Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan Page B

woman. Most straight Smithies had kissed women, but that didn’t count. SLUGs went on dates and held hands and had sex with women—
they took it a step beyond
, as Sally put it. But they did not take it beyond the college gates.
    Celia seemed comforted by the thought that Bree would soon return to the world of men. Bree knew it was hard for Celia to understand that she was not a lesbian, but that she had fallen in love with a woman. It was hard for her, too. The thought of ever trying to make her parents understand this seemed impossible. She had taken Lara to the family beach house off the coast of Charleston two summers in a row for the Fourth of July, and they had shared her bed. Bree knew her family liked Lara fine, but when she pictured them realizing what this had meant, she feared they would never forgive her.
    She broke up with Lara as planned, late one night in May. They sat on the edge of Paradise Pond in the dark and wept into each other’s hair, and Lara kept begging Bree to change her mind.
    “I know you’re afraid, but we can do this,” she said. “We’ve done it here, and these have been the best years of our lives.”
    “I know,” Bree said. “But that was here, Northampton. Not the real world.”
    “You think I’ll ever find someone as great as you, B.?” Lara shook her head, and in an imitation of her father’s Southern drawl, she said, “I’m sorry, baby, but that dog just won’t hunt.”
    Bree laughed weakly.
    “I love you,” Lara said. “I can’t lose you because you’re afraid of what other people will think.”
    “It’s not just any old people,” she said. “It’s my parents, my grandparents. The people who love me the most.”
    “Will we still be friends?” Lara asked.
    “We will always be best friends,” Bree said, though in truth she did not know.
    “Can I still kiss you?” Lara said.
    Bree shook her head. She thought of seeing Lara and not being able to kiss her or touch her soft skin. Bree sobbed into her hands, the hot tears puddling in her palms. Eventually, she got up, brushed the dirt from her pants, and said she had to go.
    “I think you did the right thing,” Celia said when Bree returned to the dorm.
    Bree gulped. “I can fall in love again, but I’ll never find another family.”
    As soon as she said it, she realized that she didn’t believe herself. She would never fall in love like this again. And so, she went to Lara’s dorm, dialed up from downstairs, and screamed “I’m an idiot! I was wrong!” into the intercom, as a trio of baffled first years looked on, smoking their cigarettes with wide eyes.
    They were briefly elated, but then graduation came. The most stinging memory of all was the look on her mother’s face when, just after the ceremony, Bree pulled her aside and told her the truth.
    “I don’t understand,” her mother said. She looked like she might faint. “Not you, Bree.”
    Not you
. It was, Bree thought, as if she had admitted to being a serial killer.
    “It’s my own fault,” her mother whispered. “Why did I insist on you coming here? You could be home safe and married to Doug Anderson by now.”
    Bree had hardly thought of him since she met Lara. It shocked her to hear his name. And how many times had her mother told her that she had made the best decision of her life letting him go?
    “Please, Mama,” Bree said. “Try to understand.”
    The rest of the family joined them then, the boys whooping and hollering over Bree’s diploma. Her mother smiled in the pictures her father insisted on taking, but afterward she sent Bree’s brothers away and said, “Tell your father what you’ve done.”
    Bree could feel herself turning red. She recited the words she had practiced with Lara the night before. “Daddy, I’m in a committed relationship with Lara and we’re in love,” she said.
    Her father looked baffled. “What do you mean?” he said.
    “They’re a couple!” her mother shouted, hysterical. “She’s