Though Alan insisted the blame was ill-founded, the marriage almost dissolved until Alan showed Diane that a split would be financially ruinous for her. Since Diane was unlikely to get a favorable ruling, she would have to depend on her teaching salary, which would not enable her to continue living in the style to which she had grown accustomed. Whether Alan helped to poison the whole damn country or not, as she claimed, his assistance in those matters was highly lucrative.
So they remained together, made love less than they had before, and talked far less.
They decided to go to Woody's party, despite the fact that the wording of the invitation had inadvertently ripped open the old wounds that oozed when Alan went to work every day. The evening would be a novelty, and Alan hoped that reminders of times past might bring them closer together, so that life could be a bit more well-lived, and some ease could come back into their conversations.
On this particular flight, for example, their dialogue, other than that necessitated by courtesy, consisted of the following: "I hope this will be fun," said Alan.
"It'll either be fun or a wake."
"Why a wake?"
"Woody never got over Tracy. God, you know that."
And that was the extent of their discourse until forty-five minutes later, when Alan said, "We're landing."
~*~
Eddie Phelps's flight from Kennedy arrived in Pittsburgh at the same time as Sharla Jackson's shuttle from Cleveland, and they met, as had been planned, at the TWA luggage carrousels. When they saw and recognized each other, Eddie squealed almost as loudly as Sharla, they dropped their luggage, and embraced. Sharla laughed. "Still gay, I see," she said.
"Still black, I see," Eddie replied.
On their drive to Iselin, they caught up on their careers and romances, the former of which were the same as four years before when they had last talked, and the latter of which, on Sharla's part, were modest.
"No, Eddie, I still ain't found myself a man. Unlike you."
“'Ain't?' You use that in front of your students?"
"Shoot, no." Sharla's next words were given in a nearly perfect British dialect. "I know how to speak the Queen's English as well as anyone, my dear, and in class I do." She shifted to street talk. "Hell, I got to. My classes are all white kids except for one little girl, and her daddy's a dentist. I think they cloned her from Rudy Huxtable. Or vice-versa. Little chocolate ofay."
"Don't change the subject. We were talking about getting you laid."
"Oh, hell, I get laid. I just don't get married. Never found a man strong enough to keep up with me for more'n a few nights. Men don't like strong women. We scare 'em away."
They drove for a while before Sharla spoke again. "You know how many of us are gonna be at this shindig?"
"Only eight or nine," Eddie said. "Woody invited over a dozen, but some people couldn't come."
"Not into nostalgia, huh?"
"Maybe. Or not into necrophilia."
Sharla was silent for a moment. "What do you mean?"
"I mean lost loves. The same kind of thing that's currently running through my own dear little gay community. Those not lost, but gone before."
"Like Tracy . . . and Keith."
Eddie nodded. "And Dale, too."
"Dale," Sharla said thoughtfully, as though she had not thought about him for a long time. "God, he was nice. I really liked him."
It had been impossible not to like Dale Collini. He had been two years older than most of them, but taught English at a nearby high school, and so had remained active on campus. Dale and his wife came every weekend to parties at the apartment. Sharla heard later that they had divorced. "How did he die, anyway?" she asked Eddie.
He gave a theatrical sigh. "It was a year after he and Karen split up. He was going to Pitt to get a theatre degree—you know he always wanted to be an actor—and one weekend he just got sick, went to the hospital, and died that night. Leukemia. You never know, do you? You just never know . . ."
"Are, uh . . .” Sharla cleared her throat. "Are you okay?"
Eddie turned and looked at her with a wry smile. "You mean HIV-negative? Yes, fortunately I am, and I intend to stay that way. I have been living with a wonderful friend and lover for the past eleven years, and we are both negative and very, very monogamous. Unlike some ebony-skinned sluts I could name."
Sharla laughed. Eddie had the gift of saying the most outrageous things without offending. "So you bring any old clothes along for this thing?" she asked him.
Eddie shook his head. "I don't have a thing left from back then. I'll have to depend on Woody's sartorial taste—which may be dangerous. How about you?"
"Still got my fatigues."
Eddie chuckled. "You mean that old camouflage suit?"
"Don't laugh, honey. You can't fight a war against the imperialist, racist pigs without the proper uniform. Besides, a lot of revolutionary anger got sweated into those threads. Who knows, I put 'em on, I might feel like offin' Whitey again." She turned and looked at Eddie solemnly. "Maybe you better watch your ass."
Then they both began to howl. Eddie laughed until tears came, and Sharla pounded the steering wheel as they drove on to Iselin.
~*~
"Town's sure changed," Judy McDonald observed as Curly Rider drove down Lincoln. Curly had flown to Pittsburgh from Los Angeles the night before, then picked up Judy at the airport in the morning. "Do you get back here at all?"
"Came to homecoming about ten years ago, but that's it. With my business, things come up."
"What do you do? Commercials?"
"Some. A lot of corporate films and videos. I try to keep the company small. That way I get to do everything. You and Frank get back much?"
"No. It's been ages." She sighed. "And now we come all the way back for a costume party."
Curly turned the car left onto Ninth Street, then pulled into the parking lot, where he saw two men muscling a beer keg out of an English Brothers Beverages truck. "Hot damn, a kegger," he said.
They preceded the men up the stairs and knocked on the apartment door. Frank opened it, but instead of letting them in, he stepped into the hall and closed the door, then kissed Judy and shook Curly's hand. "Sorry," he said, "but Woody doesn't want anybody seeing the place before tonight."
"Oh," said Judy, "and I suppose he's going to get all the food and drink ready himself?"
"Don't worry about that," Frank said, and grinned. "Here comes some of the drink now."
The two men had the keg in the entryway on the hand truck. "These steps gonna hold?" one called up.
"They never broke before," Frank said. "Let us get down first, okay? Don't want the whole building falling on us too."
"Where are we going now?" asked Curly when they were in the parking lot.
"The motel," Frank said. "I'll make sure everybody's here and has their clothes, and then we can have dinner."
"Good, I'm starved," said Judy. "How about Bruno's?”
“Great," said Curly. "They used to make the best manicotti in western Pennsylvania."
Frank led the way to the cars. "Maybe the rest will want to join us."
"How about Woody?" said Judy.
"No, he's too excited to eat. He'll see us tonight."
~*~
I should have kept them apart, Woody thought. I should have arranged it so that the first time they all saw each other was here.
He sat on the floor, his back against the sofa, looking at his handiwork. There were only a few more things to do—light the incense and the candles wedged in the Mateus bottles, put the ice and fruit in the sangria, set out the chips and the pretzels, all the things that Tracy would help him with . . .
No, that wasn't right, was it? Tracy wasn't here. Tracy was still dead.
He thought about putting on a record, then decided against it. Wait till they come. He couldn't do it alone.
Do what? he wondered. Go back?
"Shit," he said aloud. You couldn't go back. It was a party, that was all,
remember, just a party.
And then he thought that it was all right, that he shouldn't have kept them apart after all, that the first things they would want to talk about were what they had been doing since they last saw each other, and they would show the pictures of their children who hadn't existed in 1969, and tell about their jobs and what happened to their parents who the others would maybe remember, probably not, and it could go on for hours like that, and better to have them do that over dinner at Bruno's or the Harris Tea Room or Parini's or wherever they went. Much better for them to hash all of that out before they got here, and have a few drinks together so that they'll all feel mellow and nostalgic and sixties, and then the party can start, yes, then it can really start, and Tracy . . .
Stop it. Just stop it, there is no more Tracy. Just wait. Just wait for them and remember, just a party, just a party, and it won't be long now until they're all here and it can start.
But oh God, oh Jesus, it's been a long time coming . . .
And he waited for it with the excitement and terror of a child in the darkness of Christmas morning, a child who wants a certain gift so much that he fears he will die if he does not receive it.
Chapter 7
It was 8:30 when two cars pulled into the parking lot behind 4 South Ninth Street. It was nearly dark, and as the seven people climbed out they heard the sounds of The Mamas and the Papas' cover of "Dedicated to the One I Love" in the evening air. Looking up, they saw the windows of the apartment glowing blue against the dark brick of the outer walls. The light moved at times, and Diane whispered, "Candles," as though she had just set eyes on the Holy Grail. "When's the last time I've been to a party lit by candles?"
"You smell that?" Alan said, just as quietly. "Isn't that incense?"
"Sandalwood," said Frank. "The kind we always used."
"Oh, this is gonna be fun," Judy said, giggling, and no one disagreed with her.
When Woody opened the door, he smiled beatifically at them, sweeping over them with his gaze, registering each face, his own beaming in the harsh glare of the hallway light, the dark beard wreathing cheeks flushed with excitement.
"God, is it good to see you," he said, and they embraced in one huge lump, everyone hugging at once, and laughing, chattering, kissing, they moved like that into the room, into the haze of incense smoke and the babble of old music and their own happy voices, and for a while it seemed to all of them that they had truly come home again.
"You all look beautiful," Woody said, going from one to the next, holding, touching cheek to cheek, awash in friends, drowning with delight in them, and tears of joy touched their eyes as they looked and felt and scented the air and marveled at the masquerade that had taken their eager minds back.
Woody felt himself grasped from behind, and turned to look into Frank's misty eyes. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you, man. This is . . . shit, outasite." He laughed and hugged Woody again. "I love ya, man."
~*~
Judy McDonald looked around the room in wonder. How, she wondered, had he gotten so close to what it had been like before? My God, there was the little TV in the corner, and the posters, exactly where they'd been.
She moved with the others into the dining room. Even if it hadn't been otherwise perfect, the bucket of Sangria on the white metal table would have made it so, a bucket, as prescribed, filled with red wine and soda, chunks of frozen fruit bobbing on the surface like . . . yes, like body parts. "Dammit," she said to Eddie, who turned to her in surprise. "I've never been able to touch this stuff since you said it looked like the discards tank in a dissecting room."
Everyone laughed, and Eddie threw up his hands in dismay. "God, dear, that was nearly a quarter century ago! You sure know how to hold a grudge."
She laughed and hugged him, kept looking around, moved with the others as they made their amoebic way through the chambers.
~*~
The bathtub brought appreciative chuckles, packed as it was with ice cubes, in the center of which was a huge, dented keg with a ceramic Iron City tap. "I thought these taps were plastic now," Alan said.
"It's the distributor's," Frank explained. "Collector's item. Don't break it or he'll shit."
They made their way up the hall, sticking their heads into the bedroom as they passed, then slowly moved back into the living room, where the candles made their shadows flicker on the walls and ceiling. It was dark outside, except for the street lamp that shone through the window at the end of the room, and they began to form into smaller groups, talking about the perfection of the illusion, and their own wardrobes.
Sartorially, they looked like they did twenty-four years before. Curly's penny loafers, straight-legged chinos, and plain, off-white shirt made him the gentle jock of yore, with the only concession to fashion being the long peaked collars of the shirt, which he began to curl up and chew on.
"Do you still eat your collars at work?" asked Alan.
"Nope. Too short. At least I don't look like Marianne Faithful. Or are you supposed to be Melanie?"
Alan stuck out his tongue and flounced the ruffles that ran down the front of his orange and purple paisley shirt. "You never did understand haute couture. It's always the male who has the bright plumage."
“Jesus, where does that leave me?" said Eddie, lighting a cigarette and looking down at his pin-striped button down shirt and navy slacks. "Was I really this dull, Woody? I look like a gym teacher, except for the cowboy boots."
"Sorry, Eddie," said Woody, "but that's what you wore."
"That's what I still wear, except for the boots. They always gave me blisters," Eddie said, a little laugh bursting from his mouth with the smoke. "Well, better this than Mister Carnaby Street," he said, nodding to Alan. "Although Woody looks equally Love Generation without being garish, Alan. Of course the fact that he's still built like Jim Morrison doesn't hurt."
Woody grinned. The clothing felt good, not at all like a costume. The brocade vest swung free, the loose, tunic-like black shirt was comfortable, the concho belt rode easily on his hips. If he had been wearing leather pants instead of black jeans, he might indeed have resembled an older Jim Morrison, a Morrison who had not died in Paris in 1971, who had lost a little of his dark hair from the front, but replaced it with a full though neatly trimmed beard.
"Hell," Woody said, "we all look good, but the ladies . . . excuse me . . . the chicks look great."
"Groovy," said Curly, getting up and heading toward the rear of the apartment.
"Such a way with words," Eddie said.
But it was true, Woody thought. The women did look groovy. He had been afraid that fortyish women dressed like sixties teenyboppers might have been ludicrous, but it wasn't. The women glowed. It was as if they had slipped on their youth with their clothing. He had forgotten what a little pixie Diane had been. The few times he had seen her since college, she had seemed mousy, dull, crushed by life. But now, as she sat there smiling, her loose muslin blouse showing the contours of her braless breasts, tight jeans hugging her thighs, she actually looked desirable, the quintessential free-love hippie waif.
Sharla, on the other hand, looked unapproachable, but strong and passionate in her fatigues. She even still had the boots, those ankle-high steel-toes that modern skinheads would have killed for. The contrast was terrific between her and Judy, who wore the female equivalent of Alan's lurid threads, an ensemble of red and yellow paisley and bright green sandals, the whole of which was crowned by an orange headband that bound her blonde hair like a skullcap.
"Who's for brew?" Curly said loudly, entering the room with a glass half full of foam. "I've already drunk all the suds—only the good stuff left!"
They wandered a few at a time to the bathroom, drawing mugs, or went into the dining room for sangria, while the gentle tension of Jimi Hendrix's "The Wind Cries Mary" trembled beside the conversations, like faraway thunder beneath the cries of insects on a clear summer night. But the voices of the insects did not still.
~*~
Th
ey spoke of the past, drawn back there by the ambience, the music, sights, sounds, themselves. They spoke of courses they had laughed through or suffered through together, of professors living and dead. They sang the song that Curly had written about the ROTC Rangers, to the tune of "The Ballad of the Green Berets":
Fighting soldiers still in school—
Pink berets sure make 'em cool . . .
They nodded grudgingly when the subject of shows came up, recalling Judy as Marsinah in Kismet, Alan as Volpone, Curly as Creon in Antigone ("Wasn't Keith in that?" asked Diane, and others nodded yes, but said no more).
They talked about the music even as they listened to it, quoting lyrics to Arthur Brown's "Fire," Donovan's "To Susan on the West Coast Waiting," The Band's "Tears of Rage," and others that never became standards, but whose lyrics, riffs, melodies, set them all down gently into that time they remembered more clearly with every note.
And they talked about politics, of the marches that had not gotten the sole radical poli-sci professor re-hired, the sit-ins that had caused the library only slight inconvenience, the rallies that had made the board of trustees waver only a jot in their views on minority recruitment.
"There's one thing, though," said Alan. "Our boycotts got the local pool integrated."
"For two years," Sharla said.
"Huh?"
"It closed in 1971, Alan. It integrated all right, but the town fathers stopped supporting it, and it died." Sharla took a drag on the cigarette Alan had given her. "And you know how many blacks joined? Seven. One family of four and three students who never even bothered to go once they got their memberships. So all our weeks of picketing and shouting did was get four niggers wet for two years. Down south the honkies did better than that with fire hoses."
"So are you saying it was all worthless?"
"What are four wet brothers over twenty years ago worth?”
“We wasted a lot of time," Frank said, perched on the arm of the sofa.
"It was a waste of time to protest racial injustice?" Alan said. "Hey, in case you don't remember, we made things a helluva lot better for blacks—"
Second Chance Page 5
