The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  Suddenly Gogol and Maxine have the house in Chelsea to themselves. They stray to the lower stories, making love on countless pieces of furniture, on the floor, on the island in the kitchen, once even on the pearl gray sheets of Gerald and Lydia's bed. On weekends they wander naked from room to room, up and down the five flights of stairs. They eat in different places according to their moods, spreading an old cotton quilt on the floor, sometimes eating take-out on Gerald and Lydia's finest china, falling asleep at odd hours as the strong summer light of the lengthened days pours through the enormous windows onto their bodies. As the days grow warmer, they stop cooking complicated things. They live off sushi and salads and cold poached salmon. They switch from red wine to white. Now that it is just the two of them it seems to him, more than ever, that they are living together. And yet for some reason it is dependence, not adulthood, he feels. He feels free of expectation, of responsibility, in willing exile from his own life. He is responsible for nothing in the house; in spite of their absence, Gerald and Lydia continue to lord, however blindly, over their days. It is their books he reads, their music he listens to. Their front door he unlocks when he gets back from work. Their telephone messages he takes down.

  He learns that the house, for all its beauty, has certain faults in the summer months, so that it makes all the more sense that it is a place Gerald and Lydia annually avoid. It lacks air-condi tioning, something Gerald and Lydia have never bothered to install because they are never there when it's hot, and the enormous windows lack screens. As a result, the rooms are sweltering during the day, and at night, because it is necessary to leave the windows wide open, he is ambushed by mosquitoes that shriek in his ears and leave angry, lumpen welts between his toes, on his arms and thighs. He longs for a mosquito net to drape over Maxine's bed, remembers the filmy blue nylon boxes that he and Sonia would sleep inside of on their visits to Calcutta, the corners hooked onto the four posts of the bed, the edges tucked tightly beneath the mattress, creating a temporary, tiny, impenetrable room for the night. There are times when he cannot bear it, turning on the light and standing on the bed, looking for them, a rolled-up magazine or a slipper in his hand, as Maxine, unbothered and unbitten, begs him to get back to sleep. He sees them sometimes against the peach-colored paint on the wall, faint specks engorged with his blood, just inches below the ceiling, always too high up to kill.

  With work as an excuse he does not go home to Massachusetts all summer. The firm is entering a competition, submitting designs for a new five-star hotel to be built in Miami. At eleven at night, he is still there, along with most of the other designers on his team, all rushing to finish drawings and models by the month's end. When his phone rings, he hopes it's Maxine, calling to coax him into leaving the office. Instead it's his mother.

  "Why are you calling me here so late?" he asks her, distracted, his eyes still focused on the computer screen.

  "Because you are not at your apartment," his mother says. "You are never at your apartment, Gogol. In the middle of the night I have called and you are not there."

  "I am, Ma," he lies. "I need my sleep. I shut off the phone."

  "I cannot imagine why anyone would want to have a phone only to shut it off," his mother says.

  "So, is there a reason you're calling me?"

  She asks him to visit the following weekend, the Saturday before his birthday.

  "I can't," he says. He tells her he has a deadline at work, but it's not true—that's the day that he and Maxine are leaving for New Hampshire, for two weeks. But his mother insists; his father is leaving for Ohio the following day—doesn't Gogol want to go with them to the airport, to see him off?

  He knows vaguely of his father's plans to spend nine months at a small university somewhere outside Cleveland, that he and a colleague have received a grant funded by the colleague's university, to direct research for a corporation there. His father had sent him a clipping about the grant printed in the campus newspaper, with a photograph of his father standing outside the engineering building: "Prestigious grant for Professor Ganguli," the caption read. At first it was assumed that his parents would shut up the house, or rent it out to students, and that his mother would go too. But then his mother had surprised them, pointing out that there would be nothing for her to do in Ohio for nine months, that his father would be busy all day at the lab, and that she preferred to stay in Massachusetts, even if it meant staying in the house alone.

  "Why do I have to see him off?" Gogol asks his mother now. He knows that for his parents, the act of travel is never regarded casually, that even the most ordinary of journeys is seen off and greeted at either end. And yet he continues, "Baba and I already live in different states. I'm practically as far from Ohio as I am from Boston."

  "That's no way to think," his mother says. "Please, Gogol. You haven't been home since May."

  "I have a job, Ma. I'm busy. Besides, Sonia's not coming."

  "Sonia lives in California. You are so close."

  "Listen, I can't come home that weekend," he says. The truth seeps out of him slowly. He knows it's his only defense at this point. "I'm going on a vacation. I've already made plans."

  "Why do you wait to tell us these things at the last minute?" his mother asks. "What sort of vacation? What plans?"

  "I'm going to spend a couple of weeks in New Hampshire."

  "Oh," his mother says. She sounds at once unimpressed and relieved. "Why do you want to go there, of all places? What's the difference between New Hampshire and here?"

  "I'm going with a girl I'm seeing," he tells her. "Her parents have a place there."

  Though she says nothing for a while, he knows what his mother is thinking, that he is willing to go on vacation with someone else's parents but not see his own.

  "Where is this place, exactly?"

  "I don't know. Somewhere in the mountains."

  "What's her name?"

  "Max."

  "That's a boy's name."

  He shakes his head. "No, Ma. It's Maxine."

  And so, on the way to New Hampshire, they stop off at Pemberton Road for lunch, which is what, in the end, he has agreed to. Maxine doesn't mind, it's on their way, after all, and she is curious by now to meet his parents. They drive up from New York in a rented car, the trunk packed with more supplies that Gerald and Lydia have asked them for on the back of a postcard: wine, bags of a particular imported pasta, a large tin of olive oil, thick wedges of Parmesan and Asiago cheese. When he asks Maxine why these things are necessary, she explains that they are going to the middle of nowhere, that if they were to depend on the general store they would have nothing to live on but potato chips and Wonder bread and Pepsi. On the way to Massachusetts, he tells her things he figures she should know in advance—that they will not be able to touch or kiss each other in front of his parents, that there will be no wine with lunch.

  "There's plenty of wine in the trunk of the car," Maxine points out.

  "It doesn't matter," he tells her. "My parents don't own a corkscrew."

  The restrictions amuse her; she sees them as a single afternoon's challenge, an anomaly never to be repeated. She does not associate him with his parents' habits; she still cannot believe that she is to be the first girlfriend he's ever brought home. He feels no excitement over this prospect, wants simply to be done with it. Once they get off at his parents' exit he senses that the landscape is foreign to her: the shopping plazas, the sprawling brick-faced public high school from which he and Sonia graduated, the shingled houses, uncomfortably close to one another, on their grassy quarter-acre plots. The sign that says CHILDREN AT PLAY. He knows that this sort of life, one which is such a proud accomplishment for his own parents, is of no relevance, no interest, to her, that she loves him in spite of it.

  A van from a company that installs security systems blocks his parents' driveway, and so he parks on the street, by the mailbox on the edge of the lawn. He leads Maxine up the flagstone path, ringing the bell because his parents always keep the fr
ont door locked. His mother opens the door. He can tell she is nervous, dressed in one of her better saris, wearing lipstick and perfume, in contrast to the khakis and T-shirts and soft leather moccasins Gogol and Maxine both wear.

  "Hi, Ma," he says, leaning over, giving his mother a quick kiss. "This is Maxine. Max, this is my mother. Ashima."

  "It's so nice to finally meet you, Ashima," Maxine says, leaning over and giving his mother a kiss as well. "These are for you," she says, handing Ashima a cellophane-wrapped basket full of tinned pâtés and jars of cornichons and chutneys that Gogol knows his parents will never open or enjoy. And yet when Maxine had shopped for the things to put in the basket, at Dean and DeLuca, he'd said nothing to dissuade her. He walks in with his shoes on instead of changing into a pair of flip-flops that his parents keep in the hall closet. They follow his mother across the living room and around the corner into the kitchen. His mother returns to the stove, where she is deep-frying a batch of samosas, filling the air with a haze of smoke.

  "Nikhil's father is upstairs," his mother says to Maxine, lifting out a samosa with a slotted spatula and putting it on a paper-towel-lined plate. "With the man from the alarm company. Sorry, lunch will be ready in a minute," she adds. "I was not expecting you to arrive for another half an hour."

  "Why on earth are we getting a security system?" Gogol wants to know.

  "It was your father's idea," his mother says, "now that I will be on my own." She says that there have been two burglaries recently in the neighborhood, both of them in the middle of the afternoon. "Even in good areas like this, these days there are crimes," she says to Maxine, shaking her head.

  His mother offers them glasses of frothy pink lassi, thick and sweet-tasting, flavored with rose water. They sit in the formal living room, where they normally never sit. Maxine sees the school pictures of Sonia and him in front of blue-gray backgrounds arranged on the mantel of the brick fireplace, the family portraits from Olan Mills. She looks at his childhood photo albums with his mother. She admires the material of his mother's sari, mentioning that her mother curates textiles at the Met.

  "The Met?"

  "The Metropolitan Museum of Art," Maxine explains.

  "You've been there, Ma," Gogol says. "It's the big museum on Fifth Avenue. With all the steps. I took you there to see the Egyptian temple, remember?"

  "Yes, I remember. My father was an artist," she tells Maxine, pointing to one of his grandfather's watercolors on the wall.

  They hear footsteps coming down the stairs, and then his father enters the living room, along with a uniformed man holding a clipboard. Unlike his mother, his father is not dressed up at all. He wears a pair of thin brown cotton pants, an untucked, slightly wrinkled short-sleeved shirt, and flip flops. His gray hair looks more sparse than the last time Gogol remembers, his potbelly more pronounced. "Here's your copy of the receipt. Any problems, you just call the eight hundred number," the uniformed man says. He and his father shake hands. "Have a nice day," the man calls out before leaving.

  "Hi, Baba," Gogol says. "I'd like you to meet Maxine."

  "Hello," his father says, putting up a hand, looking as if he is about to take an oath. He does not sit down with them. Instead he asks Maxine, "That is your car outside?"

  "It's a rental," she says.

  "Better to put it in the driveway," his father tells her.

  "It doesn't matter," Gogol says. "It's fine where it is."

  "But better to be careful," his father persists. "The neighborhood children, they are not very careful. One time my car was on the road and a baseball went through the window. I can park it for you if you like."

  "I'll do it," Gogol says, getting up, irritated by his parents' perpetual fear of disaster. When he returns to the house, the lunch is set out, too rich for the weather. Along with the samosas, there are breaded chicken cutlets, chickpeas with tamarind sauce, lamb biryani, chutney made with tomatoes from the garden. It is a meal he knows it has taken his mother over a day to prepare, and yet the amount of effort embarrasses him. The water glasses are already filled, plates and forks and paper napkins set on the dining room table they use only for special occasions, with uncomfortable high-backed chairs and seats upholstered in gold velvet.

  "Go ahead and start," his mother says, still hovering between the dining room and the kitchen, finishing up the last of the samosas.

  His parents are diffident around Maxine, at first keeping their distance, not boisterous as they typically are around their Bengali friends. They ask where she went to college, what it is her parents do. But Maxine is immune to their awkwardness, drawing them out, devoting her attention to them fully, and Gogol is reminded of the first time he'd met her, when she'd seduced him in the same way. She asks his father about his research project in Cleveland, his mother about her part-time job at the local public library, which she's recently begun. Gogol is only partly attentive to the conversation. He is overly aware that they are not used to passing things around the table, or to chewing food with their mouths fully closed. They avert their eyes when Maxine accidentally leans over to run her hand through his hair. To his relief she eats generously, asking his mother how she made this and that, telling her it's the best Indian food she's ever tasted, accepting his mother's offer to pack them some extra cutlets and samosas for the road.

  When his mother confesses that she is nervous to be in the house alone, Maxine tells her she'd be nervous, too. She mentions a break-in at her parents' once when she was by herself. When she tells them that she lives with her parents, Ashima says, "Really? I thought no one did that in America." When she tells them she was born and raised in Manhattan, his father shakes his head. "New York is too much," he says, "too many cars, too many tall buildings." He tells the story of the time they'd driven in for Gogol's graduation from Columbia, the trunk of the car broken into in just five minutes, their suitcase stolen, having to attend the commencement without a jacket and tie.

  "It's a pity you can't stay for dinner," his mother says as the meal comes to an end.

  But his father urges them to get going. "Better not to drive in the dark," he says.

  Afterward there is tea, and bowls of payesh made in honor of his birthday. He receives a Hallmark card signed by both of his parents, a check for one hundred dollars, a navy blue cotton sweater from Filene's.

  "He'll need that where we're going," Maxine says approvingly. "The temperature can really drop at night."

  In the driveway there are hugs and kisses good-bye, initi ated by Maxine, his parents reciprocating clumsily. His mother invites Maxine to please come again. He is given a piece of paper with his father's new phone number in Ohio, and the date on which it will be activated.

  "Have a good trip to Cleveland," he tells his father. "Good luck with the project."

  "Okay," his father says. He pats Gogol on the shoulder. "I'll miss you," he says. In Bengali he adds, "Remember to check in on your mother now and again."

  "Don't worry, Baba. See you at Thanksgiving."

  "Yes, see you," his father says. And then: "Drive safely, Gogol."

  At first he's unaware of the slip. But as soon as they're in the car, buckling their seat belts, Maxine says, "What did your dad just call you?"

  He shakes his head. "It's nothing. I'll explain it later." He turns on the ignition and begins to back out of the driveway, away from his parents, who stand there, waving, until the last possible moment. "Call to let us know you've arrived there safely," his mother says to Gogol in Bengali. But he waves and drives off, pretending not to hear.

  It's a relief to be back in her world, heading north across the state border. For a while it's nothing different, the same expanse of sky, the same strip of highway, large liquor stores and fast-food chains on either side. Maxine knows the way, so there is no need to consult a map. He has been to New Hampshire once or twice with his family, to see the leaves, driving for the day to places one could pull off the road and take pictures of and admire the view. But he's never been so far nort
h. They pass farms, spotted cows grazing in fields, red silos, white wooden churches, barns with rusted tin roofs. Small, scattered towns. The names of the towns mean nothing to him. They leave the highway behind and drive on steep, slender, two-lane ribbons of road, the mountains appearing like enormous milky waves suspended against the sky. Wisps of cloud hang low over the summits, like smoke rising from the trees. Other clouds cast broad shadows across the valley. Eventually there are only a few cars on the road, no signs for tourist facilities or campgrounds, just more farms and woods, the roadsides full of blue and purple flowers. He has no idea where he is, or how far they've traveled. Maxine tells him they aren't far from Canada, that if they're motivated they could drive into Montreal for the day.

  They turn down a long dirt road in the middle of a forest, dense with hemlock and birch. There is nothing to mark where they turned, no mailbox or sign. At first there is no house visible, nothing but large lime-colored ferns covering the ground. Small stones spray wildly under the tires and the trees throw patterns of shade onto the hood of the car. They come to a partial clearing, to a humble house covered with bleached brown shingles and surrounded by a low wall of flat stones. Gerald and Lydia's Volvo is parked on the grass because there is no driveway. Gogol and Maxine step out, and he is led by the hand to the back of the house, his limbs stiff from the hours in the car. Though the sun is beginning to set, its warmth is still palpable, the air lazy and mild. As they approach he sees that after a certain expanse the yard falls away, and then he sees the lake, a blue a thousand times deeper, more brilliant, than the sky and girded by pines. The mountains rise up behind them. The lake is bigger than he'd expected, a distance he cannot imagine swimming across.