Reunion (13 page)

“It's in your bible too, the prohibition against pork,” answered Malinche, “you respect THOU SHALT NOT KILL, no? Why not the prohibition against eating pork? What do you do, selectively choose what you want?”

Mary Alice thinking it over for a long moment, sucking on it like a coughdrop, then laughing this glitzy, piggy-wiggy laugh, “Yeah, I guess that's the way I do it. It's a lot easier that way.”

Buzz imagining her naked, and then clothed in seduction-gear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he could see her in black lace thigh-highs and show-it-all lace bras, foot-scrunching highest heels,
totally orgasmic, you touch her and it's like blast-off time at Cape Canaveral, moon-shot on target every time.

Willy up at the mike now, flicking it a little with the middle finger on his right hand, “Testing, one, two, three … testing, one, two, three … ”

Everyone getting kind of amused. He was kidding, wasn't he?

The noise-level going down, Willy just waiting, watching, not another word, like a threat in his sentinel silence, like without saying a word he was saying “Calm it down now, you guys, absolute and total silence … or heads are gonna roll,” finally the only noise left the waiters and the plates, big casseroles of cheesy green beans now appearing, Malinche and Buzz finally getting their plates, Fred coming rolling back in Rubberman Mime Troupe style.

“What's going on? Whose funeral is it this time?”

“Yours, if you don't pipe down,” said Ellen, pulling him back into his seat, Fred chewing green (chlorophyll) gum, but the resinous juniper berry smell back on the air again, Fred really going, going, gone by now. He must have been having a few quick ones at the bar, there wasn't enough room in any sneaky little silver flask in the world for this kind of massive swoop down into semi-coma.

“See,” Willy started in, “all you fuckers expect me to be what I am … what you think I am,” like Edward G. Robinson right out of Little Caesar, “and that's the role I was cast in by …” starting to change now, the ‘da's' getting civilized into ‘the's', pronunciation more pronounced, dwelling on, crisping up his consonants, “The Socio Economic Casting department. Every immigrant group going through the same metamorphosis,
minority slowly becoming majority, like the Latin-speaking minority making their way into Etruscan Italy. Etruscan what? you say. The Greeks replacing the proto-Indo-Mediterraneans—and you always thought that Greece was always Greek,” reverting back for the sake of emphasis, bi-polaring back and forth between Little Caesar and Oliver as Hamlet, Gielgud as Lear, “not that us wallios are taking over now. We've had our day, and the next wave is moving in,” now very Oxonian, like he'd been taking accent-coaching or something, or full-time was watching all the films on the British film rack at the local video store, “it's like geological strata, really, layer after layer, after layer, you can see the far-distant future all around you now. Chinatown down on Wentworth, take another look,” throwing in a sneering “man,” at the tail end of a barrage of Oxonian, man, man, man, “or all the Vietnamese, the Arabs in Detroit, the mosques sprouting up,” looking over to Buzz, going beyond Chicago altogether into Bedford-Sty. “You're riding the wave of da future, Buzz-man,” man, man, man, “and I'm an ambivalent archipelago of Past becoming Archaeological Dig,” Fred snapping alive for a moment, standing up, “What business are you in anyhow, Willy?”

“Guillermo to you, bippy,” answered Willy, an instant rata-tat-tat back, “the consulting business. I specialize in ambiguity. But sometime about twenty years ago I became aware of the American sociological-casting system, and decided to adapt it to my own purposes. I could have even changed my mug, I suppose, but instead, just to make it a little more tricky …” reaching up behind his ear, a white dove suddenly appearing in his hand.

Freddy quietly amazed into almost-soberness, “No shit, this guy's amazing … ”

“Just to make it a little more tricky,” the dove flying out into the room, out the door, like it had been trained to do just that, “I decided to keep the face and change the spirit. Lots of visits to Sicily, si, posso parlare italiano, e aprendi molto sobre las glorias del pasado … everyone put down by their alienation from their collective, historical past. But once you plug into your larger history you realize that all you are is a wounded historical knee full of aureoles and coronas. I mean we were the Irish Middle Class, a few disguised Polskis, and then the marginalized Italians whose destinies you could more or less predict in a world of not Head-Start, but No Start at all. But then you can foil history, once you realize what it is, manufacture your own sociology, and,” stopping, head down, Buzz feeling the tremendous ancient melancholy of the man, a Vesuvian melancholy that reached right into the fiery center of his soul, “well, I won't bore you with the Bocanegran Theory of Sociological Predestination … but, in spite of,” reverting back to West Side Story street-hype again, Buzz thinking Mr. Master-Actor, Hot and Cold Running Emotions, “your Irish-Polock contempt for us wallios, it's kinda nice to be back with yas anyhow,” ending with a very Churchillian “Godspeed!,” V-for-Victory sign, too bad he didn't have a cigar.

Buzz suddenly overcome with emotion, getting up, “Bravo! Bravo!” like Swarthout in the old days doing Carmen, everyone else following Buzz's lead, getting up and applauding, Buzz going over to Willy and giving him an abraço, feeling all this kinship with him, more than the rest of them with their
controlled Irish perfectionism, “Molto bene, molto bene,” Willy back away from the microphone now, tears in his eyes, “All these years, buddy, let's not lose touch again!”

“OK, OK,” said Buzz.

Timmy O'Toole up to the microphone again, like he slept with a microphone in his hand already.

“Great show!! Somewhat unexpected. But a great show … let's see, who can we have next, pointing at Anne Pritchard, this tall, gawky woman with the short white hair who Buzz remembered solely as a tall, gawky girl with short blonde hair and these horrible Mortimer Snerd buck teeth.

Getting up awkwardly. Flat shoes and taffeta dress that could have been right out of 1945. She started fumbling around with the height-screw on the mike too, Timmy, somehow impatient and ironic with her, coming over and adjusting it in three quick, continuous movements, Annie standing there, looking around.

“You probably all remember me as Ms. Bucktoothed. Well, I had um fixed about five years ago. I wanted to just have them all pulled out. You know, all these cavities and I was just sick of all the pain. But this dentist in Palos Heights convinced me that I ought to have um all capped. So I had um capped and … ”

Stopped. Stood there. Smiled this big toothpaste commercial smile.

And that was it. Stepped away from the microphone and sat back down.

“Jesus, what a fucking idiot,” said Fred under his breath, but he had this deep, hollow, projective voice, Anne turning around and answering, “Thanks, whoever you are, the same to you … ”

“But what has happened to her in the last fifty years?” Malinche asked Buzz.

“Not much, I guess,” said Buzz feeling really depressed. It was like Ms. Harelip, Señora Crooked-Ear, Crossed-Eyed, a deformity become a whole lifetime. Louise Gentry up at the microphone now, this tall, hefty old woman, totally unrecognizable, a total stranger. Buzz could have sat next to her on a round-the-world flight from New York to Seattle via Paris, Belgrade, Athens, Karachi and Tokyo and never recognized her.

He remembered her as all tennis rackets and short white skirts, sports cars and the South Shore Country Club, the only one in the whole class with money-money-money, her father in real estate or oil or … something … but always full of all this promise of big windy estates on top of pine tree bluffs facing sunbright oceans, fulfillment-fulfillment-fulfillment.

But she kind of waddled and her face was round like a clam shell and the old attractive rich-girl overbite gave her the Mortimer Snerd bucktooth look that Anne Pritchard had just gotten rid of.

“Hi, everybody. It's been a while, huh? Well, I had, have, thank God, twelve children [everybody applauding, cheering, a couple of shoot-the-shoots whistles], I mean that's what we were supposed to do, wasn't it, I mean just outnumber them, whoever ‘they' were, that's the hazy part, and there wasn't really much choice. Either you became a nun or practiced abstinence or sinned or … I liked, like sex … and Jeremey, God rest his soul [a moment of bowed-head remembrance], liked it too, and they just kept coming and we lived in South Shore in this big house on the lake, but then things began to ‘change,' you know, so I'm
out by Maple Lake now and all the kids are gone, and it's pretty in the fall, the maples are still there, some of them, and it's great to see you all, and … ”

She started to cry, all awkward and teary-eyed, a handkerchief suddenly appearing out of her wide nightgownish sleeves, and she sat back down, all embarrassed, at the same time smiling, as if this were the biggest event that had happened to her in the last couple of decades anyhow …

“Jesus, what a brood mare!” said Fred.

“Why don't you go smoke a cigar or something!” Ellen answering impatiently, but Fred was unfazed. He was always unfazed, unfazeable …

“Nice yams!” Buzz said to Malinche, although they weren't really yamish at all, but more like caramel corn, and the green-beans and cheese had been reduced to a sort of flavorless vegetable slime.

“It's an interesting experience,” she said, always The Experimentalist, turn a toe into a jaw-hinge, a flap of gut into an artificial penis, inject gut-fat into a radically mastectomied breast where all they'd left after the surgery was the nipple. That's how she put up with him and all his sexual performance problems, his tintinitis and trick shoulder that always kept coming out of joint, his carpal tunnel syndrome (from too much typing), his sleep and elation-depression problems … what was a little overcandied yam next to the sheer-rockwall ascent that was her daily reality.

“How many grandchildren?” Mary Alice screamed at Louise Gentry, practically splitting Buzzy's eardrum.

“Five,” said Louise apologetically, “they're all like getting degrees or getting promoted or [apologetically, ashamed, voice to almost a whisper] divorced or … ”

She stopped, choked up, flexed her hands like little talking mouths and sat down, get re-interested in her food.

“What I want to know is what comes after that final OR!” said Fred. “Really, Fred, stop it or I'm out of here,” said Ellen.

And she meant it.

Fred up again, “Oh, dem tobacco fields is a calling, Old Black Joe,” as he left Mary Alice smiling a big happy porker smile, “He is funny, you have to admit … ”

“It wears thin,” said Ellen, as this heavy-looking mostly bald guy who looked like a retired exec of some kind, got up. Even the way he handled himself, I walk down the hall, man, the hall stands at attention.

“Who's that?” asked Buzz.

“Curt, Curt Baumgardner,” said Mary Alice, “He used to be so cute, remember?”

“Well, I hope he wasn't ‘cute' for me,” said Buzz, although he did kind of remember him that way, this delicate little blond cutesy pooh, kind of shy, slim, ethereal, like you could spray him with plaster, stick him on a wall in Chartres and he'd fit right in.

“I expected, you know, some remembrances of Time Past, you guys and gals, but all I'm getting is demographics here. You'd think all we were was a fish farm or something [mixed hoots and applause]. Like no one's said a word about Father Brannigan, the altar boy's all-purpose guide to budding puberty. All those early morning pre-Mass talk-sessions about ‘feelings' and budding ‘desires' and how to deal with them … although I
must say that at least physically he stayed in his corner of the ring and I stayed in mine. But there was an awful lot of, let's call it ‘mind-probing' going on full time. Which gets you thinking about the joys and dangers of celibacy. No wonder Kazantzakis-whatever-his-name-was's
Last Temptation of Christ
made such a splash. Because if we were/are imitating Christ, and Christ was sexual, then celibacy is reduction ab absurdam, right?”

“Tell us about YOU!” someone in the back screamed.

Female voice.

“Who was that?” Buzz asked Mary Alice.

“What am I, the coach here?” answered Mary Alice.

“Answer the man, come on!” said Lloyd.

“Franny O'Toole,” said Mary Alice, then an aside to Lloyd loud enough for everyone within a two table range to hear, “If you're not more respectful, my man, when we get home, it's back into the cage in the basement for a week … ”

“I'd welcome it!” said Lloyd, “it's a fact, when they've redesigned zoos, they've tried to get tigers out of what they'd always considered their cramped, inhumane cages, out into a ‘natural habitat' environment, and they didn't want to leave … ”

“Myself?” said Curt, “am I even supposed to have a self? Or aren't I just supposed to be some sort of anonymous cell in this vast Mystical Body [some applause, cheers, some hisses and boos]? Well, I had an auto-parts business out here on the southwest side. Which was a great place to have it seeing that Chicago's turned into this vast escape-from-the-inner-city MESS [more mixed cheers and boos]. Now I'm thinking of retiring to Scottsdale, Arizona, which is a suburb of Phoenix, kind of … only
do I want to trade the drama of four seasons, for the boredom of one and a half … ”

“Please explain that!” screamed Franny O'Toole.

“OK, I was hoping you'd ask,” said Curt, “in the lower part of Arizona—and I'm not talking about Flagstaff, which is a four-season town—you've got broil and baste, that's it … [lots of yak-yak almost-laughter]. If you wanna be a tourist among tourists, fine, but with all my ties to Chicago … [sarcastically holding his arms out to embrace the lot of them] … with all my ties to Chicago … [a quick little coda ending] I think … I'd better move to Fresno … the raisin capital of the world … ”