Free The Cosmopolitans by Nadia Kalman

and said, “Why didn’t you go with him?’
    “I don’t know. I remember thinking perhaps he was shamed of me, because I was always catching up to the language of the country before. I spoke Spanish with a German accent, for example.”
    “Did you ever ask?”
    Pratik shook his head.
    “You should. I read in Atypical Development, one of the main reasons fathers and sons get alienated is that they feel rejected. Usually, they don’t really want to kill each other, they just need to unpack their issues.”
    She was happier now. Although he had no intention of questioning his father, a man so afraid of being held to account that he’d run away from home at age four after having eaten a forbidden korma , Pratik said, “I would not know how to begin such a conversation.”
    “You’d just say, ‘Look, Dad, I felt really rejected when you went to Paris without us in’ — what year was it?”
    Pratik supplied the year, a detailed description of his emotional state, and a theory about the roots of his father’s behavior. Yana loved his explanation of the importance of pride for Bengalis, reacting as though the desire to avoid embarrassment were an exotic Eastern proclivity, and supplied I-statements for him to inflict. She became increasingly calm, finally yawning a few times while instructing him to put his anger on the table, or mat, if that was what his family ate upon, and wandered back upstairs to sleep. Pratik cleaned their dishes, touching the glass her lips had touched, giving her a new private nickname: The Anger Manager, TAM for short, and imagining how they’d laugh about it once they were married.
     
     
     
     
    Jean
     
     
    The night before the wedding, Jean made Bobby rent Cool Hand Luke. Paul Newman was so sexy in the movie, but still, every few minutes, she jumped up, wanting to check on something, not sure what needed checking, thinking she heard the phone. She had a headache, and, in the bathroom, stretched the wrinkles back from her face. Was she supposed to feel bad about having been a tan, sexy college student? What was God trying to tell her with wrinkling and spotting and being sued by an ex-client and Bobby’s heart problems and this pale and unfashionable sub-European who’d be walking down the aisle tomorrow carrying the Strauss family Torah? Jean had offered the Torah in a moment of weak-minded benevolence upon hearing, back in February, that Milla had agreed to postpone the wedding and get married in August instead of May. A lot could have happened in those extra months, but hadn’t. To think: Jean had given money to free Soviet Jews.
    “Bobby,” she called from the bathroom, “Do you think we should call the kids tomorrow to wake them up?” They were staying at Jean and Bobby’s summer house, which was odd. Everyone knew the bride and groom slept separately the night before. Everyone knew about Hamptons traffic.
    Bobby shuffled up to the door, not even trying to hold in his stomach. Didn’t he realize that her stomach only looked all right because she was always holding her breath? Why couldn’t he try to be attractive for her? Either a man should be so naturally handsome, like Paul Newman, that a few blemishes don’t matter, or a man should make an effort. She had Bobby, who made a comment: “They have an alarm clock.”
    Jean walked to her dressing room, Bobby following. “They’re kids,” she said, “They’ll never wake up on time. Maybe that’s — okay.”
    “Jean…” Bobby said.
    Jean held her wedding outfit, a white silk shorts-suit, in front of her body. “I should have had Ronette let out the bust more.”
    “You can unbutton the top, right?”
    “It’s much too small.” Another thing gone wrong. Life was an errand, she had always told Malcolm. What she hadn’t told him, but should have, was that errands were not easy. She tried her hardest at everything, and look what happened.
    “Try it on,” Bobby said. Jean lit her closet and went inside. At her