On my right, the young adults of 1890 stared solemnly into the camera. The girls’ dresses had high necklines and tight waists. On my left, last year’s crop of rowdies hammed it up, the girls in short dresses, the boys’ jackets cast aside, ties loose. At some point, the white dress tradition had gone away and the girls’ shifts were awash in vibrant summer colors.
I kept walking slowly down the hallway, which grew increasingly dark, squinting at the photos as I went. The solemn-faced Victorians turned into sleek Edwardians and then smiling flappers. Photos were no longer formal portraits. The collegians of the 1920s weren’t afraid to show they were having fun. They held champagne glasses, despite Prohibition, and smoldering cigarettes in long holders. Then came the toned-down years of the Depression followed by the war years. For the first time, there were an unequal number of women and men in the pictures. There weren’t enough men left at home to go around. During World War II, the girls’ sleek dresses and wavy hair made them look old beyond their years. An entire generation that had to grow up too quickly. Most of them were smoking, too, just like in the twenties and thirties.
As I reached the end of the hall, light streamed in through the windows in the community room. I turned around and started back the other way. I looked at the photos on the opposite wall with interest, watching the changing fashions, wondering about the people. I was sure I must have looked into the eyes of several of my ancestors. But I’d also done some quick math. I knew Caroline was a recent retiree, so I could figure out more or less how old she was. The kids in the photos immediately after World War II still looked purposeful and adult, many of the men still in uniform. Then there was another shift, and in came big skirts and poufy hair and giggles at the camera. I slowed down as I reached the sixties, ticking up the years. And then, there she was. Front and center in the photograph for 1967, so I couldn’t miss her. Fee was right—Caroline had aged but was otherwise unchanged. I slipped the photo off its single hook and carried it back to the better light in the community room so I could examine it.
Caroline was in the first row in the front, elegantly arranged on the floor. Her hair was boy-short even then, alone among the big hairdos of the other girls. If they were going for Katherine Ross in The Graduate, Caroline was Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby, though without the haunted look. She stared into the camera, bright-eyed, confident, happy.
I looked at the rest of the photo, searching the faces to see if any of the others who’d been in the restaurant that night were there too. I was astonished. They all were!
Henry was next to Caroline on the floor, her arm through his. His hair and brows were dark, his lean face not yet pixie-like. In a dinner jacket and skinny bow tie, he glowered, his features a map of simmering anger. His hostile expression didn’t seem at all like the Henry I knew.
The others sat in chairs or stood around them. After Caroline, Phil Bennett was the most recognizable, with his long skinny legs and arms. Slowly, Michael and Sheila Smith came into focus, mainly because Sheila’s thin figure and hairstyle of bangs and curls were unchanged. Even back then, Michael had mane of flowing hair, though whether it was light blond or prematurely white, I couldn’t tell from the black-and-white photograph.
Though both Sheila and Michael were in the picture, Sheila was standing next to Phil Bennett, his arm around her, and Michael was with . . . Fran Walker! It took a few moments for me to decide the young woman was really Fran. She was sleek and trim, every hair in her bouffant artfully arranged. With her overlarge features, she should have been ugly, but she was gorgeous.
Barry Walker was also in the photo. Like the other men, he was dressed in a dinner jacket, but he looked uncomfortable in his clothes. His long hair touched his collar and looked dark blond or light brown. I tried to remember back to my childhood. What color had Barry’s hair been? I couldn’t come up with it. Barry stood close to a pretty woman I didn’t recognize.
It took a long time for me to believe Deborah Bennett was in the photograph. I had assumed her plastic surgery had been an attempt to recapture the beauty of her youth, but the woman in the photo looked so different. She was stunning, for sure. The young woman in the photo had a beauty that jumped out of the frame. But her cheekbones were somehow differently shaped than Deborah’s, and instead of Deborah’s cascade of light blond hair, this woman’s dark hair was an elaborate construction that swept back and up, and then hung down into a flip. But as I stood in the cold, empty community room, studying the photo, I became convinced from her height and carriage and beautiful legs that the woman was Deborah. She stood with a man I was sure I didn’t know. He was in a U.S. Navy dress uniform, and the photographer had caught him laughing.