Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” Sally said dramatically, and they both burst out laughing, because of all the stock phrases in history, this one was the most ridiculous.

  “Seriously, though, I’m sorry, too,” Sally said.

  “Thanks for making me laugh,” Bree said.

  “Anytime,” Sally said.

  At twenty-four, Bree’s brother Roger had their father’s long, lean body and dark hair. When she walked into the terminal in Savannah, he hugged her tight. Her brothers had visited her in San Francisco a few times, and each time she saw Roger he looked more and more like a man.

  Bree’s parents had never been to her apartment. It had been nearly six months since she last saw them, at a big family reunion in Tennessee. “Neutral territory, so hopefully World War Three won’t break out,” she had said to Lara, hoping she wouldn’t ask to come along. She didn’t, and when Bree saw her family alone like that, she felt overjoyed. Her father had kissed her cheeks. Her mother had held her hand like they were schoolgirls. She realized then that they still loved her, as much as ever.

  “Oh, it is so damn good to see you,” Roger said. Then, looking past her, he asked, “Where’s L-Dog?”

  L-Dog, Bree thought. As if the two of them were old poker buddies or something.

  “She’s not coming,” Bree said.

  He nodded. “Probably for the best, huh?”

  Roger offered to take her to the house first for some lunch, but Bree wanted to go straight to the hospital.

  “How’s Daddy?” she asked, once they were in the car.

  Roger shrugged. “I think he’s in shock. Poor Tim had to call the ambulance and me and you. Dad is just kind of out of it.”

  “She’s so young,” Bree said.

  “Fifty-two,” her brother said, and Bree wasn’t sure whether he was agreeing with her or disagreeing.

  “Had she been sick?” Bree asked. Tears filled her eyes. What kind of daughter didn’t know the answer to that question?

  “No,” Roger said. “Me and Emily were over there for a barbecue just last night.”

  “Emily?” Bree said.

  “This chick I’ve been seeing,” Roger said.

  “Your girlfriend?” she asked teasingly.

  “She wishes,” he said with a grin. “Mama talked about you last night. She told Emily that she still makes her potato salad without paprika because when you were little, you thought it looked like red ants and refused to eat it.”

  Bree laughed.

  “Anyway, Emily doesn’t know anything about anything, so she asked when you were coming home again. Said she’d like to meet you. And Mama said she hoped you’d be coming home soon because she only has one daughter, and two smelly sons just don’t cut it.”

  “She did not say that,” Bree said with a smile. It was exactly the kind of thing her mother would say.

  “Sure did,” Roger said. “We’ve all missed you, but Mama most of all.”

  “Well then why the hell doesn’t she ever call me or come visit?” she said, surprised to hear the words come out of her own mouth.

  “You gave them both such a shock, Bree. You rubbed this new lifestyle of yours in their faces.”

  “That’s absurd,” she said. She hated when people referred to an actual life as a “lifestyle.”

  “Sleeping with her in your room all those times in college?” he said. “Pretending like y’all were just friends. And you never come home anymore. I mean, I know you’re busy, but even at Christmas?”

  Bree’s hands formed two fists. “I live with my girlfriend, and she’s not welcome in my parents’ house. If I call them, they say two words to me and then hang up. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I know, I know,” he said. “I just think that if things had been handled differently, well—what the hell. Anyway, you’re here now.”

  They were silent for a while, and then he said, “You know, they’re real proud of you. Dad’s always telling people that you’re a lawyer out in sunny California.”

  Bree scoffed. She thought of the weekend, two years back, when they had come out to Stanford to see her graduate. Lara was hopeful that maybe it would be a turning point, but Bree couldn’t stop thinking about her Smith graduation, about telling her parents she loved a woman in the middle of the Quad, and how they had reacted.

  At Stanford, they lived in a cramped studio apartment, far too small for all their stuff. On the day Bree’s parents arrived, Lara wanted them to come see the place. She had spent all week cleaning, making coffee cake, and buying flowers. But when Bree’s family stepped into the apartment, her parents’ eyes were drawn straight to the bed, stacked on one side with law books, and with back issues of Sports Illustrated on the other.

  “I bet you can guess which one of us sleeps on which side,” Lara said with a smile.

  Bree’s mother turned bright red.

  At dinner after the graduation ceremony, her father made a toast. Roger, drunk on the ten or so beers he’d had over the course of the day, decided he should make a toast, too. When he had finished, Bree saw Lara begin to rise from her chair, and cringed.

  “I guess I should say a few words, too,” she said.

  Bree’s father looked aghast. Her mother excused herself and stayed in the ladies’ room for twenty minutes.

  After they dropped the family at the airport the next morning, Lara smiled at Bree and said, “Well, that was a shit show.”

  Bree wanted to scream. She wanted to ask why Lara had felt the need to point out again and again that they were a couple. She was livid with her family, too. Her mother, with that ridiculous escape to the ladies’ room, as if she were a character in a goddamn melodrama. Bree was caught in the middle, and being driven mad by both sides.

  Roger dropped her in the hospital’s massive circular driveway and went to park the car.

  “She’s in room 4,81,” he said.

  Bree walked inside, inhaling shallowly in an attempt to avoid the stale medicinal smell of the hospital. She suddenly felt panicked about seeing her parents after all this time. She asked a white-haired security guard where the elevators were, and he pointed to a spot directly ahead of her.

  “Duh,” she said. “I’m out of it, I’m sorry.”

  “You’re fine, dear,” he said. He smiled warmly, making her want to cry.

  This man must see dozens of people every day who were going through the worst time of their lives. She imagined him heading home at night to some Mrs. Claus–type wife, unloading his stories on her while she made hot cocoa. Or perhaps he was a widower who took comfort in this place, where so many others were experiencing the same sort of grief he was.

  She went to the elevator bank. A moment later, the elevator doors in front of her opened, and a family stepped off. Bree looked down to see a little girl in a pink tutu and a sparkly purple bathing suit, with a cast on her arm and a baby doll dangling from her free hand. She had bright red pigtails and freckles across her nose.

  Bree gave her a wave, and the little girl waved back with the two fingers not covered by the cast.

  “I broked my arm at Madison’s pool party,” she blurted out in an adorable nasal twang.

  “Oh my goodness,” Bree said, looking upward to smile at the parents.

  “Bree?” the man’s voice said. “Is that you?”

  Doug Anderson was holding a redheaded infant against his chest, with a cloth diaper draped over his shoulder. The last time they had spoken, she was calling him from her first-year dorm room at Smith to end their engagement. He had begged her to reconsider, but she had already made up her mind. At April’s suggestion, she had even sent his ring back to him in a Jiffy envelope earlier that day so she wouldn’t chicken out.

  He looked exactly the same. He wore a Shooter Jennings concert T-shirt and ratty jeans. He kicked at the carpet with his toe, and Bree could swear the last ten years had never passed.

  “Wow Doug,” was all she could manage to say.

  By his side sto
od a petite redhead in a white wrap dress who reminded Bree of Wilma Flintstone.

  “This is my wife, Carolyn. Formerly Carolyn Dempsey. She finished a year behind us at the high school,” Doug said.

  “Right, of course.” Bree smiled and stretched out her hand, though she had no memory of the woman. She was just grateful that he hadn’t married the little tramp who broke up their relationship, even though that unknown girl had probably done her the biggest favor of her life. “I’m Bree,” she said.

  “Oh, I know who you are,” Carolyn said sweetly, in a particular Southern tone that Bree hadn’t heard in years. Her brothers called it a razor blade in a spoonful of honey.

  “And these are our children, Rose and Oliver,” Doug said.

  Bree did the math. He really hadn’t wasted any time. She had to hand it to Doug. He was the kind of guy who wanted to be married with lots of babies, and he had gotten the exact life he’d always intended to have. She could not believe that they were the same age. There were so many ways to be twenty-six years old.

  “So Bree, do you live in the area?” Carolyn asked.

  “No, I live out in San Francisco,” she said. “With my girlfriend.”

  What the hell, she thought. Doug raised his eyebrows.

  “What are you up to these days?” Doug asked.

  “I’m working at a firm out there.”

  “As an attorney?” he asked.

  Bree nodded.

  “And Stanford? Did that ever happen?”

  She nodded, blushing. It was a sensation particular to women, she thought, to feel like a braggart just by stating a fact about yourself.

  “Good for you,” Doug said with a kind smile.

  Bree shrugged. “How about you? Looks like you’ve had your hands full.”

  “That’s the truth,” he said. “I’m working in my dad’s office now, as a sort of paralegal. I basically drive him to his golf dates and keep the coffee flowing. I’m still planning to get that JD one of these days.”

  Bree thought he looked a little embarrassed for a second, but then his face lit up. “You know, someday when I have more than ten seconds at a stretch to think, when I’m not chasing this little pumpkin around.”

  He ruffled his daughter’s hair tenderly, a gesture that made Bree wish for just a second that they could go back in time, to the summers they had spent lying in the sun-scorched grass in his backyard, talking about all the babies they’d have one day. If things had been different, she would be in Carolyn’s place right now. She didn’t want that sort of existence, but there was something so attractive about the security of feeling like you had stopped moving toward your life, and actually arrived.

  “You’re pretty,” Rose said. “Do you want to sign my cast?”

  Bree laughed. “I’d love to.”

  She pulled a pen from her purse and bent down to write her name. She had woken up this morning with the intention of taking a run with Lara, going to the farmer’s market for fresh avocados, making some guacamole, and spending the rest of the day watching baseball on TV. Now here she stood, three thousand miles away from where she had started, giving her autograph to Doug Anderson’s daughter. This was officially the strangest day of her life. She suddenly wished Lara were there to see it.

  “So is everything okay?” Doug asked.

  For a moment she thought he was asking whether she felt okay with running into him like this, but then she recalled where they were and why she had come in the first place.

  “My mother had a heart attack,” she said. “I’m just on my way up to see her now.”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry,” Doug said. “Is there anything I can do?”

  His wife shot him a venomous look, which she immediately tried to cover with a toothy smile. “Yes, please let us know if we can help. Don’t be shy now,” she said.

  “No, it’s okay,” Bree said. “But I’d better get up there.”

  “Right. Well, great to see you again,” Doug said.

  “You too,” she said.

  The elevator doors opened, and she stepped inside, waving good-bye to Doug and his family, willing the doors to close fast.

  When the elevator stopped on the fourth floor, Bree could hear her brother Tim’s voice immediately. She followed the sound to a dim room at the end of the hall, and there they all were—her brother and father looking weary, her mother in a hospital bed, hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, with a tube in her nose.

  “Bree!” she said softly. “Angel, you came!”

  “Of course I came,” Bree said. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m okay,” her mother said meekly. “Thank you, Jesus, I’m okay.”

  “Praise the Lord!” said Tim in a mocking preacher’s voice as Bree went to hug her father.

  “Hush!” her mother said. “It’s no time to go angering Him.”

  “So what are the doctors saying?” Bree asked.

  “She has a little recovering to do, but she’s going to be fine,” her father said. “In a day or two, they’ll do the surgery, and a few days after that we’ll take her home.”

  “What’s the surgery?” she said.

  “Bypass,” her mother said, holding her hand to her forehead. “Triple bypass, Bree, can you believe it? No more pecan pie for this family.”

  Roger came in, then, his keys jangling in his hand.

  “All of you, get together,” Bree’s mother said. “Go on, I want to take a picture.”

  “Honey, there’s no camera,” Bree’s father said gently.

  “Oh I know,” she said. “I meant a mental picture. I want to see my whole family together again.”

  Bree’s father and brothers huddled in around her, scrunching together so that they were crushing her from either side, just like they used to when they were kids.

  “Oww!” she said, laughing.

  “Stop that now, boys,” their mother said.

  Later, her brothers and father went to the cafeteria to investigate a rumor about red velvet cake that they had heard from another patient on the hall. Bree stayed behind. Her mother, groggy from the morphine, started talking nonsense on and off. It felt a little bit frightening to see her this way, but Bree tried as hard as she could to act normal.

  “This one really scared me,” her mother said. “You just go ploop, and then all of a sudden wheee.”

  “Right,” Bree said as if this were the most sensible statement in the world.

  “It’s been a hard day’s night,” her mother said.

  “Sure has,” Bree said, smiling because although she knew her mother was just spouting words, these ones were fairly apt.

  “I should be sleeping like a log,” her mother said with a sigh.

  Her face turned sad for a moment. She said, “You know what? You should have fought us. Fought, fought ’til the death. Here’s a secret: You would have won.”

  “What do you mean?” Bree asked, wanting to hear more, but her mother closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  After everyone had gone to bed that night, Bree crept out onto the front porch to think. Her parents had seemed so happy to see her, and yet they hadn’t even asked about Lara. It was their way, she thought, of telling her that she could have all this back again if only she would give Lara up. They were her family, and she loved them, but how could they ask her to make a choice like that?

  It was a hot, sticky July night. Purple clouds of Spanish moss dripped from the trees and glistened in the moonlight. Savannah was her true home, and still the most beautiful place she had ever been. Bree tried to imagine walking hand in hand with Lara down Congress Street, pushing a double stroller in the sunshine. She shook her head. Impossible.

  A pair of headlights shone in the distance, the first she had seen all night. It was only eleven o’clock, but this neighborhood went to sleep early. The car came closer, an old Volvo station wagon. When it reached her house, the driver pulled over and stepped out, closing the door gently. Bree squinted in the darkness to see if she could make
him out as he walked toward her.

  “Heya,” Doug said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  “Hi,” she said, rising to hug him. “This is a surprise.”

  “Not a bad one, I hope,” he said. “I was picking up diapers for the baby at the Rite Aid down the road, and I thought I’d drive by and see if y’all were home and needed anything.”

  “That’s sweet of you, thanks,” she said.

  They sat down side by side on the porch steps. He asked after her mother, and Bree gave him the update. They talked about Doug’s parents, and his brother who was in rehab for cocaine addiction, though most people outside the family thought he had gone to fantasy baseball camp. Then there was an uncomfortable moment in which neither of them knew what to say.

  “Wow,” she finally said with a laugh. “Look at you.”

  “Look at you,” he said. “You’re like a totally different person.”

  “How so?” she said, though of course she knew.

  “Well let’s see,” he said with a grin. “When you left here nine years ago, you were a good Southern girl who wore her homecoming-queen crown around the house for fun. You were obsessed with makeup and magazines. Not to mention, you were engaged.”

  “To you, as I recall,” she said.

  Was she actually flirting with her high school boyfriend?

  “That’s right,” he said. “You broke my heart, lady.”

  “I broke your heart?” she said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Of course,” he said. “I could tell as soon as you got to Smith that I’d lost you to that coven of gals you lived with. You still talk to them?”

  She smiled. “Yes. They’re my best friends.”

  “Anyway,” he said. “Not that it matters to you one bit anymore, but I wanted to say that I’m sorry for what I did. Really sorry, Bree. I panicked and I felt like things with us weren’t what I thought they’d be, and I just reached for something—”

  “Uncomplicated,” she said, thinking of that stupid kiss with Chris from the office.

  “Right,” he said.

  She waved this away with her hand. “Really, truly, it’s okay,” she said. “We were just kids.”

  She found with surprise and relief that she meant it: She wasn’t angry with him. All of that seemed like a million years ago now. It amazed her how you could long for a certain conversation, an apology, and then, by the time you got it, feel like you didn’t need it anymore.