Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [47]
They shook hands with Ryan. “Pam’s told me so much about you,” Ryan said to Amit.
“Congratulations,” Amit replied. “All the best.”
“We’ll see if I can make a California girl out of her.”
“Ryan’s kids are running around here, somewhere,” Pam said. “That was Claire, carrying the flowers.” She corrected herself, kissing Ryan on the cheek. “Sorry, sweetie. Our kids.” She caught Amit’s eye, as if to say, Can you believe I’m a stepmother? So this was a second marriage for Ryan, another woman’s children involved. The long-faced girl in the wedding procession was now Pam’s stepdaughter. It was not what Amit would have predicted for Pam, such complications, Pam who could have had any man.
“I was really hoping to see your girls,” Pam said. “Do you have a picture?”
Megan looked in her bag, but she was carrying a small beaded evening purse and had left her wallet in the hotel room.
“I’ve got some,” Amit said. He flipped to two pictures, each taken when Maya and Monika were newborns, their eyes beady, their mouths drawn to fine points. “They look nothing like that now.”
“You’ll have to bring them to L.A. You’ll all have to come and stay with us at Ryan’s beach house.” She laughed. “I mean, our beach house.”
“We’d love that,” Megan said. But Amit knew it would never happen, that this was the end of the road, that there would never be a reason for him to step into Pam’s world again.
“There’s a brunch tomorrow, on campus,” Pam said. “We’ll see you there?” She said it in her old way, looking at Amit as if there were something of extreme urgency she needed to discuss with him—notes for an exam they were about to take together, or an analysis of his latest college infatuation.
“Of course,” he told her.
“It’s great of you to come, Amit. It’s so good to see you,” Pam said. For a moment he felt a flicker of their old bond, their odd friendship. He had always been devoted to her, more so, she’d once admitted, than even her brothers, and he felt that she was acknowledging that again, now, in her glance.
“We wouldn’t have missed it,” he said.
The line pushed them along, into the crowd of the party. Megan said she needed to use the restroom. “Do you know where one is?”
He looked around. Across the lawn where people stood eating hors d’oeuvres was the admissions building, a massive Victorian mansion with wraparound porches. The double doors at the back were open, and waiters dashed in and out with their trays. He remembered going there with his parents, being interviewed by an unpleasant man named Mr. Plotkin. Mr. Plotkin had asked Amit why he wanted to attend Langford, and because his parents were sitting outside the room, Amit had replied, truthfully, that his parents were moving to India and didn’t want him to go to school there. “I’m afraid that reply isn’t the mark of a Langford boy, Mr. Sarkar,” Mr. Plotkin told him across the desk where Amit’s report cards and recommendations lay. And then he folded his hands together and waited until Amit had provided a more adequate reply.
“There’s probably bathrooms in there,” he said now to Megan. He walked with her, still positioned faithfully at her left, toward the building, but inside they discovered a long line for the ladies’ room.
“What should we do?” Megan whispered.
“Well, I can’t wait in that line with you. It’s all women. I’m sure no one will notice the skirt.”
“You think?” She fiddled with her purse, adjusting her wrist so that the purse rested over the burnt material. Over the skirt she was wearing a white buttoned shirt, open to reveal part of a pink camisole below. Her neck was bare. She never wore the jewels his mother had given her eventually, that were too ornate for her taste.
“You look great,” he said. He meant it, but he hadn’t told her yet. “I’ll get us more drinks and meet you back here. Another lemonade?”
“Okay.”
He left her there, still fiddling with the purse. It took him longer than he expected to get the drinks. The line at the bar contained a few of his old teachers,