Reunion



Here is a short story I wrote in 1991 – the first (and to date only) piece of fiction I have ever done.  But like most good fiction it was based on reality.  And shortly AFTER it came out in the Yale SOM literary magazine The Chronicle, I attended my own 10th high school reunion. By then, copies of this article had reached some of my friends who would be at the reunion, and at the reunion itself I posed with two bottles of beer in my hands, and I posted that photo on a wall back at Yale.  It was life imitating art imitating life.

 

My story revolves around a bottle of beer, which is pretty strange since I don’t drink beer, except of course if you count the times when Dad used to offer me a sip of his when he went down to the kitchen for a snack at about 8:30 each night.  But in those days beer was an innocent enough thing, because I didn’t know that anybody actually got drunk, and most importantly because beer commercials were still pretty tame.

But I’m getting ahead of myself….

I guess if I’m going to tell the story properly, then I must briefly review with you the history of my heart.  It shouldn’t take long.

Probably the first time I noticed the existence of women was in first grade, when LoriBeth Metz and Sherri Krueger came up to me during recess one day and giggled into my ear that they thought I was pretty cute.  Until then I hadn’t really made any distinctions between boys and girls, because except for the length of our hair we looked the same, and from what I understood we were both able to give the cooties to each other, whatever that meant.  This interesting little romance lasted reasonably long by my standards ‑‑ maybe three or four more recesses.

I flirted and was flirted with a few more times throughout gradeschool and junior high, but it wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school when I actually kissed someone.  That was Sandra Wheatley, Sandy, who had only moved into town a few years earlier, and who occasionally wore full‑length skirts, which made her kind of different.  I liked that, and somehow I fought through my shyness to get to know her.  I guess I got to know her reasonably well, because pretty soon she was wearing my varsity basketball jacket and whispering to her friends whenever I walked by.  We kissed for the first time walking home from a football game, and thereafter looked for every opportunity to be alone so we could do it again (I would never dream of kissing in public).  We were together for nearly a year, Sandy and I, before her father was transferred to Baltimore, but that was just as well since we seemed to be fighting a lot toward the end anyway, about kissing in public and things like that.

I didn’t really date anyone else in high school.

And I didn’t really date anyone in college, either.  I always wanted to, but somehow I just never met anyone.  Four years at Kenyon College in Ohio just flew by, and since I wasn’t into drinking at all, and I was a terrible dancer, I had to force myself to be social, something I wasn’t any good at.  There was one woman whom I kind of had a crush on, a beautiful blond with a brilliant smile who always sang while she walked, but I only admired her from afar.  And there was one other, with the unlikely name of Merit, who seemed to like me a little bit, but she had an odd twitch to her right eye which I found really disconcerting.  I didn’t know where to look when I talked to her, so pretty soon I just didn’t talk to her at all.

After college I returned east and settled into a job with a real estate company in New York.  This brought me into contact with a lot of people, one of whom was the office manager for a computer company which was relocating from midtown to Westchester.  Annette was outgoing and temperamental, which I was not, but we both enjoyed going to the movies and eating dim sum, and before long we found out that our bodies fit together nicely, too.  We stayed together (I mean that literally ‑‑ for all practical purposes I moved into her apartment a little while after we met) for two years, maybe a little more.  But she started to grow tired of my staid habits and lack of social graces, and I guess longed for some more excitement.  One night we went out to dinner and she started drinking a lot just to gall me, and then she started making eyes at some guy at the bar, and before the night was out we’d had a big fight and decided to split up.  I thought maybe it would last a few days or a week, but she had apparently had it with me, because she never did call to apologize.  I borrowed a friend’s old station wagon and moved my things out of her apartment one night in the rain.

That pretty much gets you up to speed.  I realize this paints a sad and sort of desperate picture, and I want you to know that’s not really the case.  Work is good, and I play basketball a couple of nights a week with some guys at the Y, and I can honestly say that I’ve never been tempted to call up one of those dating services, although the fact that both of my sisters and my brother are now married does hurt a little bit.

Well, here’s where it starts getting interesting.  Because just when I had settled back into my routine, and decided that being alone wasn’t so bad after all, an invitation arrived for my high school reunion.

It’s been ten years

                         Since you’ve seen your peers

                         Now it’s time to relive

                         All the laughs and tears.

Well, wasn’t that cute?  I looked at the names of the people who were organizing the reunion, and chuckled:  exactly the kitschy, sentimental ones I would have guessed.  Carol DeMartin, who had been the yearbook editor, and whom I had known since nursery school; Peter Swan, who had set an all‑time Denton High record by being named Student Council President twice; and Laura Ingemi, apparently now Laura Guilfoil, who cried so hard at graduation that her mascara ran down her face and dripped onto her diploma, and it had to be replaced.  Who else could have produced an invitation with gold foil printing on sky blue paper?

I’d like to say that the event just snuck up on me, that I thought to myself, “Wow, has it been ten years?”  But the truth is I had been anticipating this reunion for a long time.  I had wondered what ever happened to Jack and to Stevie, and to Mark Krasner, and to Joanne Delitieri, and to a bunch of other people.  There were of course a handful of folks I had kept in touch with ‑‑ my truly close friends ‑‑ but I had often thought about the “others” who had surrounded me for so many years, and save for an occasional rumor courtesy of Mom back in Connecticut, I really didn’t know what anyone was up to.  I was dying to find out.

Of course, I played it cool when some of my friends started to call and ask whether I was going to go to the reunion.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I’d say with a big sigh.  “Probably.  I’m not sure if I’m going to be around that weekend” (it was five months away).

Deep down, though, I was sure.  I knew exactly where I was going to be that weekend ‑‑ I just didn’t dare admit it.  I was going to be with the woman of my dreams.  I was going to re‑meet someone, probably someone I had barely known 10 years ago, and fall in love at a glance.

I would be lying if I told you that I sat back and waited for the reunion weekend to come.  The fact is I started obsessing about it.

For one thing, I had to decide whether to grow a mustache or not.  That would show worldly sophistication, wouldn’t it?  I spent hours agonizing over this decision, several times starting to grow one, only to shave it off the day before a big meeting with a client.  Ultimately I opted for the clean‑shaven look, because I figured the crow’s feet around my eyes and the slightly receding hairline were enough to show that I had, indeed, matured.

Then there was the question of what to tell people I was doing with my life.  I figured that a lot was expected of me, since I had finished 9th in the class and had played sports, and had gone to a fancy liberal arts college.  Surely I couldn’t reveal that I was a real estate marketer!  I had to come up with something more glamorous.  I toyed with the idea of saying I ran my own company, but thought that might require too much explanation.  Maybe I should go the other route, and say that I had worked overseas for a while, but was now unemployed and kind of on the skids a little bit ‑‑ that might generate some interesting sympathetic reactions.

I finally decided that enough people at the reunion actually knew what I was doing, so I better stick with the truth ‑‑ but I’d mostly just answer, “Oh, I dabble in real estate, but what do you do?”  Women love it when you show interest in their work, right?

I realized that I might be one of the only people coming to the reunion alone, and this also caused me to lose some sleep.  I mean, I wanted to make it clear that I was alone, but I didn’t want to come across as lonely.  I decided that the best way to cover up was to meld in with the crowd, and this would mean dancing and drinking a little bit ‑‑ two things I wasn’t real comfortable doing, but what the hell.

And so, over the course of the next few months, I spent a lot of time watching beer commercials.  This might sound a little funny to you, but I figured that if I were going to look at all natural with a drink in my hand, with pretty women all around, then there was no better source to study than the beer commercials.  So alone in my apartment at night, I’d sit and wait for the commercials to come on (well, in truth, I sought them out with my remote control).  Then, using a bottle of salad dressing as a prop, I’d watch and imitate the guys on TV.  There were the “Mountain Men” from Busch who opened beer bottles on their boots; and the Bud Light volleyball players who were somehow able to concentrate on the game, before cooling themselves off with a cold bottle brushed coyly across the brow; and the exotic people in the Michelob commercials who decided “there’s no going back”; and those smug fellows who acted surprised when the Swedish bikini team dropped in with a case of Old Milwaukee.  At one point I totally fell in love with a woman in a Coors ad, and would stare glassy‑eyed at her each time she made her all‑too‑brief visit to my living room.

But mostly I just looked for cues on how to appear natural, how to dance, how to hold a beer in a suggestive way; things like that.  I studied hard, and once even took a swig before remembering that it was actually Seven Seas Creamy Italian in my hand; I’m still trying to get that smell out of the couch.

Anyway, the day finally arrived, a brisk Saturday in late October.  The reunion was being held at some hotel in Manhattan called the St. Regis, for reasons I couldn’t figure out.  I showered and shaved, and dabbed myself with cologne I had bought just for this occasion, dressed in a conservative suit with a not‑so‑conservative tie, and then took a cab uptown, timing it just right to arrive half an hour late.

Walking into the ballroom, I immediately ran into Ted Mattson ‑‑ one of the few people I had kept up with ‑‑ and his wife Sharon, and I was able to walk in with them, avoiding the appearance of coming in alone.  So far, so good.

The room was nauseatingly decorated with that same gold and sky blue motif from the invitation, which was all the more surprising since our school colors had been red and white.  A band was already in high gear up front, playing tunes from The Doobies and Fleetwood Mac, which I guess must have popular ten years ago.  Some people were dancing ‑‑ notably, Carol DeMartin, Peter Swan and Laura Ing‑‑‑ Guilfoil, the three organizers…together (God, it looked like some kind of love fest).  Mostly, though, people were clustered together at tables, talking up a storm and smoking more than I had remembered them doing in high school.  I couldn’t help noticing that some of the guys were wearing tuxedoes, which I had only done once in my life, and then only for my sister Karen’s wedding.  Was it my imagination or did they really looker older and more successful than the rest of us?  Certainly the prettiest women were hanging around the guys in tuxes.

Like a pinball in an arcade game, I bounced from one group of people to another.  Most of them I didn’t recognize, or if I did I hadn’t any real desire to go up and say hi since we hadn’t ever done that in three years of high school.  I said hello here, how ya’ doin’ there ‑‑ small talk, which I hated.  I started to dread that the whole night might turn out like this.  But before long I ran into Jack and Stevie, off on the side looking at a montage of photographs and reminiscing about the basketball team ‑‑ boy we were bad!  I stayed and talked with them, and for a while we really got into it.  Did they know that Karl Tatum, who had been on the team with us as a sophomore, was now playing pro ball in the CBA after a cup of coffee with the Dallas Mavericks?  Had I heard that Stan Whatshisname, that young assistant coach, had been killed in the Gulf War?

We talked for about fifteen minutes before we exhausted our stories, and then moved on.

Mark Krasner, who had been in all of my classes and had, I knew from browsing at Barnes & Noble in recent years, gone on to become a successful author, was there with his wife, a petite southern woman whose name I never did catch.  We talked for a while, and then he went to the bar and asked if I’d like a beer, and I said “Sure” without hesitation (at least I think it was without hesitation).  While we were talking, a couple of people drifted by and leaned in to read our nametags; apparently uninterested, they kept walking.  Mark and I broke into laughter.

Soon I saw Joanne Delitieri, who had run the Senior Class Pledge Drive with me, and I asked her to dance, even though she was pretty pregnant, about seven months, I’d say.  Good, I thought: a nice safe thing to do.

After the song ended and the band stopped to take a break, Joanne and I went over to the table where her husband was seated (was everybody married except me?), and I went back to work on my bottle of beer.  Looking suave, I thought; ready to go bust a bronc.

And then I spotted Sandy Wheatley.

She was standing with a small group of people, laughing hard, her right foot angled back against the wall, a glass of something or other in her hand.  Dressed in a sleeveless, sequined outfit, with shoulder length blondish hair and a string of pearls, she was absolutely stunning.  She wore a couple of rings, but I was so shaken that I didn’t notice if any of them were wedding rings, and besides, I’d never been able to figure out if wedding rings were worn on the right or left hand.  I had never expected to see her here ‑‑ after all, she had left Connecticut during our junior year ‑‑ and maybe that’s what shocked me so much.  Or maybe it was how beautiful she looked.  Or maybe it was the normal response for seeing an old flame.  Or maybe the alcohol was starting to take its toll.  In any event, I was flabbergasted.  So I did the only thing I could think to do, the only trained response strong enough to withstand this blast of sentiment and libido, the only truly instinctive move left:  I went and bought another beer.

I stood against the bar and marvelled at her, no longer even thinking about the bottle in my hand; pretty soon she felt my stare.  I thought about turning away, but it was too late.  She smiled, looked down to the floor shyly, and then excused herself from the group and started walking over my way.  She stopped about two feet away.

“Hello, Sandra ‑‑ I certainly didn’t expect to see” ‑‑

You’re drinking beer?!”

‑‑ we mumbled our greetings at the same time, and then laughed.

 

“Yeah, I’m drinking” ‑‑

“Someone sent me an invitation ‑‑”

‑‑ again we spoke at the same time, and we laughed even harder.

 

“How are you?” I asked, indicating with a head gesture that I would go first, and pulling her in for a hug.  “Where are you these days?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, again looking to the floor.  “Older, I guess.  Doing fine.  I’m in retail now, did you know?  I’m a buyer for Burberry’s.  In Philadelphia.  How about you, Michael, are you still selling real estate?”

“How’d you know about that?”  I was still so disoriented that I completely forgot I had been sending Christmas cards to her family in Baltimore for the last ten years.

“Santa told me,” she said, and we both laughed some more.

 

Now, I must tell you at this point that I although I am usually quite good with words, I simply couldn’t think of anything to talk about with Sandy.  I really, truly was surprised to see her.  It had never occurred to me that she would be at the reunion, and so even in my wildest beer commercial fantasies I had not prepared any speech, had not rehearsed any sophisticated lines or gestures.  Worst of all, I suddenly became conscious of my hands, and didn’t know what to do with them ‑‑ so I went for my third beer of the night ‑‑ a record, eclipsing the old mark by three.  Unfortunately, I was still so disoriented that I thought it was a twist‑off top, and actually cut my thumb trying to remove it.  Sandy laughed and laughed.  Nice move, cowboy.

We stood by the bar for a while, exchanging talk about our families, and occasionally recalling a story from the past as one or another memory walked by.  I was starting to feel a little dizzy from all the alcohol and emotion, and I think I must have been doing a lot more staring than anything else; but I still managed to ask her to dance when the band started playing “Just the Way You Are.”  She looked me right in the eyes, very surprised because she knew that I liked dancing about as much as I liked drinking, but she arched her right hand out anyway as if to say, “let’s go.”  And we did.

Out on the dance floor I was graceless as usual ‑‑ but it didn’t really matter.  Sandy led, and next to her even a crash test mannequin would have looked good.  At one point, as we swayed around, I noticed Jack and Stevie, and Mark and his wife, and a whole bunch of other people on the edge of the dance floor, looking right at us.  I simply didn’t care.

We danced for — God, it must have been half an hour — without exchanging another word.  I guess I was pretty far gone by this point, because I didn’t even hear the hoots coming from the spectator gallery (Mark told me about this later, much to my embarrassment).  The only thing I recall is that the last number in the set was John Lennon’s “Imagine,” and during the song Sandy slipped her left hand out of mine and slowly rubbed the back of my neck.

As the music ended she gently leaned forward, closed her eyes, and smiled this demure little smile of fondness and memory and…and victory, I think.  And we kissed… slowly, softly, sensuously.  Our lips parted after what seemed like an eternity, but I kept my eyes closed and started quivering a little bit.

“I’ve got to go,” she whispered in a tone of resigned determination I suddenly remembered well.  My eyes still closed, I just nodded slowly.  And as she backed off, her hand traced its way across my shoulder, down my arm, into my hand ‑‑ and then out.  I opened my eyes to see her glance to the floor again, and then leave.

It’s pointless to try to recall exactly what happened after that.  I know I stood on the dance floor for a while, because I remember Mark coming out to walk me back to a seat.  I think I may have had another drink, though based on the color of the stain I found on my shirt the next day I’d say it was a Coke, and I don’t think too much of it made it into my mouth.  I do recall trading mindless conversation with a couple more people, and then getting a room at the St. Regis for the night because I couldn’t bear the thought of going home.  There were some wild noises from the room next door.  That’s about it.

Since then, I’ve settled back into my old life.  Work keeps me busy, which I guess is good, since I really don’t have much to do at night.  I have thought about moving out to California, where my cousin has a small real estate firm, but I’m not yet sure whether I’m ready for that.  Joanne Delitieri, I heard, had a baby boy.

The thing is, I’m still consumed by thinking about that reunion, and about Sandy Wheatley ‑‑ about what happened, and what didn’t happen.  It all still amazes me, because I fell in love that night, but I’m not sure whether the romance was with a time or an image or a beautiful woman or what.  In any event, it never came to be.

Oh, one other thing you’d probably be interested in knowing.  About three months after the reunion, I received a box in the mail, with no return address.  There was no note inside, no card; just a six‑pack of Keystone Beer, and my varsity basketball jacket.