“Yes, you do want to know. You can’t bullshit me, Billy,” Elaine had said.
Now here was the Racquet Man, slumped on a couch—actually sunken into a couch in Grandpa Harry’s living room, as if it would take a wrestling team to get Bob back on his feet.
“I’m sorry about Aunt Muriel,” I told him. Uncle Bob reached up from the couch to give me a hug, spilling his beer.
“Shit, Billy,” Bob said, “it’s the people you would least expect who are disappearing.”
“Disappearing,” I repeated warily.
“Take your classmate, Billy. Who would have picked Kittredge as a likely disappearance?” Uncle Bob asked.
“You don’t think he’s dead, do you?” I asked the Racquet Man.
“An unwillingness to communicate is more likely,” Uncle Bob said. His speech was so slowed down that the communicate word sounded as if it had seven or eight syllables; I realized that Bob was quietly but spectacularly drunk, although the gathering in memory of my aunt Muriel and my mother was just getting started.
There were some empty beer bottles at Bob’s feet; when he dropped the now-empty bottle he’d been drinking (and spilling), he deftly kicked all but one of the bottles under the couch—somehow, without even looking at the bottles.
I’d once wondered if Kittredge had gone to Vietnam; he’d had that hero-looking aspect about him. I knew two other Favorite River wrestlers had died in the war. (Remember Wheelock? I barely remember him—an adequately “swashbuckling” Antonio, Sebastian’s friend, in Twelfth Night. And how about Madden, the self-pitying heavyweight who played Malvolio in that same production? Madden always saw himself as a “perpetual victim”; that’s all I remember about him.)
But, drunk as he was, Uncle Bob must have read my mind, because he suddenly said, “Knowing Kittredge, I’ll bet he ducked Vietnam—somehow.”
“I’ll bet he did,” was all I said to Bob.
“No offense, Billy,” the Racquet Man added, accepting another beer from one of the passing caterers—a woman about my mom’s age, or Muriel’s, with dyed-red hair. She looked vaguely familiar; maybe she worked with Uncle Bob in Alumni Affairs, or she might have worked with him (years ago) in the Admissions Office.
“My dad was sloshed before he got here,” Gerry told Elaine and me, when we were standing together in the line for the buffet. I knew Gerry’s girlfriend; she was an occasional stand-up comic at a club I went to in the Village. She had a deadpan delivery and always wore a man’s black suit, or a tuxedo, with a loose-fitting white dress shirt.
“No bra,” Elaine had observed, “but the shirt’s too big for her, and it’s not see-through material. The point is, she doesn’t want you to know she has breasts—or what they look like.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sorry about your mom, Billy,” Gerry said. “I know she was completely dysfunctional, but she was your mother.”
“I’m sorry about yours,” I told Gerry. The stand-up comic made a horsey snorting sound.
“Not as deadpan as usual,” Elaine would say later.
“Someone’s gotta get the car keys from my fucking father,” Gerry said.
I was keeping an eye on Grandpa Harry. I was afraid he would sneak away from the party, only to reappear as a surprise reincarnation of Nana Victoria. Nils Borkman was keeping an eye on his old partner, too. (If Mrs. Borkman was there, I either didn’t see her or didn’t recognize her.)
“I’m back-watching your grandfather, Bill,” Nils told me. “If the funny stuff gets out of hand, I am emergency-calling you!”
“What funny stuff?” I asked him.
But just then, Grandpa Harry suddenly spoke up. “They’re always late, those girls. I don’t know where they are, but they’ll show up. Everyone just go ahead and eat. There’s plenty of food. Those girls can find somethin’ to eat when they get here.”
That quieted the crowd down. “I already told him that his girls aren’t coming to the party, Bill. I mean, he knows they’re dead—he’s just forgetfulness exemplified,” Nils told me.
“Forgetfulness personified,” I said to the old Norwegian; he was two years older than Grandpa Harry, but Nils seemed a little more reliable in the remembering department, and in some other departments.
I asked Martha Hadley if Richard had spoken yet. Not since the news of the accident, Mrs. Hadley informed me. Richard had hugged me a lot, and I’d hugged him back, but there’d been no words.
Mr. Hadley appeared lost in thought—as he often did. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked about anything but the war in Vietnam. Mr. Hadley had made himself a droll obituarist of every Favorite River boy who’d bitten the dust in Vietnam. I saw that he was waiting for me at the end of the buffet table.
“Get ready,” Elaine warned me, in a whisper. “Here comes another death you didn’t know about.”
There was no prologue—there never was, with Mr. Hadley. He was a history teacher; he just announced things. “Do you remember Merryweather?” Mr. Hadley asked me.
Not Merryweather! I thought. Yes, I remembered him; he was still an underclassman when I graduated. He’d been the wrestling-team manager—he handed out oranges, cut in quarters; he picked up the bloody and discarded towels.
“Not Merryweather—not in Vietnam!” I automatically said.
“Yes, I’m afraid so, Billy,” Mr. Hadley said gravely. “And Trowbridge—did you know Trowbridge, Billy?”
“Not Trowbridge!” I cried; I couldn’t believe it! I’d last seen Trowbridge in his pajamas! Kittredge had accosted him when the round-faced little boy was on his way to brush his teeth. I was very upset to think of Trowbridge dying in Vietnam.
“Yes, I’m afraid so—Trowbridge, too, Billy,” Mr. Hadley self-importantly went on. “Alas, yes—young Trowbridge, too.”
I saw that Grandpa Harry had disappeared—if not in the way Uncle Bob had recently used the word.
“Not a costume change, let’s hope, Bill,” Nils Borkman whispered in my ear.
I only then noticed that Mr. Poggio, the grocer, was there—he who’d so enjoyed Grandpa Harry onstage, as a woman. In fact, both Mr. and Mrs. Poggio were there, to pay their respects. Mrs. Poggio, I remembered, had not enjoyed Grandpa Harry’s female impersonations. This sighting caused me to look all around for the disapproving Riptons—Ralph Ripton, the sawyer, and his no-less-disapproving wife. But the Riptons, if they’d come to pay their respects, had left early—as was their habit at the plays put on by the First Sister Players.
I went to see how Uncle Bob was doing; there were a few more empty beer bottles at his feet, and now those feet could no longer locate the bottles and kick them under the couch.
I kicked a few bottles under the couch for him. “You won’t be tempted to drive yourself home, will you, Uncle Bob?” I asked him.
“That’s why I already put the car keys in your jacket pocket, Billy,” my uncle told me.
But when I felt around in my jacket pockets, I found only a squash ball. “Not the car keys, Uncle Bob,” I said, showing him the ball.
“Well, I know I put my car keys in someone’s jacket pocket, Billy,” the Racquet Man said.
“Any news from your graduating class?” I suddenly asked him; he was drunk enough—I thought I might catch him off-guard. “What news from the Class of ’35?” I asked my uncle as casually as I could.