GRADUATION

I drove up on Friday to Jeffrey’s graduation. I went alone: Alex, Jeffrey’s stepfather, was away on business and couldn’t come till Saturday. St. George’s is in Rhode Island, just past Newport. It’s a four-hour trip from Manhattan, but I didn’t mind the drive. The afternoon I left, I stood in the garage on Eighty-third Street, waiting for the attendant to bring my car. I started breathing deeply, big, long breaths, and I closed my eyes, as though I were standing in a windy meadow and not on the oil-stained concrete floor of the garage. I couldn’t help it: I couldn’t wait to start. I couldn’t wait to be in the car, I couldn’t wait to begin the racing surge along the smooth highways, every second drawing me closer to Jeffrey. If you have only one child, that child is at the heart of your life.

I reached St. George’s around six. The school is on a wide hillside overlooking the ocean, and everything glitters with the light off the water, and the air is fresh with salt. The school buildings are red-brick Georgian with white trim, set with big old sugar maples. It was a clear day, early summer, with no wind. By the time I got there, shadows were stretching across the sloping lawns, turning the landscape majestic. Driving up the long driveway, I felt peaceful to be at this place, so calm and handsome.

I found Jeff in his room. It smelled rank, as always—a rich mixture of healthy young men, dirty socks, and industrial cleanser. And everything they owned—clothes, shoes, athletic equipment, electronic parts—was all in a great swirl, across the floor, on the beds and desks, in and out of the closets, like debris after a flood. It looked wonderful. My own room I want immaculate, each chair set in its own footprints on the carpet, but I love Jeff’s room like this. It makes me laugh, all that energy.

Jeffrey was sitting on the bottom bunk bed, fiddling with his Walkman. He is tall now, and lanky, and his joints make odd angles. His limbs seemed to fill up the whole rectangle of the bed. He looked up and smiled when I came in. Each time I see him it is a tiny shock: he has come to look more and more like his father. In between, I forget this, but when I see him next it hits me again. Jeffrey has Bill’s wide square face, short straight nose, his odd low eyebrows and muddy blond hair. In fact he looks exactly like his father when I first met him in college. It is a face that I once loved, and one which now makes my heart shrink.

I leaned over and put my arms around those smooth, strong young shoulders, closed my eyes, and willed the face to change into my son’s again.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

I sat down next to him on the bed. “Well, I’m glad to see everyone’s all packed,” I said cheerfully, looking at the voluptuous heaps littering the room.

Jeffrey grunted, he had gone back to the Walkman. His roommate, Owen Schaefer, appeared. Owen is impossibly tall and thin, with no-color short hair that stands straight up from his forehead. He has been Jeff’s best friend since freshman year, and I am a great fan of his.

“Hi, Mrs. Winslow.”

“Hi, sweetie, how are you? Come over here and let me give you a kiss.” Owen permitted this. “Are your parents coming up, I hope?”

“No, Mom, they’re busy. They can’t make graduation, they have a party this weekend,” said Jeff, not looking up from the Walkman. I rolled my eyes and shook my head at Owen.

“Thank you, Jeff,” I said, and Owen laughed. “What’s the matter with the Walkman?” I asked Jeff. “The batteries?”

“No,” said Jeffrey, his voice making it clear that the problem was too complicated for a maternal sensibility.

“He probably needs a new one,” offered Owen solemnly.

“Right,” said Jeff, pleased.

“Thank you, Owen,” I said, and we all three laughed.

Jeffrey may be at the heart of my life, but I am not at the heart of his. I was, of course, when he was little. At first, you are your child’s whole, whole world, and though you love him, though he is at the center of it, he is not your whole, whole world. For years the child is like a beloved anchor, dragging on you, slowing you down. He pleads with you constantly: to play with him, read to him, help him out. You do it, of course: you are all he has, and you love him. But infinitesimally and inexorably, things shift. When he is fifteen, you realize suddenly that the burden, the debt, has slid heavily and forever onto the other side, like the ball of mercury in a thermostat. Now you have become the supplicant: for the rest of your life you will be asking him to spend time with you, and feeling grateful when he does.

Jeff is eighteen, and my affection makes him uneasy. I don’t care: I love him and he has to put up with it. When we first heard that he had gotten into St. George’s, I said, “That’s wonderful, sweetie! And I’ll get a little apartment in Newport! I love Newport.”

Jeffrey shook his head. “Very funny, Mom,” he said. I could see him wondering if I was going to be one of those mothers who turn up too often, wearing the wrong clothes and saying mortifying things about rock music to his friends. I haven’t done that. But this is how I feel: his presence in my life is huge, crucial, heartrending, in a way that mine will never again be in his.

Now Jeffrey keeps me at a distance, but he’s supposed to: he’s an adolescent boy. It means he’s establishing himself as a separate person, not that he hates me for divorcing his father and marrying Alex Winslow.

I’m waiting for things to get better, and they’re not so bad right now. There are times, like then, sitting next to Jeffrey on his unmade bed, in the wonderful chaos of his room, and being conscious of his smooth skin, the tender young bristles on his upper lip, the easy, supple strength of his limbs, breathing in the fresh, strange smell of him, and laughing with him and his roommate, when I feel so grateful I want to close my eyes. I wanted more children, but I am so glad at least that I have this one, so thankful to have been able to start a life like this: a miracle.

Jeff and I went out to an early dinner. I took him back to my hotel, in case he wanted to talk or watch TV or something after dinner. The hotel was one of the old Newport mansions, and the rooms were handsome, oversize, and gloomy. We were alone in the dining room, and we took a table next to the ocean wall. We sat on either side of a cold, black window. We could feel the draft coming from it, and beyond it we could hear the invisible sea on the rocks. I looked around—at the long, ponderous curtains, the dim reaches of the ceiling, the solemn classical archways dividing the vast room.

“Can you imagine living here?” I said. “It’s not what I’d call cozy. I hope they didn’t have to have breakfast here every morning.”

I was trying to stir Jeff up, but he just looked around and smiled. He didn’t say anything. He drank some of his water.

“When you get back, we’ll find a camp outfitter and take a day to get all your things for Alaska,” I said. He is going kayaking this summer in Prince William Sound.

“Okay,” said Jeff.

“Your trip will be so great,” I said. “I want you to know that we never, did things like that when I was your age. You went to Camp Wikkee-o-kee, in Maine, every summer until you were seventeen. After that you still went every summer, only then you were a counselor. No one ever asked us if we wanted to go kayaking in Alaska or trekking in Nepal or helicopter skiing in Cortina. In fact, still no one asks me,” I finished up. I was sure Jeff would challenge me on this, as my childhood was not deprived, but he didn’t. He laughed, but didn’t answer. He was pretty quiet: I knew what was on his mind.

“Well, Alex is flying in early tomorrow. And your father and Susan, they’re coming up tomorrow morning too?” I asked carefully. He never mentions his father to me, not ever.

“Yup,” Jeff said.

“And you’re having dinner with them tomorrow night,” I said.

“Yup,” said Jeff. This made him visibly uneasy, so I didn’t ask where they were going.

“And then Alex and I will take you out to lunch on Sunday.”

Jeff was eating carefully, watching his plate. His foot jiggled steadily under the table, a tiny, febrile throb. How could he not be uneasy? The next day we would all be there together, Bill and Susan, his new wife, and Alex and me and Jeffrey, which has never happened before. I was dreading it myself.

Bill and I have been divorced for four years, and he is still full of rage. He hasn’t spoken to me in two and a half years; all communication is through lawyers, accountants, or his secretary. His secretary includes brief notes about plans when she forwards my school mail (there is some continuing mixup, and periodically the school sends my mail to Bill’s office).

Last spring vacation Bill took Jeff skiing in Austria. By the terms of our agreement we are supposed to share Jeff’s holidays. Bill was going to take him for the first week, and Alex and I would take him to Nassau with us for the second. The day Jeff left for Austria, after we had said good-bye, he stopped in the doorway of our apartment and turned. He was wearing his big red parka. His bag and boots were already on the elevator, and the car was waiting downstairs to take him to the airport. He put on one of his mittens, and jabbed at the door frame with his blunt mittened hand as he talked. He looked at the mitten instead of me.

“Mom,” he said.

“What is it?” I asked. “Do you need money?” He seemed so troubled.

“No,” he said, not looking up. “I’m not coming to Nassau.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Dad said he’d only take me skiing if I’d come for the whole vacation, both weeks. And he said I had to be the one to tell you. He said he wouldn’t. He got really mad.” Jeff spoke without raising his eyes to me, banging away at the door frame with his mitten. For a second I just stood there—I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. “Why did you wait until now to tell me?” My voice was angry.

Jeff’s mitten stabbed at the brass door socket. “I don’t know,” he said resentfully.

But I went on. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You knew I’d find out, Jeffrey, why didn’t you tell me?” Unexpectedly, I began to cry, which I think I have never done in front of Jeff. I swept the tears off my cheeks with the backs of my hands.

“I didn’t want to tell you!” Jeff said finally, looking up at me. He saw my face, and his own face crumpled. “Because I knew this would happen when I did,” he said, and then, horribly, his voice broke, and darling Jeff, my large, sweet-smelling, kind Jeffrey, began to cry, too.

The car was waiting downstairs to take him to the airport. There was nothing for me to do but let him go. I put my arms around him and told him that it was all right. I told him to have a great time skiing, and that I loved him. What else could I do? Bill is good at getting what he wants. I knew how he had acted to Jeff: threatening and jeering, alternately. He’s a bully, it’s one reason I left him.

When they came back from skiing, of course I tried to reach Bill, but he would never take my calls. Finally my lawyer wrote a letter of complaint, but Bill never responded. My lawyer reminded me that the law is expensive and cumbersome to set in motion, and he asked me what, in the end, it was that I wanted to achieve? What I want to achieve is never to have Jeff put in that position again, and so now I let Bill do mostly what he wants. I suppose I hope that being placating will finally earn me absolution. In any case it will protect Jeff.

Bill’s secretary sent the graduation information to me with a note saying that Bill wanted to have dinner with Jeff on the Saturday night after graduation. I suppose that night is the climax of the weekend, but I didn’t argue. Anything is better than putting Jeff in the middle.

When Jeff and I left the hotel dining room he said he didn’t feel like coming upstairs. He said he had to pack, which was visibly true, so I drove him back to school. When I stopped the car outside his dorm he didn’t move or look at me. I knew what he was thinking, and I wished I could make things easier for him.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “it won’t be so bad.”

I hugged him. When he was small, things seemed so easy: I could make things whole and right, simply through the fact of my presence, my body. Things are different now, I am forty-two, and can no longer count on my body to do the things it used to.

Over his shoulder I could see the lights of the dorm, brilliant in the dark landscape. There was all that life in there, music thudding and doors slamming: that was where Jeff’s world was now, not in my arms. He was too polite to pull away, but I could feel him aching to, to disconnect from me, so I pulled away first.

“Good night, sweetie,” I said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He opened the car door. “Good night, Mom,” he said, “thanks for dinner.” I nodded, and as he shut the door I waved to him as I started the car, and I drove off at once, so it wouldn’t look as though I were yearning, wistful, abandoned.

When I got back to the hotel Alex called, from wherever he was.

“How’s Jeff?” he asked. They are great friends, thank goodness.

“He’s worried about tomorrow. Surprise.”

“How about you?”

“I’m all right,” I said. “Hurry up and get here.”

“Don’t worry,” he said.

I read for a while and went to sleep. I felt fine that night. It was the next morning when I began to worry.

I woke up alone in that big bed, and anxiety closed down over me like a poisonous fog. I ordered breakfast, and got up and dressed, but it got worse. I stood in front of the mirror and my heart sank: how could I have bought this suit? Jeff would be embarrassed; Bill and Susan would laugh. It looked awful, but there was nothing else to wear. I turned from the mirror and went to stand in front of the window.

Why wasn’t Alex here by now? Wasn’t he late? Was he all right? I wondered if something had happened to him. No one would know where to find me, if it had. I wouldn’t know until I got back home on Sunday. These things were skittering about on the top of my consciousness: I was trying to avoid the big things.

I was afraid that Bill would do something terrible, something public and humiliating, something that would discredit me as a mother. I couldn’t think what it was he might do, but it was in my mind, like the nightmare when you have no clothes on in public: shame and degradation. I was worried that Jeff would be caught in the middle again, that he would be trapped, bullied, blackmailed into taking his father’s side against me. I was afraid that his own graduation, instead of being a day full of pride and exultation for him, would be one of anguish and misery.

And then there was another thing, unconnected to what Bill did to Jeff or to me: why was it that Susan had had a baby, easily, at once, getting pregnant after one month of marriage, at the age of forty-one? I had tried to have more children, first with Bill, after Jeff was born, for the next eight years of our marriage. Then I had tried with Alex, for the four years of ours. I tried everything, everything. I started with pills and injections and unnatural couplings, and worked my way up to anesthesia, operations, terrible glittering steel and glass, bloody changes to the center of me. I let them do things that hurt, that went too deep. I didn’t mind anything, though, I was greedy for it all. Each time I rode along on a high, blissful wave of conviction, until I was told once again that I had failed, my body had betrayed me again.

In the mirror I could see that my neck was thin, my skin was becoming parched. I was forty-two, and on the wane. The flow in me was subsiding. I would never have another baby. This whole part of me, this delicious current, this heavenly voluptuous flow of passion, this blissful, legitimate, uncomplicated tide of love would have only one object, ever. I would never have a whole enchanted circle of faces that were mine, that looked for me, that gave themselves up to me entirely, that needed my face for the completion of their world. I would never hold a baby on one hip, another small body leaning easily against my legs, a third rocking unsteadily toward me. It was what I had wanted; it wouldn’t happen. That part of my life was gone, was over.

I try not to think about this—it does no good—but there are times when it hits me and the air seems to turn dark around me, as though I am in mourning. Then panic rises up in me: I am afraid that I will give way, that I will let this dark wave break over me.

I sat down now on the bed and folded my arms against my chest. “No,” I said out loud, firmly. I held my arms tightly, pressing in hard. “No.”

There was a discreet knock on the door: “Room service.”

It was Alex. He stepped inside and gave me a big, slow, enveloping hug. All of him wrapped around me and squeezed. It felt wonderful. Alex kissed me and then stepped away.

“Don’t you look terrific,” he said.

“Really?” I asked, starting to laugh. One of the wonderful things about Alex, besides, of course, his generosity of spirit, is his sideways approach. He knew perfectly well that it wasn’t the way I looked that was on my mind.

“Yes,” he said, studying me carefully and nodding. “Susan will turn green when she sees you.”

The graduation was in the gymnasium, and Bill and Susan sat on the other side of the room. Alex and I sat with Owen’s parents, Jim and Libba Schaefer. The four of us clapped dutifully, and laughed at the jokes, and kicked each other when the hated French teacher was introduced. I yawned suddenly and horribly during the visiting dignitary’s speech, and Libba poked me, and we both turned weepy when our sons stepped forward for their diplomas.

After the class marched out again we all began to follow them outside. Everyone was milling around on the lawn, and we inched our way through the crowd trying to find Jeff, and watching for Bill and Susan out of the corners of our eyes.

“There he is,” I said to Alex, and we ploughed toward him. He was talking to the parents of a friend. His face was cautious, his hands busy rolling and unrolling his diploma. He seemed so nervous, I felt sorry for him. I threw my arms around him and kissed him.

“Congratulations, sweetie,” I said. Alex hugged him, too, and Jeff’s smile broke through. I introduced myself to the other parents, and we stood talking for a few minutes. I stood on tiptoe the whole time, trying not to let my heels sink into the soft lawn. My peripheral vision was in high gear. Bill and Susan were behind me, to my left, talking to someone I didn’t know. They were edging their way toward us, and I could feel the back of my neck turn prickly. I wanted to be calm, I wanted to overwhelm them with poise, with amiability. But as I could feel them coming nearer I could feel my body beginning to subvert me. My pulse had speeded up, and I was having trouble breathing. Nothing seemed to work normally, and my face was turning stiff, I wouldn’t be able to smile. Even moving my mouth to talk felt peculiar. I could feel them coming nearer.

I turned to Jeff and said, “We’ve told the Schaefers we’d all eat lunch together, I hope that’s all right with you?”

“Uh,” said Jeff, nervously.

“With your father and Susan, of course. I’m going to go find the Schaefers and get a table. You collect your father and come find us.”

“Okay,” said Jeff, without a flicker, and just as Bill and Susan arrived I fled. I nodded at Susan, but just barely, it might have been part of my turning away from Jeff. We made our way back to Jim and Libba. My ankles were shaking, from standing on tiptoe I thought, but my hand, holding the program, was shaking, too. My heart was pounding, and my whole peculiar body, without my permission, was in a state of wild alarm, as though I had had a near miss with an axe murderer.

But, miraculously, it turned out all right. At lunch we all sat at a round table. Jeff was between me and Bill. Alex sat next to me and Susan next to Bill. Jim Schaefer sat dutifully next to Susan and Libba next to Alex. Between the Schaefers was Owen. I subdued my nervous system. It was very civilized, and I was very proud of everyone. The two sides never had to speak to each other, and Bill and I let Jeff turn back and forth from one to the other in spurts. We were all animated—manic, really—and I could see Susan being charming, irresistible to Jim Schaefer. Alex is always charming, and he made Libba giggle. In an odd way, it wasn’t too bad. It was excruciating, but it wasn’t too bad: there we all were, sitting together, and nothing terrible had happened. Bill had done nothing after all. I thought, if this is the worst, it isn’t so bad.

That night Alex took me to the most expensive restaurant in Newport, where we had too much to eat and too much to drink, and a lovely time. In the morning we made love, and so we were late to the chapel service, and had to stand in the doorway.

The chapel is small, graceful, and Gothic, and it was packed. I never even saw Bill and Susan. Jeff was next to Owen in the choir stalls. I thought how simple young faces are. The boys looked so clean, so handsome and tidy; they had somehow managed to spring, immaculate, from that chaos they lived in, as they had emerged from the long, rumpled, complicated, chaotic process of childhood. Here they were at last, beautiful, loved, capable, ready to live their lives. It was a miracle.

Standing there, listening to the lovely, high, soaring voices asking “And did those feet, in ancient times,” I felt exhilarated. It was partly relief: it was such a vast blessing to feel that it was over. Nothing had happened, we had all been polite, and maybe things would go on getting better. Maybe at last I had been forgiven. It was so lovely there, all of it, the rows of smooth, young faces in the choir, the high ceiling soaring over our heads, the pure white plaster walls, the hymns: it seemed enchanted. I thought, this is our reward, this is all we hope for, starting these children off, and it’s more than enough.

Afterward Jeff hurried past us in a group of boys, his head down. He didn’t see us, I guess, so I reached out to grab him.

“Wait a minute, Mister,” I said. “Not so fast. Good morning,” I leaned forward for a kiss but he ducked. It was too public for him, so I patted him on the shoulder instead.

“Oh, hi,” he said, nervous. “Listen, I have to go. These are Owen’s pants. He needs to have them back, they’re leaving right away.”

I looked down: Jeff’s white pants were rolled up over his ankles. “Oh,” I said. “Why do you have Owen’s pants, or is that a silly question?”

Jeff sighed elaborately. “Mine got red paint on them, remember? Now I’ve got to go. I’m keeping the Schaefers waiting.”

I pushed him easily away. “Go,” I said. “We’ll come find you in your room.”

We made our way there slowly, stopping to talk to people we had come to know in four years of Parents’ Weekends. It was a triumphal procession. There were the favorite teachers, whose faces lit up when they saw us, who loved Jeff themselves, who honored our love of Jeff. There were the other parents, whose children had shared this school with Jeff, these four awkward, long years. We were happy to see one another, like survivors after a war. It was over, we had all succeeded. We all felt congratulatory, proud of one another and of ourselves.

Near the dormitory I saw Libba. I waved to her and called, “We’re keeping the pants. They’re much nicer than Jeff’s.”

She laughed, and as we came up she put her hand on my wrist. “Listen, I never saw where you were sitting last night,” she said, “but I wanted to tell you how fabulous Jeff’s speech was.”

I stared at her. “Last night?” I said.

“At the dinner,” said Libba.

“At the dinner,” I repeated. “What dinner?” My heart started up again, pounding away like a fool. I didn’t know what she was going to say, but I knew I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want this to go any further.

“What do you mean ‘what dinner’? Here at the school, dummy,” said Libba, “The senior class dinner. Jeff’s speech was wonderful. Had you heard it before? Of course you must have. You must be so proud of him.”

I stared at her, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t cover for myself, I couldn’t think of any way to fill that terrible black space she was creating. I couldn’t think of a sentence that would show that things were all right, that I had known this, that her words weren’t scraping at the core of my heart. I couldn’t do it. I just stood there and stared at her, and finally she realized what had happened.

“Oh, no,” she said, and put her hand on my shoulder. It was too much, and I pulled back.

“Listen, we’ve got to arrange with Jeff about the car,” I said loudly, “we’ll see you later.” I pushed ahead again, as though everything in the world depended on my getting through this crowd. Alex was next to me. I didn’t know whether he had heard or not, but I couldn’t tell him. It seemed as though they were words I could never say out loud, sounds that would kill my heart if I ever heard them again.

When we reached the dormitory we started down the hall, but there was a group milling around Jeff’s room. As we got closer we could see what it was: Susan was standing in the doorway, right in the middle of it, so no one could pass by her. In her arms was a baby, Bill’s second son. Susan held him with one arm; she had him propped easily on her hip, and her other hand was outstretched. She was smiling at Jeff’s friends and introducing herself. “Hello, I’m Mrs. Carpenter,” she was saying—my old name. As I came up she was shaking someone’s hand and smiling.

“Good morning, Owen. Congratulations! Now, there’s someone I want you to meet. You haven’t met Graham, Jeff’s little brother. Say hello, Graham,” she said comically.

She turned to the baby, and jiggled him up and down, easily, as though she were used to having a baby on her hip. Then she picked up his small pink hand and made it look as though the baby were waving, saying hello to Owen Schaefer, my friend Owen, who stood there smiling back, who had shaken Susan’s hand; Owen, who had betrayed me.