Chapter 9: Commencement

I picked up his letter and handed it back to him.

"Wear good shoes," I said. "The ED takes a lot of walking."

He took it.

He didn't have anything to say to that.

Seven weeks later, I put on a black gown with green velvet stripes on the sleeves.

The concert hall on Broad Street had red seats and three balconies and a ceiling painted like the sky.

My mother had a seat in the second balcony.

She'd made a new sign.

DR. MY DAUGHTER.

"It's backwards," I told her in the lobby.

"It's emphasis," she said.

Jodie's fiancée was there, and Jodie's whole family from South Philly.

In the last seat on the aisle sat a big man in a sport coat that didn't quite close.

Fitz had worn a tie.

It had tiny ambulances on it.

"It was my dad's," he said. "The only one he owned."

"It's perfect."

"It's hideous. That's why it's perfect."

The class lined up in the basement in alphabetical order.

Archer was near the front.

Cantrell was eight people behind me.

Kirby was further back.

Tatum was in her gown with a gold class speaker's stole over her shoulders and her phone in her hand.

We filed up and onto the stage.

The dean stood at the podium.

The program in every lap had her name printed under the words Class Address.

"Before we begin," the dean said, "a correction to your program."

A rustle went through two thousand people.

"Our class address will be delivered today by the class vice president."

Every head on the stage turned.

Tatum sat very still in the first row of graduates, in her gold stole.

Then the vice president stood up from three seats away and walked to the podium.

Tatum didn't move.

The woman next to her reached over, without a word, and lifted the gold stole off her shoulders.

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