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Authors: Margo Candela

BOOK: Underneath It All
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21
Bina
T
here is nothing in the world that can get me out of my bed. Not a raise, not a slightly used Prada bag, not Mr. Mayor begging me to quit my job and become the new Mrs. Mayor. Nothing. Not even my mother’s plaintive voice from my answering machine. Nope. Nothing.
Nada
.
I open one eye and check to see if I have any messages on my cell or answering machine. No message, not even a hang-up call from Mrs. Mayor. She usually has at least one last-minute crisis for me to take care of before a trip, appointment or engagement. Maybe I should call her to make sure everything is OK? No, that would be a sign that something is really lacking in my life. Like a life.
I could call my mom but the chance of getting another earful of Yolie is enough to make me roll over and close my eyes again.
At 8:15
AM
I give up on sleeping. I know it’s too early to call Bina, who works the late shift at the hospital on Friday nights. I should let her sleep. I bet that Sanjay Gupta isn’t as considerate. I bet he calls her first thing in the morning and asks her to drop off his dry cleaning on her way to work where she saves lives.
I could clean up my flat, read a good book, give myself a pedicure or do something equally useful. Or I could call my mom. I opt for TV.
I grab a glass of orange juice and a box of granola and settle on my couch for some serious ingesting of mass culture. Of course, since I don’t have cable at home my choices are limited to cartoons and shopping channels.
After a few hours of watching cartoons and commercials, I now know why kids are ultraviolent and/or shallow and materialistic. The stuff they put on TV is just garbage. And it’s nothing short of disgusting how many calories a fistful of granola has.
It’s almost noon so I pick up the phone to call Bina. It rings ten times before she picks up.
“Hello?” Bina sounds sleepy.
“Are you still asleep? It’s almost noon.”
“It’s ... it’s 10:30! Jacqs, you wretched, wretched girl!” Bina covers the phone with her hand and I can hear muffled talking.
“Hey! Hey, who are you talking to?” I press my ear tighter to the phone.
“It’s Sanjay, you dope.”
“Oh. My. God. What is he doing in your bedroom? I thought you told me it was Indian custom to wait until you got married to let him have a bit of your curry and you were going to do it all by the book. Which book is that, huh, Bina? The
Kama Sutra?
”
I had slept with other guys before Nate and I’m sure my parents knew, but they were shocked when I fessed up that Nate and I were living together. My mother even gave me the cow-and-the-
gratis-
milk speech. Ugh, like that’s what I really needed to hear. I told her Nate was lactose intolerant and she hit me over the head with a dishrag.
“What would your parents say? Hmmm, Bina?” I continue, knowing she’ll have no good answer to that one. It’s not that I’m surprised Bina is sleeping with the man she says she’s going to marry, if anything, if she wasn’t sleeping with him I’d think she was crazy. But why does it have to be him? “After all the trouble you went through to convince them to let you live on your own and now you do this? Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“Yes, well, I’m American, too, you know.”
Bina sounds more awake now. Good. That means we’ll make the first show and have plenty of time to talk and shop before she has to run back to that Sanjay.
“American when it comes to premarital sex? Indian when it comes to letting your parents arrange your marriage? Isn’t that convenient?” I turn on the water in my shower. I hear Bina flush the toilet.
“I have the best of both worlds. Give me half an hour. Kiss, kiss.”
“Yeah, kiss, kiss to you, too, you hypocrite slut.” I toss the phone on a pile of towels and I step into the shower.
 
“So? Tell me the latest.” Bina’s ass hasn’t even touched the passenger seat before she asks. She knows my weakness is gossip. At least, it’s one of my weaknesses and one I’m all too happy to share with her.
“Oh, not much.” I sniff. I need to punish her for letting Sanjay in her bed. She could have least warned me.
“Oh, this has to be good.” Bina rubs her hands together.
“You are so evil, Bina. OK, but you have to swear not to tell anyone. Not even Sanjay. Especially not Sanjay.”
Bina crosses her heart. I know she won’t tell anyone but it makes me feel better to make her promise. And it makes me feel even better to know that I have a bond with Bina that Sanjay will never have.
“First, it looks like he’s going to run for governor.” I wait for Bina’s response. She likes people gossip but not political gossip. I can’t get enough of either. Other people look forward to the Oscars or the Olympics, I live for election nights, even when it’s obvious who’s going to win and what is and isn’t going to pass. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Pfft.
It’s so obvious that man has a fifteen-year plan. First become mayor, then governor, then run for president. He’s very American.” All of a sudden Bina has been pointing out how very American things are that don’t meet with her approval.
“Don’t call him that. He’s brilliant. And supercute. What’s wrong with having a plan? I have a plan.”
“You do?” She looks at me doubtfully.
“Shut up. I do. I’m in the process of sort of reworking it.”
“Don’t make any plans for the third week of April. You are coming to India. My parents and Sanjay’s parents insist we have a ceremony in India.”
“You are so kidding? India? Your parents haven’t been to India in ages. And you haven’t been back since you moved here, like, what, twenty years ago? From
England,
for Christ’s sake!”
“Yes, but it’s very important to share this with our relatives and continue our traditions.”
“I thought most of your relatives live in Union City?” I feel snarky, but I know Bina can handle it. Maybe I’m jealous because she’s had sex in the last twelve hours and I’ve only thought about it in the last twelve months.
“Don’t get cheeky with me, Jacqs. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you are keeping the best gossip from me.”
“You have a one-track mind. OK. Promise—” I say, dragging it out deliciously.
“I promise! Tell me,” Bina snaps.
“Mrs. Mayor thinks Mr. Mayor is having an affair.”
Bina gasps, actually gasps. One thing I know she has always taken seriously is marital fidelity. That’s why I can’t share my George stories with her even though technically we haven’t
done
anything. But I’ve entertained the thought and that’s close enough. Plus, now there is the matter of the one-sided gift-giving. A bouquet of flowers? Even she and my mom would let me get away with that. They might even think it’s sweet, if I neglected to mention his marital status and why, after seeing him for almost two months, I’ve never mentioned him. But an expensive purse from a man who I wasn’t either in the process of marrying or married to? I may as well sew a scarlet letter
S
for slut over my left boob.
“No!” She clutches my arm. Bina, despite her numerous ex-boyfriends, is very into monogamy. She always made sure to dump one before she moved on to another.
“Yes. And she called me her
friend
after she told me.” Why does that creep me out so much? A year ago if someone would have told me I’d be
friends
with the idolized soap star of my teen years I would have wet my pants with glee. Now all I want to do is scrub the memory from my brain.
“What are you going to do, Jacqs?” Bina sounds genuinely concerned. Before, most of my Mrs. Mayor gossip had to do with plastic surgery, double-sided tape and hair-removal stories. Nothing malicious but it was trippy having access to the most intimate moments of a celebrity’s life, although I never imagined they’d be this intimate.
“Me? Nothing. At least, that was my plan. What should I do? Spy on Mr. Mayor for her? Confront him? I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
“Do you think he’s cheating on her?”
Bina checks her phone for messages. I pretend not to notice.
“Who knows?” Vivian would know, that’s who, but after my last attempt to broach the subject, I don’t think I want to know what she may know. “I mean, yeah, they fight and are icy toward each other, but, you know, I thought that’s the way it was with all rich-and-powerful couples.”
“I don’t envy them. What good is money and power when you can’t be happy with the person you are married to? That is so very Western.”
“Puhleez, Bina. Are you saying the only good marriage is an arranged marriage? How about all those stories on the news about women seeking political asylum to escape an arranged marriage? Or killing themselves because they can’t get out of marrying some village creep?”
“Yes, but that’s beside the point. So are you coming to India or not? And let me stress that
not
is not an option.”
“India? I don’t know how Mrs. Mayor will take that. Remember, Myra abandoned her to wander around India. She still mentions it when she’s unhappy with something I’ve done or not done. And if my mom finds out I’m going to India for any sort of religious reason she’ll get on my case for not making an effort to drop in on the pope at the Vatican.”
“That woman is manipulative,” Bina says as she expertly lines her eyes with the extradark liner she buys at the drugstore.
“Which? My mother or my boss?” I ask, even though I know the answer.
“Both. No offense to your mother.” Bina was also raised to revere her elders but it’s never stopped her from talking smack about them.
“Yeah, but don’t you think we all are? To a point, of course.” I know I am. There is nothing wrong with conscientious manipulation. Done correctly it is both an art and a virtue.
“A mother can’t help making you feel guilty. They do it because they love us. Women have different ways of getting things done, but that doesn’t make it OK ...” she says self-righteously. “Mrs. Mayor is outright manipulative. A very unattractive trait in a woman.”
“Oh, really?” I give Bina a look and gesture toward the impressive engagement ring on her finger.
“In
some
cases it is essential to finesse a man’s opinion,” Bina concedes.
The first ring Sanjay presented her with was pitiful, but a Gupta family heirloom. It took some fancy and covert emotional footwork but Sanjay soon realized that his modern bride needed a 2-carat pear-shaped diamond with baguettes flanking either side. The heirloom is now relegated to Bina’s right hand, where it will make appearances only at occasions where Sanjay’s family will be around.
“She’s a pro, that’s for sure. She and the Mayor had a fight last night, not a yelling-and-throwing-the-family-crystal kind, but it was pretty tense. By the end of the night she let me know to pack for Carmel
and
Santa Barbara.”
Mr. Mayor is attending to some family business in Carmel and then on to some politico conference in Santa Barbara. He made it clear that it was not a pleasure trip and, as a (very bad) example, he pointed out that Vivian was going with him. All work and no play, he swore. Now Mrs. Mayor is going along to make sure that’s just what happens.
“You mean, he’s taking her?” Bina nods her head. “OK, she’s manipulative, but she does get what she wants.”
“Isn’t that the whole point? And I get to go, even if I do have to go as her assistant.”
“This is exactly why you need to come to India, so you can anchor yourself. You are morally adrift and your soul is hungry for nourishment. Oh, there’s a sale at Club Monaco, let’s stop by after the movie.”
“I like your version of spirituality, Bina. It’s so ... so very Western.”
22
George
B
y the time I’m done primping for a date with George, I feel like a present that begs to be unwrapped, which is stupid because even though I think about being naked with George, a lot, I know I could never go through with it. Plus, George has never hinted that he wants to have sex with me or watch me have sex with someone else, which I wouldn’t put past any man.
During our first few lunches at Globe I was on the edge of my seat, waiting for him to suggest we get a room. I had planned on smiling gently but firmly stating that I didn’t like him that way and I understood if he didn’t want to get together anymore. But it never happened. I finally worked up my courage and asked him why the hell he hadn’t tried to get into my pants. By this point I was sort of offended. Who wouldn’t be?
“Jacquelyn, we have such a great time together, why complicate it? And, you know, I’m still technically married. I couldn’t see myself cheating with someone I like so much. You have to have a bite of my dessert ... Delicious? I knew you’d like it.”
Knowing that George likes me so much that he doesn’t want to ruin our relationship by having sex makes me feel better and a little less guilty about the whole thing. Aside from the fact that George is married, a couple of decades my senior and not sexually or emotionally available, I think we have an ideal relationship.
What everyone else thinks about it is immaterial. But just to make sure this never materializes is why no one knows about George.
After my divorce I did try to date men in my mating range, but I would eventually realize they were stand-ins for Nate. It wasn’t at all fair to them and didn’t make much sense to me. If I had gone through all the trouble to get rid of Nate why would I get involved with someone who was a poor copy of him?
I never bothered mentioning any of them to my mom. I didn’t want to get her hopes up that I had finally maybe found
he
of the elusive qualities and culturally correct background. After a while, I just stopped dating or even hoping that there was a guy out there for me. It was too much work, and even I was confused about my expectations. Did I just want to have fun, or was I looking for a husband so I’d make my parents happy?
Not even Dr. N has helped me figure that one out. Not that I’ve shared this dilemma with her, or anyone else. There are some things that are even too personal to share with my doctor, who thinks I’m cured, my mother, who’d marry me off to the Devil if he proposed, and even Bina, especially since she’s crossed over to the bride side.
This is why the George thing is perfect. He is so unlike Nate or any of the other men I’ve been involved with.
And if I skip a wax now and then, I don’t have to worry because I’m sure George won’t see me in or out of my panties and, if he did, he came of age (the eighties, seventies?) when women sported full bushes.

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