Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  The four of them were assigned to the worst rooms in King House—third-floor maids’ quarters. Everyone in King had a single, and most of the rooms were huge, big enough for a king-size bed, with two or three windows each. But a few unlucky first years had to sleep in the dim corridors of four rooms off the main floors, where students had once housed their live-in servants.

  That first night, each of them went to her room and closed the door, a mystery.

  Later, around eleven o’clock, Celia could hear Bree sobbing through the wall that separated their rooms. She put on an Indigo Girls CD to block out the noise and told herself not to be nosy, but halfway through the first song, she could no longer take the sound of a stranger in pain, and also, she was dying to know if Bree and her fiancé had broken up. She scribbled a note on the back of one of the house meeting flyers (Join the Radical Cheerleaders and Pummel the Patriarchy with Pep!) and slid it under Bree’s door: I feel your pain. Want to come next door for vodka and Oreos?—Celia B. Room 323

  The crying stopped. Ten minutes later, there was a knock at Celia’s door.

  Bree poked her blonde head in and waved Celia’s note in the air. “Thanks for this,” she said in a sweet Southern drawl. “Is the offer still good?”

  Celia smiled. “Of course.”

  She wondered whether Bree felt the same way she did about the house meeting. Celia had stayed dressed in her dark jeans and emerald green wrap dress on principle: Just because there were no guys around did not mean she was going to become a total slob. Bree wore pink flannel pajama pants and a plain white tank top, but Celia could tell that she had just applied a fresh coat of eye shadow and lip gloss, and something about that struck her as both funny and touching.

  “I’m sorry I was crying so loud,” Bree said. “My brothers call me the Drama Queen of Rosewood Court. That’s the street we live on back home.”

  “No worries,” Celia said. “I think I’ve cried more since I got here this morning than I have in the last year. So are you homesick or boy sick?”

  “A bit of both,” Bree said, walking to the desk and taking a seat.

  “Can I get you some vodka or Oreos?” Celia said.

  “A bit of both,” Bree said again, and Celia laughed for the first time all day.

  They drank their vodka out of paper cups Celia’s mother had tucked into a grocery bag, along with plastic cutlery and paper napkins and Tupperware containers, as if Celia were going off on a picnic instead of to college.

  Bree downed the contents of her cup, and then refilled it to the brim.

  Was this girl a big drinker, or just nervous? Celia figured the latter—big drinkers didn’t tend to swig straight vodka by the gulpful. They knew it was all about pacing yourself. She thought back to the parties she had attended senior year—red plastic cups and vodka that felt warm in her throat, consumed in countless musty basements while someone’s unwitting parents watched 20/20 upstairs; tequila shots taken in Reggie Yablonski’s mother’s hot tub when she was visiting her sister in Kittery; and a bottle of champagne with the girls from the neighborhood on prom night.

  “What about you?” Bree asked. “Did you leave someone back home?”

  “I broke up with a guy right after graduation,” Celia said. “We’d been seeing each other for like four months. He was going off to be a camp counselor for the summer, and I just knew that that whole long-distance thing was a disaster waiting to happen.”

  She instantly regretted saying it.

  “For me,” she stumbled. “A disaster for me. I’m just not cut out for all that.”

  “Why a disaster?” Bree said with wide eyes, like Celia was an oracle who could predict the fate of her engagement.

  At Celia’s high school, girls called September 1 “D-day,” as in the day your boyfriend went off to college and dumped you. She had always sympathized when this happened to friends, secretly reminding herself to never let it happen to her.

  And so she had ended it with Matt Dougherty at the graduation night lock-in at St. Catherine’s. In the gym, everyone was dancing and drinking punch and sneaking beers, giddy with excitement. Celia and Matt sat just outside the fray on an old treadmill in the weight room. They had lost their virginity to each other right there in that sweaty, windowless space between lunch and fourth period, just one month earlier. He was captain of the wrestling team, and as such, he had a key. They had snuck in during the lock-in to fool around, but Celia thought she saw something in his eyes: She knew this would not last. And wasn’t it better to end something while it was still in your control than to have it yanked out from under you when you weren’t expecting it?

  “Can’t we even give it a chance?” he had asked.

  “What’s the point?” Celia said. He was going all the way to Berkeley, and who knew when they’d see each other again.

  They spent the rest of the lock-in apart, talking to their respective friends, with Celia crying into Molly Sweeney’s jean jacket in the bleachers at one point, knowing all the while that it wasn’t really about Matt, at least not entirely. It was the fear of the new and the unfamiliar, the surprising sorrow of knowing that she would probably never stand in this gym again, even though she had always hated gym class and skipped it at least twice a month, either hiding out with Sharon Oliver in the handicap stall or telling the teacher—a balding guy in a polyester tracksuit—that she had cramps. (This always seemed to gross him out sufficiently, and she would get to spend the hour napping on a cot in the nurse’s office, sipping Tropicana from a tiny carton and reading pamphlets on abstinence and the proper way to use an inhaler.)

  “Do you miss him?” Bree asked now.

  “Not really,” Celia said. “Maybe just the thought of him. I have this problem where when I’m single, I am really happy, but I feel like something’s missing. Then when I’m coupled up, nothing’s missing, but I’m just sort of sad and insane. It’s fucked up, right?”

  For a split second, Bree looked taken aback, and Celia wished that she hadn’t said “fuck.”

  Then Bree said, “Yes, I’ve never heard it put that way, but I know exactly what you mean.”

  “I’ve always been a little boy crazy,” Celia confessed. “But then once I get the boy I’m never quite sure what to do with him.”

  Bree laughed. “If you’re so boy crazy, can I ask what in God’s name brought you to Smith?”

  Celia took a little sip of her vodka. “I’m from just outside of Boston, and I knew that I wanted to go to school close to home. Basically, Smith was the best place I got into. I guess the all-women’s thing kind of freaked me out at first, but as long as there are parties with men in attendance, I’ll be fine here. Truth be told, I’ve never really understood women who want to be friends with men. I only have a sister, and I grew up with a bunch of girls on my street, and I don’t know—female friendships have always been my thing.”

  Bree nodded her head. “Mine, too.”

  She ran her finger over her engagement ring.

  “Anyway, what about you?” Celia asked. “Why Smith?”

  “My mom and my grandmother both went here,” Bree said. “When I was little, every summer my mother and I would fly to Boston for a long weekend, and then we’d rent a car and drive out here to Northampton. My mom was always telling me about ball gowns and fancy dress dances with the Amherst boys and candlelit dinners in the dining hall. I’ve been in love with the idea of Smith ever since.”

  “Huh,” Celia said. “I have to admit, I was almost scared off by all the tea parties and formals and stuff.”

  Bree laughed. “They were a big selling point for me.”

  “Isn’t it a bit odd that the same school that has a weekly tea party in every house also has rules about lesbian shower hours?” Celia said.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that was part of Mom’s and Nana’s experience,” Bree said.

  “What do they do now?” Celia asked.

  “Do?” Bree said.

  “For work.”

  “Oh
. Well, they were both homemakers. But they’ve always done a lot of volunteer work in the community,” Bree said. “Does your mother work?”

  “Yes,” Celia said. “She’s a VP at an ad agency in Boston.”

  Bree’s eyes grew wide. “Oh wow,” she said. “That’s great. I don’t know—I couldn’t wait to come here, but the past couple months my boyfriend, uhh, my fiancé, has been pressuring me to transfer.”

  “Already?” Celia asked. She tried to envision Matt Dougherty begging her to transfer to Berkeley, but that was beyond imagining. Where she came from, no one got engaged out of high school. If she had even tried something like that, her parents would no doubt have staged an intervention.

  Bree nodded.

  “How long have you been together?” Celia asked.

  “Almost three and a half years,” Bree said.

  “Wow.” Celia’s longest relationship had lasted six months, and that had seemed like an eternity. When it ended, all she could manage to do for weeks was go to school and write her little column for the student newspaper. The rest of the time she lay in bed, with her father bringing her bowls of ice cream and trying to make her laugh, her sister reporting on all the choicest gossip from the freshman class, as if Celia cared. Suddenly, she saw why Bree would want to hold on to her boy back home.

  “It’s like it’s 1952 and I’m just here to get a degree in home ec,” Bree said. “I sometimes think love has a hard time catching on to social change, because part of me really wants to go be with him.”

  “Well, what part of you wants to stay?” Celia asked.

  “The part that gave birth to me,” Bree said. “My mother loves Doug, but she just about threw a walleyed fit when I told her I might transfer. She really wants me to give this place a chance. And I want to, too. At least I think I do.”

  “Ahh, mothers,” Celia said. “Mine tied a string bracelet onto my wrist this morning, and an hour later my little sister goes, ‘It’s a WHAT WOULD JESUS DO? BRACELET!’ My mom had put the letters facedown, so I wouldn’t know. Subliminal Jesus power or something, I guess.”

  Bree laughed. “Some of the girls running registration were wearing WHAT WOULD JANE AUSTEN DO shirts.”

  “That’s awesome,” Celia said. “I’ll have to send one to my mom.”

  After a long pause, Bree thanked Celia for the cookies. Her voice wavered, and Celia could tell she was getting tipsy.

  “I should be thanking you,” Celia said. “You’re actually helping me to not set a record for the fastest freshman fifteen ever gained.”

  “You mean first-year fifteen,” Bree said with a smile.

  “Oh, right. And from the look of those upper-class women, maybe I should amend that to first-year fifty.”

  Celia wrinkled her brow in thought. “Too mean?” she asked.

  “No, I was thinking the exact same thing,” Bree said.

  Her voice turned to a whisper, as if maybe someone were listening. “Have you met April yet?” she said. “The girl who lives on the other side of me.”

  “No,” Celia said. “Not yet.”

  “I met her in the bathroom before dinner,” Bree said. “She kinda freaked me out. She’s a real hippie type, you know? They just don’t make ’em like that where I come from.”

  Celia laughed. “She did look—interesting.”

  Bree started to giggle. “I’d secretly love to tie her down and give her a makeover. The right shadow and blush, and that girl would be downright lovely,” she said. “Speaking of, I like your coloring. I was thinking that at the meeting earlier.”

  “My coloring?” Celia said.

  Truly beautiful women were always complimenting average-looking women on the strangest qualities: Oh, I’d kill for your small feet. Your coloring is divine.

  “Yeah, I always wanted that exotic Black Irish look. That’s what you call it, right?” Bree asked. “That’s not offensive, is it?”

  Celia laughed. “No, it’s not offensive. But where I come from it’s hardly exotic. Every girl I grew up with looks exactly the same: Black hair. Pasty white skin. Freckles. We had one fake ID that started off with my friend Liz’s older sister and got passed around among five of us neighborhood girls.”

  “You’re not pasty!” Bree said. “You’re fair skinned. Anyway. Growing up in Irish Boston must have been so cool.”

  Irish Boston. Celia had to stifle a laugh. She wondered if Bree was picturing her family wearing scally caps and talking in thick Southie accents, when really they lived on a sleepy suburban street like everyone else. They did have the cast-of-thousands Irish clan, with cousins all over Massachusetts, who gathered nearly every weekend in someone’s backyard to celebrate something—a birthday, a communion, a wedding anniversary. And in a brief burst of pride after a trip to Galway (as well as a fruitless attempt to fix Celia’s incurable clumsiness), her mother had forced her and Violet to take step-dancing classes, which Celia now credited with her perfect posture and complete inability to dance like a normal person. But other than that, she was no more Irish than anyone else.

  Of course, she was doing the same thing to Bree: She could easily imagine this girl at high school cotillions and debutante balls. All they knew of each other, really, were the sharp edges. The middle parts and blurry lines were yet to be filled in.

  Celia missed her friends back home. Liz Hastings, with her wicked sense of humor and childlike fear of the dark. Lauren O’Neil, who had been raised with six brothers and always had the wildest slumber parties as a kid—the brothers scaring and delighting them, popping into the room in clown masks, or telling them ghost stories until they cried. Those girls knew Celia, all the way through. How long would it be before she could sit down with someone and just have a conversation without small talk or back-story, without having to worry about what words she used?

  An hour later, before she went back to her room, Bree hugged her and said, “I’m so glad you’re right next door. Have you ever been to Savannah, Celia? It’s beautiful there. These gorgeous droopy trees, and purple Spanish moss hanging all over the place. Oh, I’ll bring you there one of these days. I know you’ll just eat it up with a spoon.”

  Then she gave a dainty little drunken hiccup. “I don’t really drink very much.”

  Celia laughed. “I’m glad you’re next door, too.”

  The following morning, on the first full day at Smith, Celia woke before eight o’clock. There was still a day to go before classes began, but she could not get back to sleep. She opened her bedroom door and looked out into the empty hallway. She wished she knew Bree well enough to go wake her up for an early breakfast or a long walk around campus. Instead, she left the door open and sat alone on the bed, writing in her journal.

  A while later, there was a movement in the hall, and Celia caught a glimpse of red hair. “Hey!” she called out. “April, is it?”

  April’s head popped in. “Yes, it is,” she said.

  She entered the room in cutoffs and a faded tank top, and Celia saw that her calves were covered in thick, brown hair. It wasn’t stubble, she realized. The girl had never shaved. Her dyed red hair was up in a messy ponytail, and she wore no makeup. She was about five foot eight and very skinny, with long legs that were surprisingly sexy in spite of the hair.

  Typical, Celia thought. It was always the girls who didn’t give a damn about how they looked who got to be tall and thin without even trying. April’s face was pretty enough, but her features were sharp—she had a slightly pointy nose and prominent cheekbones that gave her a sort of harsh look when she wasn’t smiling.

  “Have you already been out and about this morning?” Celia asked.

  April nodded. “I went to help set up for a lecture from the director of Equality Now later today,” she said. “It’s gonna be amazing. Here, take this.”

  She handed Celia a pamphlet. Celia’s eyes scanned it:

  STOP HONOR KILLINGS NOW! DID YOU KNOW: In Pakistan, under the Hudood Ordinances, a woman needs either the confession of her rap
ist or the eyewitness testimony of at least four Muslim adult males to prove she has been raped? Otherwise, she can be prosecuted for fornication or adultery, or murdered by her husband, brothers, and father for having dishonored the family’s name. An average of one thousand women die in honor killings in Pakistan each year. HELP US STOP THE CRUELTY AND THE SUFFERING!

  Celia blinked. She felt overwhelmed just being in this dorm and meeting all these strange new women. How on earth had April already taken it upon herself to join in the fight against honor killings?

  April came and sat beside her on the bed. She had the body odor of a Boston street person—pungent and spicy and raw. Celia suddenly remembered how one summer in high school, her mother had read a magazine article about chemicals in household products that cause cancer and insisted that the family go organic. She made them start using all-natural toothpaste and shampoo and even deodorant. Celia wondered now if this was the way she had smelled up until she started dating Joey Murray the fall of her junior year. That was when she began to sneak Soft & Dri, hair spray, and Noxzema into the house the way other kids might smuggle in bags of pot or shrink-wrapped copies of Hustler.

  April eyed the glass Absolut bottle from the night before in Celia’s garbage can, and Celia immediately felt guilty for not asking her to join them.

  “You know Smith recycles, right?” April said.

  Celia diligently took the bottle from the trash and placed it in the blue bin behind the door, reminding herself to tell Bree about the interaction later. Who the hell was this girl? she wondered.

  “Do you feel like grabbing breakfast?” April asked after an awkward pause.

  “Sure,” Celia said.

  “On the walk home from town I couldn’t stop thinking about potato hash and a huge fucking plate of Fakin’ Bacon,” April said.

  “What’s Fakin’ Bacon?” Celia said.

  April laughed. “It’s a soy-based product that tastes like the real thing. Well, kind of. I’m a vegan,” she said. “But I really like to eat.”