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...
