Tap & Gown (40 page)

1*The confessor cannot speak to the veracity of this account. One would assume that the ACLU would have been all over this by now, but then again, if the victim just went away quietly, as the confessor realizes victims are occasionally wont to do …

On the morning of my last day at Eli, I rose and looked around my bare room. My boxes and trunks had already been put into storage until I found a place to live, and just last night, Lydia and Josh had gathered up our couch, microwave, and coffee table for transport into Lydia’s new off-campus apartment.

On Orange Street. In New Haven.

She’d decided to attend Eli Law. Only time would tell what this meant for Josh and her.

The last few weeks had been characterized by two things: nostalgia and major life decisions. Though Lydia was planning to spend at least three more years on campus, we’d spent a lot of time revisiting old haunts. Our last 3A.M . call to the local Chinese food place. Our last shared “small Greek salad” that could feed a large family. Our last late night spent studying in the Stacks. Our last evening spent imbibing Gumdrop Drops.

After exams were over, most of my friends made the usual senior trek down to Myrtle Beach (Michelle had offered to mouse-sit for Reepicheep until I came back from England). Odile had rented a house for us right on the shore, and twelve Digger and Digger-friends spent the week fighting over bathroom time and rotating who got to share private rooms with their sweethearts (or the random “last chance” hookups they dragged home from clubs, bars, and beachcombing). As someone who had more than had it with Myrtle Beach hookups, I found myself relegated to sleeping bags in the living room a lot of the time. I didn’t begrudge my companions their prurient activities. Heck, in a different frame of mind, I might have been up for a few last-chance encounters myself.

One last encounter with Jamie would not have been unwelcome.

I’d tried to contact him again. And again. No phone numbers worked. And though his Eli alumni and Phimalarlico e-mail addresses remained active, I doubted highly he was checking them. At least, I hoped he wasn’t. The idea that he could see four or five notes from me and still not respond triggered blunt pains in my chest cavity.

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I spent a lot of time with Jenny and Harun, who’d managed to turn restraint and courtly love into an art form, and Clarissa, who’d recently placed a moratorium on her own amorous existence in order to get the rest of her life in peak shape. “I’ve got a company to run,” she explained. “I don’t have time for heartbreak.”

Was that what this was? Heartbreak? In the past, it had floored me, too. But my separation from Jamie had felt so different, and I still didn’t fully understand why. Maybe it was because it came without betrayal. We both cared for each other. We just couldn’t make it work. Or maybe it was because every time I checked my e-mail, I held my breath for a moment, hoping against hope I’d see his name in my in-box.

Given my choice of company was it any wonder that I at last acquiesced to their persuasion? As soon as I returned from England, I’d be moving to New York City and working as the brand-new public relations chair of Jenny’s company, Caritas. As it turned out, all my protests amounted to a lingering guilt that Jenny’s offer was made out of pity. Eventually, they convinced me otherwise.

“I read the narratives you put together at your D.C. job last summer, Amy,” Clarissa pointed out. “You were able to capture both the plight of these women and their hope for a better future.”

“We want you to craft the same kind of narratives, just on a global scale,” Jenny pointed out. “Caritas is going to be like the eBay for micro-loans. But some of these entrepreneurs—well, they aren’t going to have the writing skills necessary to describe where they come from, what they face, and what’s so good about their projects. You’re going to be marketing for them as much as you are for the company.”

I’d loved my job in D.C. I’d loved knowing that the writing I was doing was directly affecting people’s lives.

All that, four weeks of paid vacation per year, and full health and dental. How could I resist?

So here I stood, on the morning of commencement, suit freshly pressed, graduation gown feeling very cheap and flimsy next to the society robe I’d been wearing two nights a week all year long. My mortarboard and tassel were waiting for me on my dresser, my parents were waiting in the café at their hotel, my diploma was waiting in a stack in the Prescott College dean’s office. This was it. I was graduating from college.

Maybe I should wear a different blouse?

I was down to my bra and pantyhose, digging through my suitcase, when Lydia knocked on my door.

“Are we going?”

“Just a minute,” I called. I picked up the pink shell and held it against my jacket. Hmmmm …

“Are you decent?”

“You know the answer to that: hardly ever.” What about the yellow top?

Lydia stuck her head in the doorway. “It’s just that my little brother is out here and I don’t want to spoil his virgin eyes with glimpses of college co-eds in bras.”

“Aren’t you and Josh supposed to be at that Phi Beta Kappa reception?”

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“Been and back, honey,” said Lydia. “It’s almost ten.”

“What?” I cried. “No!” But of course. With my alarm clock packed up, I had no way of keeping track of the time. “I was supposed to meet my parents—”

“They’re here, too. But if you don’t come out in thirty seconds, they are giving the English muffin and mocha they are saving for you to my brother. And you really don’t want to see what he’s like on caffeine.”

“Okay.” I looked at the three shirts in my hands. Ugh, why couldn’t I make this choice? I was a college graduate—pretty soon anyway. Couldn’t I dress myself?

“Overthinking again?”

“You know it.”

Lydia tapped one. “The white. It’s classic. Now come on.”

“What am I going to do without you?” I slipped the shirt on and grabbed my graduation gown.

“Luckily, New Haven is just a short commuter train ride away.”

I began to follow her to the door, then stopped, snatched yesterday’s jeans off the floor and pulled my Rose & Grave pin free of the belt loop.

One last time.

Ivy League commencement ceremonies are interminable. We’d already had one whole day of celebration, wearing gowns, but not our caps. We listened to our commencement speaker and met with the president for his commencement address followed by a reception at his house. Today consisted of a march through the New Haven Green, culminating in a giant ceremony at Old Campus, marked by honorary degrees, recognition of graduates in every graduate field of study as well as the undergraduate program, more addresses (some in Latin), and special awards to exceptional graduates. I was pleased to recognize a few faces on the podium that day. Omar received an award for outstanding scholarship in the face of significant personal tragedy, as most of his family were still political prisoners back in his home country—a story that his friends and fellow knights already knew far too well. Howard First, who had been a Digger for all of thirty seconds, received an award for his public service. I guess he did use his time well.

After the group event, all undergrads split off to attend smaller ceremonies in their respective colleges.

As there was no way I’d be able to find my folks in the crush of families and students, we’d arranged to meet back at Prescott. I paused for photo ops with Jenny and Harun, Odile and Clarissa, Ben and Greg and Demetria and, hell, even Mara. I peeled Lydia away from Josh, promised her that we’d see him again at dinnertime, gathered up George (whose voluminous robe almost completely concealed his cast), and headed back to Prescott College, only to find another madhouse. The second we entered the gates, the undergrads working commencement gathered us up and herded everyone in a black robe into the dining hall to be organized by last name and given instructions about how to approach the stage to receive our diplomas.

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Another commencement speaker, another host of awards. And then they handed out diplomas, preceded by the caveat that, in the interest of time, we should save our applause for the end. Amen to that. I was ready to get this robe off once and for all. I toyed with the Rose & Grave pin on my lapel as the dean and the master of Prescott worked their way through our graduating class.

“Amy Maureen Haskel, Literature, Honors in the Major.”

I walked up the stairs and across the stage. Shook the dean’s hand, shook the master’s hand, took my diploma, and we all paused, smiling, for the photographer to take my picture. Out of the corner of my eye I finally caught sight of my parents, who’d somehow managed to snag coveted seats in the shade. In total defiance of the dean’s orders, they were clapping and cheering. My mother lifted her camera to take a picture.

Later, my parents told me that I totally ruined my graduation photo and that my expression should have been more in the neighborhood of happy and triumphant than fish-mouthed and flabbergasted. But what could they expect?

Somehow I made it back into my seat, clutching my diploma folder and craning my neck back at the audience in vain. My parents’ seats were nestled into an alcove—comfortable spot, to be sure, but I couldn’t see them.

Or whoever they might or might not be sitting with. Because for an instant, up there on the stage, I swear I saw someone most unexpected standing at their backs.

Maybe it was a trick of the light? I spent the rest of the ceremony trying to find out. When George cartwheeled across the stage, one-armed, my classmates hooted and hollered without me. When Lydia’s summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Honors in both of her double majors was announced, it barely registered.

I couldn’t have been hallucinating. I knew that face. In half light, in full light, in no light at all. In quiet or cruel moods, in happy, restful ones. Heck, I knew it in the throes of passion. Jamie had come to my graduation.

The second the ceremony was over, I bolted from my seat, vaulted over the laps of the graduates who actually chose to throw their caps in the air, and beelined for the alcove. My parents met me halfway.

“Sweetie!” my mom said, enveloping me in a momentum-ending hug. “We’re so proud of you!”

“Smile, kiddo,” my dad said, pointing his camera at me. “Get that tassel out of your face.”

Students and families swirled around us, but there was no sign of Jamie.

“What a madhouse,” said my mom. “We thought we’d never find seats here, but it turns out your friend had them saved for us.”

“My friend,” I repeated, still craning my neck over their shoulders. My mother has this habit of saying

“your friend” in a tone of voice that manages to convey all of the following:
1)
The individual to whom I refer is a person of the opposite sex,
2)
Who clearly has carnal knowledge of my daughter,
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3)
But I’m not going to judge,

4)
And I’m certainly not going to assume that their relationship is quantifiable by any pedestrian term such as “boyfriend” or “betrothed,”

5)
Because who knows what passes for a romantic relationship in my daughter’s mind,
6)
A behavior of hers I wholly disapprove of, by the way (though as I stated, I’m not going to judge),
7)
And while I’m on the subject, he’d better watch it. Just saying. Not judging.

“Do you think he’ll want to come to dinner with us?” my father asked.

“Weird that he recognized us, don’t you think?” my mom asked. “He said he’d seen a picture of us.”

Well, yes, that’s what happens when you spy on the families of your potential taps.

“I—” There he was, standing back from the crowd, as always, in a new black suit, with his arms filled with white lilies. He was watching us, his expression unsmiling but expectant. My heart almost burst out of my graduation gown.

“It’s no big deal, at any rate,” said my mother. “We’re already eleven with Lydia’s family and Josh’s mom and siblings. A twelfth won’t change the seating arrangements too much—”

“Oh, look, honey,” said my father. “There are the Travineceks. Amy, sweetie, ask your friend if he wants to have dinner with us.”