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was the only person I knew well enough in America to ask.
    I kept my mother’s letter for a long time at the bottom of my jewelry case, under the thick gold wedding bangles that I no longer wore because they were too elegant for my pedestrian Sacramento life. I wasn’t sure if I should send it to Tarun, if that would be disloyal to my mother.
    And then during a move to a new house, I lost the letter. By then it was too late, anyway.
    THE FIRST FEW months after moving to this country, Tarun called me almost every day. He hated cooking for himself. Hated coming home in the evenings to an empty room. It was so cold in Vermont, he felt he was slowly freezing, one organ at a time. I forced myself to ignore the pleading in his voice. Sandeep was dead against any family—his or mine—coming to live with us.
Landing on my head
was the term he used. So I would offer Tarun a variation of We-all-went-through-the-same-thing, before-you-know-it-you’ll-get-used-to-this-lifestyle. It was hard to think of anything more profound to say with the baby screaming in my ear or the dal boiling over and Sandeep, like most husbands brought up in India, no help at all. Tarun would be silent for a moment. Then he would say good-bye in a quiet voice.
    FOR A LONG time I didn’t know about the rift between Ma and Tarun, although I wonder now whether it was more that I didn’t want to know. I’d had my second baby by then, and Sandeep and I were finally falling in love. It seemed such a precarious miracle, our little house of kisses. I was afraid that even one careless word would topple it.
    So when I rang up India and Ma would say that it had been a long time since she had heard from Tarun (she was too proud to say any more), could I call him and make sure he was okay, I wouldn’t let myself take it seriously.
Oh, Ma!
I’d say, my gay voice drowning out her hesitant words,
Quit worrying! He isn’t a baby anymore
. I’d leave a brief message on his answering machine telling him to write home, and add something cheerful about all the naughtiness his nieces had been up to. Those days, I worked hard at being cheerful because Sandeep had informed me that men disliked gloomy women.
    Still, one night after Ma had been more insistent than usual, I spoke to Sandeep. I waited till after lovemaking, when he was usually in an expansive mood, and then I asked if we could have Tarun stay with us for the summer holidays.
    “I’m the only family he has here, after all,” I said. “And he’s always been so shy, not the kind to make lots of friends—”
    Sandeep touched my cheek lightly. “We’re just getting to know each other. Let’s give ourselves—and Tarun—a little more time alone, shall we?” When I hesitated, he sighed. “That’s the trouble with our Indian families, always worrying too much. It’s
good
for your brother to be on his own for a while. He’s probably having a great time at the university. For all you know, he has half a dozen girlfriends and would much rather you didn’t keep tabs on him.”
    I wanted to tell Sandeep, who was an only child, about those afternoons in Calcutta, the smell of wheat rutis browning on the skillet, the way, when Tarun entered the kitchen, a certain sternness he carried to all his day’s activities fell away from his face. But Sandeep was yawning. In a moment he’d remind me that he had to get up early and go to work. I watched his lips, the way they stretched into a thin oval around his large, even teeth.
    I could have argued, I know that now. I could have threatened. Sandeep needed a wife as much as I needed a husband. He feared aloneness as much as I did. But in those early days I was too unsure of myself, too much in love with being in love. It was easier to let myself believe him, to snuggle against the warm curve of his backbone and relinquish responsibility. To tell myself as I gave in to the sweet tiredness of after-sex sleep that I would have a real heart-to-heart chat with Tarun next