Whatever Became Of

Raymond Beauchemin

“Never made it beyond captain. Spent all those years in the Marines and that’s as far as he got. Kinda tells you something.”

“Tells you what?”

That was Miller. His name was Lee Miller, but everyone called him Miller. It started when we were in fifth grade. The teacher called all the boys by their last names. Even the French and Spanish ones he couldn’t pronounce.

“It tells you he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier,” I said. “No leadership skills. Still lives alone in the house his parents left him. No people skills either.”

“That can’t be all true,” Miller said. “He was a nurse. Gotta have some brains to get through nursing school, and people skills too.”

“What hospital you go to? Nurses with people skills?”

“For chrissake, Reilly. They’re not all Nurse Ratched.”

Reilly’s my family name. The family called me Josh. My ex was a nurse. That was Rachel. When she left, she became Ratched.

“I suppose,” I said, “but you’re missing my point.”

We were sitting in Franny’s. Places like Franny’s have been around forever. Worn wooden chairs, thin-skinned pool tables, splotchy bar. If you were to describe the patrons, you’d use the same words: worn, thin-skinned, splotchy. Franny’s joined the internet age in 2014, but never updated its website afterward. Miller and I were in Franny’s because we didn’t want to be where everyone else in our graduating class of 1978 was: the Soldiers’ Memorial, where Robin, the class president and my closest non-girlfriend girl friend in high school, had rented the hall for our 40th reunion.

It’s not that we didn’t want to see any of our old classmates, but the truth was we were already keeping up with anyone we wanted to keep up with. We were of that worn, thin-skinned and splotchy generation that used Facebook. Our parents – some of us were fortunate to still have them around – used email or a telephone, and our kids had moved onto Instagram and Snapchat apps on their cells. The grandkids, I’m not sure what they’re doing. Miller and I, we didn’t need a reunion. We needed a beer, like every other Friday.

So it was Miller and me talking about Dwight Paxton, who went to university with the idea of becoming a Marine officer and never made it beyond captain. Had it been ten years before, he’d have joined as the Vietnam War was spreading into Cambodia and Laos. To have not made it beyond captain during wartime would have been an indication of something, I said.

“Of what?” Miller said.

“Why are you defending the guy?”

“Not,” Miller said. “You come up with this theory, so I wanna hear you back it up.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

I flagged the bartender over and ordered a couple more beers.

“Probably woulda been fragged,” I said.

Miller shook his head. “You’re too much,” he said.

Franny’s had Paper City Brewing on tap. Holyoke, when cities of its size and pride had nicknames, was called the Paper City. There were mills along the canal and the Connecticut River: Parsons, Chemical Paper, Eagle, Whiting, Ampad, National Blank Book. But most of the mills were shuttered years ago. Parsons went up in flames in 2008 and some fourteen-year-old kid was charged with arson. Now, everyone was trying to figure out how to make a buck. Irish, Puerto Ricans, didn’t matter what your race was, everyone busting ass to get by.

“Hal Blaine came out of Holyoke,” I said, “and other than him, I can’t think of anyone from this city who amounted to anything.”

“The exception that proves the rule,” Miller said.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Who was Hal Blaine?”

“Drummer. The Wrecking Crew, you know, Beach Boys, the Rat Pack, the Monkees?”

“How do you know this shit?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “Just do. There’s some shit you just remember.”

“But there must be others from Holyoke who made it.”

“That’s my point,” I said. “You could find thirty people on Google born in Holyoke and you wouldn’t know a one; same thing with Chicopeeor Aldenville. Springfield you might have better luck. To make it, you gotta be born somewhere else or you gotta leave. There are places in the world where, if you’re from there, you ain’t gonna make it. You’ve got a better chance coming out of Bostonor New York than Holyoke. I’m not slamming the place. It’s just a fact.”

“And that’s why Paxton didn’t make major or colonel in the Marines? Because he was from Holyoke?”

I nodded as I was swallowing my beer. “Yeah, partly that’s so.”

“Partly,” Miller said. “What’s the other part?”

“He was dumb as fuck,” I said.

Miller laughed, slapping his palm on the bar top.

“And that’s also because he was from here,” I said. “It’s not lack of opportunity. It’s lack of education. Lack of education, lack of opportunity, you come out of a place like this, that’s two strikes, man.”

Miller was all quiet. I could sense he was thinking, processing. It was true what I was saying. I’d been saying it all my life. They don’t sing about Holyoke the way they sing about New York. If you make it there, you make it anywhere. If you make it in Holyoke, you’re shad that happened to make it upstream.

“What’s the third strike?”

“Marrying a girl from here,” I said.

Miller laughed until he coughed.

He swung off his barstool and went to the pool table. Coughing the whole way. He racked up the balls and we played some. He won, I won. Neither of us was all that good despite the time we’d spent in Franny’s. Then Miller went to the bathroom and I went to the bar. I made a “two” sign to the bartender once I caught her eye and by the time Miller was back from the john, a couple of drafts were waiting.

“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said.

It was hard to tell from the other side of the bar, but I figured the woman was five-five or so. Modestly built, white long sleeve blouse, black trousers, typical wait-staff bartender gear. If I’d checked, I’d say sneakers or sensible, well-soled shoes. She had short white hair, a bit spikey, the kind of hair that grows back after it was lost or shaved. Her face was smooth but for a couple of wrinkles around the eyes. If I had to guess, she was around my age and a cancer survivor. I concentrated but nothing was coming to me. I shook my head.

“I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?” I said.

The bartender shrugged. “Depends on how embarrassed you get when someone points out your faulty memory.”

“Did we … you know?”

Miller choked. “You’d remember that, Reilly, for fuck’s sake; you’d remember if you took someone for a ride.”

He realized what he’d said. “No offense,” he said.

“None taken,” she said.

Then to me: “No, we didn’t.”

“OK, that leaves out illegitimate children,” I said.

“Well, by me,” she said.

“Give me a clue.”

“You’re here because you’re not at your reunion.”

“Were we in high school together?”

She looked left down the bar.

“No,” she said. Then she went to the shelf and poured out a glass of Ferreira port and a shot of Grey Goose for a couple down the end of the bar.

“Of course, she wasn’t,” Miller said. “I’d remember her. I’ve always been good at faces. Besides, the woman’s way too young to have gone to school with you.”

“You’re the same age as me,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m kidding, old man.”

“Still no clue.”

That was her again.

I shook my head.

“My eyes adored you,” she sang.

“Frankie Valli,” I said.

“So you do have a memory. It was the theme song to your senior prom,” she said. “May 1978. Yankee Pedlar.” She was smiling now, broadly. Surely I had to. I had to remember now.

“You’re taking him back,” Miller said.

I felt myself redden because now I remembered the girl. She was from Holyoke High, a friend of Robin, our class president. I’d done the unforgivable thing and gone outside the school to find a date for prom. It’s not as if I’d had a choice. My girl, Lori, had dumped me two weeks before prom to go with a hotshot new transfer student named Dwight Paxton.

Robin said she had a friend. And she was gorgeous. A couple of inches shorter than me. We dated a couple of times before the prom. Robin and her date Frank went with us to Friendly’s once; the other time, I took her up to the Ingleside mall.

The night of the prom, I picked my date up at her house. Her mother answered the door and made a big ta-da of presenting her daughter. They looked like sisters. I was in white tie with tails; she had a spaghetti-strapped floor-length pinkish gown. I presented my date with a corsage, she gave me a boutonnière that her mom pinned to my tux. I walked her down to the car, opened the door for her and she slid in to the middle of the front seat. I came around to the driver’s seat. I started the car and we waved bye. She put her hand in mine.

She had long, black hair; a sweet sweet smile. She had aware, curious eyes, searching all the time, like when we were dancing, faces so close our noses could touch and her eyes were scanning my face, then locking onto mine. She was smiling shyly and we kissed. “My Eyes Adored You.”

Yeah, I remembered her. Just not her name.

That smile she’d worn on her face prom night was receding now from her face. In its place, her own shade of embarrassment. Of a prom date left on a dance floor, a girl watching a kite full of dreams fly away, a girl forced to open her own car door, a taxi door, and make her way up to her front door alone, a door swung wide by a mother, crying, “Dear, what happened?”

During the prom band’s second break, Lori had broken up with Paxton. She’d caught him smoking pot with another girl. “I should never have left Josh,” Lori was supposed to have said in the bathroom. Word got to me. I went to Lori and I left a girl to fend for herself.

“Julie, order’s up,” the cook called from a window down the other end of Franny’s.

“Julie,” I said.

“No points for guessing,” she said and walked away.

“I thought of someone else,” Miller said.

“What?”

“Someone with a Holyoke tie.”

“Who?”

“Rachel Maddow,” Miller said.

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. I remember hearing her on the radio,” Miller said. “You never forget a voice like that.”

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