He does not flinch. “If I find out that you’ve been telling people about what happened today, you’ll be sorry.”
His lips droop into a sneer. Then he turns around and stomps away to catch the subway to work.
My hands shake as I insert the key. Once inside, I flop on the couch and kick up my feet, letting them land on the coffee table. My toes graze the glass vase holding my wedding bouquet. I resist the urge to hurl the fake roses as far as I can.
Peter’s parting words leave me seething. How should I take his threat? What if I pack my bags right now and leave? Where can I go? Mandy’s place? No, that’s the first place Peter would look for me. What about Wendy? She’s got her own troubles. Her daughter recently moved in with her boyfriend, whom she dislikes.
I look at my watch. Not a good time to call Calcutta. One o’clock in the morning there and Papa and Mama would be asleep already—but I desperately need to talk to Mama.
The operator connects me quickly and for once the line is clear.
A sleepy voice says, “Hello.”
“Papa? This is Jie-Lan.” I wish it was Mama instead of him.
“Wha . . . what are you doing calling in the middle of the night? Did something happen?”
I start to sob.
“What’s the matter?”
“Papa, something terrible happened today. I’m going to leave Peter.”
After a long pause, Papa says with an edge in his voice, “Did you say you are leaving Peter?”
“Yes. I can’t stay married to him anymore . . . not after what he’s done.” I start sobbing again.
“What did he do?”
His cold voice slices through me like a knife. “I . . . I can’t tell you. It’s too shameful.”
“Well, you can’t leave. Nothing can be that bad.” I hear the unmistakable hardness of his tone.
“You don’t understand,” I tell him desperately. “I am ashamed to tell you what Peter did!”
“You listen to me. You listen carefully. Sometimes a man does things . . . yes, it’s not always smooth sailing. You can’t threaten to divorce your husband the first time he does something you don’t like.” He’s guessed that Peter has been unfaithful . . . with a woman, of course.
“But what he did is unspeakable, Papa! I can’t stay with him anymore.”
I cannot bring myself to tell him about Peter and Bobby, and he’s not going to budge.
“If you leave Peter, you will never be my daughter again. How can I ever raise my head in the community if you disgrace me?”
“Papa, please . . . ”
“You will stay with him. No more of this nonsense.”
When I put the phone down, I can only cry. No one hears me. My handkerchief soaks my tears, but it can’t soak the pain.
I don’t think I can ever sleep again, but sleep does come when my fever-racked body succumbs. Rest, though, is impossible. Papa and Peter float in and out of my demented dreams. When I wake up, pain grips my temple between its savage claws.
For a few minutes, I glance around the room, disconnected from my surroundings. Lights from the neighbours twinkle through the window. I lie in the dark listening to the sounds from the television on the other side of the wall. Peter must be home. I try to get up, only to flop back on the bed. The effort knocks my breath out.
I try again, except this time I float upwards. Now I soar out of my window, up and over tall buildings. This feeling of lightness follows me as I fly into Papa’s tannery. No one sees me when I hover above them . . . not Papa, not Mama, nor anyone else. I wave at them, but still they ignore me. Frustrated, I yell and wave even harder. This time I fall and land on my back.
Firm hands push me down as my arms flail about. “Stay still, Jie-Lan,” a voice says. Slowly the fog lifts, and Kathy’s face looms over my head. “You’re awake . . . finally.”
“What time is it?” I croak.
“It’s just after three in the afternoon.”
“What day is it?”
“It’s Saturday. You’ve been delirious all day. I got one of those house-call doctors and he’s prescribed this.”
She hands me a pill and lifts a glass from the night table. I don’t resist. Was it yesterday that I saw Peter and Bobby together in the bedroom next door?
“Where’s Peter?” I ask.
“He’s watching TV. I’ll go get him.”
My hand reaches out to stop her. I see the puzzled look in her eyes. “He’s worried about you. He called me to come over because he heard you sleep-talking and he couldn’t wake you.”
Peter worried about me? I’d like to tell Kathy about her brother and his boyfriend, but would she even believe me? She senses that I’m not happy in my marriage. But she would just brush my story off as wild imagination. In my present condition, even I question the blurry lines between my dreams and reality.
The next time I wake up, Kathy is gone. I hover between sleep and delirium until the next morning. Even though I start to feel better, I spend all of Sunday in bed, venturing out only to drink water and to use the bathroom.
On Monday, I take the day off from work, but my brain goes into overdrive keeping me wide-eyed and restless. By midmorning, I can’t handle lying in bed anymore. Softly I step outside my bedroom. I don’t see Peter anywhere.
As I pass by his door, disgusting images fill my head. I will never be able to look inside without seeing Peter and Bobby on the bed.
In the bathroom, the clothes hamper needs attention. I haven’t cleaned all weekend. Housework still waits for me. With a sigh, I lift the hamper and go downstairs to the laundry room.
When I go up again, Peter has returned. He glances at the laundry basket, one hand on the fridge door. “You must be feeling better.”
I set the basket on the floor, somewhat winded from the exertion. “We need to talk.”
“Nothing’s changed. We don’t need to talk.” He doesn’t look at me as he opens the fridge and retrieves a can of Coke.
“You are despicable. I don’t know who is worse, you or Bobby. Why did you marry me?”
“I don’t have to explain anything to you. You are my wife now and that’s all that matters.”
I drop my keys on the kitchen counter. “We’re only married on paper.”
“Yes, and that’s what counts. If the immigration people get even a whiff that you’re here on false pretext, they’ll deport you.” He takes a sip from the can.
“What false pretext? You tricked me. I believed that I was coming here to marry you. How was I to know that you would turn this marriage into a farce?”
He sets the can down on the counter and approaches me, stopping only when he reaches the laundry basket in front of me. With his arms crossed and a smug expression on his face, he says, “Who’s going to believe you? No one knows about Bobby and me. Everyone will think you’re making up the story to get out of our marriage—that you used me to come to Canada. You came home with a white man on Friday. Who knows what you were doing with him?”
I gasp and almost keel over at this unexpected accusation. At a loss for words, I can only say, “I wish I’d never set eyes on you.”
He thrusts his chin out and wags an index finger, almost jabbing me with it. “You tell anyone or try to leave, I’ll make sure that your parents and the immigration officials hear about your white boyfriend. Your papa and mama may think they’ve got this goody-goody daughter. Well, they won’t be too happy if you get a divorce. You’ll be damaged goods for the rest of your life.”
“You’d lie and stoop that low?” I whisper.
“Watch me. Don’t try anything, because you’ll be sorry.”
“I wish I’d never married you.”
“Well, you better get used to being my wife. I’m not letting you go and that’s that.”
“All this just so you can keep up appearances.”
“I will do anything to stop you from exposing me. I will deny everything. No one will ever believe you.”
Peter whirls around and storms off into his room.
·10·
Life with Peter is unbearable. I cannot focus on anything except my need to end the sham that has me trapped in an awful marriage. My parents don’t approve of my getting a divorce, but I ask myself over and over again—so what?
I don’t have to answer the question because the answer is always the same. If they cut away the roots of my existence, what is left for me? Not only do I not have a family in this still-unfamiliar country, but I will have no family at all. The thought is terrifying, bringing hot flashes of anxiety. And if I am deported back to India—as Peter has threatened many times—to be close to home and not be allowed to enter it is surely worse than living here on my own.
We may not be a family that makes open displays of affection, but I know that we all love each other. I see it in their deeds, hear it in what they say or don’t say. When Lee-Lan died, Mama’s silent grief caused me more pain—especially since I didn’t stop Lee-Lan from going off on her secret trysts—than Papa’s harsh denouncement of my actions. I would have gladly borne Mama’s sorrow. Instead, it was she who tried to soften Papa’s accusing looks and words that pierced me like arrows.
But none of that helps me now. I need a plan to get out of this mess and still have my family on my side. If I leave Peter, Papa and Mama must believe that I have no other choice.
Meanwhile, I still have to wrestle with my emotions about Daniel. I seem to bump into him more and more at work. When I returned to the office following my fainting incident, he visited my workplace to find out how I was. Wendy said that he also asked about me the day I called in sick. His concern fills me with a warmth that I don’t understand. Wendy thinks that his interest in me could be his idea of a challenge—pursue the unattainable—since he knows that I am married. Just about any girl would be glad to go out with him, what with his fair good looks. Every time he walks into the bullpen, Sheryl becomes dreamy-eyed, sighing and fantasizing about the possibilities long after he leaves.
I weigh my options. Mandy has been a good friend. She will be a good listener, but telling her about my problems with Peter is risky, because she knows the same circle of people I know, not just here, but in Calcutta as well. She may tell her husband, who may go on and nudge someone else.
That leaves Wendy, who has been my mentor and friend ever since I started working. Solid as a rock, she knows when to keep a secret, and more and more lately, I have caught her staring at me with concerned eyes whenever she thinks I’m not looking.
One day when I’m sitting with Wendy during lunch, I decide to reveal to her everything about my marriage. She stares at me speechless, her eyes as round as the meatball on her fork. Then she blows a soft whistle and says, “You must leave this horrible man. Why didn’t you do that as soon as he told you he was in love with someone else?”
Miserably, I answer. “I was new to the country. I thought I could make it work between us if I tried. I never thought when he told me he was in love with someone else that the person would be a man . . . Bobby, his best man.”
Wendy takes a sip from her glass and then mutters, “If this wasn’t such a serious situation, and if you didn’t look so sad, I’d say the spectacle of you walking in on two naked men is too funny.”
My mouth twitches, and then I put my mug down and I laugh uncontrollably. People throw curious glances at us, but we ignore them. After a while, I wipe away my tears and recompose my face. I feel better. Wendy reaches for my hands. “You have to leave Peter.”
“It’s not that simple. My papa will disown me. There will be a huge scandal and my reputation—and my family’s too—will be ruined. In my culture, divorce is a bad word. I will be seen as a failure and used goods.”
“And you’d rather live like this than ruin your reputation?”
Wendy cannot possibly understand this cultural difference between us.
I stare at the table without seeing anything. Then the germ of an idea comes to my head. It begins to grow and becomes clear as I speak. I tell her, “I want nothing more than to leave my marriage, but I can’t take off just like that. I need to expose my husband first. I can’t convince Papa to believe me until the Hakka community finds out about Peter and Bobby. Only community opinion can persuade Papa. Peter’s prepared to lie, and he’s even going to say that I’m having an affair with Daniel because he saw us together last Friday.”
Wendy smiles. “Now you’re talking. Think this through and work out a plan. Let me know how I can help you . . . but tell me, what happened with Daniel?”
I relate what happened after my dreadful discovery, how he saved me from being hit by a passing car. She watches me with a curious expression as she gets up to go back to work. She says, “Be careful how you handle your feelings for Daniel. You don’t want to complicate your life even further.”
“He is the least of my concerns right now.”
I’m lying and she knows it.
I work through various plans to expose Peter and Bobby. I even imagine snapping a picture of them in the act. The ludicrous thought makes me smile—how low would I stoop to rid myself of this farce of a marriage? By the end of January I still have no idea for making a case for divorcing Peter that would satisfy my parents and the Hakka community. Peter and I settle into an uncomfortable routine, avoiding each other. Since he works the late shift, I only see him during the weekends. Mealtimes are the worst, but with the poker club as active as ever, and my first accounting course underway on Saturday mornings, we are limited to spending time alone with each other mainly on Sundays. I save all the cleaning chores for those days, and when I finish, I stay in my room with books that I borrow from the public library nearby.
I apply successfully for an accounting position in the real-estate division, where Daniel works. The job is an upward career move for me. The pay increase will come in handy when I’m ready to live on my own. While my common sense cautions me to stay away from Daniel, my desire compels me to grab an opportunity. Within three weeks, I transition to the new position and relocate to the building across the street.
I miss the companionship of my colleagues in the accounts payable department, but my new work keeps me too busy to dwell on that. Days pass without a sign of Daniel. And then one morning while I’m standing at the filing cabinet a familiar voice behind me says, “So this is where you hide out these days?”
Startled, I turn around. I straighten up and almost lose my balance.
“Oh, I didn’t see you,” I say with a lump in my throat.
“Obviously.” The voice is husky and soft, sending my heart thumping. Then, without warning, he pulls me close, lowers his head, and kisses me. Surprised and confused, I try to turn my head, but his grip forces me to stay still. Alarm and pleasure mingle to cause conflicting reactions. Against my better judgment, I meet his intensity with my own.
At last he releases me, leaving me flustered and disoriented. I glance around furtively, but I don’t see anyone. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” I whisper as I step away from him.
“I’ve wanted to do this ever since you fainted in my arms.” He moves closer as though to hold me again.
“Please don’t.” My voice sounds strangled. “I . . . we shouldn’t be doing this.”
He reaches for my hair and playfully twirls it between his fingers. He lowers his face so we are eye to eye. He whispers, “You shouldn’t look so vulnerable and appealing.”
Reluctantly, I untangle his hand from my hair. I put on a severe face and say, “This cannot happen. I am a married woman.”
His blue eyes cloud. “I’m sorry . . . no, I’m not sorry I kissed you. Why are you married to that jerk?”
&
nbsp; As much as I want to agree with him, I ignore his remark. I stiffen my shoulders and focus my gaze on the lapel of his dark gray suit. “This can’t happen again.” If I look into those eyes again, I will surely lose my resolve.
“We’ll see about that.” He picks up my right hand and traces his fingertips along my palm. It feels delicious. Then he turns and strides away, tall and handsome even from the back.
.
·11·
“Mandy, are you free this evening?” I speak into the telephone.
“Why? Do you want to drop by and visit?”
“No . . . can you come to my place? I have something to tell you and we can’t talk with Steve around. Peter is at work and I have the place to myself.”
“Oh, you’ve got a secret to tell me?” Mandy sounds breathless.
“Well, sort of . . . let’s chat when you get here.”
“I’ll be right down,” she says. I can hear the excitement in her voice.
I hang up the phone and take a few deep breaths to still my heart. Although I’ve decided to confide in Mandy, Mama’s letter in my hand is the final straw that has pushed me to action. Moments ago I finished reading Mama’s letter that I picked up at the mailbox in the lobby on my way home from work. It’s left me trembling with rage. She says that I should give Peter another chance, to work at my marriage and be a good wife—in other words, seduce him to keep his attention from wandering. Obviously they want no scandal, no matter what the consequences. They already live with the shame of one daughter having dated an Indian and coming to a tragic end. If the other one divorces they will never live down the gossip.
Mandy appears at my door, her swollen belly leading the way. She waddles to the couch and drops her ball-like mass on the plastic-wrapped cushion. How I hate the feel of that slippery plastic when I sit on it.
“How’s the baby doing?” I bring her a glass of orange juice and sit beside her.
Picture Bride Page 7
