Gogol wakes up late on a Sunday morning, alone, from a bad dream he cannot recall. He looks over at Moushumi’s side of the bed, at the untidy pile of her books and magazines on the end table, the bottle of lavender room spray she likes to squirt sometimes on their pillows, the tortoiseshell barrette with strands of her hair caught in its clasp. She’s at another conference this weekend, in Palm Beach. By tonight she’ll be home. She claimed she’d told him about the conference months ago, but he doesn’t remember. “Don’t worry,” she’d said as she was packing, “I won’t be there long enough to get a tan.” But when he’d seen her bathing suit on top of the clothing on the bed, a strange panic had welled up inside of him as he thought of her lying without him by a hotel pool, her eyes closed, a book at her side. At least one of us isn’t cold, he thinks to himself now, crossing his arms tightly in front of his chest. Since yesterday afternoon the building’s boiler has been broken, turning the apartment into an icebox. Last night he’d had to turn the oven on in order to tolerate being in the living room, and he’d worn his old Yale sweatpants, a thick sweater over a T-shirt, and a pair of rag-wool socks to bed. He throws back the comforter and the extra blanket he’d placed on top of it in the middle of the night. He couldn’t find the blanket at first, nearly called Moushumi at the hotel to ask where she kept it. But by then it was nearly three in the morning, and so, eventually, he’d hunted it down himself, found it wedged on the top shelf of the hall closet, an unused wedding gift still in its zippered plastic case.
He gets out of bed, brushes his teeth with freezing-cold water from the tap, decides to skip shaving. He pulls on jeans and an extra sweater, and Moushumi’s bathrobe over that, not caring how ridiculous he looks. He makes a pot of coffee, toasts some bread to eat with butter and jam. He opens the front door and retrieves the Times, removing the blue wrapper, putting it on the coffee table to read later. There is a drawing for work he must complete by tomorrow, a cross section for a high school auditorium in Chicago. He unrolls the plan from its tube and spreads it out on the dining table, securing the corners with paperback books he grabs off the bookcase. He puts on his Abbey Road CD, skipping ahead to the songs that would have been on side 2 of the album, and tries to work on the drawing, making sure his measurements correspond to the principal designer’s notes. But his fingers are stiff and so he rolls up the plan, leaves a note for Moushumi on the kitchen counter, and goes in to the office.
He’s glad to have an excuse to be out of the apartment, instead of waiting
for her, at some point this evening, to return. It feels milder outside, the air pleasantly damp, and instead of taking the train he walks the thirty blocks, up Park Avenue and over to Madison. He is the only person at the office. He sits in the darkened drafting room, surrounded by the desks of his coworkers, some piled with drawings and models, others as neat as a pin. He crouches over his table, a single pool of light from a swinging metal lamp illuminating the large sheet of paper. Tacked to the wall over his desk is a tiny calendar showing the entire year, which is coming once again to a close. At the end of the week, it will be the fourth anniversary of his father’s death. Circled dates indicate all his deadlines, past and future. Meetings, site visits, conferences with clients. A lunch with an architect who’s interested, possibly, in hiring him. He’s eager to move to a smaller firm, to have some domestic commissions, to work with fewer people. Next to the calendar there is a postcard of a Duchamp painting he has always loved, of a chocolate grinder that reminds him of a set of drums, suspended against a gray background.
Several Post-it notes. The photograph of his mother and Sonia and himself at Fatehpur Sikri, salvaged from his father’s refrigerator door in Cleveland. And next to this, a picture of Moushumi, an old passport photo he’d found and asked to keep. She is in her early twenties, her hair loose, her heavy-lidded eyes slightly lowered, looking to one side. It was taken before he’d begun to date her, when she was living in Paris. A time in her life in which he was still Gogol to her, a remnant from her past with little likelihood of appearing in her future. And yet they had met; after all her adventures, it was he whom she had married. He with whom she shared her life.
Last weekend was Thanksgiving. His mother and Sonia and Sonia’s new boyfriend, Ben, had come, along with Moushumi’s parents and brother, and they had all celebrated the holiday together in New York, crowded together in Gogol and Moushumi’s apartment. It was the first time he had not gone either to his parents’ or to his in-laws’ for a holiday. It felt strange to be hosting, to assume the center of responsibility. They had ordered a fresh turkey in advance from the farmers’ market, planned the menu out of Food & Wine, bought folding chairs so that everyone would have a place to sit. Moushumi had gone out and bought a rolling pin, made an apple pie for the first time in her life. For Ben’s sake they had all spoken in English. Ben is half-Jewish, half-Chinese, raised in Newton, close to where Gogol and Sonia grew up. He is an editor at the Globe. He and Sonia met by chance, at a café on Newbury Street. Seeing them together, sneaking into the hallway so that they could kiss freely, holding hands discreetly as they sat at the table, Gogol had been oddly envious, and as they all sat eating their turkey and roasted sweet potatoes and cornbread stuffing, and the spiced cranberry chutney his mother had made, he looked at Moushumi and wondered what was wrong. They didn’t argue, they
still had sex, and yet he wondered. Did he still make her happy? She accused him of nothing, but more and more he sensed her distance, her dissatisfaction, her distraction. But there had been no time to dwell on this worry. The weekend had been exhausting, getting their various family members to the apartments of nearby friends who were away and had given them keys. The day after Thanksgiving they had all gone to Jackson Heights, to the halal butcher so that both their mothers could stock up on goat meat, and then to brunch. And on Saturday there had been a concert of classical Indian music up at Columbia. Part of him wants to bring it up with her. “Are you happy you married me?” he would ask. But the fact that he is even thinking of this question makes him afraid.
He finishes up the drawing, leaves it pinned on his desk to be reviewed in the morning. He’s worked through lunch, and when he steps out of his office building it is colder, the light fading rapidly from the sky. He buys a cup of coffee and a falafel sandwich at the Egyptian restaurant on the corner and walks south as he eats, toward the Flatiron and lower Fifth Avenue, the twin towers of the World Trade Center looming in the distance, sparkling at the island’s end. The falafel, wrapped in foil, is warm and messy in his hands. The stores are full, the windows decorated, the sidewalks crammed with shoppers. The thought of Christmas overwhelms him. Last year they went to Moushumi’s parents’ house. This year they’ll go to Pemberton Road. He no longer looks forward to the holiday; he wants only to be on the other side of the season. His impatience makes him feel that he is, incontrovertibly, finally, an adult. He wanders absently into a perfume store, a clothing store, a store that sells only bags. He has no idea what to get Moushumi for Christmas.
Normally she drops hints, showing him catalogues, but he has no clue as to what she’s coveting this season, if it’s a new pair of gloves or a wallet or new pajamas she’d like. In the maze of stalls in Union Square that sell candles and shawls and handmade jewelry, nothing inspires him.
He decides to try the Barnes and Noble at the northern edge of the square.
But staring at the immense wall of new titles on display he realizes he has read none of these books, and what was the point of giving her something he hadn’t read? On his way out of the store he pauses by a table devoted to travel guides. He picks up one for Italy, full of illustrations of the architecture he had studied so carefully as a student, has admired only in photographs, has always meant to see. It angers him, yet there is no one to blame but himself.
What was stopping him? A trip together, to a place neither of them has been
—maybe that’s what he and Moushumi need. He could plan it all himself, select the cities they would visit, the hotels. It could be his Christmas gift to her, two airplane tickets tucked into the back of the guide. He was due for
another vacation; he could plan it for her spring break. Inspired by the thought, he goes to the register, waits in a long line, and pays for the book.
He walks across the park toward home, thumbing through the book, anxious to see her now. He decides to stop off at the new gourmet grocery that’s opened on Irving Place, to buy some of the things she likes: blood oranges, a wedge of cheese from the Pyrenees, slices of soppresata, a loaf of peasant bread. For she will be hungry—they serve nothing on planes these days. He looks up from the book, at the sky, at the darkness gathering, the clouds a deep, beautiful gold, and is momentarily stopped by a flock of pigeons flying dangerously close. Suddenly terrified, he ducks his head, feeling foolish afterward. None of the other pedestrians has reacted. He stops and watches as the birds shoot up, then land simultaneously on two neighboring bare-branched trees. He is unsettled by the sight. He has seen these graceless birds on windowsills and sidewalks, but never in trees. It looks almost unnatural. And yet, what could be more ordinary? He thinks of Italy, of Venice, the trip he will begin to plan. Maybe it’s a sign that they are meant to go there. Wasn’t the Piazza San Marco famous for its pigeons?
The lobby of the apartment is warm when he enters, the building’s heat restored. “She just got back,” the doorman tells Gogol with a wink as he walks past, and his heart leaps, unburdened of its malaise, grateful for her simple act of returning to him. He imagines her puttering around the apartment, drawing a bath, pouring herself a glass of wine, her bags in the hallway. He slips the book he will give her for Christmas into the pocket of his coat, making sure it’s well concealed, and calls the elevator to take him upstairs.
