Shining Sea (24 page)

That's him!

And then her vision of Kenny is swallowed up again as the graduating students pour into the central square of the campus, up the steps, across the walkways.

She lays the binoculars in her lap and opens her commencement-day program. There are a lot of graduates. This is going to take a while.

“May I?” Jennifer says, pointing to the binoculars.

“Of course.”

The program is a nice weight. The lettering is handsome. Traditional elegance, like one would expect from a college in the East. Jeanne used to send her notes on similar paper from Vassar.

Poor Jeanne. The last time she came East it was for Jeanne's funeral, two years ago. A quiet affair: Molly and her family, Francis and his pregnant wife, two former colleagues from Vassar, one former student, and the assistant to the oncologist who had treated Jeanne's breast cancer. And, of course, she and Kenny.

She opens the program. The list of honorary-degree recipients starts with:

WYNTON MARSALIS, COMPOSER, MUSICIAN, TEACHER

Toward the end, Ronnie would listen to a recording of trumpet solos played by Marsalis over and over. She came both to hate and love those elegant concertos.

Don't you get tired of those?

I'm listening to them welcome me upstairs.

And how do you know you're going
up
stairs?

He turned his head to look at her, slowly and painfully. She and Ronnie had always joked so much; it hadn't occurred to her that he might take her words seriously. She returned his gaze and took his hand in hers. She squeezed it.

If anyone will be welcome in heaven, it will be you, dearest.

That's all she ever said. They never spoke further about it. But she knows he understood, at that moment, that she forgave him. No matter what mistakes he might have made or what dark secrets he might have struggled with—even if he might have strayed once or more—Ronnie was a good man. She's been lucky, really. Most women don't get one good husband. She got two.

“Pff,” she says, shutting the program. Times change. The Japs
tortured
Michael. For more than a half century, Russia kept the entire US spooked with the threat of communism. Now Kenny's school is handing out graduate degrees to their people like doughnuts from a welcome table.

“It's slow getting started, isn't it?” Jennifer says. “It's such a big school. Almost nine thousand students are graduating today.”

Nine thousand. That's how many “fire balloons” the Japanese launched across the Pacific, hoping to strike North America. Each balloon contained a bomb.

The only way is not to think about it. About any of it. Sissy, who is supposed to be an expert on the subject, working over there in Africa, says the path to resolving conflict is through recognition and truth. She couldn't agree less. Nothing erases the past. The past will always be around longer than the present. The solution lies in moving on.

“Yep,” she tells Jennifer. “A lot of happy kids. A lot of happy parents.”

“And grandparents,” Jennifer says, smiling.

“And grandparents.”

Horns blow again. The graduates are seated now, and older men and women in cloak and gown, less steady on their feet, appear at the door of the library. A voice over a loudspeaker introduces them with due pomp and circumstance: the representatives of the alumni anniversary classes, the faculty, and on and on until the president of the college takes his place by the dais.

“Daddy. Can't see,” the little girl sitting on her neighbor's lap says.

“There's nothing to see yet,” he tells her.

She takes the binoculars back from Jennifer and hands them to the little girl. “These are magic,” she says. “Stand up on your daddy's lap. Now, don't drop them, and don't put them in your mouth.”

Finally they play the opening song, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“Put your hand over your heart,” she says to the little girl, tapping her hand against her own thin chest. The girl smiles, excited to be part of a ritual or just to have a reason to move, and flings her left hand in the region of her right shoulder.

She catches the father's eye and gives him a steely look. He quickly switches his daughter's hands, then slips his hand over his heart also.

“Honestly,” she mutters. To think she had a brother, two husbands, and two sons fight for the likes of this. And one of those husbands came back on a slow path to dying. And one son and her brother never came back at all. Not alive, anyhow.

And then there were all the other, connected casualties, like Francis's friend and even, in a way, Patty Ann. All these lives rearranged or even ended. It's easy to say, “Don't dwell on the past”—and she does say that all the time. But it is harder in practice not to do so.

“O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave…”

But things
are
getting better with Patty Ann. That's something to remember. Between Glenn's stonework and the rent from the house's extra bedrooms, their money problems seem under control finally. Patty Ann even says two fancy boutiques, one on Melrose and one on Montana, have begun stocking her Beachswept jewelry, and Glenn sold one of his sculptures to the private collection of a famous actor—she'd never heard of him, but that doesn't mean anything. And Sean has his job and, it seems, a girlfriend. The other two boys are a bit more of a mess, but they're still young; there's time for them. Look at Francis! He didn't come into his own until well into his thirties, and then he became a family man and from one of his songs alone must have made a million.

“In our enthusiasm to save money and to make money…” the president of the college is saying, talking about health care in America, comparing it to the savings-and-loan debacle. Thank God she didn't lose anything in that. Thank God she and Ronnie didn't have to rely on Medicare, either. It cost an arm and a leg those last months, keeping him home, hiring home health care. For the first time in their two decades of marriage, she saw Ronnie completely naked helping the nurse get him into the bath, to slip him into clean pajamas. Poor Ronnie—he'd always been such a modest man. But at least he didn't have to face the endless scrutiny of being in a hospital. People whispering about him. People saying things.

“We need a new contract today, where everyone gains—not just a few…”

Jennifer is clapping loudly, her hair and breasts swinging. A pleasant young woman, but what a physical spectacle girls make of themselves nowadays, tossing their vim and vigor all over the place. A sparrow skims the air over their heads. He doubles back and alights on a lamppost, letting out a brilliant trill. Who is he calling to amidst the thousands of humans on this campus this morning? Above, the sky stretches clear blue, streaked with ribbons of white cloud. The little girl has fallen asleep, one arm and one foot flung onto her lap. She pats the child's chubby ankle aimlessly, smoothes her skirt down over her pink tights. The sweet thing is the same age as Francis's daughter. She'd have liked to see Mia while she was East. She would have liked to see Francis, too, for that matter. But now that the fuss over his music has died down, he prefers his privacy up on that farm in Massachusetts, and she has to accept that.

How sprawled her family has ended up! Patty Ann on one coast. Francis on the other. Mike smack in the middle of the country, in Texas. And Sissy—not even on the continent. At least Kenny will be in Arizona.

The degrees are being conferred now, the dean of each school introducing a mass of graduates and formally requesting that the president of the university bestow diplomas on them. The actual diplomas will be handed out in the individual ceremonies this afternoon. For now, graduates of each school rise in turn by their places, while related members of the audience seem to rise along with them, a spirit of shared elation as buoyant as the bright spring air. Each dean tries to say something funny, something to set apart their throng of optimistic hearts and faces, and no one jeers at the goofy jokes and awkward attempts to be clever.

The family next to her cheers. The little girl wakes and touches her hand milkily.

“It's all right,” she says. “They're shouting because they're happy.”

The law school dean steps away from the podium, and a new bunch of students rise from their chairs. Their necks are flecked with deep green; it's the medical school!

She lifts the binoculars and scans the standing graduates; they are to the right of the dais, toward the front, with their backs to the thousands sitting behind them. They sway and clap, and she is sure she'll be able to pick out her Kenny.
Kennedy.
Twenty-two years ago, he sat beside her, a skinny seven-year-old clutching a torn sweater of his mother's in the place of a stuffed animal as they drove away from his parents' pitiful hovel in Los Angeles, through the desert, toward her and Ronnie's comfortable home in Arizona.

Give me his brother, too,
she told Patty Ann.
Give me Sean also
.

No
.
Sean needs to stay with me
.

Then Patty Ann married Troy and suddenly wanted Kenny back. But she'd been smart enough to make Patty Ann sign over legal guardianship.
It's just a formality,
she'd said,
in case of an accident or something. We can tear it up later.
She wasn't so uneducated as people might think.

How Patty Ann yelled at her when she refused to return Kenny.
Go ahead,
she told Patty Ann.
Shout as much as you like. Kenny is staying right here, where he is safe and happy.
During the worst of times, Patty Ann would call in the middle of the night, three sheets to the wind, shouting about Luke, shouting about Kenny, virtually incoherent.

Kenny would have been torn to bits trying to protect his mother in that household. Instead he grew up with Sissy walking with him to school and Ronnie taking him to his baseball games and helping him patiently with his math homework. A sweet boy in a happy household. He would never be here today if she'd sent him back to Patty Ann. That's the real reason Patty Ann backpedaled on coming today, not Glenn's wrist surgery. They've called a truce over her keeping Kenny, finally. Neither of them wants to reopen old wounds.

“I respectfully request, sir, that you grant these degrees, along with the rights, privileges, and responsibilities thereto attached…”

She scans the backs of the graduates again. That's Kenny! Boxing the air with his latex glove!

“I solemnly swear by whatsoever I hold most sacred that I will be loyal to the profession of medicine…”

She lifts a white-gloved hand to her mouth. A little sob, like a hiccup, escapes.

“…and just and generous to its members. That I will lead my life and practice my art in uprightness and honor…”

“Mrs. McCloskey, are you okay?” Jennifer whispers, hand hovering over hers.

“Congratulations, and welcome to the profession of medicine!”

“Of course I'm okay, dear. Haven't you ever seen a grown woman cry before?” She's earned these tears. She stands up proudly.

For lunch, Kenny has reserved a table for them at a large Mexican restaurant on Broadway. Cheerful approximations of southwestern life hang on the ceilings and walls: brightly colored sombreros and ponchos, brilliantly red plastic chili peppers. A waitress, noting Kenny's cap and gown, congratulates him, then reels off the day's specials like a train barreling through a tunnel.

Everything seems to happen quickly in New York City. Pedestrians walk quickly; even the squirrels dart around like their tails are on fire.

“It's not fancy, but I thought the theme would make you feel at home,” Kenny says. “And Jennifer loves southwestern cuisine. She can't wait to try the real thing.”

So Kenny is planning to bring Jennifer out to Arizona, at least for a visit. “It's a perfect choice for lunch,” she says. “Best of all, I won't have to pretend to know how to speak Spanish.”

“Your Spanish is not so bad, Grandma.”

“When I went to buy my new purse”—she lifts it up for them to see—“the salesgirl kept showing me bags made from canvas. She was very pretty but not very good at speaking English. I kept telling her, ‘No, no, I only want to see leather.' Finally I lost my patience and said, loudly and firmly:
¡Basta! Lo que necesito es de Cuervo
.”

Kenny breaks out laughing. “
Cuero
is leather,” he explains to Jennifer. “My grandmother was announcing that what she needed was some tequila.”

“By then, I
did
need a shot of tequila.” She takes a gulp of her margarita, delivered already by the waitress. Fast, fast, fast—New York City. The margarita isn't quite right, though. Ronnie became a real expert at them, mixing them every Friday evening. After Luke died, Ronnie never made a daiquiri again. He understood she'd always associate the taste with life before.

Life before, life after. She's had a few of those.

“Did you know that tequila can be used in the treatment of colds, irritable bowel syndrome, and even colon cancer?” Kenny says, sipping from his Diet Coke. “Seriously—it's the cactus it's made from, the blue agave. It helps deliver medicines to the intestinal tract and can kill toxins.”

“Seriously—we're going to talk about bowels at the lunch table?” she says, raising her eyebrows at him, taking another sip. It may not be the best margarita ever, but it's cold, and she hadn't realized how hot and thirsty she got out there during the ceremony. New York has its own kind of heat.

Kenny looks chastened. “I just thought it was interesting. The Mexicans have used it medicinally for centuries.”