the namesake

Gogol remembers how his father never wasted food. He stays in his father's apartment and spends the night thinking about his father: the last time they had seen each other, when Maxine and Gogol had stopped by the house on Pemberton Road to have lunch before heading up to New Hampshire instead of staying overnight as his parents had hoped they would.

As he heads back to New York, Gogol remembers a time when he was a child and his family had driven to the beach on Cape Cod. They had driven as far out as they could, and then his father and he had continued walking, out onto the rocks, as far as possible. Unfortunately, his father forgot to bring a camera, but he tells Gogol, "We will have to remember it, then." He tells Gogol, "Try to remember it always... remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go." Now Gogol remembers it as he travels away from their family home, back to his life in New York.