With a buglelike call husky Dwayne Hewson, co-chair of the weekend, summoned us, "Hey guys! Grab plates, get in line! Dr.. Baskett's our carver again this year-our resident surgeon. Dig in." Even the glamorous among us. Even the money-minded. Even the "socially conscious." Even the embittered. Even the several rationalists fiercely debating Virtual Reality, cyberspace and -time and the future course of evolution ("It can only be by way of the machine! Human brain-circuits transformed by microchips into computers! Homo sapiens will be to the species as chimpanzees were to Homo sapiens"). Even the lawyers.
The investors, the business-minded. The plotters. The romance-minded.
The besotted, and the near-suicidal, and the religious. Even Eickhorn drifting at the periphery of the party feeling estranged from his old Chess Club buddies and vigilant for Evangeline Fesnacht, E. S. with whom he'd fallen in love eleven years earlier--"A night of madness in Kenawka, Minnesota, where madness is rare & exquisite as a in winter"--fell under the spell of the Pig.
Even Bart Digger who'd left us scornfully thirty years ago vowing to return, nor even to cast his wistful thoughts in our direction.
Even Elise Petko our valedictorian who'd planned for weeks, she didn't yet know how, some sort of "class-action revenge." Even Dexter Cambrook our salutatorian who'd arrived at the party an hour late, anxious and infuriated.
Even snobby Carolyn Cameron, even Blake Wells, president of College, and waifish Shelby Connor (formerly Sims) soon to embark upon a career as a psychiatric social worker in the slums of our nation's capital--all fell under the spell of the Pig. Even the serious drinkers. The Xanax-and Prozac-sedated. Jokey Jax Whitehead who'd been slipping into a guest bathroom to vomit up beer, spicy Buffalo wings, grape leaves and blood. Jon Rindfleisch who'd left his own party to arrive at the Pifers' without his glamorous wife, swaying-drunk like a man with one wooden leg, striding the redwood deck to again greet slinky Ginger McCord in such an you'd swear the two hadn't seen each other since our twentieth reunion. Art Lutz who confessed to having had so much pig ("Totally pigged out! ") at our rowdy-raunchy twentieth, the very smell of roast pig made him gag.
Still, Art ate. You know Art. ) Even Lee Ann Whitfield our fat in disguise. Even Sarepta Voss who was undergoing radiation therapy for cancer and whose appetite was depressed--"Everything tastes like foam rubber except wine, which tastes like axle grease." Even Kitzie Cox and-Marge Flemm, Home Ec majors who'd braved Millie's party guessing we would, if but innocently, snub them. Even Lulu Lovitt scarcely recognizable as a lateforties suburban housewife with blond-tipped bouffant hair and a silent, sullen husband who stared at us unsmiling. Even Ginger McCord cateyes were electric. Even Pattianne Groves who confessed to
"neurotically obsessed with my weight." Even Mary Louise Schultz who spoke of her recent fear of meat--" The additives. The toxins. The way they matching toxins, cancers, in our cells." Even Kate Olmsted who followed a quasi-mystical regimen to maintain her M. S. remission, and thus never ate meat--"Our karma is what we eat, and are. The pig's terror at slaughtered will be communicated through its flesh." Even E. S. our controversial literary light, as we spoke of her in our newsletter, who'd slipped into the noisy gathering unnoticed, declining to pin a name tag to her purple satin jumpsuit, a trim, hipless, boyish figure with white hair shaved close to her head, and furtive eyes--all fell under the spell of the Pig.
Even, at last, Veronica Myers! --we'd given up expecting her--who at 11,08 P. M. by limo, alone, gaunt-cheeked, eyelids like coins, in a backless cerise summer shift that showed much of her still-buoyant breasts ( just the tip of the tattooed t--you had to know it was there to see it), tousled blond hair to her shoulders, our celebrity Hollywood though she'd been doing mainly made-for-TV films since turning forty), glamorous, distracted and magnetic to the eye as always--Verrie, too, sniffing the mouthwatering aroma, fell at once under the spell of the Pig. Eating ravenously the morsels we fed her, not taking time to use a fork, panting, "Mmm! Mmmm! Mmmm!" as in the throes of cinematic sex. We poured champagne for our precious Verrie, we toasted her miraculous arrival. The middle-aged girls of the Circle, her former boyfriends and admirers, the rest of us gathered around her on the Pifers' redwood deck so boldly above a shadowy, perhaps a rocky, treacherous and unfathomable abyss. ("An abyss," Ritchie Eickhorn was thinking, "--as of Time itself. ")
bumped Verrie's bare lovely knees. We saw that she'd kicked off glamorous high-heeled shoes, her bare toes wriggled with happiness, nails bright cerise. Plates of food were passed, and more plates. Wineglasses drained, and refilled. The servants at the spit helped serve the exquisite carj L. cass Dr.. Baskett had so expertly carved. One hundred six pounds pig. Except for bones and gristle, we would devour it all. On our plates, pork fumes rose out of the lacerated flesh. We noted how Bart Digger we'd recalled as one of the quiet, brainy guys, now a renowned criminologist, Northwestern Law School, advisor to the U. S. Attorney General, surprisingly aggressive, managing to shoulder out former Hewson himself--fetching for Verrie more champagne, and a second lavishly buttered cob of fresh-steamed corn. We noted how Dwayne stared at Verrie, licking his greasy lips. And Roger Zwaart, having coolly avoided his old, recently divorced sweetheart Suzi Zeigler all evening, sprawled snakelike at Verrie's naked feet. Kate Olmsted ("We try to love her but Kate's a pain in the ass") kept intervening, taking flash photos.
And others were taking flash photos. Verrie cringed, and cried, "But this private life!
I'm eating." That luscious mouth. We speculated that Veronica been starving herself, mortifying her flesh in homage to her career.
Even those of us who adored her searched her face for signs of age. But though she complained of exhaustion ("It must be chronic fatigue, I can't fucking sleep, not just my fucking career keeps me awake, my personal life' that's in ruins, but for weeks now anticipating reunion, how much it means to me, you guys I love, my only friends, the only people in the world who know me. And knowing, oh God, Ken won't be with us tonight") when she glanced around at us with those eyes, greasy lips gleaming, we had to acknowledge that Verrie Myers was our Prom Queen still.
During this time
"The Ballad of John Reddy Heart" had been playing the Pifers' tape deck. It had been repeated so much through the evening, we'd ceased hearing it. Though we felt it, the percussive beat, edgy-sexy rippling in our blood. Trish Elders whose lovely mouth, too, gleamed with pig-grease, shouted at her old friend Verrie, "John Reddy's possibly going to drop by tonight. At Dwayne's. The all-night disco. Isn't that great?" Verrie's shadowed eyes brightened. She'd been grieving for Ken Fischer, now she said excitedly, "He's alive, then? I knew it. I had a dream of Reddy the other night, the first in years. He held my hands in his and was telling me something urgent but there was too much noise, static, I couldn't make out the words." When the redwood deck collapsed beneath our weight, at 12,12 A. M. wasn't
"The Ballad of John Reddy Heart" that was playing but another, later hit single by Made in USA, "Hunger Hunger." By this time, MacK Pifer had retreated to one of the farthest rooms of the California-style Normandy chateau to listen, through headphones, to one of his favorite Callas recordings-Tosca performed by the La Scala Orchestra and Chorus.
Though he'd the volume up as high as he could bear, still Millie's husband could hear, or perhaps feel, the powerful seismic throbbing of
"Hunger Hunger" like a vibration of the earth's very crust. MacK Pifer had long himself a "tough player" in the competitive world of high-stakes medical insurance, and he and Millie had endured the protracted adolescences of three American children, but his nerves were close to shattered by this party.
"Even if the deck hadn't collapsed, it's likely the Pifers were going to sepa, rate soon. The way Millie was dancing with some of the guys--she'd have behaved that way back in high school. It wasn't just she'd been drinking, our Millie was hot." The pig-carcass had been stripped clean of all save gristle by this time.
The long buffet table profusely stocked with other meats and seafood,
salads, breads and desserts looked as if a rampaging wave of locusts had struck.
Numerous cases of champagne, wine and beer had been consumed. For hours, the white-uniformed caterers' assistants had labored grimly to clear away debris and garbage. In the Pifers' gleaming kitchen with its new-model appliances, the garbage disposal unit had broken, defeated by the heavy use to which it had been put. How many of us were on the deck at the time of the accident? "A conservative estimate, counting spouses and the hired help, is somewhere beyond one hundred. And some of these were big fellas." Our former athletes, for instance, for Blake Wells who'd been a swimmer, must have weighed on average two twenty pounds. Many others had put on weight, including a number women who'd been, as girls, obsessed with dieting.
There followed then a boisterous interlude of after-dinner speeches and jokes. Dwayne Hewson and Jori Rindfleisch, arms around each other's shoulders, "our WHS Tweedledee and Tweedledum," were witty if not always coherent masters of ceremonies. We applauded and stamped feet, informed that these notable WHS alums had donated a generous sum of money to the school--"To the Woody McKeever Memorial Fund." We applauded and stamped our feet, informed that Veronica Myers had money for the construction of a theater wing of the school--"The Francis C. Lepage Theater." We applauded and stamped our feet, informed that E. S. Fesnacht and Richard Eickhorn, former co-editors of our literary Will-o'-the-Wisp, and apparently still good friends, were for the "enhancement" of the magazine. Our former Willowsvillian cartoonist Chet Halloren was establishing an annual award for most talented cartoonist in the graduating class, and our local artists, photographer Kate Olmsted and painter Trish Elders, were establishing awards in respective fields. HARTSSOFT men McQuade and Merchant announced they'd acquired a "seed grant" from their notable employer to establish a state-of-the-art computer laboratory at the school. Our millionaire cosmetic surgeon Scott Baskett was establishing a pre-med scholarship, and our National Science Foundation director Dexter Cambrook was establishing a science scholarship. Not to be outdone, Artie Lutz heaved himself to his feet to declare that he'd tried to establish an award, funded by "big bucks," for X annual Class Clown--"But the assholes at the school turned me down. So I f said, What the hell's wrong with a sense of humor? Why's brains so imporx tant? People blow their brains out, in fact, for lack of a sense of humor. Every day people are dying for lack of a sense of humor. (Of course the joke is, the schmucks would die anyway. But they don't know it. ) I said, Give an award for once at commencement to some poor dick, yeah he's gotta be a guy, only a guy can be a true dick, a girl who's a dick is too pathe ic for any award, some poor dick who never succeeded at anything much through high school, but never failed, either, some guy everybody kind of likes, or they do, but nobody, y'know, gives a profound shit about, if he lives or dies.
Even his own wife and kids. Even his old girlfriend he'd die for. I said--" We applauded and stamped our feet drowning out Artie who looked a little hurt, and sat down.
There were prizes for who'd come the farthest distance, who'd had most children, who had the youngest child (made posthumously to Bo and accepted tearfully by his young wife, who had a ten-month-old home in East Orange, New Jersey), who among the men had the bestpreserved hair and, among the women, the best-preserved figure.
Our controversial award--to the individual who'd made the shrewdest of the bankruptcy law since the last reunion--had been squelched at the minute as "not in the spirit of the occasion." Then came our toasts to the departed. Every reunion, the solemn recitation of names becomes longer. "Jesus. It's like you look over your shoulder and there's somebody rolling up a carpet right behind you. Brrr!" We passed around well-worn copies of The Yearbook opened to black-bordered photos.
passed around school pictures, snapshots. We made one another old memories, cherished anecdotes--"'So Smoke offers a roach to Reddy of all people, John Reddy who'd been doing weed, maybe LSD heroin, back in grade school, and John Reddy looks at Smoke like he's never seen such an asshole, and says, Man, get that shit out of my face, I'm on fucking probation, man. And Smoke says--" We were deeply moved, were thrilled to hear our old departed classmates' names evoked, Bannister ("Our first--ninth grade"), Smoke Filer, Babs Bitterman, Lunt, Pete Marsh, Bert Fox, Ken Fischer, Bo Bozer, and--were others?
"Hell, I'm thinking--Nosepicker. I have a premonition."
"What?
you know?"
"It was looking pretty grim last time I checked in."
"And Janey Plummer?"
"Who?"
"Oh, you know--that kind of cute little cross-eyed with the bangs, in Mme. Picholet's homeroom? In chorus? French Club?" We looked up Janey Plummer in the yearbook, sure enough she'd been our class, but no one knew of her whereabouts thirty years later--"I don't know, I just have some sort of idea she's, I guess, dead. In a car crash?
Batavia?"
"And what about Dougie?"
"Who?"
"Dougie Siefried, how Dougies are there? --how's he?" We tried not to turn in Ginger McCord's direction knowing how her face would have stiffened but it was hard to resist.
And Ginger was crying. Poor Ginger, she'd loved Dougie so, when they were kids at least--"It was just one of those tragic mismatches, as adults. All they had in common was they'd been high school sweethearts and could never love anyone else." By this time the girls of the Circle were sobbing, holding Ginger, and Verrie who was crying as if her heart had broken, we knew we believed we knew) that Verrie and poor Ken had had a brief love affair after our fifteenth reunion but we weren't certain what had happened, Ken had attempted a reconciliation with his wife, from whom he was subsequently divorced, but possibly he'd been rebuffed by Verrie who'd had a love affair (at least, People so reported) with John Travolta, her co-star in a film many of us had purchased in video. Following this, on a business trip to Europe, Ken, a corporate lawyer, a "troubleshooter" for Motorola, Inc. , had allegedly killed himself in a hotel room in Stuttgart, Germany. There was some debate over the actual method of suicide--"It just wasn't like Ken to opt out like that.
On the team, he'd never let you down. He'd get kicked in the gut, in the groin, he'd be staggering after a foul or a tackle and he'd never let you down.
Ken Fischer." Made in USA's
"Hunger Hunger" was whining, thumping, panting like a living thing. The dense foliage of the Pifers' giant maple trees, incandescent in the moonlight beyond the redwood deck, shook in sympathy.
hastily stood, upsetting her glass of champagne. Her face was gaunt, ghastly.
Her beauty drained out of it like blood. Staring behind us, hands to her cheeks in the pose of Edvard Munch's The Scream, she cried--"Ken?
Ken?" We believed that Veronica Myers had snapped. Under the strain of many memories. Under the strain of her fading, failing career.
She'd eaten ravenously, she'd drunk too much too quickly. She was giddy and groggy under the spell of the Pig. But when we turned to look, in astonishment we saw--Ken Fischer? A handsome, trim, graying man in his late forties, his face relatively unlined, his smile diffident, yet playful? He wearing, like one or another of his ex-teammates, a WHS maroon and gold T-shirt beneath a summer blazer. Could it be--Ken Fischer? Alive after all?
Not dead?
We stared, some of us screamed, a few staggered as if about to faint. Yet the man was obviously real, as real as any of us. Politely he made way past us, to Verrie. Ken Fischer returned to us as if he'd never been away.
We made a little circle around the lovers. Ken rushed to Verrie, her in his arms. She was beginning to faint, lovely bare arms swinging limp, windswept blond hair nearly brushing against the floor. Ken said worriedly, X "Verrie, darling! Forgive me! I didn't mean to frighten you. Some of us t helped Ken revive Verrie by pressing a damp cold cloth against her burning forehead. She moaned, and her eyelids fluttered. She was at Ken, yet could not speak. He murmured, "Verrie, it's me. It's Ken. I've never been away, darling. Someone has been spreading ugly rumors about me I've never been away, and I've never s
topped thinking of you. Not for a moment.
Not for a heartbeat. Oh, Verrie!" Verrie recovered, and twined her arms around Ken to kiss him full on the mouth as she hadn't done, at least in our presence, at our Senior Prom. She cried breathlessly, "Ken! I love you. Don't ever leave me again, Ken. Please." Ken said, "Of course not, darling. Never again." We applauded our feet. We rushed at the lovers, eager to touch them. Tears streamed down our cheeks. Even embittered Elise Petko was weeping. Even our class cynic Chet Halloren. Even Bart Digger and Dwayne Hewson who'd been in with Verrie for decades. We were overjoyed for them, we wished lovers well. In the stampede to get close to them we must have caused the cantilevers beneath the deck to buckle, with no apparent warning they collapsed, and the deck tilted violently beneath us. We screamed and flailed at one another, thrown together, tumbling, desperate, as the deck splintered and crashed into the abyss and Made in USA yelled in seeming sympathy, "Hunger hunger! I gotta hunger! Hunger ain't never gonna be fulfilled!" On the windowsill, out of range of our disaster, Bo Bozer in his plastic box brooded upon us, untouched.
At Dwayne Hewson's, things really got wild.
Reports of what happened at Dwayne's residence on Mill Race Lane printed in the press were confused and misleading, and overly sensationalist.
Broke Heart Blues Page 46