Lost and Wanted(86)

“I’ve never understood what VES actually is.”

Neel shook his head. “Something to do with film? I don’t think they know themselves.”

We started talking about a class—I think it was Georgi’s Lie Algebras—and the people we knew who were also taking it. There was a romantic drama between two of the teaching fellows, and we covered that, too. We were talking a little too loudly, with a little too much animation.

“I liked what you said before.”

“About what?”

“Adopting a kid. If I wanted one, I’d do the same. I bet very few women say that.”

“Men either.”

“Yeah, but guys my age don’t talk about kids.”

“We hardly ever do.”

“You’re reasonable, is all I’m saying.”

“Wow, thanks.”

Neel laughed.

“I was about to compliment you on your organizational skills,” I told him. “But I didn’t want to be too forward.”

“What with your rationality and my systematic thinking, we would probably have amazing sex.”

Of course it’s only when I let go of my rationality and systematic thinking that I can have amazing sex. Neel smelled and tasted like salt, and he really looked at me; he wasn’t one of those people who close their eyes and go somewhere else during sex. He held my arms over my head and said, “Do you like this? And this?” He got up once and found a sheet in the closet, to put over Aunt Penny’s narrow attic bed. He insisted we keep the light on. There was a lot of talking. He said that I seemed younger than other girls he’d been with.

“I’m not talking about your mind,” he added, before I could protest. He ran his hand down my body, admiringly, put his hand between my legs and left it there. “Not your body either, but everything else.”

    I didn’t know what he meant—what was there, besides my mind (my brain) and my body?—but I could barely think while he was touching me. He was patient and made me wait a long time. We came together, incredibly, the first time.

Later we crept down the ladder shivering in our T-shirts and underwear. I took the sheet with me, and hoped I would be able to find the washing machine without asking Charlie. The house was quiet, and I assumed she had gone to bed downstairs. We climbed into the bed I was supposed to sleep in—I realized Charlie hadn’t given Neel a room—and got undressed again, but we didn’t touch each other again right away. Instead we talked: first Neel about his parents, who had left their lives and their families in Hyderabad when they were the same age we were, because his father had been accepted to medical school in Chicago. He said that his mother had told him recently that she’d cried every day for the first fifteen months they lived there.

“What happened at fifteen months?”

“She got pregnant with me,” he said.

I told Neel about my parents’ conscientious objection to Vietnam, the fabricated epilepsy diagnosis that kept my father out of the war. I might have overemphasized my parents’ counterculture ideals to make them seem more compelling. I said that they hadn’t been married when they had us.

Neel was interested in that. “Really?”

“They did it later, when we were kids. But it wasn’t any different from marriage, not calling it that.”

Neel nodded. “I guess it’s my Indian heritage showing, but I do want to get married.”

“I think it’s a little soon.”

He smiled at me. His teeth were very clean and white. “I’m thinking I want to marry you the second time around.”

“What?”

“After your adopted waif is out of the way, and we’re established as a theoretical-experimental physics power couple. The Ivies will have to duke it out for us—we’ll demand extremely generous terms, and only go somewhere with great weather.”

“I always liked the idea of MIT.”

    “I could do MIT,” Neel conceded. “But the University of Hawaii also has its appeal.”

“Don’t think I’m not insulted.” We were sitting against the headboard of the bed, and I pulled the sheet up over my chest. I was playing, but not entirely. He wanted me to be his second wife? Or was he joking, too?

Neel tugged gently at the sheet.

“Please don’t cover those up,” he said. “They’re perfect.”

I could tell I was blushing, and I was glad the room was dim. The only light came from a small bedside lamp, with a low-wattage, flame-shaped bulb.

“Don’t you think the really happy old people you meet are the ones who haven’t been together that long?”

“Your parents aren’t happy?”

“Who knows? They would never split up, though.”

“How come?”

“It’s not part of their culture—all that. But also because they did this huge thing together. Immigration was the great experience of their lives.”

Our legs were touching under the quilt, but we weren’t looking at each other directly. I could see a shadowy version of him in the mosaic-tiled mirror on the wall next to Aunt Penny’s armoire. He tended to gesture when he talked.

“They have a whole Indian community in Chicago now—all these couples came here around the same time, but I think each experience was very individual. Only the two of them really know what theirs was like. I don’t think they’d feel at home with anyone else.”