Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [127]
I didn’t offer an explanation. I had none. Instead, I asked how the girls had been when my father and Chitra returned.
“They were asleep,” my father said. “Still, you shouldn’t have abandoned them in the house, Kaushik, not so late at night. Anything might have happened. Chitra was quite disturbed. She’s worried that it’s her fault you’ve run off, that she’s said or done something to upset you. She’s trying her best, you know.”
I realized then: the girls had said nothing. Chitra had no idea that I had ranted at her daughters, that I had harmed and terrified them.
“We leave for Florida day after tomorrow,” my father said. “Do you plan to return by then?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You will get back to college on time?”
“Yes.”
“We will speak in a few weeks, then.”
He hung up the phone. He had not bothered to ask me where I’d gone.
The next morning I got back in my car, and for days I did the same thing: driving up the coast, eating in restaurants when I was hungry, finding motels when I was tired, paying for it with the money my father had given me for Christmas. I didn’t bother getting a map. A gas station attendant told me that eventually I would hit Canada. Now and again I saw the water, little islands and striped lighthouses and tiny spits of land. It was too brutally cold to get out of the car, but occasionally I did, to look at the ocean or explore a bit of trail. It was like no other place I’d seen, nothing like the North Shore of Massachusetts. The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I knew, to kill me, violent enough to break me apart. The waves were immense, battering rocky beaches without sand. The farther I went, the more desolate it became, more than any place I’d been, but for this very reason the landscape drew me, claimed me as nothing had in a long time.
Most of the fishing villages were shut down, the lobster boats out of the water for winter, the wooden traps stacked and empty. At times I wished that I’d had my camera with me, but there is no documentation of those days. The food was generally terrible, but when I think of it I still savor the taste of diner coffee that was at once bitter and insipid, the waffles drowned in syrup, the gummy chowder and greasy eggs, as if no other food had nourished me before then. The bars were the only consistent sign of life, strange small places that felt more like people’s living rooms, with clamshells for ashtrays and nets draped on the walls. I had nothing to say to the fishermen and the other people who drank there and had lived in those villages all their lives, their tobacco-stained beards concealing their faces, their hands raw and chapped, their accents unfathomable. They were neither friendly nor unfriendly, and I kept to myself, aware that I stood out, watching whatever was on the television, observing whatever pool game was in progress. I did not crave anyone’s company. I had never traveled alone before and I discovered that I liked it. No one in the world knew where I was, no one had the ability to reach me. It was like being dead, my escape allowing me to taste that tremendous power my mother possessed forever.
I spent five days getting to the border of Canada, another four heading back, using my father’s money almost to the penny. Somewhere during that time the year ended; I was aware of it thanks only to a free shot of whiskey I received one night in a bar. I was certain that if my mother had lived to visit that part of the world, she would have persuaded my father to buy her one of the hundreds of homes I passed, overlooking the open sea, many occupying islands all to themselves. The bars and diners always had stacks of pamphlets listing water-front properties, everything from simple timeshares to turreted mansions, and sometimes, lacking anything else to read,