The Paris Review - Fall 2016

Betsy was probably going to end. I wanted to tell my mother details about
Betsy. Both of her parents had worked, and for dinner Betsy and her sister
would heat hot dogs for themselves. Her mom would call hot dogs “tube
steaks.” Betsy liked to do laundry and fold clothes but not to vacuum. If she
had to choose between tennis and swimming, she would choose swimming.
Betsy agreed to meet with us—me and my mother. We sat on her white
sofa in the living room, and she placed a tray of tea and cookies on the coffee
table. When I had called her to ask if I could see her, she had said, “I am so
angry,” and her voice had been hard. “You didn’t behave like a good man. I
should have done something to take care of myself, but you didn’t act like a good
person.” Now, she was polite. She told my mother how nice it was to meet her.
My mother put the red box with the jewelry on the table. She opened
it to show the gold necklace and the earrings and the bracelets on the red
velvet. “Daughter, I hope you will hear our request to marry Ajay. He will be
a good husband. He is loyal and hardworking.”
Betsy looked at the jewelry once and then back up to my mom.
“Mrs. Mishra, I am not ready to get married. I like Ajay, but I don’t want to
marry him.”
My mother was silent for a moment. “Daughter, will you consider marrying
him.”
Betsy looked at us. “I don’t wish to get married,” she said softly.
“What he did was not respectful. It was not kind. But good things can
come from things that start badly. God is there in everything. He is there in
the good and the bad.”
“I will think, Mrs. Mishra, about what you have said.”
My mother was silent for a while, then, in an almost pleading voice, she
said, “Daughter, the baby is part of our family. It is part of your family, too.”
BETSY DID NOT WANT ME to come with her to the doctor. I called
her several times the day of the appointment, but it was dark out before she
finally answered the phone. “It went fine,” she said. “I’m just tired. I’m going
to sleep.”
My parents and I held the funeral ceremony for the baby on a weekday
morning at the Sri Ram temple near Princeton. We sat in a far corner, hidden
by pillars. There were only a few people in the temple. We had picked a
weekday morning so nobody would ask what we were doing.
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