As Luck Would Have It (41 page)

The night of the party arrived and Michelle said to expect about
40
people; I didn't know we had that many friends.  As the guests filtered in, the living room gradually filled with the sounds of laughter, conversation, and the music that Christian and Amanda brought with them.  The food was exceptional; there was pasta with seafood, roasted leg of lamb, pan seared Chilean sea bass, beef burgundy, seaweed salad, scalloped potatoes, tomatoes with mozzarella and a seemingly endless variety of cheeses, fruits and homemade desserts.  We had excellent bottles of pinot noir and chardonnay, and of course some fine single malts as well.

I was so pleased by the guests who
came to
celebrate with us.
  Billie and his partner Franz were there; I had not seen them
much
in
the past
year.  They brought their adopted son Charlie, who was in his mid-30s now, along with his wife Jenny who he had married a couple of year
s
earlier.  Mr. Finnernan and his wife showed up completely unexpectedly; they were retired now and had moved back to Chicago, back to the home they said they had never stopped missing while living in New York.  Lucy Mendelssohn and
her husband Donald
came too, and so did
Tim, Brent, Christine
and their respective partners.
  It was great to see them all together again and I had to admit, I missed those days in the office with my friends and co-workers, once I was able to see them as they really were.

It was 10:00 now and the party was going strong.  Michelle and Joseph's boyfriend made a big production out of bringing out all the gifts for Joseph and me to open together, then I poured shots of Scotch for our friends while Amanda and Sally Finnernan went around filling the wine glasses so that everyone would have something to drink wh
en
Joseph and I toasted our friendship
and our good luck.

Now it was nearly 11:00 and I pulled Christian and Joseph aside and showed them the CD I had make for the occasion.  In just a few minutes it would be exactly 45 years since John had been killed.  I turned off the music that was playing and loaded the disk, while I announced to everyone that this was a special day for us
celebrate, but also to pause and
remember
for many reasons
.

Of course everyone there knew what this day signified for me
personally
, and the tragic circumstances that shook all of our worlds in one way or another.  But they may have forgotten, or maybe
they
never knew that December 8 was also the day the music died, the Day John Lennon left this world for good at the age of only
40.  Quite possibly nobody there but me was aware of this little known fact about his murder, which I relayed to our friends before
playing
the music.  The surgeons and other witnesses that were with John in the emergency room noted that at the very moment he was pronounced dead, the Beatles song
All My Loving
came on the hospital’s sound system.

I started the disk and the
songs began, just as we knew them; the timeless lyrics, the even harmonies, the edgy rock, the haunting ballads.

And then while I'm away

I'll write home every
day

And I'll send all my loving to you

The
music
brought back
both beautiful
memories and tragic loss
.

Red is the color that will make me blue

In spite of you, it's true

Yes it is, it's true

Christian jumped up just then; Clifford get the Martin, where is it?  It was in the den in the closet; I hadn't brought it out in quite some time.  The crack in the fret board had grown a little more over the years, but once I managed to get it tuned, the richness of its sound returned completely.  Christian produced a harmonica as if out of thin air and
we
pulled Joseph over to the
Steinway
that Aunt Doreen and Uncle Jack had left me in their will.  The three of us did our best to follow along, our passion for the music making up for any lack of rehearsal.

I should have known better with a girl like you

That I would love everything that you do

One of my favorites came on next and Christian sang the melody while I worked out the harmony, just like we had so long ago.

And now the time has come

And so my love I must go

And though I lose a friend

In the end you will know

We listened to more songs and everyone took turns singing along on the ones they knew or liked best.  It went on like that until past midnight when people started leaving and then it was just Joseph, Christian and me sitting on the piano bench reminiscing, while Michelle, Amanda and Joseph's boyfriend worked at putting the kitchen back together again.  We were old men now, but it just didn't seem like it somehow; the youthful memories could never be very distant to us. 
I returned the guitar to its case and back to the closet in the den.  I watched the two of them, privately thinking of the good times the three of us had shared.  They are my life, they are my world; I knew it then and I never have forgotten it.  My luck would not have seen it go any other way.

After all the dishes were washed and dried
and everyone else had left for home, Michelle put her arms around my waist while I finished wiping down the counter top, officially signifying the end of our party, which had turned out quite nicely I thought.  Can I ask you a ser
i
ous question, Clifford?  Is that marriage proposal you made before the plane crash still good?  It was
still
good; better than good actually, it was wonderful.  We were married just six weeks later in a small ceremony at the same church that Michelle went to when she lived with her family in Skokie.

Wait, you lied Clifford; you said you were never married!  Yes, I did lie, but it wasn't a real lie.  There was no harmful intent at all; I just wanted to keep you in suspense a bit and not reveal before now how things were going to end up.  And it was a good lie too because things did turn out well for us, and so now you know the truth anyway, it wasn't like I was never going to say anything or let you just keep wondering.

Of course Joseph was my best man and his boyfriend gave the bride away; he and Michelle had become very close over the last couple of years.  In his toast, Joseph said that marriage must never be taken
lightly
, that is was a sacred gift
.
  Who could have known that better than him?  I was never more proud, nor
happier
to have him standing with me
, and I remember his words almost exactly:

When I look back at the miracles that were my life, the first one I always see is the one standing before you.  Twice
I was sure h
e
would turn up
dead, but he refused to let me go on alone.  Is that why you didn't die, afraid of what might happen if I didn't have you to look out for me?  We both know what would have happened; I would have turned out OK.  I would have been fine with
out
you Clifford
;
only less fulfilled, less caring, less knowledgeable, and less of a human being. 

If marriage brought a point of happiness into my life, it just wasn't meant to be for Joseph and his boyfriend.  Circumstances and events intervened as they often do and caused their plans to be postponed, then once things seemed back on their intended path, the climate shifted once again, this latest storm putting an end to their dream for good.  In the 2022 mid-term election, the no doubt upstanding citizens of the state of Iowa voiced their feelings at their respective polling stations, as any democracy should expect them to do.  The lopsided passage of the referendum overturning same sex marriage now meant that Iowa joined the other states, meaning all 49 of them, and that legally speaking, Joseph and his boyfriend
had run out of luck.  Maybe luck is the wrong word; luck is random, neutral and impartial.  The world to them was anything but; it was calculated, biased and judgmental.

S
o the marriage irony that we so carefully considered
earlier
ha
d
come full circle and was now exactly reversed, put back where it belonged according to the majority opinion anyway.  Maybe the irony was gone, but the questions raised by it probably never would be.  For me personally, the question was never one of my rights versus someone else's, or whether the institution of marriage would be negatively impacted.  My only question from the very beginning was this; why does anyone care? 
Why
in the world
would anyone care who Jo
seph wants to marry?

We decided that Michelle would sell her condo and I'd give up my apartment downtown, and we bought an 80 year-old bungalow in Mayfield, not even a mile from where I had grown up, where we had spent our wonder years, even if they were something less than that.  We thought seriously about moving to Florida and had even made an offer on a townhouse in St. Petersburg, but in the end, just like Mr. Casslemond, decided to stay in the only place that was ever home.  I wasn't afraid of flying, but I didn't exactly enjoy it either, and the though
t
of having to get on a plane to visit our friends was not very appealing to me.  Michelle wanted to stay on as a consultant part time with her law firm and she didn't want to be so far from her mother, who was still fairly independent and completely lucid at the age of 91.  But with time not exactly on her side, and remembering Mrs. Klein's sudden death at nearly the same age, we weren't
so
eager to move away.  The house needed a little work and its old wooden floors creaked
noticeably
, but there was a comfort to living there that is hard to describe, something reassuring about being so close to the place that my parents chose to spend what we hoped were the
ir
best
years.

The luck that had brought me to this point was still there, you must know that it never actually decided to forget about me. 
We could never know
what its workings we
re or what it had in mind all those years when it shadowed me faithfully, or precisely what its agenda was on my
60
th
birthday
when
it
decided that the time had finally come to set my life on a different path, a better one we now know, and a luckier one I think too. 
 

While on summer break from school in 1972, I was sitting on our porch at home when a moving van passed by and stopped with br
akes
squealing
,
just
three houses down from ours.  The morning calm
had been
disturbed by the noise
and
my mother peered through the screen door and commented that those must be the people who bought the Silverstein’s house.  I shrugged and continued reading my
Sports Illustrated
while she went back to the kitchen where she was preparing lunch.  My father was taking the afternoon off and the three of us would have a picnic later on at Margate Park
near
Lake Michigan.  It was a warm and breezy July day and I felt
at ease
just then; there were still s
ix
more weeks until
my vacation would end and
school would start up again
.

I squinted through the morning sunlight and noticed a family of four getting out of
the car
that had followed behind the van.  It was one of those big family station wagons with the fake wooden trim on the side
s
.  I went onto the lawn to see if I could get a better look at the new neighbors.  As luck would have it, there was a boy who looked to be about my age carrying a
backpack and a
basketball up the walkway and into the house.  He made a few more trips
from
the
car
carrying boxes and some clothes, and then he came over to where I had resumed
reading on the porch.  I’m Joseph Klein, we just move
d
in down the street.
 
Hi, I’m Clifford Andrews.

I mentioned that I was on the Little League team and had a game tomorrow; maybe he could come by and meet some of the guys.  Hey, let me get my glove, he said.  We tossed t
he ball around on the lawn, and he asked me what I thought our new school would be like.
  He threw a couple over my head and apologized sheepishly; not to worry I said, we’d practice more anytime he felt like it.  You can come with my father and me to Bradford Park; we go there to hit
them
out sometimes after he gets home from work. 
He had wavy reddish hair that flew out from under his White Sox cap and a crooked smile with a slightly chipped front tooth.  It gave him a bit of an odd look, but not in a bad way really, not ugly at all, just a bit different.  I liked him immediately. 
After I chased one down that got way past me, I
turned and made a perfect throw on one hop from the neighbor’s yard about 200 feet away.  He timed it just right and made a sweeping tag on the imaginary runner trying to slide under it.  You
got a good arm
Clifford, what position do you play?  Center field normally, but the coach wants me to play catcher this year.