by Anne Cherian
“Good to see you, finally,” Jay said. “And, for your information, I do know everything.”
“Or so he likes to think.” Frances made a face. “Priya, thanks for inviting us. It’s a beautiful party.”
“It was all Vic’s idea.” Priya raised her palms as if she had nothing to do with it. “I thought we should go on a family cruise, but Vic won.”
“Is he still working nonstop and not taking vacation days?” Jay laughed.
“No, no. I force him to take three weeks every summer. Then I look at the map, pick a country, and off we go.”
“Good for you.” Frances was still getting used to Priya’s poise and perfect English. Lali was correct. This Priya did not look or act as if she had been born in a small village.
She also wasn’t bragging about her life. Frances had met numerous well-to-do Indians who liked to share their love of travel by listing the countries they had visited, including museums and palaces. It was one of the reasons she and Jay no longer sought out other Indians. Priya was simply being factual, not prideful. Her entire demeanor was sweet, and she seemed genuinely pleased to see them.
Frances sighed softly. So far, both Lali and Priya had proved her wrong. In spite of the behavior of her children, this might be a party she actually enjoyed.
“It’s good for Vic,” Priya said, “I don’t work, so I don’t really need a vacation. I do it for him.”
“You do what for me?” Vic’s voice boomed from behind Priya. But instead of waiting for her answer, he greeted Jay and Frances.
“Ah, here you are. I was wondering if today also you would not show up. But you are here. And you already have some drinks. Good, good. Please, eat and drink. Just like old times,” Vic said contentedly.
All evening long, people had been congratulating him not just because of Nikhil but also because the food, the tables, the drinks, everything, they assured him, was top-notch. He told them that Priya had arranged the outdoor space, and every time he gave her the accolade, he felt his anger at her shrinking. His other main anxiety, the bikers, seemed to be doing fine, easily chatting with other groups. Slowly, he had started to enjoy himself without constantly checking to ensure that everything was going well. Now he was even happier, because his college friends had taken the trouble to come to the party.
“With a few modifications,” Jay patted his belly, “and some additions,” he indicated Jonathan and Priya.
“What old times, Vic?” Lali wrinkled her brow. “I don’t ever remember you throwing a party at UCLA.”
“Vic was too busy planning his company to plan a party,” Jay said.
“I never understood those American students,” Vic said, shaking his head. “Instead of studying, they were having parties. I did not want to waste one erg of my energy doing that. I would only go for a short time.” He smiled at Lily and Sam. “It is good you came and that you also brought your children.” The two looked as bored as Nandan did when they dragged him to parties. “Why don’t you go inside the house? We just made a game room for Nandan. You can play Wii and Xbox and PS2 and also there is a TV. He will not mind if you play with his things.”
“Can we go?” Lily asked her parents.
“You have legs, so of course you can go,” Jay answered. “The question is, ‘May we go?’ ”
“Let them go,” Vic butted in. “Ah, this is your oldest girl. Hello, hello. You can also go see if there is anything to your liking in the game room.”
“May we go?” Sam asked.
“Of course, but stay there until we come and get you. And don’t break anything.”
“Not to worry,” Vic said, patting Jay’s shoulders. “This is like their house. Let them also have a good time.”
They watched the three hurry away, and Vic had just started to say something when he was interrupted.
“Good wine, Vic,” Pierre said, raising his glass as he passed by. “Tell your son we Frenchmen approve very much.”
“Your biker friends haven’t left the bar since they went there,” Priya informed Vic.
“So?” Vic shrugged his shoulders. “They like to drink.”
“You have biker friends?” Jay inquired. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone and joined Hell’s Angels!”
“No, no, nothing like that. They are simply these French people I go motorbiking with,” Vic explained.
“You’re joking, right?” Jay asked.
“Oh, no.” Priya answered as Vic took another sip. “One day Vic came home with a BMW motorcycle, and the next week he was riding off to San Diego with his new friends.”
“They are not really my friends,” Vic clarified. “I only go riding with them.
“Like those girls at UCLA?” Jay teased. Vic really liked to keep things separate. At UCLA he had ridden girls but had insisted they were not his girlfriends.
“You had girlfriends?” Priya narrowed her eyes.
“Don’t believe Jay. I never had a single girlfriend.”
“Is that true?” Priya asked Jay.
“So he told me,” Jay joked, then relented and said, “It’s true. I was the bad Indian with a girlfriend, and Lali, here, in case you’re wondering, Jonathan, had the same girlfriend I had—Frances. Lali was just like Vic the Straight Stick. She didn’t have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t mind if she did have one. I’m just glad she married me,” Jonathan said, as he put his arm around Lali.
Lali looked at Frances. So she hadn’t told Jay about Aakash, after all. Or if she had, Jay, thank God, was pretending he didn’t know. She felt a warm, thankful connection to her friends and allowed that to drown the guilt that had risen. Every now and then, she scanned the crowd in case Aakash decided to crash the party. She didn’t think he would, but she wanted to be prepared if he showed up.
“And I’m just glad Vic’s son graduated, because it brought the gang together,” Jay said. “I’ll get a refill so we can make another toast.”
“Let me do it while you play catch-up,” Jonathan offered.
“Whiskey for me,” Vic held out his glass, “on the rocks.”
“Vic,” Priya said softly, “you have enough to make a toast.”
“Frances, Lali, what are you going to have?” Vic disregarded his wife. This was the second time she was embarrassing him in front of his friends. He wasn’t drunk. This was only his second glass of whiskey. He wanted to have a good time, and just because she never drank, it did not mean that he was going to become all pious.
“Tonight is very special. My son has become a graduate of MIT and all my friends in America are here with me. Where is Nikhil?” he asked Priya. “He must come and join us. These are the first people I met when I came to UCLA.”
“I don’t know where he is,” Priya said tightly.
“Go find him,” Vic ordered. “Tell him I want him to meet my oldest friends.”
“We’ve met him,” Frances said quickly.
“Nikhil did a great job welcoming us,” Jay added. Vic had always been able to hold his liquor. Had that changed?
Jonathan returned with refills, and Vic raised his glass. “To my friends. Thank you for coming. So, tell me,” he turned to Jonathan, “was the food okay for you so far?”
“Loved it all,” Jonathan said.
“I think Lali loved the pakoras the best,” Jay said. “Here, eat some more,” he said, holding the plate toward her.
“Satan, get thee behind me,” Lali protested.
“I will never understand you Christian types,” Jay lamented. “You think your Jesus meant that Satan should leave Him alone. But I think He wanted Satan to get behind Him, take His side.”
“You’re worse than a pagan,” Lali informed Jay.
“That I may be, but if I want to eat some pakoras, I better stand in front of you, otherwise you will gobble them up.”
“Enough, enough,” Lali said. Jay never seemed to recognize when his comments went from funny to hurtful.
“Please eat your fill,” Vic said. “I have ordered plenty of
food. Rajesh,” he called out, “make sure those idiot caterers are keeping the table filled with pakoras and samosas. Go get some more,” he told Lali, “or I can have Rajesh bring you some.”
“I’ve had enough, thank you.” Lali was embarrassed.
Rajesh hurried over and said, “I just now only checked, and there is plenty of everything.”
“Good. Find out when they are planning to serve the dinner food,” Vic told Rajesh, who scuttled away.
“He’s sweating an awful lot,” Jonathan said. “Is he all right?”
“You must not worry about Rajesh,” Vic said. “He is Priya’s cousin, and since he is the only member of our extended family present today, he is running around being important.” Vic didn’t want them to know that Rajesh liked his drink. He had warned Rajesh not to get drunk, and the idiot had nodded happily, all the while holding a beer in his hand.
“My cousin came a little early today because he knew we might like his help,” Priya added. “He’s been busy running around all afternoon.”
“I’m glad you have some help,” Jay said. “Looks like you invited the entire town.”
“How many people have you invited?” Jonathan asked.
Lali knew that her husband was amazed by the sheer number of people. “It’s bigger than most weddings,” he told her, and she had responded, “Oh, if this was Nikhil’s wedding, Vic would fly in his entire family and invite everyone he has ever met. And the celebration would probably last all day, not just a quick dinner.”
“This is a small party,” Vic shook his head. “Only 150 people. Nikhil did not want more than a hundred, but I told him that was impossible. You see, he had to invite his friends. He knows many people in Newport Beach because he studied here from elementary school right up to high school. There are also some people from MIT who live in the area, and then the boys he used to swim with. I wanted him to invite anyone he wanted to. Then I had to call all my friends, and also my workers. These days, I am a member of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and some other organizations, so those people, too, I invited. But, as you can see, I made sure to invite many, many Americans. Most of them I am knowing through work, and some are working for me. Ah, I see one of them there. He is an interesting fellow who has visited India. He is working in my PR department and is useful because he knows Spanish and is also knowing a little about our culture. Let me call him here so you can meet him. Ricardo!” Vic shouted.
“We can meet him later,” Jay said. He wanted to spend time with the gang, not incorporate a new face. He had been relieved that the Frenchmen hadn’t intruded into their group. At another time, he would have wanted to chat with the bikers, hear some stories about this new Vic who rode a bike, but not today.
“No, no, he has asked especially to meet you. When I was telling him that you had lived near Delhi, he was most interested that I arrange an introduction. He spent some time in that area and does not get many chances to talk about that. Ricardo! Ricardo!”
This time the gray head turned, and nodded, before starting toward them.
Lali and Frances exchanged glances. Vic was so inept socially. Lali wondered if he had Asperger’s—he definitely did not pick up clues. Priya, poor thing, was just standing by, a smile on her face.
“Ricardo, you wanted to meet my good friends from UCLA. This is Jay, the one I told you studied in Delhi.”
“Namaste,” Ricardo said.
Lali sighed. This man was probably going to stick around, forcing them to listen to details of his India trip, the anecdotes punctuated with the few Hindi words he remembered, like his badly pronounced “namaste.” She was tired of meeting people who had traveled to India and who assumed she would be riveted by the experiences that had fascinated them. As she told Jonathan one day after listening to a long account of a train ride, “I’ve lived there and know the place. I’d much rather hear about Hungary or Sweden or Alaska.”
Jay was just about to pick up the social baton that clueless Vic had dropped and introduce the others when Priya smoothly took over and said, “Ricardo, this is Jonathan, who is married to Lali,” she indicated Lali, “and the lady next to Lali is Jay’s wife, Frances.”
“Frances?” Ricardo peered, shaking his head sideways as if brushing away strands of hair. “Fran Dias?” Then he said, “Oh, my God, I don’t believe it. It’s you. Wow! Oh my God, I have to get my wife. Wait a minute. Don’t move. Stay right there. She’s going to be blown away. I’ll be right back.”
FRANCES STARED AT his retreating back. Her own back was clammy, and her heart had accelerated so quickly that the sound blanketed out the music and loud conversations all around her. She had been so concerned that people would poke their noses into Jay’s job, Mandy’s grades, the upcoming trip to India. She had never thought to worry that her past would be standing before her.
Ricardo was Rich, the man who had proposed to her, who had sung that stupid song about Nixon, who had abandoned her. She had thought about him only a few hours ago, and here he was, gray and pudgy and rushing off to get his wife.
“You know him?” Jay and Vic asked together.
She was saved, temporarily, from answering, because Rich had already returned, dragging a woman who looked Indian—and annoyed.
“Carmen, this is Frances,” Rich explained to his wife.
“Hello.” Carmen extended her hand, her voice evenly civil, though her face hadn’t lost its tight, “Why have I been dragged here?” expression.
Frances was limply shaking the other woman’s fingers when Rich said, “Carmen, it’s Frances—you know, Frances from India.”
“Oh my gooooosh!” Carmen exclaimed, and kept on shaking Frances’s hand.
Jay had no idea what was going on. He thought he knew everyone Frances knew.
Lali watched the tableau with amusement, a little puzzled that Frances was not delighted to meet an old friend.
“Ricardo told me so much about you,” Carmen said. “He said your family was related to that famous explorer—what was his name, sweetheart?” she asked her husband.
“Bartolomeu Dias. Fran’s father told me he was their first known ancestor.”
“I remember. I was so jealous, because my family has no one famous. We don’t even know if we are Spanish or Indian. So when Ricardo told me you are Indian, and Portuguese, I was, oh, very jealous. But now enough time has passed that we can all be friends.”
“Isn’t it amazing?” Ricardo spread out his hands. “Vic was telling me that he was going to be meeting all of you who are his old friends, and I never thought I’d meet an old flame.”
Frances heard the words that slipped out of his mouth so easily. At one time she had been completely enamored of his accent, dazzled by the way he strung sentences together. After meeting Rich, Mama had decided she preferred an American accent over a British one. “Americans let their words marry each other,” she said. “The British keep their syllables separate, and it sounds so divorced,” she used to laugh.
Now Rich’s smoothly flowing words flung open the door to a room no one knew about in America. She did not need to turn her head to know that everyone was staring—Vic with surprise, Lali with another sort of “why, you dark horse you” surprise, and Jay with the worst surprise: “You never told me this.”
If only she had seen Rich first. Then she could have avoided him.
But would she have recognized this gray-haired man who called himself Ricardo? He had been bright blond when she last saw him. Now his blue eyes were behind glasses, and the wide torso he had kept exposed to get a tan was sunken. He even seemed much shorter than the man she had looked up to with such admiration and love.
He had told her that his family was Irish Catholic, like President Kennedy, except that they weren’t rich. “Another thing we have in common,” Frances had marveled. It was the Catholic connection that had pushed aside her Indian fear when he started opening the buttons of her blouse the night before he was to leave. She had wanted to make him happy, and she convinced herse
lf that a Catholic man would marry the woman he had slept with outside the bounds of marriage. So she allowed him to undress her, rejoiced in hearing him repeat how much he loved her. Years later, after she had learned about STDs and ovulation, she realized how lucky it was that Rich hadn’t given her a disease or left her pregnant. He didn’t have a condom, and when he told her he would pull out, she had automatically said, “Sure”—the same answer she had given to his earlier, “Can we spend my final evening in India together?”
Frances had assumed their link was greater than any engagement band around her finger. The small diamond had cost him money; what she had given up on the beach had cost her the way she had been brought up. When he didn’t write, she didn’t know what to think. Had he not enjoyed that time together? Or did he think that since he had already had her, he didn’t need to marry her? She had never told Mama or her sisters.
Then Mama told her he had written that his family didn’t want their son marrying a non-American. He still loved Frances, but he could not go against his parents’ wishes. That’s what Mama told the curious townspeople.
Frances had somehow managed to live through those empty, desperate days. But Mama had lied. His family hadn’t objected to a nonwhite daughter-in-law. Carmen was as brown as Frances, and spoke with a Spanish accent. He had even taken a Spanish name.
Old flame? Jay felt as if he were at the edge of the beach, with the waves pulling the sand from under his feet. He knew he was standing in one place, but it was as if he were moving, about to fall down.
When they started dating, he had asked Frances if she had had other boyfriends. “You’re the first Indian man I’ve ever gone out with,” she had told him.
“Are you telling me that Goans don’t count as Indian?” he had teased.
“I never went out with a Goan,” she had responded.
He had worried that precisely because she was Goan, she had been kissed, touched, caressed by other men who might even have asked her to marry them. So when she told him that he was her first boyfriend, he had been relieved. He was more modern than Vic, but, like his friend, he still wanted to be the first and only man for his wife. It was the right of every Indian man, and he was not going to be left out because he had chosen his own wife.
