“This can be a permanent arrangement if you wish,” Dottie said kindly.
When evening came, Ruth helped Tara pack a small tan suitcase with clothes from the church closet—mostly tops and skirts—and her underclothes and toiletries from the guest bathroom. A cardboard box from Sam’s Club was filled with rudimentary utensils—a pot and pan, two plates and two mugs, some forks and spoons, a kitchen knife. There were also cans of soup, baked beans, and cut vegetables from the church larder. Ruth remembered to bring a loaf of bread and a box of homemade brownies from her kitchen to drop into the box.
“Now, visit me any time you feel lonesome or feel the need to talk,” she reminded Tara. “You can walk in anytime. Anytime.”
Four days after being thrown out of her apartment, Tara was settled into her own personal space in Dottie’s basement, a rectangular room with a sea-green tiled kitchenette and bathroom that overlooked the grassy oak-leaf hydrangea-and-magnolia-scented backyard. Tomorrow, she would muster courage to go back, but only to bring her car. Thereafter, she would get back to classes and work, to a whole new vision of a normal life.
Tara lay wide awake on the green-and-white-checked sofa bed, barely watching the small TV that was set to CBS News. She had cut the volume, so all she did was stare absentmindedly at the flitting images. The day had been rather uneventful, at least by her recent standards. Ruth had driven her to the apartments to bring her car back that morning. She had spent the afternoon working with Nadya, who now knew to pick her up from Dottie’s front yard. Alyona had visited her in the evening, bringing two containers filled with homemade pasta and egg salad, which they had eaten over noisy conversation.
She stared languidly at the hands of the old wooden clock that was mounted on the far wall, at the tick-tock of the passing seconds. It was 11:17 at night. It would take her a while to get used to her new home, to discard the vague feeling of being marooned on an island. She needed to shift her awareness, to focus on all that her newfound independence would bring—bonding with Ruth and Dottie, filling the space with laughter and conversation, even just breathing freely. She would never lack for companionship here. When she thought of home with Sanjay, she thought isolation, prison, purposelessness, betrayal. And yet, severing bonds, ruffling feathers, defying the established were hard things to do.
Sanjay was served that morning. She imagined what the scene may have looked like. Did Sanjay’s jaw drop at the sight of the crisp, khaki-uniformed deputy? Was he furious? Had he expected her to go away quietly, so he could forget her like a bad dream? Was he plotting ways to get even with her? She was dying to know what he was thinking.
Close to midnight, her cellphone, which lay on the cherry wood desk by the sofa getting charged, lit up like a hundred-watt bulb. She jumped up and grabbed the phone in a spurt of reflexes. It was Sanjay’s message.
“I am sorry. Please come back home,” it said.
Tara read the text over and over again, as if a hidden message or a new insight might pop up the fourth or fifth time. She had to control the urge to run upstairs to Dottie, to seek her advice on how to react. Was she supposed to feel happy, relieved, suspicious, angry?
Right now, all she felt was a colossal storm of confusion that submerged all rational thinking. She paced the long stretch of her room, taking baby strides to make her route last longer. She felt the sudden urge to pee. She ran to the bathroom and sat on the commode for what seemed like eternity. When she returned, her cell phone was lit up again. She stumbled to the desk, flipped her phone open.
“Tara, come back, darling. I am so sorry I hurt you,” his second message said.
A sob constricted her throat. The phone dropped from her shaking hands. She scrambled to pick it up, afraid the fall might have somehow deleted his messages. She read the message again, then again and again. Her feelings were grouping, forging in one direction. They seemed a lot like sympathy, or at least a mixed version of it. But when she resumed pacing the room, now with more vigor, those feelings changed. One minute, Sanjay was a pitiable character, the next, a demon.
She had spent months imagining this—Sanjay apologizing, accepting her as his wife—and yet, the circumstances were so different now. His messages didn’t warm her heart. She knew he had perceived the court case as being a threat to his job, his career, and his life in America. He was scared enough to want to take her back. She felt stupid to feel sorry for him. And yet, her feelings were out of control; they had a free will of their own.
It was another hour before his third message came.
“We will work at being happy together. Text me. Please.”
She did not text him, even though it took every ounce of her will to refrain from providing him with some solace, some respite, from the churning of whatever emotions he was feeling because of her.
At nine in the morning, she got a call from Vijay, who had just received a phone call from a remorseful Sanjay. An hour later, Amma called on her cell, but it was Daddy who spoke to her. Her personal crisis had become a crisis for the family.
Chapter 19
“You are kidding. Please tell me you are kidding.” Ruth made no attempt to coat her disappointment in Southern charm. “You don’t have to do that. You’ll be okay. We are here for you.”
Tara drew in a long breath. Daddy and Amma’s sage advice—all of which made perfect sense to them—was so hard to translate for the benefit of her American friends. Sanjay had called Daddy and pleaded with all the skills he could muster. He was a reformed man, he would make marriage his first priority, he had promised.
Daddy and Amma had insisted that she go back, give Sanjay another chance. Now that Liz was gone, the playing field was hers to claim. A grown man, a proud man had groveled at their feet. Groveled. She would have to be hardhearted to not give in.
“My parents want me to give Sanjay another chance,” she told Ruth feebly.
Ruth grabbed Tara’s hands and sat her down on the sofa. “And what do you want? Do you want to give Sanjay another chance?”
“He has promised to change, to make marriage his first priority.” Tara looked down at her hands, away from Ruth’s probing eyes. “Separation is not easy. It would bring shame to my family. My parents would have a hard time in their community.”
Ruth sighed. “I wish I could understand this better.”
At night, Tara stayed awake, probing her decision to go back. At some point in the night, she uncovered a deep truth. Being wanted had always been the biggest challenge of her life, and of greatest import. She had to see if Sanjay would now want her, love her. It mattered, even though, to her own shock, when she searched her own heart for some love for him, she came up empty-handed.
When Tara got into Ruth’s Oldsmobile for the ride back to the apartment she shared with Sanjay, her chest felt like a block of granite. She felt no eagerness to return, despite the uncovering of her truth. She knew she had opened her palm and let it fly, that which she had in her grasp for a minute. She knew the pangs of forfeiture would stay in her heart for a long time.
Ruth insisted on coming in to meet Sanjay. Even though he looked haggard with a two-day stubble that stuck out of his chin like prickly weed, Sanjay returned Ruth’s cordiality, even offered to make her some coffee, which she politely refused.