March 2002			The Natural Appropriateness of Clouds Extraordinary Activist	Letters Sports E Line Books Alumni Passages Classes From the Field First-Person Huskiana
		Welcome to the Reunion Where the past meets the present, and those present complete the past. By Herbert Hadad Harold is hugging me in the lobby of the Philadelphia Airport Marriott and whispering in my ear, “I love you, guy.” But it’s not a pledge of affection. It’s an act of penitence, or a petition for absolution. Or maybe a declaration of disdain. Ten thousand nights earlier, a half-century ago, Harold and I had been set upon by a gang. In accord with the strange code of street warfare, he was released because he wore glasses. I knew he would race to the grocer for help, bang on neighbors’ doors, call the cops. Instead, he went home and shut the door. I managed to butt my head through the gauntlet of boys surrounding me and run for my life. There had been no apology, no explanation. I couldn’t forgive him. “Great to see you, too,” I say, and turn to embrace his wife, looking hard into her eyes. She knows nothing. Harold and I are leaving a reunion of boys from our old Roxbury, Massachusetts, neighborhood, a gathering held in Philadelphia as a convenience to those who came long distances. The group of eight guys I’d dubbed the Roxbury Rowdies had lived on the same few blocks, both mean and tender, as we entered our teens. Our reunion had been instigated by a plaintive e-mail from Melvin in Dallas, headed “Do You Remember Me?” Strangely enough, for me it was the first of two reunions held the same week. The second, a brunch in a Randolph, Massachusetts, catering hall, was for classmates from my junior high school in Dorchester, where I’d lived before Roxbury. No science could explain why the two unusual get-togethers had been scheduled so closely together. After I responded yes to the invitation in Melvin’s e-mail, I began to train more rigorously at the gym and eat salads. By reunion week, I was only 10 pounds over the 126 pounds I’d weighed as a young prizefighter. My wife needed no preparation; she is effortlessly slim and charming and beautiful. Beyond the reunions’ gaiety and balloons, the drinks in the lounge, the excessive eating, the sexy jokes away from the wives, a lot happened. Secrets were revealed, entire lives tidied up, heartrending messages delivered. I had gone with a confession to make. I needed to talk to my classmate Muriel. In Philadelphia, the Rowdies are dining in a packed Bookbinder’s. Sheldon, from Nebraska, begins to suck his thumb, smiling my way. He is reminding me of a habit I carried into my teens. It makes me uncomfortable, but I laugh and imitate him imitating me. As I begin to ask him about his brother and their inseparable friendship, another Rowdy leans in: “Don’t. They haven’t talked in years. Shelly won’t discuss it.” Someone else rescues the mood by reminding the table that I was the New England sit-up champion, after completing 1,875 sit-ups one afternoon at a Boylston Street gym. I tell Melvin how much I enjoyed visiting his second-floor apartment across from the drugstore, partly because I got to stare at his gorgeous mother. “She would have appreciated your comment. She died in the seventies,” he says. Ira can’t remember the neighbors next door, but I do: the Underwoods. He is warm and kindly, and invites my wife and me to his home in West Palm Beach. We are pleased to accept. Abraham has carried into middle age his eccentricity and surplus weight. “You used to write to me,” he says. “I’ve saved all your letters.” This touches me, and I thank him. He adds, “You look great.” “So do you, Abe,” I say. “You’re a liar,” he tells me. Arthur, the largest and in his youth considered not the sagest of our group, has grown into a sweet and affectionate man. He had gone back to the old neighborhood and taken pictures of the houses and apartments where we used to live. It is a kind and remarkable gesture, and I love him for it. I hold the photos and can almost peer into the old windows, including into the room where a fellow Rowdy and I once met Naomi and Leatrice to smooch on the couch, only to hide when Naomi’s cabdriver father returned home unexpectedly. At meal’s end, Bob, one of the PhDs among us, playfully assigns a Rowdy known for his thrift to pay the bill. Bickering breaks out—arguments over who owes three dollars more or three dollars less—and we learn that some things never change. I depart with compliments for my wife’s charm and my slender waist, leaving me both happy (because her deeper qualities have been appreciated) and vaguely offended (all I got was a nod for not being enormous). Later Melvin writes: “The thing about reunions is that the attendees were all equal, more or less, at some point in time. At the reunion, you get to see what people made of their lives, and you can judge for yourself your relative success or failure compared with the others.” I write back: “I came away not knowing whether some of the guys even knew what I did for a living, if anything.” The Rowdies are now professors, computer experts, a banker, a salesman, an engineer, but the outward displays of success—as well as the assessments of them—I found so furtive as to be undetectable. A week later, at reunion number two at Lombardo’s, I blunder as soon as I enter the room, telling a woman that I used to be pals with Lenny. She smiles and says she used to be married to Lenny, until two years ago; now she’s married to another junior high classmate. One day in the school yard, Lenny made fun of me, and I chased him, quickly trapping him on the ground. “Say, I’m on the track team, but you’re faster than me,” Lenny said. “Why don’t you join?” That unlikely moment put me on the path to eventually setting or tying two citywide track-and-field records. (I thank Lenny for my track career, and promise hereafter to avoid all marital discussions.) Eddie, a small, endearing man with a fast, excitable way of talking, shows up late. Although he means no harm, his recollection is crushing. “I was proud to be on the track team,” he says. “But one day, you came from behind, and you passed me—you were that fast. The next day I quit the team.” Why didn’t he tell me? I might have talked him out of it. I want to cry. Sid and I recall capturing night crawlers in his Jones Avenue front yard, then taking the trolley to Milton to cast for pickerel, perch, and sunfish in Turner’s Pond. Malcolm had been one of my best pals since grammar school. I’d been excitedly anticipating our reuniting. In a corner of the dining room, a classmate breaks the news: “He won’t come. He lives by himself. He’s not working. He’s on welfare. And he has this habit. Whenever he gets a check, it’s off to the track.” Then there was Muriel, our class’s president and smartest student. When I was about eleven, I had done something terrible to her, for which I’d never apologized. Here is what I remember: On Woodrow Avenue after school one day, I spotted some black, pebbly shingles lying on the ground, left over from a home-repair job. I picked one up, practiced a backhand toss, and blithely let it fly. Just then, Muriel came into view, walking home with schoolbooks pressed against her chest. She never saw it coming. The shingle sliced her forehead. Crying out, she spilled her books and ran for home a few doors away. She never even noticed me. I walked to my house in misery, told my mother what had happened, and made the anxious trek back to Muriel’s. Her dad answered the bell, evening newspaper in hand. “I came to say I’m very sorry for hurting Muriel,” I said. “It was a mistake, sir. I should have been more careful.” He looked down at me. “Muriel isn’t available,” he said, and slammed the door. So I find Muriel and deliver my confession. I reach out to lift her bangs, and she lets me look for traces of a scar, which aren’t there. She smiles. “Let me tell you what I remember about you,” she says. “One day, I ran into you on Woodrow Avenue, and you had a dollar bill in your hand, a lot of money in those days. You asked me to come with you. You’d heard of a new invention, and you were going to buy one in the five-and-ten on Blue Hill Avenue. We went in, and there displayed on top of a counter were ballpoint pens. You said they were wonderful, they could write forever without refilling. I helped you pick out a color, blue. You were very happy and walked me home. I’ve told that story countless times.” I had finally unburdened myself to Muriel. She in her grace had accepted my apology, deflected it, and provided in return the perfect anecdote for a boy who grew up to be a writer. In that instant, I knew I was going to forgive Harold. Herbert Hadad, a Northeastern graduate, is an award-winning writer who lives outside New York City.