J. Courtney Sullivan - Commencement: A novel

For my parents,
Eugene F. Sullivan Jr. and Joyce Gallagher Sullivan

SMITH ALUMNAE QUARTERLY

Spring 2006 Class Notes

CLASS OF 02

Robin Hughes graduates from Northwestern this May with a masters in public health. She lives in Chicago with fellow Hopkins House alum Gretchen (Gretch) Anderson Natalie Goldberg (Emerson House) and her partner, Gina Black (class of 99), have finally realized their dream of moving to Finland and opening a karaoke bar! So far, they say, Emersonians Emma Bramley-Hawke and Joy Watkins have already stopped in for several verses of Total Eclipse of the Heart After four years of working in a health clinic in her native Malaysia, Jia-Yi Moa has been accepted to NYU Medical School! And now, news from my own darling group of girls: Sally Werner, who works as a researcher in a medical lab at Harvard, is getting married (on the Smith campus!) this May to longtime boyfriend Jake Brown. Fellow King House alums Bree Miller (Stanford Law 05), April Adams (intrepid research assistant for Women in Peril, Inc.), and yours truly will be serving as bridesmaids. Look out for the embarrassing drunken photos in the next issue. Until then, happy spring to all and keep sending me those updates.

Your class secretary,
Celia Donnelly
()

C elia woke with a gasp.

Her head was throbbing, her throat was dry, and it was already nine oclock. She was late for Sallys wedding or, at least, for the bus that would take her there. She silently cursed herself for going out the night before. What the hell kind of a bridesmaid showed up late to the wedding of a dear friend, and hungover at that?

Sun streamed through the windows of her little alcove studio. From her spot in bed, Celia could see two beer bottles and an open bag of tortilla chips on the coffee table by the couch, and, oh Jesus, there was a condom wrapper on the floor. Well then, that answered that.

The guy lying next to her was named either Brian or Ryan; that much she remembered. Everything else was a bit of a blur. She vaguely recollected kissing him on the front stoop of her building, fumbling for the keys, his hand already moving up her leg and under her skirt. She did not recall having sex or, for that matter, eating tortilla chips.

She was lucky not to have been chopped up into little bits. Her sober self needed to somehow get the message to her drunk self that it was entirely unadvisable to bring strange men home. You saw it in the papers all the timeThey met at a party, he asked her to go for a stroll, two days later the police found her torso in a dumpster inQueens. She wished that casual sex wasnt so intimately connected to the possibility of being murdered, but there you had it.

Celia leaned toward him now and kissed his cheek, trying to affect an air of calm.

Ive got to leave soon, she said softly. Do you want to hop in the shower?

He shook his head. I dont have to go into the office today, he said. Got a golf date with some clients this afternoon. Mind if I sleep in?

Umm, no, she said. Thats fine.

Celia looked him over. Blond hair, perfect skin, chiseled arms, dimples. He was cute, suspiciously cute. Too attractive for his own good, as her mother would say.

Before she left, she kissed him again. The door will lock automatically behind you. And theres coffee on the counter if you want it.

Thanks, he said. So Ill call you?

Good. Well, see you later, then.

From his tone, she figured the odds of his actually calling were about fifty-fifty, not bad for a drunken hookup.

Celia headed toward the subway. Was it weird that he had asked to stay in her apartment? Should she have demanded that he leave with her? He looked clean-cut, and he said he worked in finance. He didnt seem like the type who would go home with a girl just to rob her, but what did she really know about him anyway? Celia was twenty-six years old. Now into what she considered her late twenties, she had begun compiling a mental inventory of men she should not sleep with. As she stepped onto the A train, she added Guys who might be suspected of stealing my belongings to the list.

Twenty minutes later, she was sprinting through Port Authority, praying for the bus to be five minutes late. Just five extra minutes, that was all she needed.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, she muttered. Come on, come on.

It was a habit of hers, a remnant of a time when she actually believed in God and would say a Hail Mary whenever she was in trouble. Celia realized now that what she had once thought of as prayers were in fact just wishes. She didnt expect the Virgin to actually do anythingeven if she did exist, she probably wouldnt be in the business of controlling buses running express from Manhattan to Northampton, Mass. All the same, the familiar words calmed Celia down. She tried to use them sparingly so as not to offend the Mother of God, a woman she didnt believe in, but even so.

Her mother revered the Virgin Mary, saying the rosary in her car on the way to work each morning, keeping a statue of the Madonna in the front garden for years, until a Presbyterian family moved in across the street (not wanting to offend them, she dug up the statue and put it out back). She believed that Mary had all the power, that Jesus was secondary to her, because he had come from her womb. Celia often marveled at how her mother was perhaps the only person on earth to perceive Catholicism as matriarchal.

She reached the gate just as the bus driver was collecting the last of the tickets and closing the door.

Wait! she shouted. Wait! Please!

The driver looked up in sleepy-eyed surprise. She hoped he wasnt as hungover as she was.

Please! I have to get on that bus! she said.

Hurry up, then, he said. Theres one seat left.

It wasnt like Celia to draw attention to herself in public, but the thought of Sallys disappointment if she had to call and say she was running late was just too much to bear. Besides, Celia had been looking forward to this weekend for months. She did not want to miss a moment with the girls.

She pushed through the aisle, past mothers bouncing crying babies on their laps, teenagers with their headphones blaring, and twenty-somethings having loud cell phone conversations about insanely private matters. Bringing new meaning to hell on wheels, that ought to be Greyhounds slogan. She was desperate for more coffee and as much Advil as she could take without killing herself.

Despite the four-and-a-half-hour bus ride that lay ahead, Celia smiled. Soon she would be with them againSally, impeccable and impulsive, a twenty-five-year-old millionaire in a thrift-store wedding gown; April, brave and opinionated, with that sometimes reckless air that worried them all; and Bree, beautiful and bright eyed and mired in a doomed love affairshe was still Celias favorite, despite all the changes and distance between them.

Celia sat down beside a pimply teenager reading a comic book. She closed her eyes and breathed in deep.

Eight years earlier, on Orientation Day, Celia wept in the backseat of her fathers Lincoln Town Car all the way out to Smith. The family had to pull over in a Taco Bell parking lot so she could get herself together before meeting her housemates. By the time she arrived at the front door of Franklin King House, she was fixed with a big fake smile and half a tube of her sisters Maybelline concealer. (Celia had always prided herself on being a girl who didnt wear makeup, but she realized at that moment that she did in fact apply powder and mascara and eye shadow most mornings, she just never bought any of it herself.) She held back tears for hours as they carried boxes upstairs and mingled with other new students and their families on the lawn of the science quad. Then, at last, it was time for the family to go, and there was an embarrassing, agonizing moment in which the four of themCelia, Violet, and their parentsstood in a circle and embraced, everyone crying except for Violet, who was fifteen and eager to get back home in time to see her boyfriends ska band play at the Knights of Columbus Hall. (The band was called For Christs Sake, and Celias mother thought they were a Christian rock group. She didnt know that the last word was pronounced with an emphasis on the