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By Root 589 0

His parents had not stayed here for parents’ weekends; when Amit was at Langford they had lived in India, in New Delhi. They hadn’t made it to his graduation, either. They’d been planning to, but Amit’s father, an ophthalmologist at one of Delhi’s best hospitals, was requested to perform cataract surgery on a member of Parliament, and so Bengali acquaintances of his parents’ from Worcester attended in their stead. After graduating, Amit had not kept in touch with his Langford friends. He had no nostalgia for the school, and when letters came seeking alumni contributions or inviting him to the succession of reunions, he threw them out without opening them. Apart from his loose connection with Pam, and a sweatshirt he still owned with the school’s wrinkled name across the chest, there was nothing to remind him of those years of his life. He couldn’t imagine sending his daughters to Langford—couldn’t imagine letting go of them as his parents had let go of him.

He looked out at the hotel grounds. A pine tree growing directly in front of their balcony obstructed most of the immediate view. The pool was small and uninviting, surrounded by a chain-link fence, with no one swimming or sunbathing on its periphery. To the right were the tennis courts, concealed by more pine trees, but he could hear the soft thwack of a ball flying back and forth, a sound that made him tired.

“It’s a shame about this tree,” he said.

“If only it were a few feet that way,” Megan agreed.

“Maybe we should ask for another room. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Amit and Megan had a tradition, in their relationship, of switching hotel rooms. On the first trip they’d taken together after they met, to Puerto Rico, they’d gotten a room on the ground floor, and there was a dead lizard in the bathroom. Megan complained and they were switched to a deluxe suite overlooking the mesmerizing blue-green ocean and the contrasting blue of the sky. For the entirety of their stay they kept the curtains open to that view, making love sideways on the bed as they faced it, waking to it in the mornings, the effect being as if the whole room, and the bed, and they themselves, were somehow afloat on the sea. A similar thing had happened in Venice, where they’d gone to celebrate their first anniversary—after one night facing a stone wall, they moved to a room by a canal, where a small barge docked each morning selling fruits and vegetables. In this case, Amit reflected, they were already on the desirable side of the hotel—the rooms at the front would overlook the parking lot.

“It’s not worth it, for just two nights,” Megan said. She leaned slightly forward in her chair and peered over the railing of the balcony, craning her neck. “Is the wedding here at the hotel?”

“I told you, it’s at Langford.”

“Well, another couple is about to get married in that gazebo. I see bridesmaids.”

Amit looked on the other side of the pine tree and saw people filing out along a flagstone path that led from the terrace of the hotel restaurant. A photographer leaned over a tripod, surrounded by bags of equipment, and in front of him, a group of young women posed in matching lavender dresses.

“Pam’s wedding will be different,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“She won’t have bridesmaids.”

“How do you know?”

“She’s not the type.”

“You never know,” Megan said. “A lot of women do things that are out of character on their wedding day. Even women like Pam.”

Her slight derision washed over him, not penetrating. He knew Megan had been surprised that he’d accepted the invitation to Pam’s wedding, given that he and Pam rarely saw each other. And though Megan hadn’t protested, he understood that on some level he had dragged her here, to an unfamiliar place full of unfamiliar people, to a piece of his past that had nothing to do with the life he and Megan shared. He knew that though Megan refused to admit it, she was insecure about Pam, defensive the one or two times they’d met, as if Amit and Pam had once been lovers. When Amit and Megan had first met they’d traded their histories, divulging the succession