Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth

"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 of romantic interests that led them to each other, but he'd never mentioned Pam in that context. He had loved her, it was true, but because she'd never been his girlfriend there had been nothing to explain.He slouched in his chair, resting his neck on the hard plastic edge and shut his eyes. "I could use a drink."

They stepped back into the air-conditioned room and he opened the suitcase they were sharing for the weekend. He pulled out the thick envelope containing the invitation, directions, a small map of Langford's campus with the ceremony and reception locations marked with a highlighter. He sat on the bed, leaning against a pile of extremely soft pillows, sinking down. Then he looked at the digital clock that was beside the paper pyramid on the bedside table. "The wedding starts in an hour. We should get pillows like this at home."

"Then we'd better get ready." Megan regarded him with a look of professional concern, as if he were a patient on her rounds. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I was just hoping we'd have some time beforehand, to go for a walk or swim in the lake. I was thinking about a swim all the way up here. I didn't think the traffic would be so bad."

"We'll swim tomorrow," she said. "We have a whole weekend."

He nodded. "Right." He stood up and went into the bathroom, to shave and to shower. These everyday rituals felt like a chore. He was uninspired to put on his suit and socialize with ghosts from his adolescence. He undressed, then stood in front of the mirror spreading shaving cream on his face. Since Monika's birth three years ago, this was their first trip without either of the girls. They were overdue for a vacation. Normally, every summer, they rented a cabin for two weeks in the Adiron-dacks. But Megan was in the last year of her residency at Mount Sinai, and her schedule did not allow it. She'd just finished a rotation in the cardiac intensive-care unit, working thirty-six-hour shifts, returning to the apartment at dawn, falling asleep just as Amit and the girls were beginning their day. Amit, who worked as the managing editor for a medical journal, had a more flexible schedule. Summer was a slow time at the journal, and since June he'd been overseeing the girls' breakfasts and baths, scheduling playdates, dropping Maya off at a day camp in the mornings and picking her up again. Reducing their nanny's hours for the summer months was one of the ways he and Megan had decided to cut back on expenses; the down payment on their new apartment, two stories of a brownstone on West Seventy-fifth Street, had depleted their savings.

He sensed Megan's relief at not having Maya and Monika around, at being free. Amit wanted to share that relief, that sense of escape he'd been looking forward to all summer, after the invitation to Pam's wedding had come and they'd made their plan. But now that they were alone he was nagged by the thought of Monika's runny nose, and wondered if his motherin-law would remember that strawberries gave Maya a rash. He was tempted to ask Megan, but he stopped himself, knowing that she would accuse him of not trusting his in-laws. As a parent she was less fussy, less cautious than he was. On her days off she indulged them, baking with them in the kitchen, not minding if they skipped dinner because they were too full of cookies and cake. He knew that it was partly out of guilt that she tended to be lenient, but it was also her nature. She had not been horrified, as he had, when Maya found a wad of flattened chewing gum at the playing ground and put it into her mouth, or when Monika wandered off during a picnic they were having in Central Park and began playing, with her tiny fingers, with dog shit. Megan laughed at such moments, wiping off their hands and faces, convinced that her children could survive anything. She spent her days with people who were fighting for their lives, and could not be shaken by a scraped elbow or a hundred-degree fever.

It was Amit, who had studied enough about the body to know its inherent fragility, who had dissected enough cadavers to know what a horizontal chest incision would reveal, who was plagued by his daughters' vulnerability, both to illness and to accidents of all kinds. He was still haunted by an incident in the cafeteria of the Museum of Natural History, when Monika, a year old, had nearly choked on a piece of dried apricot. A woman at a neighboring table who happened to be a nurse had leapt up at the sound of Monika's coughing and efficiently swept her finger through the girl's mouth; in spite of two years of medical school, Amit lacked the simple instinct, the confidence, to do such a thing. He had been unable to look at either of his daughters for the rest of the day, to enjoy their time at the museum. He kept picturing the apricot piece lodged in Monika's windpipe, and how it might have silenced her forever. When he read articles in the newspaper about taxis suddenly swerving onto sidewalks and killing half a dozen pedestrians, it was always himself he pictured, holding Monika and Maya by the hand. Or he imagined a wave at Jones Beach, where he had been taking them once a week during the summer, dragging one of them down, or a pile of sand suffocating them as he was flipping, a few feet away, through a magazine. In each of these scenarios, he saw himself surviving, the girls perishing under his supervision. Megan would blame him, naturally, and then she would divorce him, and all of it, his life with her and the girls, would end. A brief glance in the wrong direction, he knew, could toss his existence over a cliff.

He lay down his razor and turned on the shower to warm up the room. He heard a knock, and then Megan opened the door.

"I can't go to the wedding," she said, shaking her head. She said this definitively, the way she told the girls that they weren't allowed to watch another program on television, or spend another five minutes in the tub.

"What are you talking about?"

"Look," she said, pointing to the skirt she'd put on. Above it she wore only her bra, flesh-colored and dingy at the straps. The skirt reached her ankles, and it was made of a diaphanous, smoky gray material, layered over a silk panel of a slightly darker shade. She held up a section, and his eyes went immediately to a spot in the fabric. At first he thought it was a stain, but then he realized it was a burn that had created a small empty patch, charred around the edges. Beneath it, the silk lining looked unsightly, like the bright flesh exposed when a scab is forcibly lifted away.