The Marriage Code: A Novel Read online

  His parents looked at each other, and after apparently exchanging some kind of secret message sent over parental ESP, his father said, “We’ve received an email.”

  As if email were an ominous thing that bewitched you with some kind of sorcery once opened. “Okay . . . what was in the email?”

  His mother looked uncomfortable, her gaze drifting to the other side of the room. His father whispered, “It was from Sudhar.”

  “Don’t say his name in this house!” his mom said, muttering something else under her breath.

  Oh, so that was it. “How is he?” Rishi asked, curious but at the same time unsure if that was the right question to be asking.

  “They have a baby.” His father turned around, like he was worried that Dharini, Rishi’s sister, might be nearby, listening. So they were keeping it a secret.

  A baby? Was it a girl or a boy? He couldn’t ask. His mom would throw up her hands, storm out of the room, and spend the day moping around, thinking about how her life had been thrown upside down by Sudhar and his bad decisions. “Did you reply to him?” Was there a chance in hell that they would?

  “No, never!” His mom crossed her arms and stared off in the distance, not looking toward the camera, like she had to put her derision on display even for him.

  His father shook his head. “We’ve been focusing on other things. Actually, there’s something we wanted to discuss. Your sister is ready to start looking . . .”

  Rishi squinted at the screen, waiting for the sentence to finish. But then it hit him. There was only one reason for his sister to look for anything. It wasn’t a house, or a car, or a new job. It was a husband. He leaned against the cushions of the sofa and propped his legs on the coffee table. “Ah, okay . . .” He nodded. What else could he say? His little sister wanted to get married. That meant things. That meant things for him. Things he’d been avoiding. Like getting married himself.

  They just stared at him from the screen, waiting for his sentence to finish. This was the way his family, maybe most families, approached this conversation. Rishi had to initiate the ask. They had been through enough, and Rishi had to be the good guy, the savior, the one who needed to suck it up and do his familial duty so his sister could get married. So his sister could find a good husband.

  “I guess that means you want me to start looking, too, then?” he asked.

  His mother nodded. “Yes, you know if you’re not married, the boy’s parents will ask questions. ‘Why is this man not married? What’s wrong with him? He’s almost thirty.’ Also, if you wait any longer, who will you find? Someone your sister’s age? Those are the girls who are looking now. That is a big age difference. I don’t like it. You need a good girl.” His mom wrinkled up her nose and shook her head. As if there were only two types of girls—good and bad. And Rishi knew from experience that the size of the “good” population he’d be interested in rivaled the population of his current company apartment.

  He’d heard the speech so many times on the kind of wife he should have. A good girl. Good meant someone from their state of Tamil Nadu; someone who was their caste (Brahmin); someone who was from their community (Iyengar); someone who would get along with his family; someone his parents liked; someone Rishi was in love with, or could at least see himself falling in love with. Good was the impossible dream.

  Rishi had hoped he’d find someone naturally before marriage was forced down his throat. Like, he’d meet the perfect woman at work, at a bar, or having coffee. But he’d never found someone who fit all the parental criteria. Someone who’d had the qualities his sister’s future in-laws would also be looking for. None of that stuff mattered to him as much as it did to his parents or to his sister. Dharini was sweet and as traditional as the rest of his family, while Rishi had pretty much broken every traditional vow he was supposed to have been upholding.

  Girlfriends.

  Meat eating.

  Drinking.

  Sex.

  Surely there were a few others to add to the list—a list that his family would never know about.

  Besides, he knew how much weddings cost, and his parents didn’t have that kind of money. At least, not anymore. “Amma, how are you going to finance this wedding?”

  She waved at the camera and looked away, getting up from the chair. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

  No eye contact. Leaving the conversation. His mother clearly didn’t know how to answer him, which meant she also was going to get the money in a way that he shouldn’t know about, like shady high-interest loans. Or else they didn’t know how to get the money yet. “Where is Dharini?”

  Dharini wasn’t known for early-morning anything, which was part of playing the role of spoiled little sister. But, as if on cue, she came in from around the corner of the adjoining room. “Hi, big brother!”

  Sometimes when Rishi saw his sister, it was like looking in a mirror. They had the same nose that sharpened in a downward V shape, the same almond-shaped eyes, the same angular jaw, but softened on Dharini, so her face was rounder and fuller. Today, she wore dangling gold earrings, and kajal rimmed her eyes. It was a change from the weekend he’d gone home just a few weeks ago, when she still looked young and kiddish. Now she was transitioning into work mode. Grown-up mode. Makeup mode. He’d never actually seen her in makeup before.

  “I see you’re finally waking up before noon.” Rishi tried to clear his head of the realization that his sister was no longer a baby. He was still used to her being his kid sister, eight years younger, whom he’d always had to coo over and spoil.

  Now she was squinting one eye at him and giving him a teasingly annoyed look. “Yes, well, I am a working girl now.”

  Rishi choked on a laugh that threatened to come up. He decided not to tell her what else that could mean as his parents bickered their way into the kitchen and Dharini settled in front of the computer, small steel cup in hand.

  “Dharini, are you drinking coffee?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Uh, yeah. Like you said, I can’t get up at noon. I had to start drinking coffee.”

  “Where is my little sister who hates coffee and only drinks Bournvita? What have you done with her, and how did you get inside her body?” Was he that out of touch with her, or was this a recent change? The last time he’d seen her, he could have sworn she’d been guzzling glasses of her favorite vitamin-rich chocolaty drink with milk. A kid drink. Not coffee.

  “Oh, ha ha. Very funny. And I still drink Bournvita.” She picked up a glass of that awful concoction and gestured toward the computer.

  “So, tell me about your job,” he said. “How is it? Are you liking it?”

  She shrugged. “You know, it’s fine.”

  Rishi nodded. Dharini, like him, had essentially been forced onto a career path determined by their parents. They had three choices from which to decide their future: IT, economics, or medicine. “Those are the only jobs where you can make a decent living these days,” his father had said when Rishi finished up secondary school. Deciding what you wanted to do for the rest of your life didn’t seem to matter when you were sixteen anyway. Rishi didn’t like the sight of blood, and economics sounded boring, so he was stuck with IT.

  His sister, however, had been nurturing the fantasy of a career as a veterinarian for years. She hand-fed the peacocks that had infiltrated their neighborhood when the nearby forest was mowed down to build a housing development. She’d nursed a baby parrot that had been abandoned by its parents to adulthood. She lugged any leftover food at the end of the day to the street corner and fed it to the stray dogs that roamed the neighborhood. When they’d started following Dharini home, and their dad had forbidden her feeding them, she’d still found a way to sneak out on her bicycle and ride, crisscrossing through the neighborhood and dropping off food in random places.

  So when she’d had to make the call about her career and what she would study, it was a much more dramatic conversation. She’d settled on IT because, like Rishi, it seemed the lesser of the th
ree evils. If she became a doctor (for humans), she would be in school forever. And to get a good job as a doctor, she’d have to go abroad to study, and that was something she, unlike Rishi, had never wanted to do.

  Rishi sighed. “Some of your university friends are also at your office, though, correct?”

  “Yes, that is the nice thing.” She looked off to the side. “Except now Priya is getting engaged, so . . . we’ll see.”

  We’ll see meant We’ll see if she comes back to the office, or at least How long will it take before she gets pregnant and starts a family and then maybe won’t come back?

  “Is that why Amma and Appa said you are starting to look for someone?”

  She shrugged. “My job is boring, so why not have something else to do too?”

  Wow. Rishi was pretty sure his head had just completely retracted into his neck. So this was his sister—ready to embark on the new adventure of getting married and having a family, just because her job was boring. This was what happened when the optimistic, dreamy-eyed wannabe veterinarian was denied her career. Thanks, Mom and Dad. Not that he would have said any of that to her. She’d cry, tell him he was wrong and that she loved her parents. And it would all be true. She did love them and probably didn’t regret her job. It was just that she hadn’t had much of a choice, and they wanted the best for her. Besides, he was pretty sure his mother was grandchild hungry and would be pressuring Dharini, since her guilt trips hadn’t worked on Rishi.

  “You don’t think it’s too soon?” Rishi asked.

  “No, why? I’ve thought about it. I think it’s time.” She looked down at the table, lashes bashfully sweeping her cheeks. “They’ve told you to get married, too, then, is it? You don’t want to, and now they’re asking you to?” She looked up, a gleam of worry in her eye.

  “I just think it’s funny,” Rishi said, shaking his head but still smiling. “You start drinking coffee and getting up at eight in the morning, and now it’s time to get married? I guess that’s the order of the universe.”

  “Maybe . . . my universe, yes.” She lifted the steel cup of coffee to her lips again and tilted her head back to get the last of it and then sighed. “I have to go to my boring office job now. Don’t want them to wonder where I am.”

  “Bye, little sister! Tell Amma and Appa I said bye.” Rishi tried to hide his own momentary melancholy as he waved to the laptop and watched her picture disappear. He closed the computer and took a deep breath. So it was true. His baby sis was ready to get married.

  A few years ago, he had been ready to take the marriage plunge with his girlfriend, Sapna. He hadn’t cared what his family would say because he was in love. And then she’d gone and left him to get married to someone her family thought was appropriate. She’d insisted they would have never spoken to her again if she’d married a South Indian guy. Like the north and south of the country were so different that they couldn’t understand each other? An irritation burned in his chest as he still remembered the day she’d told him she was getting married—to someone who wasn’t him. He could hear her superficial words even now. Your mom doesn’t even speak Hindi. I mean, how will they even talk to each other? Like that was the most important factor in spending their lives together. He should have known better.

  It was like a wound that still ached when he thought about getting married. But the time had finally come. He didn’t want to let his sister down, because his mom was right, after all. How would it look if the older brother wasn’t married already? Well, the one who was still acknowledged by the family. Especially with everything else that had happened.

  But . . .

  His manager, Jas, had essentially promised him a promotion to lead the new Helix app development. The week before he’d left Bangalore, they’d sat down for lunch, and Jas, in a hushed voice, had told him, “I’ve got something for you.” Like he was going to do a drug deal instead of have a work conversation.

  “What’s that?” Rishi asked.

  Jas looked around, like people could actually hear them talking over the cacophony of plates and trays and hundreds of voices in the open-air cafeteria. “There’s a new app, and I think this opportunity will be the promotion we’ve been talking about. They’re working on it in the Seattle office, and I think you’d be perfect.”

  Everyone wanted to go to the Seattle office. If you got a chance, you went. Because of the exposure, the money, the opportunities. Corporate headquarters was the dream if you wanted to be successful. It was a no-brainer, and the chances were few and far between. “I’m definitely interested. Tell me more.”

  Jas briefed him on the current desktop version and how they were planning on turning it into an app next year. “I’m putting your name in the hat, and I don’t think anyone else would come close to being qualified. I’ve already talked to leadership about getting you the visa, and with your track record, I can practically guarantee it’s yours. We’ve talked about how the next step for you is leading a team, and I think this might be it. My suggestion is to just pack everything you’d need for at least a year.”

  For at least a year in Seattle he could live life on his own terms and still give Dharini the giant wedding she deserved. He could send twice as much money back home as he could with what he earned in Bangalore. With that money, they would adorn Dharini with the requisite amount of gold so she’d shimmer like a queen. Give silk saris to everyone in the family. Have a wedding hall and food that would feed a thousand guests. And not need those shady high-interest loans that landed people in more debt, which was the last thing his parents needed right now.

  And the gold crown plopped on top was an excuse to postpone his own marriage. His parents couldn’t refuse him if he was financing his sister’s wedding.

  His new job could help all of that become a reality.

  Because after everything they’d been through, if they wanted Dharini to find a good husband, one she deserved, then they wouldn’t be able to afford a wedding on their own.

  The Helix app meant salvation for him and his family. Now that his current project was nearing an end, that promotion couldn’t have come fast enough.

  CHAPTER 4

  Can you come to my office for a quick chat when you get in?

  Emma was picking up her morning latte extra early when she got the message from Maria. She was sleeping in the spare room she and Jeremy had previously used as an office, and she’d tried to leave the apartment before he emerged from the bedroom. Maria would be shocked to see she was in so early.

  But this message was ambiguous. A “quick chat” could mean that in fifteen minutes’ time she would be applying to one of the other ten thousand IT companies in Seattle, or she’d be celebrating her upcoming birth to a baby Helix that would soon sprout up on smartphones and tablets everywhere. If she ended up leading the app project, she would make sure they didn’t swipe away any of the features she and the team had painstakingly implemented.

  When she got to her office, she peeked through the inch of glass that wasn’t frosted to try to gauge Maria’s mood. Maria’s face always crumpled up like a paper ball when she had to give someone bad news. And, if she was happy, she flipped through cat memes, laughing at even the cheesiest ones. Whoever stuck their cat’s head through a piece of toast in their spare time had “cheery Maria” in mind.

  But now, her face was stone. Serious. Blank. Lasered in on her monitor. Anything could happen. A promotion. A dismissal. The apocalypse. She knocked on the door. “Come in.”

  Diagnosis: not the worst she’d ever sounded.

  “Hey, Maria.” But she wasn’t going to get too excited just yet.

  “Guess what? I have some news for you. I talked to the leadership team . . . and, are you ready for this?” She did a little drumroll on her desk. “I convinced them you should oversee the app development. They had another candidate in mind, but when I explained how Helix was your brainchild, and how ‘passionate’ you were,” she said with air quotes, which made Emma wonder if she should feel the te
eniest bit insulted, “it was almost unanimous that you should lead the team.”

  “Seriously?” She hadn’t realized how doubtful she was that they’d give her the job until now. Her face was stretching from the smile that was taking over.

  “Well, you may not be an app developer, but you’re closer to the project than anyone, you’ve synthesized all the data from the team, and you already have a vision for the next iteration. I don’t think a little ol’ app coding is going to stop you. Plus, it will be more like a leadership role, which will be a good experience for you. We’ve been talking about getting you promoted to the next level.”

  A flock of pastel cartoon birds twittered around Maria’s head. Sunlight streamed in from invisible windows. Rainbows and unicorns gamboled about on her desk. Was this actually happening?

  “This is just so amazing. Thank you for supporting me and believing in me and trusting that I will help lead this app to excellence!” She resisted jumping over the desk to hug her. This faith in Emma was exactly what she needed. Not just for her career but also as a sign that at least someone could still remember that she wasn’t a bad person whose boyfriend still wouldn’t talk to her. “You will not regret this, Maria.”

  “Well, hold on. I’m not done.” Maria’s smile shifted. Emma sensed something ominous, like the rainbows and birds over Maria’s head were being blown westward by rain and sizzling cracks of lightning. “In the meeting I had with leadership, they announced that not only are they indeed closing down our division, but they’re also making some budget cuts this upcoming year. They want to work on it somewhere that’s cheaper than Seattle, so the project will be moved over to the India office.”