We had been given the option of staying at a hotel near the college or booking a dorm room on campus at absurdly high rates, which I chose. Presumably an exercise in nostalgia, my borderline revulsion at the cottage cheese-colored walls, prison-sized beds, creaky and battle-scarred wooden furniture — a chair, a desk, a dresser — and shared co-ed bathroom down the hallway mostly served to remind me how completely my undiscerning adolescence had surrendered to the fastidiousness of middle age.

I might have felt differently had I registered early enough to snag one of the rooms I had actually lived in, but I had never seen the inside of this one. 

I did recall that a resident of this room had once bizarrely accused Carrie and me of scrawling racist messages on the pad on his door, a screaming, apoplectic, jaw-droppingly false accusation that had taken us so completely by surprise that neither of us could do anything but stammer our innocence in a way that seemed to confirm our guilt.

He reported us to the Assistant Dean. Carrie and I were both worried that, only six weeks or so into our college experience, we might be trapped in some sort of interracial Kafkaesque nightmare. 

In the Assistant Dean’s office, I once again struggled to profess my genuine innocence in a way that sounded genuinely innocent, while Carrie went on the offensive. She had spent the previous evening writing an outline for her argument and made an impassioned and compelling case, complete with citations from Ellison College’s Code of Student Conduct and a closing quote from former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

The Assistant Dean, a bland and equable administrator, was dumbstruck by the force and meticulousness of her argument. Realizing that he was out of his depth, he sent us on our way, with the assurance that nothing would ever come of this. Which nothing ever did. 

That Carrie eventually became a lawyer was a surprise to nobody. 

Anyway, that was my only memory of this room. Although, thinking about it, it may have been the room next door. 

I lay there on the bed, breathing deeply, staring at the ceiling. The mattress was so thin that I could not only feel the frame’s metal springs pressing into my back, I could feel the rust. 

My suitcase was on the other bed, nearby, the one that my wife, Samantha, would have used had she not decided, presumably at the last minute, to stay home. It wasn’t a fight exactly. In the days after Lexi canceled, I became increasingly convinced that going to reunion was a mistake, that nobody would care that I was there. 

Gamely, Samantha tried to coax me out of this dark place, insisting that I was underestimating myself, that I would be surprised by how many people would be glad to see me. But I refused to succumb to her optimism.

Finally, wearily, she said, “Then why don’t we not go?” 

I had not even considered that possibility. But after a few moments’ thought, I rejected the idea. “It’s my twenty-fifth reunion,” I said. “I should be there.”

She nodded. “Then why don’t I not go?”