Not that he himself had a lot of “integrating” to do. He remembered high school as a pleasant interlude—warm, fuzzy and unremarkable. He’d been one of those well-rounded kids who scored points, not only for the basketball team, but for the “It’s Academic” squad as well.
So why not go? He could kill two birds with one stone. First, it would get him out of the apartment. And while that would no doubt lead to a certain amount of anxiety, it was also the only way he knew to overcome the problem. Like any other bully, phobias had to be confronted—or they could ruin your life.
The other thing was: if he went to the reunion, he might be able to resolve some of the problems he was having with memory. It was one thing not to remember Bunny What’s-her-name—that sort of thing happened to everyone. But there was something else going on. At times, it seemed as if his memories were somehow… overexposed, like photographs that had begun to fade in the sunlight.
Just then, the kettle shrilled, and Duran headed toward the kitchen for a cup of coffee. Passing through the hall, his eye fell on his parents’ portraits, displayed in double-hinged frames of heavy silver, resting on a side table.
His father’s picture was a head shot. It showed him gazing serenely at the camera, a self-confident smile on his face. His mother was quite a bit younger-looking—perhaps because the photographs had been taken years apart. And she wasn’t just smiling—she was laughing. She sat on the porch swing at the beach cottage in Delaware, head slightly thrown back, lips parted over white teeth, eyes crinkling in merriment.
Curious about his own feelings, Duran approached the photograph, picked it up and examined the image more closely: his mother’s dark hair and loose curls, her delicately arched eyebrows… the old-fashioned dress with its square neckline. What was it like, he wondered, to be held by her?
And the answer came back: It was like… nothing.
He’d been staring at the picture for what seemed a long time, waiting for a gut response—but there was nothing. And that, he knew, was evidence of profound alienation.
Maybe it was the way they’d died—so suddenly, he’d been blindsided. A faulty gas heater at a friend’s cabin on Nantucket. The silent buildup of carbon monoxide—and then they were photographs.
The event had been as unexpected as an avalanche and, obviously, he was still a long way from closure. The funeral ought to have provided that, but… no. In point of fact, he barely remembered the service, even though it had only been six or seven years ago. And while the ceremony should have been engraved upon his memory as deeply as a brand, the truth was otherwise. When he thought of his parents’ funeral, the images had a generic quality, cinematic, and spare as a screenplay.
EXT. Rainy day. Mourners…
He couldn’t remember any real details. He couldn’t remember who’d been there—other than “mourners,” holding their umbrellas against the rain. He must have been grieving. He must have been overwhelmed. And yet…
He put the photograph back on the side table and headed for the kitchen, where the kettle’s whistle had turned to an exhausted howl. What did it mean—what did it say about him—that he couldn’t remember his own parents’ funeral (except in the most notional way)? And what was worse: when you came right down to it, he didn’t remember his parents either. Or, rather: he remembered what they looked like, things they’d said, and things they’d done. But those memories were about as emotion-packed as long division—and that, he knew, was not good.
But what was memory, anyway? A jangle of neurons, rinsed in amino acids.
Removing the kettle from the flame, he told himself that he really had to get in touch with himself, with who he was and where he’d been, with what he was doing and where he was going. And where better to begin, he thought, than at his high school reunion?
When the day came, he was jumpy. Even though he’d taken a tranquilizer, he worried that it wouldn’t be enough. So he washed down a tab of Unisom, a nonprescription sleeping pill, and waited for the combination to kick in.
As it happened, it was one of those perfect fall afternoons. Overhead, a diamond bright contrail bisected the ballpoint-blue sky.
The taxi was right on time. Climbing into the backseat, he noticed a pair of El Salvadoran flags above the rearview mirror and, without thinking about it, gave the driver directions in Spanish—a language he’d almost forgotten he knew. The driver shot him a smile, showing two front teeth rimmed in silver.
“The Friends’ school, no? I never have a fare to this one, but I know it—just north of the cathedral. Chelsea Clinton is attending this school, am I right? Before she is going to California.”
Duran nodded. The Buena Vista Social Club was on the radio and, leaning back, he closed his eyes and thought, It’s gonna be okay. And so it was—even though the traffic was a mess, Wisconsin Avenue snarled with trucks, cars making U-turns amid a chorus of horns, pedestrians bunched at the curbs like startled deer—and the driver yelping “Eeepahhhh!” at every close encounter.
The banquet table in the Kogod Art Center was manned by a trio of friendly reps from each class at the reunion. Duran didn’t recognize any of them, but each had a red-rimmed name tag pressed to the fabric of her blouse. He greeted the woman who looked to be his own age, scrawled his name on an ‘86 name tag, stripped the backing from it and slapped it on his lapel.
Moving to a paper-covered table, he poured four fingers of watery punch into a Dixie cup, took a bite of a chocolate-chip cookie, and looked over the Schedule of Events. There was a varsity football game at two, an alumni-student soccer match at four, Meeting to Worship, class photographs, workshops on this and that. At six, a buffet dinner.
He talked to a peppy ‘56 alumnus, then drifted around toward the back of the school, where the athletic fields were. The football game—against the Model School for the Deaf—was already under way. And it was a spectacular day for pigskin, with a light breeze gusting out of the west, trees turning color under an agate-blue sky, temperatures in the fifties. And all around, an affable and stylish crowd lounged on the hillside overlooking the game. Duran was excited. Crush the Deaf, he thought, chuckling to himself as he glanced about in search of old chums.
According to the scoreboard, the Deaf were already up by a couple of touchdowns. But so what? He was in a terrific mood, and Sidwell was never very good at football, anyway. Leaning against the trunk of a towering black walnut, he sipped his punch and reflected on the miracle of what was, after all, a quintessentially American afternoon.
He really ought to get out more.
At the end of the quarter, he watched the players trot toward their benches, mouth guards dangling. And standing there in the sunlight, with one impossibly colored leaf after another spinning down to the crisp green lawn, he felt a surge of delight, a connectedness to these people, this place. Even though he himself was more of an observer than a participant in the whoops of recognition and embraces of reunion, everyone was friendly enough. Certainly, lots of smiles came his way.
And it felt good, good to be a part of something larger than himself. Good to feel connected. Good to belong.
A whistle trilled, and the footballers trotted back onto the field, where they lined up against one another, the burgundy against the blue.
Being deaf, the Model students were oblivious to the quarterback’s count and the referee’s whistle. So a large drum had been brought to the field. Though the deaf couldn’t hear it, they could feel its vibrations—which were profound. Duran had noticed the drum—a gigantic thing near the 50-yard line—and guessed that it belonged to the marching band. But, obviously, it was much too big for anyone to carry. A gray-haired man in a powder-blue warm-up suit stood beside the instrument, brandishing a padded mallet whose business-end was as large as a grapefruit.