Remembrances Of Things Past-With Josie Davis’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

There was always something, some damn thing to remind Josie Davis, Class of 1964, a fateful year in her life and not just because that was the year that she had graduated from Hunter College High School in the heart of Manhattan. She had recently (2014, and if you did the math you would know that represented the fiftieth anniversary of the her graduation from that esteemed institution) gone through something of a serious traumatic experience which left her numb every time something came up about that year, some remembrance. If you knew Josie, with her two divorces and several affairs along with scads of children and grandchildren now from the marriages not the affairs, you would know that it was about a man, always about a man, she eternally afflicted as old as she was.

 

About a man this time, this eternal time  named Bradley Drury (not Brad or worse Lee  no way he was not anything but a proper Bradley-type, who held maybe some Oxford don or Boston Brahmin Beacon Street savant with three names as his model, even in high school) whom she had had a brief puff of air affair with in that same 2014 but which had seemingly vanished in her dust of memory until she went up into the attic to clean up some stuff, get rid of most of it in anticipation of selling her house in the leafy suburbs of Boston which she had lived in since that last ill-fated marriage to Alfred who had split for California with a younger woman, a much younger woman and had left her the house (and the mortgages and maintenance) as the booby prize of their arrangements and move into a more manageable condo in Cambridge. Cambridge where she had started out her life away from New York City which she had fled right after high school and had been fleeing ever since (occasional trips back to see her parents before they passed away and 5^th Avenue shopping sprees notwithstanding) when she first came to Boston to work on her Master’s Degree and later her Doctorate (Sociology). She had found a faded tattered copy of her high school class’ remembrance card. You know those time vault cards that card companies like Hallmark, the source of this one, put out so that people, or this case the whole class by some tabulations, can put down favorite films, people, records, who was President, and other momentous events from some important year like a graduation to be looked at in later years and ahhed over. That yellowed sheet brought back not just memories of that faded long ago year but of Bradley in the not so faded past. So, yes, it was always some damn thing.      

 

But maybe we had better take you back to the beginning, back to how 1964 and Bradley Drury had been giving one Josie Davis late of New York City nothing but pains. Josie, although always urged on by her fellow classmates Dora Denny and Frida Hoffman who she had kept in touch with over the years had been for many, many years agnostic about attending class reunions, had early on after graduation decided that she needed to show his back to the whole high school experience and to that monstrously isolating  town. A lot of that teenage angst having to do with her beginnings as a daughter of a “brogger,” a father who worked in the garment factories that used to, still do, dot Seventh Avenue when there was work since most of it was drifting to New Jersey or the low-wage (really low-wage) South for which that part of town was then famous and which represented the low-end of Manhattan society. The low-end which others in the city including her fellow classmates in high school who were as socially class conscious as any Mayfair swells, especially the Jewish-American Princesses (JAPs) who were using their Hunter High resumes as a calling card to find rich Jewish husbands and move to Long Island unlike her and the other “grinds” who were using the place to get out from under, who made her feel like a nobody and a nothing for no known reason except that she was the daughter of a brogger which after all she could not help. (Of course those social exclusions played themselves out under the veil of her not dressing cool, living off the leavings her father brought home after the clothing was out of fashion, living off of Rudy’s Discount Center rejected materials on Third Avenue not even cool when purchased, you know, white striped shirts with blue stripes when that was not cool, black flouncy dresses when tight form-fitting skirts were cool like some farmer, ditto, dinky Elizabeth Bennet shoes with buckles for Chrissake, just as her younger sisters lived off of hers as they got older in that tight budget world of the desperate working poor, of her not having money to buy nice dresses, sometimes any new dresses, for dates even with fellow broggers sons, and hanging out Friday night in the library on West 20^th Street with Frida also in the same situation and with fellow odd-ball brogger outcasts (although Frida would gain non-transferrable cachet in school when she introduced Josie, and half the girls in school to the New York City Village folk minute through the folk-singer she was dating whom she met in Washington Square). So Josie had no trouble drifting away from that milieu, had no trouble putting dust on her shoes to get out and head west to Wisconsin (Wisconsin west as everything west of Manhattan was west as a famous Saul Silverstein cover on the New Yorker acerbically pointed out for a candid world to understand) when the doings out west were drawing every iterant youth to the flame, to the summers of love.

 

And there things stood in Josie’s Hunter High (remember that is really Hunter High and Manhattan joined together eternally in her mind) consciousness for many years until maybe 2012, 2013 when very conscious that a hallmark 50^th class reunion would be in the works and with more time on her hands as she had cut back on the day to day operation of her small consultant practice in Cambridge she decided that he would check out the preparations, and perhaps offer her help to organize the event. She had received notification of her class’ fortieth reunion (which she had dismissed out of hand only wondering how the reunion committee had gotten her address for while she was not hiding from anything she was also not out there publicly since she did not have clients other than other professional sociologists whom she wrote research articles and the like for, until she realized that as a member of the American Sociological Association she would have that kind of information on her professional profile page. And Frida had despite Josie’s best efforts told the committee her address when they were soliciting for the twenty-fifth class reunion as she found out later) so via the marvels of modern day technology through the Internet he was able to get hold of Donna Marlowe (married name Rossi) who had set up a Facebook page to advertise the event.

 

That connection led to Josie drafting herself onto the reunion committee and led directly to the big bang of pain that she would subsequently feel. Naturally in a world filled with social media and networking those from the class who either knew Donna or the other members of the committee or were Internet savvy joined the class’ Facebook page and then were directed to a class website (as she found out later her generation unlike later ones was on the borderline of entering the “information superhighway” and so not all classmates, those still alive anyway, were savvy that way). On that website set up by tech savvy Donna (she had worked in the computer industry at IBM during her working career) each classmate who joined the site had the ability to put up a personal profile next to their class photograph like many other such sites and that is where Josie saw Elizabeth Drury’s profile (nee Kelly), the classmate who eventually married Bradley and a flood of memories and blushes.             

 

In high school Josie had been smitten by Bradley, a student at Bronx School Of Science, whom had been  dating her friend, Dora, before she took up with Danny Ross, and a son of a couple of school teachers who worked on Long Island (and would eventually move there) and therefore stationed well above the “broggers” of the city. But in things of the heart things like class distinctions, especially in democratically-etched America, are forgotten and sometimes make one foolhardy. That had almost happened to Josie, except her close friend Frida Hoffman who was wired into the Monday morning girls’ “lav” grapevine about who did, or did not do what to whom, over the weekend and other exotica, made up half the stuff that got around when she was in one of her bitchy moods about the JAPs that ran the social butterfly world in school and had some stuff that would make a cooped-up CIA operative or an NSA techie blush with envy, put her wise.

 

Josie and Bradley had seen each other several times when he was dating Dora during senior year and sat across from each other, eying each other, in their coffeehouse double-dates when he was with Dora and she with Max or some other folk aficionado. Both loved literature and were in their respective schools recognized as such and they had certain interests in common. So they talked, talked in what Josie thought was very friendly manner about folk music, art, and pleading ignorance various aspects of science which she had had trouble getting her mind around (or as she thought later after the flame had burned out maybe she just hoped that was the case) and she had formed an intention once Dora had dumped him for odd-ball Danny to ask him to join her some afternoon even if only to Doc’s Drugstore for an after school soda and a listen to the latest platters on Doc’s jukebox which had all the good stuff that kids were dancing to in those days. She figured from there she could work up to prodding him to ask her for a real date. But sometimes the bumps and bruises of the brogger life left a little sense in their progeny and so before making attempts at such a conquest Josie consulted with Frida to see if Bradley was “spoken for.” (Josie’s term if you can believe that). See Frida, the queen of the budding folk set so a new force to be reckoned with even if a brogger’s daughter got something of an exemption from the rigid routine of the social structure of the Senior class just by being able to get dates for girls with guys who could strum three chords on a guitar and not make the subway sound symphonic when singing in comparison and take them to the Village coffeehouses had that excellent “intelligence” on the whole school system’s social network, in other words who was, or was not, spoken for. (By the way that “grapevine” any high school grapevine, maybe middle school too would also put the poor technicians at the CIA and the spooks at NSA to shame with the accuracy of the information. It had to be that resourceful otherwise fists would fly.) The word on Bradley, forget it, off-limits, he was “spoken for” now by Elizabeth Kelly, an “ice queen,” but whose parents ran the Kelly line of kitchen products and had plenty of dough. So Josie saved herself plenty of anguish and she moved on with her small little high school life.

 

Seeing Elizabeth’s name and profile with her own telltale divorced status listed though that many years later made her curious, made her wonder what had happened to Bradley and since Josie was now “single” she decided she would write Elizabeth a private e-mail to her profile page. This private e-mail exchange slot something which the website was set up to perform and which the reunion committee was recommending alumnus to do rather than take up a lot of space on the main page yakking about personal stuff that nobody gave a damn about. That “single” status, a condition that Josie now considered the best course after two shifts of fighting for equitable alimony payment, timely and adequate child support and serious help with hefty college tuitions made her realize after that last battle with Alfred that it was infinitely cheaper to just live with a man and be done with it since her child-rearing day were mercifully behind her (although not her sexual appetites, not if Bradley retained any of his youthful good looks, maybe even if he had turned to dust if he still had his humor and his interest in the literary life).

 

Josie wrote a short message asking Elizabeth whether she remembered her and how things were going and what had happened to Bradley whom she referenced by saying that she knew him from when Dora Denny had dated him in high school and they had double-dated going to Village coffeehouses.  Elizabeth replied that she very well did remember her and their “great” (her term) conversations about Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton in English class. (Josie did not remember any such conversations although the three authors mentioned were then in her firmament so it was possible since she would talk anybody’s ear off who would listen about the not so subtle allusions to “sex” and abnormal sex problems in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises that seemed kind of timid back in the 1960s, and such veiled references would be ridiculed now).

 

Elizabeth also wrote that several years back after the kids had grown up that she and Bradley had agreed to an amicable divorce since neither could think of a blessed reason to stay together. She corresponded with him (about the kids, family stuff) up in Connecticut where he lived outside of Hartford doing some archival literary work now that he had retired. Elizabeth had sent an e-mail to Bradley on getting Josie’s message and Bradley had asked her to send Josie his e-mail address so they could talk about those old times at the coffeehouse (although he said as part of his message via Elizabeth that he would rather not talk about Dora Denny since she had ditched him for dopey Danny Ross and he could never figure out why except that she had developed a liking for cuckoo contrary guys that were thick as flies in the Village).        

 

That short message with the e-mail address and Josie quick reply “sparked” something as Josie and Bradley began a flurry of e-mails giving outlines of their subsequent history, including the still important one to Josie of whether he was “spoken for.” She made it plain that she was not but busy in her career as a consultant with several major universities and a couple of high-tech start-ups. Somehow these messages back and forth led Josie to tell Bradley about her talk with Frida Hoffman about him back in high school. And he laughed (signified these days by the ubiquitous lol in e-mail and cyberspace land) not at the “intelligence” which was correct as usual with Frida when it was not about some snooty JAP but not for the reasons that she gave (his father was an abusive “asshole” and drunk, his term, so he was shy and reticent around other people for a long time) for his standoffishness and reputation as “ice queen” Elizabeth Drury’s boy.  (Elizabeth as it turned out had similar problems, the drinking problem, the curse of the Irish despite all their money and good luck, as she would tell Bradley when she asked him to pick her up at the corner rather than at the front door). He wanted to get somebody with dough and although he did have some interest in her then she was after all a daughter of a brogger and that said all he had to know then. Sorry, sorry now.

 

Bradley laughed (lol, okay) because despite his being slightly flirty, at least that was what he thought he was attempting to do because he certainly was interested in her before he latched onto Elizabeth’s train when they would talk on those long ago double-dates he had never asked her out and then one day she just stopped talking to him for no known reason. Damn. Now post hoc he knew why. Double damn.                   

 

They say, or at least Thomas Wolfe did in the title of one of his novels-you can’t go home again but neither Bradley nor Josie after that last furious exchange of e-mails about the fateful missing chance and subsequent cellphone calls when all they thought they had to say to each other seemed too cumbersome by e-mail would heed Wolfe’s message. They decided to meet in Cambridge one night to see if that unspoken truth had any substance. They did meet, got along great, had many stories to exchange and it turned out many of the same interests (except golf a sport which relaxed Bradley when he was all wound up but which Alfred had tried to teach her to no avail). And so their little affair started, started with great big bursts of flames but wound up after a few months smoldering out and being blown away like so much dust in the wind once Bradley started talking about marriage. Josie was willing to listen to living together but her own strange marital orbit had made her very strongly again any more marriages. So this pair could not go home again, not at all, and after some acrimonious moments they parted.           

 

Josie knew that was the best course, knew she had to break it off but it still hurt enough that any reference to 1964 made her sad. As she took a look at the sentiments expressed in that tattered yellowed document she had a moment reprieve as she ahh-ed over the information presented. Had she really forgotten that there was not Vice-Presidential succession then when Lyndon Johnson became President after the assassination of Irish Jack Kennedy. That My Fair Lady was popular then as now. That the Beatles had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s Show and done a film that year, and that the great Chapel of Love by the Dixie Cups had been a hit that year as well. That 1964 was the year the Mustang that every guy she knew (except Danny) would have died for came out into the world. That gas was only about thirty cent a gallon, and that another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, married one Richard Burton for the first time (although not the last). On that note she put the yellowed tattered document in the trash pile. She would remember things past in her own way.