Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Sally took it in, and played the role of caretaker—holding back other girls’ hair while they puked, fetching them glasses of water, and tucking them into bed with their heads elevated so they wouldn’t choke on their own vomit during the night. All the while, she thought of Bill alone in his office. She would have so preferred to be with him, listening to him weigh the virtues of Keats versus Byron, or discussing their childhood summers, both spent on Cape Cod. Occasionally, after those private parties, Celia brought boys home, lanky Amherst students who came to brunch in the dining hall the next morning with their collared shirts untucked and sheepish grins on their faces. Once or twice she even brought home a girl, some straight Quad bunny or other. Later she would report that they had made out for hours, breaking every so often to discuss how neither one of them had gotten over her high school crush yet. (It wasn’t meant to be romantic, Sally thought. It was more like an experience, the sort of thing girls like Celia did just to say that they had done it.)

  Sally never so much as kissed someone on those nights. She preferred her thoughts and her Post-its, as pathetic as she knew that was. When she saw Bill again on Monday, he’d ask her about her weekend. Sally wouldn’t mention the parties. They seemed to exist in another universe from him, his poetry, his office, which she thought of, in a way, as theirs.

  Finally there came a Monday morning when he asked her how she’d spent her weekend, and she could no longer hold it in. Some guy had grabbed her ass at a party and acted like she ought to be grateful, as if he’d given her a diamond ring. She went home and cried herself to sleep.

  “I went to some stupid party, the same sort of stupid party we’ve been going to for two years,” she told Bill.

  He raised his eyebrows. “What’s stupid about it?”

  She sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Everything. My best friend April always complains that we Smith girls tend to transform ourselves into these trampy tarts whenever men are around.”

  “Tarts,” he said with a smile. “Good word. Go on.”

  “We wear these skimpy little skirts and halter tops,” she said, feeling her heart in her chest.

  “We?” he said, eyeing her cable-knit sweater.

  Sally ignored the implication. She’d never worn a skimpy skirt or a halter top in her life, but she needed to get this point across, and now she had his attention.

  “And for what? The guys at these things are just so unevolved. They’re embryos, really.”

  “So you need someone more mature,” he said in a detached, almost uninterested voice. Then he met her eyes, and Sally felt something pass between them. Was he going to say the words that would change everything?

  But he looked down again and only said, “It is the plight of many an intelligent young woman.”

  She told herself that this was for the best; that what she had been imagining was altogether ridiculous anyway. But then, at last—

  “You could try wearing that tiny skirt here some time if you’re looking for something a little more grown-up,” he said, and she felt a rush of energy shoot from her belly to her groin.

  She took a deep breath. He had made the attempt, laughing so that she might pass it off as a joke if she wanted to. Sally hadn’t lusted after anyone since high school. She hoped middle-aged men could be seduced with the same tricks as teenage boys. She soon found that indeed they could.

  “What will this grown-up something entail?” she said with a coy smile, cocking her head.

  She felt like she was in a movie, the sort of movie no director would ever cast her in because she was too wholesome looking.

  Bill rose from his chair, walked around the desk, and then perched on her side of it, so that his warm body was all before her. He reached down and cupped her chin in his hands, lifted it gently, and then kissed her so hard that later that day she could swear her lips were swollen, puffed up, though no one seemed to notice.

  He was the first man to undress her. Before, it had always been the quick and awkward routine of yanking one’s own clothes off while the guy did the same. But Bill ran his hands over her, peeling off first her pink sweater and then her tank top, as though they were layers of delicate tissue paper, rather than cotton blends from Banana Republic. He unbuttoned her jeans so slowly that she moaned, wanting his hands on her, inside of her. He pulled her pants down and dropped to the floor with them, kissing her ankles, and then the insides of her knees, and up and up until she gasped for breath and dug her hands into the arms of his old wing chair. They made love against the door to his office, and Sally thought with panic about that little square of glass in the door, wondering if some unsuspecting English major had spotted the tops of their heads and figured it all out. A moment later, lost in the feeling of his skin against hers, she had forgotten her fear. She wanted to scream out that she loved him, but she knew it was way too soon. Instead she said it silently, in her head, over and over.

  That week, she went to his office every afternoon. By Wednesday, he had covered the window in the door with duct tape. She assigned this act too much meaning, knowing she was doing so, but not caring in the least. The fact that he had covered the window said that he wasn’t in this for the stupid thrill of sleeping with a student, but because what they shared was irresistible, Sally reasoned. For once in her life, she had been the aggressor. They had sex in the wing chair, and behind the desk, and on the sheepskin rug that he once told her he and Jan had bought on their honeymoon in Scotland. When she was with him, she was in heaven, and when she wasn’t, she only thought about seeing him again.

  By dinner the following Thursday, the girls were beginning to get suspicious. The four of them plus Lara sat at their corner table, which was piled high with a platter of turkey and bowls of thick gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and steamed squash. April loved to horrify Sally with tales of what went into their meals—huge bricks of butter in the shepherd’s pie, a whole can of Crisco in the chicken and wild rice casserole.

  Usually Sally would steer clear of this sort of glop. She was terrified of turning into one of those Smithies who sat in the living room watching TV with her pants unbuttoned, seeming not to notice the rolls of fat growing around her middle. Celia and Bree had both put on weight in the previous two years, and they talked about it as if it were inevitable: “Look at my gobble chin,” Celia would say, pulling at the skin under her neck with one hand as she took a bite of cherry cobbler with the other.

  Sally spent two hours a day minimum in the gym in the basement and ate a Lean Cuisine with a salad from the veggie bar for dinner almost every night. But tonight she felt famished, and she filled her plate and began eating before anyone else had even been served.

  “Whoa there,” Bree said. “Sally, you’re eating like Lara—like you only have a day left to live.”

  “Thanks, sweetie,” Lara said, patting Bree on the knee.

  Sally caught Celia rolling her eyes. This was shortly before Bree and Lara announced that they were a couple, and apparently Celia thought that only she was allowed to call Bree sweetie. Or maybe it annoyed her that Bree felt comfortable enough around this new friend to tease her as the King House girls might tease one another.

  “I’m hungry,” Sally said with a shrug. “You guys are always telling me to eat more, so I’m eating more.”

  They changed the subject. There would be banana-cream pie for dessert, and despite the fact that she usually ate a vegan diet, April leaned over to the table beside theirs to tell a junior named Lily Martin that she thought tonight might be her night for beating Lily’s record—five pieces of pie in a sitting.

  Jenny Reynolds, a first year who had already gained BDOC status, dinged her water glass with her fork, a Smithie signal that meant she had an announcement to make. The room grew quiet.

  “The Smiffenpoofs will be having an a cappella concert tonight in the archway by Public Safety to celebrate Coming Out Day,” she said. “Come one, come all, come out!”

  The whole room laughed and cheered.

  �
��That girl could announce National Teeth Cleaning Day and people would applaud,” Celia said. “But is it Coming Out Day today? I didn’t see any chalkings.”

  Usually on Coming Out Day there were colorful chalkings on the pathways all over campus—SO AND SO IS OUT AND PROUD OR SILENT NO MORE! OR COME OUT, COME OUT, WHOEVER YOU ARE! The previous year, Sally had walked over so many of them that she dragged what looked like four pounds of chalk into the house and onto her brand-new throw rug.

  “It’s actually Coming Out Day Eve,” Lara said. “We’re chalking after dinner tonight. Speaking as the token lesbian at the table, I thought I’d let you know. Oh, and we’re decorating the whole campus with paper lanterns later.”

  “During that last part, were you speaking as the token Asian at the table?” Bree said.

  Sally gasped a little—wasn’t it sort of racist to say something like that? But Lara laughed, and said, “Oh, yes, I take all my minority roles very seriously.”

  Sally reached for the gravy. She accidentally spilled a huge dollop onto the white tablecloth, but she ignored the mess and poured gravy over her potatoes. Lara kept talking, but the other three were instantly silent.

  Bree squealed, “Sally, what is going on?”

  “What happened?” Lara asked, looking confused.

  “The Sally Werner we know is physically incapable of spilling anything onto linen without at the very least running for seltzer,” Bree said.

  All eyes were on Sally, who was shoveling a forkful of stuffing into her mouth. “What?” she said with a smile.

  The truth was, she was dying to tell them. She swallowed and started to laugh. “Lean in,” she said, wishing that Lara weren’t around. She hardly knew the girl, but what the hell?

  “You must all promise to never ever tell a soul what I’m about to tell you,” she said, knowing that she could roughly estimate that each of them would tell at least three people. “Promise!”

  “We promise!” they said in unison.

  “Tell us, I’m dying here,” Bree added.

  “I am sleeping with someone,” she said, taking in a deep breath. “And don’t laugh, but I think I’m in love.”

  “This just happened today?” April asked.

  “No,” Sally said. “It’s been going on for a while, but it’s only been—well, you know, physical—since Monday. He is just so—”

  “He?” Bree and April blurted out, because it was more plausible that their straightest friend might have fallen for a woman than that she could have found a man to love on the Smith campus in the middle of the week.

  “Yes, he.” Sally laughed. “Jesus, what do you think I am?”

  She noticed Lara’s face tighten a bit and felt a little guilty. She hadn’t meant anything against lesbians. She thought that perhaps she ought to say so, but couldn’t bear to let it take away from the exquisite fun of the conversation. She would just have to send her a note in the campus mail the next day. Did Hallmark make Coming Out Day cards?

  “Well, who the hell is he?” Bree asked.

  “Please don’t say Bill Lambert,” Celia said quietly.

  “Who’s Bill Lambert?” Lara asked.

  “Some old poetry prof,” April said.

  Celia’s eyes were trained on Sally. “He’s a creep,” she said.

  Sally felt herself harden. “Yes, it’s Bill,” she said. “But you don’t know anything about what he’s really like, sweetheart.”

  Bree slapped the table. “What? Oh my goodness, Sal, way to spice up a Thursday dinner! Details!”

  “This is some seriously old-school women’s college shit,” April said. “Do you realize that once you become a faculty wife, your old professors won’t even acknowledge that they ever taught you? My mom’s friend married her adviser from Radcliffe, and that’s how it went down.”

  Sally giggled. She was grateful for their excitement or amusement or whatever it was, but she could feel Celia’s disdain from across the table. “Well, we’re not exactly getting married yet.”

  Finally, Celia spoke. “This is just too clichéd for words,” she snapped. “This doesn’t happen at Smith. It’s the kind of thing people fantasize about, not the kind of thing they actually do. I mean, seriously. The whole thing is like a parody of itself. Was he reciting Tennyson when he came on to you?”

  Sally fumed. “It’s nothing like that. We just—connect.”

  April took her hand in a rare show of romantic enthusiasm. It had been a long, dry semester for them all.

  “You’re like old souls maybe,” April said. “Age be damned. Seniority be damned. Fuck it. All that stuff is bullshit anyway.”

  “Exactly.” Sally smiled. “Thank you, my love.”

  “Previous history of stalking be damned, too,” Celia said.

  “That’s just a nasty rumor, and you know it,” Sally said.

  “April, I’m surprised at you,” Celia said. “You don’t think this is wrong?”

  April shrugged. “No, not really. It sounds like old Sally here is more than into it. It’s not like he coerced her.”

  “And what about the fact that he’s married?” Celia said.

  “His wife is dead, for God’s sake!” Sally said.

  “Jan Lambert isn’t dead,” Celia said. “She’s a Victorian lit professor at Mount Holyoke. She was signing books at Beyond Words on Sunday afternoon.”

  Everything began to blur in front of Sally’s eyes—the food and her friends and the room around them.

  She heard Bree whisper, “Are you sure it’s the same person?”

  The next thing she knew she was running in her T-shirt, pajama pants, and flip-flops, out of the dining hall, and then out of the house, past the president’s home and Paradise Pond and the greenhouse and Chapin, until finally she got to the steps of the library. The campus had grown dark and all but deserted at only six-fifteen. Nearly everyone was inside, listening for the squeaky wheels of carts, pushed by friendly old ladies and laden with thick slices of banana-cream pie.

  Sally did not stop to catch her breath. She pushed through the doors and went straight to his office.

  There he sat, with his door open, the sight of that duct tape making her feel slightly ill now. His feet were up on the desk, and he was reading The New York Times in the dim lamplight.

  She knocked at the open door.

  He turned his eyes upward without moving his head, and when he saw her there, he grinned. “Well, aren’t you a vision,” he said.

  Sally suddenly realized what she was wearing, and she felt embarrassed in spite of herself. “I was in a rush,” she mumbled.

  “I’m serious,” he said, putting down the paper and beckoning her to him. “You look radiant. Have you been running?”

  “Are you married?” she interrupted.

  “What?” he said with a chuckle.

  Rage was coming over her now. He had made her the kind of woman she despised without so much as letting her know. She thought of her own father’s affairs, how she had overheard her mother weeping into the phone one night in high school, something about business trips and the credit card statements and how had she possibly not realized before?

  “Are. You. Married.” Sally said it more sternly than she’d ever said anything in her life.

  “You know I’m married,” Bill said. “Darling, come in. What is this about?”

  She wanted to be immune to the power of that darling, yet already she felt herself slipping. She did not want to hate him, or for this to end. She just wanted it all to be a big misunderstanding.

  She tried again. “The poem about the tomb. I thought you said it reminded you of your wife.”

  “It does,” he said, not seeming to understand her point.

  “Oh,” Sally said. “I guess I just assumed that …”

  “What?” he said, looking genuinely confused. Then a grin spread over his face, and he began to laugh, a deep belly laugh as if she had said the most hilarious thing in the world. “You thought Janice was dead.”

/>   “Well, yes,” Sally said, her heart beating quickly as she took this information in fully. His wife was alive. She was someone’s mistress.

  “It’s a poem about dead lovers, isn’t it?” she said finally.

  He looked to the ceiling, his way of telling her he was giving this some thought. Then he said, “To me, it’s a poem about pure feeling, pure love that is lost, and a sad shell that remains.”

  “Your wife is alive,” Sally said. She immediately wished she hadn’t. Obviously she was alive; he had just said so.

  “Sally,” he said, pulling her to him and running his palm over her scalp as if she were a cocker spaniel. She had an incredible urge to punch him in the jaw. “Janice and I are separated. Have been for a year now.”

  “Separated,” she said. She felt slightly relieved, though she knew separated could mean a great many things. “Separated, as in—”

  “Separated as in we’re about to get divorced. Separated as in a poem about a tomb reminds me of her. Separated as in I’m in love with you.”

  It was the first time he had ever said it.

  “I love you, too,” she said, and then borrowing a favorite phrase of her mother’s, she whispered, “I love you to the moon and back.”

  That night they slept together, curled into each other on the carpeted office floor. When she woke alone the next morning, Bill had left a Post-it stuck to her purse: Went swimming. Love you.

  Seeing the words written out that way startled her. She threw on her coat and headed to the Quad, her breath forming tiny clouds in the frigid February air. It was still early, the middle of the night by college sophomore standards.

  When she got to her room, another note was waiting, this one from April: Where did you go, Lady Chatterley? Come see me when you get home. I’m worried about you.