“Mohan is not gay.”
“Maybe he’s into Haritji!”
Ranjana started laughing in spite of herself. Seema was a certified lunatic, but at least she was entertaining.
“What am I going to do?”
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do: you’re going to buy lingerie.”
“Ji.”
“Let’s go.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I am totally serious.”
“Please don’t tell me you’ve bought lingerie before,” Ranjana said. “Please don’t tell me you have a ‘place’ where you buy lingerie.”
“I have, and I do. Let’s go.”
Seema pulled Ranjana into a store called Le Grand Finale. Lace glared at them from every angle; there were so many blond mannequins that it looked like a Hooters. Ranjana and Seema were the only ones in the store besides the saleswoman, who was wearing a suit but had her cleavage, lace-cupped, hanging out of the V of her jacket. “Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for a negligee for her. Something that will match her skin tone.”
The woman moved silently to a florid red number that had so many intricate bows and ruffles that it looked like three negligees sewn together. “This is the Parisian Fire.”
“I have the same in orange,” Seema said, as plainly as if they were picking out a cardigan.
“I can’t do this,” Ranjana said. She disagreed with this sentence as she said it. She could do this—indeed, she wanted to do this—but the store, the possibility of what Seema may tell their friends, the worry that Ranjana might look absolutely insane trying to pull this off installed indecision in her voice.
A switch flicked in the saleswoman, and her face glowed synthetically. “Of course you can, dear! We all have a vixen in us waiting to get out.”
Even Seema cringed at this statement. “She doesn’t want to be a vixen,” Seema said. “She wants to be sexual.”
The woman’s face fell, the switch flicking off. “Honestly, that’s a line that my manager wants me to use on people. I’d never say that in real life, I promise.” She was probably in her midtwenties. Along the curves of her ears, a series of piercings looked like additional confidantes watching this interaction. “You just need to find something that makes you comfortable.”
Seema clicked her tongue. “Don’t tell her that. She’ll end up picking a pair of sweatpants.”
“Arré,” Ranjana said, turning to Seema and clicking her tongue, too. “No need to be rude—to me or to her. She’s just trying to help.”
“Of course I am,” the woman said. She looked at Seema. “I appreciate you bringing your friend here and getting her to try something new. Let’s see if we can find her something good.”
They went through negligee after negligee—billowy silks and busy teddies, wrought bodices and garters that dangled seductively. There were pink ribbons and red buttons, black ropes and white frills. The garments all looked downright elegant on the mannequins, but when Ranjana imagined them on her own body, she wanted to rip them into tatters and go have another cup of frozen yogurt. How could she wrap these soft pieces over the striated dough of her thighs, the jiggly wideness of her breasts? How could she even entertain the sharp diagonals of these panty lines when she hadn’t trimmed for years? Worse yet, what was she to make of the quivering rope of flesh at her waist, which would have caused the silk to strain and fray like some alien baby trying to escape from her womb? Negligee was not the right word for these things; they weren’t for the negligent but for the willfully fit.
The phone rang, and the saleswoman went to answer it. Ranjana turned to Seema.
“I’m going to say something to you, Seema, and I want a helpful answer, not sarcasm.”
Seema was already formulating a giggle, but Ranjana gave her a grave look.
“I’m being serious, ji.”
“All right, all right. You’re the one who’s always sarcastic,” Seema said.
Ranjana decided to ignore this comment. She was too preoccupied with the shambles of her body to parse out who was more sarcastic between the two of them. (It was Seema by a long shot.)
“I would feel like a fool wearing any of these things,” Ranjana said. “I’m not fishing for compliments, but I do not have the body for any of this.”
“That may be true, but here’s what you do—”
Seema continued, giving some kind of pep talk, but Ranjana was already seizing upon these initial words—That may be true, but—and how unsupportive they were. Whether it was a lack of empathy or just general nonchalance that motivated Seema, she wasn’t a very good friend. She should have had the tact to treat this situation with the proper understanding, but she took Ranjana’s homeliness as a fact instead of trying to show Ranjana what could be beautiful about herself, what might actually cause Mohan to see her as someone worthy of being desired. Seema was picking up a cream-colored pile of silk that looked like a bakery cake, then holding it against her torso. Ranjana picked up a boxy but night-silken number and headed to the register, leaving Seema midsentence.
“Great choice. I have the same one,” the saleswoman said. She pulled back the frills at each of her cuffs, the navy tips of tattoos poking out, and she set to wrapping the garment in crispy papers in shades of black and pink.
As Ranjana thought of what it would take to have someone carve images into your flesh, she wanted to match this woman’s resolve with her own determination. Everything that she had experienced in the past few months—Prashant’s absence, whatever was going on with Mohan, Achyut’s proximity and his slinking-away, the harangues of her writing group and Harit’s devastating existence and Teddy’s nosiness and now the revelation, right here in this store, that her friendship with Seema was once again a flimsy thing—it had all seeped into her and forced itself into her bones. She could choose to be in control of her reactions and her decisions. She could create a sense of self as a writer and a wife and a woman to be desired. She could be what she wanted to be in this thin slip of sinuous stitches and threads. Just watch.
MIDWAY THROUGH HIS WINTER BREAK, Prashant got up late, at around noon, and went downstairs for a bowl of cereal.
It was a Saturday, the doctor’s office was closed, but his mother was out of the house anyway. His father was in his study, which was attached to their living room and which lay behind two white French doors that signaled a firm KEEP OUT when closed. Prashant chewed his cereal and thought about the house’s stillness, perforated by an occasional groan or clearing of the throat from the study. It was strange to think how few plans his parents had, how their weekends were not defined by unpredictable outings or raucous conversations. Instead, they would usually get a phone call at around 4:00 P.M. on Saturdays from an auntie telling them that a get-together was happening, and they would throw on some clothes and head out with a hastily assembled dish in hand. As Prashant tipped out some more cereal, he thought of how he, in fact, had been the one anomalous component of their parties in a long time.
As he was finishing up his second bowl, his father came shuffling into the kitchen, his sandals clapping against his feet and his breath wheezing out of his nostrils. Prashant didn’t often find himself at home alone with his father, but in the past when this had happened, it seemed as if both of them were waiting for his mother to return, biding their time until she came in and started asking about their days. Now, Prashant noticed that his father seemed to have more of a claim to the house. Prashant felt like exactly what he was—a visitor, someone who didn’t technically live here anymore.
His father strode toward the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water and a small package of dried nectarines. He then pulled up a chair and sat down at the table with Prashant, not having said a word.
“How’s it going in there?” Prashant asked. It sounded like a strange question, which it was, but he wasn’t sure what else to say, especially since his father hadn’t started any conversation.
“Kids don’t stu
dy anymore, beta,” his father said. “Only half of the students passed this quiz.” His father pulled a small tag of plastic from under the rim of the package of nectarines. The lid popped up.
“I study,” Prashant said, encouragingly.
“That’s because you are a good student. You’re like your dad.” He took the lid off the package, dove his fingers in, and put a nectarine into his mouth.
“You’ve never called me a good student before,” Prashant said. He wasn’t usually so blunt with his father. “I appreciate it.”
His father paused, midchew, and looked right at him. It was a rare thing for him to do this. His eyes softened, and he swallowed. “I am very proud of you, beta.” He looked down and placed his hands flat on the table. “I don’t ever tell you that.”
Prashant knew that he should have seen this moment as incredibly touching, but he actually found it comical. They made such a strange duo: he, still in his boxers and high school community service T-shirt, the box of cereal before him as loudly colorful as a calliope; his father, in old slacks and an undershirt, eating dried fruit like some kind of lemur. Prashant had never given it that much thought, but his father was mildly attractive—or had been. He had obviously let himself go a bit, but he must have once been relatively hardy, with a firm swing in his step and some kind of glint in his eye.
“I don’t tell your mom that, either,” his father continued. “But I should.”
“You should,” Prashant replied—less because he felt like fighting for his mother and more because it seemed like the only logical response to such a comment.
His father shrugged, picked up his bottle of water, and downed it. He picked up the nectarines and patted Prashant on the head. “Very proud,” he said, almost mournfully. Then he went back to the study.
Prashant went back up to his room and threw on some clothes. He checked his phone and saw a text from Clara: My familys gonna be out of the apartment 2nite. Do u wanna call me for some … fun? Prashant went to the bathroom attached to his bedroom, shut the door, locked it, and started jerking off. It was Clara’s words that had started this, but his thoughts went immediately to Kavita.
He had performed this act so many times in this bathroom, but when he finished, he realized that he felt like a sociopath. He had barely thought of Clara; he had replaced her all too easily with Kavita, altogether negating his existing relationship. He wasn’t someone to be proud of. He was pretending at having a real relationship while, just now, he had reverted to his primal interpretation of romance.
He sat on his bed and, without stopping to second-guess, composed a quick but earnest e-mail in which he told Clara that he wanted to have a conversation with her about their relationship when they were back on campus. He wasn’t sure if he was in the right place to be in a relationship and didn’t think that he was treating her with the utmost respect. He hit SEND, then headed downstairs and told his dad that he was going to go for a drive. His dad, as usual, didn’t see the purpose of such a thing, but he seemed OK with it, probably because he was still feeling emotional after their brief interaction in the kitchen.
Prashant drove to the parking lot of his high school, where he used to meet the guys after school. He felt like calling Vipul up and seeing if he wanted to hang, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to go through the boring details of his college life instead of delving into these large existential issues. So, he stayed in his car and listened to a Beatles playlist on his phone, not worrying that the car was getting colder and colder as the winter settled into it.
At a certain point, you had to make a decision about what kind of man you wanted to be. He was far from being a man, he knew that, but he wanted to lay the foundation. He wanted to be the kind of person who would have an honest, adult conversation with Clara about what he was thinking and feeling, and he wanted her to see that he was making an effort to be better—even if she hated the idea of a breakup at this point in time. He had sat there observing his father’s middle age, the fractured nature of his parents’ interactions, and he didn’t want to fall into that trap. He felt extremely lucky to be learning this lesson now, before college was fully under way: he still had so much time to be an upstanding guy. There was poetry to realizing how much work it required for a person to be respectable.
As he studied the red bricks of his school and the sun-catching metal of the large flagpole that rose in front of it, he knew for certain that he was going to change his major once he got back to school. He wouldn’t tell his parents now. He would wait until sophomore year, when he had to officially declare it, and by then, he’d have so many credits toward a literature degree that there would be no turning back. He wasn’t going to throw everything away—he would still minor in chemistry—but he wanted to honor his love of books and stories. He hoped to do this without tipping into self-indulgence or being absolutely insufferable, but he was going to trust his instincts and try it anyway. Not for Kavita. Not for his parents. Not even for himself. For something larger and grander, something that rebuffed a life of narrow-minded safety.
RANJANA LOOKED GOOD. She performed a series of half-turns in her mirror, smoothing the silk against her thighs and trying to see them as roundly alluring. No—she didn’t even have to try. They looked good, without any effort necessary on her part. Self-esteem was like a pyramid: once you had a solid base, you could keep sliding more blocks onto it and make something sturdily impressive.
Here was a series of blocks that had been hoisted onto that foundation in recent days: Ranjana received an enthusiastic e-mail from Christina Sherman telling her that she was “delightfully mad to represent” Ranjana’s writing. Two short but meaningful phone calls later, Ranjana received a contract by e-mail that she filled out online and shot right back. She didn’t share this news with anyone, afraid that she would reverse the spell and jinx herself, but she relished it. On New Year’s Eve, Prashant, in an endearing burst of selflessness, decided to cook his parents an elaborate dinner of mattar paneer, rice, and homemade naan, all of which he created by consulting a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. (Ranjana and Mohan flicked a pinch of extra masala onto their plates when Prashant ducked out to take a quick call from Vipul.) Seema called to apologize for her bluntness in the lingerie store, though she followed this up with a question about when Ranjana was thinking of “springing the surprise” on Mohan. Ranjana ended the conversation soon after. Then, perhaps least likely of all, Ranjana received an e-mail from Achyut, who apologized for his treatment of her and for having dropped off the face of the earth. He finally wanted her to meet his boyfriend. Despite whatever might have happened between her and Achyut, she was both surprised and glad that his relationship had lasted all this time.
With the exception of her contract with Christina, these were all relatively small successes, yet taken together, they gave her the confidence to slide this garment onto her body. Prashant was back at school now, and it was a Saturday night. Mohan had gone into the office at the university to finish a few things, and he would come home and find the first floor singing with a chorus of long-tapered candles, bowls of rose petals with floating candles in them, and an ascending pilgrimage of paper-bagged candles up the stairway.
She knew the irony of greeting her adulterous husband this way, but she comforted herself by not jumping to conclusions. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, there was a possibility that Seema was right: maybe Mohan hadn’t been trying those moves on someone else. Maybe he was just watching porn like so many other men did. She couldn’t blame him for this, could she?
She could. She wanted to. Instead she chose to straighten herself in front of the mirror. She saw the silk stretch over her skin, and she felt like someone that she would have written about. She would try controlling the story of her marriage, finding whatever allure she could in herself and seeing where it took her.
She mounted her bed, relaxing her limbs and feeling this simple act to be part of a choreography. She felt conscious of her brain, shifting gears to move the com
plex machinery of her body. In turn, she wanted her husband to appreciate the complex communication that it took for her to translate her body into sex.
Downstairs, the garage door retracted with a snarl, and she heard Mohan’s car roll forward, another snarl announcing its enclosure. He entered, his papers and briefcase swishing as he went into his study, calling out “Ji!” Unsurprisingly, he didn’t seem to notice the vigil in the house until he was out of his study and in the kitchen. She could hear his puzzlement all the way from here. “Ji…” he said more softly. She heard the cordless phone beep as it was switched on, the long ahhhhhh of the ringtone, and she realized that he was about to call 911.
She rose up on her elbows, then heard him hanging up the phone. Finally: he understood that a seduction and not a burglary was taking place.
He emerged out of the shadows like a creature in a trance. By now, she was flat along the bed, her head bent on the pillow and her eyes doing their best to keep his engaged. He went to speak, then closed his mouth.
All along, her plan had been to seduce him in silence, merely to look at him suggestively and have him embrace her, but she found herself speaking. “Show me what you’ve learned,” she said, and his mouth fell open again.
“Ji…”
“Show me all of the tricks that you know,” she continued.
“Tricks? What tricks?” He still seemed to be in some kind of trance, his arms limp at his sides. His beige jacket was still on and zipped. Then, his face moved knowingly. It was unclear whether he knew that she had discovered his antics online, but it was obvious that he knew what she meant by tricks.
She could tell that he was about to start back, flip on the light switch, and hustle this moment away, so she did the unthinkable: she reached down and lifted the hem of her negligee up, revealing herself. Earlier, she had used a pair of orange-handled kitchen shears to sculpt herself, and she felt the full effect of this now.
His eyes went to hers again, his mouth still open. “I was studying those … tricks … for you.”
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