Don't Let Him Know (2 page)

‘A what?’ Romola gasped.

‘Chef, you know, like a gourmet cook.’

‘I know what a chef is,’ she said impatiently. ‘I watch TV too. But why do you want to be a cook? You are a computer engineer.’

‘I know but cooking is what I want to do,’ said Amit. ‘It’s about following your heart, you know.’

She didn’t know, she thought. ‘But you studied computer science in America,’ she said, as if to reassure herself. Then a dreadful suspicion crept into her voice. ‘Didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he laughed. ‘But that doesn’t mean I can never do anything else. Anyway, it’s not like anyone ever asked me what I wanted to do. I got into computer science and that was that. You and Baba were so excited and pleased I just went along with it.’

‘What does June think?’

‘She knows it will be tough. But she thinks I should do what I need to do,’ he replied. ‘Maybe it will help our marriage even. Things had been tough, Ma.’

What a strange country, thought Romola. He wants to cook his way back into his marriage. And then a sudden lick of annoyance flared up in her. How dare he dig up old infidelities and hurts to give himself permission to quit his good computer job and learn cooking?

‘But you never even stepped into the kitchen when you were a boy in Calcutta,’ she said. ‘What do you even know of cooking?’

‘I’d love to cook, Ma, if only you’d let me step into the kitchen,’ he said sharply. ‘Ever since you came you’ve just taken it over. I’ve learned to cook in America and I really enjoy it.’

‘You do?’ she stared at him as if he was a stranger. Chefs were perfectly coiffed celebrities like Madhur Jaffrey in beautiful silk saris, not Amit. She couldn’t imagine him on television with an apron around him talking about sautéing chicken breasts and marinating kebabs.

‘It’s like meditation,’ he said. ‘It calms me.’ Then he paused and said, ‘And maybe you can teach me now. I could watch you and maybe we’ll even re-create your recipes, write a cookbook together – “Bengali Meals for an American Kitchen”. Wouldn’t that be fun, just you and me?’

Romola smiled and shook her head gently at herself. She had been afraid she had lost Amit to America. Who would have thought that accursed letter from so long ago would bring him back to her? They used to call him her little tail when he was a toddler because he’d follow her everywhere. Today he was looking at her with those same eyes again as if she knew the answers and could wrap him in the love of her sari.

She smiled at him and threw up her hands.

‘Don’t you feel better?’ he said. ‘Now you don’t have to keep all that locked away, a secret any more?’

She did feel better, she thought.

‘If you tell me Sumit Uncle’s last name and where he lived in America, I could try and track him down on the Internet,’ said Amit.

‘No, no,’ Romola startled herself with the urgency in her tone. ‘You must not. Promise me you won’t start digging all that up. He might be dead, married, who knows? That chapter is over.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Amit shrugged. ‘It was just an idea. I thought it might be cool. Ma, you know you’ve done all your duties. You’ve raised me. You took care of Baba. You wouldn’t even take any money for the funeral.’

That American word ‘cool’ made her shiver. How Ameri–can her son had become. She wondered if he really meant it. He hugged her before going to bed that night. He never did that she thought as she distractedly put away the leftovers.

All night long she tossed and turned. Once she woke up filled with sharp-toothed anger. Pshaw, she thought to herself. Amit was right. She had done everything everyone expected her to do. If no one had ever asked him if he wanted to study computers, no one had ever asked her if she wanted to do anything at all. All she had ever got to decide was what fish to serve for lunch and whether to have chicken or mutton for dinner. Now after Avinash’s death, not even that. Rui, paarshey, ilish, the fish of her childhood, all gone. Who asked me whether I wanted to give them up? she thought angrily. No one. But when she did no one had told her not to.

For a moment that anger rose again, inky dark, from the pit of her stomach, dredging up bits and pieces of the past, like unabsorbed pills, their cheery candy-coloured coating long gone, just the bitterness now, still there after all these years, little pills of bitterness.

By the time the sky turned light the anger had ebbed away and she fell asleep. She tossed restlessly, her dreams full of fish in Calcutta swimming through Amit’s giant television screen. The blonde weather person was telling her about fish prices and pizzas and burgers with a fake sunny smile and then she suddenly morphed into Amit, and Romola, startled, jabbed blindly at buttons on the remote control and the whole screen turned solid unblinking guilty blue. She opened her eyes and she saw the blue was the cheerful pastel of the California sky framed in the window by her bed. She sat up in bed and felt for her glasses. As she brushed her teeth she looked at herself in the mirror. There were lines around her eyes, feathery wrinkles. The skin around her neck was starting to sag. She could see the web of wrinkles there as well, like a crushed-crêpe sari. Her hair was turning grey. How thin it had become, she thought. She could see her scalp through the strands. She had never smeared red sindoor on her parting, like some women she knew, as a sign of her marriage. She’d preferred a discreet smudge of red. But without even that her parting looked shockingly naked.

‘What are you going to do today, Ma?’ said Amit as he usually did every morning. Even though her back was to him as she waited for the water for her tea to boil, Romola knew he was not looking at her. He would be glancing through the newspaper while he absently poured cold skim milk straight from a carton into his cereal, more often than not Rice Krispies.

It was another cloudless California morning, the sky spotlessly blue, laundered by the early morning sunlight as it had been every morning since she got here a fortnight back from Calcutta. But the linoleum on the kitchen floor was cold, seeping in through the hole in her grey sock while the stainless steel kettle purred on the stove. Normally she would never have her tea until she had been to the bathroom and had a wash. But she knew better than to try and insert herself in the carefully timed and choreographed morning drill of getting ready for the day.

Soon Amit would leave the kitchen and she would hear the whine of his electric shaver, the spluttering gurgle of her daughter-in-law’s coffee percolating, her grandson chattering through mouthfuls of Froot Loops. As usual.

Except today wasn’t usual. Romola curled her foot against the cold floor and pulled her blue cardigan tighter around the crumpled white sari. She stared at Amit, wanting to ask him if last night had all been a dream.

‘Why don’t you eat some breakfast?’ she asked instead. ‘How can you survive on just coffee and cereal? Let me make some toast.’

She knew he wouldn’t have any. He never did. But it was part of the routine, part of the play of pretending everything was normal. Soon Neel’s hair would be brushed and June would have changed into her business suit. Then they would leave. But not before the last-minute instructions: ‘Ma, yesterday’s leftovers are in the refrigerator. Don’t forget to heat them for two minutes in the microwave first. And don’t put the plates with the gold rim in the microwave. If anyone calls just ask them to call again and leave a message on the answering machine. Say bye to your grandma, Neel.’ The door would bang shut. She would hear the rattle of the garage door opening and then Amit’s car coughing into life. She would stand at the window and watch June help Neel into the child seat in her car. She would half-raise her hand in goodbye and then drop it. No one was really looking.

And then for a moment it was silent. The quiet rose warmly throughout the house, rushing in to fill the spaces that had been so frantic and busy five minutes ago. The first time, she had just leaned back against the door letting the quiet curl around her feet and rise around her. But now she hurried across the living room to turn on the TV. It had become a habit. She stubbed her toe on a piece of Lego Neel had left lying on the floor and said ‘Uff’ but she did not stop till she reached the television and turned it on. The familiar face of that talk-show host with grey hair and glasses sputtered into view.

‘Aah,’ she sighed and sat down on the couch. The host was talking with a young woman who was obviously pregnant. That’s right. She remembered – the show was going to be about young woman who were pregnant with a child by men other than their husbands.

Oh, thought Romola, I hope I did not miss the bit when they bring out the husband to confront the wife. The audience was hissing and booing at the young woman. But she did not seem to care. Romola looked at the carefully-drawn arched brows, the shocking pink halter-top and shook her head. Look at her, she thought. Six months pregnant with another man’s child and look how she dresses. She quivered, though whether with righteous indignation or secret relish, she was not quite sure.

But today she felt something was missing. She felt restless and the television couldn’t just sweep her away into its brightly coloured world of sordid affairs and illicit sex. She imagined herself in there and a flicker of a smile crossed her face. ‘Sons reunite mothers with ex-lovers’ could be the theme she thought. Wouldn’t Leela in Connecticut get a shock if she turned on the TV and saw Romola there? But the moment passed and Romola realized that today she couldn’t blank her head with a remote like she usually did. ‘What can I do?’ she said, sounding like Amit when he was a little boy on the first day of the long seemingly never-ending expanse of his summer vacation.

‘Well, he’d probably know soon enough when the baby is born,’ the mother-to-be on television tossed her hair. ‘Coz the baby’s father – he’s black you know.’ The audience went ‘Ohhhh.’ Romola realized she had her hands clapped over her mouth in shock. She had to admit she loved the television. She was amazed at how much she loved it. At first it had scared her – all those channels, and the way Amit and June restlessly surfed through them every time the advertisements came on. She hated that for she loved the ads. She liked watching the car commercials even though they made no sense most of the time. And those beautiful women with sleepy eyes and lustrous hair. But most of all she loved the food – it all seemed bigger and tastier on television – glistening and juicy in eye-popping colours. The fried chicken looked so crisp and brown, the insides so moist and tenderly white, the tomatoes rounder and redder than anything you could get at the supermarket. And those creamy dressings oozing across the screen – Romola had to sit on her hands to prevent herself from reaching out to touch it.

Back in India, she had never bothered to get one of those fancy new televisions everyone seemed to love. Amit kept urging her to buy one. But she always resisted.

‘Save your money,’ she would tell him. ‘Who watches TV anyway? All these stupid, rubbish programmes. Anyway the moment I turn on the television, the maid comes and sits down in front of it. Then next day she brings her friend from across the street and before you know it, my living room is just filled with them. Better not turn on the television anyway.’ When Avinash was alive, it had not mattered. He would sit patiently going over his investments while she carefully totalled up the day’s expenses. Every now and then she would ask him something or tell him something from her day. He mostly just grunted and she knew he was not listening. But it soothed her – that he was there, working contentedly across the room from her. Now that he was gone, the quiet sometimes unnerved her. It was a dead kind of quiet, musty and dank and it filled her with dread. Sometimes in the evening, she turned the television on just to keep the quiet away from the room. It was like burning incense, she thought ruefully.

Every night she burned one incense stick in front of his framed photograph. Every three days she changed the white garland of tuberose. The picture was from fifteen years ago – he was smiling, his hair just beginning to grey. Sitting in America, she felt a pang as she thought of the picture sitting alone in the dark, shuttered house in India. She had felt like she was abandoning him but didn’t know how to say it.

But Amit was right. She had indeed given Avinash a grand funeral – followed every single Hindu rite. She had not taken a paisa from Amit. This she had wanted to do for Avinash. He had had his problems but he had been, in the final reckoning, a decent man. Then after the funeral she had given up meat and fish. She knew in these modern times no one really cared whether widows ate meat or not. Amit had, in fact, asked how she would get her protein.

‘I’ll eat soya bean nuggets,’ she said. ‘I hear it’s very nutritious.’ And that was the end of that. She was a little surprised actually at how easily he accepted her vegetarianism. For a moment she wished he would argue with her, tell her she had done enough, that she didn’t need to give up anything like her grandmothers once did. But he had moved on and was talking about closing bank accounts and going through the financial papers.

She wondered if one day she would be able to summon up the tangy taste of ilish in mustard sauce in her head even, or whether it too would fade away like everything else, unused and forgotten.

After Amit had left for America, some days she’d wake up with a craving for fish. But she didn’t dare buy any. She was afraid the maid would find out and spread the gossip. After a while, she craved it less. It certainly made her daily expenses much lower. Every day she would hear the neighbours complain about how fish prices were skyrocketing. She’d tell herself she was lucky she didn’t have to worry.