Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  This was a part of Smith that Bree knew very little about. In the Quad, all the girls kissed one another all the time. (Well, not all the girls. Sally, for one, thought it was just plain gross.) Bree had kissed Celia plenty of times after a few rounds of vodka tonics, and once Deborah Cohen, who lived next door in Scales, had kissed Bree on the mouth after a barbecue, and moved her lips down Bree’s neck and onto her breasts, sloppily licking one nipple and then the other. Two mornings later at breakfast, Bree ran into Deborah, who happened to be with her boyfriend, and quickly got a craving for pancakes from the diner on Pearl Street. It was as if they were all playing at being gay, though they knew it was only a pose. Or perhaps some of them were trying it on for real. Others, Bree imagined, treated Smith like prison—they needed some bodily contact during these years, but once they were set free, they’d return to the opposite sex.

  April, who said it was a strange joke that she’d been assigned to live in the Quad, was a member of every human rights group on campus and knew a lot of the famous Smith lesbians—the Bull, a giant girl with a ring through her nose; Little Lefty, a bony thing who sang a cappella with the Smiffenpoofs and had once thrown a cream pie in Ann Coulter’s face; Elania, head of the BDOCs who needed no last name, she was just that cool. But those girls were like celebrities to the Quad bunnies. They presented themselves as untouchable, or at least Bree perceived them that way.

  (“If we went to any other school, can you imagine April and the Bull being the most popular girls?” Celia had once asked her, and Bree just laughed.)

  Lara was different. On the afternoon Bree started at the book-store, she could not stop watching her—the way Lara sang under her breath at the register, how she read a paperback hidden behind the inventory list. She was Asian, with hair like a black cat’s and dark brown eyes. Her arms and legs were tan and lean but sinewy, in a way that the gym never provided. She looked as if she used her body for work—a fisherwoman, Bree thought, though she recognized Lara as one of the cute lesbians from the soccer team, who were forever crashing formal events by running through in their panties, banging pots and pans and singing Olé. (Sally, who was cochair of the Recreation Council, despised them for it.)

  They both had a three o’clock break.

  “You want to grab a coffee?” Lara asked, and Bree was shocked to hear a Southern accent.

  They walked down Green Street talking about home. Lara was from Virginia, a state that had once seemed as far from Savannah as the moon, but now felt like right next door.

  They joked about how different it was up north.

  “My father always says ‘Up at Smith, they think okra is a black talk-show host,’” Lara said, and Bree laughed so hard that she spat coffee onto the sidewalk.

  “I guess the biggest difference for me is how everyone here is all emotions all the time,” Bree said, and she couldn’t help but feel a little guilty. “I get exhausted talking about other people’s feelings. I grew up with two younger brothers in Georgia—there wasn’t a whole lot of soul-searching going on. At least not out loud.”

  Lara nodded. “Tell me about it. My mother is from Singapore, and my father is the son of a white, Christian tobacco farmer. They don’t talk about feelings. Although I think it’s less about the North and more about what happens when you isolate twenty-four hundred self-obsessed women for four years. I mean, isn’t it a little bit creepy how enmeshed in our friends’ lives we all are? I get my period the exact same day as everyone else in my house. That’s just weird.”

  “Exactly,” Bree said. “Sometimes I need a break from the girls I live with, as much as I love them.”

  “I think it’s just sophomore slump,” Lara said. “But maybe we can break through it by hanging out together. I promise not to ask you about your feelings or to sync my menstrual cycle up with yours.”

  Bree laughed. “Deal,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet Lara’s. She could feel her face go red.

  They worked the noon-to-six shift together every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Soon they were meeting for three o’clock coffee every day, even when they were off. They both loved Southern writers—Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty. Lara introduced Bree to novels by newer authors like Ellen Gilchrist, and Bree stayed up long into the night trying to finish each one as fast as she could so that they could discuss it.

  The King House girls, especially Celia, seemed a little bit jealous.

  “Haven’t you had enough coffee?” they’d call as she bounded down the staircase each afternoon.

  The way Bree felt about Lara was similar to the way she felt about the girls, but there was something else there, too. She wanted to be with her every second. In the beginning she wondered if it was just that she and Lara had more in common—they were both from down south, they didn’t take it all so damn seriously. But at some point, Bree found herself thinking about Lara the way she once had about Doug or George Clooney. She’d get distracted by the thought of Lara’s long legs for a minute in class, or sit on the windowsill in her room and recall every word of their last conversation, cringing retroactively at something dumb she had said. Once she even lay in bed, moving her hand up under her cotton nightgown, imagining Lara’s long fingers on her thigh. A minute later April was banging on the door, looking for a notebook she’d left behind earlier. Bree felt herself blushing as she called out, “Come in!”

  She almost told April then. Out of all of them, she would probably be the most understanding. But Bree could not say the words.

  Not long after, as they waited for a traffic light to change on a walk into town, Lara took Bree’s hand, leaned over, and kissed her gently on the lips.

  Kissing Lara felt nothing like kissing the Quad girls. That had always seemed like a dumb joke. This was simply magic.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that since the first time we worked together,” Lara said with a huge smile. “But I wasn’t sure.”

  The WALK signal flashed, and Bree stumbled backward a bit, something in her insisting that she stop this. Lara began to cross the street.

  “I don’t know. I’m just not—,” Bree sputtered. “I have to go.”

  She turned and ran up the hill, back toward campus, with Lara behind her, calling out to her to slow down.

  “Leave me alone,” Bree shouted over her shoulder. “Just get away from me!”

  They didn’t speak again for four days. Bree called in sick to work and skipped the classes where she had a chance of running into her. The entire time they were apart, Bree thought of Lara, missed her, dreamed about her.

  Finally, she called her and asked her to meet up.

  When they did, Bree said, “I’m terrified.”

  Lara squeezed her hand tight. “I shouldn’t have done that. We’re friends and that’s all, okay?”

  Bree felt strangely disappointed by this. She had hoped for something else.

  For the next few weeks, Bree longed for contact. She shivered when their hands accidentally brushed at the cash register at work. She let her head fall against Lara’s shoulder at the movies, reasoning that she would do the same thing if Celia were there.

  Then, one Friday night, they were in Lara’s dorm room talking, sitting on the bed with Alison Krauss singing in the background. Lara leaned over and kissed Bree’s neck gently, moving her lips over Bree’s jawbone and onto her face, up to her lips.

  “Is this okay?” Lara whispered.

  Bree couldn’t say anything but yes.

  As they kissed, Lara moved her hands under Bree’s dress and over her skin, making her tremble. “Take it off please,” Lara said.

  Nervous and exhilarated, Bree slid the dress over her head and let Lara unhook her bra. She didn’t know what she was doing. It seemed that this should be easier, more intuitive than fooling around with a guy. After all, Lara’s body was so much like her own. But everyone around her—friends, cousins, hell, even Judy Blume—had prepared her early for what boys wanted. This time, there was no map.

  Lara ran her fing
ers over Bree’s nipples, making them hard, and then down, down into her panties. Bree didn’t breathe. She sat still as a post, feeling herself get wet. Lara kept her hand there, moving slowly, kissing Bree’s neck until she moaned.

  “Lie down,” Lara instructed. Bree did as she said.

  Lara moved her lips toward her hand, and pulled down Bree’s underwear with her teeth, letting it fall to the floor, laughing.

  “Slick move, huh?”

  She ran her tongue over Bree’s wet flesh, in slow, intoxicating circles. No one had ever done this to Bree before, and she felt like she might pass out from the joy of it.

  “Don’t stop,” she gasped. “Lara, don’t stop.”

  After Bree came, Lara pulled off her T-shirt. She wore no bra. Her small, pert breasts looked like two white peaches. She took Bree’s hand and guided it over her body. Bree had never touched another woman’s breasts. Lara’s skin was smooth and soft, like nothing she had ever felt.

  “I want your lips on me,” Lara whispered, and Bree took Lara’s breasts into her mouth, one by one, licking the nipples, sucking them hard. Shaking, she reached into Lara’s jeans. She couldn’t help but let out a surprised “Oh!” at the soft hair between Lara’s legs. Her own had always been well manicured, clipped close or shaved off completely, as per her brother’s Playboy magazines, her go-to source for what other women looked like down there.

  Bree had lost her virginity to Doug Anderson in his family rec room their junior year. Sex with Doug had always been exciting, dangerous. But there was little real pleasure in it. Neither of them knew what they were doing, and poor Doug came after a minute or two every time, yelling out “Sorry!” with his final thrust. This thing with Lara was another world completely. They continued for hours, with lips and fingers everywhere, and when they were done, they lay naked, exhausted, wound together in Lara’s bed until morning.

  At first, Bree could not bring herself to tell the girls. Not because she thought they would judge her, but because she knew that they would want to talk about it constantly, to analyze it like they did all their other relationships. They would want the story of Bree and Lara to belong to the group, while Bree believed it should be hers alone.

  Lara didn’t buy it. She had always known she preferred women, and she’d come out to everyone in her life back in high school. “You’re afraid that if their perception of you changes, you’ll have to change your perception of you,” she said, not harshly, but with understanding. And of course it was true. During the first couple of months they were together, Bree would only allow Lara to sleep over if she snuck through the back door after everyone was asleep. Once, a fire alarm sounded in the middle of the night. Bree begged Lara to stay in the house, picturing the looks on her friends’ faces if they were to run outside together. It was only a drill, but she instantly regretted what she had done.

  The next day over lunch, Bree decided to come out to her friends. But it wasn’t a coming out, not really, she told them. She broke the news quickly—she and Lara were now a couple—and then, before taking a big bite of her turkey club, she said, “So. What’s doing with everyone else?”

  “What’s doing?” Celia said. “Umm hello, you’re a lesbian. That’s what’s doing.”

  “I am not a lesbian,” Bree said with a smile.

  “Did you have sex with a woman last night?” April said.

  “Yes. And this morning.”

  “Show-off,” April said.

  “Then you’re a lesbian,” Celia said.

  Bree laughed. “But how can I be a lesbian if I still really really want to marry Brad Pitt?”

  “Good question. I’ll have to get back to you,” Celia said.

  And that was more or less that.

  What followed was a blur of parties and concerts and dinners in the dining hall spent holding hands, unafraid. Bree knew they were one of those couples that were so touchy-feely that other people had to look away. She didn’t care. This feeling was what she had always dreamed of.

  They were together for the rest of their time at Smith and achieved all the milestones of a couple, while posing as friends to the world outside the college. They met each other’s families, they said I love you, they read aloud in bed, and made love for hours on end. They fought sometimes, but mostly they laughed. No one had ever made Bree laugh the way Lara did. They shared a Southern sensibility, inherited from their fathers, that was devoid of the political correctness that saturated most conversations at Smith. They laughed over how their grandparents would react to typical Smith terms like “heteronormative” and phrases like “Gender is fluid.” They agreed that women who started off any comment in class with the words “I feel” deserved to be dragged out and shot. “It’s not a therapy session, it’s History 203,” Lara would say.

  Bree had always told the girls that commencement would mark the end of her relationship with Lara. She had told Lara this, too, but Lara never seemed to believe her, or if she did, she didn’t want to think about it. Some women came to Smith and realized that they had been lesbians all along. Bree was not one of them. There was a name for girls like her: SLUG. It stood for Smith Lesbian Until Graduation. She wasn’t the only straight woman on campus in a full-fledged relationship with a gay woman. Most straight Smithies had kissed women, but that didn’t count. SLUGs went on dates and held hands and had sex with women—they took it a step beyond, as Sally put it. But they did not take it beyond the college gates.

  Celia seemed comforted by the thought that Bree would soon return to the world of men. Bree knew it was hard for Celia to understand that she was not a lesbian, but that she had fallen in love with a woman. It was hard for her, too. The thought of ever trying to make her parents understand this seemed impossible. She had taken Lara to the family beach house off the coast of Charleston two summers in a row for the Fourth of July, and they had shared her bed. Bree knew her family liked Lara fine, but when she pictured them realizing what this had meant, she feared they would never forgive her.

  She broke up with Lara as planned, late one night in May. They sat on the edge of Paradise Pond in the dark and wept into each other’s hair, and Lara kept begging Bree to change her mind.

  “I know you’re afraid, but we can do this,” she said. “We’ve done it here, and these have been the best years of our lives.”

  “I know,” Bree said. “But that was here, Northampton. Not the real world.”

  “You think I’ll ever find someone as great as you, B.?” Lara shook her head, and in an imitation of her father’s Southern drawl, she said, “I’m sorry, baby, but that dog just won’t hunt.”

  Bree laughed weakly.

  “I love you,” Lara said. “I can’t lose you because you’re afraid of what other people will think.”

  “It’s not just any old people,” she said. “It’s my parents, my grandparents. The people who love me the most.”

  “Will we still be friends?” Lara asked.

  “We will always be best friends,” Bree said, though in truth she did not know.

  “Can I still kiss you?” Lara said.

  Bree shook her head. She thought of seeing Lara and not being able to kiss her or touch her soft skin. Bree sobbed into her hands, the hot tears puddling in her palms. Eventually, she got up, brushed the dirt from her pants, and said she had to go.

  “I think you did the right thing,” Celia said when Bree returned to the dorm.

  Bree gulped. “I can fall in love again, but I’ll never find another family.”

  As soon as she said it, she realized that she didn’t believe herself. She would never fall in love like this again. And so, she went to Lara’s dorm, dialed up from downstairs, and screamed “I’m an idiot! I was wrong!” into the intercom, as a trio of baffled first years looked on, smoking their cigarettes with wide eyes.

  They were briefly elated, but then graduation came. The most stinging memory of all was the look on her mother’s face when, just after the ceremony, Bree pulled her aside and told her the
truth.

  “I don’t understand,” her mother said. She looked like she might faint. “Not you, Bree.”

  Not you. It was, Bree thought, as if she had admitted to being a serial killer.

  “It’s my own fault,” her mother whispered. “Why did I insist on you coming here? You could be home safe and married to Doug Anderson by now.”

  Bree had hardly thought of him since she met Lara. It shocked her to hear his name. And how many times had her mother told her that she had made the best decision of her life letting him go?

  “Please, Mama,” Bree said. “Try to understand.”

  The rest of the family joined them then, the boys whooping and hollering over Bree’s diploma. Her mother smiled in the pictures her father insisted on taking, but afterward she sent Bree’s brothers away and said, “Tell your father what you’ve done.”

  Bree could feel herself turning red. She recited the words she had practiced with Lara the night before. “Daddy, I’m in a committed relationship with Lara and we’re in love,” she said.

  Her father looked baffled. “What do you mean?” he said.

  “They’re a couple!” her mother shouted, hysterical. “She’s telling us she’s a lesbian! She’s telling us that her little Chinese friend is her girlfriend!”

  All around them, people stared. Her little Chinese friend, Bree thought, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Did it bother her mother more that she was in love with a woman or that she was in love with an Asian?

  Bree graduated magna cum laude from Smith College that day and received her diploma and her Phi Beta Kappa key. But in her parents’ eyes, it would always be the day she had broken their hearts in a sea of folding chairs, right in the middle of the Quad.

  Things had been strained between them ever since.

  Lara followed her to Stanford, taking a job as a coordinator at the local Boys & Girls Club while Bree finished law school. Lara’s patience always amazed Bree. When she stressed over an exam or a paper, Lara would say, “You need carbs,” then busy herself in the kitchen making banana bread or pasta in a thick, creamy Parmesan sauce. She quizzed Bree every morning, reading questions off of note cards and sitting on Bree’s feet as she did her sit-ups. If Bree expressed a moment’s doubt over whether she could handle the workload, Lara would smooth her hair and say, “Come on now, cowgirl, you can do this. You were born to be a lawyer. Look how you argue me into submission all the time.”