Free The Middleman and Other Stories by Bharati Mukherjee Page B

tea. We had a ritual, starting with the real estate pages, passing remarks on the latest tacky towers. Not for us, we’d say, the view is terrible! No room for the servants, things like that. And our imaginary children’s imaginary nanny. “Hi, gorgeous,” I said. He is gorgeous, not strong, but showy. He said, “I’m leaving, babe. New Jersey doesn’t do it for me anymore.” I said, “Okay, so where’re we going?” I had an awful job at the time, taking orders for MCI. Vic said, “I didn’t say we, babe.” So I asked, “You mean it’s over? Just like that?” And he said, “Isn’t that the best way? No fuss, no hang-ups.” Then I got a little whiny. “But
why?
” I wanted to know. But he was macrobiotic in lots of things, including relationships. Yin and yang,hot and sour, green and yellow. “You know, Rindy, there are
places.
You don’t fall off the earth when you leave Jersey, you know. Places you see pictures of and read about. Different weathers, different trees, different everything. Places that get the Cubs on cable instead of the Mets.” He was into that. For all the sophisticated things he liked to talk about, he was a very local boy. “Vic,” I pleaded, “you’re crazy. You need help.” “I need help because I want to get out of Jersey? You gotta be kidding!” He stood up and for a moment I thought he would do something crazy, like destroy something, or hurt me. “Don’t ever call me crazy, got that? And give me the keys to the van.”
    He took the van. Danny had sold it to me when the Marines sent him overseas. I’d have given it to him anyway, even if he hadn’t asked.
    â€œCindi, I need a turkey roaster,” I tell my sister on the phone.
    â€œI’ll be right over,” she says. “The brat’s driving me crazy.”
    â€œIsn’t Franny’s visit working out?”
    â€œI could kill her. I think up ways. How does that sound?”
    â€œWhy not send her home?” I’m joking. Franny is Brent’s twelve-year-old and he’s shelled out a lot of dough to lawyers in New Jersey and Florida to work out visitation rights.
    â€œPoor Brent. He feels so
divided
,” Cindi says. “He shouldn’t have to take sides.”
    I want her to ask who my date is for this afternoon, but she doesn’t. It’s important to me that she like Ro, that Mom and Dad more than tolerate him.
    All over the country, I tell myself, women are towing new lovers home to meet their families. Vic is simmering cranberries in somebody’s kitchen and explaining yin and yang. I check out the stuffing recipe. The gravy calls for cream and freshly grated nutmeg. Ro brought me six whole nutmegs in a Ziplock bag from his friend, a Pakistani, who runs a spice store in SoHo. The nuts look hard and ugly. I take one out of the bagand sniff it. The aroma’s so exotic my head swims. On an impulse I call Ro.
    The phone rings and rings. He doesn’t have his own place yet. He has to crash with friends. He’s been in the States three months, maybe less. I let it ring fifteen, sixteen, seventeen times.
    Finally someone answers. “Yes?” The voice is guarded, the accent obviously foreign even though all I’m hearing is a one-syllable word. Ro has fled here from Kabul. He wants to take classes at NJIT and become an electrical engineer. He says he’s lucky his father got him out. A friend of Ro’s father, a man called Mumtaz, runs a fried chicken restaurant in Brooklyn in a neighborhood Ro calls “Little Kabul,” though probably no one else has ever noticed. Mr. Mumtaz puts the legal immigrants to work as waiters out front. The illegals hide in a backroom as pluckers and gutters.
    â€œRo? I miss you. We’re eating at three, remember?”
    â€œWho is speaking, please?”
    So I fell for the accent, but it isn’t a