Reunion (12 page)

The moment of silence dragging on, Buzz remembering perky little Randy Foreman, kind of a Mr. Wiseass Jerry Lewis type, and solidly stout but not obese Jim O'Hallaran, a kind of pretty-boy exec type, born serious, like he was destined to be chairman of GM or something, Moe Belucci the circus fatman, Mr. Rancid Cheese, Benny O'Callaghan with a face like a rubber ducky, always looking scrubbed, like he'd just gotten out of a bath …

“I hear that O'Callaghan was an alcoholic!” said the somebody's husband next to Buzz.

“And you're … ?” Fred asked aggressively.

“Olga Santini's husband,” reaching across the shaking hands with Fred, getting the sleeve of his dark blue sports-jacket a little into his salad, a little oil, a little dusting of Parmesan.

“And Olga?”

“Oh, she's over with the girls. She always likes to ‘mix' at things, sees enough of me during the whole year.”

“Where is she?” asked Buzz.

“Over there, next to Anne Pritchard, third table over, very end, up against the wall … ”

The ugliest girl in the class, this hangdog, sagging bloodhound face. Now, ironically, she didn't look too bad. Maybe a little tucking up around the edges, a lot less Melancholia Incarnate now than she had been at fourteen.

“She looks good,” said Buzz.

“It costs,” said her husband, “but I didn't say that. Don't quote me, I'll get scalped … not that there's that much to scalp,” ha, ha, ha, ha, smoothing his hand over his shiny baldness.

Mary Alice making her way back into the room, all smiles again. Nothing had happened. Nothing at all. It was all just a conjurer's trick. Pure illusion. She was the soul of grandmotherly bounty all over again.

“Well, that's better. I have this thing about my makeup,” she said as she sat back down, “I took a course in modeling five years ago. The Rapello Studio … ”

Looking over at Buzz expecting a reaction. So Buzz gave it to her. What did it cost?!?!

“Oh, yeah, great!!!” Almost saying “You look better now than you ever did before.”

“So what's going on?” she asked, looking all curious and surprised.

“It's a moment of silence!” her husband whispered.

“Ahhhh,” sitting down, looking at the big salad in front of her. “What's this?”

“I haven't eaten this much salad in the last fifty years!!!” talking at Buzz. “You remember how ‘basic' Mom was, meat and potatoes and potatoes and meat. It was like tomatoes and celery were some sort of alien conspiracy … ”

“Arab!” said Buzz, still looking down at his plate like it was a sacred monstrance or something.

“I didn't even think that,” said Mary Alice, her voice/temper rising again. It was like monsoon winds in southern India, lull, storm, then a little more lull, then a lot more storm.

“Just kidding, come on!” he said.

“Will you guys have a little respect for the dead!”

Willy Bocanegra three tables away.

What an ugly sonofabitch, man. Really! With that bald head of his looking like a potato person. Big black coal eyes, white potato skin, and this white potato head. Like he'd gone through radiation treatment or something. Voice like a pruning saw cutting through Styrofoam.

“Mary Alice, please … you promised!” Lloyd started in again, voice lower and lower, “you're gonna get us both killed, something mysterious and accidental, like a wrecking ball falls out of the sky on our car, a viper somehow gets into our bed, typhus in the tap water, a mysterious two A.M. fire, and the bedroom door gets ‘accidentally' locked … ”

Mary Alice got up, walked over to Willy, Lloyd trying to stop her, then just letting her go, his face a pincushion of consternation. Stroke territory.

“She promised she'd behave herself tonight. She's got this energy like for ten people,” sitting back, closing his eyes. If he folded his arms he would have been a perfect mummy. A little winding tape. Eternal, pharaonic resignation.

Only Mary Alice surprised him, went over and kissed Willy on his bald head, leaving a nice big ketchupy lip-print, he held her on his knee for a moment, tucked her under her chin, Lloyd very much waking up all of a sudden, resignation sliding into consternation again, leaning over to Buzzy, quietly pleading …

“Listen, could you talk to her, Buzz. No extremes. Middle of the road. The less the better … all the way around,” Buzz thinking “Jesus, I haven't even seen her for fifty fucking years,” wondering how his life would have been married to her, what would he have written about, Archie Bunker, Roseanne, Desi and Lucy, the Waltons … domestic purgatory … instead of walking through the clashing vaginal gates of rebirth into mother-of-pearl-eyed shamanistic VISION …

Timmy O'Toole back on line again.

“OK, guys, what I'd like to have everyone do is get up and give a little personal, how shall I put it, ‘testimony' … maybe that's a little strong … a little personal ‘statement,' you know … whatever you wanna say, remembrances, projections, gripes, ecstasies … ”

“Ask Mary Alice and Willy about that!” shouted someone from the other side of the room, Buzzy trying to see who.

“Who was that?”

“Benny … what's his name … it's been fifty years,” Ellen straining to both see and remember, “Carugati … ”

Buzzy seeing the face but it hardly registered. The slim sprout of a fourteen year old replaced by the sturdy, heavy, dark solidity of an adult oak. Not that he even knew him well back then in the old days, the sudden realization dawning on Buzz that, honestly, he hardly knew most of these people at all, and never had known them, they were just peripheral contacts for him, something Out There, trees in the forest, boats on the lake. His real life had begun for him three times a week after school when he'd gone up north to Mrs. Schumacher's All Children's Grand Opera class, or the other afternoons when he'd gone for his violin lessons with P. Marius Thompson. Mrs. (Madame) Schumacher was a Jewish woman who had escaped from Nazi Germany and had come to Chicago and started up with the crazy idea of forming an all children's music troupe, and somehow making contact with the Met in New York so that when the Met came to Chicago, her All Children's Grand Opera would sing the children's choruses in
Carmen
and Boris Godunov or be part of the street scene/chorus in
La Bohème
, and later he'd gotten into all the choruses for all the operas … had spent his real childhood either on or back-stage … and the stage door guy, a Mr. Johnson, would let him in backstage whenever, so that when the Ballet Russe came to Chicago he'd come in and watch the dancers rehearse, Tallchief, Markova, Barinova, Patricia Wilde, Danellian, Franklyn … like some small boy phantom of the opera, getting to love the catwalks above the stage, standing and watching rehearsals and performances from all angles, hanging around with the musicians when they were on break, learning the different roles and timbres of all the instruments … getting inside the Death of Boris, or the Fall of Valhalla, the death of
Mimi, Manon … all magic tights and makeup and timbres and arpeggios, bullrings and homes of the gods, Salome with John the Baptist's head, Arabella finally finding love. And then at home in his own room either practicing the violin himself or listening endlessly to Tchaikovsky and Mahler, Bruckner, getting the scores and “following along,” little diagrams of orchestral seating arrangements, in his little room at home closing the door and becoming a conductor himself. Or coming to singing class early and having piano contests with big showoffs like Sheldon Patinkin, where he'd play a little, then Sheldon, then him, who could do the fastest runs, the most crashing chords, the craziest cadenzas. As if there was a pale, cocoon-wrapped daytime him, and then in the afternoons his other Self would emerge and really FLY …

Who was Benny Carugati? What was Benny to him and him to Benny?

Mary Alice getting up and coming back to her seat.

“See, no problems. I get the Nobel Peace Prize,” she said, sitting down, re-attacking her salad. As the next course appeared—huge slices of baked ham, the outer skin a rich dark brown, filled with cloves.

Malinche getting all agitated, standing up, going over to the waiter, trying to be a little discreet and muted, but not making it.

“Don't you have maybe something else?”

The waiter trying to get the plates passed down, period, paying a little token attention to her, but mainly ignoring her.

“Like what?”

“Like a falafel sandwich?”

“Nah, we don't have no oriental stuff here, this is like homestyle Italian-American … ”

Buzz coming over to Malinche.

“Come on, listen, just don't eat the ham, I'll give you my sweet potatoes. You know the old Jesuit saw … ”

“Saw?”

“Modus operandi. Handle on things. Wherever you go, you eat what they serve. Number one rule—FIT INTO THE WORLD YOU ENTER. Like they always used to give the example of this Italian Jesuit who introduced Catholicism into China. Ricci. He became a Mandarin, was going to become a Buddhist monk, but discovered that the monks were looked down on … got to know the emperor … ”

“What are you talking about?” she said, “I don't want to eat ham and you're talking about Buddhist monks in China … I guess that's what you're talking about … ”

“So don't eat the ham, OK, eat everything else, just don't eat the ham,” turning to the waiter, this short Italian who looked a lot like Willy Bocanegra used to look when he had hair, “listen, how about one plate with double sweet potatoes, no ham … ”

“It's really great ham,” said the waiter.

“She's moslem,” said Buzz, “they don't eat ham … like the Jews … you know … ”

“She looks Italian,” said the waiter.

“She's from Pakistan … but there's a common Proto-Indo-Mediterranean race, you know … ”

“What about you? Aren't you a moslem tonight?” said Malinche.

“Jesus! Come on! You never do this! You're always so easy-going!”

“Do what? You want I should leave, get a taxi and go back to Grand Junction, or even better go back to Karachi and my sisters?”

“You can't take a taxi to Karachi,” said Fred, getting up again, “Jesus, all this agitation has brought on another nicotine attack.”

As Tim O'Toole kept yakking on.

“OK, now what I want everyone to do is get up, one by one and give your little spiel. It's the best way for us to re-get to know each other. The planning committee has been planning this thing for a long time, even did a little reunion-consulting, and that's what we've been advised, everyone opens up a little … reestablishes old connections, begins new ones … ”

“Me first!” Willy Bocanegra up on his feet, both fists clenched, like he was all ready for round one.

“Man,” said Lloyd, to Mary Alice, “you really got his juices flowing. It's like spring, huh. Look at him!”

“Don't be vulgar!” said Mary Alice, “you made a few promises too, don't forget, to love and obey … ”

“I didn't make any promises to obey!” said Lloyd, turning to Buzz, “You've had a little practice with marriage vows, ever hear anything about promises to OBEY?”

“Be back shortly, then!” said Fred, like he was waiting for permission to go to the John or something.

“So go already!” said Ellen impatiently, and Fred just kind of snailed his old soft shoe self out the door, totally self-enclosed in a kind of solipsistic trance-state.

Buzz got up and passed the waiter five bucks on the Q.T.

“Listen, just go get two plates with double yams, whatever, OK? My wife's this vegetarian nut, you know … ”

“Well, let me get the rest of the plates passed out first, OK?”

“OK.”

Sitting down watching everyone else get ham plopped down in front of them, lusting after the thick pink ham-slices like they were the food of the gods, understanding better than anyone else why ham was The Forbidden Food, you could eat grasshoppers for god's sake, but The Pig was the sacred animal that dwelt in the sacred precincts of the Acropolis, beloved of Athena, the animal that other animals were sacrificed TO, like the serpent a symbol of Earth, the Earth Mother, sacred bounty and abundance.

He'd raised his first two kids almost exclusively on ham:

Ham in the morning,
Ham at noon,
Ham in the evening,
It's ending too soon
.

Maria del Carmen couldn't-wouldn't cook and ham was so easy, here a slice, there a slice, everywhere a slice-slice, nice caraway-seeded rye bread, cole slaw, potato salad. And the kids hadn't turned out so bad, Pepe this alcoholic down in Laredo, teaching Survival English to wetbacks, doing OK, 15 teachers working for him. THE SURVIVAL ENGLISH ACADEMY—no questions asked, but we give you lots of answers. That's what it said on the cards that he had passed out all over in border
towns in Northern Mexico. He didn't even have to be around, could stay home and drink tequila full time …

And Conchita, so she was a little psychotic (“The butcher didn't look at me again last week, he kept his eyes glued on the sausages,” “The secretary down at Ortho-Mind thinks I'm scum, I can see it in her eyes,” squirrels avoid me, the wind blows the other way), weighed 300, lived on M & M's and Crispo-Rice, cheesecake and bratwurst, showered the first Sunday of every month and that was it, always had her pants drooping so her belly stuck out, all hairy around her goddamned belly button, women weren't supposed to have hair around their goddamned belly-buttons, were they? But she was OK … it wasn't the ham. Ham. He could have killed for a piece of ham, the whole air saturated with the ham smell.

“Why don't you just eat some ham, what's the difference? God made the world, for god's sake,” Mary Alice sweet-talking Malinche, Lloyd wimpily objecting “Leave her alone, people have their beliefs … ”