Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  After Bree passed the bar, they moved down to San Francisco where they could both find better jobs. Bree knew it was thanks to the Old Girls Network that she landed her fantasy gig as an associate at Morris & White (White being Katherine White, Smith Class of ’68, who loved hiring smart women’s college grads).

  At first, it was wonderful, being with Lara in the wide world, making a life together. But as years passed, her parents’ disapproval took a greater and greater toll on Bree. Each time she was asked to declare their relationship for what it was, she hesitated. It made Lara livid that Bree’s coworkers didn’t know she had a girlfriend and that, a year after college graduation, she had faked food poisoning to get out of going to her high school reunion, picturing the looks on the faces of her former classmates when she strolled through the doors of the high school gymnasium with Lara on her arm.

  Lately they were lucky if they could go twenty-four hours without a fight, despite the fact that Lara still made Bree laugh more than anyone; despite the fact that the sex was amazing as ever; despite the fact that they fell asleep each night pressed together, with Lara’s hand on her belly, whispering nonstop about politics and books and celebrities and their days until they were too tired to say one more word.

  In theory, Bree thought, it was bold and brave and right to choose love and fight for it. But how could love survive when it necessitated giving up so much? Since telling them about Lara, Bree spoke to her parents once every month or so, instead of four or five times a week like she used to. Her brothers e-mailed her and sent drunken text messages, but that was about it. She did not go home for holidays. She knew this hurt her parents, but she also knew that they wouldn’t want Lara in their house. So they spent holidays with Lara’s parents in Virginia, eating fried shrimp wontons and playing mah-jongg around a card table, with Lara’s mother and aunts lapsing into Mandarin every so often, and Lara whispering, “They’re talking about you.”

  Lara’s mother went to Catholic Mass every morning, and on Christmas she insisted that they all go with her, even her husband, who had fought in Vietnam and was a staunch atheist, and Lara’s brother, who was in some sort of cult, though they really never talked about it. Bree would get lost in the sound of organ music and the sight of sunlight passing through a stained-glass window behind the altar and the strange, funny feeling that you just never knew what the hell life was going to bring. She tried to ignore how much she missed being home with her own family.

  Lara’s mom would squeeze her hand as they walked out of church, and say, “Next year, you’ll bring your parents with you, okay?”

  It embarrassed Bree that her family wanted nothing to do with these people, that her own mother had no interest in meeting Lara’s parents. When Lara had come out in high school, she said, her mother had been devastated, saying Hail Marys and lighting candles, trying to undo what had been done. For a year, they hardly spoke. But then, Lara said, one day her mother returned home from church and said, “When I was twenty-five, I met your father. And I brought him to my parents, and they said if you marry this man, we will disown you. He was white, a non-Catholic. I married him anyway. My father died without ever speaking to me again, my mother missed my wedding, and your birth. We don’t always do the things our parents want us to do, but it is their mistake if they can’t find a way to love us anyway.”

  Bree only wished her own parents would realize this.

  “They’ll come around,” Lara said. “You just have to let them in a little.”

  Bree was ashamed to tell her that she suspected they didn’t want to be let in.

  April had been supportive of their relationship. She sent cards addressed to both Bree and Lara; she always asked after Lara when she called or e-mailed. But Bree could tell that Celia—and Sally, too, to some extent—felt mystified. They had never really taken to Lara, never quite understood why Bree was willing to risk everything to be with her.

  Sometimes just knowing this felt as real and painful as a dog bite. She was in love, but hers was a relationship that would always require explanation, that few people—even her dearest friends, even she herself—could really understand. After all this time, she still wished for a normal life, for the kind of love that would please her parents, for a moment like she’d had with Doug Anderson in Forsyth Park all those years ago, but with the person she actually loved. Part of her wanted to break away and find what Sally had found—normal, understandable love. She knew she could never have that, as long as she and Lara were together.

  The alarm went off in the bedroom—a jarring, moaning sound. There was a grunt of protest, and then the noise stopped. A moment later, Lara emerged in her cotton bra and panties, her short, spiky hair sticking up in the back like Dennis the Menace’s. Her soccer player’s body—all muscle and curve—looked golden in the morning light.

  She rubbed her eyes, walked over to the back of Bree’s chair, and wrapped her arms around her from behind.

  “You okay, baby?” she asked, and Bree shrugged.

  “You were tossing and turning all night, and then you got up before the alarm even went off,” Lara said, crouching down and kissing Bree’s neck. “This can only mean one thing: We’re about to see Sally get married.”

  “Yup,” Bree said. “Buckle up.”

  “Oh, I’m ready for it,” Lara said. In a sudden burst of energy, she started moving around the kitchen, hopping from one foot to the other, arms outstretched as if she were on the soccer field, trying to block a goal.

  “Hit me with your best shot,” Lara said, still moving. “I’m ready for the Bree Miller supersize emotional roller coaster, to be endured and dealt with by yours truly, and made up for by you with hours of mind-blowing sex when we get home.”

  Bree couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing.

  “Do you know that I love you?” she said.

  “Why yes,” Lara answered. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  APRIL

  In her entire life, April had been to only one wedding, on her mother’s friend’s emu farm in Colorado. They had called it a Cherish Ceremony, and—not wanting to adhere to any patriarchal customs—they’d done away with rings, a white dress, attendants, and all of that. Really it was just a bunch of hippies out in a damp field, smoking joints and dancing circles around a couple who were blissfully in love and six months pregnant. April was only seven at the time, but she still remembered parts of it—her mother’s long, tangled red hair, a strapping guy with a beard who scooped her up and put her on his shoulders, a cake covered in honey and sunflower seeds.

  When she’d e-mailed Sally about it in an effort to explain why she had no business being a bridesmaid, Sally had written back just one short line, a classic Sallyism: Sweetums, I need you there.

  April had to hand it to her—she would have envisioned Sally as a Princess Diana sort of bride, all done up in a meringuelike dress and veil, a church full of people, bagpipers on the front steps. But Sally had told her that the wedding was to be a simple, small outdoor ceremony and reception with absolutely no meringue.

  April was glad for that, at least, though she still could not believe that after all their Smith training in independence and self-reliance Sally had decided to get married at twenty-five.

  She arrived at the hotel slightly on edge. In the cab from the airport she had popped a Xanax Ronnie had given her, washing it down with the last of the bottled water she’d gotten on her flight. It wasn’t helping. Despite all the crazy things she had done without fear in the past four years—hiding out in African villages, watching little girls endure the agony of genital mutilation in Indonesia, going to a maximum-security prison in Mississippi to interview a serial rapist—being her best friend’s bridesmaid was still threatening to give her a full-blown panic attack.

  She had felt this way for weeks, but now, having been punched in the stomach by a military guard two days earlier and forced to sit in a hospital waiting room for five hours just to learn that her arm was not, in fact, broken, April w
anted nothing more than to spend the weekend lying in bed. She knew it was the jackass’s job to protect government files, but he seemed to recognize her and Ronnie, and took genuine pleasure in beating her up, when he could have just escorted them off the premises. It was exciting, in a way, because it meant that the army was scared of what they knew was about to be exposed.

  She was lucky that none of her bruises showed. Most were hidden by her T-shirt. Her dreadlocks, which she had once feared might anger Sally, actually covered a welt on her neck quite nicely.

  It annoyed her that Sally and Jake were getting married in Northampton, because it hinted at the fact that Sally knew she was losing herself, and so she was grasping for their Smith days; for the last time in her entire life she would get to be an individual. And then there was the wastefulness of making all those people trek out to the middle of nowhere, increasing their collective carbon footprint and decreasing April’s personal bank account.

  All through college, April had marveled at the way her fellow students threw their—or, more accurately, their parents’—money around. She did ten shifts a week in the dining hall, washing dishes, peeling seemingly endless bags of potatoes, listening to the full-time staff talk about car payments or their kids’ ear infections. She worked mornings in the admissions office, sorting through applications. She was the only one of the girls who paid for school entirely through work-study and loans in her own name. (Sally and Bree’s fathers had paid their tuition in full. Celia had loans, but April knew for a fact that her parents made all the payments.)

  Not much had changed since. The other girls still received financial help of some sort or another from their parents, though as open as they were about everything else, this was one area in which specifics never came up. She knew that Bree and Celia paid their own rent. And she was proud of Sally, because even though she could live comfortably off her mother’s malpractice money for the rest of her life, she went to work every day just the same.

  April knew it wasn’t the money that was bothering her. In fact, the girls had been incredibly generous and thoughtful when it came to this weekend. Celia and Bree knew that Ronnie wasn’t paying her much, so they had insisted on covering her third of the costs for Sally’s presents—which, by the way, were a goddamn Cuisinart and a KitchenAid mixer, hello 1952.

  The simple fact was, weddings were just not her thing, and this one was going to be particularly strange. She liked Jake, but she didn’t think he was smart enough for her Sally, and she couldn’t stand his frat-boy friends.

  Plus, Ronnie had made her swear not to tell the girls the full extent of their next project, which would be hard, if not impossible.

  “People like that don’t understand,” Ronnie said. “They’ll try to talk you out of it, and I need you to be in it with me, one hundred percent.”

  “I’m in it,” April said, annoyed because as long as she had worked for Ronnie, as many sacrifices as she had made, Ronnie never quite seemed to think she was dedicated enough.

  For months after she graduated from Smith, April was working in the Chicago headquarters of Senator Dick Durbin, answering phones, fetching sandwiches, sorting mail. She told herself that these little tasks were an essential part of getting the greater work done, but she was dying to do something more radical, more real. Then came the phone call that changed her life. Ronnie Munro—whose picture April had had taped to her bedroom wall since middle school—called her up and asked her to meet for a drink.

  April’s mother had always talked about Ronnie Munro’s true devotion to the cause. They kept her book, Woman Scorned, in an exalted position in the center of the mantel.

  Months before she even graduated, April had sent Ronnie her résumé and a heartfelt letter, in the hopes that she might at least keep it on file until the next time she needed an assistant. But job searching had led her to the conclusion that no one actually kept anything on file—they just threw résumés in the trash, until the day they happened to be hiring. She had long ago given up on the idea of hearing from Ronnie, so when she suddenly did, April felt elated.

  She went to meet Ronnie at a dark wine bar two days after getting the call. Ronnie ordered them a bottle of Cabernet and laid out her plan, step by step. She was starting a Chicago-based company called Women in Peril, Inc. They would make films about misogyny all over the world—covering honor killings in Pakistan; genital mutilation in Africa; sex tourism in Asia and Eastern Europe; and the epidemics of rape and eating disorders right here in the United States—culminating in something huge, explosive, a few years down the road, once they had established a reputation.

  “You don’t have as much experience as I usually like in an assistant,” Ronnie said. “But your letter really stayed with me.”

  Then Ronnie Munro actually quoted April to herself: “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help girls and women who are suffering in this world.”

  She looked April in the eye and said, “I couldn’t have put it better myself. Tell me, April, do you really mean it?”

  “Of course,” April said, feeling giddy with excitement. She had never been this close to one of her role models, and for the first time in her semi-adult life, she couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “You’re bright as hell, that’s clear,” Ronnie said. “And I like that you’re a Smithie, even though there are Smithies and there are Smithies.”

  April laughed. “Right,” she said.

  “But I can tell which kind you are already,” Ronnie said. “This isn’t going to be a job like any job you’ve ever had. You’re going to be right in the thick of it, all wrapped up in it. It might be scary some-times. Hell, even I get scared, and I’ve been doing this for years.”

  “I’m not scared,” April said. “It sounds really exciting.”

  “And I’ll admit I can be a pain in the ass,” Ronnie said with a smile. “I’m not what you would call an agreeable lady, as you might have heard.” She took a sip of wine. “But I can promise you that working with me on this project will change your life and accelerate your role as a revolutionary.”

  April grinned, not sure whether or not Ronnie was being serious.

  But Ronnie went on. “I mean that quite literally, April. When we are done, everyone who matters will know your name.”

  April was thrilled, calling Sally as soon as she got home, telling her the entire story.

  “Do you get benefits?” Sally had asked.

  April sputtered, “That’s your first question?”

  “Well. Do you?” Sally asked.

  “I have no fucking clue,” April said.

  “What is she paying you?” Sally said.

  “Sal, why aren’t you happy for me?” April said, though of course she knew why.

  All young feminists studied and revered the work of Gloria Steinem and Susan Faludi and women like that. They were beyond reproach. But most of the feminists who had made a real impact—Dworkin, MacKinnon, Brownmiller, Munro—were divisive figures.

  “I’m a member of NOW, even though its milksop politics deeply offend me,” Dworkin had written in an essay about attending a conference in the eighties and trying to get support for antipornography laws. “Guts were sorely lacking even back then.” April had had this quote written on a scrap of paper and tucked into her wallet since her junior year at Smith.

  All anyone ever thought about when they heard Ronnie Munro’s name was the damn movie she’d made in which a woman ended up being killed by her husband. But that was thirty years ago, and in the meantime she had done so much good. People April’s age, having heard the story secondhand, acted like Ronnie herself had killed that Indiana housewife, for fuck’s sake. Anytime some Smith girl said bad things about Ronnie, April thought of how, when they were just babies, Ronnie was in China, raising awareness of female infanticide and trying to keep little girls alive, even though no one in the press gave a shit or did a thing.

  April suspected that the real reason Ronnie had been cut out of most popular feminist c
ircles was that her views and her methods were considered too extreme. It sickened her that to feminists like Sally, “extreme” meant that you didn’t want women to be forced to have sex, forced to have their genitals carved up, forced to starve themselves in the name of beauty. If it was radical to think that all women should be free and safe in the world, then why have a women’s movement in the first place?

  Despite Sally’s trepidation, April accepted the job the very next day. She sometimes joked to the Smithies that in her entire time working for Ronnie, that first night in the bar constituted the wooing phase. Ever since, it had been all-consuming, heart-wrenching, and often dangerous work. Ronnie wanted their minds to be in sync, for the two of them to share not only a job but a life. So much of their work was a secret, she said, that having an office away from home made no sense at all. They should have their projects with them always. April moved into Ronnie’s apartment at her request shortly after they started working together. She knew the girls thought this was crazy.

  “What do you two do after work?” Sally said. “Do you play Scrabble and watch Entertainment Tonight at the end of the day, or what?”

  She was joking, of course, but it wasn’t so far from the truth. Ronnie was rich, and they each had an enormous bedroom at opposite ends of an enormous apartment. But they did tend to spend their free time together, drinking wine on the couch, watching PBS, and shouting at the television set. While they were working, Ronnie was all business, and she was nuts about her work—sometimes she would shake April awake at four in the morning because she had a brilliant idea and wanted them to get started on it right away. But most of their free time was spent pleasantly enough, eating alone together or else with Ronnie’s incredible friends, who were all scholars and activists April had long admired. She often thought that if she were working for some Hollywood starlet and getting to mingle with famous actors, the girls wouldn’t bat an eye at her boss’s odd behavior. Ronnie and her friends were April’s icons, and having the chance to live among them was an honor.