“That was awkward,” Hazel said, after one such episode.
It’s difficult to know what the children think of his misbehavior. Wisely, they never bring up the case.
“You made one mistake,” Jim told Matthew, in Dorset, a few weeks ago. Ruth was out for the night with her play-reading group, and the two men were smoking cigars on the terrace. “You made an error in judgment on a single night in a marriage of many hundreds of nights. Thousands.”
“More like a few mistakes, truth be told.”
Jim waved this away with the smoke from his cigar. “OK, so you’re not a saint. But you were a good husband, compared to most. And, in this case, you were enticed.”
Matthew wonders about that word. Enticed. Was it true? Or was that just how he’d portrayed the incident to Ruth, who’d taken his side, as a mother would, and then had given that impression to Jim. In any event, you couldn’t be enticed by something you didn’t already want. That was the real problem. His concupiscence. That chronic, inflammatory complaint.
* * *
There was a coffee shop near the university where Prakrti and Kylie liked to go. They sat in the back room, trying to blend in with the college students at the surrounding tables. If anyone ever spoke to them, especially a guy, they pretended to be first-year students. Kylie became a surfer girl named Meghan who was from California. Prakrti introduced herself as Jasmine and said she’d grown up in Queens. “White people can be so dumb, no offense,” she said, the first time she’d gotten away with this. “They probably think all Indian girls are named after spices. Maybe I should be Ginger. Or Cilantro.”
“Or Curry. ‘Hi, my name’s Curry. I’m hot.’”
They laughed and laughed.
In late January, as midterms approached, they started going to the coffee shop two or three times a week. One blustery Wednesday night, Prakrti got there before Kylie. She commandeered their favorite table and took out her computer.
Since the beginning of the year, colleges had been sending e-mails and letters encouraging Prakrti to apply. At first the solicitations had come from schools she wasn’t considering due to their locations, religious affiliations, or lack of prestige. But, in November, Stanford had sent her an e-mail. A few weeks later, Harvard did.
It made Prakrti happy, or at least less anxious, to feel pursued.
She logged into her Gmail account. A group of girls in bright-colored rain boots came in from the wind outside, smoothing their hair and laughing. They took the table next to Prakrti’s. One of them smiled and Prakrti smiled back.
There was one e-mail in her queue.
Dear Miss Banerjee,
That is what my brother, Neel, suggests I write as a salutation, instead of “Dear Prakrti.” Though he is younger than I, his English is better. He is helping me to correct any mistakes, so that I will not make a bad first impression. Maybe I should not tell you this. (Neel says that I should not.)
My own feeling is that, if we are to be married someday, I must endeavor to be as honest with you as possible to show you my True Self, so that you will get to know me.
I suppose I should ask you all sorts of questions, such as, What do you like to do in your leisure time? What movies are your favorite? What kind of music do you like? These are questions relating to our personal compatibility. I do not think they matter greatly.
More important are questions of a cultural or religious nature. For instance, do you want to have a big family someday? Perhaps this is too big a question to ask so early in our correspondence. As for myself, I come from a very big family so I am used to a lot of commotion around the house. Sometimes I think it would be nice to have a smaller family, as is becoming more common.
I believe my parents have told your parents about my aspiration to become a programmer for a major firm like Google or Facebook. My dream has always been to live in California. I know that Delaware is not close to there, but that it is close to Washington.
In my leisure time I enjoy watching cricket and reading manga. What do you like?
In closing, may I say that I thought you extremely nice-looking when I saw you at my great-uncle’s house. I am sorry I could not say hello but my mother told me it was not customary to do so. The old ways are often curious but we have to trust in the wisdom of our parents, who have the experience of a longer life.
Thank you for the photograph you sent. I keep it close to my heart.
If the boy had sat down with the intention of revolting Prakrti with every word he wrote, if he were a Shakespeare of pure annoyingness, he couldn’t have done better. Prakrti didn’t know what she hated most. The mention of children, which assumed a physical intimacy she didn’t want to imagine, was bad enough. But somehow it was the phrase “extremely nice-looking” that bothered her more.
She didn’t know what to do. She considered writing back to tell Dev Kumar to stop bothering her, but she worried that this would get back to her mother.
Instead, Prakrti googled “age of majority U.S.” From the results she learned that, when she turned eighteen, she would obtain the legal right to buy property, maintain her own bank account, and join the military. The phrase that encouraged her the most, however, was where it said that turning eighteen “brought the acquisition of control over one’s person, decisions, and actions, and the correlative termination of the legal authority of the parents over the child’s person and affairs generally.”
Eighteen. A year and a half from now. By then Prakrti would already be accepted to college. If her parents didn’t want her to go, or wanted her to go somewhere nearby, it wouldn’t matter. She would go on her own. She could apply for financial aid. Or win a scholarship. Or take out loans, if necessary. She could work part-time during college, ask her parents for nothing, and owe them nothing in return. How would her parents like that? What would they do then? They’d be sorry they ever tried to arrange her marriage. They’d repent, and grovel before her. And then maybe—when she was in graduate school, or living in Chicago—she’d forgive them.
When Kylie was Meghan and Prakrti was Jasmine, they were lazier, slightly dumber, but more daring. One time, Kylie had gone up to a cute boy and said, “So I’m taking this psych class? And we’re supposed to give someone this personality test. It’ll only take a few minutes.” She called Prakrti over, as Jasmine, and together they interviewed him, coming up with questions off the top of their heads. What was the last dream you had? If you were an animal, what animal would it be? The boy had dreadlocks and dimples, and after a while, the inanity of their questions seemed to register on him. “This is for a course? For real?” he said. The girls started giggling. But Kylie insisted, “Yes! It’s due tomorrow!” At that point, the fiction they were creating doubled: they weren’t just high school girls pretending to be in college; they were college girls pretending to be giving a psychological test in order to talk to an extremely cute guy. In other words, they were already inhabiting their future collegiate selves, the people they might someday be.
Now all that felt far away. Prakrti looked at the girls in the leggings and rain boots. At other tables kids were typing, or reading, or meeting with professors.
She had thought she belonged among them, not as Jasmine from Queens, but as herself.
She felt dizzy. Her vision dimmed. It was as if the floor of the coffee shop were giving way and a chasm opening between her and the other students. She grabbed hold of the edge of the table to steady herself, but the dropping sensation continued.
Soon she realized it wasn’t a dropping so much as a retarding or encircling; a claiming. She was the one chosen. Closing her eyes, Prakrti pictured them coming toward her, as they did through the halls of her school. With their dark, downcast eyes, murmuring in foreign tongues that were her own, looking like her, and reaching out with their many hands to haul her in. The Hymens.
She didn’t know how many minutes went by after that. She kept her eyes closed until the dizziness passed, and then got to her feet and made her way toward the fro
nt door.
Just inside the entrance was a bulletin board. It was covered with flyers and announcements, business cards, and tear sheets for tutoring or sublets. In the upper-right-hand corner, only partially visible, was a poster advertising a lecture. The topic meant nothing to her. What caught Prakrti’s attention were the date of the event—next week—and the photograph of the speaker. A pink-faced man with sandy hair and a boyish, friendly face. A visiting professor from England. No one from around here.
* * *
When the girl came to his hotel room, Matthew had already made his decision.
He was planning to offer her a drink. Sit, talk, enjoy her company, the nearness of someone so young and pretty, but nothing more. He was drunk enough to be content with just that. He felt no strong physical desire, only a rising sense of exhilarated apprehension, as though he were crashing an exclusive party.
Then the girl swept in and her powdery smell hit him with full force.
She didn’t meet his eyes or say a word, merely unshouldered her backpack onto the floor and stood with her head down. She didn’t even take off her coat.
Matthew asked if she wanted something to drink. She said no. Her nervousness, her possible reluctance to be there, had the effect of making him want to reassure or persuade her.
Stepping forward, he put his arms around the girl and buried his nose in her hair. She allowed this. After a while, Matthew lowered his head to kiss her. She responded minimally, without opening her mouth. He nuzzled her neck. When he returned to her mouth, she pulled away.
“Do you have a condom?” she said.
“No,” Matthew said, surprised by her directness, “I don’t. I’m afraid I’m not part of the condom generation.”
“Can you go get one?”
All flirtatiousness had left her. She was all business now, her brow furrowed. Once again Matthew considered going no further.
Instead, he said, “I could do that. Where would I get one at this hour?”
“In the square. There’s a kiosk. That’s the only place open.”
Later on, in England, during the months of recriminations and regrets, Matthew admitted to himself that he’d had time to reconsider. He’d left his hotel wearing only a jacket. The temperature outside had dropped. As he walked to the square, the cold cleared his head, but not enough, in the end, to keep him from entering the kiosk when he found it.
Once inside, he had another chance to reconsider. The condoms weren’t on display but had to be requested from the clerk behind the counter. This turned out to be a middle-aged South Asian man, so that the crazy thought assailed Matthew that he was buying condoms from the girl’s own father.
He paid with cash, not meeting the man’s eyes, and hurried out.
The room was dark when he returned. He thought the girl had left. He was disappointed and relieved. But then her voice came from the bed. “Don’t turn on the lights.”
In darkness, Matthew undressed. Once in bed, finding the girl naked as well, he had no more reservations.
He fumblingly put on the condom. The girl spread her legs as he climbed on top of her, but he had hardly got anywhere before she stiffened, and sat up.
“Did it go in?”
Matthew thought she was worried about birth control. “It’s on,” he reassured her. “I’ve got a condom on.”
The girl had placed a hand on his chest and become very still, as though listening to her body.
“I can’t do this,” she said, finally. “I changed my mind.”
A minute later, without another word, she was gone.
* * *
Matthew awoke the next morning a half hour before his Q and A. Jumping out of bed, he took a shower, rinsed his mouth with hotel mouthwash, and dressed. Within fifteen minutes he was on his way back to campus.
He wasn’t hungover so much as still a little drunk. As he walked beneath the leafless trees, his head felt light. There was a curious insubstantiality to things—the wet leaves on the pathways, the ragged clouds drifting across the sky—as though he were viewing them through a mesh screen.
Nothing had happened. Not really. He had so much less to be guilty about than might have been the case that it was almost as if he had done nothing at all.
Halfway through the morning session, his headache kicked in. By then Matthew was at the Physics Department. When he’d arrived, he was worried that the girl might be among the students gathered in the brightly lit classroom; but then he remembered that she couldn’t come. He relaxed, and answered the students’ questions on autopilot. He barely had to think.
By noon, with his honorarium check in his jacket pocket, Matthew was on his way back to New York.
Just past Edison, he’d nearly fallen asleep in his seat when a text came through to his phone.
Matthew wrote back, “I’ll send you a copy of my book to paste it in.” Then, deciding this sounded too open-ended, he deleted it and replaced it with, “Nice to meet you, too. Good luck with your studies.” After pressing SEND, he deleted the entire conversation.
* * *
She had waited too long to go to the police. That was the problem. That was why they didn’t believe her.
The town prosecutor, with whom Prakrti had met once before, was a barrel-chested man with a kind, open face and wispy blond hair. He was gruff in his manners, and frequently used profanity, but he treated Prakrti with delicacy when it came to the details of the case.
“There’s no question who’s at fault here,” the prosecutor said. “But I’ve got to bring charges against this reprobate, and his lawyer is going to try and impugn your testimony. So I have to go over with you the things he might say so that we’re prepared. Do you understand? I’m not happy to be doing this, let me tell you.”
He asked Prakrti to tell her story again, from the beginning. He asked if she’d been drinking on the night in question. He asked about the sexual acts in detail. What exactly had they done? What was permitted and what was not? Whose idea was it to buy the condoms? Had she been sexually active before? Did she have a boyfriend her parents didn’t know about?
Prakrti answered as best she could, but she felt unprepared. The whole reason she’d slept with an older man was to avoid questions like this. Questions having to do with her willingness, her blood alcohol level, and whether she had acted provocatively. She’d heard enough stories, she’d streamed enough episodes of Law & Order on her phone, to know how these cases worked out for women. They didn’t. The legal system favored the rapist, always.
She needed the sex itself to be a crime. Only then could she be its victim. Blameless. Blameless and yet—by definition—no longer a virgin. No longer a suitable Hindu bride.
This was how Prakrti had worked it out in her head.
An older man was preferable because, with an older man, it didn’t matter if she’d sent flirtatious texts, or had come willingly to his hotel room. The age of consent in Delaware was seventeen. Prakrti had looked the statute up. Legally, she wasn’t capable of consent. Therefore, there was no need to prove rape.
An older, married man wouldn’t want to talk about what had happened, either. He’d want to keep it out of the papers. No one at school would ever know. No college admissions officer, googling her name, would find an electronic trail.
Finally, an older, married man would deserve what he had coming to him. She wouldn’t feel so bad involving a guy like that as she would some clueless boy at school.
But then she’d met the man, the physicist from England, and followed through with her plan, and felt regretful afterward. He was nicer than she expected. He seemed sad more than anything. Maybe he was a creep—he definitely was—but she couldn’t help liking him a little, and feeling sorry for tricking him.
For this reason, as the next months passed, Prakrti held off going to the police. She hoped she wouldn’t have to put the last part of her plan into action, that something would alter the situation.
The school year ended. Prakrti got a summer job at an i
ce cream parlor in town. She had to wear a candy-striped apron and a white paper hat.
One day at the end of July, when Prakrti came home from work, her mother handed her a letter. An actual letter, written on paper, and sent in the mail. The stamps on the envelope showed the face of a smiling cricket star.
Dear Prakrti,
I apologize for not writing you sooner. My studies at the university have been extremely onerous and it has been all I can do to keep up with them. I keep myself going with the thought that I am working hard to prepare a future for myself and my future family, which of course means you. I am beginning to see that it might not be so easy as I had hoped to get a position at Google or Facebook. I am now thinking of perhaps working for a flash-trading company based in New Brunswick, where my uncle also works. I do not have a driver’s license and I am beginning to worry that this may be a problem. Do you possess a license? Do you perhaps own your own car? I know our parents have been discussing the possibility of a car being provided, as part of the dowry. This would be most acceptable to me.
Prakrti read no further. When she got off work the next day, instead of going home, she walked to the police station behind the town hall. That was almost a month ago now. Since then, the police had been looking for the man, but there had been no arrest. Something was holding things up.
“The judge is going to want to know why you waited so long,” the town prosecutor said to her.
“I don’t understand,” Prakrti replied. “I read the statute online. I’m seventeen now, but I was sixteen when it happened. By definition it’s rape.”
“That’s right. But he’s claiming there was no sex. No—penetration.”
“Of course there was penetration,” Prakrti said, frowning. “Check out our text messages. Or the video. You can see what was going on.”
The reason she’d sent the man out to the kiosk was because she knew there was a security camera there. She’d intended to save the condom, too, to tie it in a knot to preserve the semen. But, in the complications of the moment, she had forgotten.
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