The Last Time I Saw You

by Elizabeth Berg

  A dark cloud comes onto her psychic horizon: what if Pete’s wife is there after all? When Dorothy checked in, she’d quietly asked Pam Pottsman if Pete had arrived yet, and Pam had told her in her nine-billion-decibel voice that, yes, he’d arrived—alone, even though he’d registered for both himself and Nora. “I am going right up to him tonight and asking for a dance,” Pam had said. “It’s my very last chance, and I’m doing it!” That had made Dorothy kind of mad, and nervous, too. Not because Pam was any kind of competition—please—but because she’d take time away from Dorothy and Pete, and Dorothy had a lot of work to do in a short amount of time, especially if she went according to plan and ignored Pete at first.

  If Nora comes, everything will be harder. That damn Nora, she’d been popular and pretty and smart, all three. And she’d never liked Dorothy, Dorothy knew it, even if Nora never said it. Whenever Dorothy tried to talk to her, Nora just acted tired. Surely Pete wouldn’t bring her, he’s just not the type, he’s never been the type, and even if he does, well, he’s Pete Decker. He would never turn down a ripe peach. So to speak. Especially at a last high school reunion, where everything is almost required, isn’t it?

  She didn’t see anyone else when she was registering. It was just Pam Pottsman, with her three chins and badly dyed red (??) hair, acting like she was the queen bee just because she organized this whole thing. Which was something, Dorothy supposed. Credit where credit’s due. Once everyone’s registered, though, Pam will be left in the dust, just like in high school, when she used to organize all the dances and then not be invited to go to any of them. But you couldn’t ever discourage that girl! She loved life! She loved everything! And she doesn’t seem to have changed one whit, sitting there behind the registration table smiling and laughing and acting like everyone she sees is her long-lost friend.

  In a way, Dorothy is glad there weren’t a lot of people registering when she arrived. She never looks very good after a plane ride; she needs time to rehydrate and rest after a flight. She did pass Ben Small on her way to the elevator. Ben was in the drama club and everyone thought he’d be a great actor but no; when Dorothy asked him about it, he laughed and told her that what he did was sell products for people who were incontinent. Imagine having to say that over and over again tonight! If Dorothy were Ben, she’d say she was in the medical supply business and let it go at that. Ben always did share too much; he was needy that way. You’d say, “How’s it going, Ben?” and he’d tell you!

  As she was heading down the hall to the elevator, she saw Nance and Buddy Dunsmore—they’d hardly changed at all! Thank God they didn’t see her. They were the Cute Couple in high school; everyone liked them. Nance was a cheerleader who wasn’t all that pretty, and Buddy was the football player that nobody got all that excited about. They were just cute, like Karen and Cubby in the Mouseketeers. And they’d been together forever, since fourth grade, everyone knew. Buddy used to walk Nance slowly to every class, which made him late for his own, but the teachers all tolerated it because they were Nance and Buddy.

  In the winter of her senior year, Dorothy was at a party and went into the bedroom to get her coat to go home, and there Buddy and Nance were, she resting back on her elbows at the end of the bed, her skirt shoved up and her garters revealed, and he kneeling before her with his face shoved between her thighs.… Well, you can just imagine how it felt to walk in on that. Dorothy had never seen such a thing; it gave her a sick and vaguely discouraged feeling, like when she saw dogs’ red penises sticking out, and she did what she had to: she told the boy hosting the party that there was lewd behavior going on between Buddy Dunsmore and Nancy Greene right in his parents’ bedroom. Plus, okay, she told a few other people. She thought it was indecent! She thought people needed to know so that they could leave, too! Word spread quickly and someone must have alerted Nance and Buddy because, very soon afterward, they came out of the bedroom, hastily rearranging their clothes, Nance all shamefaced and crying, as well she should have been, Dorothy had thought. But Buddy was mad. He’d come rushing up toward Dorothy and scared her so that she reached out and slapped him preemptively and also inadvertently scratched him. It was a bad scratch, he bled a lot and later there was a scar on his cheek, and she was horrified at what she’d done. She was sorry, too, that she hadn’t just gotten her coat and said nothing to anyone and quietly gone home. But she remembers thinking, If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you tell him! There Nance and Buddy were, defiling the party, behaving in what she believed at the time was an immoral way that, really, affected everyone else who was there. Everyone was guilty by association! Dorothy had wanted no part of it, and she’d assumed that, if the others knew, they’d want no part of it, either. She’d imagined, in fact, that everyone would leave, talking about how they were so grateful that Dorothy had walked in on Nance and Buddy, because otherwise there they would have been with that going on not twenty feet away. But afterward, all the kids stayed at the party anyway, and they were mad at Dorothy, as though she’d been the one behaving in such a disgusting way. Which of course was true.

  If only people were given the opportunity to behave differently at certain times in their lives! That party would be a time that Dorothy would revisit. Never mind the popular sentiment you heard every five minutes these days: Everything that’s happened in your life has helped to make you who you are! No, Dorothy would like to be back at that party, and she would open the door to the bedroom, and she would see Nance and Buddy, and she would quietly close the door. She would wait until they came out of the bedroom to get her coat, and then she would go home without having said a word to anyone about what she had seen. Not because she thought what they did was all right, but because it was none of her business.

  Not long after that party, Nance got pregnant (the night of a church social, of all things, Dorothy had heard). The whole school knew about how she had lain in bed crying night after night when her period didn’t come, and how she’d then tried to solicit advice for how to get rid of it. Lynn Donnelly told her to take hot, hot baths. Debbie Goodman said to drink vinegar three times a day. Joyce Ulrich told her to stick a chopstick up there, and Nance had reportedly started to, but then she got scared and ended up telling Buddy she was going to have the baby. And he’d said, well, they’d just get married, then; and he’d get a job after graduation and take care of her, no problem. He said that, even though he had gotten a football scholarship and was all set to go to college. He just kept on loving her, and he treated her even better after he knew she was pregnant, like glass! Nance had come to graduation with that bump showing, wearing her wedding ring with the microscopic chip of a diamond, everybody trying to act like it was okay, but it was not, not in those days.

  Buddy got a job bagging groceries at SaveMore and had to wear a white shirt and black pants and a red bow tie and a green apron. He’d always looked so sexy in his letter jacket, moving down the hall with the other jocks and carrying his books at his hip. And then there he was, looking like a little Christmas elf or something. Dorothy saw him in the store a few times before she left for college and she was just mortified on his behalf. He didn’t seem much different, though, still the same smiling, affable guy, but, oh how sorry Dorothy felt for him. To be married at eighteen! Surely he felt a terrible shame! And how could a marriage like that ever last? How? And yet there they were, still together and holding hands, for goodness’ sake! And they were still very nice-looking people, just the tiniest bit overweight.

  Dorothy ran into Karen Erickson when Karen was getting off the elevator, and they chatted for a while. Karen reminded her that they were in chorus together, though Dorothy had no memory of that, not at all. She would look Karen up in the yearbook later; she had brought along the yearbook for just such things. Karen Erickson was Karen Slater now. Her husband was not there, but Karen made sure she let Dorothy know that he was an orthodontist, and Dorothy raised her chin and said “Oooh!” appreciatively, even though who the hell cared.

  Karen asked if
Dorothy had seen anybody else yet, and Dorothy said she’d talked to Ben Small, and she’d caught a glimpse of Buddy and Nance but hadn’t spoken to them. “Oh?” Karen said. “Well, I’ve kept in touch with Nance. She and Buddy own a few Subway franchises and they have five children, can you imagine? They’re a very close and happy family. Two of their children, a daughter and a son, work at NASA. One is an English professor and one is an actor on a soap opera, very successful. And the youngest has just become an executive chef at some fancy hotel in Milwaukee, where they live.”

  Dorothy said, “Huh,” and her spirits sagged a bit. Other people’s happiness could do that, put a pin to your balloon, you’d think people could keep good news to themselves instead of acting like those god-awful trumpeting Christmas letters: Look at US! But never mind. Buddy and Nance had their happiness; Dorothy was about to enjoy her own. Dorothy said she’d see Karen later, and she got into the elevator and quick punched the button so she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone else, she had a lot to do.

  In her room, Dorothy opens her suitcase and starts unpacking. When she goes into the bathroom, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror and is actually shocked to see herself as a fifty-eight-year-old woman. She’d been thinking of herself as that high school girl in her plaid skirt and kneesocks and circle pin, but no, here is who she is. Fifty-eight years old. She really can’t believe it. Oh, she believes the changes in herself physically, but inside she still feels like a girl. She does! Aaron Spelling’s wife, Candy, feels that way, too; Dorothy heard that, in some interview, she described herself as a child who happens to be sixty-something. Dorothy could probably be friends with Candy Spelling, because she feels exactly the same way. She wonders if they were friends, if Candy would pay for everything all the time—she’s so rich!—even though Dorothy would offer to pay for herself.

  Dorothy leans in closer to the mirror and looks deep into her own eyes. She experiences a sudden descent into what feels like the center of herself. She is aware of a lonely regret: she isn’t that high school girl any longer; and she can’t do a single thing in her life over again—though she wonders if, given the opportunity, she really would do anything over. One is given one’s own particular box of tools; one does what one must at various points in one’s life. She supposes she might have been a little kinder in high school. She wasn’t very kind, then. Though who was, in those days? What adolescent could be described as being kind? An aberrant one, that’s who. Well. Nothing for it but to make the best of what one has, at the moment. Which is exactly why she’s here.

  On the shower rod, Dorothy hangs all the clothes that she’ll wear tonight and to the breakfast tomorrow: the steam from her bath will make the few wrinkles fall right out. On the counter go all the things for personal hygiene, including the new bottle of Chanel No. 5 she bought that had necessitated her checking her bag. Checking her suitcase had made her very nervous—what if it got lost?—but she had sat by the window and watched as the bags got loaded into the plane, and there was her suitcase on the conveyor belt, the handle tied with a hot pink ribbon you couldn’t miss. She leaned back against the seat after that, relieved, and refused the offer of peanut M&M’s from her seatmate, even though she was dying for some. There would be time enough for peanut M&M’s after the reunion, unless she was still seeing Pete, in which case she would still be dieting, but it would so be worth it. She wonders what Hilly would think of Pete, wonders if her Mom Stock wouldn’t go up if her daughter saw her with such a handsome man. It could be their time, Dorothy and Pete’s. Reunions are breeding grounds for just that sort of thing. Divorces happen all the time in the wake of reunions. She wonders if you can get divorced online; it seems to her that you can do everything online, these days. Soon no one will venture out of their house for anything, ever.

  The phone rings and Dorothy actually jumps, then laughs at herself. She’s so nervous! Or excited, or something! It’s Linda and Judy calling from their room. They want to know if Dorothy has eaten her box lunch yet, it actually looks pretty good. They suggest coming up to Dorothy’s room and they’ll all have lunch together. And then she has to come with them to look at the ballroom—it’s decorated so cute, in their high school colors, all burgundy and white! There are Kleenex carnations at every table, felt pennants. On the wall there are blowups of photos that had been in the senior yearbook. There’s a cheerleader outfit and a football uniform hung up there, too; and there are posters made to look like the ones that used to hang in the halls when people ran for things.

  “Never mind all that,” Dorothy says. Those damn cheerleaders; would their glory never fade? They’d be in a nursing home and everyone would still be fawning over them because they were cheerleaders. “We’re due at the spa in less than half an hour.”

  “It’s right here at the hotel,” Linda says. “We’ll have plenty of time. Relax!”

  But Dorothy says, “We can’t be late. Why don’t you guys eat and then come and get me and we’ll all go over together. I’ll see the ballroom tonight. I’d rather see it tonight anyway, it will be more romantic.”

  Judy says, “It’s hardly romantic! There are plastic horses on every table, for the Mustangs. And the crepe paper is twisted and hung up all swoopy, you’ve got to see it.”

  “We don’t have time,” Dorothy says. And since she remains the boss of their little group, the women agree, and Dorothy finishes making ready her room. She puts her pajamas in the bureau drawer, sprays her pillowcases lightly with Chanel, removes the dust from the window ledge. Those maids. All they do is watch soap operas and begrudge you extra bottles of lotion.

  When her friends come, Dorothy knows they’ll comment on all the flowers in her room, and she isn’t sure she should tell them she sent them to herself. Then she decides she will admit to it; she might as well get back into the habit of telling them everything, because if she gets her way, she’ll have plenty more to tell them. Not for nothing did she opt out of staying with them, and get a single. It had been fun to think about making out in Pete’s car, and they still might, some, but for the grand finale, no. A bed, please, they probably both have joint issues.

  She pulls the blackout curtain, then lies on the bed to practice her Kegels. No one can tell when you’re doing that, they say you can even do it when you’re sitting at your desk, but still. She lies in the exact center of the bed, closes her eyes, and squeezes, releases, squeezes, releases. Dorothy could never do this sitting at her desk. For heaven’s sake! It gets you hot! If she gets to be intimate with Pete, she’s got to remember not to get on top no matter what. All the loose skin on her face will fall forward like ice cream sliding off a plate. And besides, when she lies flat her belly looks… containable.

  After a few minutes, Dorothy hears a knock at the door. She gets off the bed and opens the curtains, then opens the door, and there they are, Linda and Judy, squealing Hi! and Oh, my God! and Can you believe it? They are wearing bright orange feather boas, and after they come into Dorothy’s room they offer one to her. Which she takes and wraps gaily around her neck, then immediately removes and lays on the table. No boas. Next they’ll be suggesting red hats. No.

  “Who are all the flowers from?” Judy asks, and Dorothy admits that she sent them to herself. Judy and Linda have a good laugh about that, though Dorothy doesn’t know why—she doesn’t think it’s so astounding that a woman would send flowers to herself, she thinks it shows a kind of spunk.

  Linda sits on the edge of the bed and says, “Guess who we just saw?”

  Dorothy presses her lips together and tries to contain her emotions. “Pete Decker?”

  “Yes!” Judy and Linda squeal, together. “He was going into his room and no one was with him! He’s three doors down from us!”

  “Oh, my God,” Dorothy says. “Is he still handsome?”

  “He is so handsome!” Linda says, and she shakes her hands like she just burned them. Linda is still cute, Dorothy realizes, blond, petite, her big blue eyes still huge in her face and no lines ar
ound them, thank you Mr. Botox. Judy’s not bad-looking, either, tall and slender, with front teeth crossed in an endearing way, brunette hair still long and thick, and those great boobs that are now and always were 100 percent natural. Dorothy hopes her friends have no interest in Pete.

  “He was wearing doctor pants,” Linda says. “Did he become a doctor?”

  “No,” Dorothy says. “He’s a stockbroker.” Facebook.

  “Well, he’s wearing scrubs.”

  “It’s probably some cool fad or something,” Judy says. “He was always starting fads; whatever Pete did, a whole bunch of other guys did.”

  “I’m going to hit on him,” Dorothy says.

  Linda rolls her eyes. “We know.”

  “So don’t either of you.”

  “We’re not,” Linda says, but Judy says, “I might.” When Dorothy’s mouth drops, she says, “Just kidding. I do think I might hit on Buddy Dunsmore, though.”

  “He’s still married to Nance, and she’s here with him!” Dorothy says, and Judy shrugs and says, “It’s a reunion. That’s what these things are for. Although I also just saw Lester Hessenpfeffer. And he is really hot. But he’s, you know, Lester Hessenpfeffer. Ew.”

  They all laugh, and then Dorothy looks at her watch and says it’s time to go to the spa. When she walks down the hallway toward the elevator, she feels oddly outside herself. Here it comes, the reunion is here, it’s all starting to happen! This is the before before the after.

  When they get off the elevator, they start heading toward the spa. But then Judy suddenly stops in her tracks. “Look!” she says, pointing toward the registration table down the hall.