Pawing Through the Past (16 page)

34

Heart racing, Harry threw another log on the fire in the bedroom fireplace. She crawled into bed, finding the sheets cold. Then she crawled out, grabbed a sweatshirt, pulled it over her head, and slid back under the covers. Keeping an old house warm was a struggle, especially for Harry, who watched her pennies.

“Will you settle down?”
Pewter grumbled from the other pillow.

The dry cherry log slowly caught fire, releasing a lovely scent throughout the room.

Harry tilted the nightstand light toward her, picked up her clipboard and reviewed tomorrow’s agenda. Mrs. Murphy, cuddled on her left side, observed. Tucker was stretched out in front of the hearth, head on her paws.

“Okay. The tables are already set alongside the gym for breakfast. Susan’s having the food delivered at seven-thirty. Bonnie Baltier said she’d be here in time to help me man the check-in table. She understands she has to write something, anything, on the name cards with names only on them. The band will set up tonight when we go home to change. Amazing how many amps those electric guitars and stuff suck up. And I suppose we’ll all hold BoomBoom’s hand, who’s really supposed to be in charge, but by now is Miss Basketcase Crozet High.” She parked her pencil behind her right ear. “My second superlative photo didn’t turn out so badly. I think it’s better than BoomBoom’s.”

“Me, too,”
Tucker called up to her.

“Just don’t draw a mustache on BoomBoom’s, Mom—or at least wait until the end of the reunion.”

“Mrs. Murphy, maybe I’ll put a blue and gold bow on you for the festivities.”

“Won’t she be fetching,”
Pewter meowed.

“Don’t be catty,”
Murphy rejoined.

“Ha, ha,”
Tucker dryly commented.

“You guys are a regular gossip club tonight.” Harry scanned her clipboard, then put it on the nightstand. She put her right hand over her heart. “My heart is thumping away. I don’t know why I’m so nervous. I wasn’t nervous at our fifteenth reunion.” She stroked Murphy’s silken head. “People know I’m divorced. Oh, I’m not really nervous about that. They can just hang if they don’t like it. I’m hardly the only person in our class who’s suffered romantic ups and downs. Don’t know. Of course, how many divorced people are dating their exes? Guess it’s seeing everybody at the same time. Overload.”

“Sure, Mom,”
Mrs. Murphy purred, closing her eyes.

She snatched her clipboard again. “Fair said he’d be there as a gofer. Everyone will be glad to see him. Half the girls in my class had a crush on him. I think he wants to be there—in case.” She again spoke to Mrs. Murphy since Pewter had curled up in a ball, her back to Harry. “Say, can you believe Miranda on that skateboard? Or you, Murphy.”

“I can do anything.”

“Oh, please.”
Tucker rolled on her side.
“Why don’t you two go to sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long, long day.”

As if in response, Harry replaced the clipboard and turned out the light.

35

Screams echoed up and down Crozet High School’s green halls as classmates from 1980 and 1950 greeted one another. Southern women feel a greeting is not sufficiently friendly if not accompanied by screams, shouts, flurries of kisses, and one big hug. The men tone down the shouts but grasp hands firmly, pat one another on the back, punch one another on the arm, and if really overcome, whisper, “Sumbitch.”

Harry, up at five-thirty, as was Tracy, finished her chores in record time, arriving at the school by seven. Tracy picked up Miranda so he arrived at seven-fifteen. Everything was actually organized so Harry sat next to Bonnie Baltier checking people in. Dennis Rablan, three cameras hanging around his neck, took photographs of everyone. Chris assisted him with long, smoldering looks as she handed him film.

Tucker sat under Harry’s legs while Mrs. Murphy defiantly sat on the table. Pewter ditched all of them, heading toward the cafeteria for Miranda’s reunion. The food would be better.

The class of 1950 arranged tables in a circle so everyone could chat and see one another. Pewter zoomed into the cafeteria, which was decorated with blue and gold stallions built like carousel horses and fixed to the support beams. Miranda had said that Tracy was working on something special but no one realized it would be this special. The beams themselves were wrapped with wide blue and gold metallic ribbons. The room was festooned with bunting. The cafeteria actually looked better than the gym with its huge photographs, then and now, and blue and gold streamers dangling from huge balloon clusters.

Best, to Pewter’s way of thinking, was the breakfast room itself. Miranda had sewn blue and gold tablecloths. On each table was a low, pretty, fall floral bouquet.

Pewter noticed Miranda’s and Tracy’s skateboards resting behind the door. She also noticed that this reunion, forty-two strong, was quieter. There were more tears, more genuine affection. One member, a thin man with a neatly trimmed beard, sat in a wheelchair. A few others needed assistance due to the vicissitudes of injury or illness. Apart from that, Pewter thought that most of the class of 1950 looked impressive, younger than their years, with Miranda glowing. She’d lost twenty-five pounds since the beginning of September and Pewter had never realized how pretty Miranda really was. She wore a tartan wraparound skirt, a sparkling white blouse, and her usual sensible shoes. She also smiled every time she glanced at Tracy. He smiled at her a lot, too.

“Pewter Motor Scooter!” Miranda hailed her as the gray cat dashed into the room. “Welcome to the class of 1950.”

“What a darling cat. A Confederate cat.” A tiny lady in green clapped her hands together as the gray cat sauntered into the room.

“We work together,” Miranda laughed, telling people about Pewter’s mail-sorting abilities while feeding her sausage tidbits.

“I am so-o-o happy to be here,”
Pewter honestly said.

About ten minutes later Harry ducked her head into the room. “Hi, everybody. Aha, I thought I’d find you here.”

“I like it here!”

“Folks, this is Doug Minor’s girl—remember Doug and Grace Minor? Grace was a Hepworth, you know.”

Martha Jones, quite tall, held out her hand. “I know your mother very well. We were at Sweet Briar together. You greatly resemble Grace.”

“Thank you, Miss Jones. People do tell me that.”

“Your mother was the boldest rider. She took every fence at Sweet Briar, got bored, jumped out of the college grounds, and I believe she jumped every fence on every farm on the north side of Lynchburg.”

People laughed.

Miranda said, “Mary Minor is a wonderful rider.”

“Thanks, Mrs. H., but I’m not as good as Mom. She was in Mim’s class.”

“Where is Mimsy?” the thin man in the wheelchair bellowed.

“I’m here. You always were impatient, Carl Winters, and I can see that little has changed that.” Mim swept in dressed in a buttery, burnt-sienna suede shirt and skirt. “You know, I wish I had graduated from Crozet High. Madeira wasn’t half as much fun, but then, all-girls schools never are.”

“You’re really one of us, anyway.” A plump lady kissed Mim on the cheek.

“I’ll take my thief back to the gym,” Harry said while the others talked.

“She can stay. She’ll come back anyway. It’s fine.”

“Please, Mom.”
Pewter’s chartreuse eyes glistened with sincerity.

“Well . . . okay,” Harry lowered her voice, leaning toward Miranda. “Your decorations are better.” She raised her voice again. “Tracy, the carousel horses are spectacular!”

She left them smiling, talking, eating Miranda’s famous orange sticky buns.

She ran into Bitsy Valenzuela and Chris Sharpton dragging an enormous coffee urn down the hall.

“Guys?”

“BoomBoom called me on the car phone and told me she was panicked. There wasn’t enough coffee so we dashed over to Fred Tinsley’s, which got Denny’s nose out of joint since Chris was assisting him. I had to promise Fred six months free on his car phone to get this damn thing. E.R. will kill me,” Bitsy moaned. “Is he here yet?”

“Yes, he brought miniature flashlights shaped like cell phones.”

“That’s my E.R. for you: ever the marketer.”

“Would you like me to take a turn here? That looks heavy,” Harry offered.

“Why don’t you run in and get someone strong—like a man—to do this. That’s what men are for.” Bitsy gave up and slowly set down her side of the urn, as did Chris.

“Are we still allowed to say stuff like that?” Chris giggled.

“Yeah, among us girls we can say anything. We just can’t say it publicly.” Bitsy laughed, “Nor would I admit to E.R. that I need him. But I do need him.”

Harry dashed into the gym, returning with Bob Shoaf, Most Athletic, who had played for seven years with the New York Giants as cornerback. Apart from having a great body, Bob wasn’t hard to look at. He was, however, blissfully married, or so the newspapers always reported.

“Girls, you go on. I’ll do this.” He hoisted the urn up to his chest. “You two should look familiar to me but I’m afraid I can’t place you.”

“They helped us all summer and fall, Bob, but these two lovely damsels aren’t from our class. Bitsy Valenzuela—Mrs. E. R. Valenzuela—and Chris Sharpton, a friend.”

“Forgive me if I don’t shake hands.” He carried the urn into the gym, where BoomBoom greeted him as though he had brought back the Golden Fleece from Colchis.

Bitsy and Chris stopped inside the door. “It’s odd.”

“What?” Bitsy turned to Chris. “What’s odd?”

“Seeing these people after staring at their yearbook pictures. It’s like a photograph come to life.”

“Not always for the best.”
Mrs. Murphy lifted her long eyebrows. The class of 1980 had been on earth long enough for the telltale spider veins in the face to show for those who drank too much. The former druggies might look a bit healthier but brain cells had fried. A poignant vacancy in the eyes signaled them. A lot of the men were losing their hair. Others wore the inner tube of early middle age, not that any of them would admit that middle age had started. Nature thought otherwise. Bad dye jobs marred a few of the women but by and large the women looked better than the men, testimony to the cultural pressure for women to fuss over themselves.

Bonnie absentmindedly stroked Mrs. Murphy as she double-checked her list. Everyone had checked in except for Meredith McLaughlin, who wouldn’t arrive until lunch. Harry rejoined her while Chris joined Dennis, wreathed in smiles now that she was back.

“Done.” Bonnie put down her felt-tip pen.

“You’re a fast thinker. I should have remembered that.” Harry smiled. “When you came up with ‘Secret Life, Televangelist’ for Dennis Rablan, I could have died. That was perfect. Even he liked it!”

“Had to do something. What do you put down for the Best All-Round who has . . .” She shrugged.

“Zipped through a trust fund and unzipped too many times,” Harry laughed.

“And then there’s you. Most Likely to Succeed and Most Athletic, running the post office at Crozet,” Bonnie said.

“I guess everyone thinks I’m a failure.”

“Not you, Mom, you’re too special.”
Tucker reached up, putting her head in Harry’s lap.

“No.” Bonnie shook her head. “But if there were a category for underachiever, you’d have won. You were, and I guess still are, one of the smartest people in our class. What happened?”

Harry, dreading this conversation, which would be repeated in direct or subtle form over the next day and a half, breathed deeply. “I made a conscious choice to put my inner life ahead of my outer life. I don’t know how else to say it.”

“You can do both, you know,” remarked Baltier, successful herself in the material world. She ran an insurance company specializing in equine clients.

“Bonnie, I was an Art History major. What were my choices? I could work for a big auction house or a small gallery or I could teach at the college level, which meant I would have had to go on and get my Ph.D. I never wanted to do that and besides I married my first year out of college. I thought things were great and they were—for a while.”

“I’m rude.” Baltier pushed back a forelock. “I hate to see waste. Your brain seems wasted to me.”

“If you measure it by material terms, it is.”

“The problem with measuring it in any other way is that you can’t.”

“I think it’s time we join the others. I’m hungry.”

“You pissed at me?”

“No. If BoomBoom had asked me I’d be pissed.” Harry then nodded in the direction of an attractive woman on the move up, one face-lift to her credit, holding court by the pyramid of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. “Or her.”

Deborah Kingsmill, voted Most Intellectual, truly thought she was superior to others because she was book-smart and because she’d escaped her parents. And that’s exactly where her intelligence ended. She’d never learned that people with “less” intelligence possessed other gifts.

Deborah and Zeke Lehr, the male Most Intellectual, were pictured together reading a big book in Alderman Library. Zeke owned a printing business in Roanoke. He’d done well, had three kids and kept himself in good shape. He was pouring himself a second cup of coffee while listening to BoomBoom discuss the sufferings of organizing the reunion.

“Hey, thanks for your work.” Rex Harnett, already smelling like booze, kissed Harry on the cheek.

“You know, it turned out to be fun,” Harry admitted to the broad, square-built fellow, who had been voted Most School Spirit and would easily have qualified for Most School Spirits.

“Fair coming?”

“He is but he’s probably on call this morning. He’ll get here as soon as he can. He’s as much a part of our class as his.”

“You two getting back together?”

“Not you, too!” Harry mocked despair.

“I have personal reasons. You see, if you aren’t interested in the blond god then I’d like to ask you out.”

“Rex?” Harry was surprised and mildly revolted.

Tucker, on the floor, was even more surprised.
“He’s to the point. Gotta give him credit for that.”

“I thought you were married.”

“Divorced two years ago. Worst hell I’ve ever been through.”

“Rex, I’m flattered by your attention”—she eased out of his request—“but we aren’t the right mix.”

He smiled. “Harry, you can say no nicer than any woman I know.” He glanced across the room. “The redhead and the blonde look familiar but I can’t place them.”

“Bitsy Valenzuela, E.R.’s wife.”

“The other woman?”

“Chris Sharpton. She moved here from Chicago and she and Bitsy helped us organize.”

“Market looks the same. Less hair,” Rex said. “Boom’s the same.”

“She’s beautiful. She’s surrounded by men,” Harry flatly stated.

Bonnie Baltier, having grabbed a doughnut, joined them, as did Susan Tucker.

“Isn’t this something?” Susan beamed.

“We’ve all got to go down the hall and congratulate the class of 1950,” Harry suggested. “After breakfast. You can’t believe how they’ve decorated the cafeteria.”

“We can see ourselves thirty years from now.” Rex smiled.

Bonnie was staring at the huge superlative photos. “You know who I miss? Aurora Hughes. What a good soul.”

“I suppose with each reunion we’ll miss a few more,” Rex bluntly said.

“What a happy thought, you twit.” Bonnie shook her head.

“Hell, Baltier, people die. For some, Charlie could have died even earlier.”

Susan asked, “Remember the rumor that Charlie had an illegitimate child in our junior year?”

Rex shrugged. “Yeah.”

Harry said, “Guys talk. You say things to each other you wouldn’t say to us. Any ideas on who the mother was—or is, I should say?”

“No,” Rex replied. “He dated a lot of girls. Raylene Ramsey was wild about him but she didn’t leave school and she didn’t gain weight. Wasn’t her.”

“Yeah, we thought the same thing,” Susan said.

Bonnie dabbed the sugar crumbs from the corners of her mouth. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s concentrate on the good times.”

“I’m for that. When’s the bar open?” Rex held up his coffee cup.

“Six o’clock.”

“I could be dead by then.” He laughed as Bitsy, Chris, Bob, and Dennis joined their group. He slipped a flask from his pocket, taking a long swig.

“If you keep drinking the way you do, that’s a possibility.” Baltier let him have it.

“S-s-s-s.” Rex made a burning sound, putting his finger on her skin.