"Pewter Motor Scooter!" Miranda hailed her as the gray cat dashed into the room. "Welcome to the class of 1950."
"What a darling cat. A Confederate cat." A tiny lady in green clapped her hands together as the gray cat sauntered into the room.
"We work together," Miranda laughed, telling people about Pewter's mail-sorting abilities while feeding her sausage tidbits.
"I am so-o-o happy to be here," Pewter honestly said.
About ten minutes later Harry ducked her head into the room. "Hi, everybody. Aha, I thought I'd find you here."
"I like it here!"
"Folks, this is Doug Minor's girl-remember Doug and Grace Minor? Grace was a Hepworth, you know."
Martha Jones, quite tall, held out her hand. "I know your mother very well. We were at Sweet Briar together. You greatly resemble Grace."
"Thank you, Miss Jones. People do tell me that."
"Your mother was the boldest rider. She took every fence at Sweet Briar, got bored, jumped out of the college grounds, and I believe she jumped every fence on every farm on the north side of Lynchburg."
People laughed.
Miranda said, "Mary Minor is a wonderful rider."
"Thanks, Mrs. H., but I'm not as good as Mom. She was in Mim's class."
"Where is Mimsy?" the thin man in the wheelchair bellowed.
"I'm here. You always were impatient, Carl Winters, and I can see that little has changed that." Mim swept in dressed in a buttery, burnt-sienna suede shirt and skirt. "You know, I wish I had graduated from Crozet High. Madeira wasn't half as much fun, but then, all-girls schools never are."
"You're really one of us, anyway." A plump lady kissed Mim on the cheek.
"I'll take my thief back to the gym," Harry said while the others talked.
"She can stay. She'll come back anyway. It's fine."
"Please, Mom." Pewter's chartreuse eyes glistened with sincerity.
"Well . . . okay," Harry lowered her voice, leaning toward Miranda. "Your decorations are better." She raised her voice again. "Tracy, the carousel horses are spectacular!"
She left them smiling, talking, eating Miranda's famous orange sticky buns.
She ran into Bitsy Valenzuela and Chris Sharpton dragging an enormous coffee urn down the hall.
"Guys?"
"BoomBoom called me on the car phone and told me she was panicked. There wasn't enough coffee so we dashed over to Fred Tinsley's, which got Denny's nose out of joint since Chris was assisting him. I had to promise Fred six months free on his car phone to get this damn thing. E.R. will kill me," Bitsy moaned. "Is he here yet?"
"Yes, he brought miniature flashlights shaped like cell phones."
"That's my E.R. for you: ever the marketer."
"Would you like me to take a turn here? That looks heavy," Harry offered.
"Why don't you run in and get someone strong-like a man-to do this. That's what men are for." Bitsy gave up and slowly set down her side of the urn, as did Chris.
"Are we still allowed to say stuff like that?" Chris giggled.
"Yeah, among us girls we can say anything. We just can't say it publicly." Bitsy laughed, "Nor would I admit to E.R. that I need him. But I do need him."
Harry dashed into the gym, returning with Bob Shoaf, Most Athletic, who had played for seven years with the New York Giants as cornerback. Apart from having a great body, Bob wasn't hard to look at. He was, however, blissfully married, or so the newspapers always reported.
"Girls, you go on. I'll do this." He hoisted the urn up to his chest. "You two should look familiar to me but I'm afraid I can't place you."
"They helped us all summer and fall, Bob, but these two lovely damsels aren't from our class. Bitsy Valenzuela-Mrs. E. R. Valenzuela-and Chris Sharpton, a friend."
"Forgive me if I don't shake hands." He carried the urn into the gym, where BoomBoom greeted him as though he had brought back the Golden Fleece from Colchis.
Bitsy and Chris stopped inside the door. "It's odd."
"What?" Bitsy turned to Chris. "What's odd?"
"Seeing these people after staring at their yearbook pictures. It's like a photograph come to life."
"Not always for the best." Mrs. Murphy lifted her long eyebrows. The class of 1980 had been on earth long enough for the telltale spider veins in the face to show for those who drank too much. The former druggies might look a bit healthier but brain cells had fried. A poignant vacancy in the eyes signaled them. A lot of the men were losing their hair. Others wore the inner tube of early middle age, not that any of them would admit that middle age had started. Nature thought otherwise. Bad dye jobs marred a few of the women but by and large the women looked better than the men, testimony to the cultural pressure for women to fuss over themselves.
Bonnie absentmindedly stroked Mrs. Murphy as she double-checked her list. Everyone had checked in except for Meredith McLaughlin, who wouldn't arrive until lunch. Harry rejoined her while Chris joined Dennis, wreathed in smiles now that she was back.
"Done." Bonnie put down her felt-tip pen.
"You're a fast thinker. I should have remembered that." Harry smiled. "When you came up with 'Secret Life, Televangelist' for Dennis Rablan, I could have died. That was perfect. Even he liked it!"
"Had to do something. What do you put down for the Best All-Round who has . . ." She shrugged.
"Zipped through a trust fund and unzipped too many times," Harry laughed.
"And then there's you. Most Likely to Succeed and Most Athletic, running the post office at Crozet," Bonnie said.
"I guess everyone thinks I'm a failure."
"Not you, Mom, you're too special." Tucker reached up, putting her head in Harry's lap.
"No." Bonnie shook her head. "But if there were a category for underachiever, you'd have won. You were, and I guess still are, one of the smartest people in our class. What happened?"
Harry, dreading this conversation, which would be repeated in direct or subtle form over the next day and a half, breathed deeply. "I made a conscious choice to put my inner life ahead of my outer life. I don't know how else to say it."
"You can do both, you know," remarked Baltier, successful herself in the material world. She ran an insurance company specializing in equine clients.
"Bonnie, I was an Art History major. What were my choices? I could work for a big auction house or a small gallery or I could teach at the college level, which meant I would have had to go on and get my Ph.D. I never wanted to do that and besides I married my first year out of college. I thought things were great and they were-for a while."
"I'm rude." Baltier pushed back a forelock. "I hate to see waste. Your brain seems wasted to me."
"If you measure it by material terms, it is."
"The problem with measuring it in any other way is that you can't."
"I think it's time we join the others. I'm hungry."
"You pissed at me?"
"No. If BoomBoom had asked me I'd be pissed." Harry then nodded in the direction of an attractive woman on the move up, one face-lift to her credit, holding court by the pyramid of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. "Or her."
Deborah Kingsmill, voted Most Intellectual, truly thought she was superior to others because she was book-smart and because she'd escaped her parents. And that's exactly where her intelligence ended. She'd never learned that people with "less" intelligence possessed other gifts.
Deborah and Zeke Lehr, the male Most Intellectual, were pictured together reading a big book in Alderman Library. Zeke owned a printing business in Roanoke. He'd done well, had three kids and kept himself in good shape. He was pouring himself a second cup of coffee while listening to BoomBoom discuss the sufferings of organizing the reunion.