To The Power Of Three

35

Dale Hartigan remembered exactly one thing about his own graduation from Hereford High School: The speaker had predicted that the students wouldn’t be able to recall his name, much less what he said. The guy had pretty much nailed it. The only thing Dale remembered from graduation night was that Cathleen Selden, a rather plain girl who had gone through high school in flannel shirts and work boots, had shown up in a black-print halter dress. Cathleen Selden’s reinvention had fired Dale’s imagination, in ways large and small, reminding him that there really was a reason the ceremony was known as commencement. He might not be going to his college of choice, he might still be yoked to his brother, but College Park was big enough to allow a fresh start. After the ceremony he had tracked Cathleen through the looser, less organized gatherings that made up the Senior Ramble in his day, and while they never got further than sharing a Miller Lite on the hood of his car, it had been a most satisfying night.

Yet Dale was certain that every detail of his daughter’s graduation ceremony would have remained vivid. Not because she was first in her class- Glendale, following the cowardly example of other schools, had dropped valedictorian and salutatorian from its ceremony, denying Kat that recognition. Nor did he care that she was slated to recite that strange poem, “ Dover Beach.” His daughter could have been just one of the crowd, an ordinary student with no special role in the ceremonies, and every moment would have been etched in his memory as long as he lived. When it came to his own achievements, Dale felt vaguely shameful. But he had been able to glory in everything Kat did.

Of course, it hadn’t quite worked that way in Dale’s family, where his parents had been keen not to emphasize the differences between the brothers. Everything must be equal for twins, his father insisted. Dale remembered his parents’ consternation when they finally left the house on Frederick Road and moved into the old Meeker farm, whose odd-shaped rooms made it impossible to give their sons identical bedrooms. So, rather than let one boy have what was clearly a superior room-even by random drawing of straws or flipping a coin-they had made them continue to double up. Dale had not minded, not until the issue of college came up and his father said each boy would get the same amount of money, no more. So if Dale wanted to go to Stanford, which was offering no financial aid, it was up to him to pay the difference in tuition. And not just the college costs but the difference in expenses, including the travel back and forth to California. It was probably a bluff, but Dale hadn’t called it.

Wait-he did have another memory from his own graduation night: His father had arrived late. Dale had been third in his class, winning prizes for math and history, but his father had managed to miss that part of the ceremony. Yet he was there when the diplomas were awarded, clapping first for Dale Hartigan, then Glen. He knew that his father hadn’t meant to teach him to be ambivalent about his achievements, and yet Dale always felt a little desperate whenever he received any public recognition.

So Dale had tried to do things differently with Kat, and he hadn’t lacked opportunities to celebrate her. Number one in her class, a cheerleader yet, and popular too, the kind of girl who was elected prom queen not just because she was beautiful but because she was beloved. Early admission to Stanford. All that, and then the bonus of her lovely soprano voice, to which Kat seemed utterly indifferent. He remembered feeling a little startled when she said Perri had been given a solo while Kat was to recite.

“It’s what I want,” she insisted. “I specifically asked for a speaking part. Dad-don’t interfere again.”

“I never interfere.”

“Dad.” Kat could say a thousand things with that one word. In this instance she was saying he was full of shit. She knew him, his daughter. Her love for him was not blind, but it was constant, unwavering. Married people never knew this kind of love. A lasting marriage was full of rough spots and angry times; the only real victory was hanging on. But it was possible, with a child, to have a pure relationship.

“That was different, what happened last spring. You deserved the number one ranking in the class. It was silly of them to try to deny it, sillier still to just drop the valedictorian rather than sort out their own contradictory policy-”

“Dad.” This time her tone signaled: End of topic. If Dale had been frustrated by his own father’s refusal to brag about him loud and long, Kat squirmed a little at her father’s obvious pride, which just made her more adorable. What would Kat have been like as a mother? What lessons would she have absorbed, what models would she have rebelled against? Her even temper, her dislike of arguments-were those inborn or the result of the fractious years in the Hartigan marriage?

Kat was Kat, her own person. He had looked forward to celebrating every milestone in her life, had cherished the idea of seeing her graduate, high school and college, find her way into the professional world, marry-but not too soon. Have children. Again, not too soon. He had envisioned her winning prizes first-he wasn’t sure for what, just that there would be prizes, endless prizes, and he would always be there.

Alexa was one of the teachers assigned to keep the seniors in the cafeteria, where they were corralled like wild horses. After all, there were almost four hundred of them, and, understandably, their spirits were high verging on insane. Alexa tried not to find them annoying, but her own mood was gloomy. Perri was dead, so all her efforts on the girl’s behalf were meaningless. And Perri had been her primary focus, she assured herself now. She had not used her concern over the girl as a pretext to spend time with the sergeant. He was much too old for her, and stocky.

Even Josie Patel, allowed to perch on a bench while the others stood, seemed happy, if not as gleeful as her fellow students. When the signal finally came, via walkie-talkie-Barbara Paulson had no intention of any unplanned contingencies in the graduation-Josie’s fellow P’s helped her stand and accommodated her off-kilter gait as they began to march out to the recorded strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.” Yes, Josie was smiling-wanly, to be sure, but smiling.

As the procession reached the door of the cafeteria, Alexa saw that strange little gay boy, Dannon something, appear at the threshold and fall into step alongside Josie, whispering urgently. Josie shook her head, trying to pick up her pace, but there was no place to go, and Dannon continued to dog her down the long corridor. Finally another teacher put a hand on his shoulder, told him to step back and stop slowing down the processional, which had to cover a lot of ground through the cavernous school.

Perhaps, Alexa thought, Dannon had last-minute instructions for Josie, whose participation in that night’s ceremony had been carefully scripted so she could accept her scholarship, then wait in the wings for her diploma, instead of going up and down the stage stairs.

The last line of the “Desiderata” echoed in Josie’s mind, more crystalline in Toni Singleton’s soprano than it would have been in Perri’s. Peace in silence. Perri had never been as good a singer as she yearned to be, so she had worked extra hard at chorus, winning solos through sheer determination. It had been difficult for her, when Kat’s golden voice had emerged, although she had never admitted it.

How could she be dead? Until the moment that Dannon had grabbed Josie-hissing at her, as if it were her fault-Josie had believed that Perri would recover. Perri had to recover. Perri was the talker. Perri was the one who needed to explain what happened.

The speaker droned on and on, but Josie heard none of it, although her mind registered the relieved applause signaling that the speech was over. Only two more items on the program, the Hartigan Scholarship and the diplomas. She barely heard her own name when Mr. Hartigan called her forward, although each mention of Kat’s name was like a low-level electrical shock. Kat! Hartigan! Kat! Hartigan! Kat! Hartigan!

Then there was a huge silence, and Rose Padgett nudged Josie, reminding her to rise and go up the stairs to the stage. It was hard to maneuver, even though they had arranged for Josie to be on the aisle, and she lurched a bit, rolling from side to side as if drunk. She hopped up the steps-they had offered to put in a ramp, but Josie had said she could manage the short flight of stairs, and made her way toward Mr. Hartigan. He had a handheld mike, and he tilted it toward her so she would not have to let go of her crutches while making her brief remarks.

Peace in silence. Josie would know peace, if only she could keep her silence. No, that was wrong. She would be miserable if she kept on this way. It was everyone else who would be happy. Her parents, Mr. Hartigan, the Kahns. The scholarship was a bribe, even if they didn’t realize it. Take the money, go to college, and stick to the version that made everyone comfortable. With Perri dead it would be easy. Even if they found her sandals, even when they retrieved the text messages from Perri’s and Kat’s phones, they couldn’t prove anything. If Josie had learned anything from her mathematically inclined father, it was how hard it was to create a proof from a few scanty facts.

“Mr. Hartigan, parents, my fellow students,” she said, stalling as she gathered her thoughts, trying to figure out if she really wanted to say the words forming in her head. All she had to say was thank you, according to her mother. A simple thank-you and she would be free. Or not.

“You are very kind, but I can’t accept this scholarship. Kat would have wanted it to go to someone who truly needed it-and someone who deserved it.”

It had been planned that the diplomas would be awarded next on the program and that Josie could wait in the wings for her name to be called, rather than make her laborious way back to her seat. The band played, covering the confused silence, and parents applauded as if the scholarship presentation had gone as planned. Josie stayed, making it through the G’s, but she simply could not take it anymore, and escaped through the stage door, following the curving paths around the school to her parents’ car.

When they showed up twenty minutes later, they did not berate her for what she had done or pester her with questions, although Josie could see a thousand questions in their faces.

“Perri died,” she told them. “This afternoon. Dannon Estes told me while I was in the processional. The police kept it from me.”

“Oh, Josie,” her mother said. “No wonder you’re so upset.”

“I want to talk to the police.”

She was scaring them, she knew she was scaring them, but she couldn’t help it. She had been protecting them for a week, and she was exhausted.

“Why don’t you sleep on it?” her father suggested. “Go home, get a good night’s sleep, and we’ll call Ms. Bustamante.”

“I’m not going to be able to sleep until this is settled.”

Just as Josie had gone reeling, in her own fashion, from the auditorium, Dale had slipped away, too, leaving as soon as the principal began handing out diplomas. What was the girl thinking? Why had she embarrassed him that way? True, he may have had ulterior motives when he offered Josie the scholarship, but it was, above all else, a sincere memorial to Kat, and she had been Kat’s best friend. Angry, distracted, he drove blindly through the streets of Glendale, unsure of where he was going until he ended up at his old house.

“Dale,” Chloe said. It wasn’t even nine-thirty, but she was wearing a silk robe, which she had thrown over a decidedly odd outfit, even for Chloe-yoga pants and a tailored shirt. It was as if she couldn’t decide what part of the day she was inhabiting. She held a glass of wine in her hand, and Chloe had never much cared for wine. “What in…?”

“Can I have a drink?”

“Sure.” She closed the door on him, returning to the porch with a second glass and the bottle of Vigonier in which she had already made a considerable dent. “Let’s sit out here. It’s a nice night.”

She doesn’t want me in the house, Dale thought. She’ll never let me in this house again if she can help it.

“It will be loud,” he said. “All those kids driving around, the night of the Senior Ramble and all. The traffic on Old Town Road will be bumper to bumper.”

“I don’t mind noise these days,” Chloe said. “In fact, I find I need a constant wall of sound. I’ve started sleeping with the television set on.”

“I don’t sleep at all.” They were being competitive. Lord help them, they were competing to see who was suffering more.

“I don’t really sleep. I lie in bed, and I listen to CNN. There’s so much death in the world. Every day people die. Soldiers and civilians. Ex-presidents. A busful of people on their way to a riverboat casino in Mississippi.”

“But none of them matter. Not like Kat.”

“You only say that because she was your daughter, Dale. Our daughter. But everyone who dies is someone’s child. Or a parent, or a sibling. This is our grief. But we’re not alone. Every day someone in the world is grieving.”

“No, Kat matters more. She was extraordinary. She would have done important things.”

“Like you? Like me? What have we done with our lives that makes us so vital, so much more important than others?”

“Chloe-”

“We lost our daughter, Dale. You don’t need to make it bigger than it is. It’s big enough.”

Oh, Lord, the world really was upside down. Chloe was wise and calm, while Dale was the hysterical one, scattered and out of control.

From Old Town Road, they heard the first slow rumble of cars, the honking horns, the blasts of hip-hop music, and, over it all, the loud, exuberant voices of eighteen-year-olds flush with the success of surviving their education. The Senior Ramble was under way.