CHAPTER 1
Reunion
When it come in the mail that day, I couldn't hardly believe it. Just stood there at the end of the driveway with that little square of paper in my hands, a list of names of all those folks I'd lost track of and the date coming right up. But what got me was the twenty-five year part. I mean, in all that time I just moved fifty miles away, and here's twenty-five years, gone.
Some of those names jump right out at me – Samuel F. Miller, Ronald K. Fuller, Lucinda A. Moore, Marjory L. Simms – even if I used to know them by others: Sam, Ron, Lucy, Marge. Except Marge, I haven't seen the others in just about the twenty-five years it says on that invitation, and for a second I think how nice it would be to catch up after all these years.
But reunions are for people who got something snappy to show for all that time – a la-di-da car, a split-level house, jeans the same size you wore back then. That's not me. And it's not just the weight. Around my hips now, but there in my face too. Not that I look in the mirror much. Not like I used to. I got two deep lines between my eyebrows showed up after Eddie left and ruined my looks, or what was left of them after having babies, and after a while I just gave up and stopped trying. Them creams don't do nothing but make your lines deeper, what with worrying how you're gonna pay for what they cost.
My maiden name's there on that invitation too: Patricia R. Lapone, it says. I look at that name there in black lettering and try to remember the girl I used to be. That girl thought the world was stretched out in front of her with possibilities, like items you could pick from a cafeteria line. That girl thought you chose your own path in life. She didn't know how sometimes the path chooses you, and no matter how hard you try you can't seem to make your feet go a different way, almost like the path was there long before you came to walk it, long before you were born, even.
* * *
Days pass, and I've good and forgotten about that reunion when the phone rings one afternoon, which is rare. I mean, my daughter Marie calls in the evenings when the baby's asleep, and my son Jack only calls once a week since he left for junior college, usually Saturday mornings, wanting money or asking what do I do for a headache? So I already know something's up when I answer, and sure enough, it is.
Now, like I say, Marge is the only friend I still see from high school, and even her I don't see much more than once in a great long while for whiskey sours at the Shepherd Bar, but the second I pick up that phone she starts in about how we have got to get ourselves down to the Dress Barn before that reunion. She says Randy Sanders just got divorced, and since I'm single and so is she, why don't we go together and be each other's dates?
I say, "Marge, I can't go." That is all I can manage. I don't know how to tell her the rest.
Marge says, "Patty, I have had dreams about that man since I was fifteen years old. I will not lose my chance now."
Now, I want to talk her out of this. It seems silly, all these years later, putting so much stock in something somebody used to be twenty-five years ago. But all the time I am thinking this, I can almost feel the way I used to swing my ponytail when I wanted someone whose name is also on that invitation to look my way: Bernard P. Goodwin. Benny was a good boy, sweet. I was trouble, couldn't help myself. I used every trick I knew to make Benny love me in those days and it worked. Back in high school that boy adored me. Flat-out worshipped the ground I walked on, like they say. And I thought he was fine, and we went together for years, and Benny took me on dates in his father's Cadillac and sent roses every Tuesday and refused to lay a hand on me until he'd paid for the diamond ring he had on layaway so we could get married in the Maple Street Chapel, but for some reason I had it in my head that love meant running down the beach together naked with a movie soundtrack playing in the background, and there was this bartender worked at McGraw's used to serve me underage who looked at me like he knew that same stretch of beach, and before my nineteenth birthday, I'm knocked up. That was Eddie.
Now, I always thought I'd grow up to be a stewardess and fly to the places in those National Geographics I used to read in doctor's offices. I wanted to wear one of those navy blue get-ups with the white collars and carry my life in one of those neat rolling suitcases. But I had to put all my energy into Eddie after that – cook for him, clean, iron his clothes, keep the kids quiet and out of his way, fix him Sloppy Joes once a week because that's what he loved. And somehow it was like I just disappeared into all that responsibility. Just plain vanished. Sometimes when the kids were at a sleepover I'd put candles on the table and think maybe in the dimmer light Eddie might look at me the way he used to, but he never did, not even once after Marie was born. And he took it all with him when he went, all that time I poured into trying to make him happy, time I wish I had back now, and I can't help feeling like I should have known from the very first beer he ever served me that he was a man who couldn't stick, like there's something wrong with my head that I didn't.
The last time I seen Benny was the day I had to tell him about Eddie's baby. We were sitting in this empty parking lot in his daddy's Cadillac and his knuckles went white on the steering wheel and these big tears come out and mess up his shirt front, which was always pressed so nice because his mama used to work for a dry cleaners. He dropped me off in my parent's driveway after that, but even mad as he was, he hugged me real tight before I got out of that car for the last time, and right then I felt how much he must of cared for me to still have it in him to touch me after what I done.
Now, I haven't thought about any of this for years, mainly because whenever I do the memories start to come, all murky and blurred, the way I see after too much Wild Turkey. Which is what I start drinking the minute I hang up with Marge. I turn on Oprah first, then switch to Dr. Phil, who always makes me think I can fix my problems, then end up watching Jerry Springer, which usually makes me feel like my problems aren't so bad even if I can't fix them, but nothing helps. The way I feel about Benny is sudden and terrible and sad. It makes me notice the stains in my carpet and the holes in my couch and the dirty streaks high up on the windows where I can't reach and I have to go sit on the back porch and smoke until I feel better.
At least when Eddie went he left me the house. He didn't want to bother with no alimony or child support, but neither did he bother with dividing things up and that house was all we had. So I figure I'm lucky and that's where I stayed. And it's not like I got nothing to show for all those years – I got Marie and Jack, and I'm real proud of them kids, too. Not a trace of Eddie anywhere, except sometimes when Jack tips his head to the side in this particular way that reminds me of Eddie before he got it in his head he wanted to see the world. That's what he said. I don't know, sometimes I can't blame him. I wanted to see the world too, but somebody had to take care of those kids and I wasn't like Eddie. I couldn't just go.
For a while after Eddie left I'd get to feeling lonesome, but between work and grocery shopping and laundry-folding and parent-teacher conferences and doctors' appointments, it's not like I ever had much time to think about it. But sometimes after the kids were in bed and the house was quiet, it'd come over me, and I'd start thinking maybe I'd get myself a snazzy hairdo or some new clothes. I even tried dating every now and again, men I met at work or on a night I could get a babysitter and hit the Shepherd Bar with Marge, but even that didn't make me feel less lonely. Just more tired. It didn't fill up the emptiness inside me. But the truth is I felt empty even before Eddie left, so his leaving didn't affect me the way you might think.
Now the kids are gone, it sometimes feels like I'm drowning in that emptiness, or maybe like I'm already dead. Sometimes I wish I was. I have this idea that dying is like leaving all these suitcases stuffed with your unpaid bills and lonely nights at the desk of a fancy-pants hotel and riding an elevator up to a room with big windows and a king-size bed made up real pretty with white sheets and a down comforter like you see in the catalogs, and you get to sleep all night without waking up until you're good and ready, and then room service brings you Denny's Grand Slam with orange juice in a wine glass and you didn't even have to do nothing for it except answer the door. But I don't know what happens after that. Maybe you just get back in bed and wake up with the sun streaming over you morning after morning until you feel like getting up, and what you decide to do on that day is heaven. I don't know what I'd decide to do. Maybe if I weren't so tired I might be able to figure that out right now and do it.
I'm into my fifth drink when I get it in my head about Benny. The truth is I have spent more than half my life regretting what I did. And I have more than paid the price. It comes to me suddenly. I think, maybe he's divorced. Even if he's not, maybe he'll see me across the room at the reunion and know he has to leave his wife. And the more I think it, the more it seems true. I think, we'll see each other and time will stop. We will realize we are still in love. We will get the chance to go back and start over, get married, move into a two story house on High Street where all the pretty dogwoods bloom. It will be like a new beginning and Jack and Marie and his kids will be like brothers and sisters and we will have big Christmases that fill that hollowness I've been feeling all these years. But when I wake up in the morning with my head pounding and see that woman with the puffy eyes and gray streaks staring back at me in the bathroom mirror, I know for a fact what a silly idea this is. How can I expect Benny to recognize me? I can't even recognize myself. And it's not just me. The waitress at the diner, the teller at the bank – it's not that they haven't seen me before, there's just nothing to fix their eyes on when they try.
* * *
Now, I don't know what on earth possesses me to go to that reunion. I don't want to go. Still, once Marge twists me into going, I decide I will lose a pound or two, but by the time we pull into the parking lot of that high school I've gained four instead and the pink chiffon number I bought at the Dress Barn with Marge don't fit so good in the waist.
Something about the sight of the doors as we're walking up to that old high school puts me in mind of the last time I ever walked through them, the night of graduation when Randy and Ron and Lucy and Marge and me got tanked up and rode through town in the back of Sam's pickup. When Ron got hot and took his shirt off, the wind swept it out of his hand, so Randy took his shorts off and let those go too. By the time we passed McGraw's, none of us had a stitch on, so Sam hid his truck in some brush at Jumper's Hole and we went splashing into the water with the moonlight shining all around us, bobbing and laughing and diving until we had to find our way back following the trail of jeans and panties and tee-shirts like some pervert version of those fairy tale kids with the breadcrumbs. Feeling our oats, they used say, and the memory of it is so clear that I'm not sure if it's a memory or if I'm feeling it right this very second.
But as soon as we walk through those doors it suddenly hits me what a terrible idea this was. I feel kind of dizzy and my heart's pounding so hard I swear you can see it beating though all those layers of ciaffone. And wouldn't you know, right off the bat Marge spots Randy Sanders and starts in on the swooning. "My God," Marge says. "He looks exactly the same." Now this is a lie, but when I point out that Randy had a chin in high school, Marge just says, "Shut your mouth, Patty." So I do. Especially after I notice Holly Belker, who is so much thinner than she was in high school that I can feel my own belly straining against the belt of that new dress. Then I see Lucy Moore. That girl competed with me over every single thing. Outfits, cheerleading, grades – even Benny, whose eye she never caught, but I worried back then. And the first thing I notice is how much fatter she got than me, and this makes me feel great for a second, like someone else is worse off. Then she smiles like she's real glad to see me, and right away I feel mean and small. We were good friends, went to a Styx concert back in the day. Lucy's father drove us there and Lucy drank so much beer with her fake I.D. that she threw up on the way home, and her father had to stop and clean the mess off the side of his truck with the windshield wand at a gas pump. That is the first thing we talk about after twenty-five years. And it's funny how it feels like yesterday, like time is nothing, just a breeze that slips through your fingers, but we're still here, and something about that makes me feel solid for a second, like maybe time doesn't mean anything but these lines on my face and a few extra pounds.
Then Ron is there, who I haven't seen since the night of our naked parade. When we hug hello, Ron tries to pick me up the way he used to when we were young, but he's too weak and I'm too fat, so we pull away, embarassed for a second, then bust out laughing.
"Patty Rae Lapone," he says. "I didn't recognize you with your clothes on." Then we cut up again, and it feels so good to laugh. It's the first time I have in longer than I can remember, like joy I didn't even know was still in me is rushing out into the world where it's not so lonely. And before I know it, Sam is standing next to me too, and is he a sight for sore eyes. Seeing his smile again makes me remember all those days when just passing him in the hallway cheered me up after Mama and Daddy stayed up fighting until I got on the bus for school. Then he introduces me to his wife, who has a face that is nice in the exact same way Sam's is, and right away Sam asks if I still swim.
"Not for years," I say, and it's true.
"I can't believe that," Sam says now. "You was always a fish." And he is right. I was a fish. And not just in those chlorinated pools. There didn't used to be a body of water in Lake County I didn't swim. I didn't care about undertow or riptides or rapids in the Crystal River. I just wanted to be out there in that underwater coolness that always made me feel closer to what life was all about. But after the kids, even swimming got to be too much trouble and I just didn't have it in me at the end of the day. Didn't want my blow-dry to get wet, or sandy feet making sandy floormats I'd just have to clean up later. Didn't want to have to hunt around for a bathing suit that might fit me. Even one of Eddie's shirts wouldn't cover those veins and bulges from having kids, and I couldn't do like my neighbor lady growing up who wore control-top pantyhose under her bathing suit. I made fun, but now I know. Never even taught the kids to swim. They learned anyway, it's hard not to with all this water around us everywhere, but I never even took them to the beach, that's how bad I felt.
But now I look at the way Ron's shoulders have shrunk and how Lucy's cheekbones have disappeared and the little crinkles around the edges of Sam's eyes when he smiles, and I realize that I thought I was the only one got old. And Marge, of course, but seeing her over the years makes it harder to tell the difference. But for some reason I thought everybody else was still as fresh and perfect as I remember them, and here I been walking around feeling ashamed of what happens to everyone, what's natural. Half the men got no hair and everybody's features are blurrier and rounder, like we're all dissolving. Maybe that's what dying is, I think, just dissolving and dissolving until you're gone. But if that's true I'm only halfway there, something I know the minute I see Benny Goodwin looking at me from across the room. It comes to me just like that: I'm not dead.
But when Benny sees me looking back at him I suddenly want to look for a place to hide. I'm ashamed of every decision I ever made in my entire life, which isn't that different than the way I feel most days anyway. Because Benny looks like twenty-five years of three square meals and long nights of sleep and bills paid on time, and I feel like every cigarette and shot of Wild Turkey and Hot Fudge Ice Cream Cake at the Big Boy I ever gave into. I feel like he can tell just by looking at me that messing things up with him was the biggest mistake of my life.
"Patty Rae," he says when he walks over to me, and his voice is exactly the same. "It is good to see you."
"Benny Goodwin," I say. "It is nice to see you too." Up close he looks just the same, almost, except like he grew up some. His shirt, I notice, is still perfectly pressed.
"How have you been?" he asks.
Now, I have never been any good at hiding things. Many a cashier has got more than they bargained for when they asked me how I was. But for some reason it seems real important all of a sudden that Benny not know how bad I feel.
"Oh, fine," I say, straightening a little. "Just fine. And you?"
"Can't complain," Benny says, which is such a Benny thing to say that I have to smile at that. He always was content.
