"What's this?" he asks.
"You didn't think I forgot your thirtieth birthday, did you?"
It had been a few days ago, a weeknight he and Moushumi had both been too busy to celebrate properly. Even his mother, preoccupied with last-minute wedding details, had forgotten to call him first thing in the morning, as she normally did.
"I think I'm officially at the age when I want people to forget my birthday," he says, accepting the gift.
"Poor Goggles."
Inside he finds a small bottle of bourbon and a red leather flask. "I had it engraved," she says, and when he turns the flask over he sees the letters ng. He remembers poking his head into Sonia's room years ago, telling her about his decision to change his name to Nikhil. She'd been thirteen or so, doing her homework on her bed. "You can't do that," she'd told him then, shaking her head, and when he'd asked her why not she'd simply said, "Because you can't. Because you're Gogol." He watches her now, applying her make-up in his room, pulling at the skin next to her eye and painting a thin black line on the lid, and he recalls photographs of his mother at her own wedding.
"You're next, you know," he says.
"Don't remind me." She grimaces, then laughs. Their shared giddiness, the excitement of the preparations, saddens him, all of it reminding him that his father is dead. He imagines his father wearing an outfit similar to his own, a shawl draped over one shoulder, as he used to during pujo. The ensemble he fears looks silly on himself would have looked dignified, elegant, befitting his father in a way he knows it does not him. The nagrais are a size too large and need to be stuffed with tissues. Unlike Moushumi, who is having her hair and make-up professionally styled and applied, Gogol is ready in a matter of minutes. He regrets not having brought his running shoes along; he could have done a few miles on the treadmill before preparing himself for the event.
There is an hour-long watered-down Hindu ceremony on a platform covered with sheets. Gogol and Moushumi sit cross-legged, first opposite each other, then side by side. The guests sit facing them in folding metal chairs; the accordion wall between two windowless banquet rooms, with dropped ceilings, has been opened up to expand the space. A video camera and hand-held white lights hover above their faces. Shenai music plays on a boom box. Nothing has been rehearsed or explained to them beforehand. A cluster of mashis and meshos surround them, telling them continually what to do, when to speak or stand or throw flowers at a small brass urn. The priest is a friend of Moushumi's parents, an anesthesiologist who happens to be a Brahmin. Offerings are made to pictures of their grandparents and his father, rice poured into a pyre that they are forbidden by the management of the hotel to ignite. He thinks of his parents, strangers until this moment, two people who had not spoken until after they were actually wed. Suddenly, sitting next to Moushumi, he realizes what it means, and he is astonished by his parents' courage, the obedience that must have been involved in doing such a thing.
It's the first time he's seen Moushumi in a sari, apart from all those pujos years ago, which she had suffered through silently. She has about twenty pounds of gold on her—at one point, when they are sitting face to face, their hands wrapped up together in a checkered cloth, he counts eleven necklaces. Two enormous paisleys have been painted in red and white on her cheeks. Until now, he has continued to call Moushumi's father Shubir Mesho, and her mother Rina Mashi, as he always has, as if they were still his uncle and aunt, as if Moushumi were still a sort of cousin. But by the end of the night he will become their son-in-law and so be expected to address them as his second set of parents, an alternative Baba and Ma.
For the reception he changes into a suit, she into a red Ba narasi gown with spaghetti straps, something she'd designed herself and had made by a seamstress friend. She wears the gown in spite of her mother's protests—what was wrong with a salwar kameeze, she'd wanted to know—and when Moushumi happens to forget her shawl on a chair and bares her slim, bronze shoulders, which quietly sparkle from a special powder she's applied to them, her mother manages, in the midst of that great crowd, to shoot her reproachful glances, which Moushumi ignores. Countless people come to congratulate Gogol, saying they had seen him when he was so little, asking him to pose for photographs, to wrap his arms around families and smile. He is numbly drunk through it all, thanks to the open bar her parents have sprung for. Moushumi is horrified, in the banquet room, to see the tables wreathed with tulle, the ivy and baby's breath twisted around the columns. They bump into each other on her way out of the ladies' room and exchange a quick kiss, the smoke on her breath faintly masked by the mint she is chewing. He imagines her smoking in the stall, the lid of the toilet seat down. They've barely said a word to each other all evening; throughout the ceremony she'd kept her eyes lowered, and during the reception, each time he'd looked at her, she'd been deep in conversation with people he didn't know. He wants to be alone with her suddenly, wishes they could sneak off to her room or his, ignore the rest of the party as he would when he was a boy. "Come on," he urges, motioning toward the glass elevator, "fifteen minutes. No one will notice." But the dinner has begun, and table numbers are being called one by one on the loudspeaker. "I'd need someone to redo my hair," she says. The heated silver chafing dishes are labeled for the American guests. It's typical north Indian fare, mounds of hot pink tandoori, aloo gobi in thick orange sauce. He overhears someone in the line saying the chickpeas have gone bad. They sit at the head table in the center of the room, with his mother and Sonia, her parents and a handful of her relatives visiting from Calcutta, and her brother, Samrat, who is missing out on his orientation at the University of Chicago in order to attend the wedding. There are awkward champagne toasts and speeches by their families, their parents' friends. Her father stands up, smiling nervously, forgets to raise his glass, and says, "Thank you very much for coming," then turns to Gogol and Moushumi: "Okay, be happy." Forks are tapped against glasses by giggling, sari-clad mashis, instructing them when to kiss. Each time he obliges them and kisses his bride tamely on the cheek.
A cake is wheeled out, "Nikhil Weds Moushumi" piped across its surface. Moushumi smiles as she always smiles for a camera, her mouth closed, her head tilted slightly downward and to the left. He is aware that together he and Moushumi are fulfilling a collective, deep-seated desire—because they're both Bengali, everyone can let his hair down a bit. At times, looking out at the guests, he can't help but think that two years ago he might have been sitting in the sea of round tables that now surround him, watching her marry another man. The thought crashes over him like an unexpected wave, but quickly he reminds himself that he is the one sitting beside her. The red Banarasi wedding sari and the gold had been bought two years ago, for her wedding to Graham. This time all her parents have had to do is bring down the boxes from a closet shelf, retrieve the jewels from the safety deposit box, find the itemized list for the caterer. The new invitation, designed by Ashima, the English translation lettered by Gogol, is the only thing that isn't a leftover.
Since Moushumi has to teach a class three days after the wedding, they have to postpone the honeymoon. The closest they come is a night alone in the DoubleTree, which they are both dying to leave. But their parents have gone to great trouble and expense to book the newlywed suite. "I have got to take a shower," she says as soon as they are finally alone, and disappears into the bathroom. He knows she is exhausted, as he is—the night had ended with a long session of dancing to Abba songs. He examines the room, opening drawers and pulling out the stationery, opening the minibar, reading the contents of the room service menu, though he is not at all hungry. If anything, he feels slightly ill, from the combination of the bourbon and the two large pieces of cake he'd had because he had not had any dinner. He sprawls on the king-sized bed. The bedspread has been strewn with flower petals, a final gesture before their families withdrew. He waits for her, flipping through the channels on the television. Beside him is a bottle of champagne in a bucket, heart-shaped chocolates on a lace-covered plate. He takes a
bite out of one of the chocolates. The inside is an unyielding toffee, requiring more chewing than he expects.
He fidgets with the gold ring she'd placed on his finger after they'd cut the cake, identical to the one he'd placed on hers. He'd proposed to her on her birthday, giving her a diamond solitaire in addition to the hat he'd bought for her after their second date. He'd made a production out of it, using her birthday as an excuse to take her to a country inn for the weekend, in a town upstate on the banks of the Hudson, the first trip they'd taken together that wasn't to her parents' place in New Jersey, or to Pemberton Road. It was springtime, the velvet hat out of season by then. She'd been overwhelmed that he'd remembered it all this time. "I can't believe the store still had it," she said. He didn't tell her the truth about when he'd bought the hat. He'd presented it to her downstairs, in the dining room, after a Châteaubriand that had been carved for them at the table. Strangers turned to admire Moushumi when the hat was on her head. After trying it on, she'd put the box away under her chair, not noticing the smaller box lost among the tissue. "There's something else in there," he'd been forced to say. In retrospect he decided that she had been more shocked by the hat than by his proposal. For while the former was a true surprise, the latter was something expected—from the very beginning it was safely assumed by their families, and soon enough by themselves, that as long as they liked each other their courtship would not lag and they would surely wed. "Yes," she'd told him, grinning, looking up from the hatbox before he'd even had to ask.
She emerges now in the snow-white terry-cloth hotel robe. She has taken off her make-up and her jewels; the vermilion with which he'd stained her part at the end of the ceremony has been rinsed from her hair. Her feet are free of the three-inch heels she'd worn as soon as the religious part of the wedding was over, causing her to tower over almost everyone. This is the way he still finds her most ravishing, unadorned, aware that it is a way she is willing to look for no one but him. She sits on the edge of the mattress, applies some blue cream from a tube to her calves and the bottoms of her feet. She'd massaged the cream onto his own feet once, the day they'd walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, causing them to tingle and go cold. And then she lies against the pillows, and looks at him, and puts out a hand. Underneath the robe he expects to find some racy lingerie—back in New York he'd glimpsed the pile of things she'd received for her shower in the corner of her bedroom. But she is naked, her skin smelling, a little too intensely, of some sort of berry. He kisses the dark hair on her forearms, the prominent collarbone, which she had once confessed to him is her favorite part of her body. They make love in spite of their exhaustion, her damp hair limp and cool against his face, the rose petals sticking to their elbows and shoulders and calves. He breathes in the scent of her skin, still unable to fathom that they are husband and wife. When would it sink in? Even then he does not feel fully alone with her, half waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell them how to go about things. And though he desires her as much as ever, he is relieved when they are through, lying naked side by side, knowing that nothing else is expected of them, that finally they can relax.
Afterward they open up the champagne and sit together on the bed, going through a large shopping bag full of cards with personal checks inside them. The checks have been given to them by their parents' hundreds of friends. She had not wanted to register for gifts. She told Gogol it was because she didn't have the time, but he sensed that it was something she couldn't bring herself to face the second time around. It's fine with him, not to have their apartment crammed with a dozen crystal vases and platters and matching pots and pans. There is no calculator, and so they add up the figures on numerous sheets of the hotel stationery. Most of the checks have been written out to Mr. and Mrs. Nikhil and Moushumi Ganguli. Several are written to Gogol and Moushumi Ganguli. The amounts are for one hundred and one dollars, two hundred and one dollars, occasionally three hundred and one dollars, as Bengalis consider it inauspicious to give round figures. Gogol adds up the subtotals on each page.
"Seven thousand thirty-five," he announces.
"Not bad, Mr. Ganguli."
"I'd say we've made a killing, Mrs. Ganguli."
Only she is not Mrs. Ganguli. Moushumi has kept her last name. She doesn't adopt Ganguli, not even with a hyphen. Her own last name, Mazoomdar, is already a mouthful. With a hyphenated surname, she would no longer fit into the window of a business envelope. Besides, by now she has begun to publish under Moushumi Mazoomdar, the name printed at the top of footnoted articles on French feminist theory in a number of prestigious academic journals that always manage to give Gogol a paper cut when he tries to read them. Though he hasn't admitted this to her, he'd hoped, the day they'd filled out the application for their marriage license, that she might consider otherwise, as a tribute to his father if nothing else. But the thought of changing her last name to Ganguli has never crossed Moushumi's mind. When relatives from India continue to address letters and cards to "Mrs. Moushumi Ganguli," she will shake her head and sigh.
***
They put the money toward a security deposit for a one-bedroom apartment in the Twenties, off Third Avenue. It's slightly more than they can comfortably afford, but they are won over by the maroon awning, the part-time doorman, the lobby paved with pumpkin-colored tiles. The apartment itself is small but luxurious, with built-in mahogany bookcases rising to the ceiling and dark, oily, wide-planked floors. There is a living room with a skylight, a kitchen with expensive stainless-steel appliances, a bathroom with a marble floor and walls. There is a Juliet balcony off the bedroom, in one corner of which Moushumi sets up her desk, her computer and printer, her files. They are on the top floor, and if one leans far enough to the left outside the bathroom window it's possible to see the Empire State Building. They spend a few weekends taking the shuttle bus to Ikea and filling up the rooms: imitation Noguchi lamps, a black sectional sofa, kilim and flokati carpets, a blond wood platform bed. Both her parents and Ashima are at once impressed and puzzled when they come to visit for the first time. Isn't it a bit small, now that they are married? But Gogol and Moushumi aren't thinking of children at the moment, certainly not until Moushumi finishes her dissertation. On Saturdays they shop together for food at the farmers' market in Union Square, with canvas bags over their shoulders. They buy things they are not certain how to prepare, leeks and fresh fava beans and fiddleheads, looking up recipes in the cookbooks they've received for their wedding. From time to time when they cook they set off the fire alarm, which is overly sensitive, and they bang it into silence with the handle of a broom.
They entertain together on occasion, throwing the sorts of parties their parents never had, mixing martinis in a stainless-steel shaker for a few of the architects at Gogol's work or Moushumi's graduate student friends at NYU. They play bossa nova and serve bread and salami and cheese. He transfers the money in his bank account over to hers, and they have pale green checks with both their names printed in the corner. The pass code they decide on for their ATM card, Lulu, is the name of the French restaurant where they had their first meal together. They eat most nights side by side on the stools at the kitchen counter or at the coffee table, watching TV. They make Indian food infrequently—usually it's pasta or broiled fish or take-out from the Thai restaurant down the block. But sometimes, on a Sunday, both craving the food they'd grown up eating, they ride the train out to Queens and have brunch at Jackson Diner, piling their plates with tandoori chicken and pakoras and kabobs, and shop afterward for basmati rice and the spices that need replenishing. Or they go to one of the hole-in-the-wall tea shops and drink tea in paper cups with heavy cream, asking the waitress in Bengali to bring them bowls of sweet yogurt and haleem. He calls every evening before leaving the office to say he is on his way home, asks if he needs to pick up lettuce or a loaf of bread. After dinner they watch television, as Moushumi writes out thank-you cards to all their parents' friends, for the checks they had needed twenty different slips to deposit. These ar
e the things that make him feel married. Otherwise it's the same, only now they're always together. At night she sleeps beside him, always rolling onto her stomach, waking up every morning with a pillow pressed over her head.
Occasionally, in the apartment, he finds odd remnants of her life before he'd appeared in it, her life with Graham—the inscription to the two of them in a book of poems, a postcard from Provence stuffed into the back of a dictionary, addressed to the apartment they'd secretly shared. Once, unable to stop himself, he'd walked to this address during his lunch break, wondering what her life had been like back then. He imagined her walking along the sidewalk, carrying grocery bags from the supermarket that was on the next corner, in love with another man. He doesn't feel jealous of her past per se. It's only that sometimes Gogol wonders whether he represents some sort of capitulation or defeat. He doesn't feel this always, just enough to nag at him, settling over his thoughts like a web. But then he looks around the apartment for reassurance, reminding himself of the life they've set up together and share. He looks at the photograph taken at their wedding, in which matching garlands hang from their necks. It sits in a tasteful leather frame on top of the television set. He wanders into the bedroom, where she's working, kissing her on the shoulder, drawing her to bed. But in the closet they now share is a garment bag containing a white dress he knows she would have worn a month after the Indian ceremony that had been planned for her and Graham, a second ceremony before a justice of the peace on Graham's father's lawn in Pennsylvania. She had told him about it. A patch of the dress is visible through a plastic window in the garment bag. He'd unzipped it once, glimpsed something sleeveless, to the knee, with a plain round neck, reminding him of a tennis dress. One day he asks her why she still keeps it. "Oh that," she says with a shrug. "I keep meaning to have it dyed."