The Last Time I Saw You

by Elizabeth Berg

  After Dorothy sits back down at her table, Wendy Striker comes over and sits heavily beside her. “Remember me?” she says breathlessly, leaning in way too close to Dorothy. The woman is bombed out of her mind. Dorothy leans back a bit and offers a tight smile.

  “Do you remember me?” Wendy asks.

  “Well, of course I do,” Dorothy says. “Wendy Striker. We were in Future Homemakers of America together. You and I teamed up for beef Stroganoff.” Dorothy remembers that because Wendy had been such a slob. She’d gotten sour cream all over both of them and Dorothy’s mom had gotten mad because she’d had to take Dorothy’s skirt to the dry cleaner’s.

  “And chorus,” Wendy says.

  “And chorus, yes,” Dorothy says, though she does not remember this.

  “When you signed my yearbook, alls you wrote was ‘Good luck to a nice kid.’ I really wanted you to say more. Like, at least, ‘Thanks for covering for me on our class trip.’ I covered for you that time we went to Washington, D.C., and you snuck out with Pete Decker, remember? You could have said something about that.”

  “Sorry,” Dorothy says. “I must have been in a hurry.”

  “Isz okay. I forgive you.” Wendy thrusts her chest dramatically forward and then back, a kind of stretch, Dorothy supposes. A vulgar one. “Are you having a good time?” Wendy asks.

  Dorothy shrugs.

  Wendy peers into her face. “Is that… Are you wearing false eyelashes?”

  Dorothy moves her chair back. “No.”

  “You are, too.”

  “So what?”

  “So nothing. Jeez. Just asking. Don’t have a cow.” She laughs at herself, laughs and laughs, then abruptly stops. “So listen. Are you having a good time? Is it what you expected? This is your first reunion, right?” She gently burps. “Ecshuze me.”

  “Who told you it was my first one?”

  “I know, because I’ve been to them all. But also Pam Pottsman. She told me. She tells everybody evvvvverything. What a fucking blabbermouth. But is it what you expected?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Whattdya mean?” Wendy leans closer, savagely hikes up a bra strap. “What’d you think would happen? Huh? Did you think something would happen? Because oh. Oh! I did. That’s what I thought, is that something would finally happen because this is the last one. Oh, my God, we’re almost dead, all of us!” She sniffs, looks wistfully around the room, and some sort of whimpering sound escapes her. “Oh, we all got so old, we all look like old people.” She turns back to Dorothy. “But anyway. I was getting ready in my room tonight? And I was just so happy thinking of all the things that could happen and you know what? You know what? Not one damn thing has happened! I’m divorced,” she adds, seemingly apropos of nothing.

  “Hmm,” Dorothy says. Where the hell are Judy and Linda?

  “I’m divorced, so, I mean, anything could happen.” She throws her arms up in the air. “I’m a free woman. YOO-HOO, BOYS! OVER HERE! I AM FREE!”

  “I have to go,” Dorothy says.

  “Wait, wait, wait a minute,” Wendy says, grabbing her arm. “I want to ask you something. Okay? I just really want to ask you something.”

  Dorothy raises an eyebrow.

  Nothing.

  “What did you want to ask me?”

  Wendy lists to the left. “Huh?”

  “I have to go,” Dorothy says, and walks quickly away from the table.

  “Waaaaiiit!” Wendy cries.

  Dorothy keeps walking.

  “Doooorothy! Waaaaait!”

  Dorothy turns around and starts back to the table. Hush! she’ll tell her. Get hold of yourself, why don’t you! But then she sees that Wendy has found Dorothy’s unfinished drink, and her attention is now taken up with something else. Look at her. Barefoot, her legs spread widely apart. Oh, it’s awful the way some people behave!

  She wanders over to the table where Nance and Buddy Dunsmore are sitting and plops herself down. “Hi,” she says, miserably.

  Buddy takes a quick look at her name tag and says, “Dorothy Shauman. Well. Hello.”

  Nance says nothing. She just holds her mouth in that well-well-well way. Well, well, well; look what the cat dragged in.

  Dorothy regards the two of them. Nance and Buddy. Still going strong, she guesses.

  “So how are you guys?” she says.

  “We’re just fine,” Nance says. “Surprised?”

  “Nance,” Buddy says.

  Nance turns to her husband. “What? Don’t you remember what she did?”

  Buddy smiles at Dorothy, then tells his wife, “It was a long time ago, hon.”

  Nance scratches at the top of her arm, says nothing.

  Dorothy sighs. “Okay, you know what? I’m sorry. I am! Here it is, a formal apology: I’m sorry. Really. And I’ll bet it has bothered me all these years a lot more than it has bothered you. Look at you! You’re still together and you’re happy!” She looks back and forth at their faces. “Aren’t you?”

  Buddy shrugs. “Yup.”

  “And your family is just perfect.”

  “We’re not perfect,” Nance says. She practically spits it out.

  “Well, close enough,” Dorothy says. “I heard about you guys. Pam Pottsman told me.”

  “Well. Pam Pottsman,” Nance says, and now her voice seems to have softened a bit. Then she says, “Did you know Pam hit on the DJ?”

  Dorothy turns around to see if she missed something attractive about the DJ. Absolutely not. He’s a short little guy, exceedingly thin, with a beard he should never have tried to grow. It looks like a beard that some kid tried to color on his face with a crayon.

  “She’s three times his size!” Dorothy says.

  Nance laughs. “I know. But I heard they’re getting together after the dance is over. I’ll bet they hook up.”

  “What?” Dorothy says.

  “Some guys like large women,” Buddy says. “For some guys, that’s their thing.”

  “Well, good for them,” Dorothy says bitterly. She stares into her lap.

  “Dorothy?” Nance says. “How come you did that thing?”

  “Aw, come on, Nance,” Buddy says.

  “No!” she says. “I want to know.”

  “Well, then I’m getting out of here for a while,” Buddy says. “I’m going out to the parking lot and talk to the boys.” When Nance starts to say something, he says, “What did I tell you? Don’t worry, I won’t. I told you I won’t and I won’t.”

  Dorothy watches him walk away. Then she asks Nance, “What won’t he do?”

  “Drugs,” Nance says. “They’re doing drugs out in the parking lot. The Lettermen’s Club.”

  Dorothy’s hand flies to her chest. The idea of doing drugs appalls her, but the thought of all the lettermen together, that kind of attracts her. Maybe she could go out there on some pretext or another. Just to see if anyone’s there she might have forgotten about, now that that damn Pete still hasn’t come back. She should have had a second choice in mind all along.

  “What kind of drugs?” she asks.

  Nance shrugs. “Pot for sure. Probably cocaine, too.”

  “Oh, my God,” Dorothy says.

  “Hey, Dorothy?” Nance says. “Can I give you some advice? Don’t tell.”

  Dorothy looks at her. “I know.”

  “But why did you tell on us?” Nance asks.

  “I thought it was wrong,” Dorothy says. “I thought it was immoral. I guess I was kind of scared by it. I thought the others should know, in case they wanted to leave.”

  “Uh-huh. Know what I think?”

  Dorothy sighs. “What?”

  “I think you were jealous of us.”

  “You’re right.” She nods. “I still am. Now more than ever.”

  Nance waves to someone across the room and tells Dorothy, “I’m going over to talk to Betty Williams.”

  “Okay.”

  Nance grabs her purse. “You can come, too.”

  “That’s all right.
”

  “Oh, come on,” Nance says, and Dorothy rises gratefully.

  Following Nance across the room, she sees some people she remembers, and many she doesn’t recognize at all. A group of women is standing around some guy demonstrating what looks like a yoga pose. Downward dog or whatever—Dorothy wonders if he teaches yoga. Judy and Linda are at the bar, talking to John Beckmeier, who was captain of the debate team. They would never have talked to him in high school, but they seem to be enjoying him now. They seem not to want to be with Dorothy, and she doesn’t blame them; all she’s talked about since they got here is Pete.

  On the dance floor, two women are jitterbugging together in their bare feet, shrieking with laughter. A couple seated at a table in the shadows are kissing. She tries to see who it is and runs smack into a chair. Nance grabs her to keep her from falling, then links arms with her as they continue to walk. “Come on, you old tattletale,” she says.

  Dorothy can’t look at her. She stares at the floor and holds back some strong feeling that could be laughter or could be tears, either one. Or both. It comes to her that all of the people in this room are dear to her. As if they all just survived a plane crash together or something. All the drunks and the show-offs and the nice kids and the mean ones. All the people she used to know and all the ones she never knew at all. And herself, too. She includes herself and her stingy little soul. And oh, what a feeling.

  SEVENTEEN

  BETTY WILLIAMS IS DEEPLY ENGROSSED IN CONVERSATION with Pam Pottsman. But when she sees Nance and Dorothy coming over, she waves at them and points to the empty chairs at her table.

  “Listen to Pam’s great idea,” Betty says, when they have seated themselves. “It’s a really great idea. Tell them, Pammy.”

  Pam’s face is flushed, her hair has fallen flat, her mascara is smeared, and the top of her bra is showing and it is not meant to be; no, that kind of Valkyric bra is not for display. But there is such excitement in her eyes that she looks lovely, Dorothy thinks. A happy person just looks good, no matter what. And a depressed person? Well, that’s the opposite. You get some gorgeous woman who’s all sad, and she doesn’t look good. You don’t want to be around her. It comes to Dorothy now that that’s what “Pretty is as pretty does” means. She was always terrible at interpreting aphorisms. When she was in ninth grade, her English teacher, Mr. Hannigan, said, “‘Fish and visitors smell in three days.’ Meaning? Dorothy?” She’d started when he called on her; she hadn’t had her hand up, she’d been doodling daisies in the margins of her paper and hadn’t been paying attention. “Pardon?” she’d said. And Mr. Hannigan had drawn himself up the way he always did if he noticed someone wasn’t hanging on his every word and repeated coolly, “‘Fish and visitors smell in three days.’ What does this mean?”

  Dorothy had scootched her butt around a little in her chair and smiled at him. She’d had no idea what it meant. She remembers thinking, Why do people speak that way? Why don’t they just say what they mean? Why must their words wear little costumes? But she wasn’t going to say that, she wasn’t going to delve into some completely unrelated subject like Wendy Peters, who one day raised her hand in history class and asked the teacher, “What is truth?” Imagine! But anyway, everyone had been staring at Dorothy that day, all the kids turned around and leering in that piranha-like way kids did when someone got in trouble. Dorothy had run the sentence through her head again: Fish and visitors smell in three days. Well, of course they did! And so she’d said, “Well, I think it’s self-explanatory,” which she thought sounded kind of smart. But Mr. Hannigan had sighed and called on Donna Whitby, that little National Honor Society, prissy nerd weirdo, and Donna had said, “It means ‘Don’t overstay your welcome,’” and then she had looked over at Dorothy and smirked. And Dorothy had looked down at her desk and thought, So what. At least I have friends. And a figure.

  “Okay, so here’s what I thought,” Pam says. “I thought we would get a whole bunch of people to sit around the table and really open up. I’ll ask certain questions, and they’ll answer really honestly what their lives have really been like since we last saw each other.”

  Nance and Dorothy look askance at each other and Dorothy gets a little thrill, thinking that she and Nance are now actually friends. Nance says, “Well, Pam, that’s kind of a tall order, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” Dorothy says. “Nobody’s going to do that.”

  “Oh?” Pam says. “Well, I already asked four people, and they said yes and they’re going to get more people. They’re all coming back here. A whole bunch of them. And Betty and I were just coming up with the questions, and we’ve got some good ones.”

  “Nobody’s going to sit in a circle and answer questions,” Dorothy says, again.

  “Well, your friends are,” Pam says. “Linda and Judy.”

  “They are?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who else?” Dorothy asks.

  “Tom Gunderson, he’s just getting another drink and then he’s coming. President of the student council, in case you forgot. Lettered in four sports, in case you forgot. Really good-looking, still, in case you hadn’t noticed. And available.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Dorothy says, but Betty has her number. Dorothy pulls her chair closer to the table. She’s in. “So what are the questions?” she asks. She wants a jump on them so she’s not caught off guard.

  Pam holds the napkin close to her breast. “That’s for me to know and you to find out. But if I were you, I’d get another drink.”

  “I’ve had enough,” Dorothy says.

  “No you haven’t. Trust me, go and get a drink.”

  Dorothy asks Pam to save her place, and goes over to the bar. Annie Denato is ahead of her, ordering red wine. Annie Denato, class slut, but my goodness, hasn’t she cleaned up! Dorothy heard two things about Annie: one, that she went to both medical school and law school; two, that she lives in New York City, on Park Avenue, thank you very much! Her streaked hair is in an elegant chignon, she’s wearing a pale blue shantung suit, and it fits her so perfectly Dorothy thinks it must have been tailor-made. Annie turns around and Dorothy sees that she is wearing diamond studs at least half a carat apiece and Dorothy doesn’t think they could possibly be cubic zirconium, although later she will find out. “Dorothy?” Annie says, and Dorothy nods. “Hi, Annie.”

  “It’s Anne now,” she says, and then hugs Dorothy like they were old friends. And Dorothy hugs her back, God knows she’s not going to hold a grudge or whatever after all this time! Though it’s hard to escape memories of how Annie used to be. Hard not to think of her beneath the bleachers on the football field, humping away, everyone knew she did that.

  “Know what I heard about you?” Dorothy says. “That you went to law school and medical school.”

  “True,” Annie says.

  “Why both?”

  “Well, medicine is a symphony, and law is hip-hop. And I discovered I like hip-hop better than classical. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Sure,” Dorothy says, nodding, though she has no idea what Annie means. Who would?

  “I use a lot of what I learned in medical school in my law practice,” Annie says. “In my life, actually. But on a day-to-day basis, I prefer to practice law. How about you? What are you up to these days?”

  “Oh, well,” Dorothy says. “This and that. Not much. Nothing, actually.”

  “I’m going over to Pam Pottsman’s Table o’ Truth,” Annie asks. “Are you coming?”

  “I am,” Dorothy says, and Annie waits for her while she gets another glass of wine. Finally, she’s starting to have a good time! She doesn’t even care if Pete ever comes back!

  Well, yes she does, but not as much.

  When Dorothy gets back, she sees that a sizable crowd has gathered. Three tables have been pushed together to make for a kind of round table, and many chairs are pushed up to it. Several people stand behind the chairs, too. There must be twenty-five people here! Dorothy thinks, and counts. Well, tw
enty, but still.

  She claims her chair and looks around at the people. Tom Gunderson is across from her. Ron Rubin, the preacher’s son, is on one side of her, and Marjorie Dunn is on the other. Tommy Metito is here, and he’s still in terrific shape—he’s taken off his suit jacket and tie, unbuttoned his shirt a few buttons down, and rolled up his sleeves. Yup, he’s still in pretty good shape, even if his chest hairs are all white and wiry and stick-outish. He’s wearing a gold necklace that Dorothy thinks is tacky—way too Tom Jones, but hey. Why not? Let the man be what the man wants to be! Here comes that soulful expansiveness she felt before.

  Linda and Judy arrive, and sit in the last two chairs left at the table. Buddy is standing behind Nance, and now more people, drawn by the setup and the noise, curious about what’s going on, have made their way over. “What’s going on?” someone asks, and when they’re told, some laugh loudly and others stand still, their expressions a mix of eagerness and apprehension.

  Pam dings a spoon against the side of her wineglass and speaks loudly. “Everyone? Everyone?” A few people stop talking, but most people keep right on. Then Tom Gunderson stands up and claps his hands once, and everyone quiets down. Good old Tom. Dorothy remembers how he used to lean so earnestly on the lectern when he spoke at student assemblies. He began one speech by saying, “What does ‘pep rally’ really mean?”

  “Thank you, Tom,” Pam says. “Okay, everybody. Here’s the deal. Betty and I were talking and it seems like we’re all curious about certain things that don’t exactly come up in general conversation. So we thought we’d just make it a kind of game. I’ll ask questions and anyone who wants to can answer. But if no one volunteers, I’ll pick someone. And if that person won’t answer the question, they have to buy a round for everyone.”

  “Oh, fuck that, I’m out of here,” a man says, and strides off angrily. It’s someone Dorothy doesn’t recognize, and then she hears someone say, “Well, Donnie Funderman, he’d never talk to anyone about anything. He never did. He was just always pissed off about everything. He got suspended about five thousand times, once for putting a cherry bomb down the toilet. He hated our school. He hated everybody in our school.”