Reunion at Red Paint Bay

by George Harrar

  Jean did, of course, hands down. But she isn’t there to play the game. Paul maneuvers his way to the cardboard table by the entrance and takes a few cards.

  When the class president steps to the microphone a half hour later, Paul is standing just a few yards from Simon. When he moves to get a drink or hug an old friend, Paul moves, too, a shadow.

  “Okay, folks, give me your attention,” Greer says, “I’m going to read some questions, and if you know the answer, just call it out. I’ll start things off with one of my own: What did Jimmy Doyle ask Mr. Cox on his first day in physics class?”

  “Why did the chicken cross the Möbius strip?” comes the call from several directions.

  “And the answer?”

  “To get to the same side,” the voices reply.

  “Right, that was Jimmy for you. Here’s another one: What did Mr. Kerwin say when he picked up the ticking package in chemistry class?”

  “Holy shit!” A chorus, everyone joining in, the favorite class moment of senior year.

  “Right again. Let’s see if we can’t find a harder one.” Greer shuffles the cards. “What did the National Merit Scholar get away with on graduation night?” He looks puzzled. “We had a National Merit Scholar? I didn’t know that. Who was it—Sherri, Sherri Tate?” He surveys the crowd and keys in on a woman with black hair knotted halfway down her back. She shakes her head regretfully, swishing the hair side to side, her signature move, no doubt. “No?” Greer says. “Then who?”

  “Simon was,” comes a call from just a few feet away, the voice of the pretty blond woman standing next to him.

  Greer tilts the microphone that way. “Simon Howe, the editor in chief of the finest newspaper in Red Paint, were you a National Merit Scholar?”

  Simon leans out of the pocket of people where he’s standing and waves. A self-effacing little gesture. So modest of him.

  “Then I guess this question is about you. Want to confess what you …” and here Greer checks the card, “… got away with on graduation night? Something more scandalous than drinking rum and Coke in the bushes?”

  Simon shrugs, retreats into his group.

  “Okay,” Greer says, “the next card asks, Who sneaked off to the dock during the graduation party, and what did he do there? Another graduation question. Any takers?” There are wondering glances and shaking heads. “That’s a stumper. Moving on: Why didn’t anyone listen when the girl on the dock … All right then,” Greer says, slipping the cards into his jacket, “we’ll stop there. Strike up the music!”

  Simon leaves abruptly, weaving past the suddenly swaying bodies in the ballroom and pushing out through the heavy doors. Paul follows at a suitable distance, in the shadows of the path leading to the parking lot. He gets in the Lumina, waits till the other car starts up, then trails the red taillights onto the entrance road. He speeds up, draws closer, and turns on his brights. The car ahead slows, and he does, too. When the car speeds up again, he does also, the bright lights sweeping over it. A little farther and the car stops. After a moment Simon gets out and shakes his fist in some vague threat. Paul dims his lights for a moment, as if in apology, then turns on the brights again. Simon starts for him, but not very fast, not quite sure he should challenge whatever lies in wait for him. Paul revs his engine and hits the accelerator. Are you watching, Jean? Am I doing this right? The car bucks a little, then barrels down the dark, narrow road.

  He felt odd walking across the parking lot of the Bays-water Inn without Amy, as if there was an imbalance to him, the lack of a counterweight. And what would his classmates think? Why would he come to the reunion without his wife when they live only a few minutes from the inn?

  “Simon?” came the call from behind him, and there was Holly Green coming down the gravel path, alone herself.

  “Where’s Steve?” he asked as she caught up.

  “Home with Jenny. Where’s Amy?”

  “Home with Davey.”

  “So,” she said, linking her arm in his, “we can walk in together, cause a stir.”

  When they reached the front door of the inn she turned toward the bay, about fifty yards down the winding drive. “I saw the obituary,” she said.

  “You didn’t know about Jean?”

  “No, we were distant cousins. We only kept in touch at Christmas. I know she got married to that guy a year behind us who was always following her around. I never understood why she did that. She said she found him a little creepy.”

  Voices came from the parking lot, and Simon moved Holly away from the front door into the darkness. He hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he didn’t want to be heard. “You drove her home on graduation night,” he said just above a whisper as the voices passed them by.

  “She told me she wasn’t feeling well, like she was having a bad period and was embarrassed, that’s why she didn’t ask you.”

  The moon emerged from behind the clouds, and a milky light illuminated the dock. Simon was surprised at how clearly it could be seen from so far away.

  “The obituary,” Holly said, “it mentioned a brutal attack twenty-five years ago.”

  “I don’t know what that was about,” Simon said. He let a few moments go by for Holly to say something. When she didn’t he said, “Do you?”

  “Maybe it had to do with that guy. Seems like he was always pestering her that last year here. But I think she would have told me if he had actually attacked her. Jean was a very sensitive person, like a raw nerve.” Simon hadn’t thought of that description of her before, but it seemed exactly right. The moon went under the clouds, and he took Holly’s arm again. “Shall we go in?”

  “Memory lane,” Simon said to Lauren, his former lab partner in chemistry. “Next we’ll be bobbing for apples and passing an orange down the line with no hands.”

  She grazed his arm with hers. “Sounds like fun.” He didn’t dare look at her straight on and have to answer the ever-present questions in her eyes, Why not me, Simon? Why not now? He would think the answer was obvious—he was married with an eleven-year-old son.

  “Simon Howe!” someone called from across the ballroom. A red-haired man wearing a baseball cap with a swordfish decal sewed on the brim pushed through the crowd, swinging a bottle of beer from his fingertips, just like old times. Simon recognized him instantly, a larger-sized, bearded version of his once best friend.

  “Brewer,” Simon said as he extended his hand, “how long has it been?”

  The big man ignored the hand and bear-hugged Simon, something they would never have done as teenagers. When he pulled away he gestured toward the banner over the platform. “Twenty-five years, old buddy. I haven’t set foot in town since graduation. I figured I should make the effort once every twenty-five years.”

  “I can’t believe it,” Simon said, how this face that he had seen every day of his life in high school, the person he could tell anything to, was suddenly there again. “I lost track of you after you had that trouble in Portland. Where’re you living now?”

  “Ha Ha Bay.”

  It sounded like one of Brewer’s jokes, but Simon didn’t get it.

  “It’s in Newfoundland. I was sitting in a jail up in Kodiak City and all they had to read was old National Geos. This story mentioned Ha Ha Bay, and I said, man, that sounds like the place for me. So when I got out I headed back across country, bought a couple acres of land up there for nothing and built myself a cabin. There’s only three hundred people in town, and I figured, I can get along with three hundred people.”

  Strange, Simon thought, because Brewer never had a problem getting along with anyone before. It was his most positive trait. Mr. Congeniality. “So, what do you do up there?”

  “Nothing, that’s the beauty of the place. I made so much money fishing ten seasons in Alaska I don’t need to work till who knows when, maybe never. I invested all of the money I didn’t drink away. Don’t you love capitalism?”

  Simon did and didn’t. He could see the good and the bad of it, as in everything.
It wasn’t a question to be answered at a high school reunion anyway. “Sounds like you’ve had some wild times, Brew.”

  “Oh yeah, but the crazy stuff gets boring after a while. I figured I’d settle down.” He took a quick swig, still gripping the bottle high up on the neck. “But how about you, Simon? Putting out the old rag, I hear.”

  “He’s owner and editor of the Register,” Lauren said, which surprised Simon, that she was still there and part of the conversation.

  Brewer looked at her for a moment like he didn’t recognize her. Apparently Lauren had changed considerably since high school. “I would never have figured it,” he said to Simon, “you staying in this fucking town. You were always talking about getting out first chance. I figured you’d beat me to the door.”

  “I did leave for a while,” Simon said, an attempt at a defense. “I worked in Portland at the Press Herald.”

  Brewer emptied his bottle. “So,” he said.

  “So?”

  “Why’d you come back?”

  There was the question, plain and simple. One could always count on his old friend to ask it. Why had he returned to Red Paint? That was easy—his parents getting sick within weeks of each other and needing his care. But why did he stay after they died? That wasn’t so plain and simple. He liked saving the Register. He liked being the boss of his own paper. He liked the idea of Davey growing up where he had, in a little town in Maine, far from the temptations of the city. “Boring” actually seemed like a positive attribute back then. “You know how it is,” Simon said, “you make some choices and then some more choices and suddenly you end up spending your life where you never expected.”

  “Yeah, like me, I never thought I’d be living on Ha Ha Bay.” Brewer rolled the empty beer bottle in his hands. “You’re like happy here?”

  “Sure,” Simon said quickly, and he wondered if it came out too fast, as if he didn’t really want to think about the question. “I have a great wife and son, it’s a good place to raise a family. And I like running the newspaper, so yes, I’m happy.”

  “That’s all that counts then, isn’t it? As long as you’re happy.” As long as you’re happy. Despite the apparent drabness of life in Red Paint, if he had carved out some small refuge of happiness here, then great. It was nice of Brewer to grant him this. His friend took another swig of his beer. “So, how long have you two been hitched?”

  It took Simon a moment to understand Brewer’s inclusive glance of him and Lauren. “Oh no,” he said, “this is Lauren Canelli. You remember her.”

  “Oh yeah,” Brewer said without any remembrance in his voice, “how’s it going?”

  She looked past him toward the microphone.

  “My wife Amy had to stay home tonight with our son,” Simon said. “We’ve had some things going on lately, and she didn’t want to leave him alone.”

  “Simon,” Lauren said, touching his arm again, “you were a National Merit Scholar.”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Simon was!” she called out, and it embarrassed him to hear his name shouted across the room.

  On the platform, Greer pointed toward them. “Simon Howe, our editor in chief, were you a National Merit Scholar?”

  He waved and nodded.

  “Okay, then, I guess this question is about you. Want to confess what you got away with on graduation night?”

  Simon turned up his hands and shrugged, with a little I don’t know and wouldn’t tell if I did expression. Before he turned back he glanced around the ballroom, a sweep of faces. Which one of them was accusing him?

  “I’ll have to get my spies investigating that one,” Greer said. “The next card asks: Who sneaked off to the dock during the graduation party, and what did he do there? Another graduation question. Any takers?”

  Brewer nudged him. “You ducked out early, Si.”

  It irritated him that his friend was remembering his high school life so assuredly. “Why would you think that?”

  “They called for the king and queen to do a dance, and you weren’t around, so I jumped in with Ginnie. I wouldn’t forget that.”

  Ginnie. Why hadn’t she turned up at the reunion? They could have shared a dance together now. A king needed his queen, even after twenty-five years. “I must have ducked out for a little refreshment about then,” Simon said. “We all did at some point, right?”

  “That all you ducked out for, old buddy?”

  “Moving on,” Greer said from the platform, “why didn’t anyone listen when the girl on the dock …”

  Simon felt the past jolting back into his brain—the girl, the dock, and the words in the obit … brutal attack.

  “You okay?” Lauren touched his arm again—how many times would she do it?—squeezing a little.

  He tried to smile, but he could tell by her face that his mouth was doing something else. “I guess I’ve had too much to drink.”

  “You never had the stomach for it,” Brewer said.

  “You need some air,” Lauren said soothingly. “There’s a wonderful breeze off the bay tonight.”

  “That sounds good.” She picked her pocketbook off the chair and slung it over her shoulder. He imagined how it would look, crossing the room with Lauren, heading outside. “I don’t want to drag you away,” he said. “I’ll just be a minute.” He slipped off quickly, angling through the dancers swaying to “I Will Survive” suddenly blaring from the speakers. He swung his head each way as he went, hoping to catch a gaze fixed on him. Whoever wrote those questions would certainly be watching for his reaction. So many faces—old classmates grown older, thicker, the men with beards and mustaches, the women heavier, stockier, mothers now, not the slender schoolgirls that remained in his memory. Everywhere he looked heads turned away, eyes averted.

  He pushed through the double screen doors of the inn and hesitated on the porch for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He heard people talking on either side of him, the gravelly voices of the unrepentant smokers in the class. He hurried down the steps and headed toward the parking lot overflowing with cars angled in all directions. He found the old Corolla, climbed in, and slammed the door to make sure it wouldn’t pop open at the first big bump. He swerved around the jutting front ends of much better cars and turned onto the dirt entrance road. It felt good suddenly leaving like this, telling no one. Why should he have to explain himself? Headlights appeared behind him, someone else fleeing the scene, no doubt. The lights grew bigger, coming up quickly behind him, then flashed to bright. He shielded the rearview mirror with his hand, but white light flooded his car, making the way ahead completely dark and everything that might be in his way unseeable. He slowed a little, and the follower slowed, too. He flicked his hand in a back-off gesture, but how might that appear, as a friendly wave? He slowed even more, squinting to make sure a deer or dog or even a person wasn’t up ahead. He couldn’t go on like this, driving blind. He stopped. The car behind stopped, too. Simon opened the door and shook his fist. That could not be misinterpreted. The lights turned down for a moment, then flashed bright again. Simon started toward the light, and it was like in a science fiction movie, the lone human moving toward the alien presence on a deserted country road. He heard the engine rev up, a screech of the wheels, and the lights came toward him. He couldn’t believe this was happening. He didn’t know exactly what was happening. He ran back to the Toyota, but there wasn’t time to get in. He pressed himself against the door and closed his eyes as the vehicle rushed toward him like a furious wind.

  It’s curious to him how relaxed he feels submitting to another human being’s inspection and analysis. Maybe it is Amy Howe herself, the scent of her perfume, with its hint of citrus mellowing his brain. He has been uncommonly cooperative today. Fifteen minutes so far, and he hasn’t resorted to sarcasm once.

  She inhales suddenly, as if bracing herself with an extra hit of oxygen. “When you married Jean, did you know she had been raped?”

  How could he miss it, just a stone’s throw a
way, a tableau on the dock illuminated by the moon and the harsh light from the parking lot? “I saw it.”

  Amy’s eyes widen. Apparently she can be shocked. “You witnessed Jean’s attack?”

  “From a distance.” He knows what must be going through her mind … “I could have stopped Jean from being raped?”

  “Is that what you think?”

  A question to a question. He will add his own. “Is that what you want me to think?”

  “What you think is up to you. I’m just trying to explore what that thinking is.”

  “My thinking is that I couldn’t have stopped her being raped.”

  “And afterward you couldn’t stop the suffering the rape caused your wife.”

  “That’s right. I’m a failure on both counts.”

  “I’m not judging you, Mr. Chambers.”

  Of course she is. One cannot help but judge every second of one’s existence. To consider is to judge.

  She opens the manila folder on her desk and reads for a few moments, as if answers might be there. “When did you marry Jean?”

  He notices now that she is wearing only one earring, a light blue teardrop, possibly topaz, hanging from her delicate left ear. This earring shivers a little when she moves her head. In the other ear, nothing. Is this a mistake or some new fashion? She reaches up to her right ear where he’s looking, feels the absence herself, surveys her desk, and finds the missing teardrop by the phone. She sticks it back in her ear in a single quick move. When did you marry Jean? A change-of-pace question calculated to lower the intensity level a bit.