He reached a hand along my neck and slipped it tenderly into my hair, pulling my face toward his. Within moments I was kissing him so passionately that I even surprised myself. As if winning a similar intensity from him might make up for the ridiculousness of my outburst, I persevered. And it worked. Thankfully for my ego, he seemed to think this was fun, and we spent the better part of the next half hour leaning against the stone facade of my building, sucking face like a couple of teenagers racing against a curfew. At one point, he pulled away and smiled at me, semibreathless and covered from chin to nose in traces of my lipstick to ask, “Wow. Do all the girls from Long Island kiss like that?”
“I don’t know,” I blurted without thinking, high on his pheromones and cocky at my face-sucking prowess. “I don’t kiss that many of them.”
Wait a minute. Did I just imply that I did kiss some of them? Thank God for men who knew when to shut me up with a kiss. Because for the first time I wasn’t thinking about anything other than that moment.
34
I pulled the comforter tight around my body to savor the clash of the warmth with the crisp October morning chill sneaking in through the edges of the windows. Rolling onto the half of the bed that Nick recently left behind, I took a deep breath of something that had started to become so familiar. It was the scent of the pancakes cooking in the kitchen. Chocolate-chip pancakes, to be specific, since it wasn’t hard to detect a hint of burned chocolate wafting through the air. There were no chips in the fridge the night before, so the sweetie-pie must have snuck out early to get them before I woke up. On our fourth date, he brought along four roses and asked if we could see each other exclusively. On our three-month anniversary he told me that the only thing he would be willing to accept as a gift was something I wrote just for him, because my heart would be contained inside it far more than it could ever be in anyother object. And when the tears streaked down my face as I explained that it would be difficult for me to let him into my heart after having been hurt so deeply before, he listened quietly and literally kissed them off of my cheeks.
Dropping my head back onto the pillow, I gazed in the general direction of the kitchen, and I smiled. Exposing myself had been the right move this time, no matter what happened next. He would never know how much he had healed me. Right about then, my cell phone rang….
“Heeeeeeeey. Are you as hung over as I am?” Cristina asked in a hushed voice.
“Nobody is as hung over as you are,” I told her. “But we did have an early night. We didn’t drink much after the restaurant. By the way, your new boyfriend’s amazing.”
“Francois is not my boyfriend.”
“Does he know that? Considering the way he was nibbling on your elbow last night…”
“I kicked him out an hour ago. I swear, I spent all night listening to him talk, and I didn’t hear anything I hadn’t heard before, you know?”
“Yeah, yeah.” I swallowed to stop my mouth from watering at the scent of the pancakes.
“Isn’t Nick annoying like that? Aren’t you bored of him?”
“Not really. Maybe he’s blinding me with food and sex. Either way, I’m still interested.”
“You’re such a married couple,” she complained.
“I am not a married couple,” I said a little too loud, and then smiled at the sight of the framed diploma that always reminded me of the first time I woke up in Nick’s apartment. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I’m sniffing all the milk in my fridge to see if there’s anything that hasn’t gone bad yet, so I can have some coffee. How about you? Do you want to get brunch?”
“I literally just woke up. I’m still in bed,” I answered, piling one pillow on top of the other behind me. “And Nick’s making chocolate-chip pancakes, I think.”
“Okay. I’m hanging up.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I know.” I heard her roll her eyes. “You’re a lucky woman.”
“And he’s a lucky man.”
“And he knows it. Talk about nibbling on my elbow. Nick still doesn’t seem to notice that there are other women in the room. My prediction? He’ll propose within a year.”
“Whoa there, trigger-happy! I don’t know about all that. I’m happy with him, but…”
“But what, chica? I don’t know what to tell you. You’ve got your life back. You’ve got a wonderful new man. And he makes friggin’ chocolate-chip pancakes for you, even after he saw you in that hideous dress last night.”
“Hey!”
“Look, I told you that brown is not your color. It was almost as bad as what we had to wear to Chris’s wedding. And if I’m not honest with you, who will be? Anyway, where else are you going to find a guy who’s so superficially pleasing, but so not superficial? It’s an elusive balance.”
“I know, I know.”
If meeting most women’s parents is the emotional equivalent of taking the SAT (no matter how much you’ve prepared, you’ll never know all the answers, so you just thank God that they’re judging on a curve), then meeting my parents is the equivalent of the MCAT tailored for trilingual engineers. No one ever passes.
Meeting most men’s parents, on the other hand, has been a piece of cake for me. And I’ve come to pride myself on it, since, aside from being able to limbo far lower than is natural or necessary, there are few things that I can do better than most other women. Christopher thought the fact that I could sense and tell each parent exactly what they wanted to hear made me an emotional prostitute. I thought the fact that he was traditionally attracted to men on the rebound made him emotional toilet paper.
Maybe the former girlfriends of my former boyfriends had been such disasters that the parents were simply grateful I wasn’t sporting track marks. Or maybe my boyfriends were so bland that the time I spent with them, before meeting their parents, left me starving for the adult conversation. Whatever the reason, I would often delay breakups for fear of losing my rapport with the’ rents. I worked well in an artificial environment—the meetings were always planned weeks ahead, everybody knew everybody else’s allergies and Do-Not-Touch topics and there was only the example of the women who had hurt their son in the past for me to compete with. I shined like a bottle cap resting on top a trash heap in the sun.
The keys to success in winning the hearts of the people whose sons you have bewitched include:
1. Dress for church, or temple, or mosque, or whatever.
Up (like it’s an occasion to be excited about), but also conservative (like you always assume God’s watching). Nothing below the collarbone or above the knee. Makeup like his mother would have worn at your age, which you should know because you asked him in advance. Jewelry that’s classy but affordable. You should be good enough for, but not better than, their son.
2. Give ’em a little bit of your dwarky side. The wider and goofier the smile, the better.
There’s a reason why a certain relatably quirky redhead is a hit across all cultures and demographics. Laugh at yourself when you do or say something silly, and his parents will laugh with you. Maybe even glance shyly over at their son for reassurance, and make sure that they see this, but also make sure that they don’t see that you see that they see this. It will remind them that he already loves you, and make them want to find reasons to approve.
3. Don’t talk too much. Answer their questions and ask more.
His parents aren’t interested in falling in love with you. They’re only interested in accepting you. The intricacies of your emotions are his cross to bear. Well, his, and your therapist’s. One of the parents always wants to be the center of attention. Figure out which one, and help them. Even if you don’t give a damn about Dad’s stamp collection, or the summer Mom spent in Dijon during college.
Since my parents always assumed I would be meeting men through them, as opposed to the other way around, at least a year of a relationship would pass before I’d even bother to mention my man to them. And if he wasn’t Indian, it was a disaster-recove
ry mission from the start. You assume a certain number of casualties, some carnage, tears and recurring nightmares for everyone involved. That might be another reason why I spared most men the indignity of it for as long as I did. I was hoping to give them as much positive reinforcement as possible in advance, since it was virtually impossible for some stranger who just walked in off the street, some meathead whose family they didn’t even know (my father identified way too well with the ’70s sitcom All in the Family)to win the early approval of the people whose offspring he was attempting to steal. He was lucky if he left without his self-esteem deep-fried and seasoned in a doggie bag.
I knew it was a bad idea, but Nick insisted just a few months into the relationship that I allow him to meet my parents. When I called to invite them over for lunch, my mother interrupted to tell me that she had decided not to make any new friends until after my wedding.
“Am I engaged and nobody told me?” I asked, smiling conspiratorially at Nick as he crossed my living room.
“No, darling, of course not. But surely you will be within the next few years.”
“Mom…”
“No pressure, no pressure. I am just planning my affairs accordingly.”
“So why exactly can’t you make any new friends before then?” I tried to keep my composure while he lifted my hair and began nibbling on the back of my neck.
“Because,” she began as if she were explaining to me for the fifth time why I wasn’t allowed to wear my pajamas to school, “any friends I have will be offended if I do not invite them to my daughter’s wedding. And limiting guest lists is always a difficult thing to do. Everybody is so petty.”
“Why don’t you tell everyone we plan to have a very small wedding?”
“Why don’t I just go and have a liposuction?” she mocked.
“What?” I rose to my feet, causing Nick to nearly tumble off the couch. Sorry, I mouthed, before walking toward the window.
“Vina, you know us better than that. There are certain things which are not done. And what’s more, you know things don’t work that way in Indian society. We cannot change traditions to suit ourselves. I don’t want to make new friends right now, and then have to alienate them within two years because of the wedding.”
“Oh, so now it’s two years?”
“Vina, calm down. I am only talking, that’s all.”
“Okay, so what you’re saying is that my not being married is now directly cramping your social life.”
“That is not what I said.”
I knew she hadn’t.
“Why are we talking about this? Listen, it’s time for you and Dad to meet Nick. He has offered to make lunch for all of us at his apartment on Sunday.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because…we might be hungry?”
“Don’t make fun, Vina. Anyway, you father is not going to like this. But I’ll try to convince him. I think it should be fine. So you are…umm…very serious about this…Nick?”
“Mom.” I was as stern and declarative as a grammar-school headmistress. “I am not inviting you to this lunch to announce an engagement. You’re meeting him. That’s all. Calm down. And please tell Dad not to be mean.”
35
Grocery shopping with a boyfriend on a weekend afternoon. Does it get any better? It provides all of the gratification of shopping at the mall, but he doesn’t have to lie about whether that skort makes you look fat, and you don’t have to act as if you didn’t notice him steering clear of the diamond store. My hand lightly brushes his as we reach for the same avocado. Inevitable snickering in the fruit aisle over whether a banana can ever really be too firm. Groping each other inappropriately amongst the frozen foods to keep warm, until management kindly requests that you keep the public affection to a minimum, since this is a family place. It’s suggestive enough of nesting to keep your feathers fluffed, without throwing him into a fit of hyperventilation.
At least it is under normal circumstances. However, less than three hours away from my parents’ estimated time of arrival at his apartment, Nick was waaaaaay too calm for anyone’s good. How had he managed to miss the fact that offering to feed my parents the first time he met them was about as casual as a presidential inauguration?
He stood before me surrounded by Whole Foods’ fresh produce with both arms outstretched, one holding a cantaloupe and the other a honeydew.
“So which will it be? Ladies’ choice.” He winked.
“I don’t know. The cantaloupe, I guess.”
“You guess? You guess? Well, that’s not good enough.” A sarcastic grin spread across his face. “Don’t you understand that your parents’ entire opinion of me is riding on what they think of my fruit salad?”
Not amused.
“Vina, you know, you should show more enthusiasm. I’m a guy who cooks. Doesn’t that make me a great catch, according to all those girly magazines?” He tossed the honeydew onto a pile of lemons beside us, dropped the cantaloupe into the cart and leaned into the push.
“I don’t read those magazines,” I told his back.
“I know. That’s one of my favorite things about you. Well, that and the fact that you’ve got a really sweet ass. Who knew Indian women were built like that?”
“Everyone who’s ever bothered to look.” I smiled coyly, catching up. My gaze met that of a young girl riding in a cart pushed by her mother, who glared disapproval at our adult discussion. The girl reminded me of myself at her age, and the woman couldn’t be much older than me, which made me feel very, very old.
“That’s probably true. Anyway, remind me to thank your mother for that.”
“You will do no such thing,” I chided, as we turned a corner toward Wines & Spirits. “Okay. What else do we need?”
He waved a couple of bottles of wine at me as if they were bells and I was the only one who couldn’t hear them chiming.
“What’s this?”
“Uh…a really good bottle of Chardonnay.” He played dumb. “According to the price tag?”
“We can’t serve this.”
“Why not?” He held the bottle at arm’s length and squinted. “Was 1999 not a good year for you? For me, it was a very good year.”
Not cute.
“No, ’99 was a perfectly good year.” I felt my forehead.
“Then why can’t we serve it? Unless…” His eyes grew wide before he gasped, fixing his stare on my belly, with all the cockiness of a man whose girlfriend insists on condoms even though she’s on the pill. “Are we pregnant?”
Why do men always do that? Why do they overemphasize the “preg,” as if some other sort of “nant” would be lesser cause for alarm?
“Not funny.” I replaced the bottles on the shelf. “Serving wine at a casual late lunch will make them think that you drink at every meal. This will make them worry if you come from a family of alcoholics, which will make them judge you unworthy of their daughter.”
“But you know much more about wine than I do,” he protested.
“That’s not relevant. I belong to them. And first impressions are critical.”
“I thought you belonged to me.”
“Not after today I won’t if this doesn’t go too well.” I raised an eyebrow at him but couldn’t help cracking a smile.
“Okay, babe. No problem.” He raised both hands in surrender. “Relax. We’ll serve juice and iced tea. That is, unless you think the fact that it’s not chai will make them think I’m culturally insensitive? Anyway, it’s no biggie.”
“But it is a biggie. I’m crazy about you, but I swear, the fact that you’re taking this so calmly is really stressing me out.”
“So you’re crazy about me?” He looped his fingers into the belt holes of my jeans, and dragged me toward him. Normally, such a Me-Tarzan-You-Jane gesture would have had me goofy and weak in the knees, but in light of the day we had ahead of us…
“Oh, lord. I’m gonna puke.” I doubled back, resting one hand on my belly and using the other to pinch the
top of my nose.
“Vina,” he said slowly and knelt down to look me right in the eye, “there is no reason to be nervous. When my last girlfriend’s parents met me, they loved me instantly. Within six months, the father took me aside at a family barbecue and told me that I had his blessing if I wanted to marry her.”
“Mmm-hmm. And why didn’t that work out, again?”
“We drifted apart. After a while I didn’t feel as strongly about her as I thought I did.”
“Okay, so the translation of that in my parents’ language is Love is a fashion trend to you, and so is their daughter. Maybe that’s not the story you should open with.”
“Maybe I should start with how we met?”
“Yeah, that would go over well. Mr. and Mrs. Chopra, your daughter, after waking up naked in my bed, chanced upon three video cameras aimed directly at her, assumed I was an online porn producer and ran screaming for her life. But don’t worry, nothing happened between us that night. She was waaaay too drunk at the club for me to even consider trying to get any action. That came later.”
He laughed and kissed me on the top of my head, told me I was cute, and then headed over toward the juice aisle. I was left standing somewhere between Johnnie Walker and Jose Cuervo, feeling guilty that I failed to impress upon him how totally out of his league he was, when it came to my parents.
I suppose he had no idea how scared I was that a truly disappointed glance from my father might force me to reconsider him entirely. As much as I hated to admit it, no matter how much I separated myself from my family’s restrictions, it would always, always, always matter what they thought. All I could hope for was that he understood, respected and continued to relate somehow to my need to please them. I could also do what was possible to help him along. I told him to make whatever he considered to be spicy food, and then add at least three teaspoons of paprika per person. I told him never to refer to either of my parents by their first names until they invited him to do so, which would be never. I told him to ask my mom about her gardening and use it as a segue into explaining how he wants a garden of his own one day so that he can grow fresh vegetables to cook. I told him to ask my dad about how he made his transition from engineering to real estate and use it as a segue into explaining every twist and turn of his own career before the real interrogation began. It was all about preemptive strikes. This was a war, I had shaken him by the shoulders and tried to make him understand the night before that we were dead in the water without a good, solid strategy. All this, and I bought him a new sweater that I thought they might not deem too expensive, too casual or too fitted for their taste. The less they had to contend with his practically prison-sculpted physique, and what it implied about the carnal interests of their only daughter, the better.
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