Lucky Boy

by Shanthi Sekaran

  “I do.”

  “No. I don’t think you do.” Joyce sighed. “But look, the foster home was a much better setup for an infant. Ignacio was frankly a little more than the foster mother could handle. So we made an exception. Consider yourself lucky.”

  Kavya was speechless, and before Joyce could rescind the offer, she gently disconnected the phone. When she looked up at Rishi, he raised his brows and smiled.

  “We’re getting him,” she said.

  “We’re getting him.”

  Before Rishi could get up and wrap his arms around her, Kavya rose and went to the bedroom. She climbed under the blankets, closed her eyes, and fell asleep. She slept for six hours that morning. It was a Tuesday. Rishi called the sorority.

  The woman on the phone asked him to repeat himself. She was quiet for a few long, dry seconds.

  “You can’t get takeout?” Rishi asked.

  “No,” the woman said. “We cannot.”

  Joyce’s news had come on a Tuesday, and Ignacio was due to arrive that Sunday. The process had been so painless that Rishi began to worry. His inner lawyer was searching through the night for a loophole, a prediction of regret, sniffing every corner for the proverbial little rat.

  “What if he’s more difficult than he looks?” Rishi asked.

  “All kids are more difficult than they look,” Kavya said. She was cramming plastic plug protectors into every outlet in the house. Now she crawled across the living room on her hands and knees, past the mound of toys that occupied an entire corner.

  “I’ve got to get diapers,” she said. “I was going to do that today. Is that all right with you? Are you on board with that?”

  Kavya had been asking him a lot lately if he was on board with things.

  She gazed at him then rose and walked to his side. She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her face into the dip between his chest and arm. “Are you happy?” she asked. “I’m happy.”

  He held her hard. “I’m happy, too.” He smoothed down her hair. “Do we have to tell your mom?”

  • • •

  RISHI AND KAVYA had been dating for six months before he met her parents. It was during their third year of college, when they were due to separate for the six-week winter break, a length of time that had once felt luxuriant, but that year stretched before him like a sexless desert. He would miss Kavya herself, even without the sex, though this was not something he was ready to admit, even quietly. His plan was to go home to Ohio for the break, but he’d managed to say yes to a trip—a week in Lake Tahoe with six of his premed friends, four of whom were old enough to buy alcohol.

  “Why don’t you stop by Sacramento on your way back?” Kavya had asked. “It’s a good rest stop for Berkeley.”

  “Stop by? At your parents’ house?”

  She stood in the kitchen, peeling cucumbers, her hip pressed to the countertop, one foot resting gently on its toe. She was making tzatziki. In the oven, pita bread was warming. In the blender, a volcano of homemade hummus sank into itself. Over midterms, she’d taught herself to make tahini, and a fresh bowl of it waited at her elbow.

  I like to cook, she’d told him on their first real date. He’d thought this was something Indian girls said because their mothers told them to. He’d had no idea of the truth.

  He watched her work, and considered the prospect of six weeks of not watching her. He wondered if she cared that they wouldn’t see each other. If she did, she didn’t let on. Even now, she seemed to focus solely on her cutting board, rinsing cucumbers and swiping away their tough green skins. But technically, she’d been the one to suggest the visit. It was her idea.

  Going to Sacramento meant meeting her parents. Moreover, going to Sacramento meant meeting her Indian parents. He knew from his own pair that Indian parents never settled for a quick and forgettable how-do-you-do over cocktails. Meeting the Mahendras meant that assessments would be made, prospects tracked, and errant dreams of a red and gold wedding would waft through their living room. The heavy iron stamp of officialdom would be thrust upon Rishi and Kavya. They, as a couple, would exist.

  But they as a couple did exist, and something about Kavya’s fierce focus, the silken plain of her wrist, the silver bangles that jangled at her arm as she stirred the hummus, and the inch of brown skin at her waist that peeked between her jeans and white T-shirt, compelled him to stop thinking and simply say yes.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ll stop by.”

  “Okay,” she answered quietly.

  The visit had almost not happened. Rishi hadn’t brought himself, during his week in Tahoe, to tell his friends that they’d be stopping for tea at his girlfriend’s parents’ house. Their group didn’t plan—they simply did. They found themselves doing. And so, he ended up waiting until they’d reached the series of Sacramento exits on Highway 50, on their way back to Berkeley, to bring up the Kavya situation.

  “What?”

  “Who?”

  “Heeeeeeeelllllll, no!”

  “No way, man. No.”

  The chorus of dissent was unanimous and passionate. So the driver slowed the car at the mouth of the Mahendras’ driveway, and Rishi ran around the back of it, grabbed his backpack, closed the trunk, and gave it a whack to send it on its way.

  Kavya opened the front door. She looked at him blankly. It occurred to him then that maybe her invitation had been a half thought, something he was supposed to pursue and solidify himself. It occurred to him that he might have failed in some stage of the planning. But then, as if to compensate for the poor greeting, an aromatic cloud slunk out the door to meet him. He grinned at Kavya, and stepped forward. She stiffened, turned her face away, and leaned in for a feathery non-hug, a veritable pat on the back that Rishi, for the moment, did not understand.

  Then, through the window, he saw two faces, two pairs of black eyes, as hard and lustrous as rune stones. He cleared his throat and followed Kavya in. Kavya’s mother stood short and broad in her kitchen. He bent to give her a gingerly long-distance hug, before wondering if he should have shaken her pincushion hand instead. “Hi, Aunty,” he said.

  “Okay,” she replied.

  Kavya’s father was startlingly tall, taller than Rishi, with sleepy eyes and stooped shoulders.

  “Hi, Uncle.” He saw in her father’s face Kavya’s cheekbones, the stubborn jut of her chin.

  Almost immediately, they were sitting down to eat, a pot of lamb curry at the table’s center. Kavya’s mother asked questions about his degree, his plans, his parents. Kavya barely ate. Her father barely spoke but to offer a line of information, a morsel of commentary on the very-goodness or very-badness of things. The mother’s eyes bore into him like lasers, incising his intention, assessing his moral and perhaps his monetary worth. Rishi’s thoughts sought refuge in the mountains he’d been on that week, his skis slicing snow, their clean parallel lines.

  And then it was over. His stomach was heavy, his eyelids heavier. He wanted nothing now but to sleep, his face burrowed into the peaty warmth of Kavya’s skin.

  “Rishi, you would like to lie down?” Uma asked.

  “Yes!” Rishi nodded, grateful.

  “Kavya.” Uma signaled to her daughter, then turned her hard gaze back on him. Laser eyes.

  Kavya led Rishi to a room down the hall. In the dark hallway, away from her parents, he felt his shoulders unlock from his neck, his arms slacken. He took a good long look at Kavya, and she looked new to him again. He’d grown used to her at school, he realized. Over the break he’d forgotten the strength of her back and the patrician angles of her face. She had a force that he craved. He wanted to belong to her.

  She brought him to the guest room. Kavya leapt for the bed and landed outstretched. “Come here,” she said.

  Rishi stopped to close the door.

  “Don’t! If they hear the door close they’ll think som
ething’s happening!”

  “But something is happening.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “Come here.”

  Rishi lay down on the bed in a stiff line, hands on his stomach.

  “I missed you,” she said, and covered his body with hers. “Put your arms around me.”

  They lay like this for a long while, Rishi holding Kavya, nervous and grateful and sleepy all at once. He began to drift off, but felt her lips on his neck, her lips on his lips, and woke again. He’d lost her scent, and now it came back in a storm cloud of soap and skin and something like warm bread. He forgot about sleeping, about the open door. He let Kavya run her fingers into his waistband, undo his fly, and yank down the denim. His hands went to her waist, to the fevered bare skin of her back. He longed to be alone with her, and then he was. He was lost in the world of Kavya, and they were, at last, absolutely alone.

  And then they were not.

  “Kavya!” A shuffle at the door. “Kavya!” Uma stalked in, a fire-breathing bull. “Stop it now!” she roared, and smacked at her daughter’s back. Rishi flipped onto his stomach, cringed, and waited for the blows. But there were none. Uma chased Kavya from the room, still swatting. Her voice faded down the hall. “What he will think, Kavya? You are my daughter? Who taught you this business?”

  He sat up, catching his breath and listening to their distant shouts. He grinned in spite of himself. He would have to find a way home, he realized. He certainly wouldn’t be spending the night.

  An hour later, Kavya had gathered her keys and purse to drive him to the train station. Rishi could hear her from the other side of the house. “I know! Okay! O-kay! I know! Mom!”

  Rishi stood in the entryway, his ski jacket on, his duffel bag in hand. Before him, Kavya’s father was silent, his cheeks sagging glumly from the lower rim of his spectacles. He smoothed his hair down over his forehead and cleared his throat.

  “Rishi,” he began. “You also are Indian. Are you not?”

  Rishi nodded.

  “You know the values?”

  The values, Rishi thought. There were just so many of them. He nodded.

  “Our daughter, Kavya . . . our daughter is not this kind of girl.”

  “I’m sorry, Uncle.”

  “It is very bad, Rishi.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Thank you for having me here, Uncle.” Rishi’s stomach turned, and spikes of sweat sprung to his forehead.

  Kavya drove him to the station in her parents’ beige Lexus. They said nothing until the first stoplight, when she turned to him with a miserable sort of grin.

  “So that went well,” Rishi said.

  Kavya rolled her eyes.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Indeed.”

  They rode in silence and merged onto the highway.

  “Let’s go to Berkeley,” he said. “Forget the train station.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “Am I, like, an untouchable now?”

  “You?” She sent him a sidelong gaze. “No, you’re not the untouchable.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re premed, though. I think that saved you,” she said. “I, on the other hand, will have plenty to answer for.”

  “Sorry.”

  Kavya was silent, then turned, saw he was staring at her, and frowned. “What?”

  “Who taught you that business, Kavya?”

  She started to laugh.

  “You’re not that kind of girl.”

  And Rishi was glad he came. He was almost glad that it had gone badly—it had gone badly and he still wanted to be with Kavya. She was worth the worry and the trouble, the anticipated strife of future parental meetings, the shadow of that afternoon that would forever darken his encounters with Uma Mahendra. He was glad that he knew this, glad he’d stopped for tea, glad for old Laser-Eyes, and glad, most of all, that Kavya, his Kavya, was that kind of girl.

  • • •

  AND NOW, the day of Ignacio’s arrival. The sun pounded its welcome through the bedroom window.

  Kavya stood in the doorway, still hunched with sleep. She wore an old T-shirt of Rishi’s with the sleeves cut off, and her arms dangled from them like jungle reeds. Her legs were bare. White panties stretched across her hips.

  “I’m speaking to my mom today.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “I’m speaking to her about Ignacio,” she said.

  “Oh.” He studied her face. Kavya was right to be worried, and Rishi didn’t envy her task; breaking unfavorable news to Uma when there was nothing that Uma could do was like swatting a wasp.

  Uma Mahendra had made her position clear. Offspring sprung off the family tree. Adoption was trouble. Adopted children were shadowy variables in an otherwise finely wrought equation of marital eugenics. Adoption itself subverted what Uma saw as the very purpose of existence: to marry, to mate, to give birth to caste-navigated, elder-sanctioned, blessed and bouncing bundles of reproduced hope. To adopt, to take a child from some other union, some union of whose nature they had barely an inkling, was an act that uprooted the very foundations of family.

  The phone rang. “It’s her,” Kavya said. “I can tell.”

  She did not move, and let it ring until Rishi rolled out of bed, crossed the room, and picked it up.

  “Hi, Mom. Sure. We were up. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

  Kavya snatched the receiver and pressed the speakerphone button.

  “Hi, Amma.”

  “What you’re doing?”

  Her mother sounded suspicious already, at eight on a Sunday morning. Rishi stretched, put on a T-shirt, and headed to the kitchen to make their morning tea. From the doorway, he watched his wife. He watched the woman he thought he knew try to reason with her mother. Her skin was still powdery with sleep, her voice raspy. As she listened, her jaw sawed to and fro. She picked at the rug and rubbed her eyelids, quiet, listening despite her best intentions. This was not his wife. The wife he knew did not ask for approval. Nor did she weave crisis, drawing it from her palm like spider silk. The Kavya he knew wouldn’t be seeking her mother’s pardon on a day like today. Her pursuit of it was nothing but self-destructive.

  But Kavya, this new Kavya, seemed to need it badly. She submitted totally to her mother’s rattling tirade, her body sprawled at angles like a homicide outline. When Uma met the kid, she’d fall in love, as all grandmothers did. Or she wouldn’t. But there was no reasoning with an angry wasp. He filled the kettle and put it on the stove. When he returned to the bedroom with a mug in each hand, he found Kavya lying flat on the floor, her palm pressed to her forehead, still on the phone. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.”

  When she saw him, she put the phone down, rolled onto her side, and took the mug of tea. Rishi lay facing her on the carpet, listening to Uma squawk through the room. He wondered if she’d always sounded like that, or if her voice changed with age and wear. Kavya’s face was slack with defeat, her cheeks drooping to the floor. Her eyelids fluttered as she listened. It angered him, suddenly, that this day, of all days, should have to begin like this. He listened to Uma’s litany. It was a thorough one. She remembered it all: the mistakes they’d made in trying and failing to get pregnant, the recklessness of their decision to foster, the hassles they would inevitably face, the perils that lay with the little boy who, at that very moment, was eating his breakfast, watching his foster mother pack his bag, and preparing for the car ride that would bring him to their door. He hoped that maybe, in her pre-tea state, Kavya was too sleepy to detect the condemnation that saturated the airspace of their bedroom. He wanted this to be a good day for her. He set his mug next to the telephone and pulled her close. He took her mug from her hand and placed it next to his. He pressed the speakerphone button, shrinking Uma’s voice to a distant buzz.

  His fingers moved up Kavya’s shirt and fo
und her breasts. She drew closer to him, looped her arm around his neck, and kissed him. And then, they proceeded to do what had come to feel like an exercise in failure, but on this muggy Sunday morning, with their future eating its breakfast, their tea steaming on the carpet, and maternal disapproval still rattling from a nearby mouthpiece, proved to be the essential thing, the only thing.

  • • •

  IT WAS NEARLY TEN. A ring of steam misted the windowpane where Kavya pressed her forehead. Rishi wanted to tell her to relax, to come away from the window. One of them had to be calm. But he wasn’t calm and couldn’t pretend to be, so he pressed his own forehead to the window and gazed out onto Vine. Their French toast grew cold and wet. The air was heavy that morning, the sky bereft of color, waiting for rain to break. Outside his window, the bougainvillea hung lushly off their gate, the grass grew wild, overfed that spring with rain. Rishi thought of trimming it, but couldn’t bring himself to leave the window. The time was 9:47.

  The phone rang.

  Kavya grabbed it, said three words, put it down.

  “They’re almost here.”

  What Kavya and Rishi hoped to project, from under the eaves of their Berkeley bungalow, was an air of parenthood. An air of belonging where they were, of knowing what to do with the little stranger—for that’s what he was, a stranger, as foreign to them as they were to him. Parents were people who knew what they wanted. It fell to Rishi and Kavya, the parents in this game of make-believe, to do and say the things that parents were meant to say and do, until pretend became real, and they found, one day, if all went well, that the little boy was theirs and they were his, that the three of them did indeed belong to one another. Pretending, at this point, was the most they could do.

  31.

  And then, one day, Soli woke up and said, “Today is Sunday,” and Jeanette was taken away. But that was okay. “Maybe they’ll send someone new,” Salma said. “Maybe her name will start with S, or maybe she’ll at least have something to say.” They waited for two days, three, but nobody else showed up. It grew cold in the yard as summer hinted at fall. Though they could see no trees with crisping leaves, they felt the sadness and the vigor that would ride the currents of autumn. La juala wasn’t heated. Soli knew a request for heat would get no more than a chuckle. The guard would laugh and go and tell the others, and they would laugh, too. Without a third person to heat the room, the nights grew even colder, and one night Salma and Soli kept each other awake shuffling in bed, groaning with cold. The only way they could sleep was to lie side by side, Soli’s arms around Salma’s waist, knees curled into knees. Soli climbed up to her bunk before daybreak, because if the guards found them lying like this, lying like sisters and keeping warm, there would be a price to pay.