by Diksha Basu
Marianne had grown up far more comfortably, with a swimming pool in her backyard and annual summer holidays at their home in Mallorca. Her father was one of the original creators of IMAX films and her mother was a columnist for the weekend section of the Bethesda Herald, and now her parents did little other than travel the world wearing pastel-colored linen.
Being blond and from Bethesda would have been so much easier than being brown and from Ohio, Tina thought.
“And it’s usually the brown person who posts the picture online because you just know they wouldn’t generally go hiking—no Indians go hiking—but the minute they go slightly uphill with a white person, they feel so fit and outdoorsy, they have to post pictures online,” Tina said.
“Are you being pissy about David coming to India?” Marianne asked. “Because you and I went hiking last summer and you took a thousand pictures.”
Tina looked over at David again. The worst part of this all was that Tina found him attractive. She looked away.
“He’s like what I imagine Colin Wrisley turned into,” Tina said.
“You remember his last name? That was so long ago! He has three kids now and they all play lacrosse,” Marianne said.
“You played lacrosse that entire spring too! Didn’t you even try out for Yale’s team?”
Marianne shook her head and laughed. She had. She had fallen head over heels for Colin Wrisley and started playing lacrosse—she hated it and was terrible at it—and going to ice hockey games and wearing sports jerseys. That was sophomore year, and that summer he was hiking to Everest base camp, and Marianne said her goodbyes and left her jerseys at the Salvation Army in New Haven and returned to Bethesda and her books for the summer, and only ever saw Colin Wrisley again when they crossed paths in the hallway after her Monday-Wednesday class on women and literature in traditional China. In fact, she remembered, that was where she met Tony Wei, for whom she taught herself how to make soup dumplings. But that ended quickly when he said nothing could ever compare to the soup dumplings at Din Tai Fung, and her heart sank when she realized she had no idea what Din Tai Fung was, and since this was before iPhones she couldn’t even excuse herself to the bathroom to google it quickly. And of course, on the heels of that, was Riyaaz from Pakistan—the ultimate international romance, the one who still crossed her mind, the one for whom she had once, late at night, alone in her room, tried draping a scarf like a burqa, leaving nothing visible but her eyes.
Outside, the tarmac glistened black and she could see into the oval windows of parked airplanes. A Singapore Airlines plane taxied slowly toward the runway.
“My father is on this flight too. He’s obviously avoiding the lounge,” Tina said. “My mother said David’s looking forward to going to India because he loves doing yoga. I really wish America had never discovered yoga.”
She was folding a page of today’s New York Times into an origami swan. Three smaller origami swans—one made from a napkin, one from a discarded boarding pass, and one from a Time magazine cover—lay on the table in front of her.
“Don’t you do yoga at that place across the street from you?” Marianne asked.
“I used to but I think I’m done,” Tina said. She also watched the Singapore Airlines plane reach the main runway and thought about all the people in the plane, jostling into position, not yet feeling cramped and annoyed and exhausted. She thought about the young families in the front row with their babies in their laps waiting for the bassinets, hoping the children would sleep through the flight. She thought of the couples off on holiday or returning home after a trip through America. Maybe an Indian family with two parents and two children in high school flying home to Singapore after visiting family in Rochester and going to Niagara Falls. Maybe the mother was flipping through the in-flight magazine to find a Bollywood film to watch.
Last week, at the end of her yoga class on North Eleventh Street, the slim Caucasian instructor ended the hour by sprinkling water on all the students and saying “It’s holy water, the way they do in Hinduism.” Tina opened her eyes—she wasn’t supposed to, they were supposed to be in relaxation mode. The teacher caught her eye and smiled and nodded slowly. Tina was used to this in yoga class and she sagely nodded at the instructor and offered her a gentle smile, letting the instructor bask in her Indianness. Then Tina did the same with all the other students who bowed to one another after class, their hands pressed together in namastes. She was certain that the other students lingered during their namaste with her and she felt like a fraud—because not only did she barely speak Hindi, she struggled to even touch her toes—but still she went around nodding slowly at everyone as if she were Buddha himself.
A few months ago, after too many happy hour cocktails with Marianne, Tom, and her ex-boyfriend Andrew at the Pony Bar on the Upper East Side, Tina, surprising herself the most, suggested dinner at Saravana Bhavan.
“I could definitely go for a tomato-onion uttapam,” Tom said, pronouncing it with a hard t. Tina saw Marianne smile at him and touch his elbow. Tom buried his face into his brown cable-knit scarf and put his hands into his blazer pockets.
“As long as it’s not too spicy,” Andrew had said. “I don’t want to have to run to the bathroom.”
Tina felt her ears get hot with embarrassment—about Andrew and his inability to eat spicy food, but more, worse, about being Indian and having food that was associated with urgent trips to the bathroom. Marianne had grown up eating meat loaf, and her family had all-American traditions like breakfast for dinner every Sunday. Tina had tried suggesting that to her mother when she was home for winter break her sophomore year and her mother had said, “You’re too old to be so cutesy, darling. We’re having keema khichdi tonight. Now, open up the windows, I don’t want the onion to make things smell. And take all the jackets from the downstairs cupboard and put them on the guest bed. The smell of food just lingers and lingers and I won’t have us walking all over town smelling like the kitchen of that horrid Indian buffet restaurant.”
* * *
—
“WHEN WAS THE LAST time we went on a trip, just us?” Marianne asked, flipping through the same Time magazine, now without a cover. “Was it senior year to Cancun?”
“Unless you count that depressing New Year’s Eve we spent in Atlantic City,” Tina said.
“We are definitely not counting that,” Marianne said. “That was when I nearly burned down our rental trying to make dumplings. Remember?”
“I do remember. And then we ended up having bologna on white bread for our New Year’s Eve dinner.”
“And New Year’s morning breakfast,” Marianne said. “What a disaster. I’m glad we’re doing this trip just us.”
“I’m so grateful,” Tina said. “Forget my mother and her boyfriend, I have you here and this is going to be fun.”
Marianne was watching Tina’s mother and David.
“I can see why you find him sexy,” Marianne said.
“I should never have told you that,” Tina said.
“It’s the dad-bod thing. I get it,” Marianne said.
“Maybe I should call him ‘Daddy.’ ” Tina said. She laughed. “Daddy David Smith.”
“You could be his hot young trophy wife. If you had kids, people in Williamsburg would mistake you for the nanny.”
“No, that’s taking it too far!” Tina said laughing, throwing a pistachio at Marianne. “I’d have to speak in really clear English to show I wasn’t the nanny.”
“And you would have to wear expensive workout clothes and always carry Starbucks.”
“And then all the other Lululemon mothers would feel guilty that they had assumed I was the nanny.”
“And they would all say, ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being the nanny. My nanny saves my life,’ ” Marianne added.
“Like that mother who burst in to get the kids out of the interv
iew with the BBC dad.”
“Yes!” Marianne said. “The one everyone assumed was the nanny because she was Asian.”
“I made the same assumption,” Tina admitted. “But then I read that she was the mother before Andrew, and when he said that he thought she was the nanny, I used that to start a fight with him and call him racist.”
“It’s a wonder you two lasted as long as you did,” Marianne said.
“Daddy David Smith,” Tina sighed.
Marianne looked over at them again. Radha and David both had reading glasses on and newspapers in their hands but it was clear that they weren’t actually reading. Seeing them made Marianne wonder if she should have put more pressure on Tom to come to Delhi with her. She had asked once in passing but followed it up by saying Tina didn’t think she was bringing Andrew. Then Tina and Andrew had broken up, putting the question to rest.
A few weeks ago, she’d shown him the glittery glass bangles she had bought in Jackson Heights for the wedding.
“You’re going to look so beautiful,” Tom had said. “You should have this trip with Tina. I’m sure she’ll appreciate that. But you will be on my mind constantly.”
She had rubbed her fingers together and said, “Damn it. Now there’s glitter everywhere.”
Tom had gone to the kitchen and brought back a wet paper towel and handed it to Marianne and said, “This will help with the glitter. Let’s go out for dinner tonight. We haven’t wasted money for fun in a long time.”
A little over twelve months ago, Marianne was sitting on the 6 train on the way to see her gynecologist on the Upper East Side and she was reading the previous week’s issue of the New Yorker. She looked up to see what stop they were passing when she saw a handsome black man right across from her reading the same issue. He looked up then too, perhaps sensing her gaze, and she lifted her magazine to him and smiled.
“I’m also always at least an issue behind,” the man who turned out to be Tom said. He had an earnest face, a little nerdy with his glasses and collared shirt and tidy slacks.
“I panic every single Tuesday when it arrives,” Marianne said.
At Grand Central the train emptied out and Tom crossed over to Marianne’s side of the train and said, “Have you ever submitted to the caption contest?”
“I have! Several times,” Marianne said. “Never made it.”
“I made it to the final three once,” Tom said.
“You’re like a celebrity,” Marianne said. “I’ve never met a real-life New Yorker cartoon-caption-contest finalist before.”
“We should exchange numbers. I’ll show you my entry sometime.”
At the gynecologist, Marianne asked to have an IUD put in.
Tom was from Newton, Massachusetts, which, she learned, was a lot like being from Bethesda but with different sports allegiances. His father was a professor of African-American studies at Tufts and his mother was a pediatric dentist, and Marianne’s parents had met them for brunch in Brooklyn one sunny weekend morning and everyone got along easily, perfectly, and the two fathers even discovered that they had taken flying lessons at the same flying club outside Westchester. It was all so perfect on paper, maybe too perfect, and in any case, Tom hadn’t even mentioned proposing and Marianne worried that he never would and she was starting to get itchy feet again, wondering if maybe she needed something more exotic, more exciting, and less familiar.
* * *
—
“HOW DO YOU MAKE these so quickly?” Marianne asked Tina as she picked up the origami swan made from the Time magazine cover. “I’m going to keep this.”
Tina took it out of her hands and thoughtlessly crushed it and said, “Don’t take that one. I’ll make you a better one.”
“Let’s get more free champagne,” Marianne said.
“Can you believe your mother is bringing David Smith?” Neel Das, Tina’s father said as he approached his daughter and her best friend at the bar getting refills on their champagne glasses. He put his bag down at the table where their things were and stood next to them at the bar. He had been wandering around the duty-free shops trying to avoid his wife—ex-wife—but since the flight was over two hours late, he had no option but to come to the lounge and face everyone.
“A champagne for me too, please,” he said to the man at the bar.
“It’s prosecco. But still good,” the man at the bar said. “Where are you folks flying to today?”
“India,” Marianne said. “Where are you from?”
“Mali,” the man said, as he popped the cork on the prosecco bottle and smiled at Marianne.
“I’ve always wanted to go,” Marianne said to him.
“You have?” Tina and the bartender asked her.
“Of course,” Marianne glared at her. “Timbuktu has always sounded so magical to me.”
The bartender laughed even though Marianne had not meant it as a joke.
“Look at how broad his chest is. Can you imagine how handsome he’ll look in Indian clothes?” Mr. Das asked, looking across the lounge at David.
He shook his head and took a sip of his drink. The three of them took their glasses and walked back to the table where they had been sitting and Mr. Das looked at the origami swans on the table.
“Why are you making the swans again?” he asked Tina. “Are you anxious? I read somewhere that most air crashes happen in the first three minutes after takeoff.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Tina said.
“I’ll believe you,” Marianne said. “Then I can relax after three minutes.”
“Exactly. I download three-minute-meditation apps for takeoff,” Mr. Das said. “But then I don’t use it and instead spend three minutes staring at the faces of the flight attendants and then I order a drink.”
Mr. Das picked up a handful of pistachios while looking around the lounge and tossed them into his mouth. He also sputtered as the shells hit his teeth and poked the inside of his mouth. He spat them out into a napkin.
“They could at least shell the nuts,” Mr. Das said.
“Why did you agree to be on the same flight?” Tina asked, placing her glass down. “And why are you wearing a turtleneck? Don’t they give you headaches?”
She picked up the remaining origami swans and crushed them all into a ball.
“Your mother booked my ticket as well and she thought it would be nice for all of us to be on the same flight and who am I to argue? I’m wearing a turtleneck because Esquire says it’s dignified and makes men look more intelligent,” Mr. Das said. He picked up the ball of crushed swans and tried separating them and pressing out the wrinkles. “He might look good but there’s no way a restaurant manager can afford a business class ticket to India, let alone one for her as well. But how on earth does his gray hair make him look so dignified?”
“Ma probably paid,” Tina said.
“Exactly,” Mr. Das said. “With my money.”
“You don’t pay alimony,” Tina said.
“Not my money exactly but family money, Tina,” Mr. Das said. “Your inheritance.”
“Why are you swinging your arm?” Tina asked, noticing her father swaying his right arm off the side of his chair.
He lifted his wrist to Tina and said, “Fitbit.”
He had bought a Fitbit last week but discovered that it tracked steps based on movement so he had been keeping his arm swinging even when he wasn’t walking in order to increase his step count. Figuring out how to maximize his step count while minimizing the number of actual steps he took was more challenging than just walking around endlessly. Maybe he would buy one of those mobiles they give infants to keep them occupied and attach his Fitbit to it. But that movement might be too smooth to register as steps. What he needed was one of those large clocks like his family used to have in Calcutta with a swinging pendulum.
“Maria
nne,” he said. “How have you been? Where is your skinny little husband? Tell him to come along. He can still hop on a flight tomorrow and be there for the fun parts.”
“Just boyfriend,” Marianne said. “Not husband. And I can’t imagine Shefali would be too happy about having to rethink the seating arrangements last minute.”
Tina and Mr. Das laughed.
“Marianne. Sometimes I genuinely forget how white you are,” Tina said. “Seating arrangements? There’s going to be over a thousand people at this wedding. Nobody’s sitting anywhere.”
“You know, for our wedding, the invitation card said You and your friends and family are invited to celebrate. I didn’t recognize more than half of the guests at our wedding,” Mr. Das said. “Book that fellow a flight. I like him. Tina, that’s the kind of man you need to meet. Marriage material—isn’t that what your generation says?”
“I don’t need any kind of man, Papa,” Tina said. “Isn’t that how you raised me? Not to need a husband or a boyfriend.”
“Everyone has a boyfriend,” Mr. Das said, no longer listening. “Even your goddamn mother. Sorry, I meant, even your lovely mother. Not just his chest, even his shoulders are broad. Do you think he lifts weights?”
Mr. Das twisted around in his chair to look at his ex-wife and her boyfriend again. He raised his glass at them and smiled, and David waved energetically while Radha nodded gently in his direction. Mr. Das swiveled back around and had a large gulp of prosecco.
“You’re being awfully nice,” Tina said. “Are you seeing a therapist?”
“No therapists for me, Tina. Living with your mother all those years was enough. I’m sure her patients get a lot from her but I personally am sick of being analyzed. That’s for David Smith to deal with now.”
“Then why the sudden generosity, Uncle?” Marianne said.
“Marianne, I like that you call me Uncle. You’re an honorary Indian,” he said.
He pulled at his collar.
“It’s hot in here. Is anyone else hot? This turtleneck is giving me a headache. Do either of you have Tylenol in your purse?”
