Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri Page B

to join hands. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Dear Lord, we thank you today for the food we are about to receive,” he began. My parents were seated next to each other, and I was stunned to see that they complied, that my father’s brown fingers lightly clasped my mother’s pale ones. I noticed Matty seated on the other side of the room and saw him glancing at me as his father spoke. After the chorus of Amens, Gene raised his glass and said, “Forgive me, but I never thought I’d have the opportunity to say this: Here’s to Thanksgiving with the Indians.” Only a few people laughed at the joke.
    Then Pranab Kaku stood up and thanked everyone for coming. He was relaxed from alcohol, his once wiry body beginning to thicken. He started to talk sentimentally about his early days in Cambridge, and then suddenly he recounted the story of meeting me and my mother for the first time, telling the guests about how he had followed us that afternoon. The people who did not know us laughed, amused by the description of the encounter, and by Pranab Kaku’s desperation. He walked around the room to where my mother was sitting and draped a lanky arm around her shoulder, forcing her, for a brief moment, to stand up. “This woman,” he declared, pulling her close to his side, “this woman hosted my first real Thanksgiving in America. It might have been an afternoon in May, but that first meal at Boudi’s table was Thanksgiving to me. If it weren’t for that meal, I would have gone back to Calcutta.” My mother looked away, embarrassed. She was thirty-eight, already going gray, and she looked closer to my father’s age than to Pranab Kaku’s; regardless of his waistline, he retained his handsome, carefree looks. Pranab Kaku went back to his place at the head of the table, next to Deborah, and concluded, “And if that had been the case I’d have never met you, my darling,” and he kissed her on the mouth in front of everyone, to much applause, as if it were their wedding day all over again.
    After the turkey, smaller forks were distributed and orders were taken for three different kinds of pie, written on small pads by Deborah’s sisters, as if they were waitresses. After dessert, the dogs needed to go out, and Pranab Kaku volunteered to take them. “How about a walk on the beach?” he suggested, and Deborah’s side of the family agreed that that was an excellent idea. None of the Bengalis wanted to go, preferring to sit with their tea and cluster together, at last, at one end of the room, speaking freely after the forced chitchat with the Americans during the meal. Matty came over and sat in the chair beside me that was now empty, encouraging me to join the walk. When I hesitated, pointing to my inappropriate clothes and shoes but also aware of my mother’s silent fury at the sight of us together, he said, “I’m sure Deb can lend you something.” So I went upstairs, where Deborah gave me a pair of her jeans and a thick sweater and some sneakers, so that I looked like her and her sisters.
    She sat on the edge of her bed, watching me change, as if we were girlfriends, and she asked if I had a boyfriend. When I told her no, she said, “Matty thinks you’re cute.”
    “He told you?”
    “No, but I can tell.”
    As I walked back downstairs, emboldened by this information, in the jeans I’d had to roll up and in which I felt finally like myself, I noticed my mother lift her eyes from her teacup and stare at me, but she said nothing, and off I went, with Pranab Kaku and his dogs and his in-laws, along a road and then down some steep wooden steps to the water. Deborah and one of her sisters stayed behind, to begin the cleanup and see to the needs of those who remained. Initially, we all walked together, in a single row across the sand, but then I noticed Matty hanging back, and so the two of us trailed behind, the distance between us and the others increasing. We began flirting, talking of things I no longer