Special Topics in Calamity Physics (80 page)

With his half-a-slice-of-pineapple grin, Norvel turned the floor over to Ashleigh Goldwell who did Weather. She announced Stockton could expect "high humidity with an eighty percent chance of rain."

Despite this dismal forecast, as soon as I arrived at St. Gallway (after running my last few errands, Sherwig Realty, the Salvation Army), Eva Brewster

made the announcement over the intercom that proud parents would
still
be ushered to their designated metal folding chairs on the field in front of the Bartleby Sports Center
precisely
at the stroke of 11:00 A.M. (Five chairs maximum were allotted per student. Any relative spillover would be relegated to the bleachers.) The ceremony would
still
begin at 11:30. Contrary to the circulating rumors, all events and speakers would proceed as scheduled, including the post-ceremony Garden Hour of Hors d'oeuvres (music and entertainment provided by the Jelly Roll Jazz Band and those St. Gallway Fosse Dancers who were not graduating) where parents, faculty and students alike could circle like Pallid Monkey Moths among the whisperings of Who Got in Where and the sparkling cider and the calla lilies.

"I've telephoned a few radio stations and the rain isn't forecast until later this afternoon," Eva Brewster said. "As long as all seniors line up on time we should be fine. Good luck and congratulations."

I was late leaving Ms. Simpson's classroo
m in Hanover (Soggy Ms. Simp
son: "Can I just say, your presence in this classroom has been an honor. When I find a student who demonstrates such a deep understanding of the material . . .") and Mr. Moats also wished to detain me when I turned in my Final Drawing Portfolio. Even though I'd been meticulous in making sure I looked and behaved exactly as I had before my abrupt hiatus from school, a total of sixteen days—dressing the same, walking the same, having the same hair (these were the clues people bloodhounded when trying to chase down Domestic Apocalypse or a Deteriorating Psyche), it still seemed Dad's desertion had altered me in some way. It had revised me, but only very slightly—a word here, a bit of clarification there. I also felt people's eyes on me all the time, though not in the same envious way as in my Blueblood Heyday. No, it was the adults who noticed me now, always with a brief yet baffled stare, as if they now noticed something old within me, as if they recognized themselves.

"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
dreamers
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 themfluffing their hair as if it was 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
AM an
d 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 a 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, opened the door with
American Bandstand
flourish and Ms. Sturds, as if unveiling a solid new line of mules, arms raised, her floral skirt jitterbueging 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. John-son'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 was 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 daddylonglegged 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."

He pronounced Meer
mare,
but I tried not to think about it as I stood up, smoothed down the front of my dress and, in the moderate but perfectly respectable burst of applause, made my way across the rubberized stage (supposedly there'd been a bad wipeout a few years prior: Martine Filobeque, cunning pinecone, girdle). I was grateful for the applause, grateful people were generous enough to clap for a kid who wasn't theirs, a kid who, at least academically, had outtangoed their own kid (as decent a reason as any Dad would find to crack "so
this
what they call 'outstanding.' "). I set the papers on the podium, pulled down the microphone and made the mistake of glancing up at the two hundred heads facing me blankly like an expansive field of mature white cabbage. My heart was trying out new moves (The Robot, something called The Lightning Bolt) and for a harrowing second I wasn't sure I'd have the courage to speak. Somewhere in the crowd Jade was smoothing her gold hair back, sighing, "Oh,
God,
not the pigeon again," and Milton was thinking, tuna tataki, salade niçoise—but I quarantined these thoughts as best I could. The edges of the pages seemed to panic too, trembling in the wind.

"In one of the first well-known Valedictorian Speeches," I began; somewhat disconcertingly my voice boomeranged over everyone's coiffed head, presumably reaching the tall man in the blue suit in the very back, a man I'd
thought,
for a split second, was Dad (it wasn't, unless like a plant without light, Dad without me had withered, lost serious amounts of hair), "transcribed in 1801 at Doverfield Academy in Massachusetts, seventeen-year-old Michael Finpost announced to his peers, 'We will look back on these golden days and remember them as the best years of our lives.' Well, for each of you sitting before me, I really hope that's not the case."

A blonde in the front row of the Parents Section wearing a short skirt crossed, uncrossed her legs and did a restless swinging gesture with them, a stretch of some kind, also a movement used at airports to direct planes.

"And I—I'm not going to stand here and tell you, 'To Thine Own Self Be True.' Because the majority of you won't. According to the Crime Census Bureau America is experiencing a marked increase in grand larceny and fraud, not only in cities but rural vicinities as well. For that matter, too, I doubt any of us in four years of high school have managed to locate our self in order to be true to it. Maybe we've found what hemisphere it's in, maybe the ocean—but not the exact coordinates. I'm also"—for a terrifying second my hobo concentration fell off the train, the moment started to speed by, but then to my relief it managed to shake itself off, sprint, hurtle on board again —"I'm also not going to tell you to wear sunscreen. Most of you won't.
The New England Journal of Medicine
reported in June 2002 skin cancer in the under-thirty demographic is on the rise and in the Western World, forty-three out of every fifty people consider even plain-looking people twenty times more attractive when they're tan." I paused. I couldn't believe it; I said
tan
and a little seismic laughter quaked through the crowd. "No. I'm going to try to assist you with something else. Something practical. Something that might help you when something happens in your life and you're worried you might never recover. When you've been knocked down."