It could get a little much. So as a balance, even though I was exhausted, I travelled to the library every weekend with Ashok and Meena – once even going by myself when their children were ill. I got better at dressing for the cold and made my own placard – Knowledge is power! – with its private nod to Will. I would head back on the train and afterwards make my way down to the East Village to have a coffee at the Vintage Clothes Emporium and look over whatever new items Lydia and her sister had in stock.
Mr Gopnik never mentioned the library again. I realized with mild disappointment that charity could mean something quite different here; that it was not enough to give, you had to be seen to be giving. Hospitals bore the names of their donors in six-foot-high letters above the door. Balls were named after those who funded them. Even buses bore lists of names alongside their rear windows. Mr and Mrs Leonard Gopnik were known as generous benefactors because they were visible in society as being so. A scruffy library in a rundown neighbourhood offered no such kudos.
Ashok and Meena had invited me for Thanksgiving at their apartment in Washington Heights, horrified when I revealed I had no plans. ‘You can’t spend Thanksgiving on your own!’ Ashok said, and I decided not to mention that few people in England even knew what it was. ‘My mother makes the turkey – but don’t expect it to be done American-style,’ Meena said. ‘We can’t stand all that bland food. This is going to be some serious tandoori turkey.’
It was no effort to say yes to something new: I was quite excited. I bought a bottle of champagne, some fancy chocolates and some flowers for Meena’s mother, then put on my blue cocktail dress with the fur sleeves, figuring an Indian Thanksgiving would be a suitable first outing for it – or, at least, one with no discernible dress code. Ilaria was flat out preparing for the Gopniks’ family dinner and I decided not to disturb her. I let myself out, checking that I had the instructions Ashok had given me.
As I headed down the corridor I noticed Mrs De Witt’s door was open. I heard the television burbling from deep inside the apartment. A few feet from the door Dean Martin stood in the hallway glaring at me. I wondered if he was about to make another break for freedom, and rang the doorbell.
Mrs De Witt emerged into the corridor.
‘Mrs De Witt? I think Dean Martin may be about to go for a walk.’ The dog pottered back towards her. She leaned against the wall. She looked frail and tired. ‘Can you shut the door, dear? I must have not closed it properly.’
‘Will do. Happy Thanksgiving, Mrs De Witt,’ I said.
‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’ She disappeared back into the room, the dog behind her, and I closed the front door. I had never seen her with so much as a casual caller and felt a brief sadness at the thought of her spending Thanksgiving alone.
I was just turning to leave when Agnes came down the corridor in her gym kit. She seemed startled to see me. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To dinner?’ I didn’t want to say who I was going with. I didn’t know how the employers of the building would feel if they thought the staff were getting together without them. She looked at me in horror.
‘But you can’t go, Louisa. Leonard’s family is coming here. I can’t do this by myself. I told them you would be here.’
‘You did? But –’
‘You must stay.’
I looked at the door. My heart sank.
And then her voice dropped. ‘Please, Louisa. You’re my friend. I need you.’
I rang Ashok and told him. My one consolation was that, doing the job he did, he grasped the situation immediately. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I whispered into the phone. ‘I really wanted to come.’
‘Nah. You got to stay. Hey, Meena’s yelling to tell you she’s going to save some turkey for you. I’ll bring it with me tomorrow … Baby, I told her! I did! She says drink all their expensive wine. Okay?’
I felt, briefly, on the edge of tears. I had looked forward to an evening full of giggling children, delicious food and laughter. Instead I was going to be a shadow again, a silent prop in an icy room.
My fears were justified.
Three other members of the Gopnik family came to Thanksgiving: his brother, an older, greyer, more anaemic version of Mr Gopnik, who apparently did something in law. Probably ran the US Department of Justice. He brought with him their mother, who sat in a wheelchair, refused to take off her fur coat for the entire evening and complained loudly that she couldn’t hear what anyone was saying. Mr Gopnik’s brother’s wife, a former violinist apparently of some note, accompanied them. She was the only person there who bothered to ask what I did. She greeted Agnes with two kisses and the kind of professional smile that could have been meant for anyone.
Tab made up the numbers, arriving late and bringing with her the air of someone who has spent their cab ride in deep telephone discussion about how much they did not want to be there. Moments after she arrived we were seated to eat in the dining room – which was off the main living room and dominated by a long oval mahogany dining table.
It is fair to say the conversation was stilted. Mr Gopnik and his brother fell immediately into conversation about the legal restrictions in the country where he was currently doing business, and the two wives asked each other a few stiff questions, like people practising small-talk in a foreign language.
‘How have you been, Agnes?’
‘Fine, thank you. And you, Veronica?’
‘Very well. You look very well. That’s a very nice dress.’
‘Thank you. You also look very nice.’
‘Did I hear that you had been to Poland? I’m sure Leonard said you were visiting your mother.’
‘I was there two weeks ago. It was lovely to see her, thank you.’
I sat between Tab and Agnes, watching Agnes drink too much white wine and Tab flick mutinously through her phone and occasionally roll her eyes. I sipped at the pumpkin and sage soup, nodded, smiled, and tried not to think longingly of Ashok’s apartment and the joyful chaos there. I would have asked Tab about her week – anything to move the stuttering conversation along – but she had made so many acid asides about the horror of having ‘staff’ at family events that I didn’t have the nerve.
Ilaria brought out dish after dish. ‘The Polish puta does not cook. So somebody has to give up their Thanksgiving,’ she muttered afterwards. She had laid on a feast of turkey, roast potatoes and a bunch of things I had never seen served as an accompaniment but suspected were about to leave me with instantaneous Type 2 diabetes – candied sweet potato casserole with marshmallow topping, green beans with honey and bacon, roasted acorn squash with bacon drizzled in maple syrup, buttery cornbread, and carrots roasted with honey and spice. There were also popovers – a kind of Yorkshire pudding – and I peered at them surreptitiously to see if they were draped with syrup too.
Of course only the men ate much of it. Tab pushed hers around her plate. Agnes ate some turkey and almost nothing else. I had a little of everything, grateful for something to do and also that Ilaria no longer slammed dishes down in front of me. In fact, she looked at me sideways a few times as if to express silent sympathy for my predicament. The men kept talking business, unaware or unwilling to acknowledge the permafrost at the other end of the table.
Occasionally the silence was broken by the elderly Mrs Gopnik demanding somebody help her to some potato or asking loudly, for the fourth time, what on earth the woman had done to the carrots. Several people would answer her at once, as if relieved to have a focus, no matter how irrational.