If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar

  “He didn’t. That is, Tara is his wife’s half sister. He’s just letting her stay there through the winter until he sells the house next spring. At least, that’s what he says.”

  “Ach, family,” Eva said, fanning herself with a brown paper bag. Tehmina noticed that even though it was cold at the market, Eva was perspiring. In contrast to the thick coat and neck scarf that Tehmina had on, Eva only had on a wool sweater. The next minute, Eva pulled her large, man-size handkerchief out of her pocket and mopped her flushed face dry. “What’s with this heat?” she said. “Solomon says I look like grilled salmon. And this, in December, in Ohio.”

  How could Eva possibly be hot? Tehmina thought. That one warm day they’d had earlier this week was gone. She noticed that all the vendors were wearing knit caps over their ears and gloves with the fingers cut off. But before she could say anything, Eva continued: “Didn’t I suffer enough with my in-laws, not to mention my own parents, God bless their souls? And even now, think I have a minute’s peace, with seven brothers and sisters? Anything goes wrong in their lives and they’re on the phone with me quick as a flea on a dog. And now even their children have taken to calling their auntie Eva, minute they need something.” She grinned. “Okay. Enough of my kvetching. You know what my poor mother used to say? This wicked world was here yesterday and will be here tomorrow. No use shedding tears over it.”

  They resumed their shopping, Tehmina going from stall to stall inquiring whether they had any red pumpkin, which she needed for her dhansak daal. But the mostly Greek and Italian and Mexican vendors looked at her blankly and she decided to wait until the children took her to the Indian store. Instead, she bought some Japanese eggplant, okra, squash, bell peppers, and a dozen tangerines and bunches of fresh-looking cilantro and grapes. Maybe she could spare the children a trip to the grocery store later this week.

  “Tehmina,” Eva gasped finally. “You better slow down, darling. You buy any more and we’ll have to call a cab to take the stuff to the car. And you want to leave us some time for going to Target, yah?”

  The sun was out as they left the old stone building of the farmers’ market and made their way to Eva’s car. Maybe it was the sunlight in Tehmina’s eyes that made them fill with water. But as she helped Eva unload the grocery bags into the trunk, Tehmina recognized what she was feeling. It was happiness. For the first time in months, she felt truly free and happy.

  Still, something was nagging at her. Concentrating on that black spot within her, she recognized what was troubling her: it was the earlier run-in with Tara, a solitary dark cloud in a perfect, blue sky.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Women.

  Sorab Sethna felt like he was drowning in women. His new boss, Grace Butler, was only the latest female who seemed put on earth to make his life torturous. Take earlier today, for instance. Grace had ordered him into her office to discuss his long-standing plans to take a vacation the week after Christmas. Never mind the fact that he had put in for the time off almost a year ago. Never mind the fact that he had taken that same week off for the last eight years. And that all his colleagues and former bosses knew this and had never begrudged him this. After all, Sorab almost never used up all his accumulated vacation time. His last annual evaluation had been as glowing as the one before that. In fact, Sorab usually thought of the phrase glowing evaluation as one word, stitched together by the uniform praise he garnered from his superiors. Let the other executives spend their hours looking over their shoulder and fretting about who was catching up on them. Let them spend their evenings crafting the exact words with which they would ask their bosses for a raise. Sorab had never asked for a raise in his life; in fact, every time he switched jobs he never so much as asked his new salary, knowing that it would be more generous than his last. And despite being the golden boy at every agency he had worked at, Sorab had also escaped the ulcer-inducing backstabbing and scheming and plotting that had felled so many others. He expected nothing but fairness and good treatment from others, and somehow, miraculously, he got it. When Sorab was a young boy at Cathedral school in Bombay, his father, Rustom, used to tell him, “Never begrudge another man his success, sonny. Remember, all of us live out our own destinies. All our lives run on a parallel path—someone else’s success neither pulls us down, nor does his failure boost us up. You just focus on your own report cards and your own work.” Sorab had taken his father’s message to heart, first at Cathedral and then in college in America and now in the corporate world. He still remembered his horror when he had first heard about the Tonya Harding–Nancy Kerrigan Olympic scandal. His first thought had been, Why didn’t Tonya simply work harder and beat Nancy fair and square?

  Hard work triumphed over all else. Sorab knew this to be as true as the fact that he was Rustom Sethna’s only son. Canfield and Associates, where Sorab was now a vice president, hired executives fresh out of prestigious business schools. They were young, and square-jawed and aggressive. Above all, they were single, which meant they could put in the kind of hours that Sorab couldn’t. But still he wasn’t concerned. With no false modesty, he knew that brain cell for brain cell, idea for idea, he could stack up against any of them. On numerous occasions, Sorab had left men fifteen years younger than him sitting openmouthed and slack-jawed in staff meetings.

  At least that had been the state of Sorab’s tenure at Canfield until Grace Butler had taken over from the kindly Malcolm Duvall, six months ago. Now Sorab often found himself sitting in his office doodling and thinking dark thoughts about Grace Butler instead of focusing on the report in front of him. The way she had cut him short during one of his presentations and said, “Well, that’s fine and dandy, Sorab, but that’s so twentieth century. What do you have that, y’know, would make the hair at the back of my neck crackle and pop?”

  That’s how she spoke, in clichés. Who else except bubble-gum-popping airheads on sitcoms actually spoke like that? Fabtastic. That was another of Grace Butler’s favorite words. Now all the junior executives were going around saying words like fabtastic and wonder-sonic. What, during Malcolm Duvall’s reign, was merely good was now imfuckingpossibly brilliant. What used to be great was now the mother of all cool.

  And what she had pulled during the executive meeting today was beyond loathsome. Sorab had mentioned that he was going to be off the last week of December and Grace had turned to him with an expression that said that Sorab had just confessed to a series of bank robberies across the United States. “But that’s impossible.” Grace gasped. “Oh my God, that’s like one of our most important weeks. There’s no way a senior executive can be off then. Besides, I’m planning on taking some time off around the holidays, myself.”

  Sorab looked around the conference room, unsure of what to do. Did Grace really want to discuss his vacation schedule during a staff meeting? But before he could reply, Grace bailed him out. “I’ll see you in my office immediately following the meeting, okay?” she said. “We need to resolve this.” Was it his imagination or did Gerry Frazier, the new guy who Grace had hired from the Weatherhead School of Management, flash a sympathetic smile at Grace?

  He was seething by the time he got to Grace’s office. But he managed to keep his face blank. “Nice flowers,” he said, nodding toward the large bouquet of yellow roses on Grace’s desk.

  “Thanks,” Grace said. “They’re from Bryan. We had a bit of a spat last night. Guess it’s his way of saying sorry.” Bryan was Grace’s boyfriend, and although Sorab had never met him, he felt an instinctive twinge of sympathy for the unknown Bryan every time Grace mentioned his name.

  Not now, though. Stupid fool, Sorab thought. Should’ve quit while he was ahead.

  Grace opened her mouth and Sorab knew he had to preempt what he guessed was coming—personal disclosures about Grace and Bryan’s relationship, which would then segue into a discourse on the unpredictable, exasperating ways of men, a subject that seemed to endlessly inspire Grace. She was this unnerving blend of frostiness and familiarity. Sorab wa
s often amazed at how a woman who ran the agency with such stealth, who kept her cards so close to her chest, also talked about her personal life with her colleagues as if she was talking to her therapist. Not for the first time, Sorab thought with longing about the patrician, formal Malcolm Duvall—tight-lipped Malcolm with his British accent, his clear delineations between the public and the personal, his steady, sober demeanor. How could Malcolm have picked this flinty, flighty blond woman in her too-short skirts, as his successor? Although it was Joe Canfield, who had founded the agency and now was chairman of the board, who had made the final decision, Sorab knew Joe would have never picked Grace without Malcolm’s blessings. Was even good old Malcolm ultimately not immune to the lure of style over substance? And was he, Sorab, such a third-world bumpkin, so hopelessly old-fashioned, so unforgivably desi, so utterly—oh my God, so utterly twentieth century—that Joe had chosen Grace over him?

  “Bryan’s a nice guy,” Grace was saying. “But sometimes, God, I just—”

  “Grace.” Sorab’s voice was louder than he’d thought. “I must say, I didn’t appreciate—that is, I wish you’d waited to discuss my vacation plans until we were—”

  “Oh good grief, Sorab, stop being so damn sensitive. You’re forever thinking I’m gunning for you. See, it’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if you’re really ready to take over the department when Kurt retires.”

  Sorab stared at the woman sitting before him. “I don’t see what this has to do with my running the department,” he said at last. “My only point was that—”

  “Yeah, well, my only point is that I don’t think you should’ve planned your vacation without checking with me. Bryan wants to take me on a skiing trip for a few days and I can’t believe you—”

  “Grace,” Sorab said carefully. “I’d put in for my vacation almost a year ago. That’s the way we’ve always done it here at Canfield. The sign-up sheet goes around in January and—”

  “Well, see, here’s another example of that old-boys-club thinking. Always harkening back to the way it was. That’s what I’m trying to do here, Sorab, shake things up. All you good ol’ boys have been complacent for too damn long. And I may as well tell you right now—things are going to be different around here.”

  Old boys club? Does she even see me or the color of my skin? Sorab thought. Is she lumping me with all those middle-aged white men who have worked here forever? Does she think I wear green plaid pants and go golfing every weekend? But then he was distracted by another, more pungent thought. “What exactly are you saying, Grace?” he asked, draining his voice of any emotion. “What’s going to be different?”

  He noticed at once that she avoided making eye contact with him. Instead, she glanced at the wall clock behind Sorab. “Look, I really don’t want to get into all this now. It’s way after six and I reeeally need to get out of here. But seeing how we’ve stumbled upon the subject…I guess I may as well be frank, Sorab—I’m getting cold feet at the thought of you taking over the department once Kurt leaves next year. You, I don’t know, you seem distracted of late, and I just get the feeling…That is, I’m just not convinced that you’re ready for the job.”

  Inexplicably, mortifyingly, Sorab felt an urge to cry. He sat rigid in the brown leather chair, stiff with embarrassment at how his body seemed ready to betray him, to capitulate before Grace’s shaming, untruthful words. But the fact was, in his entire professional career, nobody had ever told Sorab that he was unfit for a job. All his bosses had thought of him as the wonder boy, the go-to guy for problem solving. The last time a superior had expressed disappointment in Sorab had been in third grade, when Principal Francis D’Mello had tsk-tsked at the young boy sitting before him and asked him what devil had driven him to participate in a water-balloon fight. Even that, the mildest of reprimands, had been too much for Sorab to handle and he had steered clear of the wilder boys in his class after that incident. Now he felt a combination of emotions—outrage at Grace’s accusations, revulsion at her duplicitousness, and—worst of all—a desperate, schoolboyish desire to placate her, to make her see the error of her ways.

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t quite know what to say,” he began, and could see from the slight narrowing of her eyes that she had heard the treacherous quiver in his voice. “I guess…I guess I just didn’t see this coming, Grace. And frankly, I’m not quite sure what you’re referring to when you say—”

  Grace jumped up from her seat. “God, I’m sorry but I really have to run. Bryan has tickets to the orchestra for tonight. I’ve heard the guest conductor is fantabulous.” She glanced at Sorab. “Look, I’m not saying that I’ve decided anything. But I just wanted you to know that I’m keeping all my options open. Several people have mentioned Gerry’s name to me and there are other worthy candidates as well.”

  Gerry? Gerry Frazier? Had he heard right? That cocky, arrogant, know-nothing, schmoozing, glad-handing new guy with eyes as vacant as the sky? Gerry looked like Dan Quayle with a tan and muscles. Hell, just the other day Sorab had heard Bill Dixon snap, “Good God, Gerry. If you’d spend more time in the office than at the gym, maybe you’d learn something.” Gerry had only flashed his usual smile, the one that made all the secretaries swoon. The thought of Gerry running the department was as preposterous as Paris Hilton running the Pentagon.

  Grace zipped up her tan leather briefcase. “Well, gotta go. Tell you what, let’s do lunch later this week. And let me know what you decide about your vacation.”

  Back in his office, Sorab locked the door and did something he’d never done before—kicked the trash can. The wrapper from the chicken sandwich he’d had for lunch rolled out onto the floor. The Coke can oozed a trickle of leftover liquid. Sorab reached for his briefcase. He was to meet Susan for dinner at Tropez tonight and now he’d have to drive like a maniac to get there on time. All because he had to sit in that schizophrenic bimbo’s office and listen to her do what she did best—nothing. The B-word rose like a flame in Sorab’s mind, but he threw some sand on it and doused it. He hated ugly words directed toward women. And thinking of women made him think of the dark, thin face of Juanita, the middle-aged Hispanic woman who cleaned the office every evening. He could not leave this mess on the floor for Juanita to clean up. Bending down, he picked up the sandwich wrapper and then the Coke can from where it had rolled under his desk and threw both into the trash can.

  In the car, he wondered whether to call Susan to tell her he was running late. Eyeing his watch, he figured he could get there on time if he drove fast and hit mostly green lights. Instead, he reached for the cell phone and dialed his best friend Percy Soonawalla’s number at the law firm. After the encounter with Grace, he needed a simple, uncomplicated, agendaless conversation with another male.

  “Michelle?” he said into the phone. “Hi, it’s Sorab. Is Percy still there?”

  A moment later, Percy’s familiar, comforting voice came on the other end. “Hey there, bossie. Kem che? You still at work? Want to meet for a quick drink?”

  Sorab smiled. Good old Percy. They had been friends since third grade at Cathedral, and after Percy’s mother’s death, he’d practically lived with the Sethnas. Two years after Sorab had come to the U.S., Percy had followed. Now Percy was an immigration lawyer in the area’s largest law firm. “Can’t,” he answered. “I’m meeting Susan for dinner.”

  “Ah, crappers. I’ve been craving a Scotch all bloody day.”

  Sorab sighed. “I know what you mean.” He paused. “Remember that evening at Anil’s when we were in ninth standard? Wish I could get pissing drunk like that again. Maybe it would help obliterate the memory of my latest encounter with my lovely boss.”

  “Why can’t you?” came the prompt reply. “Arre yaar, that’s why we came to America in the first place, right? To have the freedom to chase women and get loaded whenever we wanted to? After all, isn’t that what the pursuit of happiness is all about—the right to down a few pegs of Scotch, to look up the skirts of our long-legged, b
lond American sisters, to eat enough meat and eggs to raise our cholesterol to new and uncharted heights? Heck, they don’t call it the Promised Land for nothing.

  “I’m telling you, Sorab, you should learn to enjoy your Constitution-enshrined rights,” Percy continued. “That’s why you’re going to end up with an ulcer, bossie, from lack of fun. If I were you, I’d ditch Susan tonight and go out drinking with me.”

  And that’s probably why you’re on your fourth wife, Sorab thought. He still couldn’t believe it sometimes—how Percy, who was no Gary Cooper, went through women the way other men went through dinner. And the weird part was, each time he married a new women, Percy’s happiness was so immense and infectious that he managed to convince all his friends—not to mention himself—that this time he had found the real deal, his soul mate, his true love. And then, within a year or two, he would be moaning about alimony and divorce settlements. “You know what your problem is, bossie?” Sorab had once said to him. “You have the Elizabeth Taylor syndrome—you don’t seem to understand that you can sleep with someone and not marry them.”

  Percy had shrugged. “Guilty as charged. Guess I’m a hopeless romantic.”

  Now he heard Percy suck his breath on the other end. “Chal ne, gadhera,” Percy said. “You’re going drinking with me or not?”

  “I can’t,” Sorab said. “Susan’s waiting for me at Tropez. Speaking of which, I’ll have to hang up as soon as I get there, okay? Thanks to my inconsiderate boss, I’m running late. And Susan hates to wait alone in restaurants.”

  “Can’t say I blame her,” Percy said. “So what happened with the she-devil today?”

  “The usual bullshit. Acted all surprised that I’m taking the week after Christmas off. When even the cleaning lady knows that I do this every year. And to make matters worse, she said…” But the thought of telling his old friend about Grace’s threat to refuse him the promotion was too shameful for Sorab. After all, they were Cathedral boys and Cathedral boys were always successful. The Indians that he and Percy socialized with—doctors, lawyers, engineers, businessmen—had all come to America and built their fortunes. Many of them were married to American women; many of their children attended Yale and Stanford; most of them had large homes in the suburbs. Sorab had long let it be known among this circle that he soon expected to head his department, and someday, the company. Until a blond-haired bimbo with Bryan on her brain had decided to bust his balls. Shit. Now he was sounding like Percy, making alliterations.