didn’t get close to the water, which was calm here. “Are you afraid to let her swim?” she asked Alice. Olivia seemed to have no intention of even wading.
“She won’t go in…not since Karen… Many things.” She paused, then shrugged. “She gets frightened now. Often.”
Tracy understood.
Alice changed the subject, although she kept an eye on her granddaughter as she addressed Janya. “So you let Wanda…teach you? Not that handsome husband?”
“You think Rishi is handsome?”
Alice looked puzzled. “There is so much character…” She reached up and touched her own face.
Tracy slid her cover-up over her head so she could enjoy the sun. “You didn’t think he was handsome when you agreed to marry him?”
Janya reached for a bunch of grapes and began to slowly pick them apart. “There was another man… One I was in love with.” She looked up, as if surprised she had said the words out loud.
Tracy realized Janya felt she’d said too much. “We all have a man like that, Janya. The one who got away. I fell in love with mine in college. He married a sorority sister.”
“Mine? High school,” Wanda said. “A real low-down skunk, too.”
Janya didn’t look reassured enough to suit Tracy. “It must have been hard, though, to love someone and not be allowed to marry him,” Tracy said.
“We were to be married….” Janya picked at her grapessome more.
“Now we’re all going to wonder,” Wanda said. “So you’d better just spill it. Who would we tell?”
“I think it’s a story you will find hard to understand.”
“I’d like to hear, if you’d like to try,” Tracy said. “And is it worse than my divorce? Did you find out he was a felon who was about to go to jail for the rest of his life? Top that, if you can.”
Somehow, that seemed to be just the right thing to say.
“In India, we still have arranged marriages, but not, perhaps, as you think of them. In our villages, they can be like that. The bride might even meet her husband for the first time at the wedding. But for most of us, it’s not that way. Our families have a great deal to do with who we choose. They introduce us to acceptable men, make suggestions about others. And in the end, of course, they tell us whether they approve.”
“Let me guess,” Tracy said. “Your family didn’t approve your choice?”
“No, quite the opposite. After I finished school, I spent a year in Manchester, England, studying English and living with friends of my father’s.”
“That explains why your English is so good,” Tracy said.
Janya nodded her thanks. “Then, when I came home—changed, of course, from the relative freedom I’d experienced in Manchester—I met Darshan. He was the most attractive man I’d ever seen, handsome, considerate.”
“Fairy tale,” Alice said.
“I was attending the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. He was nearing the end of his course work in a connected school of architecture. We met at a party. My cousin, Padmini, introduced us. Padmini and I were like sisters. Her family was wealthier than mine, with more prestige, but we had always spent many hours together. I trusted her with my life and my heart.”
“That’s never a good idea.” Wanda reached for a plum. “I have a sister, and much as I love her, I wouldn’t trust her with a bottle of ketchup, not if I was planning a meat loaf in the next week or so.”
Janya talked faster now. “Padmini warned me about Darshan. She said he wasn’t free to marry just anyone. His father was high in the government and expected to be the next chief minister of our state. His family was not only powerful, but rich and well-connected. Darshan might not submit to a traditional arranged marriage, but he would follow his parents’ lead, and his choice would need to be advantageous to his family and above reproach.”
“And you weren’t?” Tracy asked.
“Until that moment I had never thought of myself as just anyone. My family was good, my marriage prospects as good. I had been told I was beautiful. I might not be technically inclined, but I received a bit of praise for my art, particularly my painting. My reputation had never suffered, and I was convent educated. I thought that the man who wed me would be the lucky one.”
Alice had been quiet; now she leaned forward and rested her fingertips on Janya’s knee. “He had…no taste, dear.”
Janya smiled and covered Alice’s hand for a moment. “Thank you, Alice. But as it