My mother got her way. Well, most of her way.
She pestered the administration office all day to let me go. She invented various problems as to why I hadn’t RSVP’d or booked my gown rental, hinting heavily at mental illness, financial ruin and general poor health. It was incredible how accurately she had nailed my situation while ostensibly lying about it. Eventually, she was allocated three guest passes to the ceremony, but was told that there was no scroll prepared for Rachel Murray, and that I would have to watch everyone else graduate. My mother thanked her, and then rang back an hour later. How could we get the scroll prepared? The woman said she had nothing to do with the scrolls. My mother asked for the phone number of the scroll people.
After a solid eight hours of pestering, bribery and exquisitely performed small talk, my mother called me to say that I would be collecting my scroll, after all. I had to sit in the guest section, and I would be permitted to collect it on stage after everyone else had picked up theirs. If I could not procure a gown, I had to wear “dark, loose-fitting formal wear.”
“I have a black dress,” Mum said triumphantly, and started talking about getting my hair blow-dried.
It seemed to me that this was the worst of all possible worlds. You could go to your graduation or you could not, but this in-between state was humiliating. It was too late to do anything about it. My mother had already worked too hard, and all I could do was wearily go along with it.
“How did you manage it?” I asked. “With the scroll people?”
“Oh, I promised everyone I spoke to a free teeth cleaning,” she said.
I was in no position to complain about my fake graduation. Even if half the people my mother spoke to didn’t accept the free teeth cleaning, it was still a huge expense that she couldn’t afford.
My parents called to Shandon Street at 11 a.m. the next morning, my mother with her lipstick on, my father in a grey suit. The graduation had been sold to me as something my father desperately wanted and needed. That morning, however, he would have obviously rather been at home. He was utterly sullen, a mood that was in keeping with the tone of me and James’s home at that time, and I began to wonder whether depression was coming out of the walls.
My dad sat down on the couch and seemed to sink right into it. “I’ll just wait here,” he said, “while you perform your ablutions.”
Ever since Chris had shown up months before, I had thought about my father’s depression as an errand that I must get around to. I didn’t think about it as a thing that was happening to him, pushing on his shoulders, pinning him to chairs.
“Do you want a tea, Dad?”
He looked at a months-old magazine with Leona Lewis on the cover.
“All right.”
I learned—later, of course—that my mother had insisted on celebrating my graduation day because the last of my father’s investments—a shopping complex in Killarney—had just gone bust. All of my parents’ money was in property and investments, and there were huge questions around what they were going to retire on.
I brought my father his tea and he spoke.
“You’ll be going abroad, I suppose.”
“Who told you that?”
“They all are,” he said. “The youngies always go.”
I thought about the three grand in our savings account and wondered if I should tell him about it. It might comfort him to know that someone had money.
“Just don’t get up the duff, or anything stupid.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
My mother and I went upstairs, and I put on the black wool dress she had brought from home, along with thick black tights and brogues. I looked like I was going to a funeral. She asked me how the job was going, and I told her that I had been fired again.
“Oh, never mind,” she said, determined to put everyone in high spirits. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be sitting down all day, anyway.”
We knew parking would be a nightmare so we walked to the college, which only added to the odd funereal tone of the day. It felt like we were following a hearse, and I was still so weak from the miscarriage. I felt eighty years old.
It was easiest, when I was living with James, to congratulate myself on my self-sufficiency and the fact that I was not a burden to my struggling parents. While that might have been part true, it didn’t change the fact that I had done nothing to help them, either. My mother needed someone to talk to, my father needed someone to cheer him up. My brothers probably needed something, but their lives were too far away from mine to comprehend what that could be.
I said this to my mother, once. I apologised for being self-absorbed, for not asking more questions. It was years later, when she was sick, and although she did eventually get better it felt like a time for Big Truths. The statement startled her. “What could you have done?” she said. I told her that I could have been a better listener. She shook her head, and her reaction seemed to be: What on earth would I have talked to you for?
I stood next to my parents in the guest section, the rows and rows of empty seats in front of us, all awaiting graduates who had RSVP’d to the ceremony. It seemed like we waited for ever there, while various sets of parents and partners made polite chatter. I felt woozy, like my hands and feet were attached to my body with very loose string. “I’ve made a reservation at Isaacs,” my mum said. “Do you remember, we used to always go there, back when you were in school?”
It was the kind of reliably chic mid-priced place that was famous for its crab cakes, and it was right near my secondary school. My mum often had lunch with her friends there, back in the old days, and I would sometimes join her.
My dad was gazing at a couple a few rows ahead of us.
“What’s up, Dad?”
“I did his veneers,” he said. “About five years ago.”
“Ah.”
My mother smiled, happy he had said something. The music started up, and the faculty began to walk in.
I had never been to a graduation ceremony before, and I haven’t been to one since. It had not occurred to me that it’s a big day for the faculty as well as for the students, and that they are usually in attendance.
There, cloaked in red robes and looking like a wizard, was Dr. Fred Byrne.
I gripped the side of my chair, and my bones began to vibrate. Everyone in the room stood up. I was the only one who remained seated. “Rachel,” my mum prodded. “Stand.”
I stood. My teeth clenched, a straight line going from my molars to my ears. Dr. Byrne looked perfectly relaxed, smiling widely as he took his seat behind the podium with the other members of the faculty. I recognised Dr. Sheehan, who had taught me about film noir and German expressionist painting.