Good Riddance(15)

I asked Geneva on my way out, loaded down with leftovers, “If I went, how would we get there?”

“Car service, of course.”

Later, I asked myself if agreeing to go would kill me. The fiftieth would never come around again. Would in-person attendance help me understand why reunions were so magical to my mother that none could be skipped?

I called Geneva in the morning. I said okay, I’d go this once. But please know I was not in any way endorsing a future documentary. I added two conditions: It would be a day trip versus an overnight stay. And that we’d leave New York early enough for me to return two books to the Pickering library that had been overdue for a year.





8


Teacher’s Pet



In the back seat, on the cold, dull gray ride to Pickering, Geneva declared, “Your mother didn’t have great boundaries.”

“Patently obvious,” I said.

“At the same time, kind of a snob.”

“In what way?”

“Status. Jobs. Successes and failures. Her scribbles made a lot out of what they ended up doing versus their stated goals at eighteen.”

This is when I learned that Geneva, dressed in voluminous stiff black silk that fell straight from the shoulders and a fur-collared red coat, had made a study of the graduates’ dashed dreams. The class of 1968, she reported, reading from her iPad, had submitted these answers to the question Ambition?: Approximately one-quarter had answered either “happiness” or “success.” Girls had predicted wife, teacher, beautician, nurse, dress designer, bookkeeper, secretary, stewardess, store buyer, social worker, occupational therapist, one professor, and one opera singer. The boys had higher reaches, among them architect, artist, author, aviation mechanic, foreign diplomat, farmer, doctor, lawyer, Major League pitcher, “take over my father’s business,” navy, army, air force, forest ranger, hunting guide, traveling salesman, chemist, journalist, draftsman, mechanic, TV technician, aeronautical engineer, foreman at General Motors, director, millionaire. The more philosophical answers included: “Improvement.” “To see the world.” “To go to Hawaii.” “Success in math.” “A useful life.” “Early retirement.” “To be friends with everyone.”

“Talk about gender stereotyping. It makes me wonder about the school’s guidance counselors,” Geneva said.

I agreed, yes, very traditional roles. But at this moment, my main takeaway was that the yearbook was no longer in a bank vault. “You brought it with you?” I asked.

“Of course! What’s the expression—‘You can’t tell the players without a scorecard’?”

“And what do you intend to do with it?”

“Get feedback.”

“In what respect feedback?”

“To the comments, obviously. What else is there? What’s my story? Would I have fished the yearbook out of the trash if it were just a bunch of head-and-shoulder shots?”

“No way that’s coming with us.”

Geneva nudged the briefcase as far from me as the back seat floor allowed. “I don’t think that’s your decision.”

“Really? Then good luck! You’ll be like the evil fairy who shows up at Sleeping Beauty’s christening: ‘Nice to meet you, unsuspecting guy who came looking for a nice time. Would you like to see what snarky Mrs. Maritch wrote about you?’”

“I don’t interpret her comments that way.”

“Oh, really? Who’s fifty pounds heavier, who’s a failure, who’s wearing the same dress she wore at the last reunion?”

Of course, Geneva would have to introduce a mediator. “Sir?” she asked, leaning toward our driver. “Let’s say at seventeen your ambition was—I don’t know—to head up General Motors, but then reality set in and you ended up as a driver for a car service. Then an ex-teacher wrote ‘drives for a car service’ next to your yearbook photo, would you consider that a put-down?”

He turned off the radio but didn’t answer.

“I was being hypothetical. I have no idea what you put down under ‘Ambition’ in your yearbook.”

The driver said, “We didn’t do yearbooks in my country,” quickly amending that America was his country now.

I asked where he’d come from.

“From one of the oldest civilizations in the history of the world!”

“Greece?” I tried.

“Rome,” said Geneva.

“Egypt!”

“I’ve never been,” said Geneva. “And I guess it’s too late for that now. What a mess.”

I thought it best to get back to my anti-yearbook argument since we were now one exit from Pickering. “It’s either it or me,” I told her.

“What’s either it or you?”

“The Monadnockian. Either it stays in the car or I do.”

“Why do you care? You threw it out!”

“I’m not protecting the yearbook! I’m protecting the feelings of the graduates. Good luck enlisting them for a documentary after shoving their faces in it!”

“How else am I going to identify people? What about context? It’s going to be a bunch of sixty-something-year-olds—”