Page 306 - DENG201_ENGLISH_II

English - II

Notes “What do you mean you don’t know? You should write it down. What if you need to make it again,
for a party or something?”
“I’ll remember,” she said. She covered the bread basket with a dishtowel that had, he suddenly
noticed, the Ten Commandments printed on it. She flashed him a smile, giving his knee a little squeeze
under the table.

Sanjeev is serious about his religion. He is a Hindu and he doesn’t want anything to
do with Christian things.

“Face it. This house is blessed.”
The housewarming party was scheduled for the last Saturday in October, and they had invited about
thirty people. All were Sanjeev’s acquaintances, people from the office, and a number of Indian couples
in the Connecticut area, many of whom he barely knew, but who had regularly invited him, in his
bachelor days, to supper on Saturdays. He often wondered why they included him in their circle. He
had little in common with any of them, but he always attended their gatherings, to eat spiced chickpeas
and shrimp cutlets, and gossip and discuss politics, for he seldom had other plans. So far, no one had
met Twinkle; back when they were still dating, Sanjeev didn’t want to waste their brief weekends
together with people he associated with being alone. Other than Sanjeev and an ex-boyfriend who
she believed worked in a pottery studio in Brookfield, she knew no one in the state of Connecticut.
She was completing her master’s thesis at Stanford, a study of an Irish poet whom Sanjeev had never
heard of.
Sanjeev had found the house on his own before leaving for the wedding, for a good price, in a
neighborhood with a fine school system. He was impressed by the elegant curved staircase with its
wrought-iron banister, and the dark wooden wainscoting, and the solarium overlooking rhododendron
bushes, and the solid brass 22, which also happened to be the date of his birth, nailed impressively to
the vaguely Tudor facade. There were two working fireplaces, a two-car garage, and an attic suitable
for converting into extra bedrooms if, the Realtor mentioned, the need should arise. By then Sanjeev
had already made up his mind, was determined that he and Twinkle should live there together,
forever, and so he had not bothered to notice the switch plates covered with biblical stickers, or the
transparent decal of the Virgin on the half shell, as Twinkle liked to call it, adhered to the window in
the master bedroom. When, after moving in, he tried to scrape it off, he scratched the glass.
The weekend before the party they were raking the lawn when he heard Twinkle shriek. He ran to
her, clutching his rake, worried that she had discovered a dead animal, or a snake. A brisk October
breeze stung the tops of his ears as his sneakers crunched over brown and yellow leaves. When he
reached her, she had collapsed on the grass, dissolved in nearly silent laughter. Behind an over
grown forsythia bush was a plaster Virgin Mary as tall as their waists, with a blue painted hood
draped over her head in the manner of an Indian bride. Twinkle grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and
began wiping away the dirt staining the statue’s brow.
“I suppose you want to put her by the foot of our bed,” Sanjeev said.
She looked at him, astonished. Her belly was exposed, and he saw that there were goose bumps
around her navel. “What do you think? Of course we can’t put this in our bedroom.”
“We can’t?”
“No, silly Sanj. This is meant for outside. For the lawn.”
“Oh God, no. Twinkle, no.”
“But we must. It would be bad luck not to.”
“All the neighbors will see. They’ll think we’re insane.”
“Why, for having a statue of the Virgin Mary on our lawn? Every other person in this neighborhood
has a statue of Mary on the lawn. We’ll fit right in.”

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