“These temples are incredible,” she said.
“I know, they’re huge. The amount of time and effort and money people put into them is also incredible. I’m just so glad you came, Emma. I wanted you to see where I’m from.”
“Thanks for taking care of it. The hotel, the ticket.” Emma felt so formal with him all of a sudden, her body tense. They needed to talk this out, and soon.
“Are you kidding? It’s the least I can do. I was so afraid I’d lost you.”
Rishi reached out and squeezed her hand, and with that small contact, Emma felt the formality evaporate from her body, warmth replacing the cold that had filled her bones the past week. She squeezed his hand back.
Rishi got the key, and they took the elevator up to their room. She’d felt so nervous with him, that first time in the hotel elevator in Cochin, as the tension mounted between their bodies. Heat generated from so much anticipation, so much longing. The zig and zag of nerve endings volleying in her body. And now that nervousness was back. Different, but back.
He smiled at her. “Do you want me to order some coffee for us?”
“That sounds good.” They walked to the door. Each step Emma took was heavy and thick. The room. Their talk. Their future.
Rishi unlocked the door. The room was simple and clean, with two queen beds. He dialed room service and ordered coffee. Emma sat on one bed and Rishi sat on the opposite bed, facing her.
“Okay, coffee ordered. Step one.” He put his hands on his knees, and a shiver seemed to coast up his body. “God, I’m just so nervous, it’s crazy.” He shook his head.
“Me too,” Emma said, relieved it wasn’t just her. “Why? Why are we nervous?” She punctuated it with a nervous little laugh, as if to say, See?
“I know why I’m nervous. I have some explaining to do, and I’m afraid you won’t forgive me, and I’ll pine over you for the rest of my life.”
Pining for the rest of his life? Over her? Emma wanted to smile but reined it in. “Why don’t you just start from the top, before we were yelling at each other, and explain what happened.”
“I guess it started when I came back here after Cochin, to tell my parents to stop looking for someone. But they thought that since I was visiting, it was an opportune time to invite Radhika’s family over. I told my mom no, but then she had heart palpitations and had to go lie down. So I didn’t push it. I was really afraid what would happen to her.”
“So, then they came over, and you met her parents?” Emma asked.
“Yes, they came over for a few hours and had tea. I wanted to do something, offend them or show that I wasn’t a good fit for their daughter, but then my mom would just look at me, and I’d feel bad and answer their questions. She’s always had these blood pressure problems, and recently they’ve worsened, but now she’s on some medicine that seems to have helped it.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I still told them I wasn’t interested. My mother somehow thought that I was just nervous or something. And when she got a green light from the astrologer, she went ahead and planned the engagement, without asking me.”
“And that’s all that happened?”
“Yes. Then, when they called me at your house and dropped this bomb on me, I was going to ask you for help. I wanted you to help me plan how to stop it for good, but then we just got into a fight. And now, they’re all pissed off at me. Well, except Dharini. She’s okay with it.”
A shard of hurt bit at Emma’s chest. He was going to ask her for help, but then she’d just yelled at him.
There was a knock at the door, and Rishi went to get the coffee from room service. She watched him, marveling at how familiar his movements had become over the past months, how familiar all of him had become. She should have known he wouldn’t just get married so suddenly.
Rishi brought her a cup of coffee, and she took a sip. God help her, she’d even started to crave the sugary-sweet South Indian coffee.
Emma was speechless. If that had been too much for his parents, then what would she be to them?
“When my brother, Sudhar, got married, and my parents weren’t happy about it, he had this idea of how to bring the family together, to sort of make it up to them. His wife’s uncle had found this guaranteed investment, and my dad gave him most of his savings. But it was actually bad, and my parents lost . . .” He swallowed and looked at the ceiling.
“What is it?”
“All of their money. This is why I was scared to tell you. Most women would have an issue with it.”
“I hope you know that I don’t care about the money thing. But I do care about what I’m walking into. After all this, how are your parents going to react to me?”
“We’ll take it slow. I’ll introduce you as my colleague, which is not a lie, by the way. And they’ll learn to love you.”
Emma fell back on the bed and moaned, still clutching her coffee. This was his plan?
He moved over to her bed and stretched out beside her. “I know it’s a lot.”
“Uh, yeah, you think? They’re going to hate me. No matter what. I’m like the slayer of weddings. The destroyer of dreams.” But as she looked into his eyes, the ones she’d missed waking up to for days, she knew there was no way she wouldn’t try.
“They just need time. You’re a wild card, but I happen to love drawing the wild card from the deck.” He kissed her nose. “I’ve also been thinking about how to get my family all in a room, like you suggested months ago. I think we need to all just talk it out, and that should help. With everything.”
“Okay,” she said, but it was more like a question. There were a lot of wild cards involved.
“I’m sorry I put you through all this crap because I couldn’t stand up to my parents.”
“I’m sorry too, Rishi,” she said. “For jumping to conclusions. You had this list that I didn’t fit. I don’t have family. I’m not from your culture. I just assumed the worst.”
“We’re a team. The best team I can imagine. Will you help me reunite my family?”
She nodded. How could she not?
He cupped her face and drew her close, sinking his lips onto hers. Emma felt it in her body, twisting at her toes, coasting warmth up through her thighs, tickling her abdomen until her arms needed to hold him. She fumbled with her coffee cup as she tried to feel for the table and then heard it fall on the floor. But she didn’t care. It all felt so absolutely right.
Well, except for one thing. Or maybe a few things. Actually, it could have been many things.
CHAPTER 39
They caught an auto to take them to Rishi’s parents’ house.
What was Emma getting herself into? “Do I need to do anything special or different?”
“No. Just be normal,” Rishi said.
Emma held on to his hand and squeezed. Normal. Normal. Normal. What was normal? Work Emma normal? Girlfriend Emma normal? Emma living in India and having no cultural context for what to do normal? She was probably overthinking things. Maybe it would be fine, and they’d be so freaked out about everything else that they wouldn’t even notice her.
But she did want them to notice her, right? She wanted to charm them so they’d forget about the ideal fiancée and would be pleased to have a woman like Emma in their lives.
Right.
They drove down a highway lined with small shops, people selling vegetables along the side of the road or grinding sugarcane for juice. The road was dotted with small markets and the occasional cow or goat munching on the dry grass. After some instructions from Rishi, the driver turned off the main road into a neighborhood. All the buildings were various shades of yellow or beige, with small balconies and busy neighbors outside chatting, hanging up laundry to dry, or tending to their gardens.
They pulled in front of one of these homes. A small woman, her graying hair tied in a thin braid, stepped outside.
A man Emma assumed was Rishi’s father appeared on the porch, wearing a button-down and a white sarong. He was thin, with thick salt-and-pepper ha
ir that stood atop his head. A young woman peeked out from inside. It was like they were all waiting to see what he was bringing home. Well, so much for not being noticed. Already she felt like a wild specimen ready to be studied under a microscope.
Emma stepped out of the auto and stood on the sidewalk, silent. Panic flooded her senses. What should she do? What would she say? She hadn’t thought about this scenario. She needed more time. Like a course on How to Behave in Front of Your Indian Boyfriend’s Parents 101. Or at least the CliffsNotes version.
His parents’ faces were twisted up, their eyes narrowed. His sister looked like she was about to burst with laughter. All of them were staring at her.
“Come on, colleague,” Rishi said, nodding toward the house.
Could he not see that his family was less than pleased to see her?
She swallowed hard.
Rishi met his parents’ eyes and gestured toward Emma. “This is my friend Emma. We work together at TechLogic.”
“Nice to meet you,” Emma said with a smile, trying to hide her surprise at the crumbling corners of the house and his family’s stony, unchanged expressions.
But then his mother spoke in a shaky voice. “Hello.”
“Welcome,” his father said, and they turned to go in.
At least that was something. Emma followed Rishi, mimicking the way he shook the shoes off his feet and left them on the porch.
“I’m Dharini.” His sister held out her hand to formally shake it, and Emma took it.
“Nice to meet you, Dharini. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Me too,” she said quietly, like they were coconspirators.
As they walked inside, Emma paused at the doorway.
The front room was small, with a concrete floor. Small ceramic figurines and stuffed animals sat in a glassed curio cabinet. Plastic-wrapped posters depicting gods hung from every wall in the room, beads and garlands of plastic flowers cascading from the corners of the pictures.
Emma sat on the sofa, the springs trying to reach up through the cushions, while Rishi and his family volleyed some kind of tense conversation back and forth in Tamil, but it was quiet and restrained, like a wild horse with some reins on it.
His mother handed Rishi a cup of coffee in a tiny steel cup with a deep steel saucer under it. She handed Emma a small ceramic coffee cup, briefly making eye contact before whisking her eyes away quickly. Maybe Emma had smiled a little too much. Rishi poured the coffee back and forth in between the saucer and the cup. After he had mixed it, he held the steel cup by the rim with his fingertips and poured it into his mouth without allowing the cup to touch his lips.
Emma remembered Rishi saying that in his family, they didn’t touch their mouths to anything when they drank and didn’t take bites out of anything; they instead broke off pieces to eat. They didn’t use silverware, either, and washed their plates outside the house. Saliva had some kind of unclean quality, and Emma had wondered on more than one occasion how these rules applied to kissing.
She held the rich coffee-and-milk mixture in her hand, curious why she’d gotten a different cup, the saucer chipped in two places, when everyone else got shiny steel cups like in the restaurants.
If Rishi wasn’t marrying Radhika and his father was out of work, would that mean that Rishi would keep supporting them? She remembered Preeti saying something once about how many parents moved in with their children once they were married. Would that happen to Rishi?
The woman in front of her who couldn’t even look her in the eye—would she want to share a house with Emma if she and Rishi got serious?
And would Emma want to share a house with her? Could she be the mother Emma had always imagined?
She swallowed and tried to smile at everyone perched on the various chairs in the room. They stopped talking, and all of a sudden the room fell strangely quiet. No horns or traffic noise outside, only the chirping of the birds. It was perhaps the first time Emma had been surrounded by quiet since she’d moved to India. But rather than being peaceful, it was more like the greenish cloudy sky and wispy eeriness that she’d witnessed as a teenager right before a tornado had swept through a nearby town.
“You work with Rishi, is it?” his father asked.
“Yes, sir.” Emma tried to be on her best behavior, unsure what to say or how to say it. Now she felt like her prom date who’d had to stare at the shotgun over her grandmother’s head as she grilled him. Oh, karma, how you mock me.
“You have business in Madurai?” he asked.
Emma opened her mouth and gave Rishi a sideways glance. What should she say?
“Emma was here to see the temples and remembered that I was home and called,” Rishi jumped in.
His father nodded. “Ah, I see.” But the way he’d said it made Emma think he saw the truth, and not the feeble excuse of temple touring.
His father looked back and forth between Emma and Rishi. Emma swallowed hard and looked at her phone. Maybe she should leave. The last thing she wanted to do was cause another argument between Rishi and his parents.
His mother brought out a tray of snacks, crunchy bits of fried lentils and peanuts. A plateful of round laddoos and sliced burfi, rich with cashews and saffron and cardamom. The spicy aroma wafted toward her.
Emma practically drooled at the display on the table in front of her. His mother glanced at Emma, obviously not sure what to make of her. She said something to Rishi in Tamil. His father jumped in, the three of them whispering together, shooting a few looks her way. She didn’t know what else to do but smile. If only she’d tried to study their language instead of Hindi . . .
Evidently satisfied with whatever the conversation had been about, his mother left the room. His father gestured to the bowl on the table. “Please, have some.”
She pulled out her phone to take a photo first.
“What are you doing?” his dad asked.
“Oh, I just take pictures of all my food.”
He laughed like she was a crazy person. “Really?”
“Do you post them on Instagram?” his sister asked.
“I do.”
“Okay, I’m going to follow you.”
“Oh, thank you.” She smiled at his sister. Maybe she and Rishi did have an ally in the family.
Rishi disappeared into the kitchen and then came back out. “I told my mom that you would stay for dinner.”
“Is that all right?” she asked, looking at Rishi and his father.
“You’re our guest.” More like a declaration than an invitation. His father got up and walked into the back of the house.
Emma’s eyes followed him. Was he trying to escape her?
“Want to see the neighborhood?” Rishi asked.
“Sure.”
“Let’s go on a walk.” Rishi jogged off to the front porch, and she followed. He tapped his shoes together and held them upside down.
“What are you doing?” Emma asked,
“Checking for scorpions.”
Rishi might have been checking for scorpions, but Emma had the feeling she might have already been stung.
CHAPTER 40
There was nothing like a home-cooked meal. Even though his parents were borderline raging at him, they couldn’t deny him food. And Emma’s presence had diffused the situation. They couldn’t continue arguing with him in front of a guest.
Emma clutched her stomach as they pushed away from the dining table. “I never thought I could eat that many dosas. But they were so good. Thank you so much, auntie!” Emma shouted toward the kitchen door.
Rishi called to his mother, who was still cooking her own food. “Ma, Emma loves your food. She says you’re an amazing cook.”
His mother mumbled something about how her cooking wasn’t that good, but he could hear self-satisfied laughter. She’d never had her food photographed or had strangers fawn over it. Maybe in time it would all be fine. He’d ease Emma into their lives, and they’d see she wasn’t so different from a traditional pick they woul
d have normally selected. Especially over food. If anything could make his mom happy, it was being complimented on her food.
“Well, I guess it’s getting late. I’ll take you back to your hotel.” They walked outside, and Rishi started his father’s scooter up. It wheezed to life, nothing like his bike in Bangalore.
“It was nice eating with your family. I haven’t done that in so long. And the food was amazing!” Emma climbed on the back behind him.
“I can tell my mom is happy you think so. It’s not often she gets to cook for a foreigner who takes photos of her meals.” She laughed and he started down the road, and the night air whipped around them, cool and musky. Emma’s arms wrapped around him, and her head rested on his shoulder. He couldn’t wait until they were back in Bangalore and could reclaim their life together.
When they reached her hotel, he asked, “Hey, do you have your return travel booked yet? I was thinking we could take the train that leaves tomorrow night at seven—it’s an overnight train.”
“Let’s do it. Maybe I can see the temples tomorrow. Then I won’t be a total liar.” Emma jabbed him in the side with her elbow.
After they’d said goodbye, Rishi pushed his father’s scooter motor hard to get home. Eventually, eventually, his parents would get to know her and understand why she was the woman for him.
He walked in the door to find his parents cornering Dharini, who was sitting on the daybed, frozen stiff. They wheeled around when he entered, fire in their eyes.
“What’s going on with you and this Emma girl?” his mother asked.
And so began the Emma Inquisition.
“Is she why you broke off your engagement?” his mother went on. “She is why we’re in this situation!” She threw her hands up, gesturing toward the ceiling, the walls, he didn’t know.
Rishi had to clear all of this up. There was no way his parents could think badly about Emma. “This has nothing to do with her. The match with Radhika was a mistake. You need to know that. Things have changed. I want who I want. Dharini is okay with it.”
The Marriage Code: A Novel Page 30