The Reunion

The Reunion
By Bob Beach

The four man band was banging away at Rock Around the Clock like they were getting paid by the decibel. What they lacked in accuracy, they made up for with gusto. The crowd loved it. It was the 20th Springfield High reunion, and each new “blast from the past” was greeted with a wild cheer from the crowd and another mad dash for the dance floor. Elvis. Chubby Checker. Smokey Robinson. The Everly Brothers. This was our music. It was in our bones. And, as always, it was summoning us irresistibly to the past. The spell was upon us, now; we were once more seventeen, rocking and rolling with abandon in a tiny brick field house behind the school, the perfume of buttered popcorn hot in our noses, our socks gliding across the well oiled gym floor.
     Those who couldn’t find room to dance clustered in tiny knots at the tables around the room, reaffirming our fundamental connection, rekindling the white-hot fire of our adolescence. Several lonely spouses sat pasted against the wall, nursing their beers, invited to the party but not included in the celebration. A few favored teachers wandered from group to group, joining the laughter - no longer chaperones, but blood brothers in the coterie which was the class of 1960. Beer cans and paper plates littered the tables and overflowed from the corrugated waste bins in the corners. We were having a ball.
     I saw Tony Ladori coming off the dance floor in my direction, mopping his swarthy face with a handful of paper napkins. Tony and I had been in school together since kindergarten, and that alone had forged a lifelong bond, despite our nearly opposite interests and personalities. He was a jock, now a sports writer for the local paper, while I taught science at the junior college.
     “Tony! Come here a minute, I have to talk to you.”
     “Hey, Luke. Having a good time?” Between the throbbing music and the boisterous crowd, we had to shout to be heard. I led him off to a table in the corner and we sat down.
     “Hey, man,” Tony said, “I’ll tell you, this reunion is a hell of a lot better than the tenth. Last time everybody was just bragging about their jobs or their cars. Everybody trying to impress everybody else. This is a lot more comfortable – you can really talk, know what I mean?”
     “Tell me about it. You’re not going to believe what just happened.”
He cocked his head in curiosity. The band started pounding out a loud approximation of All Shook Up, and I waited a minute for the cheering to slack off.
     “Darby Willette just told me she had a gigantic crush on me all through high school!”
Tony’s eyebrows shot up and his mouth dropped open. He stayed like that for a full 10 seconds.
     “You’re shitting me! Darby was homecoming queen, head cheerleader - she was, like, all everything. All through school. You were a nerd, even worse than me. She didn’t even know you existed.”
     “I was just dancing with her.” I shrugged. “That’s what she told me.”
     “She’s got to be just messing with you, man. I don’t believe it.”
     We were both quiet for a while, thinking of the possibilities. Tony scratched his head while I twisted my wedding band around on my finger.
     “She only dated top jocks, man. The guys with cars. Just the cool kids. I don’t believe it.”
     “I’m telling you, that’s what she said. You really think she’s just putting me on? I mean, she was ace, but she was pretty nice, too, don’t you think?”
     ”Yeah, she was OK for a social. Man, if this is true, you know what it means?”
     ”What?”
     “It means you could have been bonking her all through school, man! You could have married her and bonked her every night for the rest of your life. Look at her – almost 40 and she’s still totally hot!”
We both watched her across the floor, doing the Watusi with Dale Webster to Queen of the Hop.      “Jesus. You’re right.”
     “We need a couple of beers, man. I’ll be right back - don’t go away.” He plunged headfirst into the mob around the bar.
     Was Tony right? What had I missed out on? How different could my life have been? High school had been OK, but maybe it could have been spectacular. Maybe it could have been a rollercoaster ride I’d remember all my life. Was she putting me on? I knew it was too late, that the arcs of our lives had already crossed and passed on, but still...
     “Was she hitting on you, you think?”
     Tony was back with the beers.
     “No, it didn’t feel like that.”
     “Too bad. So what did you say?”
     “I didn’t say anything. I was totally shocked and kind of embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say.” I took a long swallow of beer.
     Now Darby was doing the Mashed Potato with Chuckie Herns, her long blonde hair and shimmering gold dress flying as she bounced around the dance floor.
     “Well, I guess this is a reunion you’ll remember. Hang on, my wife wants me.” He waved across the room. “I’ll be back.”
     This was just bizarre. The Queen of All She Surveyed had the hots for me? A science geek who didn’t even have a date until his junior year? It still didn’t register. I looked around for my wife. Sandy and her two best school buddies were glued together like Siamese triplets in the hallway. Just like in high school. I went searching for Sherrie Pletz. She was Darby’s best friend. I just had to know.
                                                               ***
“Hi, Sherrie,” I shouted. The band had switched to a slow set with Break it to Me Gently. More sedate couples began drifting out to the dance floor, hand in hand, while the overheated boppers swarmed the bar, flushed with nostalgic excitement. The air was heavy with sweat and beer.
     “Hi, Luke!” She threw her arms around my neck and gave me a big hug. “Long time no see. I guess ten years, in fact – I haven’t seen you since last reunion. So what’s new with you?”
     Sherrie was cute, a tiny sparkplug with flaming red hair. Through the years, she had gone a little plump, like most of us, and the flame was likely kindled now from a bottle. She was wearing a tight Roaring 20’s flapper dress, short and sparkly with lots of fringe. We did small talk for a few minutes, catching up on spouses, kids and jobs. I maneuvered her slowly back out of the crowd, toward a quieter spot in the corner.
     “Hey, I want to ask you something. I don’t want to make a big deal or anything, but I was wondering… I heard that Darby might have kind of liked me, or something, in high school…
     She gave a sharp shriek and started laughing. Not just a polite little chuckle, but a big boffola. I could feel my face getting red. I should have known. Darby had just been making fun of me. Or maybe just flattering me a little because she felt sorry for a clueless geek.
     “After twenty years, you’re just finding this out? Did she tell you?”
     “Well, yeah… Wait. What? Really? She did?”
     “Yes! Really, she did. Boy, Luke, you sure haven’t changed much. And that’s a good thing. Are you kidding? We all had crushes on you. You were such a sweet guy!”
     I felt some basic shift in the quantum structure of the universe. I had been transported to another dimension. The north and south poles had reversed their magnetic forces. The band had launched into To Know Him Is to Love Him, but they sounded more like the Animals than the Teddy Bears. Dancers had started shedding their shoes.
     “But… I mean… why didn’t… I wasn’t that … um.” I could feel my face heating up again as I hunted for words that I knew would never come.
     “Luke, you were so totally oblivious – all you were interested in were frogs and rocks and stars. Girls weren’t even on your radar screen. You were so serious. And so innocent. You never noticed us.”
     “Yes, I did! Honest! I noticed. I definitely noticed.” She ignored me.
     “You were just yourself. That’s why all the girls liked you. Most of the cute guys thought they were God’s gift to women, prancing around like little bandy roosters, trying to cop a feel every chance they had. Especially the jocks. Did you think girls are only attracted to studs on the football team?”
     “Well, sure, aren’t they?”
     She laughed again. “Anyway, she knew she wasn’t right for you.”
     “What? What?” Wasn’t right for me? It was all coming at me too fast. I couldn’t keep up. I had loved and lost, all in the space of fifteen minutes.
     She got quiet and gave me a long and serious look. She reached up and grabbed me by the ears. She pulled my face down to hers and kissed me hard on the mouth. I was flabbergasted. She released me and smiled. “You’re still a sweet guy. I’ll see you in another ten years.”
She gave me a very, very seductive wink, then turned and walked back to her friends, switching her hips to the music, the fringe on her dress dancing in counterpoint.
                                                               ***
I stood in the corner in suspended animation as the band pounded their way through what sounded vaguely like Such A Night and what was either a quirky version of Crazy or one of the musicians strangling a cat. Finally, they took a break. They needed one. Everyone with ears needed one. In the interval of relative silence, the small bands of revelers began waltzing from table to table in a whirlwind game of musical chairs, hunting down old flames, snapping up leftover hors d’oeuvres, searching for purses, claiming centerpieces, taking phone numbers and comparing family photos.
     Was I the stupidest person in the universe?
     Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Alan Feldman sidling along the wall toward me.
     “Am I the stupidest person in the universe?”
     “Well, you have to understand that there are still a lot of people in the universe I haven’t met, yet, but so far you’re right up there close to the…”
     “Did you know that Darby Willette liked me in high school?”
     “Yeah.”
     “What!! You knew too? Did everybody else in school know? Was I the absolute last one to find out? Why didn’t you tell me? You were supposed to be my best friend!”
     “You seemed to be pretty happy with Sandy.”
     “But we didn’t start dating until our junior year. Even then, it might have been nice to have some options. Cripes. Darby Willette!”
     The band was back at it. I heard the opening riff of You Don’t Know What You’ve Got as they swung into the final set. Suddenly the dance floor was packed again and the noise level surged another dozen decibels.
     “You never even knew girls existed until your junior year. What, you wanted to hang out with the socials? I don’t recall that being high on your list of priorities.”
     “I’m not talking about the socials, I’m talking about Darby Willette.”
     “Well, what did you think the two of you would do when you hung out? Can you see Darby Willette helping you slice samples of frozen lizards for the microscope, like Sandy? Can you picture her up all night with you taking slides of the rings of Saturn? Darby?”
     “I was thinking more of making out in the back seat of my dad’s Ford! I can certainly picture Darby doing that. In fact, I really like that picture!”
     “Are you sure you would have had the stamina? Am I wrong in thinking that you and Sandy might have been doing more than catching frogs for biology class down at Waldon Pond all those spring nights?”
     I had to smile.
     “Look. At Darby.” She was doing the Stroll with some guy I didn’t know. Maybe it was her husband.      The band was back in slow mode, finally agreeing on a key and producing a surprisingly mellow Since I Don’t Have You. Terry held his hands up, cropping the scene as a film director might.
     “Look at Darby’s face. Crop out the hair. It didn’t used to be that blonde. Crop out the boobs – they weren’t that big back in high school. Crop out the dress. I give you that she knows how to wear clothes. Is her face really any prettier than Sandy’s?”
     I looked for a while. “No, I guess maybe not.”
     “No. It’s really not. And can you really tell me that you’d like to be out on the dance floor in the middle of the action every single dance of the night? And after this at Tommy’s Hot Spot until 2 am? And then breakfast at Denny’s at 4 am with the whole gang? Because that’s what socials do.”
     I was silent.
     “Listen, my young, naive and sentimental friend: we are each drawn to that path which is our destiny. You have been on yours since about the second grade, and, as far as I can see, you haven’t budged a hair off it since. And that is why you are one of the luckiest sonovabitches in the universe. Buy you a beer?”
     ”Thanks, Alan. Maybe some night this week.”
     The band wound down their final set. I looked at my watch. It was midnight. Pumpkin time. The ancient brick walls with their crepe paper decorations began fading slowly from our collective imagination, the fragrance of popcorn and linseed oil succumbing to a tired haze of sweat, alcohol and cigarette smoke. The rising house lights chased the last tendrils of illusion into the corners, leaving us staring at flocked wallpaper and cheap glass chandeliers. Forty-year-old legs began to have second thoughts about their turbocharged sprint down memory lane.
     The band had stopped playing, now, and were packing up their gear. Someone had plugged a record player into the house PA system and it was belting out more oldies, but the spell had been broken. The crowd was coming down from its delicious high, breaking up into small animated groups, babbling its way out of the hall in a final frenzy of hugs, kisses and waves. The three musketeers had wrapped up their love fest, too. Sandy was walking across the dance floor toward me. I noticed that her new haircut was a lot shorter than usual. It looked really nice. She was wearing her go anywhere little black dress. Alan was right. If anything, I thought, she’s prettier than Darby. Over the PA, the Drifters were now crooning Save the Last Dance for Me.
     “Hi, Hon,” she said. “Have fun tonight? You about ready to head home?”
     “Well, you know, the kids are out on their own tonight, anyway,” I put my arm around her. “What do you think about driving down to Waldon Pond and catching some frogs?”