Arranged Page 5

  Chapter 5

  Try This on for Size

  I’m sitting at my desk a few days later, working on an article for the next issue. It’s a year-end summary of the latest trends in home electronics called “Anne Sees the Future.” The irony of this title is not lost on me.

  “Hey, A.B.,” William says, popping around the edge of my cubicle. He takes great pleasure in trying to scare the living crap out of me a couple of times a week. Clearly, he’s fighting every one of his thirty-six years as hard as he can.

  “Will. I. Am. What’s the haps?” I crumple my latest page full of scribbles and throw it toward the wastebasket I’ve positioned far enough away to make it a challenge. “And the crowd goes wild as Blythe scores her third basket of the quarter!”

  William looks sympathetic. “That kind of morning?”

  “You said it.”

  He dumps a pile of magazines off my ugly beige visitor’s chair, sits down, and runs his hands through his already sticking-up hair. He’s wearing a light gray sweater and black pants that suit his tall, almost gangly frame.

  I put another piece of paper on my desk and smooth it flat to start over. As I bite the end of my pen, I notice that William is giving me a bemused look.

  “You know what this thing on your desk is for, right?” He taps his fingers on the top of my computer screen.

  “For keeping up with celebrities and their lifestyles?”

  “Seriously, A.B. Why are you still writing things out longhand?”

  I think about it. “I guess it’s because my dad was an old-movie freak, and I grew up watching All the President’s Men and The China Syndrome and Bringing Up Baby . . .”

  “Good films.”

  “Awesome films. Anyway, all the journalists in those movies typed on typewriters that went clackety-clack, ding! at the end of each line, and when their stories didn’t work, they crumpled up the paper—”

  “And threw it in the wastebasket.”

  “Exactly.”

  He shakes his head. “You became a journalist so you could play scrapped-story basketball?”

  “No, but it’s definitely a perk.”

  “Why not get a typewriter, then?”

  “Have you ever tried using one of those things? The littlest mistake, and you have to start over. Besides, there’s no spell-check, and you know what a crap speller I am.”

  “Why did I hire you again?”

  “My winning smile?”

  He slaps his hand to the side of his head. “Oh, yes, of course, that’s it!”

  “Did you come here for some specific reason or just to make fun of me?”

  “Both, actually.”

  “Can you get to it? I’ve got a deadline, and my editor’s a real stickler.”

  His green eyes glow. “You heard Larry left?”

  Larry was the features columnist who replaced dumped-me-on-my-birthday John.

  “Of course.”

  “Right, well, he took off without completing his column, which leaves me with a gaping hole in the next issue.”

  I feel a flutter of excitement. “Are you asking me to fill that hole?”

  “For this issue. The job gets posted tomorrow.”

  The features column! Writing about real human beings instead of just the things humans buy. And the money, shit, the money is so much better. Not that I write for money, but still.

  “You don’t need to post that job.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come on, William. Let me do it.”

  He looks uncertain. “I don’t know—”

  “I’m ready. I know I am.”

  “It’s a lot more work—”

  “I know exactly what it is. Please, William? Don’t make me beg.”

  The side of his mouth curls up. “Now, that might be fun to see.”

  “Fucker.”

  “Nice.”

  “So?”

  “How about this: If you deliver on this column, you’ll get the gig.”

  I feel a burst of happiness and fight off the urge to hug him. He’s not so down with the hugging. Plus, it might give the Fashion Nazi ideas I’m pretty sure she already has.

  “Thank you so much. That’s amazing!”

  He grins. “Just don’t say I never do anything for you.”

  “Never again. What should I write about?”

  “It’s not enough that I give you the slot, I have to come up with an idea for you too? You really want me to baby you like that?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “What?”

  “I forgot to call my brother and congratulate him on being pregnant again.”

  “What’s this, baby number ten?”

  “Just four, I think.”

  “Maybe you should interview him.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  He leaves, and I swirl my chair around in excitement. When it stops spinning, I check my email for the thousandth time, searching for signs of life from my agent. When I find nothing, I resist the near-constant urge to email her—Well? Well? Well?— and call my brother. He works a hundred hours a week in a big law factory, pumping out debenture agreements and share certificates. Or at least that’s what I think he does. I’ve never paid much attention.

  “Gilbert Blythe.”

  “Wow, you actually answered your own phone. I didn’t know you could do that anymore.”

  “What’s up, Cordelia?”

  That’s the name Anne of Green Gables wished she was called as a child. Gilbert’s been torturing me with it my whole life.

  “Knock it off.”

  “What?” he asks innocently.

  “I told you never to call me that again.”

  He chuckles. “I assume Mom gave you our news.”

  “You should get yourself fixed.”

  “What’s wrong with having a big family?”

  “Nothing. I’m happy for you.”

  “Lots of people are having big families these days. You should try it.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “There’s probably even a dating service out there for people who want to have big families. Like that family on TV with nineteen children and counting. eHarmony, the supersized edition.”

  My heart leaps into my throat. Christ, that’s hitting a little too close to the bone.

  Wait a second, maybe I can use this. Maybe there’s a way I can find out more about arranged marriages and advance my career.

  “Is that your not too subtle way of telling me I should be Internet dating?”

  “Are you saying you haven’t been Internet dating? I just assumed that’s where you met Stuart.”

  “You’re a humor machine today, aren’t you?”

  Maybe I could write an article about modern women who have arranged marriages. Not about Blythe and Company, but what if I tracked down some of those women I read about on the Internet . . .

  “I do what I can,” Gilbert says. “Do you want to come over for dinner next week? The girls have been asking for you.”

  “Yeah, that sounds great. Look, Gil, I’ve got to go. I’ve got a deadline.”

  “Sure. Call Cathy to set up dinner.”

  “Will do.”

  Two days later, I’ve got a binder full of research and three appointments: one with a marriage broker and two with real, live arranged-marriage couples.

  The marriage broker’s office is located in a small storefront on a street full of Indian restaurants and fragrant grocery stores. I’ve been here before—the street is within walking distance of the apartment I shared with Stuart (his apartment still, I assume). The Indian restaurant we always used to order from is just down the block. The street smells like memories, and I feel stressed and furtive as I ring the bell, even though it’s the middle of the business day and Stuart will be far away, at work.

  A buzzer sounds and the door unlatches. An extremely short woman with crinkled chocolate skin is standing behind a standard-issue Office Depot desk. Her long black hair is streaked with gray and pulled
back from a high forehead into a schoolteacher’s bun. She’s wearing a navy blazer and has a saffron-colored scarf tied loosely around her neck.

  “Mrs. Gupta?”

  She smiles broadly. “You must be Mrs. Blythe.”

  “Ms. Blythe. Yes.”

  “Ah, yes. Ms. Such a silly term, don’t you think?”

  “Um, I guess.”

  She makes a sweeping gesture. “Will you sit?”

  I sit in one of the black office chairs facing her desk. I pull out my notepad and pen and rest them on my knees.

  “So,” Mrs. Gupta says, “you are interested in writing about our service?”

  “Yes, that’s right . . .” I trail off as I catch sight of the credenza behind her. It has three Mac computers on it, and their giant screens contain a grid of smaller screens filled with live video of women wearing headsets.

  What the fuck?

  Mrs. Gupta follows my gaze and glances over her shoulder. “Oh, yes, those are my little marriage bees.”

  “Pardon?”

  “They work in my call center—in Bangladesh. Doing customer service.”

  You mean in case someone’s marriage is broken?

  “You don’t arrange the marriages personally?”

  She smiles. “I used to do all the matches personally. But now, with the Internet, we can help so many more people.”

  “So arranged marriage is big business?”

  “Big business? Yes, I suppose it is. Though we prefer to call them planned marriages.”

  “Is that a marketing thing?”

  “You might say that. Our young people today, they are so influenced by your culture. An arranged marriage seems old-fashioned to some, something their parents did, and their parents before them.”

  “And is it their choice? To use your services?”

  “Of course, Ms. Blythe. The young men and women, they want this, as you will see for yourself.”

  “Yes, thanks for setting that up.”

  “I’m happy to oblige. But tell me, what angle are you taking on this story?”

  “What do you mean?”

  She lays her hands flat on her desk. A burnished gold band digs into the flesh of her wedding-ring finger. “You are not the first journalist to call me, Ms. Blythe. Every couple of years, this idea for an article comes into fashion again, and a woman—always a woman—calls and says she wants to learn about what I do. And always these articles, they are the same.”

  “How so?”

  “Mocking.”

  My pen feels slippery in my hand. I know exactly what she means. The articles in my bag are heavy on the mock, many with a side of snark. And until extremely recently, that was exactly how I’d write this article, if I were writing it at all.

  “That’s not my angle.”

  “Oh?”

  “I promise. I have . . . no interest in making you or your service look bad.”

  She smiles, but her eyes say, We’ll see about that.

  Next up are Mr. and Mrs. Singh. I know in about fifteen seconds that I’m going to get very little for my article and even less that will dispel the whiff of crazy I’ve been smelling since my first appointment with Ms. Cooper.

  The Singhs own and operate one of the stores down the street from Mrs. Gupta’s office, and as I approach it, I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten here before. If I remember correctly, it has a small eat-in counter where they serve excellent but very spicy curries. Sure enough, my nose starts to itch the minute I push open the door.

  A bell above my head tinkles, announcing my presence. The store has four aisles, all too close together and stuffed with colorful foreign packaging. A tall, beefy man in a red turban is standing behind the lunch counter, wearing a serious expression. He has one of those faces that could put him anywhere from thirty-five to fifty-five, and his upper lip is covered by a black mustache. A much younger—twenty-three at the outside—shy-looking woman is tending the cash. Her hair is partially covered by a gauzy white shawl that trails across her shoulders.

  “Mrs. Singh?”

  “Yes,” answers the man in a gruff, unaccented voice.

  My gaze lingers on the woman for a moment. She gives me a nervous smile and looks away.

  “What do you want?” the man asks.

  “Are you Mr. Singh?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Anne Blythe. The reporter. Mrs. Gupta sent me?”

  His eyes shift back and forth. “Oh. Yes. She called.”

  “She said that it was okay, that you agreed to be interviewed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is now a good time?”

  He frowns, clearly thinking about saying no, although the store is empty and the street is deserted. Maybe it’s just me, but I’d talk to a reporter simply to break the monotony. This store is freaking depressing.

  “Are you eating?” he says eventually.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Have you had lunch?”

  I look at the bubbly pot of goodness behind him. My stomach rumbles. “I could eat.”

  His eyes narrow, but he nods. I take a seat at the counter, placing my notepad on the worn Formica. He busies himself at the stove, not bothering to ask what I want. I watch him cut a piece of dough and form it into a recognizable shape—naan bread. I sense someone at my elbow. Mrs. Singh has come up behind me on cat feet. She slips onto the chair next to me. She says nothing, just smiles a shy smile.

  When the naan has been placed into the oven, Mr. Singh turns to me with his arms folded across his chest. “That bakes quickly. It has to be watched.”

  I take this as tacit permission to start asking questions right quick. “Yes, okay. So, you and Mrs. Singh, you had a . . . planned marriage?”

  Mrs. Singh raises her hand to cover her mouth.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Mr. Singh says.

  “And do you mind telling me why you chose to marry this way?”

  “I was too busy to look for a wife,” he says without even the hint of a smile.

  Nice.

  “And you, Mrs. Singh?”

  She looks surprised that I’m addressing her directly. “I also want husband,” she says haltingly. “I ask my parents, and they agreed. It is normal, normal way.”

  Mr. Singh grunts and turns to the oven. A blast of heat escapes as he opens the door, lifting out the golden naan with a large, flattened wooden spoon. He dips a ladle into the bubbling pot and removes a generous serving into a round copper dish. He sets it down in front of me, and I know immediately that it’s going to be hot, spicy hot, too spicy to eat.

  “Why are you writing this article?” he asks.

  “Oh. Um, well, it’s something that’s always interested me, the way different cultures treat marriage . . .”

  “But you are not married?” Mrs. Singh sighs softly.

  I feel like sighing too. “No.”

  “You going to eat that?” Mr. Singh asks.

  “Of course. It looks delicious.” I pick up my spoon and swirl it through the reddish-brown sauce. My nose starts to twitch. I’m going to sneeze any minute now, any second now . . .

  I bring my hand up too late and let out a full-body sneeze that has enough force to spray what I can now confirm is an extremely hot vindaloo up onto the Plexiglas screen between Mr. Singh and me. I reach for a napkin, gasping, my skin tingling.

  “Bless you,” Mrs. Singh says as she covers her smile.

  I feel so discouraged after meeting the Singhs that I almost don’t go to my last appointment. But then I think about the uncertainty in William’s eyes when I asked him for this job, and the doors it could open for me, and I suck it up.

  Ashi Sharma, speaking to me on condition of anonymity, lives with her husband and two children in a two-bedroom walk-up not far from my apartment. When she opens the door, the first thing that strikes me is her beauty. She has almond-colored skin, light brown eyes, and thick black hair that falls past her shoulders in waves. She’s wearing a loose pair of jeans and a T-shirt with a baby
handprint on the shoulder. The baby in question is sitting fat and happy on her hip.

  We settle onto a toy-filled couch in the sunny living room while her three-year-old runs loud circles from us to the dining room to the kitchen and back again. I ask her a few preliminary questions, and she fills me in on her background. She was born in Mumbai into an upper-middle-class family. When she was twenty-two, she did a master’s degree at Oxford in English literature. She even had a serious boyfriend there, a Canadian Ph.D. student. But when it came time to marry, she chose the traditional path her parents encouraged. I ask her why.

  “You know, there are days when I ask myself that question,” she says in her soft voice, her accent a flawless British. “Even though I grew up with parents whose marriage was arranged, I always thought that was the old way of doing things. But I realized as I grew up that we’re too quick to reject the old ways sometimes. We confuse information with wisdom. And were my friends who married for love happier than my parents? It didn’t seem like it. It seemed to me that they were often lazy about their relationships. They didn’t work at them. And when that heady falling-in-love sensation went away, they were disappointed.”

  “When did you meet your husband?”

  “He was here and I was at home, so we corresponded before we met face-to-face, but I suppose we met two days before the wedding. Maybe three?”

  “What was that like?”

  She shifts her baby in her arms. “In a word: awkward.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “Yes, but you know, that changed very quickly. We had so much in common, you see. That’s the real benefit of using a broker like Mrs. Gupta. She ensures that everything is right. Caste, religion, values. It is not just ‘Oh, we have a girl for you, Mr. Sharma, very pretty girl.’ ” She says this last part with the stereotypical accent of a street peddler, hunching over. “A good marriage broker looks at hundreds of possible mates. If it’s left to the individual, it depends so much more on chance.”

  I scratch out some notes. “So it’s all about similar backgrounds?”

  “No, I don’t think so. That’s part of it, but . . . from almost the first email I received from my husband, I felt this connection—one I’d never felt before. The same things made us laugh, made us angry. I’d find myself looking forward to his emails, and after a few weeks we were zipping messages back and forth for hours sometimes. He just . . . understood me. Do you know what I mean?”