Call from Jersey (9781468301625)

by Kluge, P. F.

  “I’m glad you came. Anyway.”

  “I was going to skip tonight. It’s not easy to go around in a crowd of people who remember me when I stopped traffic. Now I block traffic …”

  “Don’t do this to yourself, Sue.” I hated hearing this. It took courage to come out looking the way she did. I’d been around the party long enough to notice how many suits and haircuts looked new, how many women had been at the beauty parlor that day. And when Gooker and I got around to our inevitable post-mortem, it wouldn’t surprise me if the classmates we marked absent looked or felt like Sue Hoover. Failure stopped them, age and weight and divorce: they figured they had nothing to show, nothing to report, they weren’t worth seeing.

  “I’m here because of you, you know,” she said.

  “You are?

  “I wanted to talk to you,” she said. She was studying to see how I’d take that announcement. How appalled I’d be. How I’d look to escape. She was shrewd, alright and I wouldn’t be getting away except on her terms, which I didn’t know yet.

  “Well …” I said, spreading my arms. “Here I am.”

  “I have a favor to ask. Not a hug.”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m a writer, too, George. Not like you. I have a bunch of … I don’t know what you’d call them. Maybe you think it’s silly. Maybe people come at you all the time, showing you stuff.”

  “Not so often, Sue. My coat tails are short.”

  “You’re from here. That’s what I tell myself, when I want to quit writing. And if you did it …”

  “Yeah. How hard could it possibly be?”

  “Maybe you never noticed. I was smart. Now … maybe you’ll notice.”

  “Okay, everybody,” a voice I recognized announced. There was Gooker at the center of things, at the podium. I wondered why he dressed the way he did. His wife had taste, lived in a colonial estate, dabbled in interior decoration, yet she had a husband who dressed like Rodney Dangerfield: maroon sport coat, white slacks, white shoes. Was that by accident or design? Her revenge or his rebellion? I told Sue Hoover to send her stuff to Pop’s address, that I’d look it over. I promised I would. And now a couple of hundred reunion goers were headed towards dinner tables.

  “If you’d all take your seats, we’ll get this show on the road,” said Gooker. “Anyway, the bar’s closing for a while, but there’s wine on the table.” He grabbed a carafe and hoisted it in the air. “Says it’s got to be sold by Thursday.” He poured a glass, gulped it down. “We’re in for a hell of a night.”

  I found Pauline Kennedy chatting with former coach Art Moynehan, who nodded hello to me before rising to get a drink before the bar closed down.

  “How’s the old coach?” I asked.

  “Fascinating,” she said. “He thinks that dodge ball should be an Olympic demonstration sport. He belongs to something called the U.S. Dodge Ball Association. You catch the ball someone throws at you, he’s out. If it hits you and you drop it, you’re out. That’s life.”

  “It’s an American game,” I said, joining her at a table with Kate and a seat for Gooker who was at the microphone, starting things off.

  “People ask why I put this thing on,” he began. His jacket made him into a game-show host. “What’s in it for me? Am I looking to show off or what? People ask me all the time. My wife asks me.”

  I saw Kate stare at Gooker, and not kindly. Leave me out of this, her look said.

  “So I’ve got an answer. Listen up. HEY! Can you hear me in back?”

  They could hear him alright. The trouble was, they weren’t listening. There were shrieks of recognition at the door, when late-comers appeared, there were parties at every table, drinkers four deep at the bar, which showed no signs of closing. Everyone who walked across the dance floor drew a roomful of stares. Now it was Joan Simmons and Kenny Hauser, headed for our table, where Kate had saved seats for them.

  “The delegate from Israel,” Gooker muttered into the microphone. “Fashionably late.” He knew his act was bombing. “Let’s give him a big hand.”

  I glanced at Pauline Kennedy. Call this class to order, please. Mediate. Instruct. Discipline. But she just sat there, unsurprised, taking it in.

  “So, anyway,” Gooker continued. “You start out together. Kindergarten on up. It’s classes and field trips and locker rooms and stuff after school, which would be sports and clubs and in my case, detention. There’s summers, those old summers that stretched out forever, like one long sandy beach. Baseball games after supper, ’member those, when daylight savings time kicks in, you get maybe five innings before sunset and then when it’s too dark for grounders you’re still out there, so only fly balls count. It’s dating too, sweaty palms and proms and corsages and making out in cars and stuff. What it is, is you grow up together … sort of.”

  He’d gotten carried away and now he choked and still, only half the room was paying attention. And they mostly didn’t understand. And his wife was leaning back in her chair, talking to a woman at the next table. Gooker was talking to me.

  “This isn’t about bringing anything back,” he continued. “But I think … this is maybe half-assed … I think you can keep it together a little. Stay in touch. That’s what tonight is for. That’s all. Okay? Okay.”

  Stepping out from behind the dais to a scattering of applause, he moved our way. I clapped for him and so did Pauline but the others, Kenny, Joan, Kate were otherwise occupied.

  “Well, that’s that,” Gooker said. I was the first one he looked at. I died up there, his face said.

  “Here we all are,” Kenny said. “Delegate from Israel? That’s what I hear you call me? All in good fun, right? In keeping with the spirit of the evening?”

  “Forget about it,” Gooker said, the fight drained out of him.

  “Forget about … that speech?” Kenny asked. I could see Joan place a hand on his arm, the way women do, when they see their husband headed for trouble. They were separated, but some gestures remained. And didn’t work.

  “You said we ‘grew up’ ‘together’ ‘sort of!’” Kenny wiggled his fingers to put quotation marks around each phrase. “You’re deep. You’re an orator.”

  “You got a problem with any of that?” Gooker asked.

  “Questions. About the growing up we did. About how together we were. And about … what on earth did you mean … by ‘sort of.’”

  “It’s always ‘sort of,’” Thank God, Pauline Kennedy had spoken. “It never ends. Thank God, it doesn’t. I’m still learning. And making mistakes. New mistakes. That ‘sort of’ is just fine, Mr. Cerruti.”

  “Me too,” Kate said, although the mistakes she was making might not have been what Pauline Kennedy had in mind. “Sort of, all the way.”

  “I’m another ‘sort of’ too,” Joan said. And then to Kenny, “As you know.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Kenny said. “It’s rally around the Gooker time. I can’t catch a break around this table.”

  “That’s because we grew up together,” Gooker said, his good mood returning. “Sort of.”

  “Sort of,” Kenny repeated. He turned to me. It was my turn. “How about you champ?”

  “Sort of. I’m moving back here.”

  “Here?”

  “Right back here. I can work from here. And there’s other things I want to do than run around the world rating beaches and buffets.”

  “Besides,” Gooker said, “we got plenty of beaches and buffets right here in Jersey.”

  “Now listen up,” Gooker said, back at the microphone. The meal had ended quickly. People were too excited to eat. First one, then another, then dozens started table hopping. They’d be eating three meals a day for as long as they lived. But the chance to check out flames and rivals, to inventory spouses, came once every five years.

  “This is the program,” Gooker said. “We got about half our class came back tonight, we have to move along. I’m going to call everybody up, one at a time and they’re gonna say something about themsel
ves that I hope is true …”

  “He’s had a few,” Kenny remarked.

  “He’s worked hard on this,” I said.

  “I’m sure he did,” Kenny said. “I don’t doubt it for a minute. Nostalgia is probably the strongest emotion he feels.”

  “You can say anything you want,” Gooker proceeded. “Dumb stuff about your swell wife or husband or your wonderful kids. Your job or your house, all that stuff. But stick with that and you’ll sound like a bunch of game show contestants being introduced …”

  A little nervous laughter around the room, but Gooker had a point. This wasn’t about spouses and children, about the cards and pictures you kept in your wallet, or the cash.

  “Anyways,” he said, “you’re all gonna come up here. Stand up and let us all get a look at you at least. That’ll do.” He glanced at a list of names in front of him. “Hey, George Greifinger, George Griffin, come on up here. You’re the first.”

  I got up out of my chair and headed for the microphone. At least it would be over soon.

  “… one of America’s most beloved travel writers,” Gooker was saying, “author of the Faraway Places/Backyard Adventures column that appears all across the country …”

  What did I say? Something about how, much as I traveled, I often found myself thinking of settling down and, although it hadn’t happened yet, the place I pictured settling down in was the place I came from, which was here, and if it ever came to pass, I hoped that I would find some of my old classmates around, the way we were tonight. Something like that. It started easily, just words, the way my writing was just words, most of the time. Automatic pilot. But something happened along the way. I was ambushed. I all-of-a-sudden knew this was a bunch that mattered and that seeing them again provided, not closure, but a kind of completion. I would always wonder about them and would want them to wonder about me. We were in it together.

  “Atta boy,” Gooker said when he retrieved the mike. “Not a dry eye in the place. I’m gonna call on the fellow who led out basketball team to an unforgettable four-and-seven season, Ronnie Napolitano, where’s he hiding?”

  “That was fine,” Mrs. Kennedy said as soon as I got back to the table. I nodded thanks and looked at Joan, wondering what she thought. I got a friendly nod; maybe she was nervous about Gooker getting around to her.

  “You really believe that?” Kenny asked. “About settling down? Come on George! There’s more to life than the rediscovery of New Jersey Maybe it feels right, coming back here. Maybe you think it makes a satisfying pattern, a circle or maybe a spiral. The prodigal returning …”

  “So what about returning to Israel, old buddy?” I asked, more sharply than I wanted. “You’re telling me that’s not a circle too?”

  “Let’s put it like this, George,” Kenny said. “I walk on the Via Dolorosa. I pass the Wailing Wall. The Mount of Olives. What have you got? Route 22 and Two Guys from Sicily?”

  “Hey you two,” Joan interrupted. We were missing the parade of classmates to the podium. Even then, we might have kept on, but Mrs. Kennedy leaned forward with a look that silenced both of us.

  Tom Atkinson, our black class president, was career Air Force in California and close to retirement. Sandy Delia, the sexiest woman outside the Ronettes, was married to an Amway representative and Sharon Witherspoon, introverted and poetic, wrote steamy x-rated potboilers under the name Lucinda Whippet. Maybe we were all cliches: the hot rodders become local cops, the radicals who were worried property owners, the science fair winners doing brilliant though anonymous things with transistors and genes. The class nerd—how refreshing it had been to find a mediocre Jewish student!—now incarnated as Marty Singer Inc., a platinum merchant bristling with conviction that people who complained about South Africa just didn’t have all the facts. Maybe there was nothing that happened to us that television hadn’t anticipated. But that was before Gooker called on Kenny.

  “You called me the delegate from Israel when I came in tonight,” Kenny began.

  “Oh shit,” Gooker sighed, holding up his hands. “I’m in for it now.”

  “We all are,” Joan said, speaking to me for the first time that night.

  “… The delegate from Israel,” Kenny began. “It makes me sound like an alien … like one of those foreign exchange students who wandered around for a year before they went back to wherever on earth they came from.” He paused and leaned against the podium, as though mulling over what to say next, but I knew better than that. Kenny figured things out from beginning to end.

  “It won’t take long. You don’t come to reunions to talk. You come to stare, to check people out, size them up. I’ve been doing this as much as anyone. But sorry about this I’ve been thinking too. I’ve been asking myself a question. I mean, here we are, American kids, public school graduates, New Jersey products. And I’ve been asking myself, what defines us? What identifies us? What holds us together?”

  At the side, Gooker yawned, audibly, and made a sawing motion with his arms as if he were playing a violin. “Hey,” he asked, “could we put this to music?”

  “What holds us together? The place we live in? The place we used to live? New Jersey?! What else? Memories of prom night? Convertibles? Rock and roll? That’s our history?”

  Gooker had heard enough. He got up and stood behind the podium. In a minute, he’d jump forward and shove Kenny aside. I didn’t want to see that. In the end, I was rooting for him to finish.

  “Call me the delegate from Israel,” he said, raising his voice. “But there’s politics in my life. And religion. And history every minute.” He looked like there was something else he wanted to say; he almost decided against it. Later, I wished he had. “The world’s an unsafe place. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for you, I’m sorry for me … Sorry.” He walked back through the tables, where everyone sat quietly.

  “Thank you Kenny Hauser,” Gooker snapped. “In New Jersey, call Bigelow 6-5800. Operators on duty, waiting for your call …”

  Kenny came back to our table, but he didn’t sit down. “I’m going now,” he said to Joan “You can come with me or you can stay here. Want to come with me?”

  “No,” she said.

  “You’ll get someone to drive you home?

  “Or I’ll walk.”

  Kenny started to leave. I jumped up and joined him. I put an arm around his shoulder, an unwelcome arm. Maybe he wanted to be seen stomping out in protest. When I joined him, it looked like we were going out to the parking lot for a smoke.

  “It can’t end like this,” I said. We were out among the cars. There’d been a shower. The parking lot was wet. A whoosh of spray accompanied the convoys of trucks headed into the city. All that wasted rain.

  “I can’t believe it!” Kenny said. “I lost it! I never lose it! You saw me on television I let everyone else lose it. Then I take my shot. But in there … I really screwed up. And that half-assed Gooker! He’s a magician after all, isn’t he? Bringing us back like this. I didn’t know what I was getting into.”

  “But you’re not sorry you came. Not really.”

  “I don’t know George. Hell … There’s something to it. God knows …”

  “Maybe this’ll sound stupid, but it’s late, we’ve had some drinks and … it seems right now that the saddest thing is that there are classes that … don’t have reunions.”

  He didn’t say that he agreed. But he took my point. So I pushed my luck.

  “Come back in.”

  “No … it’s alright … you and me … everything … it’s alright. But I’m not going back in there.” Still, he lingered, leaned against his car, not opening the door. “So … how’s your father?”

  “He’s planning on exploring America in a mobile home. You believe it?”

  “No!”

  “There’s more. He’s doing it with Pauline Kennedy.”

  “Amazing.” Somehow we were close again. Those old conversations. Who said what. Who was in love. Confidences and confessions. It’s kind of neat.
>
  “Come on back inside,” I said, signaling back towards the restaurant. Someone opened the door and we heard music from inside, Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs singing “Stay.” God the D.J. was on the job. “I guess they’re dancing now.”

  “Or they could be watching American Graffiti,” Kenny retorted. “Which this whole evening resembles. Watch out for ‘Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.’ Your old man really traveling with the dragon lady?”

  I told him about the presidents. And the vice presidents. We played with it for awhile: it was that kind of idea. Once you heard it you were hooked. We laughed about it. Then he stepped into the car, shaking his head.

  “Well,” he said, turning the key. “God bless America.”

  “Excuse me,” someone said. It was Pauline Kennedy. She was the one who’d let the music out into the parking lot. “Would you mind driving me home, Kenny?”

  “No problem.” He shot a glance at me, just a quick one, and I stifled a laugh. He was riding home with the woman he’d just called “the dragon lady.” He got out to open the door for her. But we kept standing there on the edge of the party, the three of us, close enough to catch the music that drifted from inside, and to hear it mix with the sound of the trucks barreling down the highway to New York. It was a rain-wet parking lot outside an over-priced “family portions” New Jersey restaurant in the Phil Rizzuto style. But no one was ready to leave.

  “I have something to say,” Pauline Kennedy said. “Before we go, a benediction. This is for both of you. It’s a funny thing about reunions. When you see a group of people go through high school, you say to yourself, here are the brilliant ones, here are the promising ones, here are the problems and so forth. The stars. The dunces. You attend a five-year reunion and you say to yourself, I’ll see if I guessed right. And then, you realize you need more time. Ten years—that’s when all the returns are in. But when ten years are over you say, maybe not. These things take time. Twenty years, at least. Well, this is twenty years and it seems to me that’ll take even longer to sort things out. Forever, perhaps. Anyway, more time. I’m giving you all more time. I hope you use it well. And that you keep in touch. It’s not so lonely then. Never lose touch.”