Unaccustomed Earth (14 page)

Although Pam still lived in New York, selling foreign rights at a literary agency, these days they saw each other, at best, once or twice a year, usually by accident, on a subway or a street corner or a crowded exhibit at the Metropolitan. But he was permanently on her mailing list, and therefore he received cards at Christmas, and even on his birthday—she was the type to remember that sort of thing. When she learned that Amit and Megan had gotten married, she sent them candlesticks from Tiffany’s. And when the girls were born, expensive gifts arrived, European dresses and cashmere blankets for their strollers. There had been no phone call from her to tell him she was getting married, only the invitation. And after all these years, Amit felt both quietly elated and solicitous, as contact from Pam and the Bordens had always made him feel, causing him to set aside whatever it was that he was doing and pay them his full attention.

Guests were gathered under a beautiful tree where a bar had been set up, offering cocktails before the ceremony. On the lawn were rows of white folding chairs, overlooking the deceptively gentle milky-blue mountains. Over them, the sun was just beginning to set. It was here, at this precise spot, that he’d graduated. He’d looked different that day, leaner in frame, his hair still predominantly black. It was Pam, in college, who’d forbidden him to color it, telling him it was distinguished, that women would be drawn to it. He hadn’t believed her but she was right; every woman he’d ever been involved with had confessed, at one point or another, that they found his gray hair sexy.

“Other side,” Megan said as they approached the crowd. He moved over to her left and matched his stride to hers. Side by side they took their place in the line for drinks. There was the usual array of bottles, and two punch bowls full of lemonade.

“Spiked or unspiked?” the bartender asked. They got two glasses of the spiked and approached the lawn, sipping their sweet, potent drinks. He looked around at the faces, at men carrying toddlers on their shoulders, mothers shushing babies in their carriers, nannies chasing after older children. The nannies seemed young, high school students, he guessed, hired for the occasion. The fathers were pointing to the trees, to the clouds that spread and shifted over the valley. He recognized no one and missed his daughters.

“Lots of kids here,” Megan said.

“The girls would have enjoyed this.”

“But then we wouldn’t be able to enjoy ourselves. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” Because they were standing side by side they raised their glasses into the air in front of them, without looking at each other.

It felt strange to be drinking at the school. He remembered the covert parties, the bottles that would be smuggled into the dorms and consumed Friday and Saturday nights, always fearful of the proctor’s rounds.

“I feel old,” he said to Megan. He saw a face that was familiar, smiling at him, walking over. The stylish tortoiseshell glasses were new, but he remembered the friendly blue eyes, the wavy brown hair, the cleft in the chin. They had shared a number of classes, been lab partners, he suddenly remembered, in chemistry. His father and Pam’s father had grown up together; he had always referred to the headmaster as “Uncle Borden.” He remembered the last name, Schultz, but not the first.

“Sarkar,” Schultz said. “Amit Sarkar, right?”

Amit extended a hand, Schultz’s first name coming to him just then. “Great to see you. This is my wife, Megan. Megan, this is Tim.”

The smile disappeared from Schultz’s face. “It’s Ted.”

“Ted, of course, Ted. I’m so sorry. Ted, meet my wife, Megan.” He felt like an idiot, as mortified by his error as he would have been in his first term at Langford, when he worked so hard to please. He berated himself for using a name at all, for not letting it emerge naturally in the course of conversation. “I’m sorry,” he said again as Ted and Megan shook hands. “It’s been a long day. A long drive.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ted said, in a way that only made Amit feel worse. “Your parents still in India?”

“They came back. And then they left again.”

“Where are you living these days?”

It turned out that Ted lived in Manhattan, too. He was divorced and working at a law firm.

“Do you guys know this guy Pam’s marrying? The one she’s finally going to settle for instead of one of us?”

“I’ve never met Ryan,” Amit said, wondering what Megan would make of Ted’s comment.

“All I know is he writes for television,” Ted said. “One of those law shows that makes my job look glamorous. That’s why they’re moving to L.A. Apparently one of the actors for the show is supposed to be here.”

They looked around for someone who might be a celebrity. It was an attractive crowd, many of the women in black cocktail dresses. Amit remembered Megan’s skirt and took a step toward her, putting his arm around her waist.

“How did you two meet?” Ted asked.

“Med school,” Megan said.

“Oh. Dr. Sarkar, I’m impressed.”

“Just her,” Amit said. “She stuck it out. I didn’t.”

A string quartet began to play and people drifted toward their seats. Amit and Megan chose chairs at the back, Megan complaining that her heels were sinking into the grass. They put their empty glasses under their seats. Everyone turned around as the man Pam was about to marry walked between the chairs and took his place at the center where a clergyman was standing. Ryan looked well into his forties, tall, tanned, with a salt and pepper beard, his handsome features lined. And then Pam appeared, coming down the aisle with her father, then her mother and her brothers behind. Mrs. Borden was unchanged, her cropped sandy hair styled in the same practical way, her figure still trim. She turned her head to smile reassuringly at the guests on either side of her. All their lives the Bordens had presided over similarly large gatherings, weekly assemblies and homecoming games and graduations, and in a way this was no different. The only person he didn’t recognize was a girl of about twelve or so, with a long, pretty face and a somber expression, carrying a bouquet of flowers. He guessed it was one of Pam’s nieces or younger cousins. Pam wore a sleeveless dress with a train, made of crumpled ivory material. The effect was not so much a dress as a long bedsheet that she had wrapped around herself, a careless yet perfect vision. She carried yellow freesias casually in one hand, smiling and waving to people with the other. To this day she was the most beautiful woman he had ever known.

The couple stood with their backs to the guests, facing the minister and the mountains and the setting sun. It was a brief, simple ceremony, without bridesmaids or a best man, as Amit had predicted. Someone got up and read a poem he could not hear because there was no microphone. Still, visually, it was spectacular, the sky deepening into a combination of dark peach and plum over the mountains, the lush grounds of the school unpopulated save for the spot where the wedding was taking place. He watched strands of Pam’s hair, loosened by the wind that had settled over them, causing women to put shawls around their shoulders, that cold mountain air that always replaced the day’s heat. She was thirty-seven now, his age, but from the back she looked like a girl of nineteen. And yet she was marrying late, so much later than he had.

As he witnessed the ceremony he felt grateful for the faint connection he and Pam had maintained, enough for him to be sitting there, watching her marry, witnessing the very beginning of that phase of her existence. Amit anticipated only a continuation of the things he knew: Megan, his job, life in New York, the girls. The most profound thing, having Maya and Monika, had already happened; nothing would be more life-altering than that. He wanted to change none of it, and yet a part of him sometimes longed to return to the beginning of his relationship with Megan, if only for the pleasure of anticipating and experiencing those things again.

There was a round of applause as Pam and Ryan kissed, their eyes open from the excitement, and then the music started up and the wedding party receded down the grassy aisle. Amit rose, this time positioning himself on Megan’s left without having to be told, and together they took their places behind the others in the receiving line. Pam tossed back her head and laughed at things people said, leaning over to kiss them or put a hand comfortingly to their upper arms. “Where are your beautiful little girls?” she cried out as soon as she saw Amit, extending her neck so that he could kiss her on one cheek, then the other. Her skin was the same, disconcertingly soft, but now that he faced her he saw Mrs. Borden’s crow’s-feet forming around her eyes.

“We left them with Megan’s parents. It’s our weekend of reckless freedom.”

“I want to stay up until five in the morning,” Megan announced cheerfully. “I want to celebrate all night and watch the sun rise from our balcony.”

Amit glanced at Megan, puzzled that she’d never mentioned this to him. He had assumed her main objective for the weekend was to sleep undisturbed. “You do?”

Megan didn’t answer him. Instead she said to Pam, “You look lovely. It’s such a pretty dress.” She said this genuinely, not intimidated by Pam as she’d been in the past. Amit wondered if it was because Pam was married now, belonging to another man and therefore not even a little bit to Amit.

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, most of them in advanced middle age, a few looking on the brink of retirement. There was Mrs. Randall, his physics teacher, to whom he waved, and Mr. Plotkin, whose eyes he avoided. Then he saw Mr. Nagle, one of his English teachers, who’d also been the adviser for the school newspaper,
The Langford Legend,
that Amit wrote for and eventually edited. Mr. Nagle had been one of the youngest members of the faculty, just out of college when Amit was a student, and he still looked refreshingly young, his dark hair and drooping mustache reminding Amit of a shorter, thinner version of Ringo Starr. Mr. Nagle was originally from Winchester, a graduate of the high school there, and Amit always felt a connection with him because of that.