Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  As Ronnie had envisioned, Women in Peril, Inc. was their whole life now. It wasn’t the big company it sounded like. Instead, it was just April and Ronnie, and the occasional contracted film crew or editor. Ronnie didn’t trust anyone but April and herself to do the real work of interviewing women who’d been beaten or who had starved themselves nearly to death; of photographing the frightening aftermath of botched vaginal mutilation; of wooing brutal rapists into telling their stories; of stealing—Ronnie said “liberating”—files from government offices to get to the bottom of exactly how many female soldiers in Iraq had been raped by their own and then made to shut up about it.

  Their work had been mentioned in Ms. magazine and praised by a handful of prominent radical feminists. Now it was finally time for the big, explosive project Ronnie had hinted at that night, more than three years earlier. She told April that this was her moment to shine, the point at which her name would be mentioned right alongside Ronnie’s, a cocreator instead of an assistant, which she had never really been in the first place.

  April knew the girls would disapprove, find the whole idea of it dangerous and risky. But what the hell was the point of life without a little danger and risk?

  She was different from the others. They had all known it from the start. The summer before first year, they had had to fill out a form stating their preferences on dozens of questions—Do you smoke? What kind of music do you like? What are your politics? Do you have a significant other?

  April had described herself as a vegan, an anarchist, a lover of sixties folk music. She wrote that she identified as an F-to-M transgendered person. That last part wasn’t true, but she had added it for good measure, thinking that it would assure her a single on Green Street with a window seat and radicals all around.

  April knew after taking just one look at Sally, Celia, and Bree on the first day of college that all three of them had been popular in high school. Maybe not the most popular girls in the class, certainly not the bitchy ones who made fun of the nerds. But she could tell they had been invited to dances and sleepovers. That they had the sort of mothers who always picked out the perfect birthday presents for their friends and braided their hair before school.

  Sally hung Monet and Renoir posters on every wall of her dorm room: pretty, benign images of crowded cafés and blooming water lilies. All of the girls had framed photos of classmates and friends in their rooms—shots of boys grilling burgers on the beach; prom pictures, posed and stiff, their hair shellacked into what looked to April like cotton candy on a stick. When they asked April why she never put pictures up, she just shrugged and said she had been a loner in high school. It seemed a very James Dean–like alternative to saying that she had no friends, that she had longed for someone to talk to but no one ever invited her out, that other parents found her mother inappropriate, and so most of her Friday nights were spent reading tattered copies of Backlash and The Feminine Mystique at home on the couch. (Cry me a river, Mrs. Astor! her mother had written in the margins of the latter. April had no idea what it meant at the time, but she adopted the phrase as her own, and still used it to this day.)

  April had convinced herself as a kid that she didn’t need anyone, and she was standoffish with the girls at first, assuming that the three of them would form a little clique, leaving her to be the outcast on the hall. She was drawn instead to the radicals on campus, who accepted her as one of their own from the start. But to her surprise, the King House girls treated her like a true friend. Even more surprising to April was the way she took to this—loving it when they confided in her or knocked on her door each night at six for dinner. She had imagined, rightly so, that she would be able to bond with the good lefties on campus over social issues. But now, for the first time in her life, she had three friends who liked her, just because.

  April had to work hard to catch up to the girls socially. She studied them—the way they interacted with ease, their ability to feel out one another’s needs. She carved places for herself where she could: She was the one who listened to Sally cry, the one who made mistakes but always tried to repair things with cookie dough. And sometimes, she could even get them excited about her causes and convictions, especially Sally, who it seemed had never thought much about feminism or racism, or any ism besides maybe Impressionism, before coming to Smith.

  Though she complained about having to live in the Quad, April knew she’d gotten the best of both worlds on the Smith campus—at meetings and in class she had met rebellious feminists who wanted to help her take down the patriarchy, and back home at the dorm she had three friends who offered safety and laughter and concern, the sort of family she had never known.

  But ever since graduation, the girls’ indifference to the world beyond their own love lives rankled her. She had imagined that four years out of college they’d be saving the world, not planning a fucking wedding. All over the planet women were being tormented, yet if you took sexism seriously, you were a bore, an idiot, or a pain in the ass. How the hell could anyone keep quiet? Why did so many women do nothing?

  A feminist anthropologist friend of Ronnie’s had come to their place for dinner one night while she was in Chicago for a conference. She told them about her research on rape in the animal kingdom. Nearly every species had some form of rape, she said, except for the bonobos, a group of primates similar to chimpanzees. Somewhere along the line, the female bonobos decided that they would no longer tolerate sexual violence. So when a male attacked one of them, she emitted a sound to draw attention to herself. The other female bonobos would drop what they were doing, rush toward the sound, and together they would tear the offending male limb from limb. She knew Sally would roll her eyes if she ever said so out loud, but that sounded perfect to April. Why couldn’t women be more like that?

  At the front desk of the Autumn Inn, she picked up the spare key to the room she’d be sharing with Celia and made her way to the elevator. The bellhop looked past her, out at the circular driveway, as if her steamer trunks might be stacked up on the curb.

  “It’s just this,” she said, patting her backpack. She had managed to cram in video equipment, two pairs of jeans, and her bridesmaid dress and shoes, though the dress was now in a ball at the bottom of the bag. Did cotton wrinkle? That was one of those things that people like Sally and Bree knew off the top of their heads, and that she herself would never make room for in her memory bank.

  She had e-mailed Sally earlier that week, asking who was coming. Sally said it would just be Jake’s parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and sister; a few of his friends and cousins and fraternity brothers from Georgetown; Sally’s father (Fred, as Sally called him) and brother; and a young married couple Jake and Sally had befriended in Boston. The young married couple was actually named Jack and Jill. April snorted when she read this, and she could almost feel Sally’s eyes on her, begging her to shut up.

  She inhaled deeply now. Behave, she told herself. She knew it wouldn’t be easy.

  Sally was what always kept her from hollering inappropriate things at strangers—just the mere thought of Sally’s face were she there to witness it. Every morning in the coffee shop at the end of the block, April overheard the old men at the counter talking politics. They weren’t enraged or even unhappy with the state of the country. Instead, they worried about a Democrat being elected in 2008; they talked loudly about how some antitorture pansy-ass wasn’t going to protect the country from another terrorist attack. April wanted to scream, Don’t you know our evil president is eavesdropping on your phone calls and monitoring every library book you take out and killing thousands of your sons and daughters in a war that serves no earthly fucking purpose? But because of Sally, she settled for just slamming the door as hard as she could when she left.

  The elevator opened, and April made her way toward room 4,93. She could hear the girls laughing from five doors away. When she stepped into the room, all three of them were there, lying in bed, watching Golden Girls on TV.

  “I see you
three are as wild as ever,” April said with a smile. “Some things never change.”

  Sally ran to her first, and then the others. April’s ribs throbbed as they hugged her, and she had to pull away.

  Celia wore a pale blue tank top and jeans. She had probably lost twenty pounds since college. She looked thinner every time April saw her. Her cheeks and collarbone were dramatically sharp, so different from the soft, cloud face she had had at Smith. The two of them exchanged a look, and April knew that Celia had not said anything about the fight she had been in. April gave her a grateful smile.

  Bree still had the look of someone’s trophy wife—long blonde hair and a tiny waist, full lips, and bright blue eyes. April found it satisfying, in a way, that no man would ever have her.

  “Where’s Lara?” April asked.

  “We had a fight,” Bree said. “But I know she’ll be thrilled to see you.”

  “And Jake’s golfing with his dad,” Sal said. “Why do men always feel the need to golf before they get married?”

  April shrugged. “Don’t ask me.”

  The four of them crawled back under the covers for a bit, and the girls asked her about her flight, about Ronnie.

  “We’ve been waiting for you to get here so we can all go down to the bar in the lobby and drink champagne,” Celia said. “Are you ready yet?”

  “I’m always ready for champagne with my ladies,” April said.

  “Good. I’ll get Lara,” Bree said, as they climbed out of bed. “She could use a drink.”

  A few minutes later, April sat between Sally and Celia at the hotel bar. It was two o’clock, and they were the only people in the room besides the balding bartender. He looked about forty-five years old. Celia befriended him immediately, and they started talking about life in New York City. He asked her who the last famous person she’d seen was, and Celia shrugged. “I saw Joan Rivers at the movies this past weekend. Does she count?”

  He said that yes, indeed, Joan Rivers qualified as famous. Celia laughed, throwing her head back as if they were having the funniest exchange in the history of funny exchanges. The girl could flirt with an oak tree, April thought, though she was grateful to have a few moments alone with Sally.

  “How’s work?” Sally asked.

  “Forget work. How are you feeling about everything?” April said.

  Sally beamed. “Honestly? The fact that I get to marry Jake and see you guys—it’s like I’m on The Price Is Right and I just won the Showcase Showdown.”

  April remembered long hours back in college spent listening to Sally talk about how much she loved Bill. That had always been a bittersweet union, a love that caused Sal more pain than joy. This one was different, but still, April was not sure that Jake could really make Sally happy in the long run. Would she wake up one morning fifteen years from now and be mad that April hadn’t stopped her?

  “I can’t believe you are getting married in two days,” she said, kissing Sally on the forehead.

  “Me neither,” Sally said. “I’m so glad you guys are here.”

  A moment later, Sally’s face turned sad, and April leaned in, preparing to hear the confession she’d been waiting for all year-Sally wanted out. But instead, she said, “I really miss my mom.”

  “Of course you do,” April said.

  “The thought of stupid Rosemary being my kids’ only grandmother is so upsetting,” Sally said. “My mother would have been the absolute best.”

  April nodded sympathetically.

  “It just feels totally wrong that my mother never knew Jake, or any of you. The woman kept every macaroni collage I made in preschool, but she never got to meet my best friends or have a conversation with my husband.”

  April squeezed her hand. “It feels totally wrong because it is totally wrong,” she said.

  A while later, Bree joined them, alone. Her eyes looked puffy.

  “She’s pissed,” she said, before ordering an extra-strong gin and tonic.

  They moved to a tiny table, with last night’s bowl of nuts still sitting on it.

  For the past six months, April and Ronnie had been busy tying up loose ends on their latest documentary. She realized now that it had been forever since she last spoke to Bree. April had no idea things had gotten so bad.

  “Lara wants Bree to marry her,” Sally whispered, loudly.

  April laughed. Sally, ever the lightweight, was already way beyond tipsy.

  “Sal, that was more of a stage whisper than an actual whisper, just FYI,” Bree said.

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Sally said. “But it’s just—is that a great idea for you guys right now? You seem to be fighting all the time.”

  Bree sighed. “I don’t know.”

  April wondered if Sally still secretly found the idea of Bree and Lara hard to comprehend: She was constantly telling Bree that maybe it was time to move on. April thought it strange that Sally had no problem saying so, though she saw her own relationship as beyond reproach. It was as if having a ring on her finger had elevated her above the level of critique, even though Bree and Lara had been together far longer than Sally and Jake.

  “What more does Lara want?” Sally said. “You live together, you’re out to your family and friends.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” Bree said. “It’s like she thinks I resent her for putting me in this position in the first place. And maybe I kind of do. I love her, but I wish it could just be easy.”

  “Love’s never easy,” Sally said.

  “Easier then,” Bree said. “Why do relationships have to be so damn complicated?”

  Back in college, they had talked about marriage so many times that April could almost recite the conversation she knew they were about to have. Of course, as with most things in life, everything always came back to their parents. Sally’s had had a sad, strained marriage. Her mother was ten years younger than her father, and he had always been a cold, removed sort of man. He’d had affairs, too, and never really bothered to keep them quiet.

  In her mother’s last days, Sally had asked her why she ever married him in the first place. She didn’t really expect her to respond, but her mother had answered quickly, without having to think.

  “I loved the idea of him,” she said. “The wisdom he had, the life he could give me. By the time I realized what he was made of inside, it was too late.”

  April had always wondered why she didn’t just leave him, but even she knew that wasn’t the sort of question you could ask some-one about her dead mother.

  Bree and Celia both had happily married parents. Celia’s had met in the stands at a Boston College football game their junior year, and Bree’s had known each other since grade school. It seemed to make the two of them believe in some sort of guaranteed, endless human connection, though since moving to New York, Celia claimed not to anymore. If April knew anything for sure, it was that bonds like that didn’t exist. Your husband could walk out of work one day after twenty years of marriage and an air conditioner could fall on his head from the fifty-second story, and you’d be alone again. Or, more likely, he could walk out of work, bump into a twenty-two-year-old dental hygienist, and the next thing you knew you’d be standing at your front door exposed in your mom jeans and your homemade Christmas sweater, as you were served with divorce papers.

  Even as a little girl, April had had no illusions about a big white wedding. Other girls’ mothers had told them about Prince Charming, so as adults they still searched for salvation in the form of some man. April’s mother had told her about self-sufficient princesses who wore painter’s pants and had adventures on the high seas. The story never included men, though she knew that her mother craved male approval, male companionship, even as she railed on about misogyny. In the years since college, she had grown further and further from her mother, so that now, even though they both lived in Chicago, they no longer spoke. The girls did not know this, and April thought it was for the best: It would scare them to have to think of her as parentless, though Apri
l had long since thought of herself that way.

  All that April had ever heard about her father was that he was an artist who had shown at the Saatchi Gallery and the Guggenheim. Her mother had loved him terribly, “like a sickness,” she said. He left her anyway when she was eight months pregnant with April, for some art student.

  Like all little girls whose mothers refused to talk much about their fathers, April imagined that hers wasn’t quite so bad. Perhaps he’d had that silly, selfish artist phase for a while, but then he’d had a change of heart. She imagined him living in a warm cottage somewhere in France, jammed full of old teapots and copper pans and dried flowers hanging from the rafters. He had married a fat French painter, and they did watercolors together for hours and baked bread and played with their seven children. April imagined that he thought of her every day, that he longed f or her, searched f o r her. And that one day, he would find her.

  “Don’t take my April away,” her mother would scream, but he would say softly, “I must, Lydia. I’ve missed her too much all these years to let her go now.”

  And April would go with him, to sleep in a big bed the size of their whole apartment in Chicago, alongside her brothers and sisters and ten or twenty dogs.

  When she was in fifth grade, her mother called school one day to say that April was home sick, and then dragged her to a no-grapes rally in Madison. She spent the entire car ride smoking a joint with her friends while April read in the backseat.