Ranjana seemed to be equally proficient in becoming American. The way she pulled the cheese, the way she managed a small sip of wine without its looking overly studied, it was clear that she had honed her social skills to something beyond culture. As Harit watched her eat, he wanted to seek out things that he did routinely here in the States that would never have been part of his days in India. He had an image of ties, of his ability to straighten them and make them into a fan of cloth, and that simple image sustained him throughout the rest of the dinner, even when his large quiche arrived, even when he saw the facility with which Teddy chewed his veal and Ranjana parceled her salad into frizzy, compact turns of a fork. He would find small gestures and moments like these that he could master, and these would move him out of his sheltered existence and into an assured, confident life. Life was digestion, then sustenance.
Naturally, Teddy insisted on dessert when they finished their entrées. He held the dessert menu toward the waiter, pointed to one item, and held up three fingers in the European way, with his thumb extended. As they had eaten soup together, they would eat sweets together. By now, Ranjana was looking at her cell phone every few minutes. She was mindful of the time, and Harit again felt supportive of this, the distinct attention to her husband. How reliable Indian women were! The reliability of Ranjana’s dedication as wife, the reliability of Swati’s smile, the reliability of his mother’s silent mourning. The last of these was particularly persistent. Harit had heard Jewish coworkers at the store speak of “sitting shiva” when a family member died, and he had originally thought that it was an homage to Shiva, the god of destruction. If ever a phrase had been appropriate for his mother, it was that one. She had been sitting shiva so thoroughly as to destroy most identifiable elements of herself. But in Ranjana, in this moment, Harit saw the opposite, the Brahma to his mother’s Shiva—newness, and creation.
Teddy was getting tipsy now, having had custody of the wine bottle all this time. His cheeks were flushed, and he had now unbuttoned the top button of his meringue shirt. “I’ve never been to India, you know,” he was saying. “Always wanted to go. A friend of mine is a flight attendant and gets to travel all over the world. Said India’s one of his favorite destinations. People there are so friendly—obviously—and he said the food is amazing as long as you know where to eat.”
“How did he find the proper places to eat?” Ranjana asked.
Teddy brought his wineglass back to his mouth, and his eyes glazed over in thought—a look that Harit now understood as an expression he often made himself, during their mall outings. He decided to avoid doing so in the future; it was incredibly off-putting.
“Well, that’s a good question, now isn’t it.” Teddy took a sip. “I suspect it was from the other flight attendants, but who even knows with that lot.” He chuckled, a sound as bitter as the wine, and Ranjana met Harit’s eyes. It was a complicit moment; it was clearly the two of them against Teddy, and although Harit felt guilty for being “against” the man who was trying to help him make a new friend, he realized that in any group of three, there were always two people against a third. Better to be part of the winning two.
Their desserts arrived. “Crème br?lée,” Ranjana said helpfully to Harit, and then Teddy spelled it. When he said the first e, he slanted his right hand one way; when he said the u, he brought his fingertips together, his palms facing downward to form a flesh roof. Harit remembered this from his aborted French lessons with Teddy—the occasional marks above letters that he found much less interesting than the ones in Hindi.
“Where do you have your hands manicured?” Ranjana asked Teddy, who flicked his hand at her again.
“I just want to take you home and wrap a big bow around you. I do them myself. I don’t trust other people to touch these babies. How about you?”
“I do them myself most of the time, too, but I treat myself every once in a while. Now that my son’s off at college, I think I should go more often.”
“Her son’s a freshman at Princeton,” Teddy said to Harit. Ranjana had blurted this out that night outside of FB.
“Yes. He is quite bright. He really wanted to go to Stanford. Since we begged him to be closer to us, he has set very strict rules for me and my husband. I guess he learned from the best.”
Harit chuckled—and was conscious that he was “chuckling.” It was a word he attributed to Teddy, to Mr. Harriman, to other people, but not to himself. He hadn’t enjoyed too much wine, either, so the chuckle was coming from something true. He had never been so happy to be the opposite of serious.
“What sort of rules did your son set?” Teddy asked.
“We can call him only once a day, and we can go visit only once a semester.”
“Wow—that sounds harsh, given that you’ve spent every day of his life with him.”
“It is a bit harsh, yes. But he will be home for fall break. And he made a good case for himself. He is majoring in chemistry, and his schedule is very grueling. He did very well on his AP exams and tested out of many early classes, so he is in very advanced classes already.”
“And your husband does not mind this?” Harit asked. He felt the difficulty with which he pronounced the word husband. It felt indelicate to be questioning Ranjana about her family. Still, he was genuinely curious.
“My husband is a professor of chemistry,” she said. “He, more so than anyone, understands the importance of one’s studies.” Harit recognized in this statement a tone of memorization. It was the type of tone he used when he explained his work at Harriman’s to other Indian people: It is a very helpful look at American culture.
“How did you and your husband meet?” Teddy asked.
Harit and Ranjana exchanged another knowing glance, the wrinkles around their eyes agreeing in amusement. It was a question that Americans loved to ask, but it went directly against the decorum of Indians, who knew that meeting for them did not often have the serendipity that Americans expected.
“We were promised to each other.” Again, a tone of memorization.
It was always surprising to see Teddy’s interpretation of being sorry, and this was one of those moments. He set his wineglass down and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “My apologies. I always forget about … the … arrangements.”
Harit and Ranjana shared another moment, another glance. “Americans are always finding different ways of saying ‘arranged,’” Ranjana said. “What I think they forget is that many American marriages are arranged, too. Not as obviously as many Indian marriages are, but people are certainly encouraged here, especially among the richer families. I am sure that Prashant—that’s my son—will encounter a certain number of them at Princeton.” Ranjana was holding her own wineglass by her mouth now, and there was a new confidence in her posture.
The feeling of loneliness kept returning to Harit like a cap placed back on his head. He had to remind himself not to forge too much of a kinship with Ranjana. It was so easy to find a sisterhood in her, to share their culture as they did dessert, in similar bites of sugary crisp. But though the food was the same, the mouths it entered were not twins. Ranjana’s mouth, as this latest exchange had shown, was capable of issuing eloquent, knowing sentences, whereas Harit’s mouth knew more of stutters. They were both Indian, but they had different types of wisdom.