Last week, at the end of her yoga class on North Eleventh Street, the slim Caucasian instructor ended the hour by sprinkling water on all the students and saying “It’s holy water, the way they do in Hinduism.” Tina opened her eyes—she wasn’t supposed to, they were supposed to be in relaxation mode. The teacher caught her eye and smiled and nodded slowly. Tina was used to this in yoga class and she sagely nodded at the instructor and offered her a gentle smile, letting the instructor bask in her Indianness. Then Tina did the same with all the other students who bowed to one another after class, their hands pressed together in namastes. She was certain that the other students lingered during their namaste with her and she felt like a fraud—because not only did she barely speak Hindi, she struggled to even touch her toes—but still she went around nodding slowly at everyone as if she were Buddha himself.
A few months ago, after too many happy hour cocktails with Marianne, Tom, and her ex-boyfriend Andrew at the Pony Bar on the Upper East Side, Tina, surprising herself the most, suggested dinner at Saravana Bhavan.
“I could definitely go for a tomato-onion uttapam,” Tom said, pronouncing it with a hard t. Tina saw Marianne smile at him and touch his elbow. Tom buried his face into his brown cable-knit scarf and put his hands into his blazer pockets.
“As long as it’s not too spicy,” Andrew had said. “I don’t want to have to run to the bathroom.”
Tina felt her ears get hot with embarrassment—about Andrew and his inability to eat spicy food, but more, worse, about being Indian and having food that was associated with urgent trips to the bathroom. Marianne had grown up eating meat loaf, and her family had all-American traditions like breakfast for dinner every Sunday. Tina had tried suggesting that to her mother when she was home for winter break her sophomore year and her mother had said, “You’re too old to be so cutesy, darling. We’re having keema khichdi tonight. Now, open up the windows, I don’t want the onion to make things smell. And take all the jackets from the downstairs cupboard and put them on the guest bed. The smell of food just lingers and lingers and I won’t have us walking all over town smelling like the kitchen of that horrid Indian buffet restaurant.”
* * *
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“WHEN WAS THE LAST time we went on a trip, just us?” Marianne asked, flipping through the same Time magazine, now without a cover. “Was it senior year to Cancun?”
“Unless you count that depressing New Year’s Eve we spent in Atlantic City,” Tina said.
“We are definitely not counting that,” Marianne said. “That was when I nearly burned down our rental trying to make dumplings. Remember?”
“I do remember. And then we ended up having bologna on white bread for our New Year’s Eve dinner.”
“And New Year’s morning breakfast,” Marianne said. “What a disaster. I’m glad we’re doing this trip just us.”
“I’m so grateful,” Tina said. “Forget my mother and her boyfriend, I have you here and this is going to be fun.”
Marianne was watching Tina’s mother and David.
“I can see why you find him sexy,” Marianne said.
“I should never have told you that,” Tina said.
“It’s the dad-bod thing. I get it,” Marianne said.
“Maybe I should call him ‘Daddy.’ ” Tina said. She laughed. “Daddy David Smith.”
“You could be his hot young trophy wife. If you had kids, people in Williamsburg would mistake you for the nanny.”
“No, that’s taking it too far!” Tina said laughing, throwing a pistachio at Marianne. “I’d have to speak in really clear English to show I wasn’t the nanny.”
“And you would have to wear expensive workout clothes and always carry Starbucks.”
“And then all the other Lululemon mothers would feel guilty that they had assumed I was the nanny.”
“And they would all say, ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being the nanny. My nanny saves my life,’ ” Marianne added.
“Like that mother who burst in to get the kids out of the interview with the BBC dad.”
“Yes!” Marianne said. “The one everyone assumed was the nanny because she was Asian.”
“I made the same assumption,” Tina admitted. “But then I read that she was the mother before Andrew, and when he said that he thought she was the nanny, I used that to start a fight with him and call him racist.”
“It’s a wonder you two lasted as long as you did,” Marianne said.
“Daddy David Smith,” Tina sighed.
Marianne looked over at them again. Radha and David both had reading glasses on and newspapers in their hands but it was clear that they weren’t actually reading. Seeing them made Marianne wonder if she should have put more pressure on Tom to come to Delhi with her. She had asked once in passing but followed it up by saying Tina didn’t think she was bringing Andrew. Then Tina and Andrew had broken up, putting the question to rest.
A few weeks ago, she’d shown him the glittery glass bangles she had bought in Jackson Heights for the wedding.
“You’re going to look so beautiful,” Tom had said. “You should have this trip with Tina. I’m sure she’ll appreciate that. But you will be on my mind constantly.”
She had rubbed her fingers together and said, “Damn it. Now there’s glitter everywhere.”
Tom had gone to the kitchen and brought back a wet paper towel and handed it to Marianne and said, “This will help with the glitter. Let’s go out for dinner tonight. We haven’t wasted money for fun in a long time.”
A little over twelve months ago, Marianne was sitting on the 6 train on the way to see her gynecologist on the Upper East Side and she was reading the previous week’s issue of the New Yorker. She looked up to see what stop they were passing when she saw a handsome black man right across from her reading the same issue. He looked up then too, perhaps sensing her gaze, and she lifted her magazine to him and smiled.
“I’m also always at least an issue behind,” the man who turned out to be Tom said. He had an earnest face, a little nerdy with his glasses and collared shirt and tidy slacks.
“I panic every single Tuesday when it arrives,” Marianne said.
At Grand Central the train emptied out and Tom crossed over to Marianne’s side of the train and said, “Have you ever submitted to the caption contest?”
“I have! Several times,” Marianne said. “Never made it.”
“I made it to the final three once,” Tom said.