by Anne Cherian
“Okay,” Lali said, trying to take the grudge out of her voice. “I’ll be there as soon as I get ready.”
The part of her that wasn’t furious with him wished they weren’t fighting. For one thing, it was so tiring. If only they could go back to being the happy couple who mingled at parties but always returned to the other, in what Lali told Mary was “the magnet effect.” She had always counted on the comfort of holding his hand, of giving him a look when someone made an outré comment. That was the image she wanted to present at the party.
But right now their lives were like the separate bags they had packed.
It was as if their entire past was a piece of luggage they had misplaced or lost. It didn’t matter that she knew he had packed two days ago, that all he needed to do was wash up and change into his travel clothes. When they first got married, every new detail she learned about him had thrilled her.
In the past few months, she had been discovering their many differences.
Was it a factor of age, as Mary claimed? That people, when they reach their forties, settle into being who they are meant to be? It typically meant that they returned to the ways of their youth. But that didn’t make sense with Jonathan, because his parents hadn’t raised him to be Jewish.
She knew that bits and pieces of her were, unexpectedly, definitely, turning Indian.
Like just now, when she was spending so much time getting ready. She used to make sure she looked nice before taking the train to her college in Bangalore. But after marrying Jonathan, she began to appreciate his theory that since they weren’t going to be seeing the other passengers again, why bother getting dolled up?
Today, of course, was special. It wasn’t who she was going to see on the plane.
It was who she was going to meet after she landed.
It was with that in mind that she put on her makeup. Concealer under the eyes, powder all over, and, finally, mascara to define her eyes. She just needed to brush her hair and put on the clothes she had set out the night before.
She was pulling up her pants when she heard something fall on the floor.
“Shit!” she muttered. The button had come off. She bent low to the floor, searching, and was about to kneel down to look under the chest of drawers when she felt a crunch under her foot. The button was in two pieces. She didn’t have time to find another one, size it, and sew it on.
“Dammit,” she said, throwing the pants on the bed. This was her best pair. Now she would have to make do with the only other “good” pair of black pants she had. The pants were a few years old, a bit faded from repeated dry cleaning, and they didn’t fit as well.
This was not a propitious beginning.
“Five minutes,” Jonathan picked up their luggage and took it to the front door. “Just enough time for another quick cup of coffee. You having that tea?”
She didn’t want the tea anymore, but this wasn’t the right moment to discard his peace offering. There still might be time to talk, to get him to agree to her wishes. She definitely didn’t want to arrive so—separate—at the party this evening.
She took a sip of tea and burned her tongue. “Ouch!”
“Honey, you okay?” Jonathan asked. “I thought you knew it was hot.”
This was his fault. It was because of his conference that they had to leave so early. Now she was stuck in the wrong pants with a furry tongue.
Before she could respond, the doorbell rang. The shuttle had arrived.
The airport was busy even at this early hour, and they moved silently from check-in to security.
She took off her shoes and placed them in the basket with her purse. She stepped through the security arch and heard the loud ding!
“Check your pockets,” Jonathan recommended, as he retrieved their bags.
“I don’t have any pockets,” Lali said. Then she saw the small brass studs decorating her blouse. She had been thinking only of how nice she would look when she bought it last week. She hadn’t been concerned about setting off alarms.
“Must be these,” she told the official.
“Step aside, and stand here,” he indicated a spot that did not interfere with the other passengers.
“Can’t you see it’s those little buttons?” Jonathan asked the man while looking at Lali.
She stared into his deep blue irises, so familiar and reassuring. Their joint annoyance united them.
The man’s voice broke their connection.
“Move away, sir,” he said sternly. “Which one is your bag?” he asked Lali, and Jonathan brought it over.
“This is ridiculous.” Jonathan banged it onto the counter just past the conveyor belt.
“Keep back, sir,” the man said threateningly, and Jonathan did as he was told.
When the man got on his walkie-talkie, Lali felt as if the entire airport could hear him. She avoided the eyes of the other passengers and didn’t talk to Jonathan, in case it drew attention to the fact that she was waiting to be allowed to join him.
After one of the longest ten minutes of her life, a tall, thin, official-looking woman approached her, wand in hand. Lali spread out her arms and legs, like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, as humiliation and anger pounded through her.
As she had expected, the wand beeped at the studs.
“Satisfied?” Jonathan asked the man, who shrugged his shoulders.
“You may go,” he told Lali.
“It’s the aftereffects of 9/11, honey,” Jonathan said as she joined him. “Remember the old days when we needed to check in ten minutes before our flight and you could pretty much carry anything on board?”
Jonathan would never be able to truly understand what she had just gone through. The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had made travel more inconvenient for him. He was an American, and his blond hair and blue eyes would always protect him in this country. She, too, had an American passport. But her face fit the profile of a female bomber, and her blouse could send the security staff into high alert. She was sure that the same blouse worn by a white American would not have produced such a response.
She was still feeling estranged when they took their seats in the waiting area.
She had just opened her book when Erik Muller came loping toward them.
“Jonathan, Lali,” he said, “Fancy running into you here. Where are you going?”
Erik was the pediatric dentist who still took care of Aaron’s teeth. “I’m off to see a friend get Mauied,” he joked, pointing to the coconut palms on his shirt. “Now that destination weddings are the rage, I’m sure Maui is going to become an even more popular locale.”
“Have fun. Nothing that exotic for us. I’m going to the Santa Barbara conference,” Jonathan said.
“And what will you do while Jonathan is conferencing?” Erik asked Lali.
Lali felt the first finger of discomfort constrict her throat. She had tried to avoid thinking about those hours when Jonathan would be busy with his colleagues.
She was collecting her thoughts when Jonathan answered, “Oh, Lali’s been to Santa Barbara before. She’s tagging along because this evening we are driving down to LA for a party with her Indian friends.”
“A Bollywood party in Hollywood?” Erik asked, shaking his hips slightly.
“We’ll find out, I guess,” Lali said, still assessing Jonathan’s “her Indian friends” comment.
“Just get me a picture of Jonathan dancing,” Erik said.
“That won’t happen,” Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t dance. Why do you think I kept telling Lali we should have a small civil wedding? I was afraid that she would change her mind when she found out I have two left feet!”
“As long as the hands do the job, eh?” Erik waved his fingers. “You might not have a choice, Jonathan. I’ve heard that Indian parties go on for hours. Someone will pull you onto the floor.”
Frances was just about to tell Erik that no one would ever presume to drag Jonathan, or anyone else they had just met, onto the
dance floor, when the loudspeaker blared.
“That’s my flight they just announced. Bye!” Erik rushed off.
“You’ll tell them I really can’t dance, right?” Jonathan looked worried. He was acting like Erik, as if an Indian party was utterly different from an American one.
She knew he was phobic about dancing, a result of his mother’s insistence that he attend Cotillion during middle school, plus something that had gone terribly wrong at a dance. He had never told Lali the whole story, and she hadn’t asked. She had been relieved, because she didn’t know Western dances, and it was one more American thing she didn’t need to learn.
She weighed her irritation against his anger at the security man. “If you stop every passenger wearing buttons on their clothes, the planes will never take off on time,” he’d told the man when Lali joined him.
“No one is going to make you dance,” she said, and suddenly she wished they could laugh about the party together. If this had happened when they first married, she would have told him not to worry, that she, too, would feel like an outsider if Vic brought in Bollywood elements. But that happy past had become hazy from their conflicts in the present.
“Erik had me worried for a second,” Jonathan said. “I’ve never met your friends, and I don’t want to embarrass you if everyone dances while I’m sitting.”
In this context, his “your Indian friends” comment no longer angered her. His concern surprised—and shamed—her.
“You won’t embarrass me,” she said honestly. She was proud that she had married a nice-looking man who was a cardiologist. Frances and Jay would no doubt dwell on the fact that he was short, but they would be impressed by the Harvard pedigree. Lali knew it was silly to give in to the Indian pressure of education and status and looks, but all those qualifications she had stuffed down for so long had come out because she would be seeing her friends at the party.
“You sure about that?”
She knew he wasn’t being literal.
“I’m sure.” She paused. “I just wish we weren’t fighting.”
“I’m not fighting,” Jonathan started, then saw her face. “Okay, then, I’ll say it again, I still don’t know why your friends would care either way whether Aaron goes back to Harvard or not.”
“It’s because you aren’t Indian,” she said, stating what was obvious to her. “It’s difficult to explain, but we all grew up assuming that people never tell the whole truth. Maybe it’s because there is so much competition in India, but people are very protective of what they have. It could be about something really silly like the shop where they bought their saree, or it could be withholding an important ingredient from a recipe. People are so used to hearing a partial story that they try to figure out the missing part, and then they often think the worst. I remember when Amma told people I was engaged to you, someone asked if you had been married before. When Amma said, “No,” they asked to see your picture. They wanted to see if there was something physically wrong with you. So now, if we tell Jay and Frances that Aaron’s not going back to Harvard next year, they will think that I’m hiding something, that he actually failed and can never return. None of them will believe that he is voluntarily taking a year off from such a great school.”
“I got that bit,” Jonathan said. “You certainly feel that way.”
“Think of it from my perspective. Harvard is the one school everyone knows about back in India.” Lali shook her head. “I can just see their brains clicking if we were to tell them that Aaron is abandoning Harvard.”
“I wish your brain had clicked into understanding why he needs a year off,” Jonathan said. “You just flew into a rage.”
Aaron’s announcement had immediately divided them. Lali had shouted, then cajoled, then threatened, until Jonathan took the phone from her and hung up. After that, Aaron refused to speak to her. Jonathan kept telling her it was Aaron’s life, and that they should support, not upset him.
“Let him take some time off,” Jonathan had said at the time. “He was so concentrated on getting into Harvard that he never had a chance to think if it was the right school for him.”
“Harvard will not wait around for him to make up his mind,” Lali had said as she left the room.
Even Mary told her it was a shame that Aaron was giving up such a good school. It was when Lali heard Mary’s words that she switched from just being upset at Aaron’s stupidity to feeling the stress of answering questions from Jay and Frances and the other Indians at the party. She wished she could cancel their plans, but it was too late to back out.
Then the perfect solution came to her. Aaron was still in Boston. She would tell everyone that was the reason he could not attend the party. She would simply omit telling them that he wasn’t going back next year. Jonathan was sure that Aaron would return, that the year away would give him a better appreciation for Harvard. So her lie wouldn’t be a total lie. But they had fought over it—again—the previous night. This moment at the airport was her last chance to get Jonathan to agree with her.
“Look,” Lali said, “you will never understand the way Indians think. Take this party, for example. Yes, it’s to celebrate Nikhil doing so well, but the people attending the party will also be celebrating themselves. They will be checking out clothes, finding out who drives the better car, even discussing whose lawn is greener—literally greener. I remember going to a party in Silicon Valley before we met and listening to an engineer go on and on about the superior grass he had used for his lawn. He was very serious.”
“Then why are we going?”
“I wasn’t thinking about that aspect of the party when we got the invitation. I just thought that I hadn’t seen my friends in a long time. But now things are different, and . . .”
“We don’t have to go,” Jonathan suggested. “It’s not too late to join the other doctors for dinner tonight.”
“Oh, we can’t cancel today,” Lali said, stressing the last word. “Vic is expecting us, and I also told Jay and Frances we’d see them there.”
“But from what you just said, they aren’t that nice,” Jonathan pointed out.
“They’re nice,” Lali insisted. “They’re just Indian. They’ll be thrilled to see us. I just don’t want them to think Aaron’s a failure.” Lali suddenly had an idea. “When the Jews first came to America, they also wanted to become successful, right? I’m sure they tried to outdo each other.”
“I suppose so.”
“Is it so bad that I want to show off my doctor husband and Harvard son? I mean, it’s not a lie, because technically Aaron is still at Harvard.”
Aaron had called them with his decision on the very morning that Lali had slipped a picture of him wearing a Harvard sweatshirt into her wallet. She had imagined Jay and Frances and Vic asking about him. Vic’s son was already a success, and if Frances’s occasional e-mails were anything to go by, her children were doing extremely well. So when they inquired after her son, Lali had thought she would show them the picture, let the Harvard colors flaunt themselves.
Jonathan paused, then sighed. “Okay, if you’re sure you want to go. I won’t say a word,” he promised. “If they ask about Aaron, I’ll just say he’s doing fine.”
“And if I say he’s at Harvard, don’t correct me,” Lali added quickly.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you.”
“Thank you. I’ll try not to say it in your presence.”
Lali sighed deeply and rested her head against the back of the chair in the airport waiting area. She felt she had checked one problem off her list.
The other issue was something she didn’t want to think about, but could not stop her mind from running in that direction.
It was what she had been considering when she parsed her body in the mirror this morning, when she tried to make those black circles disappear.
Aakash.
“I’LL BE BUSY until later this afternoon,” Jonathan reminded her as he adjusted his tie in the mirror. “You’re sure you wi
ll be okay, honey?”
“Yes,” Lali said impatiently. He needed to leave their hotel room. She could not make up her mind in his presence.
“I’m just asking,” Jonathan put up his hands as if in self-defense. Then he said, “I’ve been meaning to tell you that you look lovely.”
She immediately felt guilty, and rushed to explain, “I wasn’t sure I’d have time to change, and I wanted to look nice in case we met any of your colleagues.”
She wondered if he could hear the lie that lurked beneath her words.
He hardly ever commented on her appearance because, as he told her right after they were married, he thought she always looked pretty. So she knew, she knew, that the compliment came along with the tea he had made her earlier. But she could not quell her unease, and now she wanted him more than ever to leave for his conference. She needed to be alone to figure out the next step.
“See you later, hon,” he kissed her lips. “One more time,” he kissed her again.
Lali had started the three-kiss custom the very first time he had gone to a conference after they were married. “It’s the magic number,” she had joked, and Jonathan had simply accepted it. Now he was waiting for her to complete the ritual.
She didn’t say anything, just kissed him on the cheek. He looked at her, then shrugged. “Okay, I’m off. See you later.”
Lali glanced at her watch, then at the clock on the small table between the beds. Almost eleven o’clock.
She had told Aakash she would meet him at 11:20.
“Typical of you to pick an even number that’s an odd time,” he’d written. “I’ll be there. In case you don’t remember what I look like, I’ll be the one with the big smile and a dozen roses.”
Lali sat on the edge of the bed, watching time move forward. It was just like last night. Then she could not sleep. Now she did not know what she should do.
It had started so innocently.
“Vic is celebrating his son’s MIT graduation in true Vic style,” she had written.
“Don’t tell me, he’s going to have bhangra dancers and fly in a long line of good desi girls so his son can choose a bride without needing to make that long trip to India.”
