The living room led to a short hallway that lay in darkness, beyond which were the two bedrooms. Tara walked back to the living room and flopped on the sofa. She had stressed about traveling alone for so long, and she was glad the journey was over. And yet . . . She took her light jacket off and dropped it on the sofa beside her. It felt good to get all that weight off her.
“There’s a coat closet to hang coats. Do you mind hanging your jacket?” He pointed toward a white door near the entrance to the apartment.
“Yes, of course.” She pulled herself up, feeling her cheeks burn.
The closet was neatly lined with his coats. It smelled mildly of leather, of the unfamiliar. She found a spare hanger for her jacket.
They ate in the living room, the rustle of the wrappers filling the silence. He had occupied the loveseat adjacent to her. Tara cast sideward glances at him, thinking of something to say. Such distant eyes on such a handsome face, she thought. In the end, she said nothing, but was careful about disposing of the wrapper immediately, and not embarrassing herself again. After they had eaten, he showed her the bedrooms. The master bedroom was furnished with a queen-sized bed that was dressed in a russet-and-sand-brown duvet and matching pillow covers. The bedside tables, of dark wood, each supported a lamp and other assorted items. A dresser stood at one end of the room. On the other side was a walk-in closet, next to which was the door to a beige tiled bathroom. She noticed that a blue, green, and white-striped plastic shower curtain covered the beige bathtub.
So this was her new home, the space she would be sharing with the man next to her. A mild shiver emanated in her chest. She had tried very hard, every single moment of the past two months, to bury the resentment she felt toward him for abandoning her, then resurrecting her on a whim, as if she were mere clay in his hands.
She walked into the guest bedroom. He said he used the room as his study. It had a desk with a computer, a swivel chair, and a large bookshelf.
“You can use the closet in the study for your stuff,” he said. “That way, you can have the whole closet to yourself.” He had already parked her two suitcases there.
“Oh, I have some food stuff in the luggage,” she said. “I’d better take them out and leave them in the fridge. Amma sent some laddoos for you.”
“Laddoos?” Was that irritation in his voice? “Okay, I’ll have them tomorrow. Listen, why don’t you relax now? Take a shower if you wish. Go to bed. I have some work to finish. I’ll join you later.”
Tara nodded. She made her way to the guest bedroom closet. She sat on her haunches and opened the smaller suitcase. She got her nightclothes and toiletries out. She found the laddoos, felt them through their plastic cover. She could tell that they had retained their ball shape, despite the long journey. They had fared better than her spirits. The sharp, spicy aroma of the masala packets that Amma insisted she take hit her nose. They made her violently homesick. She pulled them out too and held a packet to her cheek.
“I have some work to finish,” he had said. Did he work this late every night? The truth was that she knew nothing more about his life in America than she did when they got married three years ago in an elaborate four-day Hindu ceremony. He was a handsome but stoic groom; she was a nervous bride bedecked in silk, gold, and flowers. After the initial bride-seeing visit, they had met only once before the wedding, at a restaurant, where the din of chatter around them and his complaints of the noise had made their silence acceptable. Her heart didn’t leap and flutter like a burning candle, a feeling she knew she was capable of, not even when they consummated their relationship the night of their wedding, in Sanjay’s childhood room at his parents’ terraced home. She didn’t see romance, even in the bed that was sprinkled with soft fragrant flower petals, like in the movies.
“It is a bit awkward being with him,” Tara had confessed to Yvonne, her best friend from high school, when she and Sanjay returned to her mother’s house for the night, as tradition demanded, after Sathyanarayana Puja the next day. “We don’t seem to have anything to talk about.”
Yvonne had tittered like it was a joke. Her own two-month-old marriage to her boyfriend made her a pundit on the matter.
“You did it without saying a word to each other first?”
“Does small talk count?”
“Did you bleed?”
“Yeah, it was so painful.”
“At least he knows you were a virgin.”
“I am not sure he cares.”
“Of course he cares. You can take an Indian out of India, but you cannot take Victorian values out of an Indian.”
It would get better, Yvonne promised. Once Tara got comfortable with her husband, she would get addicted to him.
Yvonne was right. Like a waxing moon, Tara had felt a new need for her new husband warming her body on the fourth night, probably because he was leaving for Atlanta the next day, and that made it a suddenly emotional experience for her. His two-month vacation had come to an end. He had to get back to work. She had felt a rush of regret at not having had enough alone time to know him better. She wished her in-laws’ middle-class house was not filled to the seams with relatives, that the marriage rituals and lunch and dinner invitations hadn’t consumed all four of the five days that Sanjay had left of his vacation.
He would apply for Tara’s dependent visa and send for her soon, he had promised before leaving. At the departure lounge of Bajpe Airport, with her in-laws flanking her, she was given no opportunity for an intimate farewell. She had stood with clasped hands as he said his good-byes, quelling a desperate need to rest her head on his shoulder, to claim his attention only for herself. On her way back from the airport, her eyes had misted. She was missing him already.
His first call had come after Tara had returned to her parents’ home so she could resume work at the Morning Herald. She had taken the call in the living room, a little breathless, her heart racing. Daddy left the room, but Amma hovered, making Tara self-conscious and inhibited.
The conversation had been formal, polite. He asked her how things were, and she asked him about the Atlanta weather, his work. When he was ready to end the call, she had stalled, looked around the room furtively and, spying Amma’s back at the far end of the room, whispered a quick, “I miss you.”
He hadn’t heard her; she should have been louder.
“Bye now. I’ll call again soon,” he had said in response.
After Tara put the handset back in its cradle, she had hurled an angry verbal missile at Amma for being so clueless about privacy and personal space.
She tried again the next time he called, a week later. This time she knew he had heard her, because Amma had cleared out of the living room in a hurry, and Tara had said it boldly, clearly into the receiver. His response had been inappropriate this time, too.
“All right. I’ll call next week,” he had said blandly.
Tara had felt letdown but learned soon—after four weeks and four calls from Sanjay—that disappointment is an easier emotion to bear than despair. Sanjay stopped calling. Tara had tried to reach him, out of her own volition in the beginning and because of pressure from her parents later, but he didn’t ever take her calls, not even accidentally.
It must have been something she said or didn’t say. A very inappropriate response to something he said, perhaps? Maybe he hated how she sounded over the phone. Or hadn’t he found her desirable in bed?