Reunion

I rarely tell people how I met my younger self in Jerusalem during a class reunion.  I don’t, because I can see how their eyes glaze and how they begin to shift restlessly from one foot to another ready to take off. But every once I awhile I meet someone, like you, who does not shy away from the unexpected and I share this unusual tale with them.

***

The whole thing started with a phone call after 2:00 pm. I tried to ignore it. The rule we established during our second year of running the motel is “Never pick-up the phone after 10:00 pm,” Nothing good ever happens at this time. “But seeing on the display that it was from Israel, I did. The minute I heard her voice, I recognized it, as if the years had melted away.

“Naomi, how are you?” I had said before she had time to continue. I could tell from the short pause; I caught her by surprise, but then she completed the sentence as if she was not interrupted.

“We’re having a reunion, “she said, “I thought it would be fun for all of us to get together after such a long time, thought you’d like to know that your invitation is in the mail.”

I was wondering what she meant when she said, “All of us,” but then I fell asleep.

A week later a big flat envelope showed up in my mailbox. The invitation was printed on a thick white paper. On one side the details; when, where and what to bring, on the other side a photograph of our senior class, the date on it – 1975.

I searched for my picture and found it in the bottom right. I looked at the curly hair, somewhat chubby figure, big round glasses, me more than forty years ago, and I was not sure I liked what I saw. I went directly to the mirror in the bathroom and looked at my face and liked it even less. Why would I have any interest in meeting my classmates after all this time? I did not like them when we were going to school together, so why now?

Couple weeks went by and another phone call woke me up, why can’t she figure out the time differences I thought when I picked up the phone. “So are you coming?” She was never the one to accept “No,” as an answer. Between the torrent of words I managed to ask, “Why now?” and who is “All of us,” but all I got in response was “Come and see for yourself.”

I struggled with the idea for few more weeks; it’s a long flight, could I justify the expense, except for Naomi whom I kept in touch with, I did not speak to any of my classmates for years.

Finally a week before the date, in late September,  I bought the flight tickets, packed lightly and in the last minute, as an afterthought, went to the hairdresser and dye my hair.

Forty-one years since I finished high-school. For some reason, this number with the one tucked at the end was hard to swallow. During the ten hours flight from Boston to Tel-Aviv, I run the names and faces of my classmates in my head. I remembered only a hand full and couldn’t find an answer to the question how come we never met after high school.

We landed in the afternoon. The minute I walked out the sun blinded me, and the heat felt like a warm, wet blanket pressed against my face. I tried to wipe the sweat trickling down my neck, while I waved to a passing taxi to stop. Naomi did offer to meet me at the airport and take me to Jerusalem, where the reunion was going to be held in the high-school building. She also invited me to stay in her small apartment. Standing in front of the airport’s automatic entrance doors, I inhaled the gusts of cold air coming from the inside and tried to remember why I declined her offer and told her I would meet her at the reunion.

It was the train; I reminded myself; I wanted to take the train, my favorite ride when I was a child. For years the train service to Jerusalem was discontinued, but I read in the newspaper that the new train station opened a few months ago. I thought that it would buy me some time, maybe remind it why I decided to come back.

The taxi let me off in front of the train station, and I smiled to myself breathing the fumes coming from the trains as I bumped against the hurried passengers. The heat, the noise, it finally felt like home.

***

It was dark when I got off the bus, few blocks from the school, at the top of Jaffa St. in the center of Jerusalem, I walked slowly passing lit storefronts, peeked into dark alleys where garbage cans and street cats huddled, the rhythm of my heels, hitting the stone pavement in my ears. “I am back, click, I am back.”

The usually busy street, during the day, was quiet. An occasional couple walking to the movie theater, their laughter hanging in the air for awhile, an Orthodox man with his head stooped to the ground almost bumped into me, few kids, let loose on the town dizzy with excitement. By the time I saw the top of my school building the familiar images, smells and noises were all around me, rising from the old walls, from the grills of water openings at the edge of the sidewalks, from the few weary cedars imprisoned inside the pavement.

In the entrance to the courtyard, I stopped for a minute and listened. I thought I heard people whispering but when I looked inside , I saw no one. The only light came from the street lamp and threw long shadows on the walls. Inside the school yard I found my favorite stone bench and sat on it. I leaned against the wall, still radiating warmth.  The school was no longer in the old building; I realized casting a quick look around the empty stone paved square patio where I spent so many hours.

For some reason I was not alarmed, I did not feel alone, the air around me was humming with voices, laughter, singing, chattering. I closed my eyes and let myself float until I felt someone tugging at my sleeve. Startled I open my eyes, and she was standing in front of me.

The curly hair, somewhat chubby, round glasses, me forty-one years ago, just like she looked in the class photograph. She did not say anything, and there was no need; I said the words to myself over and over, in the twelve years that passed since I left.

“I should have stayed,”

 “Fighting for what is right was my legacy, not quitting,”

“How am I going to justify leaving when I and my parents will meet again?”

We looked at each other, the questions buzzing like angry hornets when my phone rang and shattered the quiet.

“Where are you?” Naomi’s voice sounded loud, and I did not say anything for a long moment.

“I don’t believe it; you went to the old building.” Her laugh chased away the last of my hidden companions. “Didn’t the invitation say we are meeting in the new building? “

“Naomi,” I say softly, “Everyone was here, I could hear them.” At first, she is quiet and then there was urgency in her voice, “Just walk out of there and get a taxi.”

 This is exactly what I did.