The Mango Season (13 page)

I picked up my purse, which was lying next to the shoe rack on the veranda, and leaned over to find the slippers I had thrown from my feet a while ago. I slipped out of the house without telling anyone to look for a telephone booth. I found one a street away from the
goli
soda shop. I dialed Nick’s cell phone number and he picked up the phone almost before the first ring ended.

“Hi,” I said, and I could hear his relief even before he said anything.

“How are you? Where are you?”

“At my grandma’s house,” I said.

“How’re you holding up?” Nick asked.

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound okay.”

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to inject some false joy into my sagging voice. “It’s just the whole . . . the boy they want me to see . . . It’s just tiring.”

“You’re not going to go through that bride-seeing ceremony . . . are you?” Nick asked softly.

I paused for a microsecond before lying confidently. “Of course not.”

“Are you sure? I mean, do you want to? I . . . This is hard, this is very hard. I am . . . Are you having doubts?” he asked, his frustration hitting me squarely on my conscience.

“Doubts about us?” I asked, swallowing hard. “Of course not, Nick. How could you even think that?”

“Well, it makes me wonder. You’re so reluctant to tell them about us. I’m not a serial killer or rapist. I’m a pretty decent catch. . . . Don’t you think? My mother thinks so,” Nick said, laughing a little at the end.

“Oh, you’re better than decent. You’re the best catch this side of the Mississippi,” I said, joining him in trying to lighten the air, letting the doubts slip away.

“I wish I’d come with you. I wish I was there with you now,” he said suddenly in exasperation.

I wished he had, too. It would’ve made everything twice as difficult but at least I wouldn’t have been alone and my parents would never have tried to set me up with some friend’s, friend’s son.

“I want to tell them about you. I
will
tell them about you, today, soon, now,” I said, lying again. I had never lied to Nick before, this was akin to cheating on him but I couldn’t do anything about it. I was caught up in a tornado and I had left Kansas a long time ago.

“I’ll tell them tomorrow,” I lied yet again. I had no intentions of telling them about Nick anymore. I couldn’t. I would just have to kill myself on the way back home to Nick so that no one would be the wiser about my deception.

“Tell them . . . don’t tell them; just don’t stress too much. You’re on vacation, you should enjoy yourself,” he said and I wondered if he knew I was lying.

“I
will
tell them. I love you, Nick,” I said almost desperately.

“And I you.”

“I’ve got to go back now. I’ll call you again. Send me email . . . lots of email. I like to read.”

He said he loved me again before I hung up. A gloom settled upon me. I didn’t have the raw guts to tell my family about Nick. It was not to protect them from pain and hurt, it was to protect myself. I was afraid that if I told them about Nick, they wouldn’t love me anymore. I was afraid that if I didn’t tell them and went back, Nick wouldn’t love me anymore. It was not a fair bargain. I could keep either Nick or my family.

I cried all the way back to
Thatha’s
house, feverishly wiping my tears with both my hands.

Dinner was boisterous as
Thatha
talked about how we could have a double marriage. “What do you say, Priya, you and my Sowmya getting married in the same
mandap
?” he asked, slapping a hand on his thigh.

I scooped out some mango
pappu
from a steel bowl onto my plate and mixed it in with rice.

“
Nnayi?
” Sowmya held up a small steel container with clarified butter and I shook my head. I should never have come to India—I was convinced of that. Now I had more problems than I could solve.

“Priya? ”
Thatha
questioned. “What,
Amma
, you don’t want a double wedding? ”

“Maybe we should just have one wedding in one
mandap,
” Ma said as if it was all a done deal and she didn’t want
Thatha
to get the wrong idea. When her daughter would marry, it would be in her own
mandap
; Sowmya could get her own.

“Let’s not count the chickens before they hatch,” Lata said and for once I was thankful. “Anand, pass me the
rasam
.”

Anand and Neelima were sitting next to each other and they had been quiet ever since dinner began. He looked up at Lata and then at the
rasam
and took a deep breath.

“Lata, did you say Neelima would have a miscarriage when she told you about her pregnancy?” he asked, a small quiver in his voice betraying the straight face he was trying to wear.

Silence fell so soundly that the echo of voices past crashed against the steel glasses standing on wobbly feet on the Formica table. Anand’s fearless voice clamored to rise above his usual calm, comfortable, fearful, and almost silent voice. He was not one for confrontations, that was why he told the family about Neelima after they had married.

“What?” Lata asked, her hand covered with mango
pappu
lying listlessly on her plate.

Anand was silent for a minute. I could see his Adam’s apple bob in and out—his nervousness had tentacles that reached out to everyone in the room.

“Anand, we don’t need a fuss now. Lata didn’t say anything,”
Ammamma
warned, not wanting to witness a fight.

“There is no fuss,” Anand said and stood up as if towering over everyone at the table would make it easier for him.

Nanna
, who was sitting next to me, lifted his eyebrows in query. I shook my head. I knew what Anand was about to say, though I wondered if he had the courage to go through with it.

“Ever since Neelima and I got married, you all have been treating her really badly,” he began.

“Badly?”
Thatha
demanded, his voice thunderous. “What nonsense! You are imagining things.”

“Not nonsense,
Nanna
,” Anand said, his voice for once confident as it measured up against his indomitable father. “Neelima is my wife, she deserves respect. If as a family you all have decided to ill-treat her—”

“No one is ill-treating her, Anand,” Lata interrupted him. “I was simply telling her to be careful. The first trimester is always a delicate one. I don’t know why she misunderstood what I was saying.”

Neelima started crying softly. It was partly the tension in the room and partly because her hormones were raging. “I am sorry,” she whispered.

“No, I am sorry,” Anand said, sitting down to hold her hand. Such display of emotion between couples was not commonplace in our family and again I felt envy raise its head inside me. They loved each other, they were married, they were going to have a child; I was in love with a man who had the wrong skin color and nationality, I was living in sin with him and I had just lied to him.

“I keep sending her here”—Anand looked at
Thatha
when he spoke—“so that you will accept her. You will get to know her, see what a wonderful person she is and love her, treat her like a member of the family. But . . . if you don’t want to do that, she won’t come here. . . . I won’t come here . . . and neither will our child.”

The line had been drawn. Anand had just crossed over and become a man. I couldn’t have been prouder.

Ammamma
was about to say something but stopped when
Thatha
raised his hand.

“I agree, she is a daughter-in-law of this house and as such she deserves respect,”
Thatha
said somberly. “But it will take time before we love her. She will never be our choice for your wife, Anand. What is done is done; I can’t change the past or our past behavior. But from now on we will treat her like a member of the family.”

Ammamma
looked away and Lata made a small clicking sound. My mother pursed her lips and then shrugged.

“Are we clear?”
Thatha
repeated, looking at the women of his house.

“Yes,”
Ammamma
finally said, speaking for everyone.

“Good,”
Thatha
said, and nodded toward Neelima. “Congratulations on the baby. We can’t wait to hold another grandchild in our arms.”

By now Neelima’s tears were racing down her face with the speed of a heavy waterfall. Anand looked at me and mouthed “Thank you.” I nodded, feeling like a total fraud.

TO: PRIYA RAO
FROM: NICHOLAS COLLINS
SUBJECT: PHONE CALL!

IT WAS WONDERFUL TALKING TO YOU.

I KNOW YOU ARE UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE AND I WISH I COULD FIND A WAY TO EASE IT. I DON’T UNDERSTAND THE INTRICACIES OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR FAMILY AND SOMETIMES THAT MAKES IT HARD FOR ME TO UNDERSTAND WHY YOU DO THE THINGS YOU DO.

BUT I DO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW YOUR INTUITION AND YOUR HEART TO KEEP YOUR FAMILY HAPPY BECAUSE THAT’S HOW YOU CAN BE HAPPY. I REALIZE NOW THAT MAYBE THE DETACHMENT YOU FELT FOR THEM WHEN YOU WERE HERE ISN’T EASY TO FEEL WHEN THEY’RE NEXT TO YOU. HERE YOU COULD SEE YOURSELF TELLING THEM ABOUT ME EASILY BECAUSE I WAS WITH YOU, NOW YOU’RE WITH THEM AND YOU FIND THAT IT’S NOT EASY.

I WON’T LIKE IT BUT I’LL UNDERSTAND IF YOU FIND THAT AT THE END OF THE DAY, YOU CAN’T TELL THEM ABOUT ME. I WON’T LIKE IT AT ALL BECAUSE I WANT YOU WHOLE, NOT DIVIDED AS THE DAUGHTER OR GRANDDAUGHTER AND WIFE AND LOVER.

BUT ULTIMATELY, I’LL TAKE YOU ANY WAY I CAN GET YOU.

TAKE CARE.
NICK

I couldn’t sleep.

Sowmya, Anand, Neelima, and I were spread out on the terrace on straw mats,
chappas
. I lay my head on a flat cotton pillow and looked up at the stars. For the past half an hour since Sowmya had fallen asleep, I had been staring at
Saptarishi
and, just my luck, I couldn’t see Arundhati.

Instead, the vultures were circling.

The last time I had slept on this terrace, I had been twenty years old, ready to face the world with the strength of the innocent. I was gearing up to go the United States; I had gotten my F-1 student visa and my bags were packed. I was spending a last weekend at
Ammamma’s
house before heading over across seven seas to the land of opportunities. I had been so eager to leave, so excited that I had never thought that when I came back everything would be different to me and for me. I had never thought about how it would never be the same again, about how the cliché “you can never really go back home” would stand true.

This was not home anymore. Home was in San Francisco with Nick. Home was Whole Foods grocery store and fast food at KFC. Home was Pier 1 and Wal-Mart. Home was 7-Eleven and Star-bucks. Home was familiar, Hyderabad was a stranger; India was as alien, exasperating, and sometimes exotic to me as it would be to a foreigner.

I heard the gate opening and got up to see who it was. A lanky figure with a backpack stepped into the yard and then under the small yellow light that glowed with a flicker under the carport. He looked up and waved. I had never been happier to see Nate.

“I’m starving,” he said, as soon as I came down. “You guys sleeping upstairs?”

“Yes, and there’s plenty of food in the kitchen,” I said. “Let’s go in from the back door.”

“Good idea, last thing I need is Ma waking up and going, ‘oh my son is home,’ ” he said with a grin.

I hugged him tightly then. He was taller than me now, I realized as he stroked my hair.

“Hey,” he said, and pushed me away after a moment, “I’m a man, this hugging thing is for sissies.”

“Ah,” I said and tweaked his nose with my fingers.

Nate left his sneakers outside the back door before coming inside the house. We turned the light on in the kitchen and Nate flopped down onto the floor.

“What’re you doing back?” I asked, as I picked out a plate from the cabinet for him.

“Got bored,” he said, and then shrugged. “I wanted to be here for the bloodshed. Or has the fat lady already sung?”

“What fat lady?” I demanded, and filled a glass with water from the earthen pot next to the stove. “
Pappu
with rice work for you?”

“What kind of
pappu
?”

“Mango?”

“Sure. Sowmya makes this spinach
pappu
that’s painful to swallow,” Nate said. “You think you can heat the rice a little? Fridge-cold rice makes my hair in all the strange places stand up.”

I pulled out some rice and
pappu
for Nate from the fridge. I mixed them both with my fingers and put the mixture in a frying pan to heat.

“This house so needs a microwave,” I said.

“The American-returned daughter brings in some fancy ideas,” Nate said with affected mockery. “So . . . when’re you going to tell them?”

“I’m not,” I said, not looking at him. “They set up a
pelli-chupulu
for me.”

“Rice Sarma’s Venkatesh type.”

“You know?”

“Not really. It isn’t like Ma discloses all to me. But in all fairness, the boy—ah, man—is very handsome, has a good, stable job. Don’t know about the smoking and drinking part, though his mother claims he is a
gudu-baye
,” Nate said.

“A good boy, my ass,” I muttered. “Remember the
gudu
boy from Chicago?”

“Oh, the
Cheee-cah-go baye
, you mean?” Nate imitated Ma. “He was a prize, Priya.”

“He was also screwing another woman.”

“Details, details.”

I put the now warmed rice and
pappu
on a plate and placed it in front of Nate along with a glass of water. I sat in front of him on the floor and drank some water from his glass.

“There is also some HAPPINESS in the fridge,” I told him. “I asked Sowmya to save it from the mango she cut for dinner.”

“And you don’t want to fight over it?” Nate asked suspiciously.