Page 66 - WTP Vol. VIII #4

When Judd received Roger’s invitation about a mini reunion at his century-old house tucked
in a quaint district of town, it said, “please bring
your ‘plus one’—if they can stand it.” This was pure Roger, witty with stinging insight, and somehow the message summoned the spired dorms and verdant, cloistered spaces of Oberon pleasantly back from some hidden chamber in his mind. The warning was not altogether in jest. The gathering was strictly a classmate affair, so the dialogue was bound to be dominated by their illustrious college years a genera- tion before. The spouses and significant others would be subjected to a barrage of inane stories, many related in code by then because they were so familiar. Anyone on the outside would scarcely imagine why such scenes, stripped of all the essential components of shared history, might be so treasured.
Elise sensibly declined to accompany Judd there, as she was rather shy by nature, and only seemed at ease with their mutual friends. If the roles were switched, he might have done the same. When Judd joined her at parties thrown by people from her Hon- duran home town, sometimes they would all switch to their provincial language and laugh, while he des- perately tried to discern the context. So he would be on his own with the alums which had its advantages and drawbacks. There would be no worries about her inclusion but he would be deprived of the incontro- vertible proof he had a life, and of her complimentary sweetness and far superior social instincts.
It was a lovely June afternoon so this was to be an Al Fresco feast. In the upper Midwest, one did not take the magnificent weather for granted. Judd felt the hard won gratitude that comes from knowing there were probably only seven or eight such days the whole season, with just the right temperature and humidity and absence of clouds. They had all slogged through an interminable winter and wet, chilly Spring to savor this. It was like an emergence from the un- derworld.
On the drive across the west side, Judd mused about how long it had been since he’d seen them, scattered as they were across the city and exurbs, how easy
it was in your 40’s to lose touch. The excuse for the whole event was that Noel Cummings had flown in from Brussels for a conference and who knew when they might all be able to gather again, for a seminar or a basketball game at the alma mater a few hundred
miles away? Roger’s wife Carmen had once owned her own Portuguese restaurant, the Fado Café, so one could count on the food and drink being impec- cable. Judd hoped the old esprit de corps would still be there, diminished perhaps by the rigors of middle age, but with memories still near enough to keep the bond intact.
Wearing an apron that pronounced “Beware—Hus- band in Training,” Roger warmly greeted Judd and, being indisposed with a tray full of bread and cheese, pointed down the long hallway. “Now the gang’s all here. Hopefully they haven’t demolished anything yet.”
The house was one of those symmetrical bungalows presenting a wide stone porch, with a surrounding facade of dark brick like a rampart. It was neither spacious nor cramped inside, with a solid maple staircase at the edge of the living room, a whole wall of books and a lancet stained-glass window in the corner. Judd had so seldom been there that he always marveled how quietly beautiful the place was, with the kids elsewhere, still as a monastery.
After the requisite round of hugs, they all sat under a fine canopy in the hedged backyard. The checkered linen tablecloths had perhaps been salvaged from the restaurant, though Judd recalled dining there only once before the children were born. They were happy to see each other, and there was a good flow of minor chitchat, meandering from one topic to the next with an almost antic momentum like a set of dominoes. The interplay skated on the surface for a while. The old chestnuts would not emerge until the port and chianti entered their bloodstreams. Judd was glad
not to have to say too much, could almost assume the pose of a spectator. The back and forth managed to sum up the essence of this era in their lives, minus the divorces, financial reversals, and other calamities which were elided.
That Judd could not feel the attachment quite as
much as the rest of them didn’t seem to matter. He couldn’t rightly say he was a full member of the pack himself anymore, though he’d been thick as thieves with them at one time, meeting in the bars and going to the avant-garde films and rock concerts. They had gotten each other past the gauntlet of exams and heartbreaks. It was true that he’d always been on the periphery, never getting completely comfortable in one clique or another, with the introvert’s keen neces-
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Plus One
tHoMas BeNz