Graduette
June 17, 1994
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | Lined up behind Tracy Rasmussen
WHERE I WAS | The Orange Park High Media Room
“Do you think they’ll cancel graduation?” shouted a girl over the Green Day blasting from someone’s boom box.
“No way. Parents would freak.”
The ceremony was running late. We were supposed to proceed into the gym, resplendent in our rented green gowns, half an hour ago. Instead we were watching TV in the media room, a glorified closet lined with AV equipment, packed wall to wall with other almost graduates. O.J. was so close we could hear the wop-wop of news helicopters heading to the freeway.
In front of me, Serra was swimming in her gown. It was supposedly an extra small but it pooled around her ankles so much I worried she’d trip onstage. Her honors sash wasn’t pinned on right so it looked like it was choking her neck. “This is so weird,” she whispered.
“I know,” I said.
Eric stood a few feet apart from us, behind Robin Engles, a sophomore the three of us couldn’t stand. Her brother was graduating so she’d been lurking around all afternoon.
Eric put his hand on Robin’s shoulder and said into her ear, loud enough for me and Serra to hear, “So many helicopters. It’s like M*A*S*H.”
Leave it to Eric to find the movie reference.
Eric hated Robin Engles. When she wasn’t sluttifying a Halloween costume, Robin was daring frosh football players to drink Everclear until they had to get their stomachs pumped.
I knew exactly what he was doing.
Serra leaned her head back, whispering up at me so only I could hear, “Nice performance. Are you burning with jealousy yet?”
She’d warned me many times this year that Eric wanted more than friendship from me, and I’d laughed her off. But Eric had barely spoken to me since the barbecue.
“Shhh.”
“Okay, I’ll be good.” She took off her mortarboard and ruffled a hand through her chin-length hair. It had been a month since she’d cut it and she couldn’t stop running her fingers along the black strands, as if surprised every time by where they stopped. She’d had a long ponytail like mine ever since I’d met her in seventh grade chorus, when she’d sung soprano in the spot right in front of me. I’d stood inches from that ponytail for weeks, so close that I’d blown strands of it around with my breath during the loud parts of “Viva Tutte Le Vezzose.”
The day Serra and I officially met, we were digging in the tub of moth-eaten, unisex green cardigans that served as our performance uniforms. I’d snagged a medium that wouldn’t be too horribly big if my mom tailored it. Serra had rolled up the sleeves on the smallest one she could find, but it was still so huge on her I couldn’t help laughing.
“My mom could take that in for you,” I’d said. “She sews.” Such a simple, casual offer, but it had decided so much in my life.
She never did remember to bring the sweater over, but we’d become best friends so fast, it was like all my other friends—perfectly nice, smart, pleasant girls—simply receded.
Mrs. Featherton, the assistant principal, discovered our hiding place. “You naughty children. You were supposed to line up twenty minutes ago! Come along, graduates and graduettes.” She shooed us out, but not before peeking at the TV, too.
We pulled ourselves away and followed Mrs. Featherton down the hall to our places in line. Kids were sagging against walls, melting onto the floor in green nylon puddles. Finally, “Pomp and Circumstance” floated down the hall and we stood. First Serra went outside, with the I’s, then Eric, with the L’s. And finally my segment, the R’s.
I passed Eric’s mom in the front row, chatting with the woman next to her, casually running a hand through her long blond hair. Perfect Orange County–wife hair, the shimmering result of some mysterious and expensive chemistry. Eric’s father sat one row behind her and one person to the left, as if to say they were still connected but no longer paired.
No sign of Donna’s lover.
That was good of him, not to intrude on Eric’s day. He was probably off on a sail to Catalina. I imagined him alone on his boat and wondered for the hundredth time what Eric had sprayed on the side.
I spotted my mom waving from the top gym bleacher, right hand holding her silver Olympus ready, the left wiping away tears.
She’d been trying not to cry all day. Her eyes had been glassy when she gave me my graduation gift—the perfect present, a refurbished Compaq laptop that she must’ve scrimped for all year—and though I’d said, Mom, it’ll be okay. I’m not going for twelve weeks, the fact that I’d soon leave her now seemed unbearably sad.
She’d worked so hard to get us to this moment. Not once complaining. I felt her pride and excitement and eighteen years of sacrifice, shock waves of them, from across the overheated gym.
Fighting back tears myself, I smiled for the camera. Thank you, Mom.
Later, she said some parents were mad they didn’t reschedule the ceremony. A few minor relatives couldn’t make it down the freeway in time because of the chase.
We threw our caps in the air just as O.J. surrendered in his driveway.
Three days later
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | My Intro to MS Office Class at the community center
WHERE I WAS | Eric’s room
Eric and I sat on his bedroom floor with a mountain of clothes between us.
I’d had to beg him to let me come over. Finally, he’d said, “Whatever,” grudgingly accepting my offer to help him pack and treat him to a movie after.
I picked up his frayed black Joy Division T-shirt. “This is the softest thing in the world. If you don’t bring it I’m going to steal it and make it my new woobie.”
“Take it.”
“Honestly?”
“It’ll just get thrown out otherwise.”
I smoothed the T-shirt over my knees, tracing the design on the front with my index finger. The lines looked like a series of seismograph readings or mountain ranges. I toyed with a thread in the ripped collar. “I’m going to miss you. You know that, right?”
Eric looked down at the hiking socks he was rolling together army-style. “I’ll miss you, too.”
I stared at him but he wouldn’t look up. “I guess we’ll have to go on our road trip to the Mystery Spot and that gas station made of petrified wood another time.” We’d made grand plans for our summer, before he decided to bolt early.
“Let’s do that.”
“Where are all the polo shirts? And the crested blazers and deck shoes?”
He smiled at the floor. “Right, and you’re packing head-to-toe tie-dye?”
“Of course, George. Berkeley has a compulsory tie-dye seminar for freshmen.”
“You’re never going to let go of the George Hamilton thing, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Your ideas of the East Coast are about fifty years out-of-date, Becc.”
“So I’ll come visit you. See what it’s really like.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Progress, even if he said it to his socks.
Eric and I had watched Where the Boys Are on TCM in the closet over spring break, after he got his Brown acceptance. When George Hamilton’s character said he was a Brown man, I’d shrieked in delight and Eric had buried his head under a pillow, knowing I’d never let him live it down. I knew perfectly well that Brown wasn’t the soft, preppy world it used to be, but my private school/public school bit was too good to resist. I’d even invented a servant named Duckworth, who would leave mints on Eric’s pillow during the dorm turndown service.
He held up a green cord button-down.
“That’s nice on you. And warm. Bring.”
Next came the black jeans he’d worn forever. He’d snagged the left knee on a ladder, helping my mother prune a jacaranda tree in the backyard, fall of sophomore year.
“You should mend those, but bring.”
His baggy gray drawstring sweatpants. He’d had them since freshman year. Serra and I called them “The Whalers.”
“Hmm.”
“These are comfortable! They’re the only warm pants I like besides my jeans.”
“You need to think more fitted.”
“I’m not wearing ass-hugger pants.”
“Did I say ass-huggers? Just avoid the opposite of ass-huggers. Meaning any pants sewn out of enough fabric to make you two pairs of pants.”
Eric’s mom opened the door, singing, “Knock, knock.” She always managed to appear right when we were saying things like “ass-huggers.”
“Rebecca, stay for dinner?”
“Remember I said we’re going to a movie?” Eric dug into the pile of clothes.
“Right, I forgot.”
I stood up for a silent, stagy hug. She’d also hugged me downstairs when I’d arrived. But the stories that had leaked out of her household made her kindness seem like something I couldn’t trust. She left without shutting the door all the way.
Eric waited a minute, got up, and shoved the door shut. He rolled his eyes.
“Come on, she’s trying,” I said, settling on the floor again.
“She used to be an actress, remember. It’s still acting, never reality.”
“So tell me about reality.”
“I’m getting away in two days.”
“That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t help to talk about her. Them. Have you seen your dad?”
Eric shook his head, dealing out six different baseball caps. Some were so crisp they’d clearly never touched his head. The few he did wear in constant rotation had yellow stains on the brim.
“I’ve always liked this one on you.” I handed him his red Angels baseball cap. The logo was an A with a halo on top.
“They’ll probably think it’s some Christian thing,” he said, but he shot it into a suitcase. “Nothing but net.”
“You won’t be like them,” I said. “Your parents.”
“Everyone believes that. It’s our universal delusion. So what movie are we seeing?”
“Anything but The Fly.”
“Paper’s on the hall table.”
I crept downstairs, and luckily Eric’s mom was on the phone in the kitchen, her back to me, talking about “mid-tier donors.” She had a big event-planning business. I’d been spared another daughter-she-never-had hug.
Eric’s mom was always so polite, asking me about school and my “mother’s” job. She said mother, not mom. That was one thing. She was way less intimidating than Eric’s father, but her formality and surface perfection had always made me nervous. Mrs. Logan’s affair with her handsome neighbor up the street seemed so impulsive, so out of character. It made me almost like her, learning she wasn’t as flawless as she pretended.
I grabbed the Register off the table and headed back to the staircase, pausing in the hallway outside the study. Just for a few seconds.
The door was open halfway so I could see the green water of the fish tank illuminated in the dark. But the room was silent.
When I got back to the bedroom Eric had a fresh pile of clothes out. Sweaters and a bunch of other warm items I’d never seen. I picked up a gray overcoat with a J. Press tag still attached. Cashmere, and $2,600.
“Wow.” I petted the soft collar.
“The mother ordered it. A little too George-Hamilton-in-January, right?”
“No, it’s beautiful. Of course you’re bringing it. I don’t want to think of you cold.”
I studied the newspaper. Eric had circled two movies. He knew I was dying to see Four Weddings and a Funeral but I didn’t recognize the other. “What’s Return of the Secaucus Seven? Some Western?”
“Not a Western,” said Eric. “Old John Sayles movie I’ve been wanting to see.”
Of course, he’d already seen it, and what he really meant was “I’ve been wanting to secretly observe you while you react to all my favorite parts.” Eric loved to bring people to his favorite movies and pretend he’d never seen them before.
Secaucus Seven was at the revival theater, where you had to pick your seat carefully because the springs had busted through most of the cushions.
“Hold up the paper and we’ll let chance decide,” I said.
He took the top corners of the paper from me and held it between us like a curtain while I pretended to close my eyes. But I peeked as I punched with my index finger.
“Secaucus Seven it is.”
He lowered the page and smiled wryly. “You’re a nice girl, Becc. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“Only about a thousand times. Can we make the seven?”
Eric leaned to read the showtimes, so close his hair tickled my ear. If I tilted my neck a tiny bit to the right we’d almost be kissing.
His breath hitched and I held mine.
I was curious. I was. But I didn’t move.
He was leaving.
And something was missing. Some dark matter that existed in the study, and that, I was sure, waited for me in the uncharted land of college.
More breakable than he seems. I wouldn’t break Eric into pieces for an experiment.
So instead of moving closer I pulled back. “E. We need to talk about this.”
“Talk about what?”
“You know.”
His eyes shifted from mine to the wall of movie posters behind me. “I think it’s too late to make the seven.”
“What? We have an hour.”
He looked down at the tag on the fancy overcoat, yanked it carelessly. “I think we should skip the movie. I still have a ton of packing.”
“E. Come on. It’s our last day. Let’s figure this out.” I scratched his knee gently with my fingernail.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t do this. Don’t leave like this. We can figure it out.”
“Why don’t you say figure it out one more time, Becc? Figure it out. Like a calculus problem?” He lobbed the coat into his suitcase, hard.
“No. Not like that. I’m not saying it right.”
“I think you’re making yourself pretty clear.”
I waited for him to say anything, to meet me halfway, to at least try to reach across the awkwardness.
But he only crumpled up the newspaper and tossed it at the garbage. Missing, I noticed with cheap satisfaction.
“You’re acting like a pouty kid.” I stood. Waited thirty seconds. Nothing.
I left, and he didn’t stop me.