If Mohan hadn’t been so lax in observing his wife, if he hadn’t settled into his comfortable routine, if he hadn’t mistaken the increasing richness of her food as the sign of a spouse’s affection, if he hadn’t been so busy watching stories about agriculture and cinema on his TV, if he hadn’t spent more time scratching partial credit onto his students’ papers than he spent focusing his gaze on his wife’s nervous tics, if he hadn’t been, in a word, happy with the way his life flicked from day to day, then perhaps he would have seen his wife transforming. He would have noticed how she spent her free money and time not just on getting her eyebrows waxed, as Indian women had to do, but also on getting her nails done in a nice salon, a task that most Indian women accomplished in the perfumed station of their master bathrooms. Maybe he would have noticed how his wife always seemed to work latest on the nights when he played tennis; maybe he would have noticed how she got up early to make atta and masala instead of preparing them the night before. Same went for packing his lunch. When he got ready in the morning, Mohan would find Ranjana sitting in front of the TV with her cup of tea, her hair newly washed, and all of her chores already done for the day.
This change occurred over the course of a month. It could not have been more concentrated in its ascent. But Mohan didn’t notice such things. If anything, he just assumed that Ranjana had finally put aside the little death that had been Prashant’s departure. Now she could behave like herself again. Now he could have the wife he had known when they first came here, one who had no friends and no job and only her husband to eat her food with approval. Perhaps he could cradle her body in bed again.
To be sure, the more that Ranjana recalled their early years in America, the more she saw that Mohan’s ideal situation was one of monotony, the status quo when they’d first arrived here. Everything was just as he had envisioned it. She had always assumed that he meant that he had prepared himself for the logistical feat of their immigration, sight by sight, signed paper after signed paper. Now she understood. He had envisioned his ideal American life ahead of time and would see to its realization as best he could: mainly sedentary, comfortable with the objects that built its ordinariness—stainless steel dishes of fennel seeds and spices, salt and pepper shakers, oven mitts burned at the tip from handling one hot dish after another. An American life that was as reliable, present, and reinforcing as his recliner. And there in his recliner he sat as Ranjana crafted their meals over the heat of the stove. And felt, by virtue of her after-work Paradise Island forays with Achyut, as lucky and incipient as Prashant, off on the adventure of his college life. She had heard about second acts in life but had never believed in them. Although it was not like Achyut was already a best friend or, certainly not, a lover, it was an exquisite surprise to Ranjana, the idea of youth’s desire to engage her, and youth’s being entertained in turn.
It felt altogether uncharted to her, for example, to find out if she had a sense of humor. She didn’t know if she could be funny; she had never been given the opportunity, not even with her child, who did not seem particularly adept at such things himself. As much as it terrified her to find out that she might have neither wit nor guile, the simple act of exploring this was thrilling. If Mohan hadn’t been so rigidly methodical, then perhaps he would have laughed at a joke, just one, and precluded all of this from happening.
*
It was like one of the stories her cohorts in writing class would have crafted: Mohan going away on a business trip and leaving Ranjana by herself. He had a lecture to give in Minneapolis, a town where they had a few Indian friends who were more than happy to take him in. It was out of the question for Ranjana to accompany him, as the university would pay only for Mohan’s travel.
So on a Thursday evening, Mohan drove them to the airport, relinquishing the wheel only when he was properly in possession of his suitcase, his carry-on bag, a crooked fedora, and a light jacket. He waved good-bye to Ranjana while giving a quick admonition about keeping the car in good condition.
As she drove away, moving through the red and white cascade of lights clogging the airport roadways, she felt as if she had, until now, been covered in feathers and was finally molting off their fluffy weight. Dropping Prashant off at college had been heartbreaking because, in reducing her household to just herself and Mohan again, it had represented an entrenchment of her wifely duties. Prashant had hugged her, put his lips to her ear and whispered, “Good luck.” This was not meant as a general well-wishing but as a sympathetic gesture. Prashant and Mohan, like any Indian father-son duo, had engaged in many spiteful fights over the years—Mohan’s exactitude clashing with Prashant’s passivity—and Prashant knew that he was leaving his mother with a more potent version of the behavior he had found so maddening. Ranjana now understood Prashant’s relief fully because it was exactly what she felt in this moment. She wanted to go home, brew a pot of tea, put on some old Anup Jalota bhajans, and sit at her computer.
Which is almost exactly what she did, except when she reached for the bhajans, she espied an old Mukesh tape covered in a compact rectangle of dust. She popped it into their years-old stereo, which Mohan never let her touch—he always asked her what she planned to listen to and then put the cassette in for her, so protective was he of his electronic things, which seemed to have spirits and souls to him—and the music came wafting out in violins, sliding chords falling like sheets onto a bed, then the steady pulse of tabla and flutes, then Mukesh’s voice, singing about a young woman and the man she had yet to meet. Ranjana danced a dance that she had learned twenty years ago. She did not know how she remembered the steps, but her body repeated them now. Her feet, soled in the hoarfrost of age, moved in patterns that had last been inscribed into the floor of her childhood home. The world was telling her to go back to that time, before marriage, before motherhood, when anything was possible. She took the bobby pins from her hair, then resumed her dancing, pulling her fingers through that thick mess and imagining that her hair was much longer, straighter, and shinier. When she closed her eyes, she could be every bit the earth-tickling siren she wanted to be, especially with the right soundtrack.
*
Achyut knew about Mohan’s trip, and reliable as ever, he e-mailed Ranjana Friday morning to invite her out for the evening. That is, he invited her to come to the bar where he worked. A group of his friends was getting together that night at a nearby diner and then planned to head to the bar at around 10:00 P.M. Even though Ranjana had now hung out with Achyut several times—more trips to Paradise Island, random cups of tea at different cafés, even a trip to Panera for cinnamon rolls—Ranjana had never made plans for that late in the evening.