(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
In June Gerald and Lydia disappeared to their lake house in New Hampshire. It was an unquestioned ritual, a yearly migration to the town where Gerald's parents lived year-round. For a few days a series of tote bags accumulated in the hallway, cardboard boxes full of liquor, shopping bags full of food, cases of wine. Their departure reminded Gogol of his family's preparations for Calcutta every few years, when the living room would be crowded with suitcases that his parents packed and repacked, fitting in as many gifts as possible for their relatives. In spite of his parents' excitement, there was always a solemnity accompanying these preparations, Ashima and Ashoke at once apprehensive and eager, steeling themselves to find fewer faces at the airport in Calcutta, to confirm the deaths of relatives since the last time they were there. No matter how many times they'd been to Calcutta, his father was always anxious about the job of transporting the four of them such a great distance. Gogol was aware of an obligation being fulfilled ; that it was, above all else, a sense of duty that drew his parents back. But it was the call of pleasure that summons Gerald and Lydia to New Hampshire. They left without fanfare, in the middle of the day, when Gogol and Maxine were both at work. In Gerald and Lydia's wake, certain things were missing : Silas, some of the cookbooks, the food processor, novels and CDs, the fax machine so that Gerald could keep in touch with his clients, the red Volvo station wagon they kept parked on the street. A note was left on the island in the kitchen :"We're off !" Lydia had written, followed by X's and O's.
Suddenly Gogol and Maxine had the house in Chelsea to themselves. They strayed 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 the weekends they wandered naked from room to room, up and down the five flights of stairs. They ate 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 poured through the enormous windows onto their bodies. As the days grew warmer they stopped cooking complicated things. They lived off sushi and salads and cold poached salmon. They switched from red wine to white. Now it was just two of them it seemed to him, more than ever, that they were living together. And yet from some reason it was dependence, not adulthood, he felt. He felt free of expectation, of responsibility, in willing exiled from his own life. He was responsible for nothing in the house, in spite of their absence, Gerald and Lydia continued to lord, however blindly, over their days. It was their books he read, their music he listened to. Their front door he unlocked when he got back from work. Their telephone messages he took down.
He learned that the house was unsuitable to live during summer, so that it made all the sense that it was a place Gerald and Lydia avoided. It lacked air-conditioning, something Gerald and Lydia had never bothered to install because they were never there when it was hot, and the enormous windows lack screens. As a result the rooms were sweltering during the day, and at night, because it was necessary to leave the windows wide open, he was ambushed by mosquitoes that shrieked in his ears and left angry, lumpen welts between his toes, on his arms and thighs. He longed for a mosquito net to drape over Maxine's bed, remembering the filmy blue nylon that he and Sonia had slept inside of on their visits to Calcutta, the corners hooked on to four posts of the bed, the edges tucked tightly beneath the mattress, creating a temporary, tiny, impenetrable room for the night. there were times when he couldn't 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, begged him to get back to sleep.. He saw them sometimes against the peach-colored paint o the wall, faint specks engorged with his blood, just inches below the ceiling, always too high up to kill.
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