(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
Every three weekends Ashima's husband came home. He used to come home by taxi - though she was willing to drive herself around their town, she was not willing to get on the high way and drive to Logan. When her husband was in the house, she shopped and cooked as she used to. He did the things she still didn't know how to do. He paid all the bills, and raked the leaves on the lawn, and put gas from self-service station into her car. His visits were too short to make a difference, and, within hours it seemed Sunday came, and she was on her own again. When they were apart, they spoke by phone every night, in her nightgown watching television they'd owned for decades that was on her side of the bed. When she found nothing interesting her on TV she leafed through books she took out of the library.
One day it was three in the afternoon, it was chilly and she hated the abbreviated days of early winter, darkness descending mere hours after noon. She was resigned to warming dinner for herself in a little while, changing into her nightgown, switching on the electric blanket on her bed, the phone rang, and her husband said hello while she heard noises in the background of the phone, people speaking. "Are you watching television," she asked Ashok.
"I'm in the hospital," he told her.
"What's happened ?" She turned off the whistling kettle, startled, her chest tightening, terrified that he'd been in some sort of accident.
"My stomach's been bothering me since morning." He told Ashima it was probably something he'd eaten, that he'd been the previous evening to the home of some Bengali students he'd met in Cleveland who were still teaching themselves to cook, where he was subjected to a suspicious-looking chicken biryani.
She exhaled audibly, relieved that it was nothing serious. "So take an Alka-Seltzer."
"I did. It didn't help. I just came to the emergency room because all the doctors' offices are closed today."
"You're working too hard.You're no longer a student, you know. I hope you're not getting an ulcer," she said.
"No. I hope not."
"Who drove you there ?"
"No one. I'm here on my own. Really, it's not that bad."
Nevertheless she felt a sympathy for him, at the thought of him driving to the hospital alone. She missed him suddenly, remembering afternoons years ago when they'd first moved to this town when he would surprise her and come home from the university in the middle of the day. They would indulge in a proper Bengali lunch instead of the sandwiches they'd gotten used to by then, boiling rice and warming the previous night's leftovers, filling their stomachs, sitting and talking at the table, sleepy and sated, as their palms turned yellow and dry.
"What does the doctor say ?" she asked Ashoke now.
"I'm waiting to see him. It's rather long wait. Do me one thing."
"What ?"
"Call Dr. Sandler tomorrow. I'm for a physical anyway. Make an appointment for me next Saturday, if he has an opening."
"All right."
"Don't worry. I'm feeling better already. I'll call you when I get home."
"All right." She hung up the phone, prepared her tea, returned to the table. She wrote "call Dr. Sandler" on one of the red envelopes. She took a sip of tea and wondered if she ought to call Gogol and Sonia. She decided to send a card each to Ashoke, Gogol, and Sonia. Though she'd been polite enough the one time Gogol had brought Maxine to the house, Ashima didn't want for a daughter-in-law. She had been startled that Maxine had addressed her as Ashima, and her husband as Ashoke. And yet Gogol had been dating her for over a year now. By now Ashima knew that Gogol was spending his nights with Maxine, sleeping under the same roof as her parents, a thing Ashima refused to admit to her Bengali friends. She even had his number there ; she'd called it once, listening to the voice of the woman who must be Maxine's mother, not leaving any message. She knew the relationship was something she must be willing to accept. Sonia had told her this, and so had her American friends at the library. Sonia, who was working for an environmental agency and studying for her LSAT, had said it was not too far to travel home.
From time to time, Ashima was looking out the window, a lilac sky of early evening, and looking up at the phone on the wall, wishing it would ring. She would buy her husband a cell phone for Christmas, she decided. She was not bothered to rest, or to get up and turn on the lamp over the table, or the lights on the lawn or any of the other rooms, until the telephone rang. emarketeranswered after half a ring, but it was only a telemarketer, asking reluctantly if a Mrs., um ---
"Ganguli," Ashima replied tartly before hanging up.
At twilight the sky turned a pale but intense blue, and turned dark.
At five O'clock her husband still had not called. She called his apartment and got no answer. She called ten minutes later, then ten minutes after that. Each time she called she listened to the tone, but she didn't leave a message. She considered the places he might have stopped on his way home ; the pharmacy to pick up a prescription or the supermarket for food. By six O'clock she called directory assistance, asking for an operator in Cleveland, then called the number of the hospital he told her he'd gone to. She asked for the emergency room, was connected to one part of the hospital after another. "He's just there for an examination," she told the people who answered and told her to hold. She spelled the last name, "G like green," "N like napkin." She held the line until she was tempted to hang up, wondering all the while if her husband was trying to reach her from home , regretting not having call waiting. She disconnected, called again. "Ganguli," she said. Again she was told to hold. Then a person came on the line, a young woman's voice, no older than Sonia probably. "Yes. I do apologize for the wait. To whom am I speaking ?"
"Ashima Ganguli," Ashima said. "Ashoke Ganguli's wife. To whom am I speaking, please ?"
"I see. I'm sorry, ma'am. I'm the intern who first examined your husband."
"I've been holding on for nearly half an hour. Is my husband still there or has he gone ?"
"I'm very sorry ma'am," the young woman repeated. "We've been trying to reach you."
And then the young woman told her that the patient, Ashoke Ganguli, has expired.
Expired. A word used for library cards, for magazine subscriptions. A word which, for several seconds, had no effect whatsoever on Ashima.
"No, no, it must be a mistake," Ashima said calmly, shaking her head, a small laugh escaping from her throat. "My husband is not there for emergency. Only for a stomachache."
"I'm sorry, Mrs.......Ganguli, is it ?"
She listened to something about a heart attack, that it had been massive, that all attempts to revive him had failed.
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