Reminiscing with Liz

I’m worn down by all the holiday festivities and spent today just responding to seasonal greetings from old friends. I usually have the best memory (for things that occurred 40 years ago, not 40 minutes ago) and evoke sighs of pleasant memories by reminding them of events that had slipped through the cracks of their minds. Once in a while, they return the favor.

In this case, it bordered on the bizarre. Liz was a year behind me in school, but we overlapped in an extracurricular activity. We became friends and even dated a couple of times. I believe I recounted one of these episodes in a previous blog, owing to the humor in what a debacle that was. It seemed like we wanted to get something going at various junctures, but it was like trying to make a campfire with wet wood. The underlying friendship has endured all these decades, however. We were destined to be pals.

Liz brought up class reunions in our recent exchange of messages, which reminded me of something I had wanted to ask her. “Was Marisa at your last reunion?”

There was a palpable pause before I got the IM message that she was typing. I tried to remember if Marisa was among the many who Liz had told me were all wrong for me. The odds were good since she approved of few. “Better you should be asking about Annette.” That brought things into focus and opened a door I had sealed long ago.

Both girls were in our extracurricular group. Annette was the porcelain doll of delicate beauty, a la Audrey Hepburn. Marisa was smokin’ hot in the Sophia Loren mode. At first, Annette and I exchanged little flirtations. She was very sweet and somewhat shy. Then, at one group meeting, Marissa signaled interest with the subtlety of a howitzer. Game over.

Far be it from Liz to mind her own business. The second Marisa cornered me, I could feel Liz’s eyes boring into the back of my skull. And, shortly thereafter, she had me pinned up against the wall in the stairwell, extolling the virtues of Annette and warning me of the evils of Marisa. She pretty much confirmed my own thoughts, and virtues weren’t high on the check off list of post pubescent males.

The thing with Marisa was like a bronco ride. I was thrown quickly, came out battered and was still glad I went for it.

Not much later, Annette’s family moved to another part of town and I would have only infrequent and brief encounters with her, usually limited to me saying “hi” and smiling and her snarling. I told Liz I didn’t understand that because we had never really gotten anything going. Liz just threw her hands up in the air, which was Liz-talk for “Men!”

But, that wasn’t the weird part. Years later, I was away at college. My mother called to say that the daughter of one of her good friends was getting married and, since I was also close to the family (not from my viewpoint), I should come in for the wedding. We fought back and forth for weeks and finally my mother played her trump card. Since she had been living in Atlantic City (a pre-gambling dump), she walked everywhere and hadn’t been using her car. I could have it if I came back in for the wedding.

Two factors came into play. I was working my way through college and could barely afford a car that would run with any consistency. I carried quarts of various fluids in the trunk of my then current ride for replenishment every other day.

Secondly, my mother had a penchant for hot cars. Most people assumed I had inherited that from my father, but not so. She had worked as a crossing guard and selling Tupperware to buy this bomb (used) and I coveted it long before I had my license. And, after that, since she’d never let me have the keys. I longed for that car and took the deal.

I flew standby and just barely made it home in time to get ready. She ripped me about that, along with the length of my hair (it was the 60s) and mod style of my suit. But, I told myself it would be worth it just to drive her car over to Philly for the wedding. Where was it, by the way?

Her boyfriend was taking us. We have to talk about the car, anyway.

We do? So talk. Later.

Maurice arrived in a navy blue Lincoln, charcoal suit with dove grey vest, patent leather shoes, pink silk shirt and a diamond stickpin in his tie. My mother introduced us. We shook hands politely and tacitly decided to despise each other.

It was a long ride to Philly. Maurice strained to ask questions, feigning interest in me, I mumbled monosyllable responses and my mother reached over the seat to swat at me.

We finally arrived at a colossal building that resembled a Moorish castle. The inside was divided into vast reception halls. I gave a silent prayer of thanks that they had decided to have the actual ceremony prior to those outside the immediate family arriving.

We went to our assigned table and my mother introduced me to several matronly women who apparently applied makeup with a trowel and marinated themselves in cologne. I’m sure they were all very nice people, but the last thing a teenage boy wants is to be bear-hugged by some elderly, commodious woman he doesn’t know and suffocated in her cleavage. About half of them had cranky husbands who immediately started in with snide remarks about my longish hair. This is fun.

Tables took turns availing themselves of the buffet line. We were among the last. But then, it dawned on me. This was like a Roman feast. With an open bar! I had been subsiding on Spaghetti-Os and stale beer for the past few years. It was nirvana. Or, at the very least, a feeding frenzy.

I returned to the table with a plate piled to an altitude intended to just clear the chandeliers and a tall scotch & soda. Everyone at the table stopped eating and stared. How can I describe the look on my mother’s face?

She confiscated the drink, gave it a second thought and then dragged me out into the hallway. “We’re not barbarians!” Well, I couldn’t speak for her, but… “I don’t care what you do, but stay away from my friends.” Deal! “And away from the bar.” Yeah, that’ll happen.

Fortunately, it was a large event and the room was crammed with hundreds. I had little problem slithering from bar to bar and staying out of her sight. But, what goes in must come out. The rest rooms were accessed through the broad hallway that was common to all the rooms.

I took care of business and had just reached the entrance to our room when I thought I heard a sibilant attention getter emanate from across the hall. I stole a quick look, but there was only a man in a tux and a bride at the doorway to the room opposite us, seemingly awaiting a cue to march in to “Here comes the bride” and commence their ceremony. If there had been an attempt to communicate, it couldn’t have been directed at me. “Pssst, Henry.” There it was again and there was no mistaking the intended recipient.

I looked. The man was staring at the bride, a mix of puzzlement and alarm on his face. She was looking at me. A flicker of recognition flashed in my scotch-soaked brain. I checked the signage outside their hall for confirmation. It was indeed Annette and, I assume, her father preparing to give her away.

“Come over here.” I was frozen. The man hissed something to her, gesticulately wildly toward the door. She ignored him. “Come here, now!”

I ambled over cautiously, taking care to stay out of range of the man who appeared well past furious and rapidly coming up on homicidal. “Remember me? Annette?”

What was the right play here? “Yes and congratulations.” “You look great.” Or maybe, “My name isn’t Henry.” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t “Uh…what doya want?” because that’s what I said and she burst into tears just before tearing down the hall to disappear into a rest room.

Her father whirled on me. “Who the #### are you?”

That’s an easy one. “Henry.”

He appeared torn between strangling me and chasing after his daughter. Fortunately, he chose the latter. I took the opportunity to dart for the safety of our banquet hall. It was a weird night and not just because I later insisted upon using the fire exit to meet my mother at the car in the parking lot.

And, I didn’t return to Cincinnati in her old car because it was undriveable. Years of sitting idle and uncared for in the ocean air had reduced it to a heap of rust and dry-rotted rubber.

Of course, I had never related any of this to Liz. I revised my inquiry, per her input. “So okay, was Annette or Marisa at your last reunion?”

“Neither, although we did spend some time talking about Marisa and decided she was the class slut. No one missed her not being there.”

I sincerely doubt that.