First Comes Marriage

by Sophia Sasson

  Obviously, he wasn’t going to be able to talk her out of it, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. It was one more hand to help clean the mess up, and he couldn’t afford to increase the hours of the other staff. But did he really want her around, distracting him?

  “Suit yourself.” He tried to keep his voice nonchalant. “How much time do you have?”

  She checked her watch. “I have another hour, maybe more before I have to get ready.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  He went to the shed and returned with a forklift.

  “You ever drive one of these things?”

  Meera’s eyes widened and she shook her head. “No! I have no idea how to operate that. I’ll crash it.”

  He smiled and held out his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not trusting you with heavy machinery. I’ll be driving.”

  She took his hand, and his heart thumped wildly as she squeezed into the cab next to him.

  It was a tight fit and she was half sitting in his lap. He tried not to notice the way her leg touched his or how small she felt snuggled in beside him. He put her hand on the clutch and showed her how to put it in gear, then he stepped on the accelerator. She yelped as they moved forward, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the wild expression on her face.

  Focus, Jake, focus. He showed her how to operate the lift and pick up the large tent in sections, moving it to the side.

  Once they’d dealt with the tent, they parked the forklift and surveyed the damage underneath. There was ash mixed in with pieces of tables, chairs and the wooden dance floor. Flecks of the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth were strewn everywhere.

  “The rental company is gonna charge you a pretty penny.”

  Meera shrugged.

  “Did you call them and get an estimate?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s fine, whatever it is.”

  Jake laughed mirthlessly. And there was another Meera contradiction. She was rich, so why insist on doing the dirty work herself? “Must be nice not to have to worry about money.”

  “I guess I’m lucky. My father has a very successful medical practice. He’s never let me worry about money—it’s one of the many things I owe my parents.”

  That’s a strange sentiment. “Owe your parents? Why would you owe your parents?”

  Meera smiled wistfully. “They’re not my biological parents. They adopted me from an orphanage in India when I was ten.” She looked out at the field, suddenly seeming a million miles away.

  He stopped the forklift. He didn’t know a lot about India, but no child belonged in an orphanage. He remembered what it had been like when his mother left, but he’d had his father and the townspeople to take care of him.

  “Do you remember your biological parents?”

  “I was three years old, or so the matron at the orphanage told me, when they left me at the doorstep. I don’t remember them, the parents that gave birth to me.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was soft and so raw that pain seared through him. “I was living in squalor and poverty, conditions you can’t even imagine until Mum and Pitaji—my father—adopted me.” He could hear the voice of the little girl inside her, the one who was afraid and alone. He put his hand on hers, wishing he could take her pain away.

  “They gave me a beautiful, perfect life. In the orphanage, all I could think about was getting my hands on a few rupees to bribe the cook to give me food. They did the bare minimum to keep us alive. Since my parents adopted me, they’ve given me everything any person could ever want.”

  That explained so much about her, especially the contradictions. Meera wincing at his dirty hands but then washing dishes in his kitchen and slinging mud to clean his field. He squeezed her hand, wanting her to know she wasn’t alone.

  “I can’t begin to tell you how much I owe my parents.”

  Now he understood why she insisted on paying him back for everything. She had grown up feeling indebted.

  “Have you spent your entire life trying to pay them back?”

  Tears filled her eyes. “I don’t think I could pay them back in this life, or my next several lives. I still remember the orphanage. The filth.” He noticed goose bumps on her arms. “There was always dirt everywhere—in our beds, on the tables we ate at. And bugs. Sometimes when I close my eyes, I can still feel the mosquito bites, the cockroaches crawling over my feet as I tried to sleep. The grit between my teeth, like the food had fallen on the floor before they put it on my plate.” She shuddered.

  Jake put an arm around her and pulled her close. He wished he could ease her anguish, somehow erase the memories that still haunted her. She was a remarkable woman, more so because of what she had endured and overcome. He had nearly fallen to pieces when his mother left. Had it not been for his father, he wouldn’t have finished high school. That Meera had spent so much time alone made his heart hurt.

  She gently pushed away from him. “I had lost all hope. It was always the younger kids who got adopted. With their wealth and stature, my parents could’ve easily taken home a newborn baby. But they chose me, and in doing so, they saved my life. If I’d grown up in that orphanage, I would’ve ended up on the streets, or someone’s mistress.”

  It sounded like a well-rehearsed statement, something rote. He wondered if it was how her parents relayed the story, and if that was what she had listened to growing up.

  She fixed him with a look. “Instead, I have a life of luxury. My father gives me a generous monthly allowance that I barely spend in one year. I’m a respected doctor, and I have a wonderful future planned for me. I owe my parents everything. I owe them my soul.”

  Now he could see why it was so important to her to get Hell’s Bells to like her. She’d spent her childhood wanting to be accepted.

  “Your parents got something in return, you know,” he said softly. “They got you.”

  She shook her head and inched away from him, as far as she could in the confined space. She was shutting herself off, retreating somewhere inside herself, and she wasn’t going to let him in. She rubbed her temples.

  “I got a lot more than they did, and I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure they never once regret their decision.”

  He thought about this own father, and the hopes and dreams he had placed on Jake, the expectations that Jake had never quite lived up to. “A child is not an investment, Meera.” His voice was soft but she tensed up.

  “And my parents have never treated me as such,” she said stiffly.

  She stood and stepped down from the cab. She stalked to the garbage bag and resolutely went back to picking up debris, keeping her back to him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MEERA TAPPED HER FOOT, listening for the sounds of Dr. Harper and Rose leaving for lunch. They were chatting and laughing while she stewed in the makeshift office Rose had created for her in a utility closet. She fanned herself. Apparently, the air-conditioning was broken. But just in her office-slash-closet. It seemed to be fine in the examination rooms, in Dr. Harper’s office and everywhere else in the clinic.

  She should leave, she thought, pack it up, find another rotation after the wedding. It would delay her lab application but so what? She was going to take over her father’s practice; a small delay in starting her lab wouldn’t change the course of her life. Still, her stomach churned at the thought. The one good thing about her timing in Bellhaven was being able to be by herself. A break before she added wife and daughter-in-law to her list of duties. In Indian culture, you didn’t marry the man, you married the family, and Meera was already exhausted thinking about all the things Raj’s mother was adding to her social calendar after the wedding.

  Besides, if she left, how would she help clean up the mess she’d made at Jake’s ranch? Despite two hours of hard labor this morning, they had only cleared out the largest pie
ces of debris. Her arms and legs ached, but she knew she had to put in several hours tonight.

  She had overheard Kelly talk about how shorthanded they already were. Even if Jake was taking responsibility for not checking the grill, the barbecue had been her event. She couldn’t inconvenience Jake more than she already had.

  She wondered if she should go back to help out in the field rather than sit in the office doing nothing. She wondered whether Jake would be there. The work was grueling and boring, and it would be nice to have his company. As long as he didn’t ask about her parents again.

  What was it about his questions that had made her behave so defensively? She had panicked in a way she couldn’t explain. She told the story of her adoption frequently—to relatives, colleagues and others who asked her private questions they couldn’t get her parents to answer. Yet it felt different telling Jake. She sensed he disapproved of her parents. Why? All her life she’d been told how lucky she was, how incredibly grateful she should be. No one had ever reacted like Jake. What was he trying to get at? And why did it bother her so much?

  More than twenty years later, she still remembered the day at the orphanage that had changed her life.

  It started out like any other day when visitors were expected.

  Matron rang the bell while it was still dark out. That’s how Meera knew it was visitors’ day. She woke up in a twelve-by-twelve-foot room with cots lined wall-to-wall. At least twenty children slept in the room with her. She was always careful sitting up and stretching so she didn’t hit the girl next to her.

  Matron assigned chores to each girl, and they got to work cleaning floors, washing clothes and dishes, changing the bedsheets. By the time the sun came up, many of the children whined and complained. The ones who had been there awhile, like Meera, didn’t mind because they knew what waited at the end of the grueling morning.

  After hours of work, they were lined up in the back maidan, where the surly matron handed out soap, then hosed them down with cold water. The smaller children yelped and tried to run away. Meera stood still. The cold water would last only a few minutes, but the feeling of not having dirt and grime all over her skin would last the whole day.

  They were given clean clothes to wear. She put hers on quickly and ran to the dining room. She eyed the plates and took the seat nearest to the biggest bowl of food. The bowl would be passed to each child, but the first person always got the largest scoop. It might be the only time all month she’d get a belly full of food.

  The rest of the children filed in and took their seats. The visitors were shown in, and the matron went about serving the children. It was the only time she did that; on a normal day, the children were left to scratch their way to the last morsels of food.

  The visitors watched and asked questions. They stopped to talk to the children about what it was like in the orphanage. They all knew their lines; they had been made to recite them over and over until they knew them by heart.

  “The matron takes such good care of us.”

  “We eat like this every day.”

  “We’re so lucky to have this place.”

  Meera knew her lines better than anybody else. She gave the tour of the sparkling orphanage and talked about the janitorial staff that cleaned the place every day. She happily showed them the toys that had been brought out that morning. She spied the stethoscope and used it to pretend she was a doctor. Once, she had hidden it under her bed after the visitors left, but the matron found it and gave her a beating. She proudly showed it to the visitors as her favorite toy, one that she played with all the time.

  She hadn’t noticed her father in the group of ten or so prospective parents that were there that day, but she had slyly admired the lady with the beautiful hair, dark red lips and pretty blue sari. She gaped at the diamond earrings glittering in her ears, wondering whether she would ever get to wear something so beautiful.

  On the day visitors came, the children were allowed into the TV room. The matron often put on an English movie to show the visitors that her girls knew English. Most of the kids didn’t understand the language, but they enjoyed the treat. Meera loved movies, even the ones she’d watched a dozen times.

  Matron was clear on what life held for her charges. Meera could stay at the orphanage “for free” for another year, but then she had to get a job and pay rent. Meera’s job prospects in a small town outside of Kolkata were nonexistent. She would have to go to the big city and become a beggar...or worse. If she were lucky, an old man in town might marry her. Meera spent every day trying to find a way out of her situation. The movies were her escape. They let her believe, for a short amount of time, that her life could be different.

  She had been through enough visitors’ days to know that the girls who were called to the matron’s office during the movie were the ones the visitors had selected. The chosen ones. It was always the younger girls, the ones who were still in nappies. The ones who could barely say a word but cooed and giggled. If any of the older children were selected, it was the pretty girls, the fair-skinned ones. Meera knew she would never be her. She was too old, her skin was too dark and she definitely wasn’t pretty enough. What she hoped for were the few rupees visitors sometimes gave the older children out of pity. On lucky days, she could hide the money before Matron confiscated it.

  On this day, the matron twisted her finger and motioned for Meera to come to the office. Meera’s heart raced. They must want more tea; why else would they call her? In the office, the lady with the blue sari sat with her back straight. There was a man with her, and he called out to Meera. She walked over to him, afraid she had done something wrong. What could they want from her? He got down on his knees so he was at eye level with her and asked if she would come live with them and be his daughter.

  The man spoke English, a language she had taught herself but still didn’t know fluently. Had she misunderstood?

  He must have seen the disbelief on her face because he asked her again in Hindi. She couldn’t believe her ears and stood there stunned until she heard Matron’s harsh voice telling her to answer. She nodded excitedly. From there, things went quickly. She saw her new father hand Matron fat wads of cash.

  Meera’s life had never been the same since. Her mother had taught her how to dress and do her makeup so she always looked glamorous. Her father gave her everything she needed. No one would ever guess Meera had been a poor orphan girl. They had given her a fairy-tale life, but not once had she forgotten that orphanage or what her life could have been.

  But was that because her parents never let her? She shook her head. She was letting Jake’s reaction cloud her thinking. What was that thing she’d felt when they were sitting so close together in the forklift? And why had she let him hold her hand? More important, why did she feel so connected to him? She laughed at herself. I have a silly schoolgirl crush on an American cowboy. I’ll get over it. The rest was her imagination running wild. She had watched three Western movies on the flight from London.

  She heard the outside door close and stepped into the lobby. Dr. Harper and Rose were gone. She peeked out the front door, and they were nowhere in sight. Lily was parked down the street, and Meera waved her over. Lily looked furtively up and down the street before walking up the steps. She quickly entered the clinic, and Meera locked the door.

  “I’m so glad you came,” Meera said warmly, leading Lily to the exam room.

  “Dr. M., you really have to promise Rose won’t know about this. That woman is such a gossip—I couldn’t bear it if people found out.”

  Meera handed Lily a paper gown and turned around while she got undressed. “Don’t worry. I’ll have to start a chart on you, but I’ll keep it under lock and key in my desk. And before I leave town, I’ll give it to you, and you only.”

  Lily sighed in relief. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  Meera turned and set up the ultrasound mach
ine. She put some gel on Lily’s stomach and began the examination. When she turned the screen, Lily gasped at the grainy black-and-white image of a head with a little nose and mouth. Meera pointed out fingers and toes. She took her time and printed several pictures for Lily, who sobbed loudly as she studied each one.

  “Lily, everything looks normal, but I’d say you’re closer to thirty-six weeks. Normal gestation is forty weeks, but you could deliver anywhere from two to four weeks from now. I know you don’t want to tell anyone, but it’s time you start preparing. You need to figure out how to get to the hospital, you’ll need to buy things for the baby...”

  Lily sniffed dramatically. “I can’t. I just can’t. You don’t understand...”

  Lily leaned her head on Meera’s shoulder. Without thinking, Meera put her arm around the young woman. “Tell me. Perhaps I can help.”

  “About a year ago, my aunt Norma Jean’s cousin by marriage came to visit—he’s a soldier in the army. We started seeing each other and fell in love. Then Norma Jean tells me he’s engaged to be married to his high school sweetheart back in Mississippi. So I tell him it’s over between us. He goes away, then he comes back and proposes to me and we were both so excited that we drove all night to Atlantic City and got married. We were going to come back and make this big announcement to everyone, but he suddenly got orders and had to go overseas.”

  Meera bit her lip. “So this is his baby?”

  Lily nodded. “It must have happened on our wedding night. He splurged on a hotel.” She wiped tears from her eyes. “It was the best night of my life.”

  “How long did you know him before you were married?”

  “About a month.”

  Meera’s brow shot up. How did people make such grand decisions so frivolously? When her parents suggested she and Raj get married, she took months to discuss it with him. She put together a list of pros and cons, and they had several thoughtful conversations, weighing each aspect before deciding. And she had known Raj all her life. She couldn’t say any of that to her patient, of course.