Read Online The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger - Free Book Online Page A

known since she was nine years old and her Devil Aunt had bought a television. She had seen it on
Dallas
, and
L.A. Law
, and
The Fall Guy
, and so there was no way to explain her ignorance to George.
    “I did know. I guess I just didn’t believe it would happen to me.”
    “You’ve kissed me a hundred times,” George said, in a voice that suggested to Amina they might be about to have their first fight. She wanted to avoid that, especially tonight, because if there was anything she believed about marriage, it was that arguing the way her parents did was a waste of time.
    “Not only kissing. The marriage in total.”
    “You didn’t believe we were getting married? What did you think we were doing?”
    It had started to rain, and that comforting sound lent the contents of the room a sudden, momentary familiarity, almost as if she’d seen them once long ago.
    “In Desh, you can make your plans, but they usually do not succeed. But in America you make your plans and then they happen.”
    To her relief, George finally smiled. “So you planned to kiss me, but you were surprised when it actually happened.”
    “Yes,” Amina said. “I was dumbstruck.”
    12 Kim had invited them in June, but soon after the wedding she suddenly went abroad again, this time to teach at a yoga retreat in France. It wasn’t until September that they finally made a date to meet her for a cup of tea, in her apartment on Edgerton Street downtown. George had said that the houses in this area were cheaply built, and that the style of Kim’s building—pale stucco ornamented with dark wooden beams—was a reference to a type of architecture popular in England hundreds of years ago. He said it looked pretentious on these modern Rochester apartments. But Amina liked the street where they’d parked their car. They walked past a women’s clothing boutique where everything in the window was black and white, a bookshop, and a café with tables outside, where college students read and talked in intimate groups. The air smelled of burning leaves, a scent somehow sharper and more distilled than it was in their yard in Pittsford.
    Kim lived on the fourth floor, and they were both breathing heavily by the time they got to the door. George had said that his cousin was twenty-seven, two years older than Amina, and so he could remember when his aunt Cathy and her husband, Todd, had adopted her. He had been seven when they brought her home—a nine-month-old baby girl—a year before Todd had gone off to Florida with another woman, abandoning his wife and child. George had said that Kim looked nothing like her mother, that she was tall and thin and dressed in an eccentric way, but when Amina pressed him for more details, he had become impatient and said that she was going to meet his cousin and could form an opinion herself.
    George rang the bell, but Kim must’ve heard them coming up the stairs, because she opened the door almost immediately. She was certainly tall, almost as tall as George, but unlike most of the women Amina had met so far in Rochester, she was very thin, with a flat chestand narrow hips. George and his adopted cousin had similarly sandy blond hair, and light-colored eyes (though hers were more green than blue)—but no one would have mistaken them for biological relatives. Kim was unmistakably pretty, with regular features, a smooth, high forehead, and a perfect, bow-shaped mouth. Her hair was wavy and hung nearly to her waist, and her skin was fair, with undertones of pink and gold. Most extraordinary, she was wearing a long Indian shirt, a kind of kurta with a red and purple pattern, over a pair of black leggings. Her feet were bare, and her toenails were painted a brilliant royal blue.
    “I can’t believe you’re finally here,” she said. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Amina—not the kind of hug George’s mother often gave her, which involved the arms and a glancing touch of the cheeks, but a true embrace,