As Sweet as Honey

33




The sky was moody, a palette of grays and blues, darkening quickly. Without the lush green color of the tropical island greenery, rain in London fell miserably, creating damp, depression, chills. No wonder the English loved their English teas, their English scones with double cream, which they called English even though in reality the latter had been used in Indian cuisine for thousands of years while the British tore at roast beef and hunted deer, drowning all with ale. My aunt wrinkled her nose; she would not fault the English for their ignorance, she resolved. Still, what did the women drink before the East India Tea Company? Cider from North America? Punch? She knew that when English women first tried to serve tea, they had no idea what they were doing. They served the leaves, boiled like potatoes, in tiny plates, tried to eat it, and wondered what the fuss was about. Yet these same English learned to make tea, and serve sweets to go with tea, little cakes with lemon glaze, and buttery biscuits. On Pi, she had devoured Jane Austen’s books like chocolate, imagining the sprigged muslin dresses, the crowds at Bath. She didn’t recall teas in the books, but she remembered the dinners. Persuasion was her favorite—and it was at the table Austen brought together the surprises and catalysts for plot, she remembered Miss Shanta impressing on the tenth standard. Real dinners were not like that; if violent emotions were felt and hidden, it was because a train was late, or there was less pocket money for the monthly budget. Conversations were unremarkable in her life, unless good spirits and humor were cause for notice. What had George Eliot said—that it was the unremarkable people who made for the equanimity of life in peacetime? Something like that.


Simon had bought her a cookbook that was full of vegetarian British food. It had beautifully photographed terrines and timbales, cassoulets and soups. She leafed through it, and tried to make a tart with leeks. The vegetables were hard to clean; she forgot to blind-bake the pastry and reduce the temperature of the oven. A burnt pie resulted, the smell lingering in the air for days. She cried as Simon laughed.


When she first tried to eat pizza, (“pete-za,” she reminded herself, not “pisa”) slicing across the cheesy top with a knife, Simon had had to convince her the tomato sauce was really vegetarian. Didn’t Americans eat pizza with their hands? The British used fork and knife. It was tasty, if chewy, but the red sauce was disquieting. What would Darshan joke? They put meat in their pies, plugged in their water to boil, and made coffee from a jar. They traveled in tubes. English people, she discovered, spoke very fast, even on that television show with the Indians. They had a secret vocabulary, it seemed, and she wanted subtitles to follow. She resolved not to call the British “they.” She drew her shawl closer to her body over her sweater, because she was home now, having gone out to purchase milk, raincoat dripping by the door, rubber boots off, groceries inside, and having made herself a cup of tea.

She wondered if Susan would share a cup of tea with her if she telephoned. But Susan was so distrustful, so wary, as if always working to bite back her resentment but not always succeeding. I am the woman who killed Archer, thought Meterling, the woman who made him dance. It was Archer who insisted on the dance lessons. Couldn’t she tell Susan, “Look, could we just start over?” But then, why should she be so conciliatory toward Susan? So her brother married me; so her cousin married me, too. What did it matter? Susan was Oscar’s aunt—wasn’t that enough?

Simon appeared, interrupting her thoughts, tousle-haired, as if he had awakened from a nap. He needed a shave. He treasured his Sundays, and would wear his pajamas all day. Buried under the newspaper or under the covers, he emerged to coo to the baby, eat, and make love to his wife. This is what they meant when they, whoever the wordsmiths were, coined “a month of Sundays.” Absentmindedly giving her a kiss, he walked to the window and rested his head on his arm against the pane.

“Damn. Does the English sun ever appear except in its former colonies?”

“Imagine contented Englishmen at home in sunny gardens, with no need to plunder and pillage.”

“Ah, plunder and pillage,” said Simon speculatively, but Meterling waved him off and went to make him a cup of tea. She liked Yorkshire tea best, strong and good, able to stand hot milk and sugar. She discovered that tea could be satisfying to the end, and wondered if it had to do with the weather. Just as she was to take Simon’s cup in, she heard a plaintive cry. Oscar? But this sounded more like a cat, a meow that sounded distressed. Opening the back door, she found a small black kitty, now mouthing its mews silently. She stared in amazement, not having witnessed such a silent appeal since seeing the street widows on Pi with their begging bowls, who were so exhausted, so tired, they could only mutely ask for alms. Hurriedly, she opened the screen and scooped the cat in.

“Simon, we’ve got a visitor.”

“Oh, dear God,” he said when he saw the cat.

“We have to take care of it. Go get me a towel.”

“What about my tea?”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

Soon, wrapped in a once-white towel after being gently but thoroughly rubbed down, the grateful cat softly purred.

“And it might belong to someone else. The landlord won’t let us keep a cat, darling.”

“Well, we’ll have to move.”


She was kidding, of course, but Meterling’s insistence on keeping the cat caught Simon by surprise. He hadn’t witnessed her stubbornness so completely before. Maybe in this strange new world, she needed an ally. They put out flyers and an ad in the paper, but no one claimed the cat. He found himself liking the creature that came running to him after work as he removed his coat. It stood on its hind legs, trying to greet him as people do, and flopped over onto its back, waiting for its belly to be rubbed.

“A thoroughly domesticated kitty,” he said, “aren’t you, Pibs?”

“Pibs?”

“Puss-in-Boots.”

Pibs took to guarding Oscar, who liked grunting into his face. At first, they worried that Pibs would bite suddenly, but Pibs and Oscar seemed companionable. Evenings, Pibs lay contentedly on a pillow by Oscar’s bouncy seat, while Meterling and Simon read by lamplight beside the fire. Simon taught her to twist newspaper, layer kindling and finally a log; and on drafty days, she liked nothing better than the fire. They had found an old hearth toaster in an odds-and-ends market, and she sometimes heated chocolate between slices of bread.

But despite this warmth and affection and food and lovemaking, there were still long stretches of day which found her doing nothing at all, long stretches when Simon was away and cat and child asleep, days where she often just stared out the window. This was when the blue slipped in, even as her thoughts became full of lush color and strong images, when she remembered sitting on the veranda with tea, the kids beside her, or Grandmother. She thought of Archer, his innate kindness, his joviality, how they began to trust one another. She stopped herself—what if his ghost were to appear? But her thoughts ran on. If only Archer had known Oscar—that was the thought that climbed its way to the top of her thoughts. If only, if only—that terrible trap of the mind. But wasn’t the darker thought that she felt grateful he’d died, if only to have Simon? That was why she disliked these large spaces of day: it made her examine what she didn’t want to examine. It left her ragged.


“But I feel it too, Meti. It’s horrible. It’s almost as if I killed Archer with my mind. When I first saw you at the wedding, I was lightning-struck. I couldn’t believe Archer’s luck, and I’m sure I instantly wished I were in his place,” said Simon when she approached the subject. He bit his lip. “My father said it’s things like this that you don’t question, you don’t torment yourself with, and I have to agree with him.”

Meterling had to agree as well. It was pointless to pick over the past; yet why did the past creep up on her when she found herself lonely? As if on cue, Oscar began to cry, and she went to feed him. Maybe she should be grateful for what she had; and really, this feeling, Oscar gently sucking, was so lovely, she didn’t, she must not, want more.

One Saturday, when Simon asked her where she wanted to go, she said she was exhausted and wanted to stay put.

“I feel like we’ve opened all the presents at once, Simon, and now there’s all this debris, the boxes and the strings and ribbons and wrapping paper that needs to be put away.”

“There are still some boxes left.”

“Can’t we just hang on to them a bit longer, wait to open them?”

“London isn’t finite. No city is.”

“Let’s just stay in bed with the baby and eat toast.”

“Or let’s just let Oscar play a bit more in his bouncy seat.”


“Where did Asian women learn to lean their cheek on their hand? Is it inborn or learned?” asked Simon.

“Learned, obviously, but surely Western women do the same.”

“Not as often. They play with their hair.”

“Honestly, Simon, where do you get these stereotypes?”

“I think it must come from a natural and historical sense of contemplation.”

“Your prejudices?”

“Women and their cheeks and their hands.”

“There are all those paintings of women looking out of windows. The miniatures always show that. Queens or handmaidens, but sometimes I wonder if they aren’t just prostitutes displaying themselves?”

“Like in Amsterdam?”

“Simon, where are we going for the long weekend?”

“Amsterdam? To sample the wares?”

He played with her hair. “I was thinking of France.”

But the conversation was already being left behind, as they engaged themselves more seriously with hands and cheeks. Later, they lay next to one another, panting. It was usually at this point that Meterling went to sleep, even as Simon felt ready for another go. Now they held hands, idly stroking one another, waiting for Oscar to cry. Pibs did, but they ignored him, knowing there was food in the bowl, water in the dish.

“Do you think Pibs needs a companion cat?”

“Is that a way of asking if I want another baby?”

“No, I meant—that is, I really was thinking of Pibs. But do you want another baby?”

“Do you?”

“Well, yes. In a few years. Wait, you’re not pregnant, are you?”

Meterling laughed at his stricken face, and reassured him that she wasn’t. But she agreed that in a few years, they might think of another baby. They began to talk more seriously of where to go for the long weekend.