Commencement

by J. Courtney Sullivan

  Sally thought about this for a moment. She imagined walking into King House, which was nothing without the girls by her side.

  Finally, she shook her head. “No, thank you,” she said. “I’m fine where I am.”

  CELIA

  It was a brilliant, sunny Saturday in New York when they first heard the news. According to the television, the Atlanta police had been tipped off by an unidentified source that there were human remains—a woman’s arm and calf—buried in the backyard of the pimp everyone thought had kidnapped April. The pimp himself had vanished. It would take a week or more to be certain it was her, but Celia had no doubt.

  Celia and Bree sat side by side on the couch and cried all weekend.

  Celia couldn’t sleep, and on Monday she had to get Ambien from her doctor, a wiry guy who looked at her suspiciously, as if she had asked him for heroin. He eventually wrote the prescription (and gave her the number for a good shrink with an office right by her apartment) when she began to sob uncontrollably into his lab coat. Bree was leaving her soon, most likely returning home to Savannah to work in her father’s firm, and the thought of being alone at night haunted Celia.

  On Monday evening, their contact in the Atlanta police department called to say that the following afternoon they would conduct one final search.

  “A search for what?” Celia asked.

  “Whenever we come up with major evidence, such as remains, our search unit takes another look over the neighborhood where the evidence was found, and any outlying natural areas, just in case. We want to take every step we can to make sure this guy is put away, and sometimes that’s as simple as finding a shell casing or a scrap of fabric.”

  The police were looking for civilian volunteers to help, so Celia and Bree bought two tickets for the first flight out in the morning. Celia’s parents and sister planned to come down to Atlanta as well, and Bree’s entire family did the same.

  Celia kept thinking about the day just before Sally’s wedding weekend, when April called to say that she had been beaten up, while Ronnie simply ran off.

  She just needed to protect herself, April had said in Ronnie’s defense.

  What would have been different if Celia had said, Oh yeah? Well, I just need to protect you and I demand that you quit.

  April probably would have laughed. But now, Celia would never know.

  “What should we pack?” Bree asked. She was congested from crying, and her voice sounded foggy.

  Celia knew what she was thinking, but could not bring herself to say out loud: that they were, in fact, going to Georgia for April’s funeral.

  Sally’s doctor had told her she absolutely could not fly this late in her pregnancy, but she was joining them in Atlanta anyway. Jake was panicked about this, but she hadn’t given him any choice.

  “He’s freaking out because I’ve already fucking dropped,” she said to Celia over the phone.

  Now that she was pregnant, Sally swore as much as April ever had.

  “What the hell does ‘dropped’ mean?” Celia asked.

  “It just means the baby has descended down to my pelvis or something,” Sally said. “Jake will tell you all about it when he sees you, I’m sure. But it could still be four weeks before I go into labor.”

  “Does it hurt when it drops?” Celia asked, cringing. When Sally talked about the specifics of her pregnancy, Celia always felt physically ill, which in turn made her feel like a bad female, but what could you do?

  “Oh no,” Sally said. “My stomach’s just lower. Now I can breathe better, but I have to pee every ten minutes. Literally, Cee. Every ten freaking minutes.”

  “Eww,” Celia said.

  “Yeah, and that’s not the half of it,” Sally said. “I also have hemorrhoids. I’m twenty-six, and I have hemorrhoids. My gums are bleeding, my legs ache, my butt hurts. I am telling you right now, Celia. If you’re smart, you’ll just adopt.”

  It was pouring rain when they gathered outside the police station the next day. The search had been announced on television all across the country, and dozens of Smithies came to help, people Celia hadn’t thought about in years and people she’d never even heard of, who had all been touched by April in some way or another. There was Jenna the Monster Truck, who had heralded them into Smith on their very first day. And Toby Jones, April’s trans friend, who was now devastatingly handsome, good-looking enough to make Celia wonder whether any of the guys she had slept with in New York had once been a Lucy or a Tina.

  Lara came, too. She and Bree had been talking by phone every night since Bree’s return from California, and Celia wondered why they didn’t just make it official already. Yes, there were complications. Of course. But she knew Bree well enough to know what would make her happy.

  Outside the station, Lara stood by Bree’s side, and the two of them held hands.

  Celia looked over at Bree’s parents, who were watching them.

  “You’re under surveillance,” she said to Bree and Lara.

  “I don’t care,” Bree said.

  Lara’s eyes grew wide.

  “Well, maybe I care a little, but I’m trying not to,” Bree said, and they laughed.

  The search had also drawn locals and church and women’s groups from all over the country, seventy people in all. April’s mother was there, but there was no sign of Ronnie. The police captain brought them out to the parking lot and separated them into groups of ten.

  “Thank you all for being here,” he hollered into a sea of black umbrellas. “This kind of search needs to be exhaustive, and the police force just doesn’t have the manpower to handle it alone. That’s why we look to civilians like you to help us in times like this.”

  Volunteers handed out flyers printed with April’s picture and a description of what she was wearing the last time she was seen. Celia stared down at the picture, wondering who had provided it-Ronnie?

  The captain explained that they would be searching the neighborhood where April had lived and disappeared, as well as parks and fields and swamp areas. Each team would have a police officer to guide them.

  “Many of you were here with us for our search on the morning of April’s disappearance, but for those who weren’t, here’s the drill: Those of you in the less-developed areas should link arms and form a sort of human chain as you look at the ground and your surroundings,” he said. “This way not a single inch will be missed.”

  The writer in Celia was amused by the vision of a human chain made of transgendered Smith grads and Catholic nuns and gray-haired second-wave feminists and Atlanta shopkeepers. She thought there was something in it that would please April, too, and for a moment, she smiled.

  But then someone in the crowd called out, “What are we supposed to look for?”

  The captain wiped a hand across his forehead, which was wet with rainwater despite his umbrella.

  “Unfortunately, at this point, we aren’t hoping to find April alive. We are searching for clues as to what happened to her,” he said. “Anything that looks suspicious—clothing or a shoe or remains-should be reported immediately to your police liaison.”

  Celia willed herself not to look at April’s mother.

  He went on. “Those of you who will be searching the neighborhood, your job is to ask questions: Has anyone seen April? Has anyone heard anything we’d want to know?”

  The idea of it scared Celia—what if she knocked on a door and then stood face-to-face with April’s murderer? Would she know on some level that it was him? Would she scream or run or just burst into tears?

  That’s when the captain began to tell them where to go: Celia, Bree, Sally, and Jake were all part of the group assigned to search April’s neighborhood, along with a police officer named Dan Daniels, who looked about her dad’s age.

  “Y’all were her closest friends,” Officer Daniels said as they huddled together as a group. “We know you want to see justice happen here. I’m gonna tell you how to talk to these people in the neighborhood. They don’t much love s
eeing cops on their block, so they’re probably more likely to speak to you than to me.”

  They hardly said a word to one another as they knocked on doors along English Avenue and around the Bluff. In their collective imagination, Celia knew, they’d hoped to knock on some door and see April standing there with a cup of coffee in her hand. Or even just some sign of her: a pair of her corduroys slung over a banister, something.

  But instead, when they got to the rows of tiny houses, only a few feet apart from one another, person after person said the same thing: They hadn’t seen April, or even heard of her, and would Celia please kindly get off their stoop.

  She had never felt so white in her entire life.

  With each hour that passed, Celia grew at once more hopeless and more relieved.

  She had been to countless wakes as a child, holding her father’s hand as they gazed at the corpse of some old relative or another. The bodies never looked quite dead to Celia. If she stared at them long enough, she could swear they were taking shallow breaths. As a kid, she braced herself against the possibility that this was just like the really good haunted house they went to at Castle Island every Halloween, and that at any moment the person in the coffin would jump upright and scream, “Boo!”

  But this wasn’t some great-uncle she only saw at Christmas. This was April. Celia didn’t want to see her body, or what remained of it. The thought alone was more than she could take.

  Despite all their efforts, the volunteers and the police didn’t turn up a thing that day. The rain had gotten heavier, and they were predicting thunderstorms for the following twenty-four hours. The police department decided to postpone the rest of the search and start it up again two days later.

  That evening, all of them—Sally and Jake, Bree and Celia and their families—stood in front of the hotel, unsure of what to do next.

  “We’d be happy to take everyone to dinner,” Celia’s father said. “If people are up for that.”

  But dinner never happened. Bree and Celia’s families went off separately in search of something to eat; Bree said she was going to take a long walk alone; and Sally needed to lie down, so Celia and Jake accompanied her back to her room.

  In the hotel room, Sally flopped onto the bed.

  “Can you believe Ronnie didn’t show up to help look for her?” she said. “That motherfucker. If I ever get my hands on her, Cee, I swear to God—”

  “I’ll get some ice,” Jake said, grabbing the half-full bucket and hitting the hallway.

  “Gotta love Jake,” Celia said with a smile. “It’s like the ninety-seventh time he’s gotten ice since we’ve been here.”

  “I told him I was going to need a lot of alone time with you and Bree,” Sally said. “I think he’s a little bit afraid of me these days. I feel like I’m moving through quicksand, Celia. This all feels like a bad dream.”

  Celia nodded. “I know. I haven’t slept much these past few days, have you?”

  “Not really,” Sally said softly. “I don’t know if I can bring a child into such a terrible world.”

  Celia poked her belly. “I don’t think you have much choice there,” she said. “That child’s coming into this world whether you like it or not.”

  “I know,” Sally said. “I’m the fucking Goodyear blimp.”

  · · ·

  That night, Celia slept in bed with her sister and mother for the first time since she was in grade school.

  Returning from Sally and Jake’s room, she found her dad already asleep, snoring on a rollaway cot. Violet was sleeping, too, a copy of Rolling Stone magazine spread across her chest. Their mother was lying in bed beside her, with her eyes wide open. Celia nestled into her side, taking in the familiar scent of her nightgown, not wanting to ever have to go back to New York.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked.

  “April’s mom,” her mother said. They had been on the same search team earlier that day, making their way through a huge park near April’s old neighborhood. “It just ripped me up, watching her. I’m sure part of her wanted to find something of April’s. And part of her didn’t—part of her probably just pretends April lives in Tallahassee or something now, that she’s out in an orange field, laughing at all of us for worrying.”

  Celia’s oldest memory was of her mother baking circus cupcakes for her third birthday, each one topped with a tiny ballerina or a clown or a seal bouncing a red rubber ball on its nose. She was nine months pregnant with Violet, and her belly bumped against the kitchen counter as she mixed the hot pink icing. She seemed invincible, magical. Even now, if Celia called her complaining of a sore throat, her mother could tell if it was strep or just a virus merely from the sound of her voice. She always knew the answers to every little question—whether to tip the locksmith, what to give your boss for Christmas, how to handle a demanding agent or a creepy male superior at work, the length of time it took to make a perfect hard-boiled egg. As long as her mother was alive, Celia would feel protected, no matter how many miles stood between them. She thought now of how April had never known that sort of safety.

  “Lydia’s not really a mother like you are,” Celia said. “She hadn’t even spoken to April for over a year.”

  Her mother closed her eyes. “That might even make things worse. When you have a daughter, this sort of thing is just your worst nightmare. It doesn’t matter who you are. For the first time I can remember, I am actually angry at God. Why would He let something like this go on? I’ve never wanted you girls to walk through your lives thinking that bad things just happen for no reason, but—”

  “Don’t they?” Celia interrupted. “Isn’t that the bitch of it?”

  Her mother kissed her cheek. “Maybe. I don’t know. Let’s try to get some sleep.”

  A moment later, her voice tired and far away, she added, “And don’t say ‘bitch,’ Cee Cee. That word is beneath you.”

  They were awakened by the sound of the phone ringing in the dark.

  Violet jumped up first. “Wake-up call,” she said. She picked up the phone and said, “Thank you,” then hung up, and flopped back onto the bed.

  It rang again.

  “Jeez.” Violet picked it up and said, “Yes?” After a moment, she let out a little scream and said, “Oh. Oh my God!”

  Celia was still half in a dream, and her first thought was that maybe April wasn’t really dead after all. Maybe the police were calling to say that the bones they had found were someone else’s, that April was safe and warm in her bed.

  But then Violet started shaking her. “Wake up!” she yelled. “Sally’s having her baby!”

  Celia opened her eyes and looked at the clock. It was four-fifteen in the morning.

  Her mother sprang up and already had her shoes on before Celia even put her feet on the floor. The hotel was huge. The two of them got to Sally’s room five minutes later, panting from the run. When Celia knocked on the door, Jake answered it and gave them a pleading look, like he was being held hostage.

  Behind him, Sally sat on the bed, calmly painting her toenails.

  Celia’s heart raced. “Umm, Sal, what are you doing?” she said.

  “Getting ready,” Sally said.

  “But shouldn’t you be on your way to the hospital?” Celia asked, looking at her mother for the answer.

  “My contractions just started,” Sally said. “We’ve got hours. Jake found an obstetrician in town who will take us. I just want to shave my legs and wash my hair and stuff. I don’t even know this doctor, so I don’t want to show up looking like a ragamuffin.”

  Celia’s mouth formed a perfect O. So did Jake’s.

  Her mother went over and sat beside Sally on the bed. She gently ran her hand over Sally’s hair. “You’re right, sweetheart. You probably have time,” she said. “But it’s possible that you were already in labor in your sleep and didn’t feel it, so you might be a lot more dilated than you think. That’s what happened to me with Violet, and she was almost born in the back of a Cutlass S
upreme.”

  “Oh God, really?” Sally said, suddenly sounding like herself.

  Jake clapped his hands together. “Yes! That’s exactly what I told her!”

  “Baby, shut up,” Sally snapped. She took a deep breath. “Sorry,” she said. “Okay, let’s go to the hospital.”

  They helped her to her feet.

  Sally grabbed Celia’s hand. “I want you and Bree in the room with us,” she said. “Okay?”

  Celia was stunned. “Yes!” she said with a laugh. “I’ll go get Bree, and we’ll meet you guys out front.”

  Before she left, Celia pulled Jake aside. “Are you okay?” she said. “Would you rather Bree and I didn’t come?”

  “This is Sally’s show. I’m just along for the ride,” he said. “Thanks for asking, though.”

  Celia squeezed his arm. “You’re pretty great, you know. You’re gonna be an amazing dad.”

  Jake smiled. “Thank you. Now go get Bree, before Sally stabs me to death with her nail file.”

  Bree’s room was three flights above Sally’s, and Celia took the stairs two at a time.

  She knocked hard on the door.

  “Bree!” she called. “Babe, come out here! Sally’s about to pop.”

  When the door swung open a moment later, it was Lara who stood there, sleepy eyed and confused in her bra and boxers.

  “Cee?” she said in a hoarse voice.

  Celia just laughed. “I need Bree for a mission,” she said.

  Bree padded up behind Lara. “What kind of mission?” she said, squinting against the hallway light.

  “Sally’s going to have the baby, and she wants us in the room with her,” Celia said.

  “Oh my God,” Bree said.

  Celia cocked her head to the side. “You two look cozy,” she said with a grin. “Have we made any decisions?”

  Bree was pulling on jeans and a pair of flip-flops.

  “Yeah yeah,” she said, nonchalantly. “No time for that now.”