Invisible Lives (14 page)

A
t the Taj, Ravi acts like a prince, escorting me from the car, holding my elbow in the five-star hotel. At a table draped in satin, he runs his thumbs across the palms of my hands. I put on a mauve churidar kurta, but he’s dressed casually today, in jeans, a white cotton shirt open at the neck, and a blue sports jacket.

“I want to know everything about you,” Ravi says.

“And I you—”

“We have all the time in the world.”

“Not if your parents have chosen an auspicious date.”

“The date is flexible. Should I ask your favorite color, food, drink?”

“Red, samosas, and mango lassi. And you?”

“Turquoise, biryani, and mango lassi.”

I smile and glance at the Indian waiters, their brown skin in sharp contrast to their pressed white uniforms as they balance trays on their fingertips. They don’t need the Mango Bay Tanning Salon in Cedarlake. They don’t even know Cedarlake exists. My first evening with Nick flashes into my mind—the wind in Port Gamble, his leg against mine in the tearoom.

The waiter brings mango lassis—mango juice and yogurt. Ravi releases my hands and sits back, regarding me. He’s cool, collected. He takes a swig of lassi. “You’re dedicated to helping your ma. Even when you could be out pursuing your own career, using your degree to get ahead.”

“I wouldn’t consider any other path. I’ve always been with Ma.”
I’ve done what I was supposed to do all my life.

I wonder about Sita. Is she moping in Mitra’s apartment? Has Rina’s mother-in-law returned to India? Has Mitra contacted her father? I wonder about Jeremy. My token offering, the sari with the sky-room pattern, could only serve as a temporary soother. And I think of Nick, driving Asha all over town, but not to our shop.

“It’s nice to be here without the families, isn’t it?” Ravi says, and I nod. “A century ago, we would not have even met before the wedding. Our parents would’ve made the arrangements.”

“Should we unmeet each other?” I sip my lassi, the liquid sweet and cool on my tongue. I’m thrown back in time to my great-grandmother peering through a burgundy veil at the blurry face of her husband, a handsome man whom she’d never seen but with whom she would sleep that very night.

“I would never unmeet you,” Ravi says. “Even if I had a time machine.”

I’m floating on a bed of invisible satin, but the voice that plays in my head is Nick’s. The deep rumble, the hint of a drawl—no!

The waiter brings us an appetizer of samosas, triangles of pastry filled with potato curry and peas and cauliflower. Thankful for the distraction, I dip my samosa in a bowl of red sauce and take a tentative bite. The fire-hot spiciness blazes in my mouth. Ravi devours the samosa without flinching.

“We’re the right match for each other.” His voice grows thick. “Our histories are entwined like the branches of a banyan tree—” He clears his throat. “This is something our families have wanted.”

What my father would’ve wanted. “Yes.”

“Why wait?” he asks.

I’ve been holding my breath again, and now I let out the air.

“Lakshmi, marry me.”

How could I ask for a more romantic moment, time stretched across the twilight sky in five shades of toxic red?

“Marry you?” I parrot, the words mushy through my half-chewed mouthful of samosa.
Do you believe in love at first sight?

He’s patient, his eyes watchful.

“How kind of you to ask,” I say shakily, as if he’s just offered me his seat on a train.
He just asked you to marry him, you dolt!
But my mouth won’t say yes, although everything he says is true. “Let me think about it.” Someone else is talking.

He doesn’t blink, doesn’t miss a beat. “Of course, don’t feel pressure. If you do, then perhaps it is not the right time.”

And instantly, I’m falling off a cliff into a near-death experience. I hang onto the precipice and pull myself up over the ledge. “Just give me a minute—”

“No need to explain.” I sense no animosity in his mind, no uncertainty.

My one chance to marry someone who fits with me exactly, in age, in social status. Our match is auspicious, and yet—why can’t I say yes? Is it because of Nick? A man who is wrong for me in every way? A man who dives in without thinking, who thinks he’s in love when he doesn’t truly know me?

And I don’t know Ravi, but such matches have been made for generations. I should not hesitate.

“I’m not feeling well.” I stand, suddenly dizzy.

Ravi stands and reaches me in a long stride, grabbing my elbow. “Must be the heat.”

“I should…go back to my aunt’s house.”

“Of course, I’ll have the car brought around. Come.”

B
ack at Auntie Bee’s flat, I hold my secret close to my chest, although the news of Ravi’s proposal will likely reach here at the speed of a nuclear-powered rickshaw. Ma and Auntie are visiting friends, so I have a minute to breathe. I escape to my room and flop on the bed. The glass doors stand open to the balcony, letting thick, smoky air waft in. Soft laughter kicks up from the streets.

Marry me.

The words sit like gems in the satin of my brain, their beauty and brightness luring me. I need to talk to a friend, but I’ve left everyone behind in Seattle.

I fumble in my purse for my cell phone, flip it open. I don’t get service here, but I long to call Mitra or Nisha. They’ll tell me to marry him, no questions asked, won’t they?

I try not to imagine Nick’s body, his broad shoulders. Then Ravi’s smooth voice flows into my mind, his easy manner, his slim but solid build. He comes from a good family, a strong background. He understands the intricacies and nuances of Bengali families. He’s a good man, handsome.

Love blossoms over many years, the way my cousin Prithi has blossomed. She bounces into the room. She’s still wiry in jeans and a white blouse, the glasses slipping down her nose, a book sprouting from her fingers, a slight mustache growing on her upper lip. Oh, I forgot the Nair.

This is the fate of Indian girls, to have their black hair show up starkly against their skin. Prithi’s mother, Auntie Bee, bleaches her upper lip. The bushy hair turned orange and now draws the utmost attention, a little orange flag.

“What are you reading, Prithi?” I ask.

She waves the book.
Pride and Prejudice.
Yesterday it was
Beyond Indigo.
She reads everything from mysteries to romances, thrillers and biographies. She reads the backs of cereal boxes, bottles, the inserts that come with boxed perfumes or soaps. Right now she’s reading the look in my eyes as she jumps on the bed next to me.

“He popped the big question,” she said.

“How do you know?” I can’t help but smile at her sensitivity. Runs in the family.

“You look different, like someone turned you inside out.”

“You’ve always had a way with words.” I touch her hair, caught and tamed into a ponytail.

“Omigod!” she squeals and presses her face into a pillow, letting out muffled screams. Then she throws the pillow at me. “You are such a lucky duck! Have you told your ma? Have you told my ma? Nona? Lakshmi’s getting married!”

“Whoa, not so fast. Don’t tell anyone. I haven’t said yes.”

“But why not?” She looks up at me in utter amazement. “He’s a dreamboat. My friends are all talking about him.”

“Just because he’s a dreamboat doesn’t mean I should marry him.”

She sits close, our shoulders touching. In India, personal space means half a centimeter. She gives off the slight smell of soap and unwashed hair. “So have you, you know, kissed him?”

“Kissed him—of course.” I’m lying. Am I supposed to wait for our wedding night? What secrets would a kiss reveal? I think of Nick’s kisses, the way I floated.

“Have you done anything else, Lakshmi-didi?” Prithi’s eyes widen as she addresses me as “didi,” elder sister, while asking me an inappropriately intimate question.

“Prithi, are you supposed to know about such things?”

“I learned in school. I’m not stupid.”

“We have not done anything more, and we probably won’t—what if I don’t marry him? Then I’ll regret doing anything…more with him. You remember that, okay? Have you kissed a boy?”

Her face goes red. “At the dance. But now I like a different boy, but I don’t know if he likes me.” She flips her ponytail. “I want to cut my hair and get contact lenses, but Ma won’t let me.”

“Wait until you’re older. You don’t need to attract boys just yet. You can keep reading, okay?”

She pouts, glancing down at her book, and pushes the glasses up on her nose.

“We’re going to a party tomorrow afternoon,” Prithi says. “Another American cousin has come. Chandra. She lives in New York now. She’s an artist, just now married—”

“Why didn’t I know about her?”

“She went to the States for her studies a few years back,” Prithi says. “Now she is oh, such an American. She has married an American, an artist.”

When Ma and Auntie return in a rush of perfume and gossip, Ma races in and hugs me. “Ah, you are getting married, my sweet!” She’s at home here in her chiffon saris, the many rings on her fingers, the sindoor in her hair part. She doesn’t walk—she undulates, the folds and creases of her sari like an ocean of ripples and waves.

“Is it true? Has Ravi asked you to marry him?” Auntie Bee asks and takes my hands. I catch a flashing image of her tangled in bed with Uncle Goola—truly tangled, since her hair is so long. I let go of her hands and dispel the image. I’ve learned which pictures to toss and which to file.

“What did you tell him?” Ma, Auntie, and cousin Prithi gather around the bed and stare at me as if I’m a new species of house gecko.

“I told him I had to think about it,” I say.

“Think, what thinking is needed?” Ma shrieks.

“Make him squirm for a bit. Good girl,” Auntie Bee says.

Then my grandmother, Nona, shuffles in wearing a long kaftan, her smoky white hair sticking out in all directions. If you didn’t know she was the hottest spice on the rack, you might think of her as a crazy bag lady. But Nona’s far from crazy. Ma inherited her clear mind and stamina.

Nona sits on the bed next to me, pats a gnarled brown hand on my knee. “I have heard all this ruckus and commotion,” she says in a gravelly voice. “And I am saying that you will know that this is right.”

“We all know you’ve been looking and looking for such a long time,” Ma says. “Ravi’s a great man.”

“Ma—thanks. I really don’t know what to do.” Tears prick the backs of my eyes.

“You already know!”

“I should marry him, right?” I ask. “It’s what—” My voice trails off. What Baba would’ve wanted. Even after all these years, I don’t want to mention my father. A hole opens in her heart when I talk about him.

“The main thing is for you to be happy,” Ma says. “Ravi will make you happy. You’ll see!”

“You must go to see your Thakurma,” Nona says quietly. “She will have the answer.”

Thakurma, my father’s mother. The last time I saw her, she resided nearly full-time in her bungalow in the northern foothills, in the company of her cook, her driver, and a plethora of part-time helpers. She spent her days tending her gardens.

Ma gives me a look. “We’ll go, Bibu.”

After they leave the room, Prithi gets back on the bed and sits very close again, as if she needs to touch my arm to know I’m here. “The main thing is for you to be happy,” she parrots in a somber voice. “Ravi might be the love of your life, or he might not. You might one day be walking down the street and you’ll meet the love of your life and you’ll know in that moment, it’s him! He’s the one. Your corresponding person.”

“My corresponding person? Did you read that in a book? You’re too wise for your britches, Prithi. What if Ravi is the love of my life?”

She shrugs wisely. “Then you marry him.”

“W
e are bringing our most sincere congratulations to you and your husband,” Auntie Bee says, taking cousin Chandra’s hands at the door to her mother’s second-floor flat.

“C’mon in and don’t track dirt, please,” Chandra says. Instead of kneeling to touch the feet of her elder relative, she backs up, holding the door open to let us inside. Nona shuffles in after us, nods to Chandra. Afternoon sunlight slants in through a large bay window. The flat opens into four large rooms connected by archways, similar to Auntie’s flat, only the ceilings are higher here, domed and reaching, as if trying to escape Chandra’s tight jeans, spray-painted on and then shrink-wrapped. She’s an elflike woman, pointy nosed and pointy eared, maybe from Vulcan, her hair like a black shower cap on her head.

Her parents appear from the bedroom as if recently let out of prison. They’re traditional, in sari and dhoti punjabi—both pointy nosed and pointy eared too, a family of Indian Vulcans. How can they be related to me?

In the living room, we all sit beneath the lazily spinning ceiling fan. We pick at shortbread biscuits and drink thick, spicy
cha.
The boiled, unpasteurized goat’s milk forms a thick film in my cup.

A blond, curly-haired man saunters in, hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. Unlike Chandra, he erred on the side of baggy. “Hey,” he says, waving as if we’re miles away.

Chandra’s mother, Mrs. Chowdhry, speaks softly in Bengali to the cook, a sweaty, large woman in an orange cotton sari.

“Speak in English, Ma!” Chandra says in a whiny voice and slaps her hand on the coffee table. It’s a delicate hand, but the force of the slap makes the table vibrate. Sam, her husband, flops onto the couch next to her.

“Always in English you want me to speak,” her mother says, glancing at her father, who shakes his head and focuses on chewing a fifth cookie.

“If you come to New York, you won’t be able to talk to everyone in Bengali,” Chandra says, slurping her cha
.
“You’ll have to make an effort to fit in, the way I had to do.”

“How difficult it is to get about in New York,” Mrs. Chowdhry says, addressing us now, an apology in her eyes. “I learned to call a taxi, but all the time they are rushing by, rushing here and there.”

“Taxicabs are the most dangerous form of transportation known to man,” Dr. Chowdhry pontificates. He’s a university professor, and every sentence comes out a lecture. “They will run you over without mercy. Without looking.” He waves his spoon at me.

“When you come to the States next month, don’t fill up your suitcase with all those saris,” Chandra goes on, speaking to her ma again. Her mother, a meek woman who looks at the ground most of the time, nods.

“She has married this American artist, and already she has lost everything,” Dr. Chowdhry says. “Every bit of her mother tongue.”

“Sam doesn’t understand. It’s rude to leave him out.” Chandra rubs his back in a provocative way, then his thigh, and they give each other looks fit for a porno movie.

I cringe on behalf of my grandmother and hope her cataracts obscure her view.

“We are hoping you will both come to India for a proper Bengali wedding?” Nona says in her gravelly voice.

“Bengali wedding?” Chandra snorts out through her nose. “But Sam’s Catholic. Or at least, his family is. He’s gone atheistical on everyone. And who can blame him? Do you know what those Catholic nuns do to kids in those schools? They rap their knuckles. Capital punishment.”

“He’s an atheist, not atheistical,” I say, and it occurs to me that I don’t know Nick’s religion.

Ma glances at me.

“Whatever.” Chandra slurps her tea. “Anyway, we had this really cool eco-friendly wedding out at Rabbit Park north of the city. My friends all brought their bikes to the ceremony and we had a vegan cake.”

Part of me admires her for her dedication, and yet I can’t warm to my cousin, my blood.

“We were hoping you and Sam would come here for a proper Indian wedding,” Auntie Bee says. “All of the family would like to celebrate.”

“Are you kidding?” Chandra reaches across the table to grab another cookie. “What a pain in the ass.” Nona flinches again. “I mean, we have family all over this damned country. We’d have to invite every single one of them and all their friends, and if we forgot to invite one person, everyone would be in a huff and nobody would talk to us ever again. Not that they talk to us now anyway. But the whole Indian thing, everyone knowing everyone—I can’t stand it, don’t know how I ever could. In America, you don’t have to know anyone if you don’t want to.”

Chandra’s parents droop across the table, their Vulcan ears seeming to fold upon themselves. When we pile into the car to leave, there’s a hush, a kind of stunned silence as if we’ve all been struck by the same bolt of lightning.

“Completely corrupt, that girl,” Auntie Bee says. “What’s America done to her? Did you see her parents?”

My grandmother shakes her head, clucking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “We must not speak of others this way.”

Auntie Bee, Kolkata’s biggest gossip, can’t keep her tongue from flying. “She’s forgotten bangla, and you see the way she speaks to her mother. Oh-la! I’ve nearly had a heart attack.”

“You’ll have one anyway with the heavy yogurt you’re eating every morning,” Ma says, frowning.

Auntie turns to her and narrows her eyes. “So America has you on exercise and low-cholesterol kicks as well?”

Ma laughs and pats her sister’s knee. “Health and exercise are good in any country, Bee. Even here. There are some wonderful things about America—”

“What wonderful? What’s Chandra done marrying this strange man with the—hair. Did you hear his tone of voice and attitude?” Auntie says. We’re all silent, and I think of Nick.

I clear my throat. “I’m sure he’s a good man. You just don’t know him yet.”

The driver is silent, staring ahead as if he doesn’t hear us, as if he’s not here.

“Chandra’s merely finding her way,” my grandmother says, and Auntie purses her lips. “She knows not where she belongs, but she will learn.”

Auntie picks at the fingernail of her index finger. “I’m worried about her parents, poor things, always listening to Chandra. And those clothes—those pants. Where do they come from?”

“Auntie,” I laugh. “Everyone wears clothes like that in America.”

“But we are in India. She is from India. Bangla is her language.”

Bengali is my language too, now rusting and derelict in the storage room of my mind, but Ravi brought out the mellifluous language again for me. Isn’t language the heart of the homeland, the heart of where we belong?

On the way home I’m sweating, but I’m slowly growing accustomed to the heat. The thick, wet air breathes through me now, becoming one with me.

Marry me.

Sam’s atheistical.

No Indian wedding.

Speak in English.

Marry me.

She’s lost her culture, that Chandra.

Do you believe in love at first sight?

What decision should I make? Should I fall into Ravi’s arms and let the sea of my culture, my destiny, close in around me? Tomorrow we’re taking the train north to see Thakurma, my father’s mother. Perhaps the answer lies with her.