Mismatch

Nathan was a student from India in the early 1990s at a Seattle community college, when he met and married Susan, a US citizen. They lived together for eight years before separating, but didn’t divorce for nearly ten years after their separation. Nathan got his legal residence based on the marriage, and became a citizen in the 1990s. He and Susan had no children.

In 2008, after years of living alone, Nathan signed up for an Indian matchmaking service. These services – there are many that match Indian nationals in the US seeking marriage – are a primary way for Indian professionals to meet and marry. This is vital, since often families of recent immigrant professionals don’t come with them. This kicks the legs out under the traditional Indian path to marriage, where families make the arrangement.

Nathan met three or four women in the Seattle area, but each match fizzled after the first date. He went further afield, and started corresponding with women in Oregon and California. He paid the match service fees for a year before he found Miranda, a high school teacher in a San Francisco suburb. She was in the US on a work visa, and was from the same Indian state as he. After two months of writing, posting photos and phone calls, Nathan flew to San Francisco to meet Miranda and her brother’s family, with whom she lived.

The first meeting was awkward. Nathan was smaller and thinner than Miranda had guessed, and was pockmarked from acne scars. He wasn’t witty or much of a talker. Miranda was more forceful, taller, and older-looking than Nathan had guessed. They sat at her brother’s dinner table while the brother and his wife tried to make conversation with Nathan about their memories of their home city. Miranda and Nathan had been born Christians, and belonged to the same evangelical denomination. It had given them plenty to talk about by phone – their churches, their faith – but didn’t lend itself as well to dinner-table conversation. Nathan talked about his high-tech computer programmer work, and didn’t let on that he was divorced. Miranda wondered why a forty-year-old man still wasn’t married. He said, “I guess I just never found the right woman.” He said he’d been work-focused to the exclusion of wife-hunting. He said he’d gotten his permanent residence in the US when his employer petitioned for him. Miranda barely spoke.

Nathan went back to his hotel room after the dinner meeting, and then flew home. He wrote right away to Miranda, to say he enjoyed the meeting and looked forward to seeing her again. He waited an agonizing week before she replied. She wrote, “As you can see, I’m no longer young. I was engaged when I was twenty, but my fiancée’s family thought my family was too poor, and he broke our engagement. Now I’m facing middle age with no husband or children. Our Christian faith can be a strong bond. I’m willing to continue to meet you and to see if a marriage is the right step.”

On this encouragement, Nathan flew several more times to San Francisco, and Miranda visited Seattle four or five times. She thought Nathan’s apartment rather small and dingy for a computer programmer who had focused on his work, and told him so. “I have to send a lot to my parents and brothers,” he said. “I’m building a compound for them all.” Hmmm, she thought, but then remembered that she was 36, nearly 37, with a teaching contract that would end in a year’s time. She’d have to go back to India, to nothing. Her parents were dead, and her brother and sister in the US, married to citizens.

She was prone to headaches, and got one nearly every time she visited Nathan. But I must marry, she thought. A year after meeting, they did marry, in San Francisco. She kept her job teaching – her contract was extended – and flew to Seattle for school vacations. Nathan visited her for long weekends.

She asked to see his workplace, but he demurred. “It’ll be dull for you”, he said. “No, really, it won’t”, she said. He said “No, family never visits; it’s not a good idea”. He took the car and left. She called a taxi, and went to the place he said he worked. No one had ever heard of him there.

She confronted him; he said he’d changed his job a week ago. She called him a liar. He insisted that he now worked at a new company. She insisted on seeing a paystub. He tossed one to her, and she saw the name of the company, and the fact that his hourly rate was $20, before he snatched it back. “Twenty dollars!” she shouted, “that’s not a programmer’s salary.” “Go to hell,” he said. “What is your job?” she shouted. “Tell the truth!” “None of your business”, he said. “Liar, liar!” she said, and went back to California without saying goodbye.

He called in a week. He said he was sorry about the lie, but he knew she wanted a professional. Every woman he’d ever dated wanted a professional. He didn’t have a degree, but he was a good man, a Christian, and he would be a good provider, a good father. He was a warehouse worker, and operated a fork lift.

She relented. What else could she do? The wedding had been in her church. It would be shameful to divorce. She traveled to Seattle during summer break. She was job hunting at high schools in Seattle and its suburbs. She and Nathan were looking for a bigger place, a condo. While organizing boxes, she found Nathan’s divorce certificate. It was dated nearly a year after he’d begun the relationship with her.

She was trembling as she held it out to him that night. “You lied! You lied!” She threw the certificate on the kitchen table. “You, you, you… you said you’d never been married!”

Nathan shouted, “Why are you snooping in my private papers? Now I’ll never petition for your residence! Get out of my house! No one will ever want you!” He slammed her against the wall, and tried to choke her.

Miranda took her suitcase, stuffed in her clothes, and ran out the door. She took a taxi to the airport. After a month, she filed for divorce. Nathan didn’t respond, and the divorce was granted. Her work visa expired, and her school let her go, since she couldn’t prove work authorization. She took a job selling clothes, in a store owned by her brother’s friend. She made minimum wage. She didn’t go back to her church, for shame. It wasn’t until another year went by that she learned that she could petition for her own legal residence in the US, based on the abuse she suffered. She is now a legal permanent resident. She has no plans to remarry.