by Veena Rao
Tara pushed the back button and opened another message from the list. It was from Liz. “Still in my birthday suit, missing you already . . . xo xo.”
She flung the phone into the laundry heap and ran out toward the front door. She found her flip-flops in the shoe closet, slipped impatiently into them, threw the front door open, and dashed out into the night. Down the stairs she rushed on weightless legs, and kept running until she was out on the road. She crossed the road into the church compound, as if with purpose. She had not joined her hands together in prayer since school, but she tried to yank open the large double doors to the sanctuary, frenzied in her effort. Her upper lip curled in, her teeth gnashed; deep troubled sounds erupted from her throat. But the doors stayed shut. She gave up, defeated, panting, her fingers sore, and sank onto the uppermost step leading up to the sanctuary. She bent over and buried her wet, sweaty face in her thighs. The tears finally came. They emerged in fits and starts before they grew to a steady flow. They purged her, then fed her more sorrow. It was a clear, warm night. A quiet, luminous moon, the same one from her childhood, was the sole witness to her coming apart.
It was almost dawn. A bird started to call from the church roof, and Tara could see the outlines of her apartment buildings opposite the road. It seemed like the beginning of just another day, but she had crossed a bridge that had collapsed after her. She sat spent, her tears dried up. She had to go back home, to her broken life; she had nowhere else to go. She pulled herself up and walked slowly out of the church compound. Her head throbbed with dull pain; the events of the night had triggered a migraine attack.
The front door was locked. She remembered leaving it open when she took flight last night. She hesitated before knocking. If only she could flee, and not come back.
He ushered her in and quickly closed the door behind her. She could not bring herself to look at him. She walked into the living room, shook off her flip flops and lay down on the sofa, face up. She stared unseeingly at the ceiling.
“Where did you go?” He had followed her to the living room and stood near the loveseat, arms crossed over his chest. She ignored him.
“Woman, you had me worried, I almost called the cops. And what did you do with my cell phone?”
She turned her gaze toward him. His forehead was furrowed, his brow creased into a frown. His eyes looked heavy as if he had stayed awake all night.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She cleared her throat and tried again.
“I suppose you’ve figured out that your dirty little secret is out?” Her voice sounded hoarse, raspy.
She heard him sigh as he lowered himself into the loveseat. He rubbed his face, ran his fingers through his hair.
“And why exactly did you go through my cell phone?” His voice was high-pitched, defensive.
Tara ignored his question. He sat staring at the edge of the coffee table, chewing his lower lip. The silence between them reached a crescendo.
“I am human too,” she heard herself say at last.
He ruminated her statement for a while, eyes still on the edge of the coffee table. “You chose to stay. It was your choice.”
“I am your wife.”
“It was never my intention to hurt you.”
“Why did you marry me?”
He raised his eyes to look at her. “We’ve been through this before. It was a mistake.”
Tara felt a lump in her throat. “After two years, you still think of it as a mistake?”
He remained silent.
She slid her feet down and sat up straight on the sofa. She felt tears sting her eyes again.
“Sanjay,” she whispered. Her voice trembled with anguish. “When you made love to me, didn’t you feel anything, anything at all in your heart for me?”
He turned his face away.
“Please tell me you felt some love for me,” she implored, tears streaming down her cheeks.
He slammed his fists on the hand rests of the loveseat, pulled himself up, and silently strode out the front door. In a fit, Tara grabbed the copy of Time magazine that lay within her reach on the coffee table, and flung it wildly at his retreating back. It missed him by several inches, hit the wall with a crack, and lay limp on the floor by the coat closet. She slithered down to the carpet and slumped over, weeping.
She lay on the carpet, face down on her forearms, drifting between blackness, dreams, and grief. Somewhere, bells jingled; they were on Amma’s feet, and she appeared looking young and beautiful, with Vijay in her arms. She waved from the train that was pulling out of Mangalore Station. “Bye, Tara, my sweet angel. We will be back soon.” Amma’s sari puffed and billowed as the train moved away.
Tara ran after the train as fast as her little feet could carry her. “Amma, don’t leave me,” she pleaded. But Amma was gone; she had vanished into the countryside like a mirage.
She woke up from her nightmare with a start, but before long another childhood memory came calling.
“See how your daddy and mummy abandoned you,” Zeenat’s harsh words rang in her ears. “Your mummy eats mutton every day, wears new saris, and has lots and lots of new gold. What do you have? Nothing.”
Zeenat wasn’t washing clothes that day. It was a Sunday evening, and they were at the back of the house, playing hopscotch hidden behind a mango tree, because Grandfather Madhava didn’t approve of Tara playing with a rickshawallah’s daughter.
Tara wished her friend would go back to her wild stories. She loved listening to them. But she hated it when Zeenat talked about Amma and Daddy.
“When Amma and Daddy come to visit, they will bring me new frocks,” she said defiantly.
“You have too much faith in your parents,” Zeenat said, shaking her head, as she hopped from square to square, her long cinnamon brown skirt pulled up to reveal fair bare feet. “I feel sad for you. For all you know, they might never come back. Then you will have to live here forever. I am only giving you fair warning.”
Tara fought back the tears, but they seeped through her resolve and stung her eyes. Her heart yearned for Amma’s comforting arms, to be reassured of her love. But Amma, she had abandoned her little girl.
Amma and Daddy and Vijay and Sanjay—they were all cast of the same mold.
When Sanjay returned a couple of hours later, Tara still lay on the carpet. He came out dressed to go to work after a while.
“Tara,” he tried again, his voice was now calmer, more subdued. “Can I get my cell phone back?”
She didn’t budge. She felt footsteps on the carpet; he was beside her, bending over. She smelled his fresh cologne, felt the moist heaviness of his breath. “Come now, get hold of yourself.” She felt a light touch on her arm. She jerked her head up, and pushed his hand away.
“You touch me one more time, mister, and I will call nine-one-one.” The shrill pitch of her voice shocked them both. He stumbled back and raised his hands. “Okay, okay, take it easy.” The sleeplessness of the previous night showed in the puffy little bags under his eyes.
She buried her face again in her forearms. She felt his footsteps move away, heard the front door open and close, the gentle click of the lock. She was alone again, at the mercy of her anguish.
The phone rang. She opened her eyes, confused. She felt catatonic, she didn’t want to move. She let the call go to voicemail. She heard Alyona’s chipper, accented voice leave a message. “Hi Tara, this is Alyona. Just checking on you. Hope you are feeling better. Give me a call. Love you.”
Alyona’s calls came at steady intervals. The voicemail got them all. But when she heard a knock on her door, Tara pulled herself up and dragged her aching body to the front door. She put an eye to the peephole before she opened the door. Alyona burst in, carrying a brown bag and two sodas.
“All right girl, it’s lunch time.” She pulled out two chicken panini sandwiches and a bag of chips and set them along with the sodas on the dining table. “Come, sweetie, you must be super hungry.”
Tara
sat at the table. Her head still felt woozy and hurt from the migraine. “Thank you for doing this, Alyona.”
“Of course, my friend. I’ve been through this. I know how it feels.”
Tara sipped on the ice-cold Coke. It felt good. She was probably thirsty and had not realized it.
Alyona bit into her sandwich, and talked with her mouth full. “Did he confess?”
“He didn’t deny anything.” Tara took a small bite of her sandwich, but it was as if her throat had closed in. She struggled to swallow, winced with the effort, gulped more Coke.
“What an ass. You tell him—break up with blondie, or you will leave.”
Tara nodded. “Alyona, how did you react when you found out about your ex having an affair?”
“I threw all his things out on the street.”
“Really?”
She sighed and shook her head. “Sadly, that made things easy for that creep. He moved in with that girl and sent me divorce notice. After three months, the court made me move out of the house. So here I am.”
“You are a strong girl.”
“Life teaches you to be strong. You be strong, too, when you talk to that husband.”
“Yeah.”
“I know it is difficult for you to think. But he is not only man in the world.”
Tara smiled dryly. “In my family, a woman is allowed only one man in her lifetime.”
“So you become more American, think like American. You will be happy.”
Tara smiled, wondering how Amma and Daddy might react to Alyona’s advice.
That evening, Tara was seated on the three-seater, imagining Sanjay French kissing a naked Marilyn Monroe look-alike, when he walked in.
“What? You kissed her good-bye early today?”
He ignored her sarcasm and sat on the other end of the sofa, a cushion’s distance between them. “If you are feeling calmer, we need to talk.”
“Are you going to end your fling?”
“It is not a fling,” he said calmly, causing her heart to heave. She saw no guilt, no remorse on his face.
“I am your wife now. You have to end it.”
“Tara, I want to be honest with you,” he said.
Tara blinked, but kept her gaze away from his face. “Do you love her?”
Sanjay sighed. “I know this is going to hurt you, but I want to be honest. Yes, I love Elizabeth. More than life.”
Tara sucked in air. She looked at him in astonishment, his audacity crippling her capacity to react. He had said, “More than life,” with so much vigor, so much shine in his eyes.
“Tara, you don’t know what it is like to be in love. To be madly, utterly, helplessly in love.”
“I don’t? You tell me, Sanjay.”
“I will tell you. From the beginning. Maybe you will understand, maybe you won’t. But this has gone too far, and I’d like to be honest with you.”
Tara watched him keenly as he related his story—at the sentiments that charged his face, blazing emotions that she had never once seen in his eyes before. She listened, feeling more and more stupid and irrelevant by the minute. By the time he finished, Tara knew that Elizabeth Bianchi was the love of Sanjay’s life; that his heart would never open to another. Tara was not part-Italian, part-Irish, with eyes that hinted violet and gold locks that swayed and softly framed her classically beautiful, oval face. She wasn’t a project manager at DCS Tech. She didn’t intimidate men with her brains, and there weren’t idiots aplenty dying to ask her out. She didn’t have a great sense of humor and a husky, sensual voice.
Tara now knew the secret behind Sanjay’s mysterious decision to marry her. It was to spite the tempestuous Elizabeth who had taken a transfer to Washington DC and broken up with Sanjay in 1998, after three years together. Sanjay was heartbroken when she told him she had met somebody in DC. In his misery, he had called his parents and asked them to find a girl for him. Liz had him in shreds, and all he wanted to do was make her jealous. He had married the first girl his parents chose for him. It didn’t matter to him what Tara was like; she could have been a donkey for all he cared.
When Liz learned of his wedding in India through the office grapevine, she broke up with the other guy, an American, and came scurrying back to Sanjay. She was apologetic, remorseful, and wanted Sanjay back. And thus, Tara became the wife Sanjay completely forgot about, because lovely Liz was back in his life.
The Sanjay–Liz love story continued for almost three years as a completely oblivious Tara and her parents wondered what had happened to the perfect groom who had wanted no dowry. But Liz had broken up with Sanjay once again. This time, she had married the guy she moved on with, an American gastroenterologist in DC, Dr. Spinks. Her breakup notice to Sanjay had been a single line text message. He was disconsolate, but eventually resolved to stay away from Liz. He made arrangements for Tara to join him in the States. His heart wasn’t in the marriage, but he had made up his mind to trudge along, plunging into work and career. But fate wasn’t through with its whimsical surprises; it brought Liz back into his life a third time. A little before the September 11 attacks, she had returned to the DCS Atlanta office, minus her wedding ring. She had avoided Sanjay initially, but on September 11, she had sought him out, distraught from the tragic events of the day. Her brother had been in the South Tower that morning, and his family had not heard from him all day. They had ended up going back to her apartment. By the time the day had ended, they had learned that the brother was well, but it was too late to come out unaffected. Their old romance, which had never really died, was reignited. Sanjay learned that Liz had separated from her doctor husband—they had similar temperaments and seldom got along. She had taken the transfer back to Atlanta to take time off to rethink things.
“What choice did I have?” Sanjay said, eyes shining with earnestness. “Who knows why some people have that effect on you—why you willingly give up all control over yourself, why the rest of the world fades away, and why rules seem irrelevant. You don’t go seeking to be helpless in love. It just happens to you.”
Tara felt Sanjay’s probing eyes on her face, but she said nothing. There was nothing left to be said. You don’t go seeking to be helpless in love. It just happens to you. Tara understood that. Her own heart had melted once before in a way it had never melted for Sanjay. Still, it was difficult to feel any shred of sympathy when she was the irrelevant part of the love triangle; when her own destiny with her husband was sealed; when her heart was pulling up old fears from the back recesses of her mind.
Sanjay cleared his throat. “Well, I know I have hurt you and I don’t know how I can make it right. But if you want to go back to your dad’s place, I will make arrangements for your travel.”
“I am not leaving.” Tara said simply. “Until you divorce me or throw me out, I am not leaving.”
When she turned to look at him, her breath was sharp but her gaze steady. “You have no idea what you put me and my family through when you left me behind for three years. The aunts and uncles, the neighbors, the community people—they would not let us live in peace. You have no idea. The questions, taunts, and unsolicited advice; I am not going through that crap again.”
Tara had stopped attending weddings and housewarming ceremonies when the whispers got louder and more obvious, but she still had to contend with Amma’s own extended family, especially when they gathered at Raj Bungalow for a cousin’s daughter’s wedding.
“Is your husband sending for you soon?” Amma’s younger sister, Aunty Nanda, had asked innocently enough one time, the moment Amma disappeared into the kitchen. The family was gathered in the cool marble-floored living room, lounging on Italian sofas, and Tara would have vanished into the kitchen with Amma except that Aunty Nanda had put her arm out and caught hold of her as she rose from her seat.
Tara simply nodded and looked down at her hands.
“But why is it taking so long?”
“I know getting a visa doesn’t take this long,” Aunty Nanda’s husband, U
ncle Satish, said, his voice grating. “My nephew in Boston married a Mangalorean girl last year. She was with him in weeks.”
“But Satish, that girl is very beautiful you know; ditto Aishwarya Rai,” Aunty Nanda turned to face Tara, rubbing her back. “Eat more fruit and nuts, darling, put some meat on those bones.”
She had additional advice. “And don’t be a shrinking violet lost behind books. Be more lively like your mummy. Men like women with personality.” She shook her head with a sad face. “Your poor mummy. How hard all this must be on her, even though she puts up a good show. What parents of girls have to endure!”
Tara mumbled an excuse and escaped into her bedroom, where she spent the next half hour shredding paper into thin strips, trying her best to stop the tears from creating embarrassing red rims around her eyes.
Unsolicited advice was the hardest to endure, as it made her seem like she was at the center of a scandal, exposed to ridicule, with nowhere to go to nurse her lacerated sense of self. She had endured enough. Escaping it all to be with the man she resented for putting her in that hellish situation had seemed like the only choice she had.
She looked at Sanjay now as he cracked his knuckles and decided on her future.
“You think you can take it?” he asked, eventually.
“I don’t know. But I am not going back.”
Sanjay chewed his lower lip. “Tara, I am not giving up Liz.”
“Are you throwing me out?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I am not. Liz is not ready to take any step yet.”
“Does your blonde bitch know you’ve been banging your wife?”
“Jeez, what kind of language is that? It is so unbecoming of you.”
Tara laughed hysterically. “Does your blonde bitch go down on you?”
“Stop it.”
Tara laughed until she bent forward with the effort, gasping for breath, tears dripping on the carpet.
“Tell me, I need to know. Does she?”
“Tara, calm down.”