The end of my speech was a disaster, the disaster being that nothing happened. Obviously, I’d hoped — as all people do when they stand before an audience, show a bit of leg — for culmination, illumination, a flake of sky to loosen, crash down on everyone’s stiff hair like the big chip of plaster on which Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel had taken a stab at God’s index finger, when, in 1789, it unexpectedly freed itself from the ceiling, hitting Father Cantinolli on the head and sending a bevy of visiting nuns into eye-rolling seizures; when they came to, their prevailing line of defense for all actions, from the sacred to the seedy, was “because God told me to” (see Lo Spoke Del Dio Di Giorno, Funachese, 1983).
But if God existed, today, like most days, He chose to remain mum. There was only wind and faces, yawning sky. To applause that might as well have been laughter on a late, late show (it had the same sense of obligation), I returned to my chair. Havermeyer began to read the list of graduating names, and I didn’t pay much attention, until he came to the Bluebloods. I saw their Life Stories flash before my eyes.
“Milton Black.”
Milton lumbered up the stairs, his chin held at that deceitfully sweet angle, around 75 degrees. (He was a lethargic coming-of-age novel.)
“Nigel Creech.”
He smiled — that wristwatch catching light. (He was an unsentimental comedy in Five Acts, sequined with wit, lust and pain. The last scene tended to end on a sour note, but the playwright refused to revise.)
“Charles Loren.”
Charles hobbled up the stairs with his crutches. (He was a romance.)
“Congratulations, son.”
The sky had yellowed, performing one of its best magic tricks, overcast yet making people squint.
“Leulah Maloney.”
She skipped up the stairs. She’d cut off her hair, not as harshly as Hannah, but the result was just as unhappy; the blunt pieces banged against her jaw. (She was a twelve-line poem of repetition and rhyme.)
Raindrops the size and texture of wasps started to zing off the shoulder pads of Havermeyer’s navy blazer, also off some mother wearing a pink sun hat that sun-rose high over her head. Instantly, umbrellas blossomed — a garden of black, red, yellow, a few striped — and the Jelly Roll Jazz Band began to pack up their instruments, evacuating to the gym.
“Things aren’t looking good, are they?” Havermeyer noted with a sigh. “Better hurry things along.” He smiled. “Graduating in the rain. For those of you who think this is a bad omen, we do have some spots available in next year’s senior class, if you’d like to wait for an exit that looks a little more promising.” No one laughed and Havermeyer started to read the names quickly, jerking his head up and down: microphone, name, microphone; God was fast-forwarding him. It was difficult to hear what name he was on because the wind had found the microphone and sent ghostly, theme park “Woooooooos” out across the crowd. Havermeyer’s wife, Gloria, stepped up onto the stage and held an umbrella over his head.
“Jade Churchill Whitestone.”
She stood up, carrying her orange umbrella Statue-of-Liberty-style, and grabbed her diploma from Havermeyer as if doing him a favor, as if he were handing her his résumé. She stalked back to her seat. (She was a breathtaking book written in a bleak style. She often didn’t bother with “he said” or “she said” the reader could figure it out. And now and then a sentence made you gasp it was so beautiful.)
Soon it was Radley’s turn to go, and then my own. I’d forgotten my umbrella in Mr. Moats’ classroom and Radley was holding his over himself and a strip of rubberized commencement stage on his other side, so I was getting drenched. The rain was an oddly soothing temperature, just right, Goldilocks’ porridge. I stood up and Eva Brewster, with her small pink cat umbrella, muttered “Christ,” and shoved hers into my hands. I took it, but felt bad because the rain started to stick to her hair and bang against her forehead. I quickly shook Havermeyer’s cold pruned hand and returned to my seat, handing the umbrella back to her.
Havermeyer rushed his closing — something about luck — the crowd applauded and began to disband. There were the wet picnic mechanics of moving inside — do we have everything, where’d Kimmie go, what’s my hair doing, it’s seaweed, hell. Dads with pained faces wrenched toddlers out of chairs. Mothers in soggy white linen were unaware they admitted to the world their underwear.
I waited another minute, doing my About-To act. One doesn’t look suspiciously alone, without blood relation, if one appears industriously About To do something, and so I stood up, made a big deal of removing the mythical rock from my shoe and scratching the fictitious itch on my hand, another one on the back of my neck (they were like fleas), pretending I’d lost something somewhere — granted, for that I didn’t have to pretend. Soon I was alone with the chairs and the stage. I slipped down the stairs and began to make my way across the field.
In the past few weeks, when I’d imagined this day, I’d pictured, at this precise moment, Dad, making a Grand Final Appearance (for One Night Only). Just as I figured all along — there he’d be, far in front of me, a black figure on an empty hill. Or else he’d have climbed up into the topmost branches of one of those hulking oaks, decked in Tiger Striped camouflage in order to spy, unobserved, on my graduation proceedings. Or else he’d be sealed inside a limousine, which, just as I realized it was he, would come swooping down Horatio Way, almost knocking me over, cruelly reflecting me back to me before roaring around the curve, past the stone chapel and the wooden Welcome to The St. Gallway School sign, disappearing like a whale in a sound.
But I saw no swarthy black figure, no limousine and not a single lunatic in a tree. In front of me, Hanover Hall, Elton and Barrow lounged like dogs so old they wouldn’t raise their heads if you threw a tennis ball at them.
“Blue,” someone shouted behind me.
I ignored the voice, continuing up the hill, but he called out again, closer this time, so I stopped and turned. Red Shirt was walking quickly toward me. Instantly, I recognized him — well, let me revise that. Instantly, I was aware I’d inadvertently done the highly improbable thing of following my own advice — all that goldfish business — because it was Zach Soderberg, sure, yet I’d never seen him before in my life. He looked radically different, because sometime between our last AP Physics class and graduation, he’d decided to shave his entire head. And it wasn’t one of those heads plagued with disturbing potholes and dents (as if tipping people off to the fact the brain inside it was a bit squishy), but a pleasantly strong head. His ears, too, were nothing to be ashamed of. He looked brand new, a newness that hurt the eyes and was unsettling, which was why I didn’t say, “Sayonara, kid,” and break into a sprint, because the Volvo was packed, waiting for me in the Student Parking Lot. I’d said so long to 24 Armor, tallyho to the Citizen Kane desk, returned the three sets of house keys to Sherwig Realty in a sealed manila envelope, including a handwritten Thank-You note to Miss Dianne Seasons, throwing in a few!!! for good measure. I had organized road maps in the glove compartment. I had neatly divided the states between North Carolina and New York (like they were equitable pieces of birthday cake) into audiotapes from the Bookworm Library on Elm (most of them pulpy thrillers Dad would loathe). I had a license with an unfortunate picture and I planned to drive in every sense of the word.