If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eva Metzembaum honked four times before Tehmina eased out of the front door and waved to her.

  “Good God, Tammy,” Eva said as Tammy got into the car. “What’s the matter with you? Moving as slow as a snail this morning. I was afraid I was going to have to leave the car and come get you.” Eva glanced at the bulge of her stomach under her red dress, as wide as a ledge upon which she could lean her elbow. “Not that a little exercise would kill me,” she added.

  Tammy smiled. She loved this about Eva, how she could make fun of the world in one breath and then turn her humor on herself, like the flash of a knife. In India, Tammy would have been embarrassed to be seen in public with a woman as large as a small yacht. But here in America, Eva Metzembaum had become the only person to whom Tammy could confide just about anything.

  They had first met five years ago during one of Tehmina’s visits, when Eva had approached her at the neighborhood block party, said hello, and then asked, “Do you play bridge? Cards? Anything?”

  Tammy shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, no. I mean, years ago, I used to play cards. But that was so long ago I’m sure I don’t remember a thing.”

  “Nonsense. Like riding a bike. You never forget. Tell you what. A bunch of us girls get together Tuesday afternoons to play. Why don’t you join us this week?”

  Instinctively, Tehmina looked around to find her husband or her son. She was not sure how to respond to this large, round woman with the bright red lipstick, who towered over her like a Ferris wheel. “I…I’m not sure what our plans are for next Tuesday, Mrs….?”

  “Mrs. Metzembaum. But don’t even try getting your tongue around that name, darlin’. You just call me Eva.”

  “And I’m Tehmina. Though most people call me Tammy.”

  “Oh, I know who you are. Know your son, too. Who I simply adore, let me tell you. Such a sweetheart. Just the other day I’m coming home from Costco’s weighed down by boxes and bags, wondering how I’m ever going to get them into the house. My Sol—that’s my husband, Solomon—is right in the garage, tinkering with his vintage Chevy, but you think he’s going to help his wife unload the car? Forget it.” Eva made a dismissive sound and then stared at Tehmina blankly. “Now why am I telling you all this? What was my point?”

  “You were mentioning knowing my son…” Tehmina said.

  Eva grinned. She had enormous teeth. “That’s right. I tell you, ever since menopause, my memory isn’t what it used to be. Either that or it’s the gin and tonics my Sol makes for me each evening. You like gin and tonic, Tammy? Whaddya mean, you’ve never had one? Why, I’d rather give up oxygen before I’d give up my gin and tonics. Tell you what, dear. When you come to our cards club next week, I’ll have my Sol prepare a pitcher or two for all the girls.”

  This woman goes from one topic to another the way the sun goes in and out of the clouds, Tehmina thought. “So you know my Sorab?” she asked cautiously, wanting to steer the conversation back to her son.

  “Sorab?” Eva pronounced it Sowrab. “Oh sure. He’s a mensch, I tell you. We live in that gray house down there, see?” Eva pointed to a large, modern house that, to Tehmina’s untrained eye, looked like every other house in the housing development. “And your Sorab and his little boy are taking an evening walk and he sees me struggling with the boxes. And next thing you know, he’s helping me haul my groceries in. Even your little grandson—it was so cute, Tammy—he takes a huge box that’s twice his size and staggers up my driveway with it.” Eva looked around her where the neighbors were gathered around the smoking barbecue grills. She lowered her voice. “Can you see any of these others being that helpful? No, they’d just keep walking, pretending to look the other way.” She beamed at Tehmina. “I asked your Sorab, you sure you aren’t a Jew? And he laughed and said he was just being neighborly, that’s all. A proper gentleman, your boy.”

  Tehmina was embarrassed and proud all at once. She decided she liked this big, good-natured woman very much. Anyone who was a fan of Sorab was a friend of hers.

  Rustom strolled up right then, holding a paper plate laden with food. “Darling, aren’t you going to eat?” he asked. “Shall I bring you a plate?”

  “Not yet,” Tehmina said. She turned back to face Eva. “This is my husband, Rustom,” she said. “Rustom, this is Eva.”

  Tehmina watched with fascination the flesh jiggling on Eva’s sleeveless arms as she vigorously shook hands with Rustom. “My hubby is around here somewhere,” Eva said. She waved her hand dismissively. “Not that you’ll see him. He’s probably hiding under the hood of a car, somewhere. Well, if you see a short little guy with grease spots on his hands, that’s my Solomon. Working on cars, that’s his passion.”

  Tehmina smiled uneasily, not sure of how to respond to Eva’s description of her husband. But Rustom appeared unfazed. “Does your husband do this for a living?”

  “Oh heavens, no. He used to own a small dealership, but he’s retired now. So he spends his time tinkering with his 1941 Chevy. Swear to God, he’d marry this car if it was legal. Suits me fine, though. Keeps him from getting underfoot, I always say.” Eva shot Tehmina a confidential look. “You know how it is, Tammy. Men are happy with objects—their cars, their lawn mowers, their boats. Whereas we women, we need—people.”

  Rustom raised his eyebrows. Bowing slightly before Eva, he drawled, “Well, excuse me, ladies. I can see you have a lot to talk about. As for me, I’m going to answer the call of my—hammers and cars.”

  Tehmina flushed, ready to explain her husband’s dry sense of humor to this warm, large woman. But to her relief, she saw that Eva was guffawing with laughter, shaking her head at Rustom’s receding back. “He’s a devil, that one is,” she said, all of her multiple chins dancing to the sound of her laughter. “I can tell. Bet he keeps you on your toes, Tammy.”

  Now, remembering that old conversation, Tehmina felt a rush of affection for her friend. Thank God Eva needed people. With Rustom gone, Tehmina more than ever needed to be around someone who loved people. Although she hated herself for thinking any ungenerous thoughts about Sorab and Susan, sometimes Tehmina felt as if both children had become so busy with their jobs and houses and cars that they had become slaves of their possessions. Tehmina remembered the old science-fiction cartoons they used to show before the feature film in Bombay when she was a kid. Many of them starred robots carrying out the wishes of their masters. But here in America, it seemed as if the opposite had happened—the humans had become the robots, carrying out the wishes of their mechanized gadgets.

  But then, what do you know? she chastised herself. When is the last time you got your Bombay apartment painted? Here, the children paint two rooms each summer. And look how Sorab maintains their cars—waxes them, cleans them, vacuums them. You are a ghaati from Bombay—who are you to judge them?

  But then a memory rose like sour milk inside Tehmina. A buffet at their house two weeks ago. Twelve guests and Tehmina had spent the whole day in the kitchen, making shrimp curry rice and sali boti. Maybe her hands shook because she was tired or maybe it was because she had had two glasses of wine, but for whatever reason, a few morsels of rice fell from her plate onto the living-room carpet as she sat on the couch with the plate perched on her lap. And Susan had gotten up immediately—Tehmina noticed her daughter-in-law’s lips thin and tight with disapproval—and brought out the portable vacuum cleaner. To Tehmina’s mortification, Susan had proceeded to vacuum the carpet around Tehmina’s feet. She had sat there, rooted to the couch with shame, not knowing where to place her feet, whether to get up or remain seated.

  Sorab had finally caught her discomfort. “Hey, Suse, that’s enough,” he’d said lightly. “I know that obsessive-compulsive disorder is going crazy today, but control yourself, hon.”

  Susan’s clenched retort was drowned out by Percy Soonawalla’s bark of laughter. Percy was an old childhood friend of Sorab’s who had virtually grown up in the Sethna household and was now a successful immigratio
n lawyer. “Arree, bossie, that’s what’s wrong with these interracial marriages, yaar,” he said, glancing at his fourth wife, Julie. “All these American women have the OCD gene. Whereas their good-for-nothing husbands from India have the bindaas gene.” He turned to his wife. “You know what bindaas means, honey? It means…devil-may-care, carefree…the way most Parsi men are.”

  Eva Metzembaum glanced at Tehmina as she put her tan Buick in reverse and slowly backed out of the driveway. “Oi, Tammy, had something bad to eat for breakfast this morning, did you? Why such a sourpuss face?”

  Tehmina shook her head. “No, sorry. Just thinking, that’s all.”

  “Well, if thinking makes your face ugly as a dried prune, better not to think, I say. Better to have a completely vacant mind, which is what my Sol says I have, anyway.”

  Tehmina grinned. Eva had a way of always cheering her up. “How is Solomon?” she asked.

  “Solomon? Oh, he’s fine. The old guy just keeps ticking away. Now that it’s too cold to work outdoors on his precious car, he’s moping around the house, reading his automotive magazines and getting in my hair. But come summer he won’t even know if I exist. I think a hundred years from now, when I’ve been reincarnated as a hamster or something—you Indian people believe in reincarnation, right?—they’ll find Solomon with his head still under the hood of his precious car.”

  “You know, Eva, a few years ago you would have shocked me. But now I know you too well. One day without Solomon and you’d be lost.”

  “Oh, I don’t dispute that,” Eva said. “Sol’s all right.” She smiled slyly. “The face of a beaver, maybe, but a good man.”

  “Tsshh. What crazy things you say.” Tehmina laughed.

  “Well, girlie? Ready for the farmers’ market? And then maybe if we have time we can stop at Target? What time is Cookie getting home from school?”

  Tehmina’s face fell. “School’s out,” she said. “But Susan didn’t want to leave him at home with me even during Christmas week. So she’s enrolled him in some special enrichment class.”

  “Oi. Enrichment class,” Eva said, clucking her tongue. “In my day, the only thing that was enriched was rice. But these parents today—not enough for them to raise happy and healthy children. No, the kid must dance like Fred Astaire and do math like Einstein.” She placed her heavy, wrinkled hand over Tehmina’s, covering it like a bowl. “It’s not just you and your daughter-in-law, Tammy. Same nonsense going on everywhere. Nobody thinks grandparents know enough to teach their grandkids anything. You take my son, David, and his wife in Florida. They treat their son as if he’s the Messiah.”

  “But that’s something I don’t understand, Eva,” Tehmina replied. “Why are the children in America so isolated? Look at our housing complex, for example. All these new and big houses but no sidewalks. How can they design these houses to the last degree—the high ceilings, the fancy bathtubs, and all that—and then forget to install sidewalks? I tell you, in Bombay even the poorest neighborhoods have sidewalks—and the fact that they are all broken and cracked and everybody spills out on the roads to walk is another story.”

  “Oh, I hear you, Tammy, I hear you,” Eva said. “Why, in my time, we children lived on the streets. Winter or summer, that’s where our life was, playing outdoors. Now take my grandson. Plays so many computer games, I tell him he’ll have stubs instead of thumbs by the time he’s fifteen. And if you ask him to go for a walk with you, he looks at you like you’ve asked him to rob a bank. Indignant.”

  It felt so good to be able to talk to someone like this and not be misunderstood. Susan and Sorab both got this pained, defensive expression on their faces if she said anything that they thought was critical of America. “And it’s so funny,” Tehmina continued. “Every house with young children here at Evergreen Estates has its own identical play set in the backyard—you know, the swing set, the slide, and all the rest of it. So why don’t all these parents get together and just buy one or two such sets and put it in a common compound? Then all these children can play with each other. I mean, my Cavas has a few other friends in the complex. But there are so many kids he never even sees. I don’t think he’s ever played with the kids next door.”

  Eva sighed dramatically. “If only you and I ran the world, Tammy. We’d take care of all the young uns, wouldn’t we? Me and my siblings, we were poor as New Jersey dirt, but I tell you—we had each other and we were happy. Not one kid in our old neighborhood we weren’t friends with. And if we did something wrong, God help us. Every woman on the street thought it was her God-given right to correct us. And if that meant a whack or two, well, no use complaining to your parents. They’d just say that you probably deserved it.”

  Tehmina smiled dreamily. “New Jersey sounds just like Bombay,” she said. She debated whether to recount to Eva the altercation with Tara a couple of days ago. But just then Eva asked, “So what do you think, honey? Shall we try to go to Target after the farmers’ market?”

  Tehmina didn’t have to think. “I’d love to,” she said. “Who knows? This may be my only chance to do some Christmas shopping for the children while they’re away.”

  Eva braked for a squirrel who darted across the street. “Christmas,” she said. “What’s the point of a holiday that just stresses people so? Tell me, have you ever seen a happy Christian on Christmas Day? The only cheerful ones are those religious nuts, and they’re so loony they don’t know any better than to be happy all the time. The rest of them, they’re running to their therapists the day after, and for what? So that they can lose their minds all over again in time for next December.”

  “In India, when I was a schoolgirl, we used to long to experience a real white Christmas.” Tehmina smiled. “You know, we’d see Christmas cards with lights and trees and snow. None of us had ever seen snow. We even put up a small tree at my school each year. But you know what we’d use to imitate snow? Cotton wool.”

  Eva snorted. “Yah, even here you have young Jewish kids running around wanting to be Jesus Christ and Mother Mary. Brainwashing is what it is, if you ask me.” Eva sighed. “Wish I could go someplace to get away from these mad Christians for a week. They spot a Jew from a mile away and they want to convert.”

  Tehmina laughed. “Eva, you’re all talk. Why, you must have more Christian friends than anyone I know.”

  “Did I ever say I didn’t? I got nothing against Christians. No, what I’m against is the hoopla that surrounds the holiday. I mean, you been inside a store recently? All those people foaming at the mouth as they run around buying up stuff. Do any of these people look happy? Are any of them thinking of Christ? No, I’ll tell you what they’re thinking of—they’re thinking of PlayStations and plasma TVs and surround-sound systems. That’s a religion?”

  “I know. I know, Eva. I think of the same thing. Susan and Sorab, they both work so hard. I mean, I see my son come home some nights and my heart just throbs with fear. I wonder, doesn’t Susan see how tired, how exhausted he looks? Doesn’t she care? And then I notice the same look on her face. And I ask myself, for what are they working so hard? Why can’t they buy a smaller house, with a smaller yard and all? Why does Sorab have to work such long hours?”

  “Because he got on the treadmill.” They entered the parking lot for the market and Eva cruised around slowly, trying to find a parking spot. “You know what a treadmill is, right? Okay, well, ever tried jumping off one of those things when it’s still moving? Very hard to do. No, the way to do it is to hit stop before you can step off. And in this country, nobody ever wants to hit that button.”

  Tehmina turned to Eva. “Eva, that’s my biggest fear. As you know, the children want me to stay here. Sorab, especially, is worried that with Rustom gone, there’s nobody in Bombay to care for me. We are a small family—not many cousins or uncles. And I well remember how lonely I was in the months after Rustom’s death.” She paused, willing herself to not remember the difficult days that had followed her husband’s funeral. “And yet…Bombay is my hom
e. Here, I am afraid that I will always be a stranger, that I will never get used to all these ways.”

  Eva eased into a space and put her car into park. But she didn’t turn off the engine. Instead, she eyed Tehmina assessingly. “Tammy,” she said at last. “You’re like family to me. So may I speak to you from the heart, the way I would to my sister Rose? What I want to say to you is, my God, Tammy, don’t be a fool. Your son and his wife want you here, so stay. And how can you call yourself a stranger here? A stranger is someone who comes to America, clicks a few pictures of the Statue of Liberty, rides the trolley in San Francisco, and then returns home thinking they know America—that’s a stranger. Whereas you and your late husband have been here so many times you know the price of milk at the grocery store. And if you lived here, I would teach you to drive. Your son can buy you your own car, so as you can be independent.”

  “Eva, it’s not that. It’s just that…in Bombay I am in my house, living my life. Two days a week I volunteer at Shanti Center, a home for orphaned children. I help my elderly neighbor with her grocery shopping once or twice a week. Every few weeks I meet up with my old friends. We’ve stayed in touch for over forty years, you know.” She leaned over and looked intently into Eva’s blue eyes. “See, there, in Bombay, I feel like a person—a person whose life has meaning, whose life follows a path. Here, despite all of Sorab’s efforts, I can’t help but feel like an ornament, a decoration. Sort of like a package that someone has dropped off at his door. I think—what I’m saying, Eva, is—I don’t feel needed here. Apart from the occasional worry, the children will be perfectly happy without me here.”

  Eva sighed. “It’s funny, life is so funny,” she said almost under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. I was just thinking…if my David and his wife were to ask us to move closer to them, I would fit my whole house into a suitcase and move the next day. But they are so busy raising their little pampered son—private school, music lessons, day camp for the gifted—who has the time or energy to spend with their parents? You’re lucky, Tammy, that your son wants you to stay close to him.”