(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
Within six months Gogol had the keys to the Ratliff's house, a set of which Maxine presented to him on a silver Tiffany chain. Like her parents, he had come to call her Max. He dropped off his shirts at the dry cleaner around the corner from her place. He kept a toothbrush and razor on her cluttered pedestal sink. In the mornings a few times a week he got up early and went running before work with Gerald along the Hudson, down to Battery Park City and back. He volunteered to take Silas out for walks, and he picked up Silas's warm shit with a plastic bag. He spent the entire weekends holed up in the house, reading books from Gerald and Lydia's shelves, admiring the sunlight that filtered through the enormous unadorned windows during the course of the day. He came to prefer certain sofas and chairs to others ; when he was not there, he could conjure the paintings and photographs arrayed on the walls. He had to make a point of going to his studio, of resetting the tape on his answering machine, paying his rent check and his bills.
Often, on weekends, he helped to shop and prepare for Gerald and Lydia's dinner parties, peeling apples and deveining shrimp with Lydia, helping to shuck oysters, going down to the cellar with Gerald to bring up the extra chairs, the wine. He had fallen the tiniest bit in love with Lydia and with the understated, unflustered way she entertained. He was always struck by these dinners : only a dozen or so guests sitting around the candlelit table, a carefully selected mix of painters, editors, academics, gallery owners, eating the meal course by course, talking intelligently until the evening's end. How different they were from his own parents' parties, cheerfully unruly evenings to which there were never fewer than thirty people invited, small children in tow. Fish and meat served side by side, so many courses that people had to eat in shifts, the food still in the pans they were cooked in crowding the table. They sat where they could, in the different rooms of the house, half the people having finished before the other half began. Unlike Gerald and Lydia, who presided at the center of their dinners, his parents behaved more like caterers in their own home, solicitous and watchful, waiting until most of the guests' plates were stacked by the sink in order finally to help themselves. At times, as the laughter at Gerald and Lydia's table swelled, and another bottle of wine was opened, and Gogol raised his glass to be filled yet again, he was conscious of the fact his immersion in Maxine's family was a betrayal of his own. It was not simply the fact that his parents didn't know about Maxine, that they had no idea how much time he spent with her and Gerald and Lydia. Instead it was his knowledge that apart from their affluence, Gerald and Lydia were secure in a way his parents would never be. He couldn't imagine his parents sitting at Lydia and Gerald's table, enjoying Lydia's cooking, appreciating Gerald's selection of wine. He couldn't imagine them contributing to one of their dinner party conversations. And yet here he was, night after night, a welcome addition to the Ratliff's universe, doing just that.
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