If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar

  She rolled over to face him and he noticed the crust around her still-sleepy eyes. “I feel happy this morning.”

  He laughed for the sheer joy of it and then, to cover it up, “Amazing what a couple of glasses of good wine do for my girl.”

  “Hey. I never claimed to be anything but easy. I’m a cheap date, you know that.”

  “Yeah, right. In that case, can I return the subwoofer that I just got installed in your car?”

  Susan smiled gently. “Sure you can, hon. And then you live without sex the rest of your life.”

  “Speaking of which…” He made a quick calculation even as he was pulling Susan’s body toward his. There was time to make love and still be at work by eight. His hands felt for the hem of her nightie and he cupped her buttocks after rolling it past her waist.

  “Whoa, easy, cowboy,” Susan said, but she was straining against him, too.

  He undid the drawstrings of his pajamas hastily as he kissed her fervently, his tongue nestling deep in her mouth, which tasted of sleep and salt. Yet even as he climbed on top of her, even as he lost himself in the welcome of her body, one part of Sorab was alert, distracted. He was acutely aware of the fact that his mother was a mere few feet away from him while he was fucking his wife. He smothered Susan’s mouth with kisses knowing that he was doing this in part to suppress her low but unmistakable moaning; even as Susan’s frantic, incomprehensible whispers flooded his ears, even as a cruel, inexorable power flooded his body, he was listening for the sounds of his mother’s footsteps as she left the bathroom. He heard her enter her room, place her brush and powder box on the dresser that was against the wall between their two bedrooms. He paced the rhythm of his thrusting so that the bed didn’t squeak and sing out its painful, unmistakable beat. There was a hot, confusing pleasure in being this silent and it turned him on even while he resented the hell out of having to be this furtive. He heard the crash of something fall in the other room, but then it didn’t matter because he was crashing himself, his whole body felt like a powerful wave crashing against the rocky shore. He bit down on his lip to prevent the groans that wanted to leak out of his mouth and at the same time he was excruciatingly aware of the fact that Susan had not exercised the same self-discipline, that she was moaning under him. He forced the side of his hand into her mouth and she bit down on it hard, the pain making him wince.

  “Well,” Susan said a few minutes later. She was leaning on her elbow, her hand under her golden hair. “That was some good-morning greeting.”

  He kissed the inside of her elbow. “I’d like to exchange good-morning greetings every morning,” he said.

  Her eyes were the color of amber. “I bet you would.” She slapped him lightly on his arm. “If you’re not up in thirty seconds, I’m going to beat you to the bathroom.”

  “I’m going, I’m going,” he grumbled. He threw the covers off and leaped out of bed. Standing up over the bed, he glanced back at his sleepy wife. “Just wham, bam, thank you, man,” he sniffed. “That’s how all you women are—only after our bodies. I feel so—used.”

  Susan’s soft laughter followed him out of the room.

  They had had the upstairs bathroom remodeled earlier this year, and standing under the hot, rushing water, Sorab experienced that deep feeling of satisfaction that he felt each morning as his eyes wandered over the rich marble wall tile, the expensive pewter fixtures, the Jacuzzi tub. It had taken him many years to accept the fact that he enjoyed the good things in life. During his early days in America, he had been haunted by the sudden wealth that engulfed him. Even when he was a poor graduate student, he was aware of the fact that he enjoyed a standard of living that in some ways was higher than that of his parents. This despite the fact that Rustom had always earned a good living and Sorab had never known a day of hardship or destitution. But the simple act of turning on a faucet and having hot water flow from it—so much more convenient than having to fill a plastic bucket with hot water from the electric geyser and then pour that over himself with a large metal can—was something he could never take for granted. In the early days, he used to walk the streets around campus, marveling at the fact that he could drink three Pepsis a day and not think about the cost; amazed at the fact that he could buy a used Chevy eight months after arriving in America; guilt-ridden by the fact that filling the tank cost him a fraction of what it cost his father in India.

  For years, visiting India had been hard on him. The beggars on the streets, the servants in the house, the unpainted, neglected walls of his parents’ apartment, the persistent dust that sat on all their possessions despite daily cleanings, all mortified him. He felt guilty about everything—the fact that his father still drove his old car that didn’t even have power steering; the fact that his mother sat in terrible traffic jams when she went out grocery shopping; the fact that his old servant looked older and thinner each time; the fact that men three times his age called him “sir” as they begged for money. He wanted to apologize for the relentless pounding of the monsoons, the cruel fury of the sun, the garbage on the streets, the emaciated stray dogs outside their apartment building, the blaring of the traffic horns, the murky grayness of the polluted sea. After all, he had escaped it all—and they hadn’t. While he lived in an apartment building where the electricity never failed, and took showers under reliably hot water and breathed air that was crystal clear and sweet, while he drank Pepsi whenever the urge hit him and withdrew money from an ATM machine whenever he needed to, millions of people—including his own mother and father—lived trapped in a hot, polluted, overcrowded, poverty-stricken, crumbling city where the only reliable thing was chaos and unpredictability. And the worst part was, as a grad student, he didn’t really have enough extra money to help any of them.

  He had changed, Sorab now reflected. The sting of newness, the delight of exploration, had worn off now. Every car that he had bought since the Chevy had been more expensive, more loaded with gadgets. And now he allowed himself to enjoy things that wealth bought. He had Susan to thank for that. Her American sense of entitlement—but maybe that was too uncharitable, maybe it was her American sense of optimism, of ease with the finer things in life—had finally rubbed off on him. He now enjoyed what he had. He told himself repeatedly that he worked bloody hard for what was his—nothing had been given to him. He reminded himself that he had come to this country with $600 in his pocket. Everything that he owned, everything—car, stereo, couch, dishes, house—he had had to earn.

  Sorab ran his fingers gently over the marble tile. He loved its damp coolness, the sensual smoothness, so much like touching the white softness of the inside of Susan’s thigh. You’ll have to take a cold shower if this line of thought continues, he grinned to himself. Instead, he turned the water to a higher temperature until it was scalding hot and adjusted the shower massager until it was pulsating on that sore spot on his upper back. Soaping himself, he eyed the extra flab on his belly distastefully. Saala, I need to get back to the gym, he told himself. For a moment he thought with nostalgia of the lean, trim lad he had been when he came to America at twenty-one. For years—despite a diet of Pepsi and Big Macs during his first two years as a graduate student—he had fought off the American curse of obesity. In the early days of his relationship with Susan, she would often comment on the prominence of his cheekbones and how his sunken cheeks drew attention to his dark, fiery eyes. During their lovemaking, she would trace the hollow of his chest bones, run her hands down his tight, firm belly. I’m going to have to fatten you up, she’d whisper, but her admiring glance belied her words.

  Sorab pinched the extra flab on his belly, holding it between his thumb and index finger. Twenty pounds, he said to himself, though I’d settle for losing even fifteen. And no more overeating during this holiday season. All these parties and the cookies and stuff everybody’s bringing to the office are killing me. And I’m joining the gym first thing in January. But even while he made his resolution he thought of how difficult it would be to stick to it
. Having Mamma here was like suddenly having a second child that he was responsible for. Each evening he came home and felt compelled to spend time with her, knowing that she’d been alone at home all day, knowing how pale and dull and lonely his suburban life must feel to her, compared to the colorful, busy, active, people-filled life she led in Bombay. Here, with the windows shut for the winter, the house felt as sealed and silent as a tomb. There, the open balcony allowed the sounds of the bustling city—the sounds of life, it suddenly seemed to Sorab—the piercing, nasal cries of the fruit vendors, the wailing of children, the dry wheezing of the BEST buses, the incessant blaring of horns—to penetrate into the apartment. There, the doorbell rang at least fifty times a day as the newspaper boy and the butcher and the doodhwalla and the servants and the neighbors and the friends who happened to be in the neighborhood stopped by. Here, she could go an entire week without answering the door. Thank God for Eva Metzembaum, Sorab thought. At least she gets Mamma out of the house a couple of times a week.

  He thought with sudden dread of the long, cold, hard winter months that awaited her. For now, there was the excitement of the holidays, the constant trips to the mall, the planning of menus, the whirl of parties. Even the weather had been unusually warm for December. Why, they had actually had a couple of days where the sky was blue instead of the pewter noncolor that Sorab always described as Ohio gray. But what would Mamma do all alone during the winter months? He could encourage her to take some classes at the Community Center, maybe, but then there was the question of transportation. Fucking Rosemont Heights, Sorab thought. All these taxes and not even a decent public transportation system.

  He stepped out of the tub and found that he was shaking despite the steamy hotness of the room. He reached hastily for the towel, thinking he was cold, when he suddenly recognized the source of his trembling. He was scared. Scared of the future that awaited him—that awaited all of them. This situation with Mamma is an awful gamble, he thought. What if she hates it here? What if she can’t stand the coldness of this place—not just the winter cold but the coldness of a life not filled with noise and color and crowds and bustle? His life here was like a pastoral painting compared to the tumultuous cityscape of her life. He himself had come to appreciate—to even love—the solitude, the bleakness of the winter landscape. But would she?

  He was asking her for so much. To give up her hometown, her friends, an apartment filled with a thousand happy memories, a city whose very existence throbbed in her blood, whose mad, manic rhythm was the beat of her heart. And in exchange for what? In exchange for—himself. And to some extent, her grandson. Sorab suddenly saw the pomposity of his offer. What did he really have to offer her except the harbor of family? Of being close to the one person whom she loved more than life itself? Was that plenty? Was that enough? He felt small, inadequate to the task. The magnitude of what he was doing, what he was asking her for, hit him hard. He stood in the middle of the bathroom rubbing the towel vigorously across his back and chest, trying to rub something warm and life-affirming into his suddenly cold muscles. But nothing was erasing the icy pit that was forming in the middle of his stomach.

  It had seemed so clear in the days after his father had died. He had stayed in Bombay for six weeks (thank God good old Malcolm was still at the company then; Grace would’ve demanded that he return superditiously fast immediately after the funeral), meeting with the lawyers and accountants, taking care of all of his father’s papers. Mamma was like a zombie during those days, taking her orders from him, deferring to him on every major financial decision, walking around in a haze of shock and grief. This is impossible, she kept repeating. Rustom can’t be dead. There has been a mistake.

  The first time he’d suggested that she move permanently to America, it was simply a gesture of kindness, his words building a rope to pull her out of the swampy waters of grief that she was drowning in. You’re not going to live here by yourself, Mamma, he had said firmly, playing the role of the responsible son, the new head of the household. You’re going to move in with us. Just settle all of Daddy’s affairs and then come live with us in Ohio. But instead of his words rescuing her from her sorrow, they became the rope that rescued him from his bewilderment and helplessness and guilt. The offer became his way out, the way he could escape the oppressiveness of his mother’s bereavement, the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen her. It helped him leave that apartment that loomed so large in his memory, helped him reduce to a manageable size his own choking grief over the death of a father he had adored, and find the courage to board the plane that took him back to his real life. Be brave. I’ll see you in America in just a few months, he’d said to his mother at the airport, and was rewarded by the hopeful light that flared briefly in her dull eyes.

  He remembered something else now: the note he had given her on the way to the airport. The previous night, his last night in Bombay, he had been sitting on the balcony listening to the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” on his iPod and on an impulse had scribbled down one of the verses on a piece of paper. He had always loved that song, had even sung it at his high school talent show, and now he found himself sitting on the rocking chair on the balcony, tears streaming down his cheeks. Limitless, undying love, he whispered to himself, holding on to the line as if it were a rosary, and then he was thinking of his father and leaving home when he was twenty-one for reasons that were unclear to him even now, and the years he’d spent away, the years he could’ve spent instead enjoying his father’s company, going for walks with him, laughing at his jokes, watching the same sunsets, a million ordinary moments in Rustom’s company that he had forfeited in order to have America. And it was all gone now, the opportunity, the dream, the possibility, the restoration. It was over. His father was dead and a door had shut. But then he thought: But that’s the magic of John Lennon’s words, their sheer generosity. This is a limitless, undying love that does not confine, that does not imprison or hold back, but that dances ahead of you like a shimmering sprite, that entices, that beckons you until you follow, all the way across the universe. This was a different kind of love from Parsi love, from Indian love, which believed in hoarding, in gathering close, in not letting go. Though truth to tell, his parents had been grand, hadn’t they? It was only now, now that he had Cookie, now that he knew the possessiveness of fatherly love, that he could appreciate the enormity of their sacrifice, how his ambition must have felt like a knife in their hearts. And still they had smiled and still they had said yes. Yes to him, to his dreams, to his future, even if it meant destroying their own dreams of their future.

  Sorab wiped the tears from his face. He looked at the words he’d written, and they so perfectly reflected what he was thinking and feeling that for a moment he felt as though he’d composed those lines himself. This is what Mamma needed to do. Only he was capable of giving her this, now that her husband was gone, this limitless love. It was up to him to make her hear the siren call of these lyrics, to convince her that she needed to follow him across the universe.

  He gave the handwritten lyrics to his mother the next day, without a word of explanation. “Come see us soon,” he whispered to her at the airport before walking away to where the plane waited. He spent the long ride back home plotting how to break the news of his preposterous offer to Susan. He expected her to resist, braced himself for being chastised for his arrogance, his selfishness, to have undertaken such a huge step without consulting with his wife. But when, two days after his return, he had stammered out what he’d told his mother, Susan had looked at him with bemusement. “I know,” she said.

  “Know what?”

  “That you offered for her to come live with us.”

  He was stunned. “How could you know? I barely knew what I was saying until the words were out of my mouth. And once I’d said them, it seemed like it was the logical—no, the only—thing to do.”

  Susan smiled. “My dear Sorab. I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “What the hell does t
hat mean?” He paused. “So, are you really mad?”

  “Mad? No, not at all. It’s the right thing to do. She’s what? Sixty-five? Sixty-six? There’s no way she can live in that apartment by herself. She probably doesn’t even know how to pay the electric bill. You know how Dad did everything. And you will go out of your mind with worry every time she has a cold or a stomachache. No, of course she has to move here.”

  He stared at her with tears in his eyes. He felt suddenly humbled. “I…I was so sure…”

  “Sorab,” Susan said softly. “It’s okay, hon. I love Mom, too, you know. And she’s so easy to be around, thank heavens. It’ll be okay. Besides, it’s what your father would’ve wanted.”

  God, we were both so bloody pious then, Sorab now thought. But then what did we know? No way to have known how much easier it was to have them here when Dad was around. How much he did to lighten the mood at home, how much easier it was to manage Mamma with him in the picture. And what a difference between having them visit for a few weeks in the summer as opposed to having Mamma here for six months during the winter months, when the dark and cold conspired to keep them at home. He had heard Susan snap at Mamma a few times in the past month alone, and had to bite down on his tongue, remind himself of the pressures on his wife. Maybe Susan was right about her insistence about moving into a bigger home if Mamma agreed to stay. But the truth of the matter was, the thought of a bigger mortgage made him nervous. The skirmish with Grace over his vacation schedule, her numerous insinuations about his work performance, were making him feel vulnerable about his job. The woman was so unpredictable, so irrational, that he wouldn’t put it past her to fire him. And despite Susan’s unflagging confidence in him, he was not sure that he could land another job quickly enough. The economy was pretty lousy and the newspapers were filled with stories of former vice presidents and managers accepting jobs at half of their former salaries. And truth to tell, he felt sluggish and flabby these days. He didn’t have the snap and the zip that had made him a marketing legend at twenty-six. Grace’s caustic comments, her disparaging looks, had destroyed something in him, and the situation at home was not helping either.