Chapter 77: Reunion

Saturday, June 25, 1983

Intellectually I knew that my family’s meltdown was not my fault, but rather the fault of my insane brother and his equally culpable mother. I was as much a victim as anybody. Emotionally, I knew otherwise. They were all the same people as on my first trip through, only I was different. That made it my fault, ipso facto, ergo sum, quod erat demonstradum, etc. etc. etc. Intellect had nothing to do with it.

Marilyn helped me. She simply couldn’t understand my family; she had no idea how to react to them. Her family was so much closer. It was one of the things I found so appealing on my first time around. I had spent far more time with them than my own family.

Over the next few weeks things continued to fall apart back at the Buckman homestead. Dad had been serious about not letting the pair of them back into the house, and Mom had to load Hamilton into her car and spend the night at a motel. They stayed there until Monday, and then snuck in when Dad went to work. He got home and then threw them back out on the street. I heard from John Steiner that Dad was going a bit loco himself and wanted John to be his divorce lawyer. John had refused and had given him the name of a good divorce lawyer in Towson. Dad didn’t back down and Mom was served papers by the end of the week. John did mention that he didn’t think Dad knew anything about the Buckman Group, so presumably Suzie was keeping her counsel on that.

On the plus side, the only person in the family who knew my address was Suzie, and she had come to the realization that giving it out would be a really fucking bad idea! My dad had our phone number, but it was unlisted, so nobody else could get it. He didn’t call. Suzie told us that Mom was trying to enlist our aunts and uncles on her side of the fight, which probably wouldn’t work out so well, since they were all on Dad’s side of the family. I hadn’t seen or heard from them since the wedding, either, so presumably I was not one of the good guys as far as they were concerned.

Suzie asked me if I wanted to use this chance to get back together with my dad, but I killed that idea real damn quick! I didn’t have any use for him either. After putting up with this since I was fourteen, he had burned all his bridges with me. I knew that he loved Mom far more than he loved us kids. What if he decided that the way to get back in her good graces was to hurt my baby? I couldn’t believe that he would have the gumption to stay away from her for good. They’d get back together. No way was I about to chance it. I just didn’t trust him anymore.

What a damn nightmare!

There was nothing to do but slap a smile on my face and pretend everything was just peachy. On the plus side, it had been forever since I had really been involved with my family, other than my sister, so I still didn’t have anything to do with them. It was simply depressing, but it didn’t have any day-to-day impact on me. Marilyn worked at keeping my spirits up, and watching Charlie and Dum-Dum was amusing. I argued several times with my wife over which one of them was smarter, occasionally on different sides of the question. How much trouble could a twenty-month-old boy get into? The answer - an immense quantity!

Two weeks after the graduation we had our official housewarming party. Everybody from the Buckman Group was there, along with their families (not including Missy’s ex-husband), along with Andrea and Taylor and their families, Bill Marsbury and his foremen, some friends of Marilyn’s from her church, Tusker and Tessa and Bucky, and Barry Bonham and his family. We just kind of threw it open to anybody who wanted to come. Suzie showed up, too. The weather was fine, and we held it out on the back deck, which was brand new, and did hamburgers and hot dogs on an immense Weber gas fired grill Marilyn got me as a pre-Father’s Day gift. That and a couple of galvanized steel tubs full of ice, beer and soda, and a bunch of lawn chairs, was all we needed to have a very nice time. Even Dum-Dum got in the act. Somebody, probably one of the little kids, managed to let her out into the back yard without being put on her tie-out, and she ran romping all over the yard until Jake suckered her with a hamburger and we could grab her and re-incarcerate her in the laundry room. We already had the back yard staked off for a potential future swimming pool and fence but wanted to delay that for another year.

Marilyn was still making noises about another baby, which I had resigned myself to. I agreed that the next vacation was going to be a family vacation, maybe to Disney World in the fall, when Charlie turned two, and then over the winter we’d do a parent’s vacation and start working on our next child then. That got her so excited I got very lucky that night! If somebody had invented Viagra back then, I could have used it!

And then we had the next big event of the summer. Why I agreed to it I will never know. Marilyn certainly wanted to go, and Tusker and Tessa were behind it, and they talked Marilyn into pushing it. I think she got me to agree when I wasn’t wearing any pants, so by all rights, the contract was illegal and invalid. Still, I couldn’t get out of it.

It was 1983, and it was the 10^th Reunion of the Graduating Class of 1973 at Towson High School.

I had only gone to my 20^th reunion before, and that was because we had planned to be visiting Maryland that week anyway. On my first trip through, Towson High was something that I endured and survived. I hadn’t even bought a high school ring until my mother found out and forced me to buy one. Certainly, by the time the reunions started, I was hundreds of miles away, and had absolutely nothing in common with my old life.

I didn’t have any excuses this time. I had missed the 5^th reunion because I was living in North Carolina at the time, but now I was only twenty miles away or so. Either Tusker or Tessa must have given my new address to the planning committee since we found several invitations and reminders in the mail. Marilyn wrote them a check for two tickets without even asking me if I wanted to go.

It’s no use arguing with Marilyn when she gets something into her head. For proof of that, we only had to go back to Suzie’s graduation. This wasn’t going to be that bad, but it was probably going to be pointless. “Honey, it’s been ten years. Nobody will even remember who the fuck I was.”

“Tusker and Tessa will remember you!”

“That’s it! Nobody else will know me, that’s for sure,” I replied.

“How do you know that?”

I just smiled at her and shook my head. “Honey, I wasn’t even there half the time. The last couple of years, I spent half the day over at Towson State. Trust me; nobody will know who I am.”

“Well, I want to go, so you have to go.”

Why she wanted to go to a reunion of a school she had never attended mystified me, but so much about my wife always would mystify me. I sort of liked it most of the time. I just smiled and shrugged. “Okay, we’ll go. We can stay for an hour or so, and after we get tired of the blank stares at my name badge, we can leave and go out for dinner or something.”

Marilyn squealed happily and kissed me on the cheek, and then scampered off to call Tessa and tell her that we would be going. I just rolled my eyes.

The morning of the reunion, I told Marilyn that we would go, but to dress for going out to a nice dinner afterwards. I would dress casually - chinos and a dress shirt, no tie - and toss a sport coat in the back of the car. Marilyn decided on a button front long denim skirt and a peasant top. She wore some high heeled sandals to look classy, but she kept laughing about how we would end up staying the day at the reunion. She was up to something, but I had no idea what.

The one thing I wanted to do was to take my new toy. I had been over to Tusk Cycles a few months ago when one of his customers drove up in a Mercedes Benz 380 SL, a new one, and I saw it through his front window. Memories came flooding back of the 380, which I thought at the time was one of the most beautiful cars ever made. Even the way they built the hard top, with the lowered center section, looked exotic. I just stared at it through the window while my buddy dealt with his customer. The next day I drove down to Towson and went to the Mercedes Benz dealership.

They had one in the showroom, and it was like getting an instant erection! Back before, the idea that I could ever actually afford one of these cars was like the idea that I could ever actually become an astronaut and go to the moon. They only built them in the late Seventies through the mid-Eighties, and I always stared when I saw one. To me, they were the sexiest car around. I wanted to have a mid-life crisis so I could solve it by buying a sports car; never mind that I was nowhere near mid-life.

I left the dealership that day, but came back about a week later, and this time I convinced myself to take a test drive. I wasn’t going to buy one, but it wouldn’t hurt to drive one. The sales rep must have thought I was nuts, or maybe he had seen this before. I took the drive, which was sort of like a mechanical wet dream, and then left the dealership again. A week later I was out with Marilyn and Charlie, and I stopped into the dealership again to show her the car. I think the cat was out of the bag when the salesman smiled and said, “Welcome back, Mister Buckman.”

I looked guilty when Marilyn commented, “Been here before, have we?” I hemmed and hawed, and she just rolled her eyes and said, “Well, how much does it cost?”

“If you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it,” I told her.

She gave me a “Hmmppphh!” at that, and then looked at the sticker in the window, at which point she gave a small shriek and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me!” The sales rep never batted an eye; I at least had the good taste to blush with embarrassment. “Oh, hell, do what you want!” she said, shaking her head.

“Seriously?”

“It’s your money! Feel free to waste it!” She juggled a laughing Charlie and said, “Daddy’s being silly!”

So, I bought myself a dark blue 380 SLC model. Dealer prep - waiting for the check to clear - took a few days. The day I could pick it up, Marilyn and Charlie drove me down, and then I drove it back, stopping at Tusker’s to give him a ride. He agreed with me, it was like an orgasm on wheels.

So, if I was going to the reunion, I was taking the 380 and Marilyn and I would dress for an afternoon and evening out. The reunion was bound to be a bust, so we could do a date night afterwards. Marilyn had joined Our Lady of Grace over in Parkton and had a babysitter in the form of the fourteen-year-old daughter of a friend in the parish. Becky arrived around 11:00 or so, and Marilyn gave the poor girl a complete breakdown of Charlie’s entire life and every conceivable emergency. I finally rescued Becky by dragging Marilyn out the door.

The reunion was being held at the Loch Raven Tennis and Swim Club, north of Dulaney Valley Road on the Jarretsville Pike, north of the reservoir. Becky had assured us she would be fine for the afternoon and into the evening, and in fact was looking forward to it, since it was worth extra money for her. It was about a half hour drive to get there, and Marilyn had a rather self-satisfied smile on her face most of the time. I couldn’t figure it out, since I just couldn’t understand why Marilyn had wanted to go to my reunion. My wife was astonishingly unromantic about the schools she went to. She never went to any of her reunions, or even her graduations for that matter.

It was just before noon when we pulled into the parking lot. It was surprisingly full, with about a half dozen motorcycles parked over at one side. “It looks like Tusker and his friends are here already,” I told Marilyn, pointing at the bikes.

“I never have figured out how you ended up hanging out with the bikers! It’s not like you ride.”

“Not in a million years!” I said, laughing. “I might be an organ donor, but I want to hang on to them at least a little while longer. Listen, I’m just not that judgmental, and mostly they weren’t either. I remember one time when the vice principal, a real tool of an asshole, was giving out a lot of shit. He had this little VW Bug, so I rounded up a few of the bikers and a few of the lacrosse players, and we picked it up and carried it over to the school entrance and wedged it between a couple of the pillars at the front door, sideways, so it couldn’t be driven out. He was so pissed!”

“You’re so pleased with yourself over that, aren’t you?” she responded primly.

“You’re damn right I was pleased. I’ll bet you never did that with the nuns.” Marilyn was almost apoplectic at the thought, so I just laughed at her some more, and teased her about getting back at the nuns, perhaps by smacking them with rulers. Thank God I never had to put up with parochial schools!

I parked the car and we got out; I left my cane in the car for later. My knee was better early in the day, generally, so I might not need it until later. I reached out and we held hands as we walked across the parking lot. There were a couple of gargantuan tents behind what looked like a clubhouse, and several tennis courts and a swimming pool over to the right. Nobody was playing tennis or swimming, though, and it was a beautiful day, so it made me think that the reunion group had reserved the club for the day. Regardless, the only way to go in was through the clubhouse, so I opened the door and ushered Marilyn inside.

There was a big banner stretched across the far wall, ‘WELCOME BACK TOWSON HIGH 10 YEAR REUNION!’, and below that was a long table with what looked like spread out name tags. Behind the table were three girls, women actually, and they looked familiar. Also, on the table was a pitcher of beer and several Solo cups. I looked around the clubhouse for a second, and then walked towards the table. I figured it to be a registration table.

Before I could say a word, a short brunette squealed, “Oh my God! You made it! Carl Buckman!” The other two women grinned madly at this. The little brunette came scampering around the table and wrapped her arms around me. “It’s been so long!”

What the hell? I glanced over at Marilyn, mortally embarrassed by whoever this woman was, now embracing me in front of my wife. Marilyn, however, was anything but shocked. She was grinning madly at me.

The little brunette stepped back. “Carl! I can’t believe you don’t remember us!” She tapped a name tag on her substantial chest - ‘TAMMY (BRAXTON) BRONSON’.

I glanced at the name tag, and it all came flooding back. It was Tammy Braxton, one of my old girlfriends! She was also about six months pregnant! Oh, God, could it get any worse? I was being hugged by an old girlfriend in front of my wife! Nothing to do but brazen it out! “My, God, Tammy, I can’t believe it! You look great! So, you ended up marrying Randy after all?” I turned to Marilyn. “This is my wife, Marilyn. Marilyn, this is one of my friends back in high school.”

Marilyn smiled. “I thought so.”

Tammy looked my wife over and said, “Well, she’s definitely your type!” which caused Marilyn to grin broadly, even more so at my discomfort.

“Huh?”

“Short, curvy, brunette!” answered Tammy. She threw her arms out in a modeling pose.

Then I noticed that one of the other women behind the table had come out, too. She struck the same pose, and on her name tag it said, ‘SHELLEY (TALBOT) MOORE’. She was now back to a frosted blonde, but she told Marilyn, “I was a brunette when we dated.”

I looked over at Marilyn and swallowed. “We were just friends.”

“I’ll just bet you were friendly!” said Marilyn. Behind the table the third woman, a tall and slender blonde, simply smirked and tried to stifle her laughter.

“I’m so glad you could come! Tessa said she was going to get you to come. It’s been so long!” said Tammy.

Tessa? She was involved in this? I began to smell a rat! “Oh?” I glanced over at Marilyn, who was grinning and nodding and laughing at me. “Tessa talked to you about this?”

“You know it! She told me I’d get to meet all your old girlfriends and talk to them about you. I couldn’t wait!”

“Oh, sweet suffering Jesus! No, please God, no!” I could see my life flashing before my eyes! “Marilyn, I swear, we were just friends!” I reached over to the table and poured myself a beer into a clean cup.

Tammy inserted herself between my wife and I, and Shelley got on the other side of Marilyn, and they began steering her through the clubhouse towards the rear. “We have got so much to talk about!” said Shelley.

“We used to call it the Carl Buckman Experience,” I heard Tammy say, just before they left the room.

At that I spewed the sip of beer out and across the lobby. “Oh my God! This just keeps getting better and better!”

The blonde, whose tag read, ‘JOY (GAYLORD) SIMPKINS’, just laughed at me. “So, you had a type? All those times I flirted with you, and you never acted on it, now I know why. I could have dyed my hair, but no way was I doing anything about the short and curvy parts.”

I remembered Joy now, a very pretty, but tall and slender blonde. I didn’t remember her flirting with me, but it had been many years. “Sorry about that.” She just laughed, and then handed me a couple of nametags. “I think this is going to be a disaster,” I told her.

“Karma’s a bitch, Carl,” she laughed.

“How come we’re here?” I asked, deflecting the conversation. I waved my hands at the surrounding tennis club. “Why’d we meet here and not down in Towson?”

“You don’t like it here?” she asked, a touch defensively.

“No, just curious.”

She nodded. “The price is right. It’s free!” She gave me a big smile. “My husband and I own the club!”

“No kidding, well, good for you! It looks very nice. I guess that explains it, then.”

She waved me on through, and then turned to wave at somebody else coming in. I didn’t even look behind me at them, but just shambled on through. My thoughts were on what trouble my wife was getting into.

The first person I ran across who I immediately recognized was Tusker, who was sitting at a table on the right side with a few of the other bikers from back in the day. He saw me and laughed. “Well, look what the cat dragged in! Where’s Marilyn?”

“Filing for divorce. Do you know what Tessa has done? She told Marilyn that she would introduce her to all my old girlfriends! I’m a dead man!”

The rest of the table exploded in laughter; Tusker included. “Oh, it’s worse than that! After you agreed to come, Tessa got on the phone with some of her old friends and they made a list and invited as many of them to come as they could! Your wife is about to find out all your old secrets!”