The Abundance: A Novel (7 page)

In those first seconds, as I understood that this was it, this was
her
, I eyed her cruelly, coldly, as I never would afterward. She was shorter than Ronak and her legs were thick at the thighs. This was not the athletic, high-cheekboned white woman I had always worried about. Amber’s cheeks were as round, and her body as plump, as any Gujarati girl’s. I thought,
If this is what he wanted, I could have found it for him
. It was twenty degrees outside. Amber’s cheeks and ears had turned red. Brownish-blondish hair under her hat, a purple scarf. I did not sense wealth or finance or Manhattan from her clothes and boots. Her skin was the white that burned before it tanned. I thought,
Mixed with that skin, his children will look completely American
. I could not see her figure under her puffy jacket, but she seemed full at the bosom; the scarf gave her the appearance of a small bird puffed against the cold. I wondered:
Does he know what childbearing will do to a figure like hers?
And:
Americans age worse than we do—is she at least a few years younger than him?
Shamefully petty, snobbish thoughts, but I thought them.
She isn’t, compared to other white women, what Ronak is compared to other Indian men.

When he led her inside, I could judge her figure better, though blurred by a snowflake-printed sweater. I said distractedly, as Ronak took her coat, “That is a lovely scarf.” I paused and formed the next word. “Amber.”

“Why thank you, ma’am,” she said, lighting up. Briefly I thought she said
mom
, but it was too early for this; she had said
ma’am
. Her green eyes met mine directly, and I looked away. “My grandmother will just love to hear that. We get one from her every Christmas. In fact she’ll probably knit you one for next time we visit.”

I looked from her to Ronak and back, and I could not connect them. This girl with a local, almost a country accent, speaking of her grandmother; Ronak, distant, money-minded, this his second time home all year. Out of her coat and hat now (was that my Ronak putting her coat on a hanger?), in the gold glow of our chandelier, animatedly speaking, her hair free over her shoulders, Amber was transformed. Her liveliness changed my perception of her. Everything that seemed plain in isolation or awkward when motionless now appeared as beauty. She exercised a calm command over Ronak that did not seem like domination. Abhi glanced at me incredulously when Ronak pulled out her chair at the dinner table. How had she made him a gentleman? We could not have imagined that Ronak was capable of monitoring another person’s comfort.

“I did not know,” I apologized, not specifying what it was that I hadn’t known—that Ronak was bringing an American guest to dinner. (He had intended to spring the visit as a surprise so that he wouldn’t have to deal with us “throwing a fit,” he told us later.) “I fear I made only Indian food.”

Ronak said, “It’s no problem, Mom. She loves Indian food.”

“Even more than Roan does. Roan’s always wanting Italian or Mexican, and I’m always the one pushing for Tandoor Oven.”

“You mean the Tandoor Oven here in town?” I asked.

She nodded. “I like the aloo gobi there. That’s what I like, right, Roan? The aloo gobi?”

“That’s right. She also likes onion naan.”

Abhi and I knew the owners. Mr. Mishra or his wife or both were at the restaurant every night. Sharmila handled the seating. I flushed. She had known. Sharmila Mishra had known about them. Who else had known?

“Roan tells me you’re a great cook. I’ve been looking forward to this. Good Lord, look at all these dishes. This must have taken you days!”

“You haven’t seen Mom cook,” said Ronak with what I was surprised to hear was pride. “She’s so fast, she could run a restaurant. How long did this take you, Mom?”

“Not too long, an hour and a half or so,” I murmured. I pointed at the eggplant bhartha. “This may be a little spicy for you, Amber.”

She threw her head back as she laughed and touched Ronak’s arm. “Don’t worry about me, I can handle spicy. Your son’s the one always asking for more water at Thai restaurants.”

Ronak nodded. “She’s amazing like that. She and Dad should have a contest.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Abhi, who hadn’t said much until then, watching the three of us. “Help yourself, Amber.”

She said she was dieting, but Amber ate with great pleasure, and it was a delight for me, seeing such obvious relish in my food by someone other than Abhi. Mala usually took thimble-sized portions; Ronak ate without recognizing what he put in his mouth; Indian guests gave formulaic praise. Amber actually inquired about what I had put into each dish. Had Ronak told her how to ingratiate herself with me, or was she naturally friendly? She accepted seconds when I pressed them on her. She ate the bhartha without resorting to her glass of ice water.

Abhi began putting the questions I wanted to ask but didn’t. How, when, where had they met? How long had they known each other? The answers saddened me. They had met in biology class. Biology? But wasn’t that … eighth grade? It was. Ronak and Amber had been paired for an owl pellet dissection. They had been going out for that long? Oh no, of course not. They didn’t go out until tenth grade. I had imagined girlfriends, but he had been faithful to this one girl all along. He had loved her and never told us. And college in Pennsylvania? And the job in New York? “On and off, you know,” murmured Ronak. “But mostly on.”

“And you didn’t feel you could tell us? All these years?”

Ronak said nothing.

“We made the decision together,” said Amber lightly. “We waited till it was the right time. No point rushing things, right?”

Abhi nodded and looked at his plate. I thought I could read guilt in the way he pushed his dahl about in the bowl, using the back of his spoon. I know I felt it. Guilt, but also embarrassment at not knowing this immense fact about our son.

Growing up in India, we hadn’t had this kind of love to conceal from our parents. Ronak’s or Mala’s children, a decade and a half from now, would never have to conceal their boyfriends or girlfriends. But during the in-between years, during the shift from Indian to American, love, for our children, was both treasure and transgression, a joy they could not bring home. Ronak had been caring and dutiful—but in secret.

No wonder he seemed remote to his parents. He had sent an effigy to live with us. His feeling self had escaped to her.

*   *   *

Without being asked, solely because she had noticed, Amber refilled Ronak’s water. She did it the way I would have done it, tilting the pitcher slowly so the ice cubes caught at the fluted lip. He held the glass steady while she poured, his whole hand around it. I had poured for him hundreds of times, and he had never held the glass.

I foresaw, in that moment, the mother she would be someday. I saw the dark blue minivan with cheddar cheese Goldfish crushed into the mats. The sinkside rack where she would dry the sippy cups she had handwashed in hot water. The cart at Walmart with her toddler’s creased thighs sticking through the upper basket, two cubes of Huggies stowed below. The toddler would be fair-skinned and have light brown hair: no trace of us. And then, beyond that, my teenage grandchildren unplaceably handsome, unplaceably beautiful. Maybe once, for some relative’s wedding reception, a granddaughter would be brought to me so I could dress her in Indian clothes. And she—what would they name her? something easy and dual-purpose, Maya, Nina, Sheela—she would look the way attractive white women look wearing Indian clothes, sharp-featured, strangely hard underneath, like those too-tall, too-slender mannequins at saree stores.

Within two years (he had introduced the girlfriend so he could make her his fiancée), Ronak and Amber had their wedding, or more accurately, weddings: the morning at their small church on a downtown street corner, close to boxy houses and a taqueria. I had never been inside one of these churches before, not in America. It looked exactly like the ones Abhi and I had seen on vacation in Switzerland and Austria; the builders had reproduced the darkness, the stained-glass windows, the organ pipes up front. I had thought such artistic churches existed only in Europe, but we had one just down the highway, with old Dodges and Fords in the parking lot behind it. We walked down the aisle to our places in the pew, as we had been instructed. Everyone twisted in their seats to look at us. The whole wedding took place in a funereal hush; no one behind us talked.

That afternoon, we changed our clothes and had the Hindu ceremony in a Hyatt ballroom where a mandap and wooden thrones had been set up. Red silks, marigolds in a stainless steel thali, Christmas lights spiraling up the columns, the pandit’s half-mumbled Sanskrit like the droning of an engine; and the audience free to turn and shake hands with an old friend, to follow a bolting two-year-old into the lobby, to chat.

I had made a trip to India with Amber’s measurements written on a chit of paper. I chose the darkest red that was not yet maroon and, for the reception, the darkest blue that was not yet purple. In Ahmedabad, I went to fetch my mother-in-law’s old jewelry sets from a State Bank of India safe, for which Abhi had vouchsafed me the key. He had kept the key inside a deposit envelope, a length of coarse twine for the key chain. I was very careful with that key and tucked it in with my passport. During the journey, I checked on it every time I checked on my passport. The key, especially with that twine, promised me access to the past, to our deceased mothers. It was time to hand those sets over to my daughter-in-law, just as Abhi’s mother had given them to me.

Brittle, faded velvet cases; their hinges resisted at first, and then, recognizing me, gave way all at once. Inside, the sets were as fragrant as old books. The gold was a deep yellow, and the work was in a busy older style, thick loops of chain and tiny dangling bell-beads. I tried to imagine the necklace resting on Amber. It would be only for a moment, the pose, the smile, the press of a button. I would not expect or even want her to wear this weight to the ceremony. After the photograph, this set would be hers to store away. Would she think it was gaudy, overdone? Even if she disliked it, she would never say so. Or maybe she would be indifferent. She would have no way to distinguish it from the bangles on her wrists or the bodice I laced up her back. No, Amber would take her cue from me; if I told her what the jewelry was, if I spoke of its history first, she would say it was “beautiful.” She would offer praise without comprehension, praise for my sake.

I returned the jewelry to the safe and buried the key in my purse. Outside the bank, though, I saw a billboard with a giant watch on it, and I changed my mind. I took off my watch, put it in my purse, and went back inside the bank. I told the clerk I had forgotten my watch inside the safe, where I had left it while trying on some old bracelets. Tick, tick: the future is stronger than the past. Would things have been any different if Ronak had married an Indian girl? Raised here, raised there—girls were different now. Abhi and I came from an India that did not exist anymore. We had sold my own father’s house in Jamnagar to make room for a multiplex. I put my watch back on, and I brought the sets to America.

*   *   *

The afternoon of the wedding, when Mala and I helped her get ready, I told Amber about the necklace and bracelets. She said they were “beautiful, just beautiful,” as I knew she would. Mala had a digital camera, and I looked over her shoulder at each new image of Amber wearing the set. When I went around to take the necklace off, her hand rose protectively to the heavy gold resting on her chest. “What are you doing, Mom?”

“I’m taking it off, of course. You wouldn’t want to wear this to the ceremony.”

“Why not? Didn’t you say it belonged to Roan’s grandmother?”

“I did.”

“Am I allowed to wear it?”

I looked at Mala.

“You can wear it, if you want to,” said Mala. “It’s not really the style anymore, Amber.”

“Neither were the earrings I wore in church this morning. Those were my great-grandmother’s opals. She wore them at her own wedding back in Germany.”

Mala frowned. “It looks uncomfortable.”

“It’s not uncomfortable.”

“You’re sure you want to wear that for two hours?”

“If I’m allowed to wear it, I want to wear it,” Amber said. She pressed both hands to the necklace, last night’s mehndi dark on her skin, a brown that glowed orange. The bracelets slid noisily down her arms. “This can be my something old.”

I like to take refuge with Sachin and Shivani. The enclave of the chaise longue feels like a clearing. Father and daughter. Both, I feel, harmless, without darkness or cruelty, even of the domestic kind. If Mala could see this quality in Sachin, as I do, maybe she might love him for that. But harmlessness wasn’t something women of her generation could love in a man.

A girl with her saree pulled low over her forehead, though, surrounded by relatives, being shown a potential husband over tea—such a girl might feel attracted to harmlessness. She would see whether her suitor looked capable of cruelty. What to watch for, in an interview that short? A certain thinness of the upper lip. Thick forearms, thick fingers. A rough way of setting the teacup back on the saucer.

My own yes to Abhi had been based, in part, on his slender fingers and receding hairline. Such a man, I had thought, will let me visit my mother and father. A similar conviction—he will be kind—had made me want Sachin for Mala.

I sit at the foot of the chaise, and Sachin moves his feet in their droopy white socks to the side. Shivani isn’t saying the animals by name yet, but she does point to orca, dolphin, walrus, and penguin as Sachin names them. He looks at me, raises his eyebrows, and points at the book to ask if I want to take over, but I shake my head and let them continue. I like the sight of them together. A turn of the long, glossy cardboard panel: tiger, gorilla, rhinoceros, elephant.

I begin pretending I am not there. I witness this scene as a ghost, unable to alter it. My presence does not change their awareness. I don’t even dimple the chaise cushion. This doesn’t sadden me. It is a pleasing fantasy, the kind some people have of fame or heaven.