“Glad to know things are back on track,” Mr. Moats said.
“Thank you,” I said.
“We were worried. We didn’t know what had happened to you.”
“I know. Things became hectic.“
“When you finally let Eva know what’d happened, we were relieved. You must be going through a lot. How’s your father doing by the way?”
“The prognosis isn’t good,” I said. It was the scripted sentence I’d sort of relished saying to Ms. Thermopolis (who responded by reminding me they can do wonders “fixing” cancer as if it was just a bad haircut) and Ms. Gershon (who speedily changed the subject back to my Final Essay on String Theory), even Mr. Archer (who stared at the Titian poster on the wall, rendered speechless by the ruffles in the girl’s dress), but now I felt bad when it rendered Moats visibly sad and mute. He nodded at the floor. “My father died of throat cancer too,” he said softly. “It can be grueling. The loss of the voice, a failure to communicate — not easy for any man. I can’t imagine how tough it’d be for a professor. Modigliani was plagued with illness, you know. Degas. Toulouse too. Many of the greatest men and women in history.” Moats sighed. “And next year you’re at Harvard?”
I nodded.
“It’ll be hard, but you must concentrate on your studies. Your father will want it that way. And keep drawing, Blue,” he added, a statement that seemed to comfort him more than me. He sighed and touched the collar of his textured magenta shirt. “And I don’t say that to just anyone, you know. Many people should stay far, far away from the blank page. But you—you see, the drawing, the carefully considered sketch of a human being, animal, an inanimate object, is not simply a picture but a blueprint of a soul. Photography? A lazy man’s art. Drawing? The thinker, the dreamer’s medium.”
“Thank you,” I said.
A few minutes later, I was hurrying across the Commons in my long white dress and flat white shoes. The sky had darkened to the color of bullets and parents in pastels drifted toward Bartleby field, some of them laughing, clutching their handbags or the hand of a small child, some of them fluffing their hair as if it were goose-feather pillows.
Ms. Eugenia Sturds had mandated that we “load” (we were bulls to be unleashed in a ring) in the Nathan Bly ’68 Trophy Room no later than 10:45 A.M., and when I pushed open the door and made my way into the crowded room, it seemed I was the last senior to arrive.
“No disturbances during the ceremony,” Mr. Butters was saying. “No laughter. No fidgeting—”
“No clapping until all names are called—” chimed Ms. Sturds.
“No getting up and going to the bathroom—”
“Girls, if you have to pee, go now.”
Immediately, I spotted Jade and the others in the corner. Jade, wearing a suit in marshmallow white, hair slicked into a mais oui twist, reviewed her reflection in a pocket mirror, rubbing lipstick off her teeth and smacking her lips together. Lu was standing quietly with her hands together, looking down, pitching forward and backward on her heels. Charles, Milton and Nigel were discussing beer. “Budweiser tastes like fuckin’ rabbit piss,” I heard Milton remark loudly, as I skirted to the other side of the room. (I’d often wondered what they talked about now that Hannah was gone and I was sort of relieved to know it was hackneyed and had nothing to do with The Eternal Why; I wasn’t missing much.) I pushed past Point Richardson, Donnamara Chase sniffing in distress as she dabbed a wet napkin along a blue pen streak across the front of her blouse, Trucker wearing a green tie with tiny horse heads floating in it and Dee safety-pinning Dum’s crimson bra straps to her dress straps so they didn’t show.
“I all can’t fathom why you told mom eleven forty-five,” Dee said heatedly.
“What’s the big deal?”
“The procession’s the big deal.”
“Why?”
“Mom’s all not going to be able to take pictures. Because of your mal á la tête mom’s all missing our last day of childhood like a crosstown bus.”
“She said she was going to be early—”
“Well, I didn’t see her and she’s wearing that highly visible purple outfit she wears to everything—”
“I thought you forbade her to wear the highly visible—”
“It’s starting!” squawked Little Nose, perched on the radiator at the window. “We have to go! Now!”
“Grab the diploma with the right, shake with the left, or shake with the left, grab with the right?” asked Raging Waters.
“Zach, did you see our parents?” asked Lonny Felix.
“I gotta pee,” said Krista Jibsen.
“So this is it,” Sal Mineo said solemnly behind me. “This is the end.”
Even though the Jelly Roll Jazz Band had broken into “Pomp and Circumstance,” Ms. Sturds callously informed us No One Was Graduating Anywhere until everyone calmed down and formed the alphabetized line. We tapewormed, exactly as we’d practiced all week. Mr. Butters gave the signal and opened the door with American Bandstand flourish and Ms. Sturds, as if unveiling a solid new line of mules, arms raised, her floral skirt jitterbugging around her ankles, stepped out onto the lawn in front of us.
The sky was a massive bruise; someone had punched it in the kisser. There was an uncouth wind, too. It wouldn’t stop teasing the long blue St. Gallway banners hanging on either side of the Commencement Stage, and then, growing bored, turned its attention to the music. In spite of Mr. Johnson’s cries for the Jelly Roll Jazz Band to play louder (for a second I thought he was shouting “Sing out, Louise!” but I was wrong), the wind intercepted the notes, sprinting away with them across the field, and punted them through the goal posts, so all that was audible were a few shabby clangs and honks.
We filed down the aisle. Parents frothed excitedly around us, clapping and grinning, and slow-motion grandmothers tried to take foe-toes with cameras they handled like jewelry. A wiry lizard-photographer from Ellis Hills, trying to blend in, scurried ahead of our line, crouching, squinting as he peered through his camera. He stuck out his tongue before snapping a few quick pictures and scuttling away.
The rest of the class made their way into the metal folding chairs in the front and Radley Clifton and I continued up the five steps to the commencement stage. We sat down in the chairs to the right of Havermeyer and Havermeyer’s wife, Gloria (finally relieved of the boulder she’d been carrying, though now she had an equally disturbing pale, rigid, Plexiglas appearance). Eva Brewster was next to her and she tossed me a comforting smile but then almost immediately took it away, like lending me her handkerchief but not wanting it to get dirty.
Havermeyer sauntered toward the microphone and talked at length about our unparalleled achievements, our great gifts and glowing futures, and then Radley Clifton gave his Salutatorian Speech. He’d just begun to philosophize—“An army marches on its stomach,” he said — when the wind, obviously contemptuous of all scholars, truth seekers, logicians (anyone who tried to address The Eternal Why), I-Spied-With-My-Little-Eye Radley, joking with his red tie, mocking his hair (neatly combed, the color of cardboard), and just when one thought the mischief would subside, it started to rag on the neat white pages of his speech, forcing him to lose his place, repeat himself, stutter and pause so Radley Clifton’s Graduation Credo came out jarring, conflicted, confused — a surprisingly resonant life philosophy.
Havermeyer returned to the podium. Strands of sandy hair daddylong-legged across his forehead. “I now introduce to you our class Valedictorian, a highly gifted young woman, originally from Ohio, who we were honored to have at St. Gallway this year. Miss Blue van Meer.”