Arranged Marriage: Stories by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

that was what he meant. But somehow I just couldn’t picture it. The details confused me. Would the baby have a thick dark mop of hair, like Indian babies do? Or would it be pink and bald, like American babies? What color would its eyes be? I couldn’t picture Richard in the role of father either, hitching up his Armani pants to kneel on the floor and change diapers, walking up and down at 2 A.M. tryingto quieten a colicky baby who burped all over his satin Bill Blass dressing gown.
    It was much easier to picture Krishna. He is running in the park. While I cheer, he pulls the kite up in a tight purple arc until it hangs high above his head, as graceful as any bird. On the first day of school, I drop him off at the gate, hand him his lunch money with a kiss, watch him follow the other kids in. He turns at the door to offer me a tremulous smile and a wave, scared but determined to be brave. At Disneyland, we scream with delicious terror as the roller-coaster car plunges down, down, down, faster than we ever imagined anything could ever be. At baseball games I clap for him till my palms are sore. I take him to buy his first car. I help him to fill out his college applications. Late in the night we sit as we’re doing right now and talk about life and death and girls and rock music or whatever else it is that mothers and sons talk about. There is no Richard in these pictures, and (I feel only a moment’s guilt as I think this) no need of him.
    Krishna was looking at me inquiringly. Glancing down, I saw we’d reached the end of the book—probably several minutes back.
    “It’s time for bed, young man,” I said. When I leaned over to give him a hug, his skin smelled of my jasmine soap. It pleased me that he no longer flinched away from me, not even when, after his bath every morning, I rubbed face cream on his scars. (They were probably too old for it to do any good, but it made me feel better.) And now, though he didn’t hug me back, he did tilt his cheek toward me for his customary goodnight kiss.
    As I watched him bring over his sheets and blankets (all carefully folded—he was a neat boy) to the sofa where he slept, I noticed that he’d put on a few pounds. It made me ridiculously happy, more than the time, even, when I straightened out the Von Hausen account which had been missing several million dollars. He was getting taller, too. Or maybe it was just the way he walked nowadays, shoulders pushed back, head up high.
    Tomorrow, I promised myself as I helped him with the sheets. Tomorrow I would start making discreet inquiries into the California adoption laws.
    Sitting across the desk from Ms. Mayhew while she went through my papers one more time, I was struck again by how cheerful the Foster Homes office was. I’d expected something drab and regulation gray, with lots of metal furniture. Instead, the room was bright with hangings and rugs, and through the big window the afternoon sun lit up the play corner, which was comfortably crowded with stuffed animals and bean bags and big, colorful blocks. They had books too, even the one about the mouse family that Krishna loved. I wondered if I could take that to be a good omen.
    Ms. Mayhew herself was quite different from the witch-like figure I’d conjured up, complete with horn-rimmed glasses, a thin pointy nose, and gray hair pulled into a tight, unforgiving bun. She did wear glasses, but they had thin gold rims that gave her a rather thoughtful look, and her short, fashionably bobbed hair curled attractively around her face.She was pleasant in a businesslike way—no wasting time or getting around rules with her—which I appreciated because that’s how I too was at the bank. When the county office I’d called referred me to her, she had explained that adoption was a lengthy and complicated process, but the State of California was always looking for responsible foster parents. It would be a good thing for me to try while I figured out if adoption was really for