Free The Dearly Departed by Elinor Lipman Page A

idiot. She’d removed the rotting, stinking, dead-eyed carp and left it on the hood of his Tercel. In world history the next day, he repeatedly turned around, his mouth annular, his lips parting and puckering idiotically. Even Mr. Cutler, usually in the thrall of varsity athletes, told Randy to face front and stop doing whatever he was doing or there would be consequences. Regina thought Randy was cute—the top layer of his hair went blond around the middle of May—but she loyally took on her friend’s grudge as her own. At Senior Honors Day, Sunny received an award that a handful of women teachers had paid for themselves: a silver-plated loving cup inscribed to “Sondra ‘Sunny’ Batten, the graduating senior who, in the judgment of the faculty, breaks ground in the area of sports leadership.” The audience gave Sunny one of those slow-spreading, person-by-person standing ovations, and even though the winner appeared stunned as she shook Mr. DeMinico’s hand, her best friend knew that the look in Sunny’s eye had been not one of gratitude but of irony.
    Four years later, Regina ran into Randy Pope leaving the Orpheus in West Lovell, after seeing a movie that Regina thought might be emblematic of a change in his worldview. It was
Thelma and Louise,
to which neither had brought a date or a friend. He invited her to a muffin house, where he drank herbal tea and told Regina he was embarrassed when he looked back at how he had acted in high school. As soon as she got home, she called her friend.
    â€œDid he mention me specifically—I mean, the War Against Sunny?”
    â€œ
I
did. I said, ‘You certainly were a jerk when it came to Sunny Batten. What did she ever do to you besides beat you at match play?’ ”
    â€œYou said that?”
    â€œMore or less. A little more politely than that. But he knew exactly what I was talking about.”
    â€œAnd what did he say?”
    â€œHe said he was ashamed of himself, the old him. He said if there were such a thing as a time machine, he’d set it back to the first day you came to practice.”
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œHe’d say, ‘Welcome to the team, Sunny. We’re all behind you.’ ”
    â€œIt’s an act! Nobody changes that much in four years, especially a jock. He thinks if he acts humble and admits to being a jerk in high school, you’ll fall at his big feet.”
    â€œHe looks different,” said Regina. “He has a goatee and a mustache. It looks a little Shakespearean. And he’s thinking of joining the Peace Corps. B.U. humbled him, and that’s a direct quote.”
    â€œMeaning, he learned that swaggering around the halls of B.U. didn’t get him what he wanted.”
    After a pause, Regina said, “I really think he’s different. Or maybe he’s not so different. I mean, how would we know? Neither one of us ever had a conversation with him in high school.”
    â€œFor a reason!” said Sunny. “He started the deep freeze. If he hadn’t started it, or if he had come around, it wouldn’t have been so painful.”
    â€œMr. Sweet should’ve helped. That’s what Randy said: ‘Too bad Coach didn’t threaten to throw us off the team.’ ”
    â€œMaybe he’d like to apologize to me now,” said Sunny. “Maybe you could give him my phone number and he could call and say, ‘I’m sorry I painted a bull’s-eye on your back. Sorry I couldn’t be big enough to recognize that a girl could beat me in golf. Sorry I was the biggest asshole on the team.’ ”
    After a pause, Regina said, “You sound so bitter. More so now than when you were living through it.”
    â€œNot more bitter,” said Sunny. “Just more willing to say it out loud.”

    She’d been invited to their wedding, but sent her regrets. Regina didn’t mail Sunny a birth announcement, but