If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar

  “Here’s something I’ve never told you children before,” Tehmina now said. “Do you know that until I got married my mamma used to spoon-feed me? I was a very fussy eater, you see, and so Mamma would coax me to eat. Even to the extent of feeding me herself.”

  Sorab snorted. “Hah. How’s that for being spoiled?”

  Susan shook her head. “That’s weird,” she said. “You Parsis are just weird.” And mother and son exchanged a grin in the rearview mirror.

  Susan turned in her seat. “How come you didn’t raise your son like that? How come you taught Sorab how to cook and clean and do all the things none of his Indian male friends would dream of doing?”

  “That was his father’s doing,” came the immediate reply. “I’m afraid I can’t take any of the credit for that. That’s how my Rustom was raised, you know, and he insisted that his son be able to look after himself. Possibly the only fights we ever had were about this issue.”

  “Well, then I wish you’d won those fights.” Sorab laughed. “Would’ve made my life a lot easier.”

  Susan punched her husband’s arm affectionately. “Oh no you don’t.”

  They were silent for a moment as the car flew smoothly down the freeway. Tehmina spoke into the dark. “I saw him last night. I mean…I dreamed of him last night.”

  Even in the dark, even with the stereo on, she sensed the sudden tension in the car. She immediately noticed that Sorab didn’t ask her to go on, didn’t ask her to describe the dream. It is as if Rustom has been banned from our lives, she thought. Each time I mention his name, it’s as if I’ve broken some social rule, as if I’m smoking a cigarette in a nonsmoking restaurant. Does everything in this country have an expiration date? she wondered. Even grief and mourning?

  She had thought that Cookie had dozed off, but now he shifted beside her. “I want to buy a Christmas present for Grandpa,” he announced. “To put under the tree.”

  Sorab cleared his throat. “Grandpa’s in heaven, sonny,” he said, as if he was explaining this to his son for the first time. “He can’t receive presents.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll come down the chimney with Santa,” Cookie replied. “I can write to Santa and tell him to bring Grandpa.”

  There was a brief pause and then Susan said, “That’s a great idea. But let’s buy him something small so that it can fit in the chimney, okay?” She half turned toward Tehmina. “What do you think, Mom? Think Rustom pappa would like some candy?”

  Tehmina blinked back the tears that formed in her eyes at hearing Rustom’s name on Susan’s lips. “That…that would be lovely. Rustom always had a sweet tooth. We all do.”

  “And I want to buy something for Joshy,” Cookie said. He was on a roll now.

  Tehmina felt her heart bursting with pride. Cookie reminded her so much of Sorab as a boy—generous, sensitive, quick to spot the pain in others. She put her arm around the boy and gave his head a silent kiss.

  “We’re not buying gifts for Joshy, son,” Sorab said in a flat voice. “We don’t exchange gifts with our neighbors.”

  “But he said he was only going to get a lump of coal for Christmas,” the boy whined. “You heard him.”

  “Oh great,” Susan muttered under her breath.

  “That’s just a figure of speech, hon,” Sorab said. “His mom was just kidding him. Nobody really gets a lump of coal for Christmas.”

  “Yes they do.” Cavas was triumphant. “The little boy in A Tale of Two Christmases. He was mean to the family dog and he got a lump of coal in his stocking.”

  Sorab pulled into the crowded parking lot of the mall and began searching for a space. “That’s just a story,” he said. “Anyway, we’re not buying a gift for Joshy.” He pulled into a space far from the Sears entrance.

  “But he’s my friend,” Cavas blubbered as they walked toward the mall. “And I have fifteen dollars saved up.”

  Tehmina could see Sorab getting exasperated. She grabbed the boy’s hand and held him back. “You two walk ahead,” she said. “Cookie and I will follow. Go on, go ahead.”

  Susan shot her a grateful glance as she took her husband’s hand. As the couple walked ahead, Tehmina bent toward her grandson. She knew what she was about to do was wrong, but she couldn’t help herself. Before Cookie had spoken up, she herself had decided to buy the two neighbor boys a small gift each. Despite Sorab’s reassurances, she was not at all convinced that that Tara was above giving her sons a lump of coal for Christmas. Any woman who could leave her children with that monster of a man was capable of anything. It was one of nature’s tricks that a woman like that could give birth to two innocent, beautiful children. There was no way she was leaving the mall tonight without buying something for them. Susan and Sorab could shop on their own for a while. She would take Cavas with her and then meet up with the other two in an hour or so. Besides, she needed to find a gift for Susan’s dad, anyway.

  They stepped out of the cold and into the heated comfort of the building and immediately heard the familiar tinny music of the carousel that competed with the piped Christmas music playing throughout the mall. “Listen,” Tehmina said to Susan and Sorab. “How about I take Cookie shopping with me for a while? That way, you two don’t get dragged down by me. I’m moving slow, today.”

  Susan jumped at the offer. “You sure, Mom? All right, how about we meet here in the food court in about an hour? Does that give you enough time?”

  She reached for Sorab’s hand, but he hesitated. “Call us on the cell if you get lost or anything,” he said, and Tehmina laughed.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. I know my way around this mall. You children go enjoy yourselves.”

  She watched as Sorab and Susan walked away. Then she turned to face her grandson. “Cookie,” she said, bending toward the boy and lowering her voice. “Are you good at keeping a secret?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  For God’s sake, man, you’re turning into a fucking woman, Sorab chided himself. Get a grip on your bloody emotions.

  Ever since his father’s death, Sorab had noticed this disconcerting trend—he could cry at the drop of a hat. Now, surrounded by thousands of strangers busy pursuing their own private happiness in the shape of DVD players and iPods, he was even more conscious of his runaway emotions and his growing inability to control them.

  The object of Sorab’s latest emotional upheaval: the sight of his son and mother sitting in the food court of the mall, sharing an order of french fries as they waited for Susan and him. Something about the angle of both their heads leaning in toward each other—one gray with the weight of the years, the other head brown and shining with the tinsel of endless opportunity—something about this sight brought the all-too-familiar sting of tears to his eyes. Susan was by his side, as laden with last-minute gifts as he was, and he wondered if she had noticed anything different about him, this worrying softness that grew within him, like a loaf of moist white bread that rose alarmingly each day. They had a name for men like that in Bombay. Milquetoast. Yah, he was turning into a bloody milquetoast.

  “You okay, hon?” Susan asked, and as always he was irritated and thankful for her amazing ability to read him, to know every eyelash-thin shift within him.

  “Yup, fine,” he responded gruffly, but then, just like a friggin’ woman, as if he had no control over his mouth, he heard himself say, “Look at them sitting there. As if they were the only two people on earth. Don’t they look beautiful?”

  Beautiful? No red-blooded American man would ever be caught saying “beautiful.” That’s how Parsi men—and that, too, Parsi men of his father’s generation—talked. What the fuck was happening to him?

  “They do,” Susan said, and try as he did, he couldn’t hear anything ironic or mocking in her tone. She sighed heavily. “Having Mom here has been so good for Cookie and,” she added softly, “for you.”

  He tensed. “How do you mean? For me?”

  Susan shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t explain. It’s just that—I thin
k you need your family around you. And—you just seem—I don’t know, not as much in a hurry as before, maybe? Just softer.”

  There you go, Sorab thought. Softer. That dreaded word. Even his wife would soon be calling him Doughboy. No wonder Grace had all but said she was going to bypass him for the next promotion. He was probably leaking his emotions all over the fucking place like some incontinent old woman, and all of them were too bloody polite to point it out to him.

  Suddenly Susan was laughing. “What’s so funny?” he started to ask, and she shook her head, still spluttering with laughter. “You. You’re what’s so funny. Good God, darling, you should see your face. Listen, I have news for you. When women say a man is softer, they mean it as a compliment. Though I’ve yet to meet a man who thinks of it that way.”

  “Well,” he whispered, his voice husky. “As long as you’re not referring to my you-know-what as being soft.”

  Susan laughed again. “No, I’m not, you idiot. I’m referring to here,” and she tapped his heart with her index finger, “though I should probably also refer to up here,” as she tapped his head. “But you men—you hear the word soft and that’s all you can think of.”

  He shifted the bags he was carrying into his right hand and linked his free hand with hers. “When I first came to this country,” he said, “I used to have these dreams. I would dream that the doorbell in my apartment would ring and I’d answer the door and my parents would be there. And I’d think to myself, ‘You bloody idiot, see how easy it is for you to see them, all you have to do is answer the door.’ But then I’d wake up and realize it was only a dream, that they were actually thousands of miles away, and I’d feel this awful, oppressive feeling. All the lightness of the dream, the ease of possibility, would get wiped out the minute I woke up. Know what I mean? I used to dread those dreams, and God, there were a million variations of them. Like someone would be calling my name from below the window and I’d go to answer and it would be my dad, asking to be let in.” He stopped abruptly. “Why am I telling you all this right now?”

  “Because it’s important to you. Go on.” Although they were just a few yards away from where Tehmina and Cavas sat with their backs to them, they had stopped walking. Susan motioned to an empty table at the edge of the food court and sat down. For a second, Sorab hesitated, caught between not wanting to leave his mother alone much longer but also enjoying this rare opportunity to talk to Susan alone. He sat down.

  “So, anyway. For years and years I felt like a man divided. And try as I might, I couldn’t bridge the damn distance. And it wasn’t all bad, I’m not saying that. In fact, you know, I think this hunger that I had earlier on, this drive to succeed, maybe it was part of that same hunger. I mean, I’d paid such a high price to come here—I’d left behind a comfortable home, a familiar city, friends and parents who adored me—that I had to make it all worth it, had to justify that sacrifice. So I was a young man in a hurry, I guess.”

  “Boy, were you ever.” Susan smiled and the look in her eyes told Sorab that she was remembering his determined, relentless courtship of her. Although Susan had been in some of his classes, he had not really noticed her until the night of a party at the home of another graduate student. They had both been a little drunk that night, and when the conversation turned to politics they had locked horns in a fiery, impassioned exchange—Susan had been a Republican in those days, a fact that Sorab could not square with the intelligent, sensitive woman in front of him—that ultimately cleared the room as the others left out of boredom or exhaustion. So it was only the two of them left standing, and still they argued at two A.M on the streets of a frigid Ohio as Sorab walked Susan home and up the two flights to her apartment. Then they called a truce long enough to make passionate love, which somehow seemed an extension of their violent arguing. When they woke up the next morning, Sorab was smitten by this exasperatingly intelligent and beautiful girl, but Susan declared that she was bewildered by her behavior, and while the sex was lovely, thank you very much, there was no way she could date a die-hard liberal. It had taken him four long months to change her mind.

  Susan squeezed his hand. “Those were good days, huh, babe? But you know what, hon? I’m glad you’re no longer in such an awful hurry. I like to think I’ll have you around in my old age.”

  He squeezed back. “It’s thanks to you, really. If you hadn’t married me and given me Cookie, I don’t know what would have happened to me. Honest.” He paused for a second. “Do you know the first time in my whole life that I truly felt at peace? I’m talking about contentment now, not passion or joy. I mean, I was thrilled when you finally married me. As for the day Cookie was born and I held him for the first time—that was like tasting heaven. But just good, old-fashioned peace? It was during Dad and Mom’s visit after Cookie was born. Having my new son and my old parents in the same house, under the same roof—I can’t describe that feeling to you. It was like they represented the past and you and Cookie the future, you know? I felt whole, like someone had stitched me back up. I used to think, anything could happen now—a tornado, a war, a bomb could go off. But we would all be together.” He grimaced. “Sorry. You know I always get corny this time of the year.”

  Susan gave him that shy, rueful look that could still make his heart do a backflip. “It’s what I love about you. All you Parsi men with your sentimental streak. I just wish some of your ways would rub off on Bobby. He’s a grown man and still believes in all that macho American-male bullshit.” Bobby was Susan’s older brother and the most taciturn of men. In all the years that Sorab had known Susan’s family, Bobby had probably said twenty words to him. Bobby’s silent persona was a running joke in the family, what Susan called Bobby’s lifelong Clint Eastwood impersonation.

  “Well, at least I come by it honestly. I remember, as a kid I used to be so shocked—here was my dad, you know, this big, muscular guy, and we’d be watching some god-awful Bollywood melodrama on television and he’d be openly sobbing. Even Mummy—and you know what a softy she is—even she would look scandalized at how unself-consciously he would cry during a movie. I was always so embarrassed I never dared have a friend over when we were watching TV.”

  “That’s because he was truly a man,” Susan said fiercely, and Sorab realized with wonder that she was defending Rustom against what she thought was Sorab’s criticism of him. “He was a real man—so comfortable within his skin.”

  He opened his mouth to protest, to explain that he agreed with her, that he was only being half-serious in describing his embarrassment at his father’s easy tears, when he realized that he was not sure. Some part of him was still uneasy at the thought of his tall, powerful father dissolving into tears at the cheap histrionics of a Hindi film. Some part of him admired Bobby for his strong-and-silent persona because it conformed to his adolescent beliefs of how a real man should conduct himself. Some part of him despised his soft, middle-class Indian upbringing, where aunts and uncles were always hugging and kissing him or pulling his cheeks and telling him what a good boy he was. Perhaps it was one of the reasons he had fled India for America, so that he could leave behind the doughy softness of childhood and harden into a man. And America had been good for him—it had toughened him up, made him competitive, independent, eager to get ahead, single-minded in his pursuit of success. It had unleashed something in him. Whereas in India people were always telling him not to appear to be too ambitious, too hungry, here in America that ambition and hunger were revered, encouraged, and rewarded. When he had first arrived in graduate school he felt as if someone had let him out of a cardboard box so large that he had never even known that all his life he had been curled up inside this box, biding his time. Here he could be as competitive, as aggressive, as loud, as greedy, as expansive as he wanted. Here he could reach for the stars and nobody told him to be careful, that pride always comes before a fall, no old grandparent told him the cautionary tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun and getting burned. Here was a sky-is-the-limit country of tow
ering ambition and large dreams, a fabled country that believed in dreams, that was itself a kind of dream. And it fit Sorab like a glove. Like a friggin’ glove. It was as if the country had been designed with him in mind, him and the millions of other restless souls who were misfits in the land of their birth and who arrived at America’s shores brimming with energy, bursting at the seams with pent-up ambition so combustible it felt like violence. And for him (unlike many others), for him, it all worked out. It was all going well, all following a plan—a smart, beautiful wife, a gorgeous, intelligent son, a big house in the suburbs, two imported cars in the garage, a series of jobs where he had always outperformed everyone else. But then his father had to die and that milky, sappy streak of sentimentality that had always flowed within Rustom had leaked its way into his son.

  “Earth to Sorab,” Susan was saying, and he jumped guiltily. “Sorry. Just lost in my thoughts.”

  “No kidding.” Susan grinned. “Well, hon? Shall we go join the others? I can’t wait to see how much money Mom has spent buying yet more gifts for her precious grandson.”

  “Yeah, sure. I’m just surprised Cookie hasn’t spotted us yet.” Still, he lingered. “Hey, Suse. I just wanna say, y’know, thank you for loving me so much. Honest. Without you, I don’t know what—”

  “You’re welcome,” Susan said softly. “And by the way, you’re pretty easy to love.” She rose from her chair and Sorab could hear the grin in her voice. “Also, I gotta keep my man happy, you know? Otherwise, you’ll be like Percy, on your fourth American wife.”

  He groaned. “I just hope the poor bastard stays married this time. What an optimist Percy is, bless him. I can’t imagine getting married twice, let alone four times.”

  “You said he’s coming to Perin’s party tomorrow night, right?” Susan asked.