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YOU'LL GET YOURS, CHARLOTTE MYERS!
By Nan Jacobs©2001
The day my fertile imagination decided Charlotte Myers should be stuck fast with bubblegum to a smokestack of a sinking QE2, the mail brought an invitation for our thirtieth high school class reunion.
I'd never attended a class reunion. After graduation, Howie Rockwell married me, joined the Air Force, and for twenty-eight years until Howie retired, the world was ours.
But every time I stepped on a piece of bubblegum in a parking lot-German, Alaskan, or Saudi-I would think about Charlotte Myers. Then I would cuss, usually in English. About Charlotte Myers first and about the sticky gum on my shoe next.
It was the damned ruler and changing desks with gum-chewing Mandy Hoffman on school supply collection day that caused Charlotte to become one with bubblegum litter in my mind. I'm not a gum chewer and anyone who thought twice about it could've figured it out, but Good Girl Charlotte told everybody in Mr. Gottshalk's sixth grade class that she saw me do it when she collected the rulers to hand in. So nobody thought twice about who did it except me.
What she *saw* was me shuffling through Mandy's messy desk to find Mandy's messy ruler. I didn't notice the gum stuck to the ruler, but apparently Charlotte did.
And so did Mr. Gottshalk. He noticed so much that, when no one stepped forward to take credit for the misdeed, he broke the ruler over his knee.
After the whodunit grapevine reached Mr. Gottshalk's ears, I had to stay late on THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL to scrub desk tops and face my parents' "we're so disappointed in you" faces when they picked me up. It never occurred to me to plead innocent... Not with Miss Goody Two-shoes as an eyewitness.
I never figured out why she disliked me enough to spread that unfounded lie, but off and on over the years I enjoyed my share of sweet payback fantasies.
I particularly enjoyed the one where she was the defendant on the witness stand, and I was the prosecuting attorney. Mr. Gottshalk was the judge and our sixth grade class was the jury. Under my penetrating cross-examination, she tearfully confessed. She got community service for life, scraping gum off movie theater floors every morning at four a.m., and off my shoes as needed.
As I stood gazing at the reunion invitation in my hands, I reckoned Charlotte Myers attended every reunion. I envisioned myself confronting her about her lie. I'd ask her why she didn't point out the gum when I handed her Mandy's glopped-up ruler. I'd make her admit in front of the whole class of 1970 that she lied about what happened in Mr. Gottshalk's sixth grade class in June of '64.
Yeah, that's all I wanted. Validation; my honor restored. But as Howie and I headed out the door for the gala evening two months later, I dropped a couple pieces of our youngest son's bubblegum into my coat pocket. One never knows.
We arrived at the hotel, hung our winter coats in the unattended cloakroom, collected our nametags and sought out familiar faces in the ballroom. Of course, there weren't many faces we recognized. Everyone there looked middle aged.
I glanced at Howie. Suddenly I noticed the gray in his sideburns. I fingered my own short-cropped, frosted locks. I supposed I looked middle-aged, too. Gracefully so, I hoped with a slight sense of desperation. It was too late to assess-and camouflage-my forty-somethingness, and for that I held Charlotte responsible. I'd expended all my reunion angst on my who-put-the-gum-on-the-ruler grievance.
I scanned the crowd, then realized I'd have to look at nametags. Her hair could have been gray or blonde or auburn or purple and she could've been svelte or fat, frumpy or chic. I hoped she'd be gray, fat, and frumpy.
A woman approached me and smiled. "Remember me?" she asked.
Her light brown hair was fashionably frizzy and gently brushed her shoulders. She wore a silver-gray, calf-length skirt with a soft-blue tunic over top; a simple silver chain was her only jewelry. Understated elegance. She didn't look as middle-aged as most of the others.
At last, I gave up and peered at her nametag. *I'll be damned.* "Charlotte Myers-Freeman?"
She nodded and smiled.
"Freeman? As in Scott?"
"Yes," she said, and her smile dwindled.
Good God, she'd married my sixth grade crush, who'd later become our star high school basketball player. How much lower could she go?
Howie had wandered away in search of hors d'oevres, so I couldn't show off my high school track star husband who still had all his hair and very little paunch. "Where's Scott?"
Her smile disappeared. She waved vaguely toward the cocktail bar. "He's over there somewhere. I see your last name's Rockwell now."
"As in Howie," I said, and grinned.
"I remember Howie. He was a pole-vaulter. Scott always wished he had the balls to do that."
A small silence fell during which I could have mentioned the ruler and gum, but I was too busy marveling that Charlotte Myers had said the word "balls".
"We got divorced last summer," she said suddenly. "He married someone else last month."
I gulped so loudly I was sure everyone in the room heard it. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. At least the kids are in college and he's paying for it." She tried to smile, but tears glittered behind her bravado. "I had to come tonight or abandon the last shreds of my female pride."
I glanced toward the bar and picked out Scott immediately. My jaw almost hit the floor. "Someone else" couldn't be a day over twenty-three, boasted wrap-around legs, a collagen-lipped mouth to fulfill every man's fantasy, and quivering mega-cleavage tickled by a fashionably wild blonde mane. Scott nuzzled his trophy's alabaster neck. She caressed his bald spot.
Charlotte took my arm and guided me toward the cloakroom. Howie, rescue me, I thought. I didn't want to commiserate with her: I wanted to *berate* her. But I did grudgingly admire the woman's pluck for showing up at the reunion in the face of such blatant testimony to youth, so I let her pull me along.
"I'm so glad you came this time, Ramona. I've been hoping to see you at every reunion."
Ha, I knew it. Perfect attendance then and now. I smiled. "This is my first one."
"I know, and I hate to put a damper on it for you. But I have to get this off my chest. I hope you'll forgive me."
I stared at her, completely baffled.
She gave a weak laugh. "It's such a silly thing, but I've thought about it all these years. Do you remember sixth grade?"
If only she knew. I narrowed my eyes. "What about it?"
"Scott stuck that gum on the ruler. He was mad at Mandy Hoffman because she told his sister he liked Janice Doan. I was in love with him even then, and I lied so he wouldn't get in trouble, because I heard one of the other boys dare Scott to do it to get Mandy in trouble. Which he did. Only, Mandy was my best friend, and then you sat at Mandy's desk and then..." She rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm sorry, because you had to stay late on the last day of school for it, everyone thought you did it and were too sissy to own up, and Scott turned out to be a... a turd." She gasped for breath after the last word squeaked out.
My mind reeled with the complexity of sixth grade intrigue, with the wonder of hearing Charlotte Myers say "turd". But her confession wasn't nearly as satisfying as I'd expected. Instead, I felt foolish for wasting so much energy on childhood melodrama and worried that my juvenile grudge had reached out to her like voodoo over the years.
I rifled through the assorted coats, found mine, and pulled out the bubblegum. I handed a piece to her and peeled the wrapper off the other one for myself. "I came prepared for revenge tonight. I hope you'll forgive me, too, Charlotte."
She gazed at the gum, then gawked at me.
"Got a ruler, for old time's sake?" I asked.
A sudden, mischievous grin lit up Charlotte Myers-Freeman's face. "No, but I know where Scott hung his coat," she said.
We tapped bubblegum squares together and popped them into our mouths.
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