Eliza Starts a Rumor(5)
On that beautiful June day, Eliza had sat in the high school auditorium enveloped in a particular sense of pride she had never felt before. She had been prepared for it by other parents, who’d told her, “There’s nothing quite like watching your children graduate.” She was thrilled to be experiencing it for herself.
She had waited impatiently for the ceremony to begin, anticipating the pomp and circumstance to come. Luke, equally excited, sat by her side. He put his hand over hers, squeezed it tight, and smiled at her with nothing but love in his eyes. It was common for him to look at her like that. He had no way of knowing how much it meant to her. She had a much harder shell than her husband did. Of course, she loved him and the twins with all she had, but she tended to keep her own heart behind a wall—a very tall wall. She was beyond grateful that Luke had persistently leaped over it, and on that day she had personally dismantled more than a few bricks—her heart felt more open than she had ever remembered.
Commencement was taking a while to begin. She imagined the kids lined up in the hallway of the high school trying their best to be quiet, but too hyped up to stand still. “Imagined” may be the wrong word; a better choice would be “remembered.” Eliza had graduated from the same high school as her children some thirty years earlier. She had lined up in the same hallway where they stood now, as she and her best friend, Amanda, rearranged the line so that they could march down the aisle together.
Eliza looked down to see Luke fidgeting with the program, rolling it between his palms like he was shaping dough. She took it from him; she wanted to keep it for posterity. She straightened it out, bending it in the other direction, then pressing it flat on her lap. She opened it up to read, first turning to the page that listed the students. There they were: her graduates, Kevin Hunt and Kayla Hunt. As she silently read their names, she could almost hear the voice of the principal calling them up for their diplomas. She imagined the cheers as they each made their way across the stage. The anticipation was palpable both in her mind and in the room.
She turned to the order of events, glancing through what she already knew. The principal’s remarks would be followed by speeches from the valedictorian, a girl she had known since the kids were in kindergarten, and the salutatorian, a boy who played lacrosse with Kevin. She was eager to hear what they both had to say: smart young minds ready to take on the world.
She turned to the next page in the program, a special dedication. As she read it, she began to shake. She tried to steady her hands in her lap but seemed to have no control of her own body. The program dropped to the floor, and Luke bent down to pick it up. As he went to hand it back to her, she saw panic in his eyes.
“Oh my God, Eliza, what’s the matter?”
Sweat poured out from under her arms, soaking the lavender A-line cotton dress with cap sleeves that she had worked so hard to fit into. She could feel the heat radiating from her scalp at the point where her hairline met her neck. Beads of sweat rolled off her upper lip and landed in her lap with such frequency that it seemed as if the roof was leaking. Her heart was literally shaking inside her body and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath, as if she was always one step behind it.
“Eliza, are you OK?” he asked in a panicked voice. “Should I get a doctor?”
Eliza looked down at the now melon-shaped circles of sweat under her arms.
“No, I’m OK. It’s just a hot flash.” She constructed her first outright lie to him on the topic.
It shut Luke up, as anything associated with menopause or menstruation always did. The first familiar notes of the graduation march began and all eyes, including Luke’s, turned to the auditorium doors. They swung open, revealing the graduates entering two by two.
Eliza didn’t hear a word of the speeches, didn’t relish the photos of her children in the montage. She sat, dazed and confused, as Kevin and Kayla walked across the stage to collect their diplomas. She stood when the audience stood, sat when they sat, clapped when they clapped, but didn’t hear a word of the commencement program.
As she stumbled out of the high school and into the June sun, she was only grateful that they had come in two cars. She slipped away from the crowd and got into hers alone. She locked the doors and drove down the block from the school, where she turned off the engine and screamed so loudly and so uncontrollably that she wondered if she might die. Wondered if her heart would explode right there, right on the spot.
Now, as she lay on the floor of her kitchen drenched with perspiration, just as she was then, she heard the loud screams once again. It took her a moment to realize that they were coming from her own mouth.
CHAPTER 4
Jackie Campbell
Jackie Campbell was a creature of habit. No matter what was going on at the office, he made sure to be on the 5:49 train out of Grand Central in order to be home for dinner with his teenage daughter. Tonight would be no different.
“If Obama had dinner with his girls, then I can certainly manage to have dinner with mine,” he would say when the notion seemed impossible.
That’s not to say it wasn’t difficult—Jackie often felt like he was doing loop-the-loops trying to be in two places at once—but their dinnertime ritual remained sacred. It was all about connecting with his daughter, Jana, even when she had no desire to connect with him. Never was that more true than right now.