A Good Indian Wife: A Novel

by Anne Cherian

  Leila watched them leave together. Was she imagining things, or did Neel seem impatient as Oona returned to collect the bag she had forgotten? What was so important at the hospital that he couldn’t stay for even half an hour with her?

  THIRTY-ONE

  CAROLINE GAVE HERSELF A LITTLE TIME to think about her decision. She didn’t want it to be spontaneous, emotional or vindictive. This was one of the most important phone calls she would make in her life and she had to be calm and sure of herself. She replayed the scene over and over again: sitting at the dining-room table, sipping a glass of Merlot; voice soft, no hint of a stammer, words that flowed easily; fingernails painted, every inch the lady, out to get her man.

  She didn’t know how else to reach Neel. He refused to answer her pages and avoided her at the hospital. She hadn’t even been able to tell him she had kicked Dan out of her apartment.

  She had never seen Dan so angry.

  “Are you out of your mind? Going out with him!”

  “He is a doctor—” Caroline started, only to have Dan continue, “I don’t care what he is. He isn’t one of us. If Pop knew…”

  “Pop wants me to be happy.”

  “Yes, but with one of our own. Not with that—that doctor.”

  “That doctor is better educated and makes more money than any of you,” Caroline said.

  “So? He’s colored.”

  “He’s Indian, Dan. And I mean to marry him.”

  “And when is that going to happen?”

  “When—” Caroline stopped. Dan would be even more crazy if he found out that she had to wait for Neel to get a divorce.

  “See, you can’t tell me because deep down, you know I’m right.”

  Deep down Caroline knew she wasn’t getting younger, that finding a man, any man, was difficult, and that Neel had status and education. He treated her well and she would have a good life with him. But she didn’t say any of that to Dan. There was no point. She might as well agree with him, for now. Then, after they were married, she would take Neel home. As she kept telling Natalie, it would be too late for the family to interfere.

  She allowed Dan to believe that he had made her see sense. Happier, he took her out to dinner and told her that he wouldn’t say a word to Pop.

  She couldn’t tell Neel what had really transpired. He would definitely break up with her. No, she would tell Neel that she had chosen him over her family, that she had made Dan leave.

  Neel hadn’t done that for her. He was still living with the wife his family had chosen. When Caroline chased him to Reno, begging him to take their relationship public, he had said it wasn’t the right time.

  He was just avoiding her. As she sat at her desk, watching the “hold” button on the phone blink on and off, repeating in slow motion the beat of her heart, she realized that she might lose Neel. That was when she decided to phone the wife.

  When the time came, her hands shook so much she had difficulty opening the bottle of wine. She drank a full glass. Only when she felt ready for anything did she reach for the phone. She knew that Neel wasn’t home.

  The ringing filled the apartment and she pressed the receiver against her ear. Two, three rings. Her heart pounded, and she didn’t know whether she was afraid it would be picked up or disappointed if it wasn’t. Just when she was thinking of giving up, a brief silence replaced the ringing and a soft voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  Caroline forgot her careful preparations. “Is this, is this Dr. Neel Sarath’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you Mrs. Sarath?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t know me, but I think you should know about me.”

  There was no response at the other end of the line.

  “My name is Caroline Kempner. I work at the hospital and I’ve known Dr. Sarath—Neel—for five years.” As she said “Neel,” she grew confident.

  “I know your name. You are the secretary.”

  “Yes.” Caroline was momentarily nonplussed. “I don’t just know Neel professionally. We have a personal relationship.” Was it the Merlot that was making her heart beat so loudly she could hardly hear the wife, or was it her own fear? She had never imagined she would be so frightened of his unwanted wife.

  “I understand. I saw you at Reno.”

  “Then you know.”

  “About the slides. You brought them to my husband. He thought you were, how did he put it? Bucking for a raise.”

  Damn that Neel. He had lied about her, about them. She remembered the humiliation of waiting for him, being sent back to San Francisco like a piece of baggage. The warm effects of the wine vanished, replaced by an angry cold that chilled her to the tips of her fingers. Once and for all she was going to fix the odds. Neel had been hers for years and would soon be hers forever.

  “There were no slides. I went to Reno to see Neel because we had quarreled. We are lovers.”

  “I see.”

  “I hope you do see. That’s why I’m calling you. Neel and I have been lovers for over three years. It isn’t as if we are just having an affair,” Caroline explained. “He met me long before the trip to India last summer. In fact, he was all set to marry me when his grandfather got sick and he ended up marrying you.”

  “I see.”

  The monotonous, almost monosyllabic answers annoyed Caroline. She had anticipated anger, denial, tears, shouting. Not this patient, almost indifferent response.

  “Did you hear what I just said? Neel never wanted to marry you. His grandfather wanted the marriage. Neel married you only because he doesn’t want someone’s death on his conscience. We kept in touch the whole time he was in India.”

  Caroline paused, but again there was no sound from the other end.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, anyway, I just thought you should know. I mean, I would want to know if I were you. When Neel returned from India with you, I was furious with him. But he told me he was going to get a divorce as soon as his grandfather dies. We thought that would happen in a few months. Neel may be married to you, but he has been seeing me the whole time. We see each other at work and then he comes to my home in the evenings. Even the first day back from India, he came to see me. He loves me and we plan to get married.”

  “Is Neel with you?”

  “No.” Caroline hesitated before continuing. “But I thought you should know what’s going on.”

  “I know now.”

  Caroline replaced the phone in its cradle and looked at the lipstick marks on the wineglass. The conversation had been easier than she had imagined. No hysteria, just quiet acceptance. That was good. It would make things easier, especially when the divorce was in the works. The phone call proved that the wife was a meek little thing who would sign the papers exactly where she was told to by Neel.

  She had thought the call would leave her relieved, lighter, give her the feeling of a woman in charge. She continued sitting in her chair, neither pleased nor displeased, waiting for the sound of Neel’s finger ringing the doorbell. She had left him a message asking him to come over tonight. He hadn’t said yes, but he hadn’t said no, either.

  THIRTY-TWO

  AFTER CAROLINE’S CALL, Neel had phoned. There was a crisis in the hospital…Leila barely listened to the hurried, lying words, but she understood that he would stay the night, returning the next morning or afternoon.

  Any hope, any happiness she had given birth to in that short space between Oona’s calling the hospital and Neel’s getting here were gone. She had thought that Neel had put her first. But he had only made an inconvenient stop before rushing back to be with Caroline.

  At first she was relieved not to have to see him, to have time to think. But all she did was go over that phone call, Reno, the scarf—each memory leaving her more and more humiliated.

  She still didn’t know what to do. After crying in bed all night she had come to stand by the window, the rush-hour activity below givin
g her something to look at.

  Leila gazed down on the street and remembered that night so long ago when she had wondered why Neel was leaving her alone in the condo to go shopping. She leaned against the window, the wood pressed hard into her cheek. She was tired, so tired, unable to sleep since that blond voice had broken into her quiet evening, the fake accent confirming everything she had long suspected.

  Tonight I can write the saddest lines. No, she rewrote Neruda, Today I can write the freest lines. She was free from suspicion, free in the sense that the worst had happened. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t sad, alone, unable to appreciate anything. Even the baby.

  Last night’s rain had brightened everything and the slants of sunshine on the wood floor contained no dancing motes of dust. Alcatraz was framed by the window, the island so close it must have frustrated prisoners. To the left was the Golden Gate Bridge.

  The orange columns hung above the white-topped waters as if dangled by the hands of an aesthetic God. Beyond was India, a daikon root jutting into the sea. An ancient country with ancient traditions, it had given her this marriage but neglected to offer a solution should that marriage fail. She had been provided a husband and an airline ticket; though no one had said, “You must make this work,” that order had been implicit. There was no place for her back home. Kila now slept in her bed, and her job was already taken by another spinster, teaching, until she too married and left.

  Leila felt as ancient as the mariner, except there was no one in whom she could confide. She had tried to talk to Rekha, but something—Amma’s voice, perhaps—had stopped her from making a complete confession.

  There were two phones in the house, a luxury by Indian standards. She could pick up the extension in the kitchen and dial home, easily traversing the thousands of miles in a minute. Another luxury. But there the luxuries stopped. Amma would be pleased and surprised to hear her voice and Kila would clamor to get on the phone, if only to talk to America. She could not say, “Amma, I’ve suspected for a while that Neel is having an affair. But now I know for sure. His lover told me everything yesterday.” Amma knew Neel as Suneel, and the terms “affair” and “lover” were not in her vocabulary. Once she was made to understand them, Leila knew what her mother’s response would be. She would tell Leila to stay with Neel and forgive him. Amma had been raised on stories of mythical women who forgave their husbands everything. According to Amma, Rama and Sita lived happily ever after in the Ramayana.

  Amma would expect Leila to be so good to Neel that he would forget Caroline. It was her responsibility to see that it never happened again. The surest way to do that was to have children. Amma would convince Leila her pregnancy had come at the right time. It was only in America that people warned couples a baby didn’t solve marital problems.

  And how could she burden poor Indy, just on the brink of marriage herself? Indy would insist that Leila leave him. That would ruin the family, but Indy would not care. Indy was not the oldest, trained to look out for the others, hammered into docility by Amma’s words. Leila Begood. Leila was perfectly aware that her failure doomed her sisters’ futures. Besides, she didn’t want Indy to imagine all men were like Neel.

  And if she did find the courage to phone Rekha? The other girl’s perspective was tainted by her own experience with Tim, and by America. These days she was advocating the role of the vengeful suffragette, as if that solved the problem. “Kill Neel,” she’d blithely say. And then she’d want to use Leila in her thesis.

  Leila found herself in standing water between Amma’s wishes and her own desire not to be with a man who kept a lover. Yet both choices, stay or go, were mad. Was she going to be like Asha, her old friend in India?

  Poor Asha was married to an unemployed schoolteacher who still lived with his parents. Two days before the wedding, Leila had stood beside Asha on the rooftop terrace, looking out at the people hurrying home from work. “I will stay with him until my sisters marry,” Asha said, her voice beaten down, so different from the shrill shouting and begging that had gone on for weeks as she pleaded with her parents to cancel the marriage. The man was bald, with pronounced buck teeth, and he spoke no English. Asha knew that everyone was tittering about the match. “Don’t think like that,” Leila consoled her. “It may all work out. At least he really wants to marry you.” Asha’s mother had bragged that the boy had gone straight from their house to the Temple to pray for the marriage. This was unusual because mostly it was the girl who prayed to be accepted. “I wish he didn’t want to marry me,” Asha said. “Anyway, by the time my sisters marry, I will be used to him and maybe I’ll just stay.” Amma had recently written that Asha was pregnant for the third time.

  Leila couldn’t bear to think about her own baby. For so many years she had performed the penance of fasting once a week to have a husband and children. Be careful what you wish for, she remembered the old Gypsy saying. Perhaps the Gypsies had learned that in India before taking it west.

  She was still at her vigil by the window when Neel came in.

  Neel had taken advantage of a brief lull in the early morning to catch up on sleep, and it had left him refreshed in spite of a hectic night.

  “Is everything all right?” He wondered if she had received bad news from India. She looked so pensive and defeated. Like a beautiful Madonna, hair floating around her face. The silk caftan outlined her breasts, and the tiny concave waist curved out into her hips. What would she do if he went to her now, in full view of anyone looking in? This openness was an unexpected bonus of marriage. No assignations or appointments. No fear of being caught; everything was legal. Perhaps that old rogue Picasso was right after all. “You are wrong not to be married,” were his last words to his doctor. “It’s useful.”

  “Yes, everything is okay,” Leila answered automatically. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason.” He glanced at the coffee table. A blue aerogram. “Is that from your mother?”

  “No, it’s from your family.”

  “Is Grandfather all right?” he asked quickly.

  “I didn’t read this one. But last week your mother said he was the same.” Neel didn’t really care about his sweet old grandfather. He wanted the old man to die so he could marry his lover.

  “Oh, good. I worry about him.” Neel was so surprised to be sharing his feelings he didn’t notice the look on her face. “You know how they never take care of themselves in India. Grandfather has this ridiculous village mentality that when his time has come, he will just give up the fight.” It was a relief to speak with someone who really understood. Americans would put this down to Indian spirituality, conjuring an old man who looked and acted like a brown Jesus Christ. But Tattappa, born in a village without a hospital, had never learned to trust the medical profession. He was proud of Neel’s accomplishments, but didn’t think he needed a doctor.

  They were in the kitchen when Leila blurted out, “There is something I have to tell you.”

  “Is it about Tattappa?” Neel looked at the phone. “Mummy called?”

  “Your grandfather is fine,” Leila repeated. “But I did get a phone call. From Caroline.”

  “Caroline?” Neel’s relief was short-lived. “Did she want me to call her back?” He kept his voice casual, but he was thinking ahead to when he would tell Caroline never to call the house again. This was reason enough to end their relationship. End what? There had been nothing between them for a while.

  “No. She called to speak to me.”

  “What about?” But even as he asked the question, Neel knew the answer. Caroline had threatened him in Reno, but he never thought she would follow through and contact Leila.

  “She said the two of you are having an affair. That you never wanted to marry me. You did it to please Tattappa. That you are going to divorce me as soon as Tattappa dies.” The words kept tumbling out. Leila couldn’t bear to look at his face and stared at the telephone.

  “She said all that?” Neel asked incredulously.

  “Yes.�
�� She didn’t elaborate. It was up to Neel. I have dared to disturb his universe and now he has to account for it, she thought.

  Neel stood still, staring at the floor, before abruptly looking up. Their eyes met and held. Leila didn’t blink and it was Neel who closed his, turned his face toward the ceiling, and sighed.

  “I had no idea it had gone this far.” He shook his head and felt the pieces come together, like the colored glass pattern in a kaleidoscope. He knew what to tell Leila. Tomorrow he would deal with Caroline. Once and for all.

  “I never told you this, but oh, about three years ago I went out with her. Just for a little while. When I realized it wasn’t going anywhere, I broke it off. Apparently she still hasn’t got over it. I’m really sorry she called you. I’ll have to talk to her, tell her never to do it again.” He paused. When Leila didn’t respond, he continued, “I could take action against her because this constitutes sexual harassment—and I will if you want me to, but it may create a number of problems. An immigrant man’s word against an American woman. It’s also hard to prove and might end up ruining my medical career. But I’ll do it if you insist.” He talked quickly, his voice growing louder with each word.

  Leila considered them, and him. She didn’t speak for a few moments, just thought about his logical, reasonable answer. He didn’t have to tell her that he had once gone out with Caroline. He had been honest about that. But the serpentine French accent, and Neel’s odd behavior in the past months, had stirred up many suspicions and questions.

  “She said you went to see her the night we arrived.” Leila remembered the long wait and how she had shivered in the cold apartment while searching through his files, Caroline’s picture falling to the floor.

  “What?” Neel wondered what else Caroline had divulged. “I went shopping. I knew the fridge was empty and it took me a while to find a place that was open. I wanted to get you some fruit. Remember the mangoes?”