Don't Let Him Know (4 page)

As she came up to the window she suddenly noticed a bag sitting there waiting for the next driver. She glanced back. The car was still parked in front of the menu. The driver seemed to be arguing with his passenger. A child in the back was crying. The packet sat there ready to be picked up. She couldn’t see anyone at the counter. Romola had no idea how it happened but as she reached the counter, her hand just crept out on its own. It didn’t even feel like her own hand – it was as if she suddenly grew an extra arm, a grabbing arm that snuck out from under her sari, a prehensile limb designed to seize orphaned paper packets. Before she knew it she had grabbed the bag. She thought she heard someone go ‘Hey’ but she didn’t even look back. Clutching the paper bag in one hand, her handbag under her arm, she took off down the street.

She had no idea she could move so fast. She had not run like this in years. Not since they were going to Darjeeling for the holidays and were late for the train. Without looking back she just ducked between two stores and ran past dumpsters, her heart heaving, her legs propelled by pure adrenalin. She was sure the car that had ordered the food was going to mow her down, that police cars would pull up, sirens screaming. She pushed a small child out of her way as she ran on. She zig-zagged without paying any attention to where she was going. Finally when she felt her heart was about to burst she stopped. There was a little park in front of her.

The street looked not unlike the one they lived on. The giant rose bush near the gate of one house littered the sidewalk with blushing pink petals. An American flag drooped in the still afternoon. There was a house for sale across the street. She looked at the street sign. Magnolia Drive it said. She had no idea where that was. But she kept moving.

She entered the park. A lady walking her dog looked at her strangely. Though she was not running any more, Romola realized she must be quite a sight. Her grey hair was dishevelled and coming undone. She could feel rivulets of sweat running down her face and back, trickling down her blouse. Her sari was sticking to her as if it was the middle of a Calcutta summer day. She stopped at a bench under a tree to catch her breath. The McDonald’s paper bag still dangled from her hands. She could see the marks of her nails where she had dug into the paper as she ran. A dark greasy stain was spreading along the side like a birthmark.

All she wanted now was a drink of water. But she opened the bag and stared at what was inside. The fries had fallen out of their little packet, now limp and broken-necked. She extracted the burger from its paper wrapping. Squished in her hand, it seemed much smaller and flatter than it looked on television. A smudge of bloody ketchup was oozing from one side and a square of plasticky yellow cheese was coming out the other. The lettuce was falling out as well, protruding from under the bun like a stiff green ruff. She raised the burger to her face and smelled it.

For a while she just sat there quietly inhaling – the scent of burger and fries mixing with the bruised smell of cut grass. Then she closed her eyes and bit into the burger. She felt nausea rising up but she couldn’t tell if it was the beef or all that running. She wondered where she was and how she would ever find her way back home. A bead of ketchup dribbled down from the burger, hovered for a second like a fat red fly and landed thickly on her sari. But for now, Romola realized she did not care.

II

Ring of Spices

When Romola was seven years old her aunt Ila visited from England. She brought her boxes of delicious chocolates filled with strawberries and hazelnuts and pretty dresses trimmed with lace. But what Romola loved best was to carefully open her Ila-pishi’s suitcase and breathe in the fragrance of her clothes and cosmetics.

‘Lavender, lilac, rosemary,’ she would whisper to herself making a daisy-chain of flowers she had never seen.

It was a scorchingly hot summer, even by Calcutta standards. In the afternoons her aunt would draw the blinds and take a nap. Romola would tiptoe into the dark room and carefully open the suitcase. Then she would bury her head in the soft cottons and smooth silks and breathe deeply and surreptitiously. It was like a little corner of England trapped in there. She would feel herself falling through it and leaving the hot parched Calcutta streets and the relentlessly blue Indian skies far behind. It smelled cool and fresh and shaded, so unlike the ripe kitchen smells that clung to her mother’s sari – turmeric and sweat and stale talcum powder.

‘Foxglove, primrose, daffodil.’

Crouched near the suitcase like a little mouse, Romola wished she could pack herself in with the soft nightgowns and synthetic saris. She imagined waking up and finding she was in England.

She was now walking down a little cobbled street past houses like the picture on her tin of biscuits. She was going home to have scones and strawberries and cream. Her house had a pointed tiled roof and a chimney. And ivy on the walls, or was it honeysuckle?

‘Honeysuckle, bluebells, forget-me-not.’

‘Romola!’ her mother’s shrill voice could be heard from downstairs ‘Where is that girl?’

‘Romola, you haven’t finished your rice. Come now or the cat will get it.’

‘Romola, check to see the door is closed.’

‘Romola, have you done your homework?’

Romola decided that when she grew up she would go to England.

Avinash was not quite from England. He was from Illinois. Romola knew of only one city in Illinois – Chicago – but he lived far away from it in some small university town called Carbondale in the southern end of the state where he was just finishing his PhD in Economics or something like that. It all sounded very difficult and dull to Romola. She liked to read Wordsworth and Keats and Jibanananda Das. But everyone said Avinash was a good match for her. He was serious, academic and sober. Romola’s aunt’s in-laws lived next door to Avinash’s family. Romola’s aunt played matchmaker. Avinash’s mother had said she was determined to get her son married this time when he visited from America. They wanted a simple, quick wedding before he had to go back. ‘You can’t do better,’ Romola’s aunt told her mother. ‘They don’t want any dowry and she will go to America. And the family is very cultured. Absolutely top class. His mother is recently widowed and anxious to see him settled.’

‘My son’, said Avinash’s mother to Romola’s over a cup of tea, ‘has always been the top boy in his class. “A model student” his principal called him. Never one to wander the streets like these other roadside Romeos. That was why I never had the slightest fear sending him to America. You know, Mrs Dutt, it’s all about upbringing and family. If you bring him up right, then why should you be worried,
na
?’

Romola’s mother nodded. She was having a hard time getting a word in edgeways but the boy looked good on paper. She glanced at Romola who was sitting demurely in a pale pink sari (‘something that will bring out the colour in your cheeks without being too flashy,’ her mother had said). Romola’s face betrayed nothing.

‘Everyone told me,’ continued Avinash’s mother, ‘see, one day he’ll call and announce he wants to marry some American girl. But I said, “I trust my Avi. He would not break his mother’s heart.” Arrey, he is my only son. He knows his duty. But I had faith and look at him now. Do you know he has had papers published in important journals? Why, my friend Sulata said to me, “Mark my words if your Avi does not get the Nobel Prize one day.”’

In the pause that ensued as all assembled digested this piece of information, Romola’s mother jumped in. ‘So how long before he finishes that PhD?’

‘Very soon,’ said his mother defensively, ‘I’ve been telling him for so long now – get married, get married. But he said, “First I must finish my master’s.” Then it was, “Oh I must complete my PhD and get a job, Ma. How will I have a family on a student’s income?” So responsible, na? But then after his father passed away so suddenly, a massive heart attack, I said, “Enough Avi. Now I have to see you settle down with a good girl. Then only can I shut my eyes in peace.” He said, “But I am not done with my studies yet,” and I said “Bas
.
I will not listen any more to your excuses.”

‘Beautiful girls grow on trees for boys in America,’ she continued, glancing at Romola who looked back at her expressionlessly. ‘But good family and education are what we really value. Avi’s father was a renowned professor, you know – he wrote three books. And I hear your Romola has an MA in English Literature.’

Romola smiled and inclined her head.

After Avinash’s mother left, Romola said, ‘I have to go lie down with an eau-de-cologne handkerchief on my forehead. That woman gave me a splitting headache with her non-stop bokbok.’

‘Oh, but mothers are like that about only sons,’ said her mother. ‘Anyway, you are lucky. You won’t even have to live with her. You’ll just go to America with Avinash.’

By the standards of the time Avinash and Romola had a bit of a courtship. Avinash took Romola out for dinner once. He was a slight man with thinning hair and owlish glasses. He smelt faintly of some lemony aftershave. They did not have much in common. She knew nothing about economics; he had long forgotten his Wordsworth. They concentrated instead on the food and discussed the merits of the tandoori chicken. When they exhausted that topic, they ate in silence listening to the ebb and flow of conversation at the tables around them.

‘What was he like?’ asked her mother.

‘All right, I suppose,’ she answered.

At the time the only man, outside of cousins, she’d ever been out with was a young man she’d met through her friend Leela. He was a handsome man with a nose as straight as a knife-edge and thick waves of black hair. When she walked into a restaurant with him she noticed young women at nearby tables look at him out of the corners of their eyes. She had enjoyed that. But he wanted to be an actor and Romola knew that wasn’t going anywhere. Her mother had tolerated him as a friend but she would never allow an actor as a son-in-law. Though she had not found much in common with Avinash she had not found anything objectionable either. At least he did not wear those loud colourful shirts with big flowers that she had seen American tourists wear.

Only once she said, almost wistfully, ‘You know I really wanted to go to England.’

Her uncle laughed and said, ‘Romola, Wordsworth’s England is long dead. In your grandfather’s time people would go to England, for then England still had power and glory. Now it is truly becoming a nation of shopkeepers. And most of the shopkeepers are Indian anyway. You are lucky, you are going to the richest country in the world.’

‘And such a brilliant husband,’ added her mother.

‘And so courteous and well-mannered,’ chipped in her aunt. ‘I hope my daughter is as lucky as you.’

Romola shrugged and said nothing. She was not sure if flowers like lavender and primrose grew in America. Perhaps, she thought, she’d have a small garden there and she could grow them.

At the wedding she glanced at Avinash as they went around the fire seven times. His gaze seemed far away, his brow furrowed in thought. She wondered what he was thinking. Was he imagining his life in America and worrying how she would fit in there? She realized they had talked about his interests and her interests but nothing about their lives together. She didn’t know what kind of house he lived in. Did he even want to get married? What had he told his mother when he had come back from dinner? That she was ‘all right’ as well?

With the white topor on his head like an ornate dunce cap, little dots of sandalwood paste on his forehead, she thought he looked slightly ridiculous. She could see beads of sweat sparkling on his brow. She debated offering him the neatly folded handkerchief she had tucked into the fold of her red-and-gold sari, just in case her own make-up started to run. But in the end she did nothing at all, quietly walking around the fire, her eyes smarting from the crackling smoke, the priest’s chants buzzing around her. When she lifted her head to allow him to put the garland around her neck, her aunts squealed with excitement.

This is supposed to be the most important moment in my life, thought Romola smelling the flowers, trying to imprint the scene in her memory. The smell of wet rajanigandha stayed with her all night, a sickly smudge of perfume still clinging to her long after they had removed the heavy garlands from around their necks.

‘Now put that garland around your husband’s neck,’ said the priest in her ear. As Romola reached up, Avinash looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. He smiled slightly but the tinge of that smile dried up before it reached his eyes. He looks lost, thought Romola, suddenly feeling tender, an anxious, lost boy.

Later that night Romola saw herself reflected in a mirror on the bedroom wall and stopped, startled. She was married. The parting in her hair was filled with red sindoor, which Avinash (‘my husband’) had poured into her hair with unsteady hands. Specks of the red powder had landed on her nose and cheeks, dusting them, soft as pollen. Their bed was decorated with a curtain of white rajanigandha and velvety red roses. She pushed the strands aside to sit down, still in the heavy wedding sari. There were rose petals scattered on the new white sheets – like specks of blood. ‘You must be tired,’ said Avinash without really looking at her. ‘Tonight let’s just sleep.’ Romola was a little relieved. She was tired and nervousness knotted her stomach. As she lay down she worried about how she would be able to sleep listening to him breathing beside her. Did he snore? she fretted right before she fell asleep.