(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
On day Gogol and Maxine canoed across the lake. Maxine taught him how to paddle properly, angling the oar and drawing it back through the still, gray water. She spoke reverently of her summers here. This was her favorite place in the world, she told him, and he understood that this landscape, the water of this particular lake in which she first learned to swim, was an essential part of her, even more so than the house in Chelsea. This was where she lost her virginity, she confessed, when she was fourteen years old, in a boathouse, with a boy whose family once summered here. He thought of himself at fourteen, his life nothing like it was now, still called Gogol, not Nikhil. He remembered Maxine's reaction to his telling her about his other name, as they'd driven up from his parent's house. "That's the cutest thing I've ever heard," she'd said. And then she'd never mentioned it again. He realized that this was a place that would always be here for her. It made it easy to imagine her past, and her future, to picture her growing old. He saw her with streaks of gray hair, her face still beautiful, her long body slightly widened and slack, sitting on a beach chair with a floppy hat on her head. He imagined her returning here, grieving, to bury her parents, teaching her children to swim in the lake, leading them with two hands into the water, showing them how to dive cleanly off the edge of the dock.
It was here that his twenty-seventh birthday was celebrated, the first birthday in his life that he'd not spent with his own parents, either in Calcutta or on Pemberton Road. Lydia and Maxine planned a special dinner, curling up with cookbooks for days beforehand on the beach. They decided to make a paella, drive to Maine for mussels and clams. They brought the dining table out onto the lawn, a few card tables added on to make room for everyone. An angel food cake was baked from scratch. In addition to Hank and Edith, a number of friends from around the lake were invited. The women arrived in straw hats and linen dresses. The front lawn filled up with cars, and small children scamper among them. There was talk of the lake, the temperature dropping, the water turning cooler, summer coming to an end. there were complaints about motorboats, gossip about the owner of the general store, whose wife had run off with another man and was seeking a divorce. "Here's the architect Max brought up with her," Gerald said at one point, leading him over to a couple interested in building an addition to their cottage. Gogol spoke to the couple about their plans, promised to come down and have a look at their place before he leaves. At dinner he was asked by his neighbor, a middle-aged woman named Pamela, at what age he moved to America from India.
"I'm from Boston," he said.
It turned out Pamela was from Boston as well, but when he told her the name of the suburb where his parents live Pamela shook her head. "I've never heard of that," she went on, "I once had a girlfriend who went to India." She remarked that her friend had fallen sick after returning from India and he was lucky that he remained healthy after India trips.
He was slightly annoyed, looked over at Maxine, but she was speaking intently with her neighbor. "We get sick all the time, we've to get shots before we go and carry the sufficient medicines along with us," explained Gogol.
"But you're Indian, I'd think the climate wouldn't affect you, given your heritage," Pamela said, frowning.
"Pamela, Nick's American," Lydia said, leaning across the table, rescuing Gogol from the conversation. "He was born here." She turned to him, and he saw from Lydia's expression that after all these months, she herself wasn't sure. "Weren't you?"
Champagne was poured with the cake. "To Nikhil," Gerald announced, raising his glass. Everybody sang "Happy Birthday," in the midst of laughter of the drunken adults, and the cries of the children. He remembered that his father left for Cleveland a week ago, his mother was alone on Pemberton Road. He knew he should call to make sure his father had arrived safely, and to find out how his mother was faring on her own. But such concerns made no sense here among Maxine and her family. That night, lying beside Maxine in the cabin, he was woken up by the sound of the phone ringing persistently in the main house. He got out of bed, convinced that it was his parents calling to wish him a happy birthday, mortified that it would wake Gerald and Lydia from sleep. He stumbled onto the lawn, but when his bare feet stroke the cold grass there was silence, and he realized that the ringing he'd heard was a dream. He returned to bed, squeezing in beside Maxine's warm, sleeping body, and draped his arm around her narrow waist, fitted his knees behind hers.
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