by
NARRATION: I've been sitting on the floor for about three hours now. I rub my calf. The pattern from the rough carpet has imprinted red splotches into my skin.
I'm stuck here on a five-hour layover. I'm reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Right now Moushumi is getting married. She's an English-Bengali woman with a PhD in French history. She'd been engaged before, to a white American man, but called off the wedding. Now she's about to marry Gogol, a Bengali-American. She appears to love him, but I'm not sure.
I press my forehead against the window next to me. In the distance, an array of sandy mountains lounge behind the shiny casinos. I shiver as the air conditioning licks at the back of my neck.
We never had air conditioning where I grew up in Rochester, NY. My parents were too frugal. But my father hated the humidity. He missed the arid heat from his boyhood home in Utah. In the 1970s, my parents joined a small Mormon exodus to the East. Young couples bought homes near each other and raised their kids together. Being Mormon was not simply our religion, it was our culture. I lived by rules that kept me slightly apart from my non-Mormon friends. I wanted to be "normal" like everyone else. But I also wanted to be different. To feel close to God.
I also wanted closeness with some flesh and blood. The Mormon guys I grew up with didn't attract me, so I all my boyfriends were outside my faith. My first true love was Jewish, but had a mixed bag of spiritual beliefs. I met him during a semester off from college working on an organic farm. He was distantly related to Bob Dylan, and sang Baptist spirituals while we picked tomatoes. I was infatuated. We would sit and make out in the hayloft of the barn. Then he would bring up Mormonism. He believed I was Mormon merely because my parents were. But I was defiant. I had the truth—and he should convert. I prayed for a miracle. But no luck. I returned to school, He asked to come see me. But I couldn't bring myself to give in to him, my perfect devil. In my dorm room I stared at pictures of him for hours on end.
I moved back to Rochester. I met a Mormon man at church one Sunday. He was a good man. I respected him. We began to date. I didn't feel the thrill of love, more a sense of safety. We got married in a traditional Mormon ceremony kneeling across an altar from one another. And we started our life together, going to church, visiting the elderly, teaching church classes. Rituals that bound us together.
I read further into the book. It's a year into Moushumi's marriage. She's now tired of Gogol. One day at school she discovers an old crush has applied to a job in her department. She secretly copies his resume. She decides to call him. Just to catch up.
I tell her in my mind, don't do it! I want her and Gogol to work out. She's got steadiness with Gogol. At the same time I want to believe it's too hard for her. That it was a mistake to choose the familiar.
But she does start an affair. And Gogol finds out. They get a divorce.
I got a divorce too. About a year into my marriage. I didn't cheat, but I left, which to me felt like cheating. I felt trapped. Trapped by the safety. I dreaded it was only tradition that would keep us together for years of arid tolerance.
I finish the book. I close it, and hold it's cool cover against my forehead. I feel warn out, but consoled, knowing someone else, and maybe its just the author, feels as I do. Outside my plane pulls into the gate. I'm headed to California. To a city I've never seen before. It's time to board. My layover is over.