If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar

She felt Cavas’s eyes on her and realized with a start that the boy was waiting for her to finish her sentence. “I love you so much that you are part of my own liver,” immediately realizing from Cavas’s disgusted expression that translating the sentiment from Gujarati to English was a mistake.

  “Ewww,” the boy squealed. “That’s gross, Granna.”

  She bent and nuzzled him with her chin. “I love you so much that I can give you a million, billion kisses and still give you a few more.”

  “That’s nothing,” Cavas said promptly. “Dad gives me a zillion, trillion kisses every night.” A cagey look came upon his face. “You know what you can do for me to show your love?”

  “What?” Tehmina asked, knowing she was walking into a trap. She felt helpless in her love for this little boy with his red lips and long, dark eyelashes.

  “You can lie down with me until I fall asleep.” He smiled his most guileless smile. “And,” he added, cupping his mouth to her ear, “if you do that, I’ll even let you call me Cavas.”

  How well she knew that seductive look. It seemed like a week ago when Sorab had smiled the same smile—the time she smelled a whiff of cigarette smoke on him when he came home from school, and knew immediately that he had been smoking, the time he had begged her to let him attend an overnight picnic with his college friends, admitting upon her prodding that there would be girls present, the time Rustom had driven by Flora Fountain and had almost run off the road when he’d spotted his only son taking part in a student protest against Bombay University. Rustom had come home and paced the balcony until he had spotted his son’s slender figure enter the apartment building at seven that evening. “How was your day, sonny?” he had asked casually, though Tehmina had heard the dangerous edge in his voice. “How was college?”

  “Oh, fine,” Sorab said with a yawn. “Just the usual stuff. But I’m tired today.”

  “Never knew accounting and marketing could be so exhausting,” Rustom replied, and this time, there was no mistaking his tone.

  Sorab looked up sharply. “I—well, you know how hard—”

  “What I do know is that I cannot drive through Fountain without seeing my only child acting like a common mawali on the streets of Bombay,” Rustom said quietly, ignoring the pacifying look Tehmina threw his way. “What I also know is that my son lies to his parents.”

  Instead of getting flustered or defensive, Sorab threw his father a shy smile. “That’s exactly why I didn’t say anything, Daddy. I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

  Despite his anger, Sorab’s lack of guile seemed to disarm his father. “So, you’re admitting that you were on the streets instead of in college?” he said. Tehmina could hear the anger leaking out of his voice.

  “Sure. But ask me why I was there, Daddy.” Without giving them a chance to reply, Sorab continued. “We were protesting Bombay University’s decision to rewrite the college curriculum. They want the whole country to be a fundamentalist Hindu nation—and they’re rewriting the history books to glorify the Hindu majority. They’re saying, if Pakistan can be an Islamic country, why can’t India be a Hindustan? Can you imagine, Dad? These people don’t believe in secularism—and they’re brainwashing us with all their false mumbo jumbo. It’s like the Muslims and the Parsis and the Catholics simply don’t exist.”

  “Yah, without us Parsis to build it, their Bombay would still be a bunch of islands floating around in the sea,” Rustom growled. Tehmina marveled at how effortlessly her son had managed to defuse his father’s anger. As if he had sensed her relief, Rustom scowled at his son. “But that’s no excuse to interrupt your education with all this nonsense,” he said. “Best to leave all this agitation and protest to the professional troublemakers.”

  Sorab looked his father straight in the eye. “But, Daddy,” he said, “fighting for what you believe is part of my education, too. You are the one who taught me that.”

  Remembering that incident, Tehmina felt a pang of remorse. What had happened to that quietly resolute boy? What had happened to his clear-eyed way of seeing the world? She had thought that going to America would broaden Sorab’s horizons, would make him stand on the shoulders of his parents and see farther than they ever had. But instead, the opposite had happened. In some strange way, Sorab seemed to have shrunk and his world had narrowed. He seemed personally happier, yes, but—but maybe that was the whole problem. Living in this housing complex, where the layouts of many of the homes were identical and even the cars and the play swings in the backyards all looked the same, Sorab had traded a dull contentment for the intense passion of his boyhood. Tehmina didn’t get it—how could a boy who had grown up on the crowded, tumultuous streets of Bombay, who had jostled with the noisy crowds to catch a train to college, who had eaten pani puri and drunk sugarcane juice from roadside booths, who had witnessed the whole carnival of human experience—the millionaires, the lepers, the jewelry stores, the slum colonies—how could such a boy encase himself in a timid, clean, antiseptic world that was free from germs, bacteria, passion, human misery? Where even the straws were wrapped in plastic and people at gyms sprayed their seats each time they rose from a machine, as if human sweat was more dangerous than the chemicals they sprayed. (She knew, she had visited the gym in their housing colony.) And how did he expect his sixty-six-year-old mother to live in that world?

  The worst part was, there was no reaching Sorab. He had disappeared, like a snail in a shell. Over dinner the day of the run-in with Tara, for instance, she had tried to tell her son about how their neighbor had left the two boys alone at home, how she and Susan had taken them in. If Susan hadn’t been present, she might have confided in Sorab the fact that Susan had made it clear that she didn’t want any more interactions with the family next door, and how it broke Tehmina’s heart to think of those poor boys in that home. She may have even broached the subject of gathering up some of the books and toys Cookie had outgrown and presenting them to Josh and Jerome. But as it was, Sorab had listened for a few moments, nodded his head, rolled his eyes, and said, “Some people should never be parents in the first place. I’ll be real glad when that woman moves out of Antonio’s home.”

  Tehmina suddenly thought of Percy, Sorab’s best friend, whom she and Rustom had virtually raised after Percy’s mother had died when he was a boy. Sorab and all the others in their group teased Percy for his multiple marriages and Tehmina herself was shocked and saddened by how often the boy traded wives. But one thing about Percy, she now thought. America has not changed him the way it has the others. She had heard the outrage in Percy’s voice when he had described an immigration case where a political refugee had run up against the cold heartlessness of the government. She had heard him discuss passionately the injustices that his clients faced as a result of laws put in place after the horror of 9/11. Somehow, Percy’s world seemed larger and more real than Sorab’s narrowly defined world of home, family, and office.

  She had offended her own sense of maternal loyalty with this last thought. That’s not fair, she argued with herself. It’s Percy’s job that forces him to have to deal with the outside world. Whereas my Sorab—working for a large advertising and consulting agency—his job is by definition limited to the concerns of his clients. Why should he worry about immigration and such? And it’s not as if he’s not generous. Tehmina knew that Sorab had written a check for $500 when the tsunami hit. And when she was in Bombay, Sorab was forever telling her to let him know if there were any deserving cases that needed help. Four years ago, he and Susan and the other local Parsis had arranged for Dina Madan’s infant daughter to come to the Cleveland Clinic for the heart surgery that had saved her life. Dina had even brought little Malika to Rustom’s funeral and had the child shake hands with Sorab. “Here’s the man who saved your life, deekra,” she’d said to the little girl. “He is a great man, just as his daddy was.”

  “Granna, are you going to lie down with me or not?” Cookie’s plaintive voice brought her back into the present. She looked at the sweet
face, so much like Sorab’s despite the fair skin and light brown hair. If I had not met Rustom, you would not have been born, she marveled, and despite its banality, she felt her heart warm at the thought.

  “You can call me Cavas, if you like,” Cookie repeated. “But just for tonight.” She forced herself to look sufficiently impressed by his magnanimous offer. “All right, Cavas,” she said, getting under the covers with him. “I’ll lie with you for a few minutes. But no talking, you hear? Good night.”

  They were silent for a second. Then Cookie said, “Did you know my mom when she was little?”

  “No, Cookie, of course not. She lived here in America, whereas we—we lived in India.”

  The boy looked lost in thought for a minute. Then he shrugged. “I thought so.”

  “What made you think that?”

  He shrugged again and Tehmina had to be satisfied with that. “Do you remember Bombay at all?” she asked. She knew that she was risking Cavas being fully awake again, but she couldn’t help herself. Getting Cavas to acknowledge his love for India was like a pimple she kept prodding at with her fingernail. How foolish you are, she scolded herself. The boy was only three when he came to India. Of course he doesn’t remember.

  “I remember Grandpa,” the boy replied. “He took me to his office one day. There was a big picture of me and Mom and Dad on his wall.”

  Tehmina blinked her tears away. That photograph now sat on top of her TV in her apartment in Bombay. She decided against telling Cookie that.

  “Grandpa was fun,” Cookie said. Tehmina knew immediately what the child was too kind to say—and you’re not. Did she imagine the hint of accusation she heard in his voice?

  She sighed. “Everybody loved Grandpa. I did, too. Still do.”

  Cavas must have heard something in her voice because he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, Granna,” he said in that singsong voice he used when petting a puppy or talking to children younger than he was. “And you’re so much nicer than that stupid old babysitter. Nighty night.” He curled into a ball and pressed himself tight against Tehmina.

  “Good night, little kitten,” Tehmina whispered, kissing the top of his head. But it was her heart that was purring.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Snow.

  It had been snowing all night long, with a quiet, ruthless efficiency. Dense cotton balls floated and landed upon the skeleton trees, bestowing upon them a jaw-dropping beauty. The beauty was so acute, so startling, that the motorists returning from last-minute trips to the malls, who slid and swerved off the road, were unsure whether to blame the wet, slick roads or the distracting magnificence of those snow-covered trees. Or perhaps it was the sight of the countless, dizzying pebbles of white, exploding like fireworks before their windshields, and making their eyes wide with dazzle and fatigue.

  Sorab lay awake in bed, glad to be home. His head was a little woozy from the two margaritas he had consumed earlier in the evening. Susan’s gentle snoring, which usually irritated him, filled him with a soft, mellow peace tonight, so that he felt as if her familiar breathing was a kind of prayer, a reward. I’m home with my family, he thought to himself, and as always, the words filled him with wonder.

  In the golden light of the street lamp that cast a beam into their bedroom, Susan’s hair shone like satin on the pillow. He looked at her familiar, thin face—the long, straight nose, the narrow lips, the high cheekbones, the arched eyebrows. Even after all these years, Susan’s simple Midwestern beauty still affected him. He looked away from her to see flecks of snow, thick and white as dandruff, coming down outside his window. He shivered and the next second his thoughts went back to those shapeless, formless lines of the street people who lined the pavements of Bombay, sleeping on the hard sidewalks through all kinds of weather. Tugging on his down comforter so that it covered his ears—he had learned during his very first winter in Ohio that covering his ears was the key to staying warm in this hard, cold country—he thought of the faded, fraying cotton sheets that the homeless in Bombay used to cover their thin, shivering bodies. What a life he’d had. First, to be born middle class in India. That alone was like winning the friggin’ lottery. And then, to have come to the U.S. To America, the place that had dominated his dreams since he was at least twelve years old. Of course, in those days America had meant what to him? Probably no more than Levi’s jeans, Wrigley’s chewing gum, Coca-Cola, Archie comic books, and rock and roll. Above all, rock and roll. It was the music that had seduced him, that had planted the seed in him, had led him out of his perfectly happy, complacent, normal life in Bombay, to seek a new challenge, a new horizon, a new home. Others may have seen America as the land of milk and honey. He saw it as the home of rock and roll. The boy whose father had worshipped classical music was ready to order Beethoven to roll over and tell Tchaikovsky the news.

  He still remembered the look of hot envy on the faces of his college friends when he announced his admission at an American college. “Fuck, man,” his friend Hanif had said. “America. Damn. That’s better than—what?—than sleeping with Cindy Crawford.”

  And indeed it had been. Better than sleeping with Cindy Crawford, better than fucking Juliette Binoche, better than attending a U2 concert, better than a cup of hot cocoa in front of a roaring fire. He had always thought he was ambitious, a dreamer, but his life had turned out to be more audacious and grander than even his dreams.

  And as if being allowed into America was not gift enough, there were all these other gifts. A son, as perfect and pure as the moon. A wife who was sometimes prickly, yes, who smiled less often than he would like, yes, but who loved him and was fierce and loyal in that love. A career that, until the appearance of Grace Butler, had soared like a rocket. A home that was beautiful and comfortable and, most important, large enough that he could offer to share it with his mother.

  His mother. A thin needle of worry was making its way into the fabric of contentment that Sorab had been weaving for himself. Mamma really needs to make up her mind, he thought, remembering his conversation with Susan at the restaurant. This not knowing is too hard on Susan. Two months will fly by and there’s so much we need to do if she’s going to stay—start the immigration paperwork, look for a bigger house, decide what to do with the house in Bombay. Besides, God, it would just be nice to know whether we’re going to have another member here come spring. Susan and I both need the time to make the mental adjustment, dammit. Cookie, too, probably. I need to prepare him for the separation if she’s going back, but how can I if I don’t know what she’s thinking? Mamma is so damn secretive. Was she always like this? Or has Daddy’s passing away changed her? How come I don’t know the answer to that? I’ll have to ask Susan what she thinks. If I can bear to ask Susan any question regarding Mamma, that is. What’s up with her these days, anyhow? This thin-lipped, schoolmarmish look that she gets on her face? Has she always worn this look and I’ve just never seen it before? How come I don’t know the answer to that? I’ll have to ask Mamma.

  He caught himself. You stupid son of a bitch; he laughed to himself. Trying to figure out the fairer sex. If you did, they’d give you the MacArthur genius grant. You’re surrounded by secretive, manipulative women, isn’t that a fact? If it’s not your wife and mother, it’s your lovely boss at work. Wait, make that your fantastical-fabulous-scrumptiously-divinely-delightful boss. Why settle for one adjective to describe her when you can use ten?

  “Sorab, for crying out loud. What are you doing?” Susan asked sleepily.

  “What?”

  “Why are you tossing and turning in bed? Jesus, you’re keeping me up, hon.”

  “Sorry. I thought you were asleep.”

  “’Sokay. Go back to sleep.”

  He lay quiet and still for a few minutes. Then, “Hon? You still awake?”

  “I am now.” Susan’s voice was between a sigh and a hiss.

  “It’s snowing. I mean, it’s really, really beautiful. You wanna come stand at the window and look at it
with me?”

  Susan groaned. “Oh, for God’s sake, Sorab, you can’t be serious. I just finally got warm.”

  He sat in the dark, saying nothing. But he was listening, hard. What he was listening for, he wasn’t sure. But he knew he’d know it if he heard it.

  He was fighting back the disappointment that was forming at the back of his throat when Susan spoke. “Okay, come on. Just for a minute, okay? Jesus, I must be crazy.” As Susan threw back her covers, he felt as if she’d thrown back the gloom that was beginning to descend on him. His step was light as his feet hit the cold wooden floor.

  They stood at the window watching the languid fall of the snow. Sorab put his arm around Susan. “This is like old times,” he said. “Remember, in college, how we used to wake up early and go to the river just to see the sunrise?”

  Susan yawned. “Yes, dear. But that was like a hundred years ago, when we were young and pretty and—unemployed.”

  He smiled. “Those were the days, huh? Unemployment sounds pretty damn great these days.”

  Susan squeezed his hand. “Look at that maple tree in Ruby’s yard. It’s like a postcard. I’ll bet you anything Mom will want to take a picture of it in the morning.” She leaned into him. “You were right, hon,” she murmured. “It really is a beautiful snowfall.”

  “Worth waking up for?”

  “Ask me in the morning.”

  He kissed her head. “Well, seeing how you are wide awake and all, can I at least make it worth your while, darling?”

  “And how do you propose to do that?”

  “Allow me to demonstrate.”

  Snow is so different from rain, Tehmina thought. Rain in Bombay was like a heavy-footed, clumsy intruder, crashing and falling over the furniture, dropping the china, making its heavy, sweaty presence felt upon the hammered, beaten streets. But the snow here! Tehmina marveled at its stealth, its subterfuge, its light touch. Why, one could sleep through the night and not even know that it had snowed until morning.