a novelist.”
“And besides,” I said, choosing to ignore her last comment, “who says I can’t be financially independent after marriage?”
“All I’m saying is, I’d learn a bit more about the world and what I wanted out of it before I tied myself down….” The pleading note in her voice frightened me. I didn’t want to hear any more.
“Well, I’m not you, thank God,” I’d shouted and slammed down the phone.
We’d made up of course, and Mrinal had helped with all the wedding preparations—buying saris, making invitation fists, choosing luggage for the journey. On the morning of the wedding, she’d done my hair over and over while I wailed that each style made me look uglier. When it was time for me to leave with my new husband, we’d clung to each other, promising to be friends forever. But throughout—even as, exchanging the fragrant red-and-white wedding garlands, Mahesh’s hand had brushed my throat, sending a shiver through me—I was wondering whether I’d been too hasty, whether I’d made the wrong decision. Whether Mrinal had won again after all.
Now, with the phone pressing its coldness against my ear, I heard Mrinal’s voice, tiny, metallic, a little disappointed, asking if I was still there, if I was all right.
“Of course I am,” I said, forcing a laugh and switching to English, which seemed a more appropriate language for lying. “I was just checking the calendar. It’s really hectic for us all next week. Mahesh’s going to be out of town till Friday. They’re sending him to Philadelphia to straighten out some R and D projects. Dinesh is busy Mondays and Wednesdays with his karate, Tuesday he has Toastmasters,” (I was improvising wildly by now) “he’s the youngest member, you know, Thursday …”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a movement in the kitchen. It was Dinesh, checking on the pizza. He glared at me. My voice faltered, but I couldn’t stop now. “I can’t quite read what he’s written here—maybe volunteer work at El Camino Hospital. I’m pretty tied up, too…. What a pity, if only you’d let me know earlier. …”
“Ashoo, don’t tell me you’re too busy to see me!” said Mrinal, calling me by my special name that only she used. I could hear the hurt in her voice. “I found out about the U.S. conference just before I left India. I was so busy running around trying to get a visa that I didn’t have a chance to call. But I’ve been thinking about you all the way to London.”
Something twisted inside me then, like it was breaking, and I knew I’d have to meet her. The knowledge filled me with excitement and dread. “I’ll cancel something,” I said. “Where are you staying?”
“What’s all this shit about me and karate?” Dinesh burst out even before I’d replaced the receiver. “And Toastmasters—Toastmasters, give me a break!” I could see an artery pulsing in his temple. He’s inherited that from Mahesh. “I’m not good enough for your friend just the way I am, is that it? And why’d you have to he to her about him”—he wouldn’t use his father’s name—“being out of town on business.” He imitated my Indian accent, thickening it in exaggeration. “Why couldn’t you just tell her the fucking truth—that he got tired of you and left you for another woman.”
That’s when I slapped him. It shocked us both, the action, the way it happened, involuntarily almost, while a part of me was still trying to fathom the depths of hurt and rage from which his words had erupted. I’d rarely hit Dinesh when he was growing up, he’d always been such an obedient boy. What frightened me now was that I’d wanted to hurt him, that I’d put all the strength in me behind that swing of the arm. We stood there facing each other, my palm ringing with the impact, a splotch of red spreading over his cheek. I wanted to throw my arms around him and cry for what I’d just done, but all I could say, even though I knew it was totally wrong, was “never use that word in front of me again.”
Dinesh’s hands curled into fists like he wanted to hit me back, and I wondered wildly what I would do if he did, but all he said in a cold voice that went through me like a knife was “you make me sick.”
“You make me sick, too,” I heard myself yell as he slammed the bedroom door. “Just remember, I’m not the only one your father left when he moved out. I didn’t hear him asking you along, Mr. Smart-ass!”
And then I was so ashamed that I did feel sick. I went into the bathroom and tried to throw up, but nothing happened and I felt worse. I sat on the toilet seat for a while, trying to figure out how my life, which had seemed perfect a year ago, had turned into such a mess. When I came out, the smell reminded me of the pizza in the oven, by now a charred black mass. I threw it into the garbage and went to bed.
Dinesh was avoiding me. He left the house early each day—even on the weekend—and came back late, when he was sure I’d be asleep. In the mornings I’d go to the kitchen and find the dinners I fixed for him the night before still sitting on the stove top, untouched. When I lifted the lid, the congealed food would give out the faintly sweet odor of rot.
One Friday night, determined to talk to him, I waited up. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say—something to explain my long and complicated relationship with Mrina
l, maybe something to assure him I loved him just as he was. It had been a humid afternoon, the still, sticky air hard to breathe. I hurried home from work and then spent the rest of the day in the kitchen making kachuris, which have always been Dinesh’s favorite dish. For hours I stuffed the dough with the spicy crushed peas, rolling out the perfect circles, sliding them into the hot oil, and lifting them out when they were just the right golden color. Once in a while I would brush a floury hand across my sweating forehead, wondering if I was going about it all wrong.
In the evening, unexpectedly, it rained. I opened all the windows and the cool smell of wet earth filtered into the house. I felt a sudden happiness—though surely I had no reason for it—a sudden hope that things might turn out all right. I lay down on the sofa in the dark to wait for Dinesh, and when I fell asleep I had a dream. In the dream his face came to me. Not as it is now, with his earring and his mutilated hair and the anger wrenching at the sides of his mouth, but his baby face with its silky unlined glow. The way he slept on his side, his plaid blanket clutched in his fist, his pursed mouth making little sucking movements. The way his eyes would dart under his thin lids when he was dreaming. It was such a clear image that I could smell the milk-smell of him, and the side of my neck tingled where he always rubbed his face after I had nursed him.
The slamming of the door woke me. Then I heard his footsteps receding down the darkened passage toward his room.
“Dinesh,” I called.
He didn’t reply, but the footsteps stopped.
I hurried to the passage, groping for the fight switch. “Dinesh, I made some kachuris. I thought we could have dinner together.” Where was that switch?
“I ate out….” Already his shadowy silhouette was turning away.
“Dinoo,” I called desperately, using his baby name though I knew it was the wrong thing to do. “Dinoo, I’m sorry for what happened.” You shouldn’t have to apologize, a voice inside my head scolded. You’re the parent. And besides, he started it. I ignored the voice. “I want …”
Arranged Marriage: Stories Page 23