At home in your body.
The membership grew from twenty people in the first month to two hundred and forty now.
I had two full-time trainers.
I had a nutritionist who shared the space two days a week.
I had a community.
It was not the life the hallway had suggested I would have.
I had not thought about the hallway in years.
Then Alison called.
It was a Tuesday.
I was at the studio after closing, doing the specific administrative work that owning a business requires, the email and the scheduling and the accounts that do not do themselves.
She called at eight-thirty.
She said: how are you?
I said: good. Tired. You?
She said: good.
She said: can I ask you something?
I said: yes.
She said: are you going to the reunion?
I said: what reunion?
She said nothing for a moment.
The silence told me everything before she said anything else.
I said: what reunion, Alison.
She said: the twenty-year.
She said: from Millbrook.
She said: it’s next Saturday.
She said: at the Holloway Hotel.
She said: I got the invitation months ago.
She said: I assumed you got one too.
She said: and then I mentioned it to someone from our class last week and they said they hadn’t heard whether you were coming.
She said: and I thought that was an odd thing to say. Whether you were coming. Not that they hadn’t heard from you.
She said: so I’m calling to ask.
She said: did you get an invitation?
I said: no.
She said: no.
I said: no.
She said: Claire.
I said: I know.
She said: that is deliberate.
I said: probably.
She said: definitely.
I said: yes.
She said: that is a deliberate choice by someone to make sure you specifically were not invited.
I said: I know.
She said: which means someone or several someones are still, twenty years later, doing the same thing they were doing in the hallway.
I said: that’s probably what it means.
She said: that is infuriating.
I said: yes.
She said: I’m sorry.
I said: it’s all right.
She said: it’s not, actually.
I said: no. Not really.
We were quiet for a moment.
Then she said: what are you going to do?
I said: I don’t know.
She said: you could come anyway.
I said: show up uninvited to my own reunion.
She said: technically everyone is invited. It’s a public high school reunion. The event is listed on the class Facebook page. Which you haven’t looked at. But which you could.
She said: I know because I looked while we were talking.
She said: it’s a ticketed event. You can buy a ticket at the door.
She said: I checked.
I said: you checked while we were talking.
She said: I’m a surgeon. I multitask.
I sat with the phone for a moment.
I thought about the hallway.
I thought about the temperature of it.
I thought about sitting in the cafeteria and doing the calculation.
I thought about twenty years.
I thought about two hundred and forty members.
I thought about the specific person I had become in the time since I last saw any of those people.
I thought about what showing up would mean.
Not for them.
For me.
Alison said: I’ll come with you.
I said: you don’t have to.
She said: I know I don’t have to. I want to.
She said: I wasn’t invited either, by the way.
I said: you weren’t?
She said: I think I fell off the list around the same time you did.
She said: which tells you something about who’s running the list.
I said: yes.
I said: all right.
She said: all right?
I said: let’s go.
She said: good.
She said: wear something good.
I said: I own a fitness studio. I own good things.
She said: I know. I’m just. Wear something very good.
I said: yes.
I said: Alison.
She said: yes.
I said: thank you for calling.
She said: I almost didn’t. I thought maybe you’d rather not know.
I said: no.
She said: no?
I said: I’d rather know.
She said: yes.
She said: I thought you probably would.
I wore the black dress.
I want to tell you about the black dress because clothes are not trivial.
Clothes are the thing you put on your body to tell the world something about who you are and what you think of yourself.
For years, I wore clothes that were meant to minimize.
Darker colors.
Looser fits.
The specific aesthetic of someone who is trying to take up less space.
The black dress was not that.
The black dress was the dress of someone who had decided they were not going to apologize for taking up space anymore.
It fit well.
It was appropriate for the occasion.
It was the dress of a person who owned a business and was doing something she had earned.
I wore my hair down.
The red hair, which had been the subject of jokes in the hallway, which I had spent years trying to tone down in various ways, which I had made peace with completely in my early thirties.
It was very red.
I wore it down.
Alison met me in the hotel lobby.
She was in a deep green dress that she wore with the ease of someone who has spent thirty-eight years becoming comfortable in her body.
She looked at me.
She said: good.
I said: thank you.
She said: ready?
I said: no.
She said: neither am I.
She said: let’s go.
The ballroom was on the second floor.
There was a registration table at the entrance.
A woman was sitting at it.
I recognized her.
She had been in my biology class.
Her name was Jennifer, and she had been one of the ones who made the hallway what it was.
Not the primary architect of it.
One of the laughers.
She looked up from the table.
She looked at me.
I watched her face.
The moment of not recognizing.
The moment of beginning to recognize.
The specific moment of recognition that happens when a face that you have filed away under a particular image does not match the image in front of you.
She said: can I help you?
I said: I’m Claire Weston. Class of 2004.
She said: oh.
She said it the way Alison had predicted.
The oh of update.
Of revision.
Of a mental file being rewritten.
She said: your name isn’t on the list.
I said: I know.
I said: I was told I could buy a ticket at the door.
She said: that’s.
She paused.
She said: we usually require advance.
Alison said: the Facebook event said door tickets available.
Jennifer looked at Alison.
She recognized Alison faster.
She said: Alison.
Alison said: Jennifer.
They looked at each other.
Jennifer said: you aren’t on the list either.
Alison said: funny coincidence.
The specific way she said it.
Not aggressive.
Just exact.
Just precise.
Jennifer said: I’ll need to check with.
She looked at the door.
She looked back at us.
She said: I’ll need to check with someone.
I said: of course.
She went inside.
Alison and I stood at the table.
Alison said, quietly: how are you doing?
I said: I’m doing fine.
She said: yes you are.
Jennifer came back.
With someone.
I recognized the someone immediately.
Her name was Dana Howell.
