Don't Let Him Know (3 page)

Of course, now she didn’t have to worry about anything. June was vegetarian too, so she always had some company. Though as they had dinner she sometimes wondered if June ever looked at the chicken curry Amit and Neel ate with a trace of wistfulness.

‘This chicken curry is wonderful, just like we used to have at home on Sundays,’ Amit would say.

‘Why don’t you have another piece?’ she would reply automatically.

Sometimes she’d wonder what she would do if he suddenly said ‘Why don’t
you
have a piece?’ But he never did. Some days she wanted someone to say, ‘Okay, you have followed the rules long enough. You are free now.’ But no one ever did.

As she listened to the woman with the pink halter-top talk about her affair, Romola’s mind was far away. She got up and restlessly paced the kitchen, looking in the refrigerator. The leftovers were covered with plastic wrap – a little dal and some green beans. She would have to make something for dinner. The ads had come on again. She stood and watched a glistening steak and a pillowy cloud of mashed potato. ‘How could they eat such a big piece of raw-looking meat?’ she wondered uneasily.

But then the burgers came on – dancing patties of meat, rich brown and succulent, wrapping pieces of lettuce around them like green shawls, hugging giant wheels of tomatoes and then hopping in between two toasty buns as if tucking themselves into bed. Romola stood at the refrigerator staring at the burgers with great attention. Then she put down the little Tupperware of dal and firmly shoved it to the back behind the low-fat no-fat yogurts.

‘I am going to McDonald’s,’ said Romola to the television. ‘And no one can stop me.’

She went to the bathroom, opened her make-up kit and first pencilled in her eyebrows. She took her precious Max Factor compact, dark beige, and powdered her face. She debated over the lipstick and decided a touch of lip-gloss would be enough. Finally she looked at herself. ‘Presentable,’ she said approvingly. ‘Quite presentable.’

As the front door clicked shut behind her Romola opened her handbag in a panic convinced she had forgotten the house keys. But there they were right next to the loose change. She really needed to go through her coins and separate out the Indian coins from the American ones. There were even a couple of pennies left over from a long-ago stopover at Heathrow airport. She tugged at the door to make sure it was really shut and then glanced around her as if to see if anyone was watching.

It was the middle of the day and the streets were completely empty. A child’s tricycle lay on its side on the neighbour’s lawn and that was the only thing askew on their little street. Amit liked cul-de-sacs, he said it gave them more privacy. Romola felt if it were not for the television, the privacy would just eat her alive. The houses, neatly painted and shuttered, were like a row of toy soldiers. Each came with its own barbecue grill, a patch of trimmed lawn and a pool in the back. As she walked past them she noticed some still had the morning newspaper lying outside encased in its yellow plastic wrap. She had taken their newspaper in already. She liked to do that first thing in the morning before anyone woke up. Then after everyone had left she liked to read about the sales. There was always a sale on at Macy’s.

She walked to the end of the street and then turned left towards the main road. A young man on a bicycle whizzed by. She felt his eyes on her and she suddenly felt conscious of her sari, her navy blue cardigan, her grey hair. She wrapped the cardigan even more tightly around her and started walking. She had memorized the route from all the trips she had made to the grocery store with Amit or June in the car. She knew she would have to walk three blocks on the main street till she came to the first light. Then she would have to cross the street. That light changed a bit too fast for her. She reckoned she had better wait in the middle till it changed again. The flashing little man always unnerved her with his anxious urgency.

Once she had crossed the street she would have to walk by the gas station with its three kind of gas (choices everywhere) and then head towards the shopping centre. She would walk past the supermarket, past the mounds of watermelons piled outside, a pyramid of green with one on top sliced open to show its juicy pink heart. She knew she would be tempted to go in and buy something but not today. She had deliberately left the supermarket coupons at home.

Romola felt as if she was acting in her own play. For a moment she felt a small surge of confidence. Everything seemed to be in place. The dentist next to the supermarket, the nail salon, the chiropractor and then at the end of the block the McDonald’s. The golden arches looked just as welcoming as they did on TV. The crayon-bright reds and yellows, brightly coloured and cheerful, made her happy. There was a tiny play area outside with a slide. It was empty and dusty but it still made her smile; the plastic blocks looked like something little fairy-tale elves might assemble. She looked at the windows – the burgers were moist and glistening, the lettuce and tomato looked as if they had just been ripped from the fields. 99c, the signs screamed at her.

Romola stood on the street clutching her handbag. Then she glanced around her and took a deep breath and pulled at the door. Nothing happened. She stepped back, the first wrinkle of uncertainty clouding her adventure. A young boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, came running up casually behind her, pushed the door and loped inside. She smiled. The sign said quite clearly PUSH. She caught the door before it shut fully and with a movement that was both deliberate and steady, pushed it open.

Immediately she felt like she was really, finally, in America.

Everything started to spin around her but at the same time it seemed to all be moving extremely slowly. The restaurant rushed at her in a crazy plastic whirl of reds and yellows and then receded into the walls of pale muted pinks and greens. Rising up on all sides around her, Formica and plastic were bathed in cheerful music as if soaked in sunny syrup. Someone had left their tray on the table and she watched a lonely matchstick of a fry sitting in a smear of ketchup. She heard children yelling and disembodied voices calling out numbers in Mexican accents. Two women unwrapped their burgers in front of her. One had a young girl who carefully ate a fry, dipping its head into a little white container of ketchup, as thick as blood. She could smell it all – a dense low-hanging smell of deep frying that left her both nauseous and ravenous at the same time.

She looked at the confusing array of options on the menu board. Holy trinities of fries, burger and soda beckoned to her. Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, she thought and chuckled to herself at the blasphemy. $4.89 for a combo. $5.29 for a combo. That was a lot of money, she said to herself. I thought these places were cheap. It took her a while to figure out the difference between the chicken sandwich and the chicken sandwich meal. She hovered at the edges reading everything, squinting at all her options. She wished it explained what a McDouble was.

The kitchen was a hum of activity. It moved briskly like a conveyor belt as people picked up their packets or trays of food and walked away. Giant baskets of fries emerged from vats of oil, plump and golden. Women with white gloves slapped dark brown patties on buns and smeared white mayonnaise with a rat-a-tat-tat rhythm as if they had done this all their lives. Red digital numbers flickered and changed over, always going up, up and up.

For a moment she wished June was there to help her navi-gate through this. But she knew they would never go there. Neither June nor Amit approved of fast food. Especially now that Amit wanted to be a chef, she thought. They tried to eat everything organic. Romola thought it was a ridiculous waste of money. She had no idea why anyone would pay more for those spindly deformed cauliflowers when they could get those big perfectly round ones for half the money. But she held her peace. She might be the cook but it was not her kitchen.

Every time they drove past a McDonald’s, Romola would look longingly at the Golden Arches. They had come to Calcutta she had heard but she had never been to one. To her, they seemed like the entrance to an exotic world. Every time they went out for dinner, Amit would say, ‘What do you want today, Ma? Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican, or good old Indian?’ and Romola would dutifully answer, ‘Whatever you like, dear, I don’t mind.’ But she looked wistfully at the bright neon-lit procession of fast food places, forbidden and alluring, friendly sirens in the dark night – Taco Bell and Burger King and Pizza Hut. But McDonald’s, she knew, was the king of them all. Neel was her only ally in these dinner expeditions. ‘I want burgers, Mom,’ he might say sometimes but he was easily overruled. Romola once thought of adding her vote to his but was afraid she’d be accused of spoiling her grandson with junk food. Once they went to a cafe that served gourmet burgers. Romola wondered what one might taste like. ‘Oh, they are just really bad for you, and anyway it’s beef,’ said Amit as he ordered a skinless chicken sandwich for himself. Romola followed June’s lead and got a spinach salad. She felt like a cow, she thought crossly, when it arrived, a heap of green leaves with little specks of dark-red cranberries and crunchy walnuts. What was this American obsession with chomping leaves?

Now she looked nervously into her bag to make sure she still had the money and walked up to the counter. The woman behind the counter could not have been more than eighteen years old. Romola noticed the big hoops in her ears, the perfectly trimmed bangs of her hair, the swatch of blue eye shadow.

‘Can I help you?’ Her bored voice sounded anything but helpful.

Romola nodded and then took the plunge. She pointed at a burger on the menu but could not say anything. At the last moment she had thought she would just get some fries or maybe the chicken sandwich. But then she felt that now she was here she had to have a burger. She knew it was beef and it would probably be revolting but she had to have it. It was her only chance.

‘A burger – that one,’ she pointed at the menu.

‘With cheese or without?’ said the girl as if reading from a script.

Romola shook her head. The girl looked at her quizzically and then went on to her next line.

‘The meal or just the sandwich?’

‘Just the sandwich.’ Romola had a little more confidence in her voice now. This might just work, she thought.

‘Will that be all?’

Romola nodded.

‘Forheretogo?’ said the girl.

Romola stared at her baffled. This was not a line she knew, there was nothing like that in the script she had carefully rehearsed in her head.

‘Forheretogo?’ said the girl again. Romola suddenly became aware of other people in the restaurant. She craned forward nervously clutching her half-open bag. The girl looked at her, her plucked eyebrow arched in a question mark. Romola felt her confidence starting to drain away. She felt like she had when she had first boarded an international flight by herself. She’d been convinced she had got on the wrong flight and was on her way to Australia instead of America. The questions and fears and worries bubbled in her stomach but dried in her throat. She shook her head and stepped back.

The girl was still looking at her. So was the man standing next to her.

‘Yes,’ she said hoping that was the right answer.

‘Forheretogo?’ said the girl again as if demanding a secret password and Romola lost her nerve. Grabbing the handbag to her chest, she suddenly turned around and started walking as fast as she could towards the door. The girl said something else behind her back but she refused to turn around and face that counter again. She walked past the trash can, its flap swinging as someone emptied their tray in it. She walked past the children with their ketchup-stained faces. She waited for someone to grab her and turn her around and frogmarch her back to the counter but no one seemed to even notice that she was there any more. Her little order had sunk without a trace like a stone in the pond and life went on with not even a ripple to show for its brief, flickering existence.

Before she knew it, she was out of McDonald’s, standing in the sunshine on the street, her heart pounding. She put her hand against the wall and looked at the giant picture of the burger and fries and felt an overwhelming sense of failure sucking her down. She wished her maid was here so she could give her ten dollars and say, ‘Go get me a burger with some fries. Mind you, make sure they are fresh and hot.’ She stood there staring at the playground and the dusty plants that lined it. The clown’s painted grin mocked her.

A young boy and his father came out of McDonald’s behind her. She stared at the paper bag they held so casually in their hands and wondered what was in it.

As she wandered out into the parking lot a car beeped at her, making her jump. A young couple gestured at her to get out of the way. She stepped back and watched them go towards a sign marked ‘
Drive-thru
’. She could see another menu board there and she walked up to it and started reading again. She stood there, smelling exhaust fumes and drinking in the dizzying array of choices. A truck drove up and stopped. A disembodied voice said, ‘Can I take your order please?’

The man in the truck looked liked he worked in construction. She could see white paint spattered all over his baseball cap and shirt. ‘Number four,’ he said confidently. And then added, ‘Could you make that large fries please?’

‘Will that be all?’ said the voice.

He grunted yes.

The voice repeated back the order and gave him the total. No one said that funny ‘Forheretogo’. The truck took off, leaving Romola at the sign. She slowly started moving along the building to see where the food came out. She could hear the bustle of the kitchen from outside, the clamour of voices, the order numbers and the canned music. As she walked to the counter she saw another car pull up. The driver reached out, money changed hands and he picked up his food and left. Romola thought this was a marvellous invention. You did not even have to step out of your car any more. She wished she had a car and could just drive up and drive away with a bag of burgers.