What Went Right by Roberta Israeloff

Author:Roberta Israeloff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The Poetry Inside Us

June 24, 2014

Dear George,

Your story about Darryl and James reminded me of my fortieth high school reunion, which took place in an awful hotel on a suburban strip of hotels about fifteen minutes west of where we’d grown up.

Reunions are strange concoctions, a place where time collides. The moment you walk in the door and see the first person you barely recognize, you’re whisked back to a past that’s both alive and dead. You remember people for the oddest reasons, and sometimes you remember their totality less clearly than an odd quirk—the smirk on the kid who sat behind you in homeroom for three years to whom you never said a word. People you barely recognize pass by like ghosts, or like faces in a dream. And then there’s the bloom of recognition as you stand talking to someone and remember that her mouth always turned down like that when she thought of something that amused her, and recall that this person was once important to you if only for a fleeting moment, or month, or season, when you sat on her bed in her room poring over issues of Seventeen magazine and talking about the boys you hated, how stupid homework was—and teachers.

At this reunion, I was stunned to discover that the most popular person by far was a big bear of a man who had been a star wrestler during his Syosset days and ended up with a successful NFL career as a guard with the Miami Dolphins. That’s all I knew about him when I nodded to him at the party—we’d never been on a first-name basis. More accurately, he didn’t know me, but I knew him. Everyone knew him, brawny and blond, quick to smile, athletic to the tips of his fingers. But his Wikipedia entry caught me completely by surprise. I had no idea he’d won a Super Bowl ring, had gone to the Pro Bowl four times, and has a street named for him in Miami in recognition of his charitable work. Perhaps most impressive of all, he’d enrolled in night school when he was still an active player, practicing law and ultimately becoming a judge when his football career was over.

At the reunion, his demeanor was that of a star athlete turned judge; he walked and even stood as if he was used to people wanting to be seen with him, and knew that when he spoke, people would listen. He moved amid a nimbus of people eager for his eye, his ear. And meanwhile, the people I’d been friends with, the ones sparring with you about the meaning of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter, sat together at a table on the periphery of the event, quietly talking among ourselves.

It was shocking to see that our group of friends—and by this I mean the kids who were in what was called Track 1, who sat in your English class with me—composed such a small segment of the class as a whole.

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