Commencement (22 page)

The dinner raced by, with speeches from Jake’s dad and grandfather, and a few awkward words from Sally’s brother (“Jake’s a really good guy, and we hope he’s going to make Sally real happy, and, umm, yeah”). He did not mention their mother once. Celia talked drunkenly and a little too freely about their college days—about dear Sally and how she had always been the sweetest and wildest girl around. How everyone in King House went to convocation in their underwear each fall, and how Sally had hand-painted Burger King crowns for them all with the words
BEST F.KING HOUSE ON CAMPUS
splayed across them in glitter. How she once did a series of keg stands at a luau with some Amherst frat guy and gave up on breaking the school record with just one keg stand to go, because said frat guy got a barbecue sauce stain on his Hawaiian shirt and Sally insisted on cleaning it up immediately, before it had time to set.

Sally saw Jake’s mother’s eyebrows rise as she listened in on this, looking a little too delighted by her own shock. She pictured Rosemary storing this information away as future ammunition, and willed Celia to stop talking.

“Now Sally’s making the craziest move of all—she’s getting married!” Celia said. “We couldn’t be happier for her. It takes a lot for us to approve of a man, but Jake, as Sally would say, we love you to the moon and back.”

Sally smiled. That made her happy, at least, because she knew Celia wouldn’t say it unless she actually meant it.

Finally, Jake stood up. “Thanks, Cee,” he said. “Wow. I’m not so great at speeches. But here in front of everyone we love, I have to say something about Sally, this girl—sorry Smithies, this
woman—
who has totally changed my life. I’ve always been a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, but I never knew how happy I could be until I met Sally. She is my best friend, the love of my life, the smartest person I know, and apparently a keg stand champion. Ever since we met, I wake up with butterflies in my stomach every morning, excited just to see her again. And I know I’m still going to wake up with butterflies
when we’re ninety-three years old and both of us have lost our teeth, and Sally’s brown hair has turned white. I’m so glad you are all here with us as we start our journey together, and I know Sally’s mom is here, too, guiding us along. Thank you all for coming and for not throwing up—one other thing I know is how nauseating cute couples can be and, well, we’re pretty damn cute.”

He leaned down and kissed Sally. Her eyes filled with tears.

Their courtship ran through her head like a cheesy montage in a Meg Ryan movie—meeting in the sandwich line at Au Bon Pain, Jake stumbling over his words and saying, “I’m not a crazy person, I swear, and I never talk to strangers, but you’re beautiful. Can I buy you lunch?” Then there was their first date, and their second, and all the hundreds of dinners and movies that came after; the car rides spent singing Elvis songs to each other; the long talks about family and friends; the trips to the Cape with Jack and Jill, sipping Coronas on the beach, grilling hamburgers, and going for long runs, making love in the sand at dawn before anyone else had woken up.

“I love you,” she whispered to Jake now, and part of her wished that everyone in the room would vanish except the two of them.

By the time dessert arrived, Celia was plastered.

“That was the most adorable toast I’ve ever heard,” she said to Jake, louder than she needed to, her words slightly garbled. “Are you guys gonna get a dog? Oh, I’ll be so jealous! I’d do anything to have a dog, but I live in a shoe box. Can I live in your attic and be the spinster aunt to your ten children, if I promise to take care of the dog?”

Sally felt slightly panicked, glancing over at Jake’s relatives, but Jake just laughed. “Absolutely,” he said, lifting his glass to toast Celia. “To spinster aunts!”

Celia clanked her glass hard against his, splashing red wine onto the tablecloth and down the front of her dress.

“Oopsie daisy,” she said with a shrug. “Gonna dash to the ladies’! Be right back!”

They all watched her run off, silenced for a moment before the room once again filled with conversation. Everyone dug into the
tiny chocolate éclairs and big bowls of sorbet. It was enough food for three times as many people, Sally thought happily. The dinner had been a success on the whole, although her wedding weekend was passing by far too fast.

Sally watched Anthony lean in toward April. She strained to hear their conversation.

“So you know Sal from college?” he asked.

“Yup,” April said blandly.

He was a bit of a McSmarm, Sally knew, and of course April wasn’t particularly interested in talking to him. But she didn’t have to be rude. Unlike Celia, April was safe from his advances—men like that did not go for flat-chested white girls with dreadlocks and unshaved armpits.

“They’re a great couple,” he said, trying again.

“Mmm-hmm,” April said, taking a bite of her sorbet and looking over her shoulder toward the steps, visibly willing Celia to return from the bathroom.

“My name’s Anthony,” he said. “Just in case you didn’t catch it the first time.”

“April,” she said, her mouth full.

“Right. So what was your major at Smith?”

“Double major—government and SWAG,” she said.

Sally sighed.
Oh brother, April
.

“What’s SWAG?” he asked.

“The study of women and gender,” she said, as if it should be obvious.

“Ahh, that’s a specialty of mine as well,” Anthony said, and then he winked.

Christ
. She knew that April believed firmly that no man under sixty-five should ever wink, and that she had just decided without reservation that she hated him.

Just then, Celia returned, a wet spot running down her dress. “What are we talking about?” she said, leaning in.

Anthony looked relieved. “So, Celia, you work in publishing. Maybe you know my cousin. Her name’s Andrea Panciacco. She’s at Simon and Schuster.”

Celia shrugged. “Nope, don’t know her. I’m at Circus Books. But she probably knows this guy I used to work with. He went over to S and S last month.”

Thus began several rounds of the
Maybe you know
game with Celia asking Anthony whether he knew her childhood friend who worked for Deutsche Bank in Boston, her high school boyfriend who graduated from Berkeley three years after he did, and her cousin who played in his soccer league (no, no, and no). Anthony, it turned out, had many former friends and acquaintances who worked in New York, though some of their last names escaped him: “You might know Liza something or other who’s a producer for Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann or one of those guys? She was in my Sunday school class as a kid.”

Celia said she thought the name sounded familiar.

Finally, she and April switched seats. Sally was happy for that at least. She walked over to April’s chair and squeezed her hand.

“Thank you for being here, sweetpea. It means the world to me,” she said. “And thanks for not slugging Anthony over there.”

“It was an effort,” April said.

“I could tell,” Sally said. “Believe me, I could tell.”

She could be pissed at April, but what was the point? Sally wanted all the memories of her wedding to be special, joyous. Plus, she knew that April was out of her comfort zone here, just as she herself had been a year earlier, when she had flown to Chicago.

April had been begging her to come for months so they could have some time alone, just the two of them. They chose a week when Ronnie was supposed to be at a conference in Miami.

“Oh, drat, I was hoping to meet her,” Sally had said over the phone, though in truth she hated the very idea of Ronnie—the danger she put April in, the way she demanded all of April’s time, even forcing her to move in, the fact that she paid April next to nothing and never gave her any credit for her work. Sally couldn’t imagine what she might say if they ever met.

But she wanted to see April’s hometown. She pictured the two of them strolling along the water, taking one of those scenic bus tours, drinking frozen hot cocoa at Ethel’s Chocolate Lounge. (She had found the place online, a little pink-and-purple oasis right in the
middle of the city, with plush sofas and dim lighting and chocolate everything. Of course April had never heard of it, but she said she would go along.) Everyone always thought of April as this crazy counterculture hippie because that was what she projected to the world. But when Sally got her one-on-one, she was just April-sensitive and funny, smart and kind.

As soon as she saw April’s face in the airport parking lot, Sally knew something was wrong.

“What is it?” she said.

“Ronnie’s fucking livid,” April said, breathless, not even giving her a hug. “The army is trying to block funding for our movie from going through, she canceled her trip, and she says we need to start working now, maybe get the ACLU involved, maybe bring a First Amendment suit if we have to.”

There was a long pause before she said, “Sorry, Sal, I know this isn’t what we had in mind for the weekend.”

Sally could tell that April was under Ronnie’s spell now, and there would be no snapping her out of it. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I can help you.”

In the car, Sally looked down at her ring. Jake had proposed just one week earlier, and she was still in the habit of gazing at it for long stretches of time. She had told herself repeatedly on the plane not to be disappointed when April didn’t notice it. Sally knew a ring just wasn’t the sort of detail April would take in, let alone gush over. But for some reason, it still made her a little sad. They were best friends, but they were so very different in nearly every way, and the more time they spent out in the real world, the more apparent their differences became.

April and Ronnie’s apartment reeked of cigarette smoke. The place was in a nice high-rise with a doorman at the front desk and a chandelier in the lobby. It was huge, with bright track lighting and wide windows. But as far as decorating went, they had only the necessities—a couch, a small dining table, a TV, and bookshelves sagging under the weight of bulky academic texts. There were no picture frames, no paintings or photographs, not even a carpet on the hardwood floor or lamps on the end tables. It looked exactly as Sally had expected.

She wished she could spend the weekend warming the place up, putting little accents here and there—some bright throw pillows on the sofa, maybe; a soft area rug, or perhaps a sisal; old Rosie the Riveter posters from the forties in worn gold frames. She was about to suggest this to April when Ronnie burst into the room, a cordless phone pressed to her cheek.

She had short, spiky hair, in such a deep shade of red that it looked almost purple. She wore faded jeans and a Smith sweatshirt with a patch on the sleeve, which Sally herself had sewed on.

“Isn’t that yours?” she whispered to April.

April shrugged. “Our laundry gets mixed in all the time.”

Sally grimaced. This wasn’t normal, this relationship of theirs. She had tried many times to say so to April, but April never wanted to hear it.

“It’s your own fucking department’s report, Gerard,” Ronnie yelled into the phone. “The Department of Defense openly admitted that one-third of female veterans had been raped during service, thirty-seven percent of them raped more than once, fourteen percent of them gang raped. Yet when a woman in your army brings charges, she only has a one-in-ten chance of getting justice. This is fucking
documented
, Gerard. I didn’t pull these figures out of my ass. What, you think this doesn’t qualify as post-traumatic stress? You’re out of your fucking mind, Gerard, I swear.”

She glanced in their direction, but she seemed not even to notice Sally. “April baby,” she hissed. “Get me the DOD file from my bedside table. Now.”

April ran down a corridor, and Sally stood there awkwardly, shuffling from one foot to the other. Farewell, Ethel’s Chocolate Lounge.

They spent the next three days in the sort of frenzied state Sally imagined one might feel in an emergency room after a forty-car pileup. Ronnie talked on the phone constantly, and April pored over transcripts and videos of all her interviews.

Sally sat beside her on the couch and watched as these women-girls, really—explained in calm, measured tones what had happened to them in Iraq. One nineteen-year-old from a tiny town in Indiana had gone AWOL, refusing to join her company on their
third deployment to Baghdad, because during her first two trips her direct supervisor had sexually assaulted her. It had started just one day after she saw a close friend killed in a car bombing. When she asked the sergeant where she should report for duty the following morning, he said, “Spread-eagle, tied up, in my bed.” That night, he came to her while she lay sleeping and pulled her outside, ordering her to strip naked, then raping her in front of two of her fellow soldiers.

A mother told how her only daughter had committed suicide on her twenty-first birthday, shooting herself in the head after hearing that the army had dismissed gang-rape charges she had brought against five of her superiors, claiming that the bruises all over her body were not sufficient evidence for a court-martial. She had been given a rape kit in a military hospital the night of the attack, but hospital officials said it had been accidentally misplaced.

Sally cried as she watched this, texting Jake to tell him how upset she was.

Wow honey
, he wrote back.
This sounds like the greatest vacation ever
.

Sally knew that anyone else would probably be annoyed with April, but she just wasn’t. April had been there for her all through college, on those awful, lonely nights when she missed her mother and needed someone by her side.

Her friends from high school had been supportive the summer after her mother died, especially Monica Harris, her best friend since sixth grade. Monica would come by every day and stay on the phone with Sally for hours in the middle of the night. When she arrived at Smith, Sally assumed this would continue, but almost immediately Monica began to pull away from her—she was settling into college, too, after all. It was April who took her place, April who saved Sally from the humiliation of begging someone not to hang up, leaving her alone with her thoughts.