Free Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page B

the law. Only when they ask if I have a boyfriend do I stumble. I know the right response. But if I deny Robert, something will go wrong between us, I just know it.
    â€œYes,” I say.
    Mr. Mehta’s Adam’s apple bobs in agitation, but his wife touches his arm. “We can’t be picky. We only have two days left before the Masala Cruise.”
    From the back room: “Yes, yes, no need to be picky. Just dump the old woman with whoever shows up, so what if they suffocate her with a pillow and steal her jewelry. Why don’t you kill me off yourselves? Then you can go on all the Masala Cruises you want.”
    Perhaps I’ve been overly optimistic about my champion.
    â€œYou’re hired,” Mrs. Mehta says. I wait for them to introduce me to my charge, but they hurry me to the door. I tell them I need half the money up front, as Blanca advised. When Mr. Mehta hesitates, the voice snaps, “You mean you’re ready to leave me at the mercy of someone you can’t trust with a few measly dollars?”

    The reason for my fight with Robert is a stuffed raccoon. He won it from Victor, his best buddy, the result of a pool-playing bet involving something called a bank shot with throw (the intricacies of which I fail to grasp), and installed it on our chest of drawers two weeks ago. Apparently, the raccoon is valuable. More important: Victor had shot and stuffed it himself, and he was terribly cut up at having to part with it. He offered to buy it back from Robert for two hundred dollars.
    â€œAnd you refused?” I eyed the creature with disbelief. Its upper lip was lifted in a snarl, and one front leg was shorter than the other (though that could have been the result of Victor’s taxidermy). It appeared ready to spring off the chest of drawers and launch itself upon us.
    â€œNaturally,” said the love of my life. “You should have seen Victor’s face.” He ran his hand over the raccoon’s back. “Feel the fur—it’s incredible, soft and bristly at the same time.”
    I declined. The only thing I found incredible was that he expected me to sleep in the same room with this monstrosity.
    â€œWant a shower?” Robert offered as a peace gift.
    I considered sulking, but I love showering with Robert, his fingers unbuttoning my clothes, letting them drop where they will, the way he holds me as he soaps my back, as though I were a child who might slip and fall.
    But afterward, I couldn’t sleep. I stared at the sliver of moonlight that had edged through our window, illuminating our belongings: secondhand waterbed, two gooseneck lamps that didn’t match, chest of drawers, a teetering stack of books. Coming from my parents’ overcrowded home, I’d felt proud of our minimalism. But tonight it frightened me, how either one of us could walk out the door and not feel we’d left behind anything we cared for.
    Except, now, the raccoon.
    I became aware of a musky odor. The raccoon? Surely it couldn’t smell, except of whatever embalmment Victor had used. Was it the scent of another woman? I couldn’t stop myself from imagining Robert at work, his hands caressing female curves. What did he say to them? What made him the most popular massage therapist at Bodywork?
    The raccoon’s glass eyes glinted. Its tiny teeth shone, so white they could have been in a toothpaste ad. I pushed myself closer to Robert and held him tightly until he gave a drowsy grunt and twitched away.
    In the morning I wanted to confess my fears, exorcise them with laughter. But I couldn’t. In her twenty-one years of marriage, my mother had never suspected my father. When one morning at breakfast, as she was serving him a crisp dosa, he told her that he loved someone else, she smiled, thinking it was one of his jokes. Here, she said. Have some coconut chutney.
    So instead I asked Robert to move the raccoon to the living room. He refused. I claimed he was