The Last Time I Saw You (14 page)

“I was a bit of a ladies’ man until I met my wife,” Einer says. “She was the editor of the school newspaper. Real bright girl.”

“That right?” Pete says.

“Yup. So who do you think signed on to be a reporter?”

“Einer Olson?”

“Bingo,” Einer says. And then, “Say, Pete, do you think you could get me a gin martini?”

“Einer,” Mary Alice says. “I don’t think you can drink with your medication.”

Einer leans back in his chair and slaps his hands on his knees. “You’re right. And guess who hasn’t taken his medication the last couple of days?” He turns back to Pete. “How about it, son?”

“My pleasure,” Pete says. And then, to Mary Alice, “What can I get you?”

“Well, a gin martini, I suppose.”

“Ben?”

“I’m set,” Ben says, and holds up what looks like a glass of Coke, complete with compensatory slice of lemon. He’s probably an alkie. A lot of sensitive types end up alkies.

“Be right back,” Pete says. He takes a path to the bar that will bring him close enough to see Nora better without her seeing him—she’s sitting with her back to him. She’s having red wine, and so is Fred. He hates that they’re having the same thing. Fred looks over and sees him and his stupid smile disappears and his expression becomes tense and unhappy.
That’s right, buddy
. Pete smiles, waves, and steps up to the bar to order the drinks, loosens his shoulders. Yup. He’s starting to have a good time now. He looks back over at Fred, who has turned away from him and emphatically put his arm around Nora.

Pete leans against the bar and looks around the room. There’s Kim Birch, she was a smart one, went to Wellesley. He sees Hodder Carter, weird name, great wrestler. He’ll catch up with him later. He’s talking to a woman Pete thinks is Angie McNair, who Hodder had a big crush on, and Angie would never go out with him. She told him if he’d just lose weight, he’d be a lot more popular and then she would go out with him. Well, who needs to lose weight now? Angie looks like
she’s
the wrestler now, heavyweight division. Look at the neck on that woman!

Some guy Pete doesn’t recognize is standing at Candy Sullivan’s table, talking to her. Wait. Is that…? It’s Buddy Dunsmore! Damn! Poor Buddy, he really got shafted, having to marry Nance. Pete would bet money that they are long divorced by now. So Buddy’s going to go after what every guy in school wanted: Miss Candy Sullivan, who looked every day like she walked right out of the pages of a magazine.
Beautiful
girl, and really very nice, too. Buddy never got her—hell, even
Pete
never got her, not even one kiss. She dated very few guys from their school, she mostly dated boys from the private school a couple of towns over, and by senior year was dating college guys exclusively. Nobody from their high school ever nailed her. She moved out East right after high school, she was going to become a nurse. She probably married a surgeon or something.

Candy was one of those happy types, always in a good mood. He’d enjoyed running into her earlier today and talking for the little bit that they did. There was something about Candy now, though. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but she had a look in her eyes—or maybe behind her eyes—that reminded him of how his then five-year-old daughter looked one time when he’d yelled at her to put something back and he’d yelled way louder than he meant to. Katie had jumped, and she’d put the thing back very carefully, and then she’d looked over at him and her hands were clasped tightly together and she was smiling but she was scared as hell. Overcome with guilt, he’d held out his arms and said, “Aw, I’m sorry; come here, baby,” and she had, but she’d kept that look on her face until he’d held her a long time. Candy had a look like that, only sadder.

The salads are being delivered. Pete pays for the drinks and starts to carry them carefully back to the table. A hugely overweight man comes up and punches him lightly in the arm. “Hey, Decker, you asshole!”

“Hey!” Pete says. “How you doing?” The guy’s not wearing his name tag. Pain in the ass. Pete’s not wearing his name tag, either, he hates those things, but he doesn’t
need
one.

“Remember me?” the guy says.

Pete smiles, says nothing.

“Aw, man, you don’t remember me?”

“I’m sorry,” Pete says.

“Benny Westman!”

“Oh, sure!” Pete says.
Who the hell is Benny Westman?

“For fuck’s sake, man! I can’t believe you didn’t recognize me. Although I look a little different now, huh?”

“I guess we all do.”
Benny Westman. Benny Westman
. Oh yes, he remembers now. Tight end. Kind of a jerk. Always real mean to his girlfriends, or at least about them—revealed plenty of secrets in the locker room. Stuff a girl for sure wouldn’t want known about herself. Stuff the other guys didn’t want to hear, although of course they never admitted that, they just laughed and shook their heads.

“Few of us lettermen are getting together after dinner in the parking lot for a little recreational toot,” Benny says. “Want to join us?”

“Yeah, sure, we’ll see.” Pete gestures with his chin to his table. “I’d better get back and deliver these drinks.”
Lettermen
. He’s got to remember to request “The Way You Look Tonight.”

Benny looks briefly toward Pete’s table, then turns back to him, his eyes wide. “Is that fucking Mary Alice
Mayhew
?”

“It is.”

“You’re sitting with
that
skank?”

“Yeah, I am. You know what? It’s been forty years, Benny. You want to give her a break?”

Benny’s face changes. “Oh, Jesus, sorry, man. Are you like
… with
her?”

“No, she’s just a friend.”

“You and Nora are still together, right?”

“She’s here,” he says, and then, “I’ll see you later, Benny.”

He returns to the table, passes out the drinks, clinks glasses with everyone. He watches Benny lumber back to his table and put his arm around a washed-out looking blonde. She’s wearing a tacky black strapless dress, and she still has her purse hooked over her shoulder, a brown leather purse on which she has put her name tag. It’s one designed for the spouses, and it says, “Hi! I’m with ———.” He feels sorry for the spouses. Nobody wants the spouses there, unless they went to the same school. In fact, all of a sudden he feels sorry for
everybody
. Here they all are, all these people, all these years later just… what? Trying, he guesses. Just trying.

“Mary Alice!” he says.

“Yes!”

“Dibs on the first dance!”

She smiles. “How about the second? Einer beat you to the first.”

“Well, the best man won,” Pete says, and holds his glass up to toast Einer. Einer holds his own glass up, his hand trembling.

When Nora and Pete were still together, Pete had noticed Nora beginning to pay a lot of attention to old people. She would watch some bent-over octogenarian painstakingly making her way across the street. Or she’d stare at an old lady selecting a little can of beans from the supermarket shelf, or standing in line with a walker waiting for a prescription. “That’ll be me in five minutes,” Nora would say. And he would laugh. He didn’t understand why she said that. Now, suddenly, he does. Einer, the high school star, holding a forbidden drink in his trembling hand.

Someone bumps into the back of Pete’s chair, and he feels cold liquid spilling onto his shirt.

“Oh,
sorry
!” a woman says.

“It’s okay,” Pete tells her, dabbing at the mess with his napkin, and now he’s got
orange salad dressing
on the shirt as well. What the hell. Nothing can make it look any worse.

“Are you…” The woman smiles. “Oh my God. Pete Decker!”

“Hey, Susie.” Susie Sussman.
She
wore her name tag, like a sensible person. She was okay in high school, pep squad, cute little figure; he made it to third base with her, something like that. He knows her underpants were on his car floor, anyway. Hers or her sister Patsy’s. They were twins. He got them both, but he never made out with them at the same time, which guys were always daring him to do. Patsy died the day after graduation in a motorcycle accident, Pete found that out at the five-year reunion, where Susie showed up looking like a million bucks. They’d had a nice little boozy kiss in the hall that year, couple of kisses, nothing else since. Susie looks a bit worn at the edges now. Well, she looks like hell, really. A good thirty pounds overweight, big circles under her eyes, one of those awful too-short spiky haircuts that women seem to think make them look younger but only make them look like Marines. He saw her at the last reunion, and she still had something, then. All gone now. Nada. Not that she seems to know it. Once in the Club, always in the Club, he supposes.

“How the hell
are
you, Pete?”

“Good,” he says, nodding. “Yup.”

“You look great!”

“Thanks. You, too.”
What the hell
.

“Save me a slow dance, will you?”

“I will!”

She moves away without having acknowledged one other person at the table. It was high school behavior she’d reverted to; the people at Pete’s table had never made the cut then and apparently don’t now, either. Pete feels ashamed, as though it’s his fault Susie ignored them. He supposes that, in part, it is. He should have made introductions. Well, add it to the mea culpas. Add it to the long and ever-growing list. He drains his drink, looks over at Nora. It appears she hasn’t touched her salad. Too busy talking, laughing. Look what a good time she’s having, a Kleenex carnation pinned to her hair. See that? He knew she would enjoy herself like this, he
knows
her. What a smile she still has. He smiles back at her, though clearly she is not smiling at him.

FIFTEEN

“N
OW, THERE’S SOMEONE
I
CAN GET ALONG WITH
,” E
INER
tells Mary Alice, as he watches Pete wend his way through the crowd toward the bar.

“He
is
a nice guy,” Mary Alice says.

“Should have hung around with
him
when you were in high school!”

“Well.” She smiles at Einer. “Yes, I suppose so.”

Einer’s having a great time. She hasn’t seen him so enlivened since… since she doesn’t know when. She herself is not exactly thrilled with the way things are going. She’d hoped—expected, really—that she’d be eating dinner with Lester, but there he is sitting next to none other than Candy Sullivan. Well, that’s the end of that. Candy is wearing a simple white dress that sets off… everything. She remains a dazzlingly beautiful woman. Her hair is in a loose upsweep, and she wears a large pair of diamond studs that twinkle every time she moves. Her shoulders are bare, her arms, but she has a gossamer wrap draped loosely about them. Mary Alice sighs the tiniest of sighs. She can’t justify getting angry: Candy doesn’t know she has feelings for Lester; and what man could resist her? Moreover, Candy Sullivan never did a single nasty thing to her in high school and, on one momentous day, actually chose Mary Alice first to be on her field hockey team in gym class. There was a collective gasp when she did that, and at the time Mary Alice wondered if her being picked first wasn’t as bad as being picked last—different stares, different whispers, but stares and whispers all the same.

No, and she doesn’t blame Lester, who sits with his chair turned at an angle toward Candy, his legs outstretched, his arms crossed. Mary Alice puts a great deal of stock in body language, and would like to think that Lester’s crossed arms indicate a certain unwillingness to let Candy in. But look at his face: open, friendly, and awfully attentive to whatever Candy is saying. At the moment, their conversation is exclusionary; everyone else at the table is talking to each other. Nance and Buddy Dunsmore. Sheila Grommer, class secretary. Linny Waterman, who, as captain of the cheerleading squad, wore a star on the sleeve of her sweater and could do multiple backflips and impossibly high jumps. Marshall Kind, whose father more than once got kicked out of his son’s wrestling matches for arguing with the refs. Erik Betterman, a huge, burly guy who was rumored to be a fool over his ancient cat. Mary Alice remembers every single one of them. Still the popular table, except that Lester and Pete Decker ought to change places.

Einer rises a little ways out of his wheelchair to reach for the salt, and Mary Alice watches carefully. She won’t help him unless she has to; she appreciates the fact that his own memories have erased many of his years, if only in his mind. After she “dances” with him, she suspects he’ll have his choice of partners. The truth is, he looks adorable, his tightly knotted tie and gold cuff links, his stick-out ears and duck-fluff hair. She bets someone will end up in his lap.

Mary Alice sighs and contemplates her hands, clasped together in her lap. She and Lester had had such a lovely time together this afternoon. They had talked easily, their conversation running smooth and lively and seemingly unstoppable. They are aligned politically; they both like pancake breakfasts; he likes Beethoven over Mozart, just as she does. They both like line dancing, though Lester says he’s better at watching it than doing it. And when it came to high school memories, well! Didn’t they understand each other in that regard! The name-calling, the spitballs, the nasty notes shoved into locker doors, the “accidental” knocking of books from their arms, the churlish comments about them in slam books. Yet both of them had let go of all that, had in fact let go of it long before they graduated. “Did you even
care
?” Lester had asked, and Mary Alice had thought for a while before she’d answered. Finally, she’d nodded and said, “Yes. But I cared about other things more. The world was quite a bit bigger than the halls of Whitley High School.”

“It sure was,” Lester said.

He had told her about his wife, briefly, mostly by way of explaining why he’d devoted himself more to work than to pursuing a relationship. There’d been one time when they were standing in the middle of the field—which, as promised, had been full of red-winged blackbirds—and Lester’s hand had rested on Mary Alice’s shoulder when he showed her one of the birds sitting motionless on a wire and looking up at the sky. “It’s like he’s contemplating the cloud formations,” Mary Alice said, and Lester laughed and said, “It’s true! I have never seen a bird do that. Have you?” Mary Alice turned toward him and allowed as how she had not. Their faces were very close together then, and the moment was charged not so much with any kind of sexual energy as with
ease
. Lester asked if she’d ever been bird-watching in a more formal way, if she’d ever risen before dawn, slung binoculars around her neck, and headed out to join a group that moved together like one organism, whispering and pointing and then going out for a breakfast that felt more like lunch. No, she said, she had never done that. And he said, well she really ought to. That moment hung in the air, it felt like an invitation from Lester was forthcoming, inevitable; and then she made a mistake. She looked at her watch, which prompted him to look at his own and say that they’d better get going.
No, that’s not what I meant!
she wanted to say.
I was looking because I wanted
more
time!

But she’d figured she’d have an opportunity to bring up the subject again. He’d said, “See you at dinner?” and the late afternoon had been gilding the side of his face and making the tips of his eyelashes seem to glow; and besides looking handsome, he’d looked kind and capable and rich in the soul, and she’d said yes, she would see him at dinner. Yes, she’d said, and she’d wondered how she would look to him in her new dress.

She went home and got ready in a kind of grounded ecstasy, and applied a little makeup to the best of her ability. And she thought she looked quite nice. She looked in the full-length mirror at her front and back and sides; and she approved of herself in a way that was new to her. She sang “It Had to Be You” under her breath, and laughed at herself for her presumptuousness, then decided she wasn’t being presumptuous at all, she was just being hopeful—realistic, even!—and responding to the encouragement she’d been given.

She called Einer before she left home, telling him she was on the way to pick him up, and he could release Rita to leave for her dinner date with the man she’d met in the grocery store. Rita had promised to come back in a couple of hours; she and Mary Alice had incorrectly assumed that Einer wouldn’t want to stay for long at the reunion.

When Mary Alice arrived to pick up Einer, he was still in his bathrobe. He told her he was sorry, but he had to use the bathroom before he finished getting dressed.
Finished?
Mary Alice had thought.
You haven’t even started!
But she stood in her heels and perfume, clutching the little evening bag she’d borrowed from her sister, and Einer shuffled to the bathroom at his turtle pace, the newspaper under his arm, and what could she do? The choice was to be furious and unhappy or to make herself useful. She’d put her purse on the nightstand and turned down Einer’s bedcovers invitingly and plumped his pillows. She’d gone down to the kitchen to get a glass of water to put on his nightstand. Then she’d sat at the foot of his bed with her back straight, her knees together, breathing in and breathing out and feeling grateful that she never had to give her bowels a second thought. Einer farted explosively several times, and then called out “Sorry!”

“It’s all right!” she called back.

“I’m having a little trouble getting going!”

“Take your time,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s
okay;
take your
time
,” she said, and looked out the window at the darkening sky. She would not give him a suppository. Absolutely not.

As it happened, Einer succeeded on his own (“Now you’re talking!” she heard him mutter), and soon he came shuffling out of the bathroom. He dressed slowly and with great deliberation, and then he fussed with the knot in his tie, and then he combed and combed his sparse hair while he squinted into the mirror. Next he deliberated over which cologne to wear, citrus or spice? By then it was all she could do not to drag him out of his room by the scruff of his neck. “Women like citrus,” she told him, and he looked at her doubtfully, but then shrugged and put on that scent.

At last, he was ready, and she helped him out and into the car, and they headed for the hotel. And then what? A freight train!

Once Mary Alice walked into the hotel, she calmed down and was most accommodating to Pete Decker, who asked if he might sit with them. She’d always found him lovely to look at, the photo of him had looked nice on her bedroom wall, but a crush? No. Despite what her sister thought, she had never had a crush on Pete Decker. No reason for him not to sit with them, though. He was still lovely to look at.

Mary Alice had told Einer on the way over that she wanted to talk to Ben Small because she did want to talk to Ben Small, but only because she was curious about whether or not he’d ever become an actor. But now look.

She turns and glances again at Lester, who is still engrossed in conversation with Candy. What are they
talking
about? Each so serious. She doubts he’s even noticed that she is here.

Pete comes back to the table and delivers the drinks, and Mary Alice takes such a large first gulp of hers, it gives her the hiccups. She’s embarrassed by this, but Ben Small puts his hand on her arm, nicely, and she leans back in her chair and smiles. Then she hiccups again and he laughs and so does she. What can you do? Love the one you’re with. The main courses are placed before them by grim-faced waitstaff who are banging the platters down in a way that is not exactly gracious:
Here! Here! Here’s your food!
They want to get this dinner over with, it’s clear; and so does Mary Alice. Because although she has missed her opportunity to have dinner with Lester, there’s still the rest of the night to come; the DJ is already setting up for the dance in the corner of the ballroom. In third grade, Mary Alice once asked the most popular boy in the school to dance. And what do you think he said?
Okay
, that’s what he said.

There is the sound of a spoon against a water glass, and the loud chatter in the room gradually quiets. Pam Pottsman is over by the DJ, and she takes his microphone. “May I have your attention?” she says. “Now, I know you just got your dinners, and I want you to go ahead and enjoy them. But I have a surprise. I think most of you know that Walter Vogel has passed on; his class photo is over on the memorial table, you probably saw it. And gosh, we all remember Walter Vogel, don’t we?” She leads the audience in a confused kind of applause.

Mary Alice has not yet looked at the memorial table, and she suspects she is not the only one who is putting off doing so. But she has no memory of Walter Vogel. Not one memory.
Walter Vogel
, she thinks.
Walter Vogel
. And then she remembers: a thin boy in ill-fitting clothes who had seemed pathologically shy—he’d never talk to or even look at anyone. He lived alone with his father; his mother was dead, and there were rumors that his father beat him with a board. He did poorly in school; Mary Alice remembers that he had a driver’s license long before the rest of them, because he’d been left back a few times. Unike her or Lester, Walter wasn’t picked on. He was simply ignored. Unseen, really.

Pam continues talking exuberantly into the microphone, though it’s obvious she’s not quite sure what she’s doing—or should do. “Right! Okay! So, Walter Vogel, he… You know, he was quite the… And of course I think he also played on the basketball team! Walter unfortunately died of cancer two years ago, and—” She looks off to the side, where a young man stands in the shadows. “Pardon?… Oh, I’m so sorry, it was three years ago, but anyway, the good news is that his son, who was the one who got the invitation to the reunion and then called and told me about his dad’s passing,
he
has come here tonight, and he would like to say a few words. It’s just a wonderful
surprise
for
all
of us, and, well, here he is, Ron Vogel. Walter’s son.”

The young man steps into the light, and now Mary Alice remembers his father clearly; his son is his spitting image. Ron is wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, a sweatshirt jacket, heavy work boots. “Okay,” he says. “Well, first off I just want to say thank you to everyone for letting me talk to you. Which I did not plan to do, to be honest. But I remembered you all were going to be here tonight, and I thought… Well, I just wanted to come over.

“My dad, he was not an easy guy. I guess that’s what you’d say. He was a hard dude to live with, he wasn’t so nice to us kids. He was real nice to my mom, he always was, he treated her like she was a princess or something.

“What I really wanted from my dad was a way to know him. I never did
know
him, he wouldn’t hardly ever talk to me. Or anybody, for that matter. He never did. But I think you all must have known him. He used to talk about this group of guys he hung around with in high school. Glory days, you know, that is the one thing he would talk about is this group of guys he hung around with in high school. Pete Decker is the guy he talked about most, he just loved Pete Decker. Is Pete Decker here tonight?”

“Over here,” Pete says. He’s smiling, but his eyebrows are furrowed, and Mary Alice suspects he, too, is trying to remember who Walter Vogel was.

Ron says, “Hey, Pete! Good to meet you, man! Wow. Okay, so… I just want to… I just want to thank
all
of you, really, for being such an important part of my dad’s life. It’s good to know he
had
a time when he was… you know…

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your party now, and thank you very much.”