Oleander Girl (16 page)

Next to Grandmother stands Maman, waving cheerily. After our ill-fated encounter in the gallery, I’d been reluctant to face her. I dreaded the weight of her disapproval and feared that she would pressure me to give up my journey. But she was unexpectedly pleasant when she came over to the house a week later to discuss wedding plans. The marriage would be held in three months, she said, honoring the date set by Grandfather. That should give me enough time for what I needed to do. When I stammered an apology at having hurt her by offering to break off the engagement, she said she understood. She only asked for one thing: that we keep my reason for going a secret. Perhaps we could drop discreet hints in the right places, indicating that I was going to meet a long-lost relative who had been estranged for decades from Grandfather? It wouldn’t be too far from the truth.

“Of course,” I said, thankful that she was being so reasonable, but inwardly I was baffled by this magical change. Then I figured that Rajat must have explained my motives to her.

Before leaving, she added that, while in America, I could stay with the Mitras, the couple who managed their New York gallery. She would speak to them if I wished. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been worrying about where I would stay. Every place in New York was so expensive, even the run-down weekly rooms that Desai had suggested. In my gratitude, I agreed to let Maman buy me an overcoat, though I feared (and rightly so) that she would choose something far too expensive.

Once in a while, though, I am reminded that the polite, friendly woman I’m seeing is not the real Maman. The warm woman who had begun to love me as a daughter, who might have scolded and cajoled me
the way she would have with Pia, who had once demanded my help the way one can only with family, had receded from me after our argument and soundlessly shut a door. It’ll be a long time before she emerges again.

Finally, Rajat. I’ve held off on looking at him because I want him to be the last, for his face to remain imprinted on my retinas like lightning. He has lost weight in the last month. It makes him more attractive in a haggard, hungry way. He stands with an arm looped around Grandmother; he has promised to take care of her while I’m gone. Since the engagement, not a day has passed when we haven’t spent at least a few hours together. Now we’ll be halfway across the world from each other. So far! How will I handle it? How will he? And what of those temptations he had mentioned that drunken night?

That night had changed something between us, though not quite in the way I had hoped. Yes, he let me in on his vulnerabilities a little more. He told me when he had had a hard day at work and how the negotiations with Bhattacharya were going. He confided that he felt guilty about the money they were losing in New York because he had urged the family to open the gallery there. From time to time he stopped what he was doing to grip my hands and look hungrily into my face, as though he were trying to store up our moments together. But he still guarded his past. Anytime I asked about Sonia, he deflected my questions and focused instead on the details of my journey. He made sure I had everything—passport, visa, tickets, medical exams, traveler’s checks. He even wired money to Mitra so he would have a mobile phone ready for me.

“Call me every day, okay?” he said last night when I walked him to his car. He clutched me as if he were drowning and only I could save him. It frightened me a little, how important I was to him. A swell of tenderness came over me. I held him close and stroked his hair.

“Promise you’ll be faithful?”

For a moment I was outraged that he should doubt me, but I couldn’t keep it up. Not when he was vulnerable like this.

“I promise.”

“Promise you’ll return in a month and marry me?”

“I promise.”

Even as I said the words, I remembered a story Grandmother had
once told me about an enchanted land. When people went there, they forgot the loved ones they had left behind. They forgot themselves, too. No one returned from that country, although they weren’t unhappy there in their bewitchment. What if America turned out to be like that?

“A month without you will seem like a lifetime, Cara!”

I said nothing. The issue of time was murky. A month without him, on my own, would be torturous for me, too. It stretched forth lonely as an ice field at the edge of the world. But what if I was close to finding my father when the month ended? Would I be able to give up that chance?

Rajat must have sensed my hesitation. He said, “In today’s world, if you can’t find someone in a whole month of searching, you’ll never find him. Maybe a man like that doesn’t want to be found.”

Looking back at him now, his free arm raised in a solemn wave, I think how people are full of contradictions. Rajat loves me, I have no doubt of that, and I love him. But here I am, hurting him, maybe even jeopardizing our relationship by going off on this crazy hunt. And he—he’s done everything for me to succeed in my search, but deep down I suspect he’d rather I failed so that things could go back to how they were.

The monitor flashes. It’s time for me to go through security check. As I turn, behind Rajat’s head I see two ovals of light. Is it just a trick of my tear-filled eyes? I want to believe it’s my mother. And, next to her, Grandfather. Are they blessing my journey, or battling over my future, the different outcome each wishes for me? I want to keep looking, but my disobedient eyes will not obey. They blink. The lights disappear. Only a whitewashed wall, discolored from the seepage of rain, remains.

I walk into the women’s booth, where a security officer pats me down. Ahead, in the waiting lounge, a gallery of uninterested faces. No one knows me. I know no one. This is my life now.

I
stumble out of the customs area of Kennedy Airport exhausted and dizzy and search the mass of milling humanity for a face that matches the one on the photograph I carry. The flight, where I was crammed into a corner beside an overweight man who spilled onto my seat, snoring energetically, had seemed interminable. The recycled air made my eyes itchy and dry. Unable to sleep, I had obsessed over all the things that might go wrong in America—and it seems that already the first of them has come true. Mitra, who was supposed to pick me up, is nowhere to be found. Minutes pass; half an hour; my flightmates reunite joyfully with their families and go off to their various destinations. Panic forms a lump in my throat. What if Mitra has been in an accident? What if he’s dead? I force myself to breathe slowly; I get coins from a money changer and phone Mitra’s home and then his cell phone. No one picks up. I long to call Rajat. But it’s 2:00 a.m there. I push the thought out of my mind before it can take hold. He can’t help me from halfway across the world, and it would only make him crazed with worry. I’m not such a weakling as to subject him to that, not this soon.

Finally I see Mitra—but I wouldn’t have recognized him without the makeshift sign he’s holding up, a sheet of paper with my name untidily scratched on it. The photo that Rajat had given me—taken less than a year back in India—was of a confident, good-looking man in a designer shirt, shoulders thrown back, smiling infectiously. This person, though his
features are still handsome, has circles under eyes that dart back and forth. He wears a suit that must have, at one time, been expensive but is now only crumpled. His hair hangs dispirited over his forehead as he apologizes about the traffic. Following him to the taxicab stand, I wonder how America the Beautiful could have wrought such a change on him.

Once in the taxi, my spirits lift. We cross a bridge, the mysterious water colored like steel. In the distance, buildings rise imposingly into a gray sky. My heart expands as I look at that famous skyline. Grandmother is right, this
will
be an adventure. For the first time, I feel ready.

I want to tell someone this, but Mitra stares out the window, lips pressed together, clearly preoccupied. He breaks his silence only when I ask the driver, a dark man with an unfamiliar accent, where he’s from. In low, rapid Bangla, Mitra tells me that it’s dangerous to ask questions of strangers in America. Chastised, I lapse into silence until we pass a Ganesh temple—the last thing I was expecting to see!

“Is this close to your apartment?” I ask. Unexpectedly, I find myself missing our temple back home, though I rarely visited it on my own.

“Not too far.”

“I’d like to visit it. Have you been in there?”

“I have as little to do with this neighborhood as possible.”

I look around. Why, then, is he living here, among modest halal restaurants that are a hair’s breadth from being run-down, and sari shop windows crammed with mannequins in garish sequined chiffons? Especially since the Boses’ gallery is some distance away in Chelsea?

When we arrive at our destination, I make a polite offer to pay the fare, which is alarmingly large. In India, a host would have refused, but Mitra only looks away when I put a stack of my dollars—limited and precious, for Grandmother’s jewelry had brought less than we’d expected—into the driver’s hand. I’m both worried and annoyed. If Mitra wasn’t planning to pay, he should have chosen a cheaper form of transportation. I’ll have to insist on that from now on.

Already I’m losing my Indian courtesies; I’m thinking in terms of survival, like an immigrant.

Mitra’s apartment sits above a karaoke bar, its windows plastered with gigantic Bollywood posters. We climb a dingy stairwell, passing an Indian woman who stares at us but doesn’t greet Mitra. He is obviously not popular with the neighbors. He unlocks his door, hands me over to his wife, a pregnant young woman who has been waiting with a hesitant smile, and tells me that he must be off, sorry to rush, but he’s already late. He’s gone before I get a chance to ask about the cell phone he is supposed to give me, or about visiting Desai, which I hoped to do today.

Fortunately, Mrs. Mitra, a sweet-faced woman not much older than me, is more welcoming. She apologizes for the smallness of the apartment, which is cramped and dark, with paint peeling in corners, brings out hot tea and spicy snacks, and entreats me to call her by her name, Seema. When I ask if I can phone India, she tells me sorry, their line is set up to make only local calls. No, no e-mail, either—the laptop is with Mr. Mitra at work. But, yes, I can phone Mr. Desai.

Desai informs me that he’s made good headway and has a possible lead—he’ll explain when he sees me. When I tell him I want to come over right now, he advises me to wait for Mitra as his office is not in the best part of town.

Disappointed and a little taken aback, I gulp down my watery tea and stalk impatiently around the apartment, which is crammed with expensive furniture that looks as if it was bought for somewhere else. With a sigh Seema puts her swollen feet up on a large and elegant coffee table and barrages me with questions. What news of Kolkata? Have I seen the latest movies? Which are my favorites? What are the new fashions, and have I brought any with me? (Here she tugs self-consciously at her cheap smock, which is already too tight.) In between, she glances nervously out the window, which is covered with a thin fabric that allows her to look out without being seen. She seems sweet, if nervous, so I curb my frustration about wasting time here when I should be starting my search—and respond as best as I can.

What has brought me to New York? she finally asks.

I stave off this one with a vague reference to a lost relative. I have some questions of my own. What happened to the Mitras to reduce them
to this state? Are the Boses aware of the situation? Maman certainly hadn’t warned me. I wonder how to ask about this, but I don’t have to. Seema, starved for conversation, has already launched artlessly into the story of her life.

They had met two years ago in the Kolkata call center, where she was a new employee, freshly arrived from a small town, and he the hugely popular manager, famous for throwing pizza parties when they exceeded their sales quota. He’d been quite the man-about-town, clothes from New Market, haircut from Park Street, and his cologne—always foreign. You wouldn’t know it, looking at him now, would you? Seema still can’t believe that he fell in love with her, little brown mouse from a suburb-town. When Mrs. Bose approached Mitra because she needed a manager for their new art gallery in the United States and promised him a job for his wife, too, if he had one, he proposed to Seema.