Рита Браун - Pawing Through The Past

Bonnie was staring at the huge superlative photos. "You know who I miss? Aurora Hughes. What a good soul."

"I suppose with each reunion we'll miss a few more," Rex bluntly said.

"What a happy thought, you twit." Bonnie shook her head.

"Hell, Baltier, people die. For some, Charlie could have died even earlier."

Susan asked, "Remember the rumor that Charlie had an illegitimate child in our junior year?"

Rex shrugged. "Yeah."

Harry said, "Guys talk. You say things to each other you wouldn't say to us. Any ideas on who the mother was-or is, I should say?"

"No," Rex replied. "He dated a lot of girls. Raylene Ramsey was wild about him but she didn't leave school and she didn't gain weight. Wasn't her."

"Yeah, we thought the same thing," Susan said.

Bonnie dabbed the sugar crumbs from the corners of her mouth. "It doesn't matter. Let's concentrate on the good times."

"I'm for that. When's the bar open?" Rex held up his coffee cup.

"Six o'clock."

"I could be dead by then." He laughed as Bitsy, Chris, Bob, and Dennis joined their group. He slipped a flask from his pocket, taking a long swig.

"If you keep drinking the way you do, that's a possibility." Baltier let him have it.

"S-s-s-s." Rex made a burning sound, putting his finger on her skin.

36

By nine-thirty the whole group, including Fair, was called to attention by BoomBoom.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention."

She didn't immediately get it.

Bob Shoaf cupped his hands to his lips. "Shut up, gang!"

The chatter frittered away, and all eyes turned toward BoomBoom, standing on a table. Modestly dressed by her standards, in a blue cashmere turtleneck, not too tight, a lovely deep-mustard skirt, and medium-height heels, she presented an imposing figure. She exuded an allure that baffled Harry, who saw BoomBoom as a silly goose. Harry wrote it off to the awesome physical asset that had given Olivia Ulrich her nickname. This was a mistake.

Women like Harry had a lot to learn from women like BoomBoom, who prey on male insecurities and unspoken dreams. Harry expected everyone, including men, to be rational, to know where lay their self-interest and to act on that self-interest. No wonder Mary Minor Haristeen was often surprised by people.

"Welcome, class of 1980." BoomBoom held out her hands as if in benediction. As the assemblage roared she turned her palms toward them for quiet. "All of us who worked on this reunion are thrilled that all of you have returned home. Mike Alvarez and Mignon, his wife, flew all the way from Los Angeles to be with us, winning Most Distance Traveled." Again the group roared approval.

As BoomBoom spoke the homilies reserved for such occasions, Harry, standing at the back with Mrs. Murphy and Tucker, surveyed her class. They were a spoiled generation.

Unlike Miranda's generation, who emerged from the tail end of World War II only to be dragged through Korea, Harry's generation knew the brief spasm of Desert Storm. Luckily they had missed Vietnam, which forever scarred its generation.

Everyone expected and owned one or two vehicles, one or more televisions, one or more computers, one or more telephones, including mobile phones. They had dishwashers, washers and dryers, workout equipment, stereo systems, and most had enough money left over for personal pleasures: golf, riding horses, fly-fishing in Montana, a week or two's vacation in Florida or Hawaii during the worst of winter. They expected to send their children to college and they were beginning, vaguely, to wonder if there'd be any money left when their retirement occurred.

Most of them were white, about ten percent were black. She could discern no difference in expectations although there were the obvious differences in opportunities but even that had improved since Miranda's time. Walter Trevelyn, her Most Likely to Succeed partner, a café-au-lait-colored African-American, did just that. He was the youngest president of a bank in Richmond specializing in commercial loans, a bank poised to reap the rewards of the growth Richmond had experienced and expected to experience into the twenty-first century.

About half the class was working class, a gap in style as much as money, but those members also had one or more vehicles, televisions, and the like.

The sufferings her generation endured were self-inflicted, setting apart the specters of gender and race. She wondered what would happen if they ever really hit hard times: a great natural catastrophe, a war, a debilitating Depression.

Susan slid up next to her. "You can't be that interested in what BoomBoom is saying."

Harry whispered back, "Just wondering what our generation will do if the proverbial shit hits the proverbial fan."

"What every other generation of Americans has done: we'll get through it."

Harry smiled a halfway funny smile. "You know, Susan, you're absolutely right. I think too much."

"I can recall occasions where you didn't think at all," the tiger cat laconically added to the conversation.

Tucker, bored with the speeches, wandered to the food tables to eat up the crumbs on the floor.

"Harry!" BoomBoom called out.

Harry, like a kid caught napping in school, sheepishly blinked. "What?"

"The senior superlatives are asked to come forward."

"Oh, BoomBoom, everyone knows what I looked like then and now. You all go ahead."

Susan, her hand in the middle of Harry's back, propelled her toward the two big photographs as she peeled off to stand in front of her superlative, Best All-Round. Under the old photo the caption read Susan Diack. Under the new one, Susan Tucker. She glanced up at her high-school photograph. She and Dennis Rablan sat on a split-rail fence, wearing hunting attire, a fox curled up in her lap. Unlike Harry, she had changed physically. She was ten pounds heavier, although not plump. It was rather that solidness that comes to many in the middle thirties. Her hair was cut in the latest fashion. As a kid she had worn one long plait down her back. Dennis had grown another four inches.

Harry first stood at the Most Athletic, sharing a joke with Bob Shoaf, whom she liked despite his silly swagger. Then she dashed over to Most Likely to Succeed with Walter Trevelyn, who gave her a kiss on the cheek.

Everyone laughed as the superlatives laughed at their own young selves.

Then BoomBoom walked from her superlative, Best Looking, to Most Talented. "Folks, let's remember Aurora Hughes. Hank, what do you remember most about Aurora?" She turned to Hank Bittner, the Most Talented.

"Her kindness. She had a way of making you feel important." He smiled, remembering the girl dead almost twenty years.

Hank, talented though he was as a youth, had prudently chosen not to keep on with his rock band. Instead he moved to New York, began work in a music company, and had risen to become a powerful maker and breaker of rock groups.

Next BoomBoom walked to Most Popular. Meredith McLaughlin, late because of a prior commitment, had just skidded under her photographs. She glanced up at herself, young and old, and twice her former size to boot.