Cold Feet

by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan

  19

  Other People’s Opinions

  Amisha stood at the crowded airport arrivals section, waiting for Derek’s family to emerge. At the last minute, they had decided to turn the wedding into just a part of the itinerary of a long-ish India trip. Of course, they would spend a week in Bombay before moving to the North and then join them in Bombay again before they all went down to Goa for the wedding. Derek had been really looking forward to it, which had the unfortunate effect on his personality of making him even more nit-picky about details. Twelve times the night before (and Amisha had counted) he had asked her if they had enough spare towels. They were now firmly settled in their new flat, the new flat that Derek had opposed and that Amisha had rented anyway.

  This made their arguments slightly one-sided: if anything went wrong with the house, all Derek had to do was look at her and say, ‘I told you this flat was unsuitable.’ There weren’t that many arguments against ‘I told you’, and so Amisha usually meekly gave in. As a reaction to this, however, she began to love it even more fiercely. The little balcony, the crazy kitchen, she embraced them all, and decorated with careful precision. It wasn’t large enough for that many guests, however, and Derek’s youngest older brother, John, was coming as well, and so she had offered to pay for a nearby hotel for him.

  Derek had looked at her and she could tell by the set of his eyebrows that he was about to pull out his ‘I told you so’ argument, so she quickly covered up. ‘We’ll give your parents the master bedroom, John can have the guest room and you and I can sleep in the living room. It’s only a week!’ He kept looking at her and so she babbled on, ‘That way, everyone gets their own room, and we don’t really care, do we?’ She crossed the room and went over to him, standing behind him, playing with his hair. ‘We’ll try it for one night? And if it’s hugely inconvenient, I’ll make a hotel reservation anyway. Just in case.’

  ‘Meesh,’ he said, sighing, but the subject was dropped and she had spent a great deal of her time yesterday organizing a spare double mattress for the living room and changing all the sheets.

  She thought to put away the contents of the Naughty Drawer as well, that lurked right underneath her underwear. You wouldn’t think by looking at Derek that he was even remotely kinky, but she shivered in the heat of the afternoon sun, thinking about all the things they had in their Naughty Drawer and just how explicitly they had used them. But the last time had been a while ago, poor Derek was probably under such stress. When was the last time they had made love? The weekend before, they had both had a couple of glasses of wine and started kissing in a promising fashion, but that had stopped soon enough and they had both fallen asleep. She didn’t want them to be one of those couples who never had sex any more. ‘Note to self,’ she thought, ‘when Derek’s family leaves, initiate and follow through on sex.’ She’d have to mark that on her planner, Amisha didn’t like to leave anything to chance, that was something she and Derek had in common.

  You’ll never have sex with another man again, popped into her brain, unbidden and she felt a claustrophobic tug in the pit of her stomach. Her memories flashbacked to the last man she had had sex with, before Derek, a tall Punjabi guy, a few years younger than her who had moved her around in all sorts of impossible poses.

  ‘It was like yoga meets sex,’ she had told a girlfriend delightedly, later, ‘yosex, sexga!’ Derek was a gentle lover for the most part, liking to take things slow and easy in bed, but she was pretty sure, after being with him for two years, that she’d never have sexga again. That’s okay, she thought to herself, soothingly, he knows what to do in bed, and that’s the most important thing.

  You’ll never have sex with another man again.

  SHUT UP.

  The voice effectively silenced, she went back to holding up her sign. It wasn’t Derek’s fault that he couldn’t come this afternoon, he had planned to, he really had, but then something had come up at work and he had to work, but he had promised that he’d make it back home by the time they reached. Even though she had waved to them when they video chatted with him online, she had still made a sign, which she now brandished over her head:

  ‘Welcome, Masters!’

  Their last name was Masters but, in retrospect, perhaps she could have gone with different wording. A new surge of passengers came out of the gate, and Amisha found herself sandwiched between a driver with sweaty armpits and a young man who seemed determined that his would be the first sign read. The travellers who were expecting to be picked up glanced at all the signs with hope and weariness, pairing off one by one, allowing their bags to be taken from them and soon, most of the crowd had cleared off, except Amisha and the young man, filled in by new signs and faces. She glanced at his sign. ‘Welcome home, Bhaiyya!’ and wondered what that story was. It would be easier to just ask him rather than wonder, but she had never been very good at striking up conversation with people she hadn’t been introduced to.

  He was unflagging, holding his placard up high with no sign of bending his elbows. Amisha had her own propped up on the railing and even that began to hurt her arms.

  Suddenly, an older man broke off from the crowd and came rushing towards the young man’s sign. His face lit up, and he held the sign out even further, like a candle. ‘I didn’t think you’d be here,’ said the older man, dropping his suitcase and clasping the young man by the shoulders. The young man was crying, Amisha noticed, and she felt bad observing what was such a very private moment; she turned away and the two left anyway. ‘I haven’t seen you in six years!’ drifted back to her. ‘You’ve grown so much. You look like a man now.’

  The Masters were obviously never coming out. She toyed with texting Derek and saying his parents were a no show and going home, but that would make him even more anxious and then, his anxiety would travel over to her and the two of them would sit in silence in their flat jumping at small noises. She glanced up at the monitor over her head, the flight had definitely landed. Half an hour ago, in fact. She pulled herself up on to the railings, so she was sitting on them, trying to ignore the grubby feeling the metal left on her palms, and propped her sign in her lap. The airport security cop glanced at her, looked like he was going to get up and tell her to move, but then he seemed to change his mind or couldn’t be bothered and went back to idly watching the crowd.

  What would they be like, her in-laws? This would be the first experience she was going to have of married life, actual married life, the in-law stuff that her married friends had been bitching about all this while. Somewhere within her, she was quite looking forward to a chance to bitch herself. ‘Derek and I have his parents in town this week,’ she had said in a text to a friend this morning. ‘And so I’m sorry we can’t make your dinner party.’ It was nice typing ‘Derek and I’. It was also nice that there was such a conventional explanation about why they were missing the party. An adult excuse. There was no turning back on her wedding now. Which was a relief—wasn’t it? It felt like a relief, but also, oddly, a little bit like a disappointment. You’ll never have sex with another man again.

  ‘Amisha?’ At first she didn’t respond, because the emphasis was on the wrong part of her name, aah-mish-aa, as if she were a member of an old-fashioned Pennsylvania tribe. ‘You are Aah-mish-aa, aren’t you?’ A middle-aged woman stood in front of her, pointing to the sign and smiling, and Amisha saw Derek’s eyes looking hopefully at her.

  ‘Yes!’ said Amisha, scrambling down from the railing, ‘Hello! Mrs Masters!’ She didn’t know what to call them, she realized. If they were Indian, she would have said ‘Aunty’, but Derek and she had never talked about it. She didn’t know what he’d call her parents. Mrs and Mr seemed safe for the Masters though. She was hoping Derek’s mother would wave her hand and say, ‘Please! Call me Ellie!’ but she just smiled at Amisha vaguely and gestured behind her to two men who were wheeling the trolley.

  ‘I found her!’ she called, and then, turning back to Amisha, ‘where’s Derek?’

  Oh. Awk-wa
rd.

  Derek hadn’t had time to tell his parents he wasn’t coming, and so that task too, would be left to her. ‘He’s at work,’ she said, falteringly, ‘but he’ll be at home by the time we reach.’ Was it her imagination or did his mother just flick her eyes over her with a not very pleased look? They’ve just gotten off the flight, she begged her inner mind, be kind. The two men came up, and there was Derek all over again in his brother, except this Derek had swapped his nose for a sharper model, and it was very disconcerting to look straight at John so she looked down at the bags instead.

  ‘Welcome!’ she said, breaking out her exclamation marks again. ‘Hot, isn’t it? Good flight?’ John nodded and smiled at her while his father looked over her head hopefully.

  ‘Where’s Derek?’ he asked his wife, and she said, ‘Not here, he had to work.’

  ‘Eh?’ said the father, a bit hard of hearing, she knew this because she had heard Derek yelling into the computer, ‘Turn up the volume, Dad!’

  ‘HE’S AT WORK!’ yelled Mrs Masters, ‘HE’S MEETING US AT HOME.’ Other people turned to stare at them and Amisha felt awkward and in the way. But, this wasn’t her family, it wasn’t her place to judge. They ARE your family now, though, reminded her brain, and she sighed.

  She led them to the taxi queue, Mr Masters still looking around wide-eyed. She wasn’t sure if he was looking at the sheer India-ness of it all or whether he was still confused about where Derek was. Mrs Masters alternated between looking worriedly at her luggage and tugging at him. ‘Dear, hurry up. Hurry up, dear!’ John, however, kept up, even though he was looking around as well.

  Amisha felt a twinge of confused attraction towards him, she almost reached out and took his hand, he looked so much like Derek and yet, so not, and now she felt vaguely guilty as well. He caught her eye as she was supervising the luggage going into the trunk of the cab. ‘It’s something, isn’t it?’ he said, grinning, and she noticed his accent was a lot broader than Derek’s. Derek must have toned it down after so many years of living in India, she thought, and then felt surprised at the insight. She wasn’t sure what John was referring to, the airport, the taxi queue, the heat, the city itself, but it seemed safest just to smile and say, ‘Ya, it is.’ And then, as an afterthought, modestly, ‘But you get used to it.’

  In the taxi, she had a small dilemma with whether to seat Mr Masters in the front (as the oldest—and she had been taught to give the best seats in the car to the oldest person) or to sit up front herself and give directions. Practicality won out over good manners, although she regretted it when she turned around and saw Mr Masters sitting in the middle, his knees up to his chest practically, because he was too tall to sit comfortably. It was weird to keep thinking of them as Mr and Mrs. After all, they were her new in-laws-to-be, and if they were Indian, they would have met several times by now, she would be intimate with them, and they would certainly not have thought it a big deal that their precious son had to work and had sent a substitute instead.

  But there was no point thinking like that. They were what they were, she was what she was. She had chosen to marry a foreigner, and this was part of the territory. If only she knew other people who had done the same thing. She knew there were more and more mixed couples nowadays, just not any in her immediate circle of acquaintances, no one who could hold her hand and say, ‘This is how it is.’ Or ‘This is what you should be prepared for.’ Instead, she had a bagful of wisdom on how to deal with Indian in-laws, something that was not very useful in the present circumstances.

  She found herself making random conversation, pointing out useless landmarks—there wasn’t really anything interesting between the international airport and their home—like ‘Oh, this flyover was just built.’ The Masters feigned interest quite well, she thought, making interested ‘Oh?’ and ‘Ah?’ noises. John even asked questions every now and then.

  ‘You must be tired,’ said Amisha, as they pulled into the gate of her apartment building. ‘The beds are all ready if you’d like to take a nap.’

  ‘No, we’re acclimatizing. John says that’s the best way to do it,’ said Mrs Masters, once again watching her luggage carefully.

  ‘Oh, okay.’ Amisha felt dread. How was she to entertain them if they stayed awake? She had counted on them napping for a good three or four hours, after which the plan was to go out for dinner. Now she would have to play the polite host all day. She pressed the bell for the lift, they wouldn’t all fit, not with luggage, told them to press the button for the third floor and started walking up the stairs.

  To her surprise, John bounded after her. ‘I want to stretch my legs anyway,’ he said, smiling, and though she was getting used to the Non-Derek-Derek of him, she still felt their journey up the stairs was somehow intimate. She worried about how she must look from behind as he followed her, was her bottom too big? Was he judging her thighs? The tights she had on weren’t the most flattering ones she owned, and she felt sweaty and bloated. She got to the third floor faster than she ever had, fumbling in her bag for the key just as the lift doors opened and the parents stepped out. Please let Derek be home, she thought, and with this one wish, she turned the key and pushed it open and sure enough he was there, bent over his BlackBerry.

  Amisha’s sigh of relief was so loud, she was sure the Masters had picked up on it, but it was all swept away in the excitement of arrival and greetings. Derek had a funny, strained smile on his face when he went over to his parents and they hugged him, his mother first, grasping him and holding on to him, rocking back and forth and finishing by giving him a big kiss on the cheek. Looking embarrassed, he turned to his father who gave him a man-hug, one arm, back pat, and to his brother who did the same. Then they all stood around, smiling at each other awkwardly.

  It was Amisha who broke the silence, looking around for inspiration and once again, filled with love for her flat. ‘Let me show you around,’ she said. ‘We’ll put your bags away first.’

  Derek gave her what she hoped was a grateful look as opposed to a this-house-is-so-inconvenient look, and she led them through the hall to the master bedroom where she had placed fresh flowers on the bedside table that morning.

  She hoped they liked it. She loved what she had done to the place, the cherry-red bedspread, the crazy mermaid Madhubani painting on the wall. ‘Um,’ she paused, not sure whether to say Mr and Mrs Masters, and saved herself with, ‘Derek, your parents are sleeping here, right?’ She had made all the arrangements, so he looked surprised at being asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘this is the master bedroom, Mum.’

  ‘It’s lovely, sweetie,’ said his mother, looking around pleased. ‘Such a lovely room.’

  ‘That’s all Meesh,’ said Derek, smiling and coming over. He placed his hands on her shoulders from behind her and she felt a feather-light kiss on the top of her head. Suddenly she was filled with joy that she was marrying him, so much joy that it was almost a relief and she wanted to lean into his legs but he moved away and began to put away his parents’ suitcases.

  Amisha moved out of the room and across the hall, where she swung open the door to their tiny study, which also served as a guest room. ‘This is where you’ll be sleeping, John,’ she said. It had been harder to make the study look inviting and attractive, but she had tossed a pretty tablecloth over the desk and placed the bed lengthwise. This way, it occupied more space in the room and made it slightly harder to navigate, but it looked more like a bedroom. There were flowers on the desk as well, but a masculine, fleshy orchid instead of the roses in the other room.

  ‘Where will you guys sleep?’ asked John, after he had put his suitcase under the bed.

  ‘In the living room,’ said Amisha and catching Derek’s eye, said quickly, ‘but that’s totally cool! We’ve had loads of guests before so it’s not like we’re not used to it.’ This bald lie popping straight out of her mouth so easily took her by surprise and when she glanced at Derek she couldn’t tell if he had noticed.

  But then he s
aid, ‘Yeah, we’re used to it.’

  And she knew he had decided to roll with it.

  ‘I could get a hotel,’ said John, and Amisha said, ‘No, no, don’t be silly, it’s really no trouble.’

  But as they walked out of the bedroom, she wondered if perhaps she had read that wrong. Maybe he wanted to get a hotel. If these were Indian in-laws, she knew the polite response was her response, but these were alien people, well, to her at any rate. These are Derek’s parents, this is Derek’s family and if he wants to say something different from what I am saying, he should just go ahead and say it.

  But Derek remained silent and Amisha found herself again in a position where she had to break the silence. House tour done (maybe they should have gotten a larger house just so that she’d have a longer tour to give and less time trying to think of things to say), she arranged them around the dining table and, just so that she’d have something to do, got everyone a glass of cold water. I am so the good Indian daughter-in-law, she thought wryly, even when I’m marrying an Australian.

  She was annoyed, though, that Derek wasn’t saying anything. Was this to be her role for the rest of their lives together? He’d leave all the heavy lifting to her? Resentfully, she turned to him and said, ‘How was work?’ The words came out nice and concerned, her voice was too trained to betray her now. It was odd, how she had gone from that tidal wave of love that washed over her in the bedroom to this, in minutes. I guess that’s marriage, she thought. Derek began talking about the crazy meetings he had had that day, and thankfully, his parents were interested in this subject, what their son did for a living so far away from them and they started to ask questions and soon there was a conversation going. John broke away from them and went to examine the silver-framed photographs of her and Derek that she had placed (artistically) on a low wood table.

  ‘This looks like it was fun,’ he said, holding up a picture they had taken on one of their first holidays together. They were in Rishikesh, walking, and she had gotten a stone in her shoe which she hadn’t removed when she first felt it and it had made a blister on her heel. Derek had picked her up in the classic carrying-over-threshold position and begun walking. She had been laughing so hard, she couldn’t remember what was so funny, but Derek had handed the camera to a local and he had got them, Derek’s teeth flashing, Amisha mid-laugh, her eyes screwed up, her head thrown back. It was her favourite picture, even if the later, less spontaneous ones they had taken, artsy shots in black and white, were far more flattering.