by Jancee Dunn
We headed back to the hotel, piled into one room, and collapsed onto the double beds. I cleared my throat when there was a brief lull in the loud conversation. Time to get it over with. “Listen,” I began haltingly, “I just want to tell you all about the Adam saga so that we can get it out of the way.” I relayed the whole story as they nodded and reached over periodically to squeeze my knee, their chins puckered with concern. They asked dozens of questions. They analyzed my every answer as if it were complex foreign policy. I was floating in the intoxicating force field of their empathy.
“Enough of this,” Sandy said suddenly. “Let’s think of the positives here. For one, you’ll always have a clean house.” I had tweaked the truth, claiming that I had an apartment lined up and that my residency at my parents’ house was ending in two weeks. “For another, you can have whatever you want in the fridge.”
“No more sports programs droning in the background,” Lynn put in.
Sandy stood up on the bed. “Oh. My. God. You’re going to start dating again.” Everyone yelled at once. She gestured at her stomach. “No one has seen this body but Ryan for fifteen years except the doctor that delivered my three kids.” She appraised my stomach. “You’re lucky you haven’t had children yet, Lily. No stretch marks.”
“Talk about stretch,” said Lynn. “I can’t laugh without peeing.”
We fell right into our age-old tradition of self-denigration. Kimmy jumped up and ran to the mirror. “Look at this,” she announced, pointing to her scalp. “Underneath this color, I’m totally gray. If you look really close, you can see it in my hair part. Can you see? It’s a gray strip! God love Ramon, is all I have to say.”
Sandy joined her at the mirror and inspected her hairline. “My hair fell out in chunks after I had kids and my friends kept saying it would grow back,” she said. “Well, it didn’t. I have a bald spot on the top of my head like my uncle Bernie.”
Kimmy pulled up her shirt. “Remember what great tits I had? Look at what happens after you breast-feed four children. I’m like a man.”
“What are you talking about?” Lynn demanded. “You’re not even saggy.”
“Well, that’s because I got a lift. My father went to med school with one of the best plastic surgeons in the country, so I took a little trip out to UCLA Medical Center. I really wanted to get a double surgery and fix my stomach, but there was just too much recovery time.” She scrutinized the taut stretch of tanned flesh that was flatter than mine was in high school. “Ugh, kids just ruin you.”
I didn’t say a word. “Kimmy, are you kidding?” said the ever-reliable Lynn. “With that stomach, I would have thought you had adopted. Your tan is so even, you can’t even see the stretch marks.” Kimmy continued to gaze at her reflection with a critical eye as I asked the group whether we were going to the cocktail hour at Playmaker’s.
“I can’t imagine anyone we hung out with being at Playmaker’s,” said Lynn. “I think most people we know are coming in tomorrow.”
“I say we go for an hour,” I said. “We’ll look at it as stopping by on our way to dinner.”
Lynn wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. Playmaker’s? I didn’t go there in high school, so I’m not sure I want to go there now. I think it’s just going to be the geeky kids.”
“Guess what,” I said. “They’re not kids, and neither are we. And we’re not exactly hip anymore.”
“Come on, people,” said Sandy. “Why travel all the way here to stay in? There’s one kid I did a bunch of plays with—remember Jason Monachino, the lead in The Music Man? I want to see him. He said on the website that he was going to Playmaker’s.”
Kimmy looked over at me slyly. “I’ll bet your old friend Dawn will be there. Remember her?”
“You know, she lives in Belleville,” I said. “I see her around. She’s actually pretty funny.”
Sandy smiled politely. No one said anything.
“Okay, then,” announced Kimmy, picking up a makeup brush. “One hour.”
chapter nineteen
Bethel Memorial Alum Night started at five-thirty, so in order for us to casually roll into Playmaker’s at eight as if by afterthought, we had dinner first. At eight-fifteen we were still touching up our makeup in the parking lot, but finally we strolled in and made our way to the bar, which was festooned with dozens of frantic signs. TUESDAY $5 BEER BUST!!! DON’T MISS FRIDAY NIGHTS AT PLAYMAKER’S WITH COMEDIANS DANNY DEISEL AND HEY MIKEY! WEDNESDAY HUMP DAY DOLLAR MARGARITAS!
Two codgers sat moodily at the bar. “Private event?” said the bartender. He pointed to a far corner of the room where a few dozen people stood around holding drinks. “Over there.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Lynn muttered.
“Too late,” I said, pasting on a smile. “We’ve been spotted.”
I scanned the faces as we walked over: Kathy, our earnest class treasurer, squarish in a gray suit; a shy girl named Carol; Michelle, the former goth chick turned Texas mom; our Spanish teacher, Mrs. Furtado; and a sprinkling of people who, I realized with slight panic, I did not recognize at all.
“Hey, girls,” said Kathy heartily, acting as the official ambassador for the evening. “Don’t you all look pretty. Kimmy, my God, how do you do it? You must not have kids. I’ve got three at home that run me ragged.”
Don’t say it. “I have four,” said Kimmy. We gave Kathy an awkward group hug and then looked around, smiling, as we clutched our drinks.
“Break it up,” Sandy said out of the side of her mouth. “Let’s mingle, for God’s sake.”
Michelle ran over, squealing, and hugged all of us. I had never hugged her before, and I could tell by the puzzled expression on Kimmy’s face that she hadn’t, either. We’re adults now, I told myself. So act like one. Gracious. Calm. Friendly.
“Lillian!” Mrs. Furtado came toward me with outstretched arms.
“Buenos dias, Mrs. Furtado!” I cried. Buenos dias, Señora Furtado, or, as you were occasionally known, Mrs. Fur Taco!
“It’s time you call me Shelly,” she said grandly.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Nonsense,” she said. She had hardly aged, and now we had caught up with her. “So I read in the updates that you’re a television producer. Very impressive!”
I dipped my head modestly. “Thank you.”
She leaned forward. “Listen, I don’t know if your boss Vi has authors on her show? But I wrote a really great book that’s coming out in two months. It’s from the University of California Press, and it’s, this is oversimplifying but it’s sort of an atlas of Spanish religious practices, which I know sounds dry but it’s quite fascinating, because…”
I had the uncomfortable realization that my Spanish teacher was pitching me. In the rare cases when we featured books on the show, it was a tame tell-all written by a movie star of waning wattage, or a book that highlighted a graying star’s late-in-life hobby or cause: animal rights, Southern cooking, cruise travel.
“…feel odd about asking you, but of course we have no publicity budget, it’s just a small university press, and I always think of you fondly, I mean if you recall, I wrote that recommendation for you when you were applying to colleges, and…”
And now it’s payback time. I fished in my purse for a business card and handed it to her. I’d tell Vi that Mrs. Furtado was my teacher and that’s how she would introduce her. I could already hear her saying, As you all know, we’re like a family on this show, and this nice lady here just happens to be the former high school teacher of my executive producer. I could spare fifteen minutes at the end of the show for my Spanish teacher, who struggled in vain to interest us in Cervantes. She once took the class to an authentic Mexican restaurant in Morristown in an attempt to spark the interest of thirty bratty suburban kids who disdained the unfamiliar food because it didn’t have a shiny coating of orange microwaved cheese like Taco Bell.
I nodded. “I’m sure we can do it.”
“Oh, Lillian,” she said, g
iving me another hug. Elated, I moved on to a few other classmates and chatted with them. This was a useful dress rehearsal for tomorrow night. As I struggled to remember the name of one beefy guy who was telling me about his software business, I spied my former biology lab partner, Ankur Saxena. He was standing off to the side with a small blond woman. They both wore rimless glasses. Ankur, always slight, had filled out nicely and had a prosperous, authoritative look, with his neatly trimmed beard and perfectly erect posture. The last I heard, he was getting his Ph.D. in…economics?
“Ankur!” I was suddenly so glad to see him. Why had I not kept in touch?
“Hello, Lillian,” he said. He was less effusive than I was, but then he had always been fairly reserved. “This is my wife, Jane.”
“Hello, Jane,” I said warmly, taking her hand. Ankur told me that he was a professor of economics at Columbia, where he had met Jane. They had two children and were trying for a third.
“Ankur was my long-suffering lab partner for two years,” I told Jane as I cooed over the photo of their kids that Ankur retrieved from his wallet. “He used to crack me up in class.” Neither replied, so I went on. “He was always so modest, so I don’t know if he told you how well liked he was at school.” I was exaggerating. Ankur Saxena didn’t inspire any dislike, which was a feat in itself in high school, but I figured that every man wants to look good in front of his wife, so I slathered on the praise. “Everyone respected him because he did so well academically, but he also knew how to have fun,” I continued. “Do you know what his nickname was? Did he ever tell you?”
She looked at him quizzically. “No,” she said.
“It was ‘Sexy,’” I announced. Now she would laugh and we could form an alliance, gently teasing him together. “Remember graduation, Ankur?” As he made his way to the podium to collect his degree, I had started the chant: Sex-EE, Sex-EE, Sex-EE, which reached a wild crescendo as he faced us all and waved. I had cheered the loudest for the friend that I had proudly cultivated outside of my insular little group.
Ankur did not laugh. “Right. Yes, I remember,” he said evenly. He was swaying a little and I realized he was drunk. “Made a fool with thirty of my relatives watching. You know, Lillian, for my parents, it was a serious occasion. After graduation, I wasn’t going to go get bombed at someone’s beach house like you. I had to go back to my house and explain that what you all were doing wasn’t an insult.”
His wife laughed nervously and tugged at his sleeve. “Ank. Let’s lighten up a little.”
He clumsily batted away her hand. “I just want to be called by my real name.”
“Right, right, of course,” I said quickly.
He laughed. “Why do you look so surprised? To see that I repudiate the attentions of a pretty and popular girl? I didn’t want to be friends with all of you. That’s what you never understood.”
Lynn stole up behind me. “Let’s go, right now,” she murmured. “We did an hour.” She marshaled us out, playing the bad guy as I mumbled apologies to Ankur and his wife.
“That was rough,” said Kimmy, shuddering. “Was it me, or was everyone a little freaky? That was like being at a medieval fair.” We all walked quickly to the car and then, giggling, broke into a run.
“You know what’s so odd to me?” shouted Lynn from the backseat as we roared out of the parking lot. “Some people surrounded me and then they wouldn’t talk. They just sort of waited for me to say something.”
“Forget about that, let’s discuss Todd Bevan,” said Sandy. “How cute was he? He really cleaned up. Remember how he used to throw chairs in class? He was smart to wear his fireman’s T-shirt. Everyone loves a fireman.” She looked at me. “Why so quiet?”
I shook my head. “I’m just rattled by that little scene with Ankur.” I repeated what he said and was rewarded with a torrent of indignant comments. Who the hell did he think he was? Seriously! What, had he been saving up for this for twenty years? He was always a little off, wasn’t he, Lillian? Fuck him! Not your problem!
But his comments replayed in my head for the rest of the night, even after we flopped on the beds and ordered ice cream sundaes from room service and Sandy tossed a pile of bad celebrity magazines on the bed and Lynn pulled her favorite nail polish out of her suitcase to give us manicures. I knew without looking that it was Ballet Slipper Pink, just as I knew that Kimmy would eat peaches and plums raw but couldn’t stand them if they were cooked, and that Sandy was deathly afraid of driving over bridges. I felt I knew them intimately, but could that be the case when I was barely acquainted with their husbands and children? Was your fifteen-year-old self your truest self? Did I need to be closely involved in the second half of my friends’ lives to entirely know them?
I sat up on the bed. “Do you feel the same inside as you did when you were a teenager?” I asked them.
“Exactly the same,” Sandy answered immediately. “I look in the mirror and sometimes I’m shocked. And when I do things that are parental, like scold one of my kids and tell them not to play with the straw in their drink, I feel like I’m acting. Like I really don’t care if my daughter plays with the straw in her drink, whereas I felt like my mother genuinely worried that the neighbors would think I was an animal.”
She lay on her stomach and put her chin in her hands. “I still feel that playfulness that I did when I was fifteen, definitely,” she said. “I’m still attracted to sparkly things, like a crow. That’s my fifteen-year-old self. All my return address labels still have Peanuts characters on them. God, do you believe how serious everyone was tonight? I’m astounded by how much people lost their sense of humor. It’s like it’s not permitted anymore when you’re an adult. I was so afraid of my personality changing after I had kids.”
“You didn’t change at all,” said Lynn.
“I think I’m the same, but I don’t think everybody is.” Sandy considered. “Although I wouldn’t relive that time period for anything.”
I would.
“I like being this age. I’m more confident now. I’m not pretending that I know things, I feel like I really do know them, and I feel easy in my own skin. Back then, everything was a little too raw.”
“I liked feeling everything so intensely,” I said hesitantly. “I haven’t had that sort of pure feeling since.”
Sandy looked dreamily at the room’s dirty stucco ceiling. “I do miss making out,” she said. “Ryan and I don’t do that very much. And I’ll tell you something, Ryan’s not the best kisser in the world. He’s a little sloppy. You think you can teach someone that stuff, but you really can’t.” She sighed good-humoredly. “I married him anyway, but when I think of a really good kisser, it’s this guy named Duncan that I went out with for a week in college. I didn’t even like him that much. In fact, I sort of hated him. He was this big, preppy, husky guy, he looked like a banker even in sophomore year, and he was really cocky. Ugh, he was so smarmy. But holy crap, could he kiss.”
I thought of what Ginny had said about women’s erotic memories.
“I miss nothing,” said Kimmy as she did yoga poses on the bed. “I loathed being a kid. I couldn’t wait to get older. I hated being subjugated—not being able to eat when I wanted, not being able to drive myself places. I was so frustrated at the perception that children were a different species than adults.” She did a downward dog on the floor. “I certainly didn’t feel that way, and I remember being in a constant state of rage at the injustice of it all. I felt I had the same sort of sensibility, the same kind of intelligence as an adult did.”
“I felt like you did, too,” said Sandy. “I never thought of you as a kid, even when you were one.”
Kimmy nodded. “When I was older and started to travel to countries where I didn’t speak the language, I remember thinking, ‘This is exactly what it’s like to be a child, when other people know their way around, and can communicate better, but you know that you’re just as competent and smart.’”
I turned to Sandy. “Do you feel like we know e
ach other well, even though we haven’t seen one another these last few years?”
She nodded. “I do. Want to test me? Right now you’re paying attention to our conversation, but in the back of your brain, you’re brooding about Ankur’s comment and wondering if you should fix it tomorrow night by talking to him.”
I jumped up. “You’re right. I was thinking of telling him that I—”
Lynn interrupted. “Just let it go. He wanted to say his piece.”
“But he misunderstood me. We were friends and he acted like I had chosen him against his will, like he was a pet or something.”
Lynn sighed. “But Lillian, you sort of did choose him like a pet. You palled around together in class, but did you ever go to his house? You never saw him on weekends, or brought him to parties. There was a definite line.”
“I guess he was more like the friend that you have in the office, where you hang around Mondays through Fridays but you don’t know their home number,” I said, hating how shallow I sounded.
“Who cares?” said Kimmy. “It was a long time ago. Besides, Ankur isn’t the only thing you’re obsessing about.” Lynn and Sandy exchanged smirks. “So are you planning on hooking up with Christian tomorrow? When I brought him up at dinner I noticed that someone was pretty flustered.” They all hooted as my face went crimson.
“I may have something like that in mind,” I admitted. “I won’t lie.”
Sandy shook her head. “I can’t imagine hooking up with someone. God, it’s been…what, fifteen years? I’d have to buy new underwear. And the elastic in mine is finally stretched out the way I like it.”
“Lillian,” said Lynn. “I’ll bet he still looks hot. He was so athletic. And his whole family had good hair.”
“Yes, but it’s the mother’s side of the family that determines baldness, right?” I said. “I never met the grandparents.”
