Screwdriver Parties

Pulling into my driveway late one afternoon, my eyes fell upon a dark sedan sitting idly.  Unable to recognize a face through the tinted windows and noting a New Jersey plate, a state from which I knew no one, a slight feeling of unease ensued. And then as if in slow motion, a window went down and a familiar voice I had not heard in many years, bellowed, “Kathy, it’s me, Jim Cappello!” I drove all the way from New Jersey to visit you.  Look in the trunk!”

I gazed in astonishment at the grinning face of my old boss Jim Cappello, whom I had worked with for over ten years at a publishing company in midtown Manhattan. Now eighty five years old and long retired, he had driven over two hours on a whim, to visit me at my home in Connecticut.

 It was the pretzels, he said. The pretzels made him do it.

He explained he was at his supermarket in New Jersey saw a bag of pretzels which reminded him of me and the screwdriver parties.  Every Friday at 5:30PM, in our small office on the 12^th floor of the Chanin Building, in midtown Manhattan, we had a screwdriver party enjoying just one cocktail before we parted ways for the weekend. Jim and I sold the display advertising and Barbara and Irene who worked adjacent to us, sold the Classified advertising. But during those cherished days we were far more than co-workers, we were confidantes and friends.

I can still hear his voice now,  “Irene, get the ice! Barbara open the pretzels, Kathy go down and buy the O.J!” and Jim, well Jim always was in charge of the vodka which he kept in his desk in the bottom drawer. He was the perennial salesman. Outgoing, tenacious, social and charming.  He loved a party. Our own little Madmen ritual in that tiny office on the twelfth floor.

“Look in the trunk!” He said again. I gazed down at two brown paper bags, one filled with a giant bag of pretzels and a container of orange juice, the other, a bottle of vodka.  “Let’s have a screwdriver!  For old times.”

We sat in my kitchen, Jim and I, and talked of our lives since the magazine closed. He shared how his beloved wife of fifty years had died three months before and how lost he felt in the weeks that followed.  I told him of the difficulty I experience in leaving my life in New York City behind for a small CT town in the suburbs.

We telephoned the classified girls, Barbara and Irene, who as luck would have it – were both home.  As each picked up the phone I would announce “Do you recognize this voice?” And then hand the phone to Jim who would bellow “Irene! Barbara! It’s Jim Cappello!  I am at Kathy’s house. We’re having a screwdriver party! For old times.”

But it was not those Friday parties that bound the four of us together but rather the cadence of life, the highs and the lows as we worked side by side in that tiny office as the years ticked past.

The last thing we did together before he left was to walk down to the bus stop where my two sons, whom he had never met, were due home from school. As we walked back up to the house I wondered…was it the pretzels he had seen in the supermarket that prompted his visit or rather the need for comfort often found in days past?  The reason was unimportant.  It was a day I have never forgotten.

Eight Years later…

As is life, the years rolled on. Time stands still for no one. Though I thought of him often, I had not spoken with Jim in several years. Deciding it was time, I picked up the phone but to my dismay discovered a disconnected number. After a bit of sleuthing I reached his granddaughter Colette, who often visited her grandfather when we worked together at the New York office and who I remembered fondly. She told me that Jim had been stricken with the Covid virus, quite severely and was currently in a nursing home in upstate New York.

Would I like his phone number?

But rather than call him, I decided I would take a page from his book and pay him a surprise visit just as he did for me eight years before.

So here we are, together once again. But we are not at our desks. We are sitting in his nursing home room, his daughter Annette by our side. The daughter for so many years I heard Jim speak of, but had never met until today. He recently celebrated his 93rd birthday. His smile is just the same.

The screwdrivers I made for us and transported in a thermos, were served in two shot glasses I brought hidden in my bag. They may have been a wee bit smaller than those of yesteryear, but tasted just as sweet, nonetheless.

We toasted to those days working in that small, midtown office. We toasted the everlasting friendship we shared. And just before I left, I raised my glass one last time to this special man with whom I shared, the very best of times.

Jim Cappello died two weeks after our reunion.