by Sonya Lalli
“He’s one of Julien’s groomsmen,” she said, her mouth full again. “He spent the last ten years abroad teaching, traveling—something like that.”
“You want to set me up with a drifter?”
“Asher’s not a drifter. He’s amazing. He’s—”
“Homeless?
“Don’t be bitchy.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re being skeptical, Raina. You’re single, it’s okay, but you need to start giving guys a chance. Asher, or”—she gestured to a balding man eating alone at the counter—“that guy over there. Can’t you just try and date, or do something—for once?”
I groaned at Shay’s authoritative voice. Just because she had her own love life sorted, my best friend was allowed to control mine, too?
When Shay and I had lived together, I’d never taken the men that stumbled out of her room too seriously. They were disheveled, red-eyed boys who groggily waved to me as they slipped past the kitchen, Shay still sound asleep. At first, Julien seemed no different. But unlike the rest of them, he kept coming back and, recently, proposed. And so Shay got to skip the queue of suitable Indian men Auntie Sarla had been lining up for her since birth, opting for the debonair French Canadian boy in her class, the fellow pediatrician.
She didn’t need an arrangement. And I couldn’t help but think, then why did I?
Shay’s eyes flicked back from the balding man and onto my plate, and I pushed my last piece of toast toward her. She lunged for it, watching my face as she stripped the edge off with her teeth.
“So Sachin’s a no.” She looked up at me hopefully. “Asher is . . .”
“A no.”
She took another bite of toast. “Last week I met a few residents from South Africa. There’s one who might—”
“Actually,” I said, looking at my hands, “I’ve already decided to start dating.”
“Really?” Shay nearly screamed.
“Nani gave me this . . . list. I told her I’d look it over, maybe start making a few calls.”
“Can I see it?” She grabbed my purse. “Is it in here?”
I watched her rifle through my bag and dump its contents onto the table—Kleenex, pens, tampons, passport, and all. She eventually found it, and started scanning the list.
“Nani knows them through the temple, or they’re friends of friends, or—”
“My cousin Rohit is on here!”
“Have I met him before?”
She shook her head. “No. He is such a jerk. Even Ma knows that. I don’t even want him at my wedding.”
“Why would Nani put him on the list then?”
“I guess because he’s”—Shay shrugged—“well, single.”
“So she’d rather have me be with some Indian guy nobody likes than be alone.”
“She just wants you to be happy—and open. You don’t only have to date Indian men”—she shook the paper—“from this little list.”
“My birthday was three days ago, and do you know she’s called me every day just to ask if I’ve met anyone from the list yet? If I’ve e-mailed or called any of these guys?” I shook my head. “A date I find online, or one with Asher or that bald guy, isn’t going to be enough.”
“So you’re really going to do this then. Date, and”—she hesitated—“marry one of them?”
I didn’t answer, and watched Shay as she deliberately crossed out Rohit’s name with my pen.
“So this is . . . it,” she said after a moment.
“I guess so.”
“But I’ve never pictured you with an Indian, Raina.”
I shrugged, and reached for my coffee. An Indian—one, in particular—was the only man I’d ever pictured myself with.
Rohit—Sarla’s nephew, lawyer in Boston
Absolutely NOT
DATE #1
“So here we are,” Vishal said, tugging at the sleeves of his white collared shirt, which were sticking out from his navy blue suit. I looked down, wondering what kind of omen it was that I was wearing virtually the same outfit.
“Have you been here before?”
I shook my head. “It just opened, didn’t it?”
“It’s been two years, actually.”
“Two years?” I glanced around the coffee shop, one that I could have sworn until recently used to be a take-out sushi joint. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
A waiter brought us each a latte, and I tried to brainstorm conversation topics as I laconically stirred a packet of sugar into my cup. Had it only been one week since I turned twenty-nine? For a woman who once spent three months deciding on what handle she wanted as an e-mail address, Nani sure didn’t waste any time. Within days of receiving the list, I’d received a text message from Vishal—the fellow Bengali boy who also liked “business things.” Unfortunately, he happened to work in the building next door to my office, and I wasn’t able to find an excuse not to see him.
I thought I’d be nervous, but I wasn’t. It was like having an awkward meet and greet with a client, or a job interview for a position you really didn’t want. He wasn’t that short, and sure, he was handsome—but within thirty seconds of shaking hands, I could tell we lacked chemistry. Or for that matter, failed to have anything in common. Funny how Nani thought that we could be a match made in heaven just because we both worked on Bay Street and understood how the stock market worked. The conversation was stilted, awkward, but eventually we found some things to talk about. Afterward, I insisted on paying for my own coffee, and then he walked me back to my office. Shaking my hand, he held eye contact just a bit too long. Was he also thinking about how he would spin this date to his family? I was about to joke that we should make up an excuse together for why there wouldn’t be a second date, when he sighed loudly.
“Look, I’m dating someone. I have a girlfriend.”
I guffawed. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t say sorry to me,” I said, crossing arms. “You should be saying that to your girlfriend!”
“I know, I know . . .”
“What on earth are you doing?”
“My mom doesn’t like the fact that she’s not Indian. And she’s been on my case to meet you for months.” He shrugged. “I just thought this would make everything easier.”
“On you, maybe.”
“I know.” He shrugged. “This was a stupid idea.”
“Stupid is an understatement, Vishal.”
He smiled at me for the first the time. He didn’t seem so dull when he smiled, and I half wondered whether we would have been friends had we met under different circumstances. Vishal ran his hands through his hair, and I wasn’t sure what to say to him. Shay was right; Nani wouldn’t care one way or the other if the guy I ended up with wasn’t Indian—but that was Nani. Not everyone was lucky enough to have that.
“It sounds like you need to call your girlfriend,” I said after a moment. When he smiled, I added, “And maybe stand up to your mom?”
“Perhaps.” He cocked his head to the side. “But it’s not like you wanted to meet me, either. I mean, how many times did you check your BlackBerry in the last forty-five minutes?” I hesitated, and he continued. “Sounds like you need to stand up to someone, too.”
I nodded, even though I knew I wouldn’t. What was the point of standing up to Nani? So I could let her down like the rest of her family had?
I didn’t have a boyfriend, or even a prospect. The only men I met were through work—and they were all married, or single for a reason. And Dev . . . Well, Dev was nothing but a memory.
Vishal—Bengali boy, also likes business things— but maybe too short
Not single!
THREE
The humidity of early summer was starting to set in, and the air conditioners were ill prepare
d as the sun arched over Bay Street and streamed in through the windows. I heard the usual chatter of the break room across the hall; the slow drip of the percolator, the opening and shutting of the fridge as Emma from reception gossiped to someone in a low whisper. I sat back down at my desk, and as my wrists hovered above the keyboard, I realized I’d completely forgotten what it was I’d been working on before I’d left for coffee.
To me, work meant doing a lot of sinfully boring things that, regrettably, I’d once found interesting enough to get me through a minimum eighty-hour workweek without dabbling in self-mutilation. These days, I wasn’t sure what kept me going. Everything had become routine. Work meant graphing variables and predicting outcomes for clients. Analyzing NASDAQ figures, Excel spreadsheets, and financial statements, and researching and sourcing investment products. It meant keeping my passport on hand and an extra pantsuit at the office just in case I needed to fly somewhere last minute to talk to or learn from people who did largely the same thing.
I’d once tried to explain to Nani the macroeconomic world and how exactly I fit into it, but she’d smiled sweetly, blankly, and then turned back to the television. She enjoyed strangers’ reactions when she told them her granddaughter worked at a multinational investment bank, but that was as far as her pride went. She didn’t want to understand what my job really was, or why choosing this career meant I had so little time for her, let alone anyone else.
It had been a few weeks since my date with Vishal, and I’d started texting with two other men on Nani’s preapproved list. It felt wrong to have more than one guy “on the go,” but Nani insisted. “Sprinkle your seeds, and see which flowers grow,” as she liked to say. Arjun seemed normal, as did Jayesh—although with conflicting work schedules, I had yet to find a good time to meet either of them.
I’d overworked myself on my morning run, and my thighs and lower back throbbed. I reached up my arms and stretched, then closed my eyes. When I opened them again, Zoey’s face had appeared in the doorway.
“Have a sec?” Without waiting for me to respond, she pushed through and closed the door behind her. She sat down in the chair opposite my desk, stretched out both legs, and drummed her stomach with her palms.
“You all right?”
She shrugged, and then glanced up at me slyly. “I accidentally saw Alice last night.”
“Accidentally?” I laughed.
“How many weeks did I last this time?” She started counting on her fingers, and then gave up.
“Six,” I said. “It’s been six weeks since you last broke up.”
“And I did really well. I didn’t see her once—”
“Until last night!”
“Raina, she just showed up out of the blue. Handed me a bottle of wine, and waltzed in like nothing had happened. Like we had never broken up. And then . . .”
“And then?” Zoey didn’t reply, and I grabbed a pen and gently lobbed it at her to get her attention.
She caught it and, blushing, set the pen down beside her. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Really. It’ll be—it’ll be different this time. Won’t it?”
“I may not be the best person to give you relationship advice.”
“No one’s perfect. You can’t be worse than anyone else.”
I laughed, trying to figure out what to say. Zoey was several years younger, the most junior—and intelligent—analyst on my team. I’d been assigned to train her on her first day, and by the time I’d showed her around the office and she’d laughed at one of my jokes, we were friends. Over a year later, she’d become more than that. We’d confided in each other quickly, and she’d told me about her life growing up in Canada’s prairies, the difficulties she had experienced coming out as gay to her family, her on-again, off-again relationship with Alice—a law student she’d met her first week in Toronto.
I’d always considered Shay to be my best friend, but these days it was Zoey who seemed to know me best. She was the person beside whom I battled each day. These days, when Shay and I saw each other, we talked about her wedding plans, or she analyzed my text messages with Arjun and Jayesh—and then she’d lecture me about how I needed to be more “open.” But Zoey and I actually talked.
My cell phone vibrated. It was an unknown number, and tentatively, I answered it.
“Hi, is this Raina?” The voice paused. “It’s Sachin.”
I covered the receiver with my palm and looked up at Zoey. She’d heard all about the birthday ambush, and when I mouthed to her who it was, she swiped the phone from my hand and set it on the desk with a thud. She pressed the speakerphone button, and his voice, the tone now less formal, blared out.
“Hello? Hi? Is anyone there?”
“Hi,” I said, slowly. “It’s Raina.”
“Yeah, hi! It’s Sachin, the, uh—”
“Cardiologist. I remember.”
He cleared his throat, his voice scratching through the room, and I tried not to laugh as Zoey gestured vulgarities at the phone.
“And how are you today, Raina?”
“I’m fine. And you?”
“Great—great, thank you. Well, no.” He cleared his throat again. “Actually, I lost a patient this morning.”
“I’m so sorry . . .”
“It happens.” His voice trailed off, and as I caught Zoey’s eye, her hands dropped slowly back to her lap.
“I had a great time with you and your nani a few weeks back,” he said after a moment. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to call.”
“I didn’t know you were planning to.”
“Yeah . . . About that. I’m sorry I was so rude to you. My mother only told me that morning about the lunch, and I was annoyed with her. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I’m sure you understand.”
I did understand, but I didn’t say anything.
“I really shouldn’t have said that I wasn’t interested. I hadn’t even met you yet, and—well, you really are a nice girl, Raina. I am interested in getting to know you.” I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and after a few seconds of static, he spoke again. “Would you like to have dinner with me?”
“Did your mother tell you to call me?” I blurted.
“No, I wanted to.”
“Really.”
“You’re intelligent and forthright and attractive and—well, frankly, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t want to get to know you. So will you have dinner with me?” He spoke quicker, as if he had somewhere to rush off to. “Just dinner. With no pressure or anything. Just a normal date.”
I listened to Sachin as he breathed heavily over the speaker, to Zoey’s fingernails against her BlackBerry as she seemingly grew bored waiting for my answer.
Except for my coffee with Vishal—with whom I’d had less chemistry than my toaster—I hadn’t been on a date in years, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever even been on a normal date. My brief relationships in college had started in the library—and then there was Dev, although nothing about that date had been normal.
I could barely even remember the last time I was alone with a man. Last winter, was it? The securities seminar Zoey and I had flown to New York for last minute. Zoey had been on a break with Alice then, and she’d briefly disappeared with a woman she’d met at the hotel lobby a few hours before the flight home. Sitting there alone, I’d somehow become tipsy chatting to a broker from Atlanta. I could vaguely recall his hand grazing my waist next to the empty coat check, ignoring the longing in his glances when I refused to take a later flight home. But that was as far as it went: turning away from the kiss, forgetting the business card in an airplane seat pocket. I never let it lead to normal. I leaned forward against the desk and stared at the phone. Getting to know each other over dinner. This was what normal meant. Later, we’d go for more dinners, movies, and lunch dates—and then what? Months of sex and the superficial? A natural segue into the serious?
“Dinner,” I repeated slowly, conjuring up Sachin in my mind. Indian. Intelligent. Handsome.
Nani-approved.
If I was going to do this, really going to do this, then it might as well be Sachin. And squinting into the glare from the window, I said, “I could do dinner.”
Sachin—Reetu’s son in Scarborough, some kind of doctor—birthday lunch??
*Dinner 9:30 P.M., Tuesday @ Eldorado
FOUR
My boss, Bill, was pissed that I left work early, but Nani had insisted I come see her before my date with Sachin. After nearly an hour battling through rush-hour traffic, I arrived home to find that she wasn’t even there yet.
She’d left all the lights on, and I walked around the house turning them off and then put the kettle on to boil. My head throbbed, and I flopped down on Nana’s side of the couch and closed my eyes. I knew I was imagining it, but the sofa still smelled of him. I could picture him there reading me Little House on the Prairie, my head resting against his knees, impatiently tugging on the cuff of his trousers whenever he stopped mid-sentence to sip his tea.
No one was home with Nana the morning he died, and I don’t think Nani ever forgave herself for believing him when he claimed his chest pain was merely indigestion. Watching her lose him was harder than dealing with my own grief. The horror of finding her collapsed sideways on the stairs clutching his parka, her wet eyes and nose buried in the garlicky tobacco scent of the goose down, would never leave me. She became a widow at the age of sixty. An arranged life drastically rearranged, Nani had to start over; create a life from scratch that didn’t revolve around the man to whom she’d been assigned.
It took her years, but her vivacity returned, as did the color in her cheeks. She was always practical and compassionate—most of all toward Nana and I—but these days it wasn’t strange to find Nani teasing the busboys and running Saffron better than Nana ever did; driving her Mini Cooper from an afternoon tea to temple, from one charity project to another. I suppose she had to find a new balance in the equilibrium that life had imposed on her.
