If Today Be Sweet

by Thrity Umrigar

  “Are you kidding? If there’s free homemade Parsi food you think any force on earth could keep Percy away?”

  “Really. What was I thinking?” She strode a few paces ahead of Sorab. “Hi, Cookie,” she called. “Yoo-hoo. Over here, darling.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Homi and Perin Jasawala lived out in the country, although it was different from any countryside that Tehmina was familiar with. Unlike India, where the countryside was made up of a few emaciated cows in dry brown fields and clusters of impoverished villages, the drive to the Jasawalas’ home took them past shopping plazas, a Wal-Mart, a Best Buy, and then a series of open fields punctuated with the occasional red barn and silo. Every so often they came across a large, well-tended house sitting on acres of land, many with garages or work sheds so large that Tehmina couldn’t help but think that in India a family of twenty could’ve lived inside one of them. As they approached the Jasawalas’ home, Tehmina noticed that the houses got larger and wood and aluminum-sided homes gave way to stone-and-brick mansions.

  Still, the Jasawalas’ house surpassed all the others in its opulence. Other than the fact that Sorab had told Tehmina earlier that the couple had only recently moved into the home that they had had built, Tehmina would have easily believed that the Jasawalas had paid to move an old mansion from England or Wales to some farmland in Ohio. As Sorab pulled up in the circular driveway, Tehmina noticed an enormous Christmas tree that spanned the height of the tall windows on the first and second floors.

  “Holy shit,” Sorab breathed. “Homi’s practice must be doing well.”

  “Well, to hear Perin tell it, it’s she who brings in the serious bucks,” Susan said.

  “I believe that,” Sorab said. “Have you seen that huge billboard as you go down Richfield Road? I think her firm probably handles ninety percent of all the immigration cases in northeast Ohio. Percy says he ran into his former boss the other day and the guy was moaning about how Perin was going to put them all out of business.”

  “It’s the smartest thing Percy ever did, going to work for Perin.”

  “Yup. Though to be honest, I wasn’t sure at first. I just thought—I dunno—better not to mix business with friendship.”

  “Well, working with Perin, he’ll never starve, that’s a fact. That woman is such a dynamo.”

  The human dynamo was waiting for them at the front door. Perin was resplendent in a red sari and gold jewelry, looking for all the world as if she was dressed for a Parsi wedding in Bombay.

  “Aavo, aavo.” She beamed. “Welcome to our humble home.”

  Sorab whistled. “Wow, Perin. Nothing humble about this house.”

  Perin looked away, as if embarrassed. “Oh, it’s nothing, nothing,” she said. “The upstairs is a little bit cramped, actually.”

  “Listen to her.” The cathedral ceilings in the foyer made Homi’s voice boom even louder as he approached them. “Imagine the gall of this woman—over nine thousand square feet and she’s still complaining about the size of the house. And the funny part is, both of us grew up in tiny little apartments on Grant Road, where there was barely room for the mosquitoes, let alone human beings.”

  Tehmina remembered the story from her earlier visits to America. Homi and Perin had been childhood sweethearts, growing up in adjacent apartments in a building on Grant Road. Tehmina couldn’t remember what Perin had told her was the reason for the long-standing enmity between the two families, but she remembered being amazed at the fact that the two of them, who had fallen in love when they were twelve, had kept their love a secret for at least the next ten years. In fact, they had secretly gotten married in a civil marriage about a month before Homi left for America, with a promise to call for his new bride as soon as he got settled. Nobody knew except Perin’s best friend, who had also been a witness at their clandestine wedding. Over a year later, Perin had left behind a note for her family and boarded a plane with the money she and Homi had saved. She arrived in Ohio during the worst snowstorm in a decade and moved into Homi’s tiny one-bedroom apartment. Never having seen snow before, she had showed up at the airport dressed in a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a skirt. Homi had had to give his shivering bride his coat while he went to retrieve the car he had borrowed from a friend.

  And after all that—after they had struggled while Homi went to medical school and Perin got a job as a cashier at Kmart, after they began a tepid reconciliation with their respective families, after they bought their first car and later, their first home, after Homi got his first job as a psychiatrist at a state hospital, after the disappointments of trying and failing to have children, after their first, emotional trip back to India to see their families for the first time in years, after Perin’s decision to go to law school and Homi’s ready support—after having cobbled a life together from nothing but the strength of their devotion to each other, after all this, Homi had had an affair. And threatened to destroy everything that they had built.

  Tehmina only knew about this because she had heard Homi talk about it. On television. On one of those chatty local morning shows that usually gave her a headache simply from the wattage of the television host’s bright, fake smile. But here was Homi looking serious and sincere as he promoted the self-help book he had written. Using words that no self-respecting Indian would ever use—words like manipulative and codependent and controlling. Heck, in India we have one word for all these things, Tehmina had thought: We call it love. But what really shocked her was how casually Homi was talking about the most intimate, private aspects of his life. How freely he was discussing, with a perfect stranger, before an audience of thousands of strangers, his emotional life, his innermost thoughts and feelings. Despite Homi’s apparent sincerity, Tehmina found herself stiffening with shame and embarrassment. For the umpteenth time she marveled at this strange country that her son now called home—how the lines between public and private blurred altogether. Are there no thoughts or emotions that are so sacred, so private that they feel compelled to guard them from the intrusion of the world? she marveled. Is there no behavior that one is too embarrassed to speak about? And here was Homi talking about how the sex had stopped being fun, how he and Perin had had to rebuild their sex lives after she had discovered the affair. It was all supposed to be positive and life-affirming—in fact, Homi now conducted weekend seminars to help other couples whose marriages were in trouble—but Tehmina was mortified. She couldn’t help but think of Perin’s embarrassed reaction to her husband’s spilling of the beans.

  But now, looking at the Jasawalas standing with their arms around each other, she could tell that she had misread the situation. Homi had obviously promoted the book and embarked on this new career path as marriage counselor with Perin’s full blessings. And why would that be so surprising? she now asked herself. Clearly, Perin was not immune to America’s unspoken insistence on self-disclosure. In India, it was just movie stars who were expected to make perfect fools of themselves by revealing the secrets of their (mostly shallow and boring) personal lives. Here, it was expected of everyone. The movie stars and rock singers were not enough to sustain the unceasing appetite for gossip and salacious details. So even ordinary people like Homi and Perin had to do their bit to feed the monster.

  They had embarked on another uniquely American custom—the showing off of the new house. Labeling it the twenty-five-cent tour, Homi was escorting them from room to room of the new house. Apparently, all the other guests who were in the living room and the kitchen—which Tehmina thought was bigger than the kitchen of most restaurants—had already had the tour because they made no move to join them.

  “This desk we bought in Kenya,” Homi was saying. “Perin just fell in love with it. Had it shipped home.” Already he had told them the story behind the Italian marble in the kitchen, the Oriental rug in the dining room, and the Japanese print that hung over the fireplace. Tehmina felt like a member of a Greek chorus—all she was expected to contribute was an occasional “oooh” and “arre wah.”r />
  “It’s beautiful, yaar. You guys did a great job,” Sorab said, and hearing the sincerity in her son’s voice, with no hint of envy or irony, Tehmina felt her heart swell with love. She also felt a new appreciation for Sorab’s expensive but more modest house. Its scale felt more manageable, more human, somehow, compared with this house, which still had the faint smell of new paint. Tehmina thought with pleasure at how Cookie kicked off his dirty shoes as soon as he walked in the door, how she sometimes found his clothes lying in a heap in the bathroom. This house was too clean, too antiseptic for her taste. Why, the Jasawalas even had white carpeting in the living room. And she realized what was missing—there was no Cookie to spill a drink on the kitchen floor, no Cookie to leave his school projects all over the dining-room table. No Cookie to humanize this house, to occupy it, to make it real with his carelessness, his childlike clumsiness, his clutter. This house needed a child to make it a home.

  As if on cue, Cookie shifted by her side. “Granna, I’m bored,” he announced. “Can I go downstairs to play with Shirin and all?”

  Homi let out his booming laugh. “Yah, I guess this is all pretty boring,” he said. Suddenly he crinkled his eyes and fell down to his knees so that he was eye level with the boy. “Hey, Cookie. So tell me. Any new adventures at school?”

  “School’s out.”

  “Oh yes, of course. That’s right.” Homi looked disappointed. And then, as if he couldn’t help himself, “Are you doing your homework now? Or is it still against your religious principles?”

  “Homi,” Sorab and Susan groaned in unison.

  Homi’s eyes were shining. “Oops, sorry. But I can’t help myself. It’s such a great story.”

  Earlier in the year, Cookie had accidentally discovered Sorab’s old collection of Calvin and Hobbes, devoured them, and decided that Calvin was his alter ego. Sorab and Susan had to endure weeks where every question that they asked him was met with a smart-aleck answer that came right out of the books. Cookie had even gone around the house doing daily polls rating Sorab’s performance as a dad, much as the fictitious Calvin did. They had thought it funny until the day Cookie refused to take a test at school, scrawling on the page, “I cannot take this test as it is against my religious principles.” Then they had to confiscate the incendiary comic books.

  A wicked smile came over Cookie’s face. But before he could respond to Homi in his best Calvinesque voice, Susan hastily grabbed the boy by the shoulders and led him toward the door of the bedroom. “Okay, hon,” she said, “why don’t you go downstairs and play with the other kids? We’ll be down in a minute or so.”

  After Cookie had left, Susan turned toward Homi. “Calvin and Hobbes is a taboo subject in our house,” she said. “You have to promise not to bring that up in front of Cookie.”

  Homi folded his hands in mock apology. “Sorry, sorry. I just can’t help it. It’s just so funny. He’s just…he’s such a creative kid.” His face was shiny, eager. “So. Are there other stories? How has he driven the teacher mad recently?”

  Sorab burst out laughing. “Saala, I’m glad we don’t live too close to you. You’d be a horrible influence on my son.”

  “He’s always been like that,” Perin said. “He was just like your Cavas when he was a boy. Brimming with mischief and fun.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you his latest escapade,” Sorab said. “But don’t remind him of it, okay? You promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay, so he had this older teacher this year. Mrs. Marriott. Acts like she’s eighty though she’s probably only in her fifties. So Cookie’s in her class and he’s chewing on his pencil, right? And Mrs. Marriott tells him to remove the pencil from his mouth because it’s got lead in it and can cause lead poisoning. Well, as luck would have it, Cookie’s been reading this book about the history of the pencil. So he stands up and in front of the whole class tells her she’s misinformed, that pencils don’t contain lead but are made from graphite. Can you imagine? This poor woman being lectured by a self-righteous seven-year-old? And when Cookie adopts that professorial tone of voice, I tell you, he’s insufferable.”

  Homi and Perin roared with laughter. “Oh my God, that’s so cute,” Perin wept. “Oh, I would’ve paid money to see the look on the teacher’s face.”

  “Well, we did,” Susan said. “Saw the look on her face, I mean. She complained to us at the next teacher’s conference. And I tell you, it wasn’t a look I care to see again. She looked like she wanted to skin him alive.”

  “And if we’d done something like this in India, they would’ve skinned us alive,” Homi said promptly. “There, you know, the whole thing is teachers are like gods. You can have the most incompetent buffoons and still you have to respect them, just because they’re teachers.”

  Tehmina heard the bitterness in his voice and marveled at it. All of Sorab’s friends seemed so bitter when they talked about India. The education system, the corruption, the postal service, the slow-moving traffic, the bureaucracy—they seemed to criticize everything. Is that why they left in the first place—because they were so angry about everything? And had Sorab—her sunny boy with his sweet disposition—had he felt the same way? Or did he see the things to cherish—the strong family bonds, the way neighbors looked out for one another, the busy, warm aliveness of the streets, such a contrast to the sad, bleak solitariness of life here?

  The doorbell rang again and they heard the door open and Percy’s familiar voice saying, “Helloooo? Anybody home?”

  “We’re up here with Sorab and Susan,” Perin yelled. “Be down in a sec. Please make yourself comfy.”

  But the next second they heard the sound of Percy bounding up the stairs. As usual, Tehmina’s heart gave a lift when she saw Percy’s cheerful face. “Hey there,” he said to the group. And then, spotting Tehmina, he went up to her and kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, Mamma.” He grinned. “How are you? Hope that ugly son of yours is taking good care of you. If not, just move in with us, okay? Room and board free, all for the price of your fabulous dhansak.”

  “I tell you a million times to stop by for dinner whenever you want, deekra,” Tehmina replied. But even as she extended the invitation, she wondered if Susan was offended by her presumptuousness. “You don’t need an invitation,” she finished lamely.

  “Arre, Mamma, be careful what riffraff you invite to the house,” Sorab said, slapping his best friend on the back. “With this bugger, if you promise him food he’ll move in with us permanently.”

  “Not a chance,” Percy said promptly. “At some point I’ll have to go home. Unless you can imitate my lovely Julie’s talents in bed.” He cast an apologetic look at Tehmina. “Pardon my French, Mamma,” he added vaguely.

  “Speaking of food, the party’s been catered by Yasmin Shroff,” Perin said. “We had her food at another party recently and thought she was quite good.” She poked Percy in the ribs. “Hope her pallov-daar meets your approval.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be great. But I tell you, nobody can make daar like this lady here,” Percy said, putting an arm around Tehmina. “Her chicken dhansak kept me alive when I was a young boy.” And despite the lightness of his tone, a look passed between Percy and Tehmina that captured the closeness that they had shared over the years. Percy’s mother had been Tehmina’s best friend, and when she died of breast cancer, Tehmina was as devastated as the twelve-year-old Percy. She would have taken Percy in anyway, would have insisted that the boy stop by for tea and a light dinner after school, even if his father, Bomi, had not been the drunken wastrel that he was. But as it was, she and Rustom had decided that the young boy should be protected from his father’s drunken rages and bouts of self-pity. If Tehmina had had her way, Percy would’ve moved in with them permanently. Instead, she tried to keep the boy over at their house as much as possible, including on weekends. Every trip or outing that the Sethnas took included a fourth member, every play or concert that they attended they bought a fourth ticket for. Lost in the fumes of
alcohol, Bomi was only too happy to give up responsibility for his son. A few times they even paid the boy’s school tuition when Bomi was delinquent with the fees, and soon it made sense for them to also check on Percy’s progress report when they went to Cathedral for parent-teacher conferences for Sorab. They were happy to do all this in a silent, unassuming way, though each time they ran into Bomi in the street, he went into one of his loud, bombastic raves and promised to repay them for every paisa they spent on his son. The man was completely oblivious to the embarrassment he caused them, and worse, to the mortification he aroused in his only child. Still, for the most part, the Sethnas’ caring for Percy went unspoken and unacknowledged, which is how they liked it. Only once did they have to intervene directly: after a sobbing Percy had shown up on their doorstep one Friday evening with red welts on his thin brown body where Bomi had hit him with his belt. Then Rustom had gone pale in the face, thrown on a shirt over his sadra, and headed for the door. A frightened Tehmina had tried to stop him, had asked him what he intended to do, but he had shaken her off, a tight, closed expression on his face she’d never seen before. He had returned an hour later and gone up directly to Percy. “He’ll never touch you again, sonny,” he had said quietly. “That much I promise you.” When Tehmina asked him that night what had transpired between Bomi and him, he said only that they’d had a little talk. But it was true—Bomi continued to drink and the verbal abuse was undiminished, but he never struck his son again.

  Now, looking at Percy’s pudgy but handsome face, Tehmina marveled again at his resilience. Two years after Sorab had left for graduate school in America, Percy had followed him. Going to law school had transformed his life. Despite paying alimony to three wives, Percy still made enough money to send a check each month to Bomi for his living expenses. The poor boy who for all practical purposes was an orphan at twelve now had the largest laugh in any room, was the life of every party, and had a zest for life that Tehmina wanted for her own son. Seeing Percy now with his thick shiny hair, his Ralph Lauren shirt, his designer jeans, no one would guess at the daily abuse his father had heaped upon him, the ugly names he had been called, the grief and anger he had felt when his beloved mother had been snatched away from him. And for the first time, Tehmina felt grateful to America. She and Rustom had given Percy a shot at life, but America had given him his life. It was amazing the transformation that happened to all these young people when they came here—most of them gained weight, most of them talked louder and laughed louder, some of them even grew an inch or so in height, improbable as that seemed. But the most amazing thing was, they became happy in America. Kids who had been pencil thin, melancholy, depressed, quiet, and shy became confident, strong, talkative, happy. How could a country change someone’s basic personality? Tehmina wondered. This thing in their Constitution which we used to mock in India—the pursuit of happiness or some such thing—maybe it really did something for people to have such a preposterous idea embedded in the Constitution. Maybe it gave them the freedom to feel they were worthy of happiness, that being happy was something they didn’t have to apologize for or feel guilty about. Tehmina remembered all of her mother’s strictures—how you should not look at yourself in the mirror lest people think you are vain; how you should never complain about anything in your life because there are millions of people worse off than you; how you should cover your mouth when you laugh because otherwise men will think you are promiscuous; how you should be satisfied with whatever God has given you because it’s your destiny; how you should never eat on the streets because you attract the attention and envy of the starving people around you; how you should never boast about having money to avoid arousing the envy of your neighbors. Because of Rustom’s broad-minded, large attitude, she herself had moved away from many of these beliefs. But still, it was true—she had never felt free in Bombay the way she did here. The simple act of eating an ice-cream cone on the streets and not being followed by the hungry eyes of a hundred children was a freedom, a luxury she had never experienced on the streets of Bombay. In America, she didn’t feel leered at by young, sex-starved men, was not self-conscious about her breasts, was not miserably aware of her female body, didn’t carry herself in that tense, guarded way that she did back home. And although it was difficult, she was forcing herself to look in the mirror as she ran her fingers through her hair when she was in a public restroom. She marveled at how American women stood for long minutes staring at themselves in the mirror, adjusting their hair, putting on makeup. Once, in the public restroom at Hunan Village, she had even seen a young woman blow herself a kiss in the mirror. Her mother had obviously not warned her against the sins of vanity and pride.