by Veena Rao
It was a humid summer evening. She had felt overdressed and sweaty in her yellow chiffon salwar suit, her short curls tamed with hairspray, as they walked down a by-lane in the quiet but ostentatious Mangalore neighborhood. He had been a dashing figure in his pressed black dress pants and starched white shirt, hands in his pockets.
The stroll was a short one. He had been polite but brooding. She had been anxious to get back home, to not be overwhelmed by the onus placed on her to be liked by this suitor. Her throat was parched, her tongue dry. But she had liked the aquatic notes of his cologne, the way he rolled his R’s, the Americanness that exuded from him.
“So, you are a journalist at the Morning Herald.” His first question had sounded like a statement.
“I am a backroom journalist, not a reporter,” she had replied. “I mostly edit news reports and give headlines.”
She had not cared to mention that she sometimes wrote features for the magazine section of the newspaper. That a feature she had cowritten with a senior colleague, a deathbed interview with a victim of domestic violence, had won several national media awards. He had asked her no further questions about her job.
“What are your other interests?”
“I like to read,” she had said.
“Do you watch movies?”
“Oh, yes, I like movies, too. I watch them all, Hollywood and Bollywood.”
He said he hated soppy Bollywood trash, but watched Hollywood movies that had good reviews. His great love was for American football and, as an Atlantan, he felt compelled to root for the Atlanta Falcons, although he was a New England Patriots fan.
She didn’t tell him she had never heard of the Atlanta Falcons or the New England Patriots. “What about cricket?” she had asked.
“What’s to watch? The matches are fixed. I’d watch if I were in the betting game,” he had said with a dry laugh.
She had forced a smile to her lips. His Americanness had become a bit too much for her. Did they have nothing at all in common?
When they returned, she had slipped into the kitchen and whispered her doubts into Amma’s ear.
“It takes years to know a person, build common interests,” Amma had whispered back in a dismissive tone. “Besides, there will be plenty to talk about once the children come along. Don’t you worry about that.”
She understood Amma’s desperation. Tara was desperate too, because at twenty-eight, everybody else in her age group was married. It embarrassed her, the questions from the community that seemed like thinly veiled barbs directed at her and her parents. They made her feel like a defective piece of merchandise.
Sanjay’s proposal had come as a relief. When his dad turned in a positive verdict the day after the bride-seeing high tea, her doubts had seemed suddenly flimsy, even to herself. She had looked at Amma and Daddy’s shining, happy faces, and felt only relief that they had finally been relieved of their burden, and she, of hers.
And three years later, here she was, at Aisle 5 of Hartsfield–Jackson International Airport’s baggage claim lounge, finally spotting her two suitcases. He helped her yank them off the conveyor belt. She wished Daddy hadn’t insisted on binding them with fluorescent green plastic rope. The straps looked so absurd here. She glanced at Sanjay, almost expecting to see scorn between his dark brows, but his face was a wall.
He loaded her bags into his silver BMW sedan.
“Nice car,” she said, once they were in it.
“I’ve always wanted a Beemer. Finally bought this baby last year.”
She got a whiff of his cologne, of his masculinity over the smell of new leather, and the newness of it all hit her senses with acuity.
“You’ve got to wear your seat belt. It’s the state law,” he reminded her. She struggled to get it on and felt stupid when he showed her how it was done. Daddy had a showroom full of cars. They had two at home. Why had she not practiced buckling up when it was still a trifling thing to learn?
He pulled the BMW out expertly into the night. The interstate was a revelation to Tara. Not one honk. The cars moved quietly, smoothly, within their lanes, at speeds that seemed inconceivable in Mangalore. Such discipline! Soon, the BMW was passing through downtown Atlanta. He pointed to the Georgia State Capitol, CNN Center, the Bank of America Plaza, and some other tall, impressive buildings the names of which did not register in her mind.
Soon, downtown Atlanta was past them, and the buildings and shimmering lights made way for smaller, less impressive buildings that lay in semi-darkness.
“I’m sure you are hungry,” he said, as he pulled into an exit. “There’s a Chinese and a Mexican restaurant close to my apartment. Or are you craving Indian?”
He had said “my apartment.” And yes, she craved rice, dal, and fried mackerel.
“Chinese or Mexican is fine,” she said.
But he didn’t take her to the Chinese or Mexican restaurant. They pulled into the driveway of a Wendy’s. He ordered a chicken sandwich for her and a cheeseburger for himself.
“This is faster,” he explained. She nodded.
The apartment was on the second floor of a three-storied structure in a sprawling community of silhouetted sloping roofs. He had furnished it well. The living room was populated with deep leather—a three-seater sofa, a loveseat, and a reclining chair. A large TV console occupied one corner. A couple of tall floor lamps lit the room. An array of magazines lay, neatly arranged, on the glass coffee table. Glass balcony doors covered one section of the wall, partially hidden behind venetian blinds. The carpet felt soft to her bare feet.
The far end of the living room contained a small dining table of dark wood and four chairs. Tara peeped into the open semicircular kitchen. The four-burner stove was clean. The counters sparkled. A white fridge stood in one corner. The kitchen was lined with white cabinets.
The living room led to a short hallway that lay in darkness, beyond which were the two bedrooms. Tara walked back to the living room and flopped on the sofa. She had stressed about traveling alone for so long, and she was glad the journey was over. And yet . . . She took her light jacket off and dropped it on the sofa beside her. It felt good to get all that weight off her.
“There’s a coat closet to hang coats. Do you mind hanging your jacket?” He pointed toward a white door near the entrance to the apartment.
“Yes, of course.” She pulled herself up, feeling her cheeks burn.
The closet was neatly lined with his coats. It smelled mildly of leather, of the unfamiliar. She found a spare hanger for her jacket.
They ate in the living room, the rustle of the wrappers filling the silence. He had occupied the loveseat adjacent to her. Tara cast sideward glances at him, thinking of something to say. Such distant eyes on such a handsome face, she thought. In the end, she said nothing, but was careful about disposing of the wrapper immediately, and not embarrassing herself again. After they had eaten, he showed her the bedrooms. The master bedroom was furnished with a queen-sized bed that was dressed in a russet-and-sand-brown duvet and matching pillow covers. The bedside tables, of dark wood, each supported a lamp and other assorted items. A dresser stood at one end of the room. On the other side was a walk-in closet, next to which was the door to a beige tiled bathroom. She noticed that a blue, green, and white-striped plastic shower curtain covered the beige bathtub.
So this was her new home, the space she would be sharing with the man next to her. A mild shiver emanated in her chest. She had tried very hard, every single moment of the past two months, to bury the resentment she felt toward him for abandoning her, then resurrecting her on a whim, as if she were mere clay in his hands.
She walked into the guest bedroom. He said he used the room as his study. It had a desk with a computer, a swivel chair, and a large bookshelf.
“You can use the closet in the study for your stuff,” he said. “That way, you can have the whole closet to yourself.” He had already parked her two suitcases there.
“Oh, I have some food stuff in the
luggage,” she said. “I’d better take them out and leave them in the fridge. Amma sent some laddoos for you.”
“Laddoos?” Was that irritation in his voice? “Okay, I’ll have them tomorrow. Listen, why don’t you relax now? Take a shower if you wish. Go to bed. I have some work to finish. I’ll join you later.”
Tara nodded. She made her way to the guest bedroom closet. She sat on her haunches and opened the smaller suitcase. She got her nightclothes and toiletries out. She found the laddoos, felt them through their plastic cover. She could tell that they had retained their ball shape, despite the long journey. They had fared better than her spirits. The sharp, spicy aroma of the masala packets that Amma insisted she take hit her nose. They made her violently homesick. She pulled them out too and held a packet to her cheek.
“I have some work to finish,” he had said. Did he work this late every night? The truth was that she knew nothing more about his life in America than she did when they got married three years ago in an elaborate four-day Hindu ceremony. He was a handsome but stoic groom; she was a nervous bride bedecked in silk, gold, and flowers. After the initial bride-seeing visit, they had met only once before the wedding, at a restaurant, where the din of chatter around them and his complaints of the noise had made their silence acceptable. Her heart didn’t leap and flutter like a burning candle, a feeling she knew she was capable of, not even when they consummated their relationship the night of their wedding, in Sanjay’s childhood room at his parents’ terraced home. She didn’t see romance, even in the bed that was sprinkled with soft fragrant flower petals, like in the movies.
“It is a bit awkward being with him,” Tara had confessed to Yvonne, her best friend from high school, when she and Sanjay returned to her mother’s house for the night, as tradition demanded, after Sathyanarayana Puja the next day. “We don’t seem to have anything to talk about.”
Yvonne had tittered like it was a joke. Her own two-month-old marriage to her boyfriend made her a pundit on the matter.
“You did it without saying a word to each other first?”
“Does small talk count?”
“Did you bleed?”
“Yeah, it was so painful.”
“At least he knows you were a virgin.”
“I am not sure he cares.”
“Of course he cares. You can take an Indian out of India, but you cannot take Victorian values out of an Indian.”
It would get better, Yvonne promised. Once Tara got comfortable with her husband, she would get addicted to him.
Yvonne was right. Like a waxing moon, Tara had felt a new need for her new husband warming her body on the fourth night, probably because he was leaving for Atlanta the next day, and that made it a suddenly emotional experience for her. His two-month vacation had come to an end. He had to get back to work. She had felt a rush of regret at not having had enough alone time to know him better. She wished her in-laws’ middle-class house was not filled to the seams with relatives, that the marriage rituals and lunch and dinner invitations hadn’t consumed all four of the five days that Sanjay had left of his vacation.
He would apply for Tara’s dependent visa and send for her soon, he had promised before leaving. At the departure lounge of Bajpe Airport, with her in-laws flanking her, she was given no opportunity for an intimate farewell. She had stood with clasped hands as he said his good-byes, quelling a desperate need to rest her head on his shoulder, to claim his attention only for herself. On her way back from the airport, her eyes had misted. She was missing him already.
His first call had come after Tara had returned to her parents’ home so she could resume work at the Morning Herald. She had taken the call in the living room, a little breathless, her heart racing. Daddy left the room, but Amma hovered, making Tara self-conscious and inhibited.
The conversation had been formal, polite. He asked her how things were, and she asked him about the Atlanta weather, his work. When he was ready to end the call, she had stalled, looked around the room furtively and, spying Amma’s back at the far end of the room, whispered a quick, “I miss you.”
He hadn’t heard her; she should have been louder.
“Bye now. I’ll call again soon,” he had said in response.
After Tara put the handset back in its cradle, she had hurled an angry verbal missile at Amma for being so clueless about privacy and personal space.
She tried again the next time he called, a week later. This time she knew he had heard her, because Amma had cleared out of the living room in a hurry, and Tara had said it boldly, clearly into the receiver. His response had been inappropriate this time, too.
“All right. I’ll call next week,” he had said blandly.
Tara had felt letdown but learned soon—after four weeks and four calls from Sanjay—that disappointment is an easier emotion to bear than despair. Sanjay stopped calling. Tara had tried to reach him, out of her own volition in the beginning and because of pressure from her parents later, but he didn’t ever take her calls, not even accidentally.
It must have been something she said or didn’t say. A very inappropriate response to something he said, perhaps? Maybe he hated how she sounded over the phone. Or hadn’t he found her desirable in bed?
He has an American girlfriend, Yvonne suggested. That was the simplest explanation. Amma vehemently disagreed. Sanjay had asked his parents to find a bride for him. No one had forced him to get married.
Tara’s mind was in a whirl, always in a whirl. She now had a stamp on her forehead that said Abandoned Wife. She imagined a dark veil over her head, woven of shame. She would spend the rest of her life in his house trying to figure out which was worse—the whispers and taunts of all around them, the exaggerated sympathy of relatives, the tears of her mother, or the silent despondency of her father.
Now she looked at her watch. She had remembered to set it to Eastern Time at the immigration line. It was past nine at night. She wondered if Amma and Daddy were up. It was after six thirty in the morning where she came from. She would have to call and tell them she had arrived.
She deposited the laddoos and masalas in the fridge and walked out into the living room. He sat on the recliner, leaning far back, his legs up. The TV was on CNN, but he wasn’t watching, and certainly not working. His eyes were closed. The back of his right hand rested on his forehead, fingers curled in.
She wasn’t sure whether he was asleep and if she should wake him up.
“Sanjay?” she said softly. He opened his eyes with a start.
“Sorry!”
“Oh, uhm, I was relaxing a bit before getting back to work.” He squinted and looked a little sheepish, she thought, as he shifted position on the recliner.
“Can I call Amma? They . . . Amma and Daddy will worry if they don’t hear from me.”
Sanjay helped her dial the number to her maternal home. It was odd, thinking of home as her maternal home. As if she didn’t belong there anymore. As if she were suspended midway between the past and her family’s hopes for her future.
Chapter 3
Tara slipped under the bulky covers of the master bed and rested her head on a soft pillow. She felt better after her warm shower. She had changed into her nightclothes, floral pajamas and a pink T-shirt. It felt good to get out of her jeans and tunic and scrub herself clean. She left the lights on, not knowing when he would come in. Her heart raced in anxiety and anticipation at the thought of him joining her in bed.
She waited a long time until her eyes began to feel heavy. Somewhere in the apartment, a clock ticked, and it was mildly comforting that its mechanical tick-tock sounded the same in this part of the world. She could still hear the faint hum of the TV, although he had turned the volume down low. Her thoughts drifted. At the other end of this vast country was her brother, Vijay, making a mark in a new job. She wondered how far San Jose was. She wondered what Amma was fixing for breakfast. Had Daddy set out on his morning walk? They had both been relieved when she finally boarded her flight to America. Sh
e was, too. Three years was a long time to be married and not set eyes on the groom after the wedding month. Why the sudden change of heart? What had prompted the email out of the blue two months ago—a very brief and formal one asking her to scan and send the necessary documents to file for her dependent visa? She and Amma had wondered, with no answers.
“What’s gone is gone. Look ahead and make it work,” was Amma’s advice to her.
Tara’s mind flitted between sleep and wakefulness. How does one make it work, she wondered drowsily. What was required of her? At thirty-one, she was still so utterly clueless about marriage.
She opened her eyes, took a moment to clear the fog inside her head, and was wide awake. The blinds were closed but aglow with the sun outside. The room looked unfamiliar. Of course. She was almost nine thousand miles away from home.
The spot next to her did not look slept in. So, he never had come in. She wondered if he had gone off to sleep on the recliner. He was in the bathroom now. She could hear the shower. She turned her attention to the sound of spattering water. She tried to imagine what he looked like under its stream, naked, with lather on his chest. But the water stopped, and she got up hurriedly to make the bed.
He came out of the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his torso, before she could finish. He was a strapping, strong-armed man with fine chest hair.
“Good morning,” she said softly.
“Good morning,” he said, ruffling his wet hair, not looking at her.
“You did not come in to sleep.”
He ignored her last statement. “Got to rush. I have a meeting at eight.”
