“You don’t need makeup, Mom.”
“I agree.” My father stepped in from the hallway. He’d been feeling better but still looked thin and tired. However, I knew nothing short of wild horses could keep him from attending my graduation. I don’t know how long he’d been standing in the hall, or how much he’d observed and heard. My father knew the depth of my relationship to my mother, and he didn’t begrudge us a moment of it. My relationship with him was different. He’d raised me to be a man, and he was proud of me. But to my mother—I suspect to all mothers—their little boys will always be their little boys, no matter how old those boys become.
I retrieved my royal-blue cap with the gold tassel and grabbed the hanger with my matching graduation gown. My mother had ironed the fabric until the pleats could cut paper. When I turned back, I watched my parents depart my room, my mother wiping at tears, my father’s arm around her shoulders, consoling her. I remember being glad they would have each other for support when I left the following fall, and I realized how much I would miss them.
16
After the ceremony, we celebrated at a restaurant with the Cantwells. Mickie joined us. Her graduation from the public school would not be for another two weeks. After the restaurant and all the toasts to our futures, Ernie and I dropped off our parents and grandparents to head to one of several graduation parties.
“Are you going with them, Mickie?” my mother asked as she stepped from the car.
Mickie begged out. “Not me, Mrs. H. I don’t want to be the only girl in a testosterone-fueled room full of glory-days jocks reminiscing about their high school sports careers. I’ll stay here and watch TV with you, if that’s okay.”
When Mickie put it that way, I couldn’t blame her. But I also knew that was not her motivation for staying with my mom. My mom had done her very best to put on a happy face. That’s not to say she wasn’t sincerely happy for me, but with every new beginning, there is an inevitable end we must first accept, and my mother was struggling to accept that her boy had finished high school and would be leaving home in just a few short months. Mickie had begged out of the parties to be with my mom and to cheer her up. In many ways, Mickie had become the daughter my mother never had, and, I suspected, my mother had become the mother Mickie wished she’d had.
That night Ernie and I hit four parties. There was a bit of the glory-days reminiscing, as Mickie had predicted, but not by Ernie or me. We weren’t viewing graduation as an end, as were some of our classmates who had chosen not to go on to college or who had enlisted in the military. Despite my reticence when it came to new adventures and meeting new people, I was looking forward to attending Stanford and living with Ernie. I’d already looked up the school paper, the Stanford Daily, and was hoping I could write for it.
I drove Ernie home at just after one in the morning. When I pulled up to his driveway, he gave me his customary handshake, grabbing my thumb. He pulled me close and put his other hand around the back of my head. “You’ve been like a brother to me, Sam. I never would have made it this far without you.”
“You’re not going to kiss me, are you?” I said.
“I’m serious, man. I’ve ridden your coattail for twelve years. I hope you don’t mind if I ride it for four more.”
“You keep getting me sideline passes, and we’ll work out some arrangement,” I said. Ernie stepped from the Falcon. “Ernie?” I said. He turned back, but when I couldn’t find the words, Ernie said them for me.
“I know,” he said.
17
My mother had left the light on in the kitchen. I shut it off and started up the stairs, but I didn’t make it halfway before I heard someone call my name.
“Sam?” Mickie stepped from the shadows of the living room, startling me.
After catching my breath, I went down the steps to where she stood, her arms wrapped around her body, though it wasn’t particularly cold. All kinds of thoughts were flashing through my mind—her mother or father had died, or something had happened to Joanna—but then I realized that Mickie had not been to her home. She’d been with my mother.