The Marriage Code: A Novel

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The Marriage Code: A Novel Page 13

by Brooke Burroughs


  Sometimes it was like she’d stepped out of one of those drama-filled soap operas she took a break every afternoon to watch. He wanted a partner in life, not just someone who checked all his parents’ boxes.

  “Your horoscope lines up with Pallavi’s. She’s from a good Iyengar family, just like you.”

  “I have to go to a meeting.” There was no way he could consider marrying someone who was just out of college.

  “Rishi . . .”

  “How is Dharini?”

  “She is fine. Going to work. Not as choosy as you when we look at potential matches.”

  “I said I’m working on it. I have to go. I’ll call later.” Rishi hung up the phone.

  He looked out into the distance of the tech park with a sigh. His chest felt as if he’d been punched the day before, and an ache was spreading across his sternum. Guilt. The feeling had been present after every conversation with his parents about a potential marriage match over the past year.

  His phone beeped. If this was his mom again . . .

  He pulled out his phone. His stomach dropped when he saw the name. A name he hadn’t seen in far too long.

  Rishi, Are you still in Bangalore? I’ll be there next week. Can we meet for lunch?

  Sudhar. His brother. The man who had defied convention and married outside their caste and community. Even outside their state. The same person who was responsible for his parents’ loss of their money.

  But Rishi had a nephew or niece—he didn’t know which yet, but he could find out soon. It wasn’t the baby’s fault that his brother had acted recklessly. Beyond recklessly. Had been an idiot. Thought with his heart, and likely other essential organs, over his head. Maybe he could meet him. At least see a picture. Maybe get the baby a present.

  Lunch? Lunch he could do. It wasn’t like he was making a blood pact with the one person whose name wasn’t allowed to be uttered in his house.

  Sure, let’s do that.

  He’d admired Sudhar so much growing up. He’d even admired him for breaking tradition and marrying for love. At the time he’d been dating Sapna and thought that this would be the path for all of them, and Sudhar was simply paving the way. Until Sudhar’s marriage had destroyed the family. And just like that, the unraveling of their familial threads and the loss of their savings had proved their parents right about their über-traditional values.

  And, of course, now he wasn’t going to make a mistake by marrying the wrong woman. He’d find something like he’d had with Sapna, but this time with a woman who was appropriate in all ways possible. And who wouldn’t leave him because her family wanted her to marry someone from her community in North India.

  You’ve just made my year. Thank you.

  He and Emma had to finish the algorithm, and soon.

  Since last night, Rishi had thought of his time with Emma at the pub more than once. He hadn’t imagined that the buttoned-up, closed-up ice queen would drink one of the giant beers, but she’d had two, and she hadn’t even erupted in giggles and nonsense like a lot of women would have.

  He trudged down the hall to her office and found her typing away, busy at her screen. “Emma?”

  Her fingertips stopped dancing on the keys, and she looked up at him. The deep green of the salwar top electrified everything about her. The rhinestones plucked the controlled seriousness from her eyes, while the red and purple of her hair vibrated in contrast to the color. Her face was less pallid, almost bright.

  “Yes?” she crooned out with a smile. It confused him but made him smile in return.

  “You look nice today.” The words just fell out of Rishi’s mouth. “I didn’t know you wore our traditional clothes.”

  “When in Rome . . . ,” she said, running fingertips along the top. “I was thinking how it’s like ninety degrees outside, and I’m covered head to toe in two layers of polyester and a scarf. A dress, pants, scarf—it’s quite a lot. Although I like the freedom to just sit however I want, so there is definitely practicality in that. No risk of indecent exposure or anything.” Her face, which had briefly laughed, abruptly closed off. “Sorry, TMI, huh? Did you need something?”

  Rishi shook his head slowly. He was still caught up on the fact that Emma seemed to be talking to him about spreading her legs. “Since we didn’t talk about the algorithm this weekend, I wanted to follow up. I need it. Like soon. Very soon.”

  “Oh. Yeah, crazy how we ran out of time, right? I had all these words pop up in my search, and I’m not sure what they mean, so I need to do some refining. Do you want to talk over lunch?”

  “Sure.”

  Her eyes lit up again. “Hey, can we go to that place you were talking about that has your traditional food? I need to continue my tour of Indian cuisine.”

  “It’s vegetarian. Is that okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fully prepared to eat a wholesome meal of lentils and vegetables. It will be like medicine for my complete indulgence this past week. I’ve been stuffing myself full of kebabs and parathas and paneer butter masala.”

  “Okay. I’ll come back at noon.”

  A few hours later, Emma popped up behind him. “I’m starving. Can we eat a bit early? Please?” Amazing how Emma could morph from domineering project lead into a hungry toddler in the span of a few hours.

  “Sure.” He locked his laptop, and they started toward the elevator. “Do you want to catch an auto?” he asked. “It’s like five minutes driving away.”

  “Is that how you get around everywhere?”

  “No, I have a bike. It’s in the garage.”

  “Motorcycle bike, not a bicycle, I’m assuming?” She hit the button on the elevator.

  “Correct.”

  “Do you want to take it?”

  “Do you want to ride on it?” Surely she wouldn’t. What would people say if they saw the two of them together like that? Emma slung over his body, her arms around him, on the back seat of his Bullet?

  “Yeah, why not? I’ve actually never ridden on a motorcycle before, and I figure this is the perfect place to do so, since the traffic travels at a snail’s pace.”

  “Okay.” He rubbed at his chin. He hit the garage button once they were inside, and his heart sped up. The thoughts in his head volleyed between wondering if Emma would wrap her arms around his waist and wondering what the drivers would say when they saw her on the back of his bike.

  She followed him to his bike. Black and chrome reflected the garage lights along its curves. Its custom handlebar, muffler, and paint job made it uniquely his. He would have missed it for sure if he’d moved to Seattle.

  “Ooh, it’s so shiny. I like it.”

  “Thanks.” He thumbed the helmet hanging off his handlebar. “I only have one helmet, though, and I have to wear it by law. Or else . . .” This wouldn’t do. “Why don’t we just take an auto?”

  “Five minutes, right? Going maybe fifteen miles an hour? I’m pretty sure I could jump off before anything would hit us. Just don’t wreck it, okay?”

  He started his bike, and Emma scrambled on behind him, like she was mounting a wide horse instead of a medium-size motorcycle, her shoes searching for the footrests, the dress of her salwar getting tangled under her legs. He turned around, their faces too close, the fabric of her clothes sprawling everywhere like silky tentacles. He tried to scoot up in the seat. “Emma, wrap your dupatta around you so it doesn’t get caught in the wheel.” Number one cause of bike wrecks and unfortunate accidental choking of women riding on the back.

  She wrapped the scarf around her body and tied it. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “Just hold on to . . . something.” He couldn’t say me. “I don’t want you to fly off.” But she was right about the snail’s pace. Traffic midday, in the same neighborhood: they weren’t likely to go over forty kilometers an hour.

  They shot up the parking ramp, and the sunshine of the day poured over them. As they hit a speed bump at the top, his shirt tightened across his chest, the pull of Emma’s fist holding on to the fabr
ic over the bump. His breath caught in his throat. Such an awkward sensation, feeling the tension looming in the inch between her chest and his back, his annoyance at her stretching out one of his favorite shirts. He wanted to say Stop and Hold me instead, but he couldn’t get the words out. Like the letters were all scrambled and reversed in his head. Longing and distrust like two friends fighting it out.

  But it was five minutes. He could deal with five minutes.

  They pulled up to the Pure-Veg eatery. As he got off the bike, Emma stared up at the sign, her face pinched in confusion. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. She probably didn’t eat at places like this, with stand-up tables for people who needed to eat fast and a separate AC room that charged more for the food so you didn’t have to sweat and eat at the same time.

  “Is this okay?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’m excited to try it.”

  The bright lights lit up the plain, almost sterile interior. Rishi claimed one of the regular tables inside so they could sit down, and a server brought two menus. “Okay, what should I get?” Emma asked.

  “Well, do you want a meal, like the little dishes with rice? See that guy’s?” He nodded toward the table next to him, where a stout man was mixing rice and sambar on his metal tray. Emma stared at the guy’s plate. He stared back, his eyes unflinching.

  She whipped back around. “What’s the other option?”

  “Their dosas are really good. I like their chutney here.”

  “Sold! You said ‘chutney.’ Get me one of those.”

  The one and only thing that Emma didn’t try to take over was the process of ordering with the waiter. Like food and Haywards 5000s were the two things that could coax her into submission. Or at least equal ground. He tried to get comfortable on the hard seat. “So you wanted to ask me some questions?”

  “Yes, let me pull out all the phrases I’ve seen. I need to just pinpoint which are relevant and which aren’t. Some of these things . . . I’m just not sure what they mean.” She shook her head and looked at her phone. “Oh, but this one I do. I’ve been dying to ask you this all day.”

  His heart sped up. What could it be? Something humiliating, something she’d found out about him? He cleared his throat. “Okay, what is it?”

  “Are you, Rishi Iyengar”—her face was so serious that the question made his stomach stir—“a mama’s boy?”

  “What?”

  Emma exploded in laughter. The tables around them all turned to the red-haired foreigner slapping the table like he’d told her the funniest joke she’d ever heard.

  “No, I am not a mama’s boy.” He lowered his voice. “Why on earth would you ask me that?”

  “Because I saw it in the web crawl results and just needed to know if I should include it in your profile.” Her smile was wicked, so pleased with herself. “You did say that your favorite food was your mom’s.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m a mama’s boy. I have a healthy respect for my mother’s cooking.”

  “Well, whatever. I’m sure most guys who are don’t think they actually are. Next question.” She looked back down at the notes on her phone. “Okay, this word—homely. I have a feeling it doesn’t mean the same thing as in the US.”

  “What does it mean there?” he asked.

  “Like a plain-looking, below-average girl. It’s definitely not something you want to be described as. I’m imagining it stems from a girl who looks like she’s never been out of the house or something.”

  Rishi almost coughed up his water. “What?” Now it was his turn to laugh, although not as loudly as she had. “No, that’s not what it means here. It just means a girl is good in the home, like she cooks and cleans and has an orderly house, like that.”

  “Ah, so you want a homely girl?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “That was a box I definitely didn’t think I would be checking. Okay, also ‘no dowry’—how does this apply to you? Are we thinking about a dowry?” She squinted at him as she tapped her nails on the table, toying with him.

  “No, we are not thinking about a dowry.” But in reality, the family of the woman he married would surely pass on some gold to their daughter. Some people gave houses or cars. Something would come out of it. “Next question.”

  “I just love all this medieval dowry stuff mixed in with this super-tech-fueled world we live in.”

  “I know. Change is hard. Tradition still reigns, et cetera. Dowry is technically illegal, by the way.” For the next generation, he was convinced things would be different, but for his parents, they were unflinching in their beliefs.

  “Dowry is so illegal that they only post about it if they’re not interested?” Emma’s eyebrows rose up to contradict him. He was getting ready to explain how nuanced their society was, but she was already moving on to the next question.

  “Okay, let’s talk about your values. Would you say you have moderate, liberal, or conservative religious values? Tell me about the values of the Iyengar family.”

  Rishi’s values were ten steps ahead of his parents’ on the progressive scale, but the marriage was for him and them. The girl would be his wife but his parents’ daughter-in-law. “I would say my values are modern, liberal, and traditional.”

  “Don’t modern and traditional contradict one another?”

  “Not necessarily. Like I think it’s important for her to do whatever she wants and be who she wants to be, but it’s important she knows about the festivals and traditions and all that stuff. I mean, it’s more important to my mother than me. I just care that she wants to light up firecrackers during Diwali—that’s my tradition.”

  “Okay, so it’s not your matrimonial ad I read online that said ‘Modern and traditional—you can wear jeans at home, but wear traditional clothes to show respect outside.’” Emma’s smile was somehow both sarcastic and amused at the same time.

  “No, that’s not mine,” he said, deadpan, and with perfect timing, their food arrived. The waiter set down a dosa in front of each of them, the rolled-up lentil-rice batter cooked so thin it was like a paper scroll.

  Emma leaned over her plate as she usually did and took a big sniff. He laughed. “Do you do that every time?”

  “What?” She glanced up at him, still bent over her plate.

  “Smell your food?”

  “I want to savor it all.” Then she took a picture of it.

  “And you always take a picture too?”

  “I have to document it all. I post my photos of each meal. Kind of like a journal for myself, but I have followers. And my best friend and I promised to share all our food experiences while we’re apart.”

  This was not what he’d expected to hear. He’d expected her to say she took pictures to conduct some kind of comparative quality analysis online, where she wrote an algorithm to pull all dosa photos and compare the size and shape of her meal with others’ meals to determine if hers was the best. And if it wasn’t, she’d come back and complain.

  “Okay, what are these?” She pointed to the three different chutneys on her plate.

  “That one is coconut chutney. This one is tomato—it’s the best, in my opinion—and then that one is peanut.”

  “Yum!”

  Rishi grabbed a bite of dosa and dipped it in the tomato chutney. His fingers paused in front of his mouth as he realized Emma was watching him. “What?” Was she judging him?

  “I’m just watching you to know how to eat it.”

  “Oh. Well, you just take a bite.” Why did he need to explain how to eat her food?

  Her lips pressed together, and she seemed to wiggle in her seat. Her right hand pinched off a small piece of the crispy dosa edge and dipped it in the chutney like a chip in salsa at a Mexican restaurant.

  “If you eat bites that small, we’re going to be here for five hours.”

  She sighed and took a bigger piece, probably too big to fit in her mouth, and pinched the chutney around it. That was more like it. She stuffed it in her mouth. Her eyes fluttered clos
ed, and her chewing was slow and calculated. A moan growled in her throat.

  Rishi had to look away. Why did it seem like every time they ate she was having an erotic experience? It unsettled him. It was intriguing and uncomfortable at the same time. He tried to focus on his food.

  “Oh my God, what is in this? Why does it taste like butter, and there’s something rich and thick about it. It’s so good.” She pointed at the tomato chutney.

  “Thick?” The weirdest way to describe a taste.

  “Yeah, like it seems as if it’s just tomato or something, right? But it’s so much more. And this.” Her finger slid along the dosa. “How do they get it so thin? It’s like a work of art.”

  “I mean, I told you they make a pretty good dosa.”

  “So good.” She took another fingerful of dosa and savored it just as before.

  He was clearly missing something. He loved food, but Emma’s reactions made him feel like he didn’t appreciate it as much as he should. He took another bite and tried to focus on what she sensed. He smelled ghee and mustard seeds and the almost charred scent of something roasted. In his mouth, the tang of tomato. There was an earthiness from the fermented batter he didn’t usually recognize, the textures soft and hard on his tongue. The tamarind and cumin added dimension to the tomato. Was that what made it taste “thick”?

  “I can tell you like it,” she said, smiling at him.

  “Well, yeah, I like it.” He cleared his throat, hoping he didn’t look like he was on the verge of orgasm like Emma did. “I eat here all the time. I’m just trying to see what you see in it.”

  “I’m just showing my appreciation, my respect for this thing I can absolutely not do. I can’t cook, and my family wasn’t really into cooking either. You’re lucky to have been raised on food this good. I grew up on cans of vegetables and hot dogs.”

  Rishi nodded. “I’m sure some people would say that the food is lucky to have someone getting so much pleasure out of it.”

  She paused her chewing and gave him a blank look. Maybe it was surprise. It was so brief Rishi didn’t know what it meant. “I love the balance of everything. How the chutneys calm the heat of the sambar. The liquid against the hard crust of the dosa.” She swallowed another bite.

 

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